scared. I watched her slide the tray into the slot and close the oven door, then strip off oven mitts and turn toward me with a smile. "It's nice out there, isn't it? Kind of peaceful. Maybe we can have dinner out there..."
"Yeah," I said. "Great. Okay." What a horrible idea. I started to move past her to the bedroom.
She reached out and grabbed my arms, pulling me to a stop. Her frown creased into faint lines. "Jo? What happened to your face?"
"Um..." I was drawing a blank. "I tripped."
"Tripped?"
"It's nothing, Sarah." I tried to pull free. My sister was stronger than she looked.
"Bullshit, nothing. You look spooked, Jo. Is it that guy? That van guy?" Now she looked angry as well. "Dammit... I'm calling the police. Right now."
"No! No, look, it's nothing like that-" This was all getting way too complicated. I yanked free of her grip. She lunged for the phone. I grabbed it away from her and slammed it down hard on the table. "Sarah! It's my business, all right? And the guy in the van is a cop!"
She stared at me, astonished. "He's what?"
"A cop." I had trouble controlling my breathing. Panic was getting the better of me. "I had some trouble in Las Vegas a couple of months ago. It's temporary."
"Jesus Christ, what did you do? Kill somebody?"
"Do I look like a murderer to you? You're my sister! You're supposed to believe in me!"
I hadn't answered the question, but luckily I'd hit the right guilt buttons. "Jo ..." Sarah flapped her manicured hands helplessly. "Fine. All right. I believe you. But why is he following you?"
Chapter Fifteen
"He thinks I know something about a crime that happened while I was-before you ask, no. I didn't." She opened her mouth to fire off another question, and I hastily searched for an excuse to escape. "Sorry. I have to use the bathroom."
Even persistent people don't want to argue with full bladders. She let me go. I hurried through the doorway into the living room, heading for my closed private space, and... the doorbell rang.
JESUS! "Get that!" I yelled over my shoulder, and kept moving. I ran into the bedroom, slid open the bedside table, and grabbed David's blue glass bottle. My heart was hammering. I was about to take a huge gamble, and it was likely to get me hurt or killed in the process. I went back out into the living room, passing Sarah on her way to answer the doorbell, frowning at me; she'd taken the time to remove her apron and fluff her hair.
I slid the sliding glass door open and stepped out onto the patio. Ashan turned from contemplation of the ocean to stare at me. His eyes flicked toward the bottle in my hand.
"At least you take direction properly," he said. "Call him."
"You don't want me to do that," I said.
Ashan's eyes went stormcloud-dark, tinged with lightning blue. "I won't tell you again."
"You want to kill him."
Ashan smiled. Not nicely.
I closed my eyes, opened them, and said, "David, come out of the bottle."
For a long second I was sure that I'd made a terrible mistake, that he'd never gone back in the bottle at all, and then a shadow detached itself from the corner and stood, swaying and angular, at my side. It wasn't David. It wasn't ... anything I could recognize. But it answered to the name, and evidently I still had some control over it.
Ashan took a step back. That predatory smile went south, fast.
"What's wrong?" I asked him, and this time, my voice stayed steady and cool. "You wanted David. Here he is."
"Ifrit."
"Oh, now that's just mean. You shouldn't judge a Djinn by the color of his ..." Before I could finish what was admittedly a very weak joke, I lost whatever control of the situation I had, as the Ifrit formerly known as David lunged, fastened himself around Ashan, and began to feed.
Ashan screamed, backed up, hit the railing, and began raking the Ifrit-I couldn't think of him as David-with silver claws. Ashan's form changed, flowed, became something larger and only barely human in form. Gray and vague and shot through with vivid streaks of white.
The two of them misted through the railing and plunged down, twisting, falling.
The Ifrit had two misshapen, angular limbs plunged deep into the