Thin Air

But that look, that smile…those were pure love.

“It’s why you could do what you did on the beach, when you made the Earth obey you,” Ve

She didn’t look particularly happy about it. Imara’s smile faded, and she looked down at Ashan, cowering near her feet. Her eyes shifted color to a molten bronze.

I didn’t need words to understand that look, and it chilled me.

If Ve

“What? What do you mean?” For a terrifying second I thought she was talking about Imara, that there was something wrong, but no; Ve

“She’s new,” Ve

I doubted sincerely that what Imara had on her mind for Ashan could go by the description of help.

“So that’s it?” I asked. “We just give up?”

Ve

I didn’t watch how she did it, but I heard Ashan scrambling, and heard him cry out, once. Then they were gone, and the door shut behind them.

I didn’t take my eyes off my daughter, the Oracle.

“Can you hear me?” I asked. “Imara?”

Her eyes slowly swirled back to that lovely shade of gold, but she didn’t smile this time.

I waited, but the candles began to dim, slowly winking out one by one. While I could still see her, I said, “Please say something. Please, baby. I need to know that you’re okay.”

She was just a dim shadow against the deeper shadows, a glimmer of gold eyes in the dark, when she whispered, “Hang in there, Mom. I love you.”

And then she was gone.

I sat down hard on the pew, put my face in my hands, and prayed. Not to my daughter. Not to the Earth, whoever that was.

I prayed to God, whose chapel it was. Who’d built this glittering, beautiful, hurtful world with all its magic and deadly sharp edges. I needed a higher power to get me through the rest of this, because I didn’t think I could do it by myself.

I don’t know if He answered, exactly, but after a few minutes I felt a kind of peace inside, a stillness, and an acceptance.

My child wasn’t suffering, and she wasn’t totally beyond my reach.

Maybe that was enough.

I scrubbed my face clean of tears, got up, and went to find Ve

Ve

He’d killed my daughter. And if he’d gotten his way, she’d have been completely dead, not sitting in there in the chapel, elevated to some level I couldn’t understand. In a very real way, he’d still taken her away; Imara the Oracle wasn’t Imara at all, not the way I’d known her.

You never knew her at all, some cold part of me said. You never had a past; you never had a daughter. Remember?

That was the point. I didn’t remember. And Ashan had done that to me.

Miles to go before I could see that put right.

“So,” I said. “Where now?”

I’d expected her to hesitate, but instead, Ve

“Pardon?”

“It’s in New Jersey.”

I hadn’t forgotten geography. New Jersey was a long way from Arizona. A long, long way.

“We should go,” Ve

Yeah, like I was going to let a kid behind the wheel of that car. Even a many-centuries-old kid. “One other thing,” I said, and pointed a thumb at Ashan. “He needs a bath. I’m not smelling him all the way to the East Coast.”

Ashan shot to his feet, ru

He slammed face-first into an invisible wall, staggered back, and whirled to face us. Ve

“Ashan,” she said to him. “You know you can’t fight me. I’ll just keep on hurting you.”

He tried it again, as if he hadn’t heard her, and I winced this time at the sound of flesh and bone hitting the barrier. “He’s trying to make you hurt him,” I said. “He wants you to kill him.”

Ve

“That’s human. And kind of crazy.”

“I will never understand mortals,” she said, sounding aggrieved. “How do I stop him without hurting him?”

“Let me handle it.”

This time, when he lunged at us, I took the Taser out of my purse, switched it on, and zapped the holy living shit out of him. Ashan convulsed and went down. I crouched next to him. His eyes were unfocused, and there was blood dripping from his chin in a gory mess. “Ashan. Can you hear me?”

He could. He just didn’t answer. I could tell from the immediate flicker of rage in him that I had his attention. The shock had incapacitated him, but it hadn’t done much to make him like me any better.

“Ve

“Yes.” She wasn’t forgiving me anytime soon for an attempt at a pet name; that was clear from her tone. “Up, Ashan.”

At first he couldn’t get up, and then it was clear he didn’t want to. The smile Ve

“If you don’t,” she said, “then I’ll make you, brother.”

Brother? I didn’t know if that was literal or figurative, but either way, it worked; Ashan climbed silently to his feet and walked down the steps without trying to run, pitch headlong to his death, or take me with him. I looked back up at the Chapel of the Holy Cross; it was quiet, no signs of life. No sign of my daughter haunting its warm, incense-scented shadows.

I wanted to run back up the steps and throw my arms around her, but somehow I knew that it wasn’t the time. Not here. Not now.

Not until this was over.

Ve

Ashan coughed, and spit a mouthful of blood at Ve

I raised the Taser and activated it, letting him get a good look at the jumping spark. “Get in the car, Ashan.”

He slid into the backseat. I pointed a finger at Ve

“Of course.” She gave me a cool raise of her eyebrows, as if I were being completely stupid, and climbed in the passenger seat.

I stood there for a few seconds with my hand on the car door, looking up at the chapel. For a second, I thought I saw…something. A flicker of red, a dress fluttering in the wind.

A smile.

“I’ll see you soon,” I promised her, and got in the driver’s seat.

We drove out toward the main road, and when I reached an intersection I idled and waited for traffic. Ve

“Ve

“David,” she said, with a little too much enunciative precision. “He’s been looking for you. I can keep him from finding us for now, but I’m not sure I can do it for long. He’s very smart.”

“He’s looking for me?” I felt a surge of gratitude and relief, and then I remembered that it wasn’t a good thing. “Oh. Looking for me because he thinks I’m the wrong one. The fake Joa