for payback and something more than a pound of flesh.
I couldn't use David to protect me. Not when he was barely clinging to his sanity and identity.
I stood there, looking down at him, as Ashan made it to his feet. He passed an absentminded hand over his suit, and the rips and dirt disappeared. He was once again a Brooks Brothers ad, except that his expression wouldn't effectively sell anything but firearms or funeral arrangements.
He didn't move, just stared at me with that burning threat in his eyes, and waited.
I said, "If you come back at me, I'm going to make you an all-you-can-eat Ifrit buffet."
He said something in that liquid-silver Djinn language, the one I could almost understand. I doubted it was complimentary.
"I mean it," I said. "Get out. If you come back, I won't be the one getting bitch-slapped."
Behind me, the sliding glass door rumbled open, and I heard Sarah say, "Jo? Eamon's here. I'm getting ready to serve the pasta. And I'm serious about the police. You really should call them. I don't care if that man is a cop; he still can't do this to you. It's not legal."
I didn't move. Down on the pavement, Ashan didn't, either. We stared for a good thirty seconds. Wind whipped at my clothes, my hair, going west, then south.
Random winds, confused by the boiling disturbances in the aetheric. God, the weather was so screwed up. The Wardens were going to go insane.
Which reminded me of what had happened on the bridge. I had no idea of how much all this was affecting the Wardens, but I knew for certain there'd already been one human casualty. I needed to report it.
"Jo?" Sarah sounded concerned. "Are you all right?" The patio door slid farther open, and she stepped out next to me, enveloping me in an ever-so-slightly overdone cloud of Bulgari's Omnia, which was-she'd assured me-a bargain at $75 for two ounces. The wind ruffled her highlighted hair, and she frowned out at the parking lot, focusing on the white van. Her breath exploded in an exasperated sigh. "That's it. I'm calling the cops. At the very least, they can make him stop parking down there and staring at us all the time."
Down in the parking lot, Ashan's intense eyes-swirling from silver back toward teal blue-suddenly shifted away from me to focus on my sister. And he smiled. It was a dark prince's smile, something chill and amused and terrifying. I felt an answering righteous surge of fury. Don't you dare, you bastard. Don't you dare look at my sister like that.
Whether he sensed that or not, he misted away without another sound or word.
Gone, except for that lingering, unspecified threat.
I sucked in a deep breath, turned, and laid a hand on Sarah's bare shoulder. Her skin felt creamy-soft under my cold, shaking fingers.
"It's okay," I said, and smiled. "Everything's okay now. Let's just have a nice, peaceful dinner."
Yeah. That was likely.
While I'd been playing Juliet to Ashan's homicidal Romeo out on the balcony, Sarah had transformed my dining room table-another secondhand special-from its usual distressed state into something that might have made an interior designer reach for a camera. I recognized the tablecloth, which was something of Mom's that she'd left me-a gigantic crocheted ecru thing, big enough to use as a car cover-but Sarah had dressed it up with an accenting silk-tasseled runner, candles, a bowl of fresh flowers floating in water. The dishes-all matching-looked suspiciously new. Also mod and oddly shaped and matte black, which I knew had not been in my meal-serving arsenal last night. In fact, my china collection mostly consisted of secondhand Melmac, with the occasional chipped Corningware.
The kitchen looked spotless. There were three glasses of chilled white wine sitting next to the plates, glimmering delicately in candlelight.
Eamon was standing next to the table, his back to us, watching something playing silently on our (still crappy) television set. Financial news, apparently. At the sound of the closing patio door he turned, and I have to admit, he looked good. Like Sarah, he'd gotten the "let's dress to impress" memo I'd missed. His pants were some kind of dark, rough-textured silk, his shirt a deliciously pet-table peachskin, open just enough to demonstrate how casual he was, yet nowhere approaching the sleazy post-modern disco look so currently in vogue. He looked hand-tailored, and still just the slightest