by Rachel Caine
“No, you stop. Right there.” Yvette’s cool, southern-smoothed voice. I jerked to a halt. Utterly, completely out of control. No, in her control. She was holding my bottle, and that meant she was holding me, too. Body and soul.
“Now, is that really necessary?” Patrick asked weakly, and waved at the boy and Lewis. “You have what you want. There’s no need for all this violence—”
“Shut up, Patrick,” Yvette snapped. Patrick winced and turned away, shoulders hunched. He raised his hands in surrender.
Lewis was still trying to get to her, crawling slowly now, blood dripping out of his hairline to spatter the flesh-pale carpet. His voice was weak and deep in his throat. “Jo, go, get out—”
“You. Do not move,” Yvette said, precisely. Nailing me in place as the boy with the glass bowl advanced again, skittishly, aiming for another swing at Lewis’s head. “Kevin. Do it.”
“No!” She hadn’t made me stop talking, just moving. I screamed it as the boy lifted the heavy bowl. I reached desperately for power…
But Lewis got there first.
The bowl shattered into sharp-edged, spinning pieces in the kid’s hands. He cursed and dropped it, shaking cuts; more blood flew out at velocity to spray the walls.
He kicked Lewis in the head, taking his anger out on the nearest and most helpless target. Lewis went down. Stayed down. I couldn’t see him from where I was, pinned in place by Yvette’s merciless command.
Patrick rounded on them, shouting, “That’s enough! No more!”
The boy stopped, panting. His face was corpse-pale, shining with sweat.
“You planning on getting righteous on me now?” Yvette asked. If she was perturbed that Patrick had just ordered her teen psycho around, she didn’t let it show. “Where are you planning to get your next meal for your beloved Sara? You going to ask him for it?”
“Just—stop.” Patrick swallowed hard, fists clenched. “Not in my house. I’ll not allow this.”
“But you’d allow this.” Yvette pulled a frosted glass bottle from a purse she’d dropped in the corner. Rattled it suggestively. Popped the rubber cap on the top.
A Djinn formed. A man, gorgeous, a study in gold and bronze. He looked utterly delicious, except for the stark terror in his eyes. He started to back away, but she froze him in place with a whispered command, and walked all around him, trailing her fingers over his gleaming skin.
I remembered something David had said. They had appetites in common. Well, I knew Bad Bob Biringanine’s appetites well enough to be sickened by that.
Patrick went sickly pale and protested, “Don’t—” but it was too late.
The black shadow of the Ifrit slid around the kitchen door, flowed over carpet.
“I see she’s hungry,” Yvette said, and moved out of the way. “Want to lecture me about morality now, Patrick?”
He hung his head.
The Ifrit leaped like a hunting cat. Ripped into the Djinn with flashing claws, digging deep. The Djinn’s mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. He wasn’t fighting. He was just… dying. Dying horribly. Disintegrating into wisps of bloodred, pain-heavy mist.
She sucked him in through that black gaping maw of a mouth and swallowed him whole. Nothing left. Not even a scream. I was frozen by Yvette’s command, but I wouldn’t have had the courage to run even if I were free. There was something so predatory, so cold in the air…
The Ifrit turned her non-face toward me, sniffing, and I went utterly cold. To stand here and be devoured without a fight was the worst fate I could imagine.
But then she changed. Frosted black skin going pale, smooth, glorious. A glowing waterfall of white hair. Her eyes were the last thing to change, flickering from dead black to a deep dark amethyst.
Sara, as I’d seen her in the dream. She stretched out her arms mutely to Patrick, and collapsed. He rushed to her, picked her up and cradled her in his embrace, lips pressed to the soft waves of her hair.
He was whispering something to her, over and over. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. When he looked up at me, the misery in his eyes hit like a blow. “It’s the only way,” he said. “She has to eat…”
And she ate other Djinn. I couldn’t imagine how lucky I’d been the other night, when he’d put me in a cage match with her, or even when I’d been chatting with her in the kitchen. What had she said in the kitchen? Don’t blame him. She’d known what he was going to do. They’d done it before.
