Cape Storm

The color faded out of Cherise’s face, leaving the tan like some eerie overlay, and I saw a real spark of fear in her clear blue eyes.

It turned hot.

“Why’d you just call me peach?”

Of all the things she could have said, that was the one that stopped me in my tracks. Peach. Sweetness.Bad Bob liked expressions like those, mockingly sentimental, used to wound. He’d used them on me all the time.

I took a step back. My hands locked into fists, and I felt the fire from the torch on my back flare hotter. It didn’t like me doubting myself.

It didn’t like me thinking.

“It’s just another kind of Demon Mark,” Cherise said. “Remember? Remember how that felt? You told me about it, how it made you feel so powerful, so free—”

“Shut up.” My voice didn’t have much force to it.

“He’s using it to destroy you. You’ve got to stop.You’re going to destroy everyone and everything you love.”

I closed my eyes. Images flashed across the darkness—David, the first time I’d seen him, a dusty stranger on the road. David, naked in morning light, looking at me as if I was the most glorious thing he had ever seen.

Lewis, standing against the storm, and compromising himself and his beliefs to find the strength. Not asking for my praise or my applause. Knowing I might kill him for it.

Cherise, without the power to light a match, signing on because it was the right thing to do.

Everything I loved was right here, on this ship, and I was destroying it.

And I still couldn’t care.

“You understand,” said a little-girl voice from behind me. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want you to die without understanding that it had to be done.”

Ve

“How the hell did you hook up with the Dji

She shrugged. “Diplomacy. Ain’t it a bitch?”

“And so am I.” But I didn’t strike at either one of them. Instead, I sat down on the bed and crossed my legs into the lotus position. It was a bit of a tight fit, in the jeans.

I stared idly at the far side of the cabin—Cherise’s side—where she had beauty products lined up in thick clusters on the shelf. All kinds of things—tubes of makeup, lipsticks, eye shadow compacts.

Bottles of expensive perfume, just the right size to hold a Dji

Ve

I held up my hands. “Can’t blame me for thinking about it.”

“Oh, I can,” she said. “I most certainly can. But it would be amusing to see you make the attempt. Your vows with David gave humans access to the New Dji

She really didunderstand. “If I hadn’t taken the poison, I’d be dead already. None of youwere offering anything else,” I said. “Alive, I can always turn myself around, right? Go to rehab, some twelve-step thing?”

Ve

I shrugged. “So? Are we throwing down, MiniMe, or are we done now? Because I don’t really think even you can stop me now. Or that you’re allowed to try.” Ve

If she lost, I could take it all.

Ve

“Well, I don’t. I’m taking it to meet Bad Bob, and what happens from there doesn’t really concern me.”

Cherise covered her mouth with both hands, appalled and shocked. That was fu

“They won’t allow you to do this so easily. They’ll fight,” Ve

“Hope so,” I said, and slid off the bed to stretch, yawn, and shake my hair back over my shoulders. “Fun time’s over, girls. I need to do some work now, so I’m going. You can either move out of the way, or I can walk over your bleeding corpses. That’s metaphorical for you, Ve

Neither of them moved. Cherise looked uncertainly at Ve

I walked right up to her. She looked up into my eyes with eerie, ancient eyes, and then moved out of my way.

“You can’t do this,” Cherise whispered.

I used a casual punch of power to slam her across the room, into a wall, and she tumbled limply to the floor.

Bleeding.

“You’re not completely his,” Ve

“Do tell.” I drummed my fingernails on the wood of the door impatiently.

Ve

“Yet,” I said. “I thought that as a Dji

Chapter Eight

As I sat in Arpeggio’s deserted bar-cum-breakfast-nook, munched my command-ordered bagel and light cream cheese, and sipped coffee, I wondered what Cherise would report to Lewis—assuming Lewis was still in any shape to be reported to. Nobody bothered me, not even other Wardens.

The few fellow diners who’d endured my presence got up and left, quickly, when Ve

“I thought we were done,” I said. I sipped my coffee. It was bitter, dark, and exactly what I needed.

“For the sake of what you were, I thought I would try once more.” That was irritatingly superior.

“You can run back and tell Lewis that I’m done with pretending to care about every little life that stubs its toe, every goddamn kitten up a tree. I’ve spent my life bleeding for humans. I’ve died for them. Enough. If that makes me evil, then fine. I am.”

Ve

“Let me sum that up with ewwwwww.”

She stared at her empty juice glass. It filled up, welling from the bottom of the glass. She emptied it again.

“Was that supposed to be a metaphor? Sorry. Don’t get it.” I ate the last bite of my bagel and pushed my chair back to stand as I swigged the dregs of my coffee. “Bother me again, and I’ll seriously inconvenience you.” From the pulse of power inside me, it was entirely possible that I could really hurt her.

“You didn’t ask,” she said.

“Ask what?”

“Anything. Why the staff of this ship are still willing to make your bagels when their world is crumbling around them.” Ve

“I’m not Dji

“No,” she agreed. “You’re becoming something else. It’s—interesting.”