Heat Stroke

I had already formed clothes under the sheet—the same denim and boots as before. One nice thing about being a Dji

“You said it. We need David.”

“I’ll go.”

“You’re in thrall,” he said. “If your little jerk of a master finds out you’re where he can reach you, he’ll get you back and dressed like a pinup fantasy girl in ten seconds flat.”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

“Oh, I don’t know, the French Maid outfit was a little—” He held up a hand to forestall my protest. “Never mind. Point is, if you go outside of the barrier he’ll be able to get you back.”

“He’s probably still asleep.”

“He is.” Jonathan nodded. “Problem is that he was calling for you in his sleep. And if you go outside this house, you won’t be able to resist.”

“I still want to go. If I get taken, so be it. I manipulated the kid once, I can do it again.”

“You’d better hope so. Well, you’re not going alone. This is too important to screw up.” He folded his hands together behind his back, stopped pacing, and faced me in a parade rest posture. “I’m going with you.”

I managed a weak smile. “Yay, Team Us?”

“Yeah, well, I could have patches made, but it seems excessive.” We exchanged another long few seconds of eye-locked silence. I was worrying about how many Dji

Jonathan must have read my mind. “This is going to be hard, you know. Getting David back. She wants him bad.”

No answer to that except the obvious. “So do I.” I saw the flash in his eyes, and amended it. “We.”

His ghost-smile manifested again. “Then let’s go get him.”

The cord binding me to David had shrunk to a thin, barely perceptible thread. Worse, it was shaking. I could feel the tension in it. No telling how strong it was, how much strain it could stand, but I had the distinct feeling that it was close to the breaking point.

And my time was almost up, anyway. On so many levels.

“You understand what we have to do,” Jonathan said. “Travel in the aetheric’s too damn dangerous. Just skim the surface, stay as close as you can to the thread. I’ll be right behind you.”

We hadn’t told anybody else except—at Jonathan’s insistence—that creepy gray-suited Ashan. “You’re sure about him?” I’d asked out of the side of my mouth, as the door shut behind him and locked me and Jonathan in what