Yvette’s cool green eyes were all over me like sticky hands. She’d forgotten all about Lewis, unconscious on the floor. “You’re like Patrick, then. Human, changed by a Djinn.”
I don’t think I’d ever been so ashamed of my origins. I gave her a burning glare back. “So what does Patrick do for you, to get your castoffs? Besides pimp out whoever he can get his hands on?”
She had the sweetest, most revolting smile. “Why, I don’t think the business details of our arrangement are going to be your concern, pretty girl. No, I think you’d just better concentrate on making my son Kevin very happy.”
Yvette tossed the kid the bottle. He almost fumbled it. I had that one second to move while the bottle was out of her control and passing into his; I used it to race to Lewis’s side and pour what healing energy I had into him.
He was hurt. Badly. I couldn’t do enough, wasn’t good enough.
“What are you doing?” Patrick protested, clearly thrown—not talking to me, but to Yvette.
She rounded on him with clenched fists. “Getting rid of the trash. You think I wanted her? You told me you had a way to get to David.”
“I do!” He nodded at me. “He’ll come for her. As soon as he knows you have her, he’ll come running.”
“He’d better,” she said, and gave him a full smile, with teeth. “If he doesn’t, there’s no place you can hide from me. You know that.” She shot a look at me, and I was struck by the sheer callous indifference in her eyes. “Put your toy away, Kevin. I want to go home.”
The kid clutching the bottle pointed at me and said, “You. In the bottle. Now.”
I had no choice, none at all. I felt myself breaking apart, looked up to see Yvette watching me with dreaming sea green eyes. “Don’t you worry, sweetie,” she said as I was sucked away into gray oblivion. “I’m sure we’ll think of something interesting to do with you.”
* * *
You wouldn’t think you could dream in oblivion, but well, there you go. I dreamed I was a child again. Very small, too small to understand the world around me—a toddler, teetering around on stubby uncertain legs and grabbing for anything pretty, shiny, interesting, dangerous.
I dreamed of being held in someone’s arms, maybe my mother’s, with my head pillowed on her shoulder. I remembered rain, falling like perfect diamonds from the soft gray sky. I remembered wind licking cool over my skin. I remembered thunder vibrating through me like the voice of God.
Dreams and memories are so very close to the same thing.
In the dream, in the memory, I fell down on the cool, damp grass and wailed in fright, and there was somebody there, gathering me up, holding me, stroking away the pain and fear and tears.
Shhhh. It was my mother’s voice, warm and blurred the way things are in dreams. They’ll hear you.
I was too young to talk, but somehow I was talking anyway. Who?
Her hands smoothed my hair in gentle, careful strokes. You know.
I did. I cuddled in closer to her warmth. Overhead, the clouds muttered to each other in a language I could almost understand, and I reached out to them and felt them draw closer, all soft edges and cold alien intensity.
They wanted me. I wanted them. In my simple child logic, I thought that meant there was no danger; anything that was interested in me had to be my friend, didn’t it?
I didn’t understand that interest could also be hunger. That there were parts of me that were tender and juicy and oh so delicious, and that the world was full of predators who wanted to scoop out those tasty tidbits
. No, I didn’t understand that.
But my mother did. Be careful, she whispered in my ear. Something’s coming. You need to be ready, sweetheart. You need to understand how to see behind the smiles.
What’s behind the smiles? I asked her, in my little-child voice. She showed me teeth. Long, sharp, needle-thin teeth, the better to eat you with, my dear.
Don’t trust anyone, she hissed. And then she let go, and I fell up into the clouds, and felt myself being stripped raw, pulled apart, burned, broken, destroyed.
See, it was just a dream. Or a memory. Or a nightmare.
Except the parts that actually happened.
Two
The next thing I knew was a rush of cool, sweet air. I convulsively wanted to breathe but I had no lungs, and no body to hold them. Still, part of me knew what to do. I followed the breeze up, out, into the light.
