Thin Air

He can’t help you, she said, as clearly as if she were standing at normal conversational distance. It wasn’t a voice, though. Not really. If he does, I’ll have to take action. Do you want me to destroy him? And the children? I will. It means nothing to me, really.

She wasn’t my daughter.

She was the Demon.

Walk toward me, she said. Walk toward me, and no more have to be harmed. That’s what you want, isn’t it? I promise you, I will make it painless.

“Lewis,” I said, louder. “Lewis, dammit, look!”

You’ll only make this harder in the end.

She turned and walked back into the trees. Gone. I couldn’t even seen tracks where she’d been standing.

“What?” Lewis shouted to me, suddenly at my side and bending his head close to mine to be heard over the noise. The dull blunt-force thud of helicopter blades was very loud now. “What’s wrong?”

Would he believe me if I told him? Or would he think I’d just finally lost my last screw? There was nothing to see there now, and as I extended the senses that Lewis and David had been showing me how to use, I got…nothing. Nothing but whispering trees and a slow, sleeping presence that I assumed was how I now perceived the Earth.

“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”

I watched as the helicopter began its descent. I held my hair back against the harsh, ice-edged wind it kicked up, and backed up with Lewis to give it room to land. The helicopter touched down, and the rotors slowed but didn’t stop. The emblem on the side was some kind of seal, and nothing I recognized.

A burly shape, well muffled in winter gear, hopped out of the passenger door, ducked the way people instinctively do when there’s sharp metal chopping the air just about head level, and hurried toward me through the snow. He shouted something to me that sounded like, Need a ride? which was fine with me.

I helped Lewis load Cherise and Kevin into the helicopter, and belted myself in for the rattling, noisy ride.

You’re safe now, I told myself. It’s all okay.

But I didn’t really believe it.

If I’d ever been in a helicopter before, I didn’t know it, but one thing was for certain: I sure didn’t like it. The dull roar of the rotors never let me forget that those fragile blades were all that stood between this clanking metal insect and a catastrophic crash, and I shuddered to think about all of the things that could happen to all those very breakable parts involved, including my own.

It was also a rough trip, full of bounces, jounces, drops, sideways lurches, and other exciting contraventions of gravity. I kept my eyes squeezed shut, clung to the handhold strap, and pretended not to be scared out of my mind.

Lewis, next to me, was so relaxed I thought he might actually drop off into a nap. He held my hand-not a romantic gesture, and he must have regretted it when I periodically dug my nails into his skin in sheer terror. A gentleman born, he didn’t pull away. On his other side perched Kevin, hunched in on himself like someone nursing a gut wound. His face was tight and looked years older than it had just minutes ago, even though Cherise was pressed against him like a winter coat. I felt inarticulately guilty, as if there were something I might have done.

The Demon looks like me.

Yeah, that made me feel guilty as hell, and there was nothing to be done about it. I had no idea what I’d say to any of them, when the decibel levels dropped enough to allow me to say anything at all.

A paramedic wrapped each of us in warm blankets, but since none of us had obvious bleeding wounds, that was the extent of our medical treatment. They gave us coffee, though, hot and strong out of a steel thermos. I was right. I did like coffee. Even black.

The helicopter, for pretty much the entire journey, was enveloped by low, dingy clouds, and updrafts and downdrafts battered us from side to side, up and down, until I felt as though the damn metal monster were a toy on a stretchy string. I don’t know how long we were in the air; constant heart-crushing panic made it seem like forever, but it couldn’t have been too long. When we dropped down below the clouds, right on top of a cleared landing area, I was weak-kneed with gratitude.

There were people waiting at the edge of the rotor backwash, holding their hats on if they had them. I didn’t recognize anyone. I was getting used to that, but it didn’t make me feel any more secure. My eyes skipped over them, looking for David, but he wasn’t there.

And then my eyes moved back, because while I didn’t recognize the tall black woman standing with her arms folded, staring at me, there was something familiar about her. She was striking. Her features were sharply patrician, her hair worn in a multitude of small braids, each one fastened by colorful beads. She wasn’t trying to hide; that was obvious. She was wearing neon yellow, even down to the long, polished fingernails.

She disdained coats.

And her eyes, even at the distance of fifteen feet, flashed with a color that didn’t look real, or human.

So, she was like David. A Dji

As we disembarked I poked Lewis in the side, avoiding his sore ribs, and nodded toward her. He looked a little less angry. “Rahel,” he said. “She’s-”

“Dji

“Depends on her mood.”

“Wonderful.”

Lewis turned to face me, blocking my path. “Jo…be careful,” he said. “I wanted to keep you safe and out of the way until we were sure we understood what was going on. I can’t do that now.” He nodded toward the assembled people. “Most of them are Wardens. That doesn’t necessarily make them on your side,” he said. “That’s Paul; he’s a friend. When we get to the group, stick with him if I have to take off for any reason. Paul will look after you.”

I nodded. “Anyone else I can trust?”

“That’s Marion.” He nodded toward a woman in a wheelchair with long, gray-streaked blue-black hair worn in a thick braid. “I’d trust her with my life. In fact, I have. I’m going to hand Kevin off to her for-”

“No,” Kevin said flatly. His face was chalk-pale, but his eyes were angry. “No way. I’m not going anywhere.”

Lewis sighed. “You’re not in any shape to-”

“I’m not some baby,” Kevin said. “I’m not go

“Sure, big guy. Only if you can stand on your own,” Lewis said, and stepped away from him.

Kevin wavered, stumbled a little, glared, and stood on his own two feet.

Barely. But he managed.

“Well, guess you’re stuck with him now,” I murmured. Lewis snorted, with a sharp edge of a

“Yes,” Lewis said. His eyes went distant and dark. “Why?”

“What should I be looking for?” And does it just automatically look like the person who’s seen it? Please tell me that’s the case.

“Usually they look like smears, dark shadows, but they can appear to be anything.”

“Human?” I hazarded.

He frowned. “Doubt it,” he said. “They can inhabit a human, but if they can assume a semblance, I’ve never heard of it. Why?”

I shrugged. Shrugs were fine things for avoiding issues. “Second thing: Do you think I can do what I did with Cherise-that memory thing-with other people?”

Lewis looked toward me sharply. “From them to you? I wouldn’t try it. What you did was…wrong, Jo. You shouldn’t have been able to, in the first place, and I’ve got no idea how it happened. Earth Warden skills take years of training, even for the basics. What you’re trying to do…no. I wouldn’t.”

We didn’t have time for anything else. The Wardens, tired of waiting for us to come to them, were heading our way.