Ill Wind

"I got the point."

"And?"

He gave me a long, wordless look, then went back to the Land Rover, picked up the water and fast food, and sat himself in the passenger side. I climbed into the back. As Star shut the door, she looked quickly at David, then at me.

"Don't mean to get in the middle, but is there something I should know?" she asked.

"No." We both said it instantly, simultaneously. It couldn't have been more obvious we were lying.

"O… kay." She put the Land Rover in gear and rolled the big boat out to the freeway. "You down with my plan?"

"Star, I have no idea what plan you're talking about."

She accelerated the truck and slid smoothly in between a red rollover-prone SUV and a station wagon held together with duct tape and baling wire. "The one where I save your ass, babe."

"I'm still waiting for a plan. That's an outcome."

"Picky, picky… Okay, here's the deal. I have a source in Norman who can put us in touch with an honest-to-God masterless Dji

I didn't dare look at David. He handed me a water bottle, and I cracked the plastic ring and sucked down lukewarm liquid. It tasted like sweat, but my body was shiveringly grateful.

"Sure," I said. "Sounds fabulous."

Norman, Oklahoma, was just twenty miles from Oklahoma City proper, but Star was making caution her new religion; we drove just about every cowpath and haypicker road in the county, watching for any sign Marion or her folks were on to us. Nothing. By the time we exited I-35 and crossed into Norman's city limits, it was getting close to sundown, and the burritos and bottled water were just a fond, gut-rumbling memory.

Norman's an old town, a strange mixture of prewar buildings and hypernew neon. The local college ensured a steady parade of coffee shops, clothing boutiques, used CD emporiums, and bookstores.

"Who's your source?" David asked. He upended his water and drained the last few drops from blue plastic; I wondered if he was really thirsty, if he even really felt such mundane things as hunger and thirst. He'd eaten with me that first afternoon, I remembered. And in the diner. Maybe he was more flesh than spirit, after all. And hey, sex? Pretty much of the flesh.

"Excuse me?" Star asked.

"Your source. The one who told you about the Dji

"Friend," she said, which was no more illuminating than anything else she'd said for the past two hours. "Which is all you need to know, seeing as how you're not in the Wardens." She reached out and passed her hand over his. No glyphs lit up on his palms. "Speaking of which, Jo, you owe me an explanation about how you and this cutie got together."

She gave him a look that reminded me Star wasn't all fun and games; she'd once been a Warden, tough and very strong. Even if she didn't have full command of her power anymore, she could be dangerous. And focused.

"Joa

"Yeah?" Star's trademark smile flashed. "You pla

"More like the tabloids."

"Makes sense. So why do you care who told me about the Dji

"I don't," he said, and shrugged, and pulled a book from the pocket of his coat. Nothing I recognized. The cover had a black-and-yellow road sign blazed on the cover; when I squinted, I saw it read BE CAREFUL.

Jesus, he was tempting fate, doing that in front of her.

The cover shifted again, into a Patricia Cornwell mystery, and he opened it to a dog-eared page and appeared to forget all about me.

Star was watching me in the rearview mirror. "You heard about Lewis taking the Dji

"I heard."

"Well, rumor has it he let at least one of them go. It's just a matter of tracking him down, that's all. And I've got just the girl to do it." She hadn't looked away. It was a little eerie, actually. Dark, dark eyes, pupils fading into irises. "Once you have Lewis, what then?"

"Then he helps me figure out how to get this thing out of me."

Her eyebrows slowly rose. "Yeah? You really think he knows how?"

"Sure." I was lying my ass off, mostly to myself, but it felt better than the uncertainty of the truth. "If anybody does, he does."

"Okay, stupid question. What I meant to ask is, why would he? You got something special going with him?"

Oh, that was a subject I really didn't want to dig into, not with David sitting in the passenger seat, thumbing blandly through a book. Star didn't seem to care. She started to smile, but her eyes were going cold.

"Or you got something else going with him? You on some undercover mission, chica?"

"Yeah, sure," I shrugged. "Don't ask, don't tell."

I meant it as a joke, and I wasn't prepared for the flash of sheer fury in her eyes. "Fine," she said. "Keep your little secrets."

"I don't have any secrets." As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized I'd lied to her. Effortlessly. Without a second thought. And I didn't even know why, except that a yellow danger sign kept flashing into my head. I'd chosen to trust Star. I just…

… couldn't trust her.

She drove down Main Street, past shops just lightning up against the darkness… grocery stores… gas stations… incongruously, a condom shop. The Burger King on the corner was doing a brisk business in robbing college students of their lunch money. On the other side of the narrow street, gracious Plantation-style homes with Doric columns put on a brave front that the South would rise again.

She slowed and turned into a strip-mall parking lot pretty much identical to the six others we'd passed, and pulled the Land Rover into a parking space barely able to stretch to fit it. I squinted up at the sign, which hadn't yet been turned on against the falling darkness: ball's books.

It looked like exactly what it was: a used bookstore, and not the corporate, regimented kind—the kind that conformed to the whim of an owner. I liked it immediately, but there was still a cold cramp in my stomach, and I couldn't think exactly how I was going to get out of this. More important, how I'd get David out of this.

I grabbed his coat sleeve as Estrella limped away, pulled him down for a whisper. "Take a walk."

"Where?" he asked mildly.

"Why should I care? I don't want you anywhere near her if she's going to—"

His hand covered mine, and some of his human disguise fell away; his eyes turned burning, swirling bronze, and I felt his heat pour into me and drive out the chill. His smile, though, was all guy. All David.

"It won't matter," he said. "If she can find me at all, it doesn't matter where I go. If you're so worried about me, there's something you can do to stop it."

I knew what he meant. "I'm not claiming you."

He shrugged and took his hand away. "Then I'll take my chances."

Stubborn, infuriating…

Star tapped on the store window and gestured. David moved to the door and held it open for me, head down. I fought an impulse to kick him in the shins. As I walked past, he murmured, "No matter what happens, you always have a choice."

We stepped into cool silence and the smell of old paper. To the right was a wall of corkboard packed with cards and papers of every description, no rhyme or reason to it that I could see; some advertised massages, some were photocopies of newspaper cartoons, some were just plain mystifying. David stepped around her and began to look through books—I thought at first he was stalling for time, but his interest in the contents of the racks seemed genuine. He really did love reading, after all. And I guess even Dji