I came out of the perfume vial, which lay on its side on a Chee·tos-dusted coffee table, right next to a much-creased and sticky edition of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I ghosted up slowly. It felt like I was drugged stupid, unable to will myself to do anything but wait, drifting, for meaning.
Shit. This was so not working out for the best.
“Uhhhh—”
An uncertain human voice. Soft and hesitant as it was, it still echoed through me like a church bell. Something in me went completely still, waiting. I was focused like a predator waiting to pounce.
This felt nothing at all like what had happened between me and Lewis. Nothing at all. It was perfectly horrible.
“Anybody there?” the voice asked. He sounded scared shitless. Good. Welcome to the club, jerk.
“Yes,” I said—not that I meant to say anything, I just was compelled to respond. My voice sounded odd, because it was coming from the very thin air I was at the moment. I filed that away for later investigation, when and if I got be scientific about such things. “I’m here.”
Oh, God, it was the little bastard who’d beaten Lewis. Lewis… God, I’d left him there. How much would he remember? Was he even still alive? Patrick, you bastard. I’d make damn sure somebody paid for this.
Seen close, Psycho Boy didn’t look nearly as threatening: a gawky, acne-pocked teenager, all long legs and stick-thin arms, wearing a Metallica T-shirt that had seen too many mosh pits. This pimply kid— she’d called him Kevin, oh God, was I supposed to call him Master? — sat on the edge of an unmade bed and tried to look everywhere at once, eyes darting like crazy but paying particular attention to the corners of the room. He had a lot to look at, and none of it was pretty. The place was like a Dumpster right before pickup day, piled with trash, discarded pizza boxes, old cartons smeared with dried Chinese food. A pile of filthy underwear moldered near the bed. A pinup of a collagen-enhanced, silicone-implanted beauty in a metal bra and thong was pinned crookedly on the ceiling, for maximum viewing in the lying-down position.
Oh, I could already tell this was not going to be pretty. Lewis. God, what happened to Lewis?
Kevin shifted nervously on the bed, which creaked like old joints. “Um… I command you to appear!” He tried to sound like some medieval wizard, but he came off like a self-conscious bad actor, and blotched bright red over his cheeks and forehead.
And even so, I responded instantly. My body built itself far quicker and better than it had before, all layers simultaneously, and I felt a certain weird cockeyed pride in that, until I looked down at myself.
Oh God.
You already know, right? Of course you do. High-heeled pumps of the come-fuck-me variety. Thigh-high hose fastened with garters. Lacy thong panties under a tiny little black frilly skirt with a white apron. Black corset top, and believe me, I was now filling it. Generously.
I shuddered, looked up and found my reflection staring back at me in the mirror.
Pale skin, fire engine red pouty lips, eyes of an unsettlingly bright shade of silver. I looked like the porn version of Magenta from Rocky Horror.
Kevin looked shocked. Genuinely shocked. Not as much as I felt, though. When I found David again, I was going to ask some very tough questions about the rules of this particular nasty game.
“Mom!” Kevin yelled, and then went pallid as he instantly thought better of that course of action. He dashed to the closed door of the room—decorated with more soft-porn posters—and clicked over two deadbolt locks in fast succession to lock her out. “Uh, never mind, sorry, mistake!”
He turned to face me, back firmly against the door, and I stared at him. Couldn’t say anything, really. Couldn’t do anything except seethe and wonder what in the hell was happening. She said she wanted David. David had been afraid of that, back at the funeral, I’d sensed it all over him.
Now she had me. Could I warn him away?
I reached for that warm silvery umbilical that stretched into the aetheric, and was relieved to find it still intact. David was still alive, at least, wherever he was and whatever Jonathan had him doing. I tried to send a whisper along the line, but it hit something, some kind of barrier, and died.
When I blinked, I saw a blue coldlight sparkle whirling around me. Oh God. It was not only still there, it was getting worse.
“Who are you?” Kevin asked me, drawing me back to the world. I didn’t feel any compulsion to answer, so I didn’t. I just stared at him. The silver eyes had to be unnerving—hell, they’d unnerved me in the mirror—so I kept them straight and level, boring a hole into him. He got nervously, self-consciously strident. “Hey. I asked you a question! You have to answer.”
