Thin Air

Neither of them liked being here; that was all I could tell.

And both of them were more than prepared to kill.

THIRTEEN

“Guys,” I said, and held out my hands, palms open and out, showing that I had nothing up my tattered, smoking sleeves. “There’s no need for this. I was coming to you, okay? I wasn’t ru

I was standing up to them because, hey, not like I had a choice, anyway. There were four Wardens and one Dji

“Down on your knees,” Lewis said. “Do it. If I have to ask again, we’ll kill you and get it over with.”

Lewis had a gun in his hand. Not one to neglect the merely mortal advantages, apparently, and that just gave them another way to bring me down if all the mystical mojo failed to work. If Ve

I held up my hands in an attitude of surrender and, wincing, got down on my knees. I laced my hands behind my head.

Lewis exchanged a glance with David. Clearly they were the two alphas in the pack; the other Wardens were along for the ride. Although it wouldn’t do me any favors to assume they weren’t capable in their own right, especially since they’d taken up positions surrounding me. “Facedown,” Lewis said. “Hands behind your back.”

“Dammit, road oil is never coming out of these pants,” I said. “Lewis, it’s me. Joa

“Correcting a mistake,” he said. “Down or die. Your choice.”

Well, when he put it that way…I pitched forward to my hands and knees, lowered myself to the gritty, oily road, and put my hands behind my back.

Somebody-not Lewis and not David-was on me instantly, digging a sharp knee into the small of my back and ignoring my yelp of protest. Plastic zip-ties slipped around my wrists and hissed tight.

“You didn’t make a mistake,” I said. I couldn’t see Lewis or David. I couldn’t see anybody, since my hair had fallen across my eyes. I was blind and helpless, and I could feel something closing in around me on the aetheric, something like a smothering coating of plastic, sealing me off from access to the powers that I was about to be driven to use. “No! Wait, listen to me! You didn’t make a mistake, Lewis; it’s me! She’s lying to you; don’t you understand? She’s…”

The wind blew my hair away from my eyes, and I saw her. The other me. She’d left the SUV, and she was standing next to David like she belonged there.

It was a good thing I’d had a lot of recent experience seeing myself from the outside, because it allowed me to get over the shock fast. Yeah, that was me, down to the last well-dressed detail. David, or someone who’d cared, had gotten her a nice flare-legged pantsuit with a fitted jacket, something that hugged her body and made her look tall, lean, elegant, and businesslike. In short, she looked like she belonged. Like she was more than capable of handling whatever needed to be handled.

Me, I was a cheap fax copy, grubby and soiled with road dirt and smoke. And I’d lost a shoe.

“I can’t believe you got her,” she said. “She must be pla

David took her hand. The Demon exchanged a look with him and smiled. It was my smile, dammit. And my love in her eyes. She’d taken it. She was using me just as much as she was using him.

“We got lucky,” David said. “We’re even luckier that Ve

“She wasn’t!” I yelled. They ignored me.

“I want you out of here,” David said to the other me. “I’m not taking any chances. Not again.” I hated the way he leaned into her space, the way his lips brushed the shining curtain of her hair. The way his hands curled around hers, so gently and protectively. “Take the truck back to the lodge and wait there.”

“David, she’s a liar!” I said. “So, Fake Joa

She watched me with steady, familiar eyes. She looked completely real. Completely me. “I’d never hurt David. The fact you think I would just proves who you are.”

“You’d never hurt David unless you know you could get away with it.” I panted. “Look, what do you really want? My life? Well, you can’t have it, so just hand over the clothes and stop using my face and move on.” Toward the end I sounded-and felt-savage. Like I could rip her head off with my bare hands for what she was doing to me. All I wanted to do was live, and she’d taken that away.

She stared at me for a few more seconds, and there was something like pity in her face. There but for the grace of God… I knew what she was thinking. It made my stomach hurt with the intensity of my fury. “Say something,” I said.

“Why?” she asked. “What’s to say? You tried to steal my life away, and you’ve failed. Game over.”

I turned to David, willing him to believe me. “David, if you kill me, she wins. The Demon wins.”

She laughed. “Nice. I was waiting when she’d pull the old ‘You’re the bad twin’ on us. Come on. Who do you think’s going to believe you this time? I’ve got my memories back. You’re nothing but a cheap copy.”

That was an echo of what I’d been thinking. I blinked, startled. Either she could read my thoughts-icky, but possible-or her mind simply worked the same way. If she’d taken on my memories, my experiences that completely, if she could fool David and Lewis, then maybe she really had become me, as much as a Demon could.

That made my job a hell of a lot harder, because she wasn’t faking. As Ve

I looked desperately at Lewis, at David. “Guys. What if you’ve got the evil twin standing right there? What if I’m the one she stole everything away from? Kill me, and you’ll never be able to fix that; it’ll be too late-”

Evil Twin snorted, exchanged a wry look with David, and walked away, arms folded. Heading calmly back for the SUV.

“Wait!” I yelled. “David, you know me! You have to know that’s not me!”

That earned me nothing. Evil Twin opened the passenger-side door of the truck and climbed in, then slammed the door. Lewis and David exchanged another one of those unreadable looks. God, I’d never realized how scary it was from this end, faced with these extremely competent people. How desperate it was to be on the losing side.

She’s going to pull it off. She’s going to have David, live my life, and be happy until she pulls off whatever evil plan she’s concocted, and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.

I hated losing.

Wind whipped across me, blinding me with grit and a mouthful of black smoke from the still-smoldering wreck of my car. “Then just get it over with,” I choked. “If you’ve got the guts, just do it.”

The SUV’s engine started up, and it drove away, slowly winding around the trees. Taking my future with it.

“We’re not going to kill you,” Lewis said with an eerie amount of calm. “We couldn’t, could we? If you’re a Demon, you’d just assume another form. The only way to destroy a Demon without sacrificing a Dji

“Guess you don’t have one of those handy,” I said, and closed my eyes in exhausted relief.

When I opened them, David, expressionless, was taking a sealed bottle out of his coat. There was red wax around the stopper, and an ancient-looking seal dangling from a complicated knot of ribbons.