Ill Wind

"Say it," Star whispered. I felt her warm breath on my ear. "It has to be you, chica, I can't do it for you."

The Dji

I hadn't heard him walk up to me, but now David was there, at the edge of my vision, almost glittering with intensity. He was still in human disguise, human form, but how much longer? How long until the words echoing in my head forced him to reveal himself?

I reached out, took the book from the Dji

"No," I said. I looked at Star and saw she was staring at me as if she'd never seen me before, as if I'd grown two heads and goat feet. "This is wrong, Star. I can feel it."

"Wrong," she repeated slowly. She reached out and put her hand over the place the Demon Mark had left its black scorching tattoo on my breast. "And this isn't?"

"That wasn't my choice." I hefted the heavy book.

It smelled faintly rotten, felt damp and unclean. "This is. And I'm not doing it."

Her eyes went flat and opaque, like Mayan flint. "You can't keep it," she said, and there was something terrible in her voice, like blood and lightning. "I can't let you keep it, Jo."

Her face was changing. Melting. Becoming beautiful, the way she'd been back before Yellowstone. Taking on a kind of lush, lustrous glow that was too perfect, even for an airbrushed magazine model. An inhuman beauty.

"You don't deserve it," she said. I could hear an echo in her voice now of something stirring inside me. "I deserve it. It chose me. I can't let you have it, Jo, not again. You've always been prettier and smarter and more powerful, and you can't have this!"

Ah, God, no, no, no. Not Star.

I remembered something Lewis had told me. There's a Demon trying to come through. Trying to touch one of us.

It had tried to touch Star. It must have succeeded, in the end. That was how she repaired her fractured core, how she looked so lustrous and beautiful.

The Demon had given her what she wanted, just as mine had given Bad Bob everything he desired.

Except I couldn't sense a Mark on Star. I looked wildly at David, who was standing just a few feet away.

"She doesn't have one," he told me. "No Mark."

"No," she said. "Not anymore. He took it away from me." Star bared her teeth and didn't look so beautiful anymore. There was so much rage in her, so much despair. And yet, she was still Star. The same lovely, smart, smart-mouthed girl I loved.

She tore her gaze away from David and made an effort to pretend it was all normal again. "I tried to make you listen, but you just kept coming. You knew, didn't you? You knew all about what was happening here. Had to be the hero. Had to save me." Her pretty mouth twisted into something bitter and ugly. "Barely saved yourself, back there in that stupid mall. Some great hero."

Star. All this time I'd been thinking it was someone else, some invisible enemy. But my enemy had been right in plain sight. Jesus, I told her I was coming. No wonder she'd known where I was, how to track me. I'd made it simple.

"Feeling betrayed?" she asked. She stepped closer. "Join the club, girlfriend. Not like you didn't betray me first."

"Life sucks," I said. Star took the book from my hands.

"Then you die," she finished gravely. She flicked her eyes at the blond-haired Dji

The book was in Star's hands. I wondered how I was going to get it away from her. Star didn't give me time to figure it out. She gave me a fu

"Third request," she said. "Alice, take the Demon Mark from my friend."

I shouted a no, but Alice was already moving, reaching out for me and I couldn't move backwards fast enough. I tripped over a threadbare Persian carpet and fell against a table as her small pale hand reached out toward me…

… and David intercepted her, stiff-armed her back. Alice flinched from him and tried to come around the other side. David put himself in the middle and held her off. Star, standing off to the side, quietly watching, said nothing at all.

"Call her off!" I ordered. Star raised her hands and let them fall. "Star, dammit, call her off. This is crazy!"

"Can't," she said. "Three wishes. I'm out of here, babe. Better let it happen."

She waved to Alice, and instantly disappeared. With the book.

I yelled at David to hold Alice and I darted for the no admittance door at the back, where Cathy had gone. A blur streaked toward me, blue and white, and I slammed the door against it and stumbled back into boxes that tumbled over and spilled gaudy romance novels to the floor in a spray of heaving breasts and manly thews. I slipped on one and bruised my knee so hard, I saw red pulsing dots.

Alice blew through the door like it wasn't even there and reached out for me, and even while she did, I saw the terror in her eyes, the horror, the desperation. She knew what this meant. Eternal torment for her. And yet… she had no choice.

A blur of hot bronze collided with her and sent her off course, and I managed to clamber back to my feet and run down the narrow, dusty hallway. Pretty much useless, ru

No. Wait. I wasn't. I sucked down gulps of air and tried to focus around the panic that was jackhammering my heart.

Alice got free of David again and flashed toward me. I stopped, turned, and put out my hands as if I might grab her in turn…… and called the wind.

It blew down the narrow corridor, swirling, ripping, tearing covers and ripping books into blizzards, hit Alice and tumbled her helplessly backwards. David, too. They both dropped from vapor into heavier flesh, but I just called more power, whipped the wind faster. The walls creaked around me, and the far door blew open with a splintering crash, spilling hurricane forces out into the bookstore where racks blew over and paperbacks were sent flying.

In my chest, something ignited. Sent feeders of blackness threading through my aching body.

I couldn't control it anymore. The wind ripped free of me, became wild and alive and dark, became a lover whispering over me, stroking my hair and pressing against me like a living thing.

David was screaming something into the wind at me. Telling me something I didn't want to hear. Something about the Demon Mark. It didn't matter. Not anymore. I could keep him away, could blow sweet little Alice back to Wonderland, could reduce this miserable little store to sticks and splinters. And I wanted to. God, I wanted all this filth to go away, quit clinging to me, quit holding me back from what I was becoming. Sticks and splinters, that was so easy. Bodies in the way? Hamburger. Gobbets of flesh, ground up between steel and stone.

Somebody was trying to stop me. They weren't doing very well, but they were trying. I opened my eyes and squinted through flying debris and saw someone standing against the wall, holding on to an iron bar for dear life. Her short brown hair blew out like a thistle, crackling with static and potential energy.