Thin Air

I was all alone.

“Hey!” My voice came out a frightened croak. “Hey, anybody! Help?”

There was a button next to my hand. I pressed it, and kept frantically pressing it until I heard a buzzing sound, and the cell door clicked open.

It admitted the doctor who’d gone off with Kevin earlier-Dr. Lee. He came back up with not one but two security guards, along with a small flying wedge of nurses.

No sign of Marion or Lewis.

The crowd stayed well out of reach, even though I was restrained.

“Hello,” Dr. Lee said. He sounded like he was making an effort to be cheerful. “Feeling better?”

“Peachy,” I said, and swallowed. My mouth felt like it had been upholstered in fur. “Water?”

A nurse poured me a cup, added a sippy straw, and held it for me. The effort of lifting my head seemed exhausting. I drained the cup and collapsed back to the pillow, gasping for air.

“You’re lucky,” Lee said. “You nearly fried your entire central nervous system. If Lewis hadn’t been here, you’d be hooked up to a ventilator right now, and we’d be transferring you to permanent care.”

I let that sink in for a second, then asked, “Marion?”

Silence. Lee stared at me for a long moment, then checked the monitors. “She’s in a coma,” he said. “We can’t wake her up.”

Oh, crap. Crap!

“I didn’t mean-”

“It doesn’t matter,” he cut me off, but I could hear the anger under his veneer of calm. “I need you to rest. Your scans are still far from normal. We’ll talk about all this later.”

I jerked at the restraints. “Can you take these off?”

“No,” he said. “As soon as you’re able to be moved, you’ll be transferred to a facility where you can be properly examined and controlled.”

Meaning I was under arrest. The security guards, grim and well-armed, more than confirmed that. I didn’t like it, but there was really nothing I could do about it.

And really nothing I should do about it.

“Can I talk to Lewis?” I asked, very respectfully. Lee shot a glance toward the security people.

“I’ll let him know you’re asking for him,” Lee said. “I’m going to give you a sedative now, all right? Just something to help you sleep.”

He used drugs instead of the Earth Warden-patented hand-on-forehead; I wanted to do something to stop him, but I controlled the impulse. Clearly, it wasn’t going to be a good idea for me to start fighting, not with the odds as they were.

David, I thought. David will help me.

I wondered where the hell he was, but before I could do more than wonder, the fog swept in, rendered my mind cool and blank, and I drifted away.

When I woke up, it was dark, and there was someone sitting in the chair next to me, snoring. I blinked and tried to rub my eyes, and remembered the restraints only when they clicked and rattled the bars.

Which cut off the snoring. A light clicked on, and I saw Lewis’s tired but freshly shaved face in the pale glow.

“Hey,” he said, and reached out to wrap his fingers around mine. “How do you feel?”

“Pissed,” I said. “I’m tied to a bed, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I noticed,” he said, and yawned. “Trust me, the restraints are there for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“Your protection,” he said. “I know you. If you had half a chance of breaking out, you’d already be blowing the door and ru

“Fine,” I said. “What exactly did I do?”

He blinked a couple of times. “You don’t know?”

“Look, I know that Marion’s in a coma, but-”

“You screwed around with things that you weren’t ready for, and you put her in that coma. Then you went after me.”

“I-I what?”

Lewis didn’t change his expression, not at all. “You heard me. If I hadn’t put you down, hard, you’d have ripped my brain apart like a piñata.”

“But-why would I do that?” I felt bewildered, alien in my own skin.

“Post-traumatic stress, I’m guessing. The point is, you were a danger to everybody around you.”

“But…not now.” I said it like I believed it. Lewis didn’t grace me with agreement, but he didn’t disagree, either. He just sat, gently providing reassurance through the contact of our hands. “Lewis, I don’t want to hurt anybody. Really. You have to believe that.”

“I do,” he said. “But the best thing right now is for you to rest and get your strength back. I had to put you down pretty hard. Harder than I’d have preferred. You need to heal.”

“Lee said I’d be moved somewhere else,” I said. “It sounded like prison.”

Lewis’s thumb stopped stroking my fingers. I wasn’t sure I liked that.

“It’s not prison,” he said. “But it’s a medical facility, and it’s run by people from Marion’s division. If they can’t find a way to stop you from misusing your Earth powers, they’re going to have to block the cha

I laughed, but it was shaky, and so was his smile. “I swear, I’ll try,” I said. “Has David been here?”

Lewis looked away. “Not yet,” he said.

“Is it normal, him being gone this long?”

“You know it isn’t. But there’s no way we can check on him, so we’ll just have to wait.”

There was a discreet knock at the door, and it did the buzz thing. Lewis leaned back as a security guard leaned in. “You’re wanted on the phone, sir,” the guard said. “Conference call.”

Lewis nodded, then gave me a distracted kind of grin. “Politics,” he said. “Marion was right. There’s always time for politics. Rest, okay? I’ll come back.”

I didn’t trust myself to say anything. He left without a backward glance, and I tried to close my eyes and damp down the panic inside.

I’m trapped. They’re taking me to prison. No, worse-they were taking me to screw around with my head, to keep me from hurting people.

I was, in Warden terms, mentally ill. Crazy with a capital K. Except somehow, I knew that I wasn’t-and that if I let them mess with my head, that would be bad. Very, very bad.

A monitor beeped somewhere near my head. My heart rate was up, and getting faster. Some other electronic alarm joined the chorus-blood pressure? I felt sick all of a sudden, almost dizzy. There was a hissing sound in my head, like interference, and this terrible pressure inside my chest…

In the corner of the room, a shadow stirred. I couldn’t see who it was for a second, and then once my bleary eyes focused I felt a jolt of sheer terror driving away what was left of my drugged sleep.

I had a visitor, and the visitor was me.

No…the visitor looked like me, right down to the nasty hospital gown and unkempt hair. But there was something cold and inhuman behind her blue eyes, something that wasn’t me at all.

It just stood there, looking at me, and I could feel space warping between us, see the air shimmering and turning dark and thick.

We were drawing each other closer, but at the same time, I could feel the sickening drain on my life.

“Help!” I tried to scream it-Lewis hadn’t gone far, he couldn’t have-but my voice was a weak, choked squeak in my throat. Oh God. It took a step toward me, and I felt a corresponding surge of dizzying weakness sweep over me.

“Quiet,” the Demon whispered, and moved even closer. I gasped for breath, but it was like breathing at the bottom of the ocean. I was drowning in the dark. “We’re nearly there. Nearly there. You need to let go, let go and give me what I need.”

I knew in a flash that this was why Jonathan had come to warn me. Right now, the Demon was missing something, something vital. Something I had.

And against all odds, I needed to hang onto it.