No, I didn’t. This kid clearly didn’t have the rule book memorized, because he’d forgotten all about the Rule of Three, which even I had known before meeting my first Djinn. Ask three times, they answer. Anything they tell you before then, forget it.
We are consummate, conscienceless liars. And from the pure cold fury boiling inside of me, I was starting to think we had an extra helping of psychopath to go along with it.
The cold stare was getting to him, all right. I could see it in the nervous tic developing around his left eye, and the quick movements of his hands as he tried to figure out the best way to lounge and look cool under pressure. He finally settled for slouching with his hands in his pockets and going for a half-lidded, defiant stare back at me.
“Nice outfit,” he said. I didn’t smile. The little bastard had done this to me, whether he knew it or not; I had a new appreciation for how little I’d changed when Lewis had claimed me. Obviously, what Lewis wanted and what he saw in me were almost the same things—in retrospect, one hell of a compliment. Kevin wanted a living blow-up doll, apparently. The implications of that were not especially comforting.
He looked pouty when I didn’t respond. “Fine, be that way, I don’t give a crap.”
He did, of course. It only took about another thirty seconds to wait him out. I felt like a participant in Short Attention Span Theater.
“Well?” he snapped, and pushed away from the door. Not much, just a couple of inches, but I still didn’t like it. Better if I could keep him cowed and thoroughly unnerved, but unfortunately the shock was starting to leave him, and now his voice was taking on an unpleasant whiny overtone. “Don’t just stand there like some dumb slut, do something!”
“What would you like me to do?” I asked. I meant it to be sarcastic, but it came out in a sultry, smoky, seductive purr. Gee, wonderful. I had the 1-900 voice to go with the yard sale Frederick’s of Hollywood outfit.
Well, one good thing about the voice, it derailed him completely. He was too hornily captivated to realize that he actually could order me to do things. So far.
This was going to take some real juggling skill. Best thing to do was to take the initiative, and since I didn’t feel anything stopping me, I took a step toward him. I made sure my new stance had that Xena Warrior Princess bad-ass cachet to it.
“What’s your name?” I asked him. He backed up again, lips parted, brown eyes wide and riveted behind the glasses.
“Kevin�
�Kevin. Kevin Prentiss.” He cleared his throat and tried to make it go deeper than its current punk-kid range. “What’s yours?”
“What do you want it to be?” Because I wasn’t going to have this horny little bastard calling me by my real name. And the twenty questions was a way to waste time.
“Um… Honey?”
I lost my sense of humor. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Really.”
He hadn’t expected resistance. “Um, no?”
“Okay, let me put it this way: You’d better be kidding.”
He blinked. “You’re arguing with me?”
“Of course not,” I purred. I really did. I wasn’t trying to purr, it was just the way things were going today. Apparently, my new voice had a built-in seduction filter. “Why would I argue with you?” Always answer a question with a question.
“I don’t know, but you shouldn’t be arguing with me, you should be—”
“What?” I interrupted, and crossed my arms. It was, not coincidentally, in the classic I Dream of Jeannie pose. Maybe I could change his subconscious wish. Even frothy pink and orange gauze and a blonde horsetail through an organ-grinder-monkey hat would be preferable to slinking around in this outfit.
He licked his lips, watching me. Uh-oh. Not having the desired effect. “You should be obeying me. Like, when I say do something, you should—”
“You haven’t told me to do anything yet,” I pointed out.
“Well, I would if you’d just—”
“Take your time.”
“Let me—”
“Really. Take your time. Think about it. Because you’ve only got three wishes.”
Which was bullshit, but I figured if he didn’t understand the Rule of Three, he probably got his entire Djinn education from Saturday morning cartoons anyway. Man, I really wished I had control of my appearance. Even aside from the currently occurring fashion disaster concerns, it would have been great to do that whole Arabian Nights shtick, half-misted. Plus, no teenage boy is going to assume he can screw a girl with mist for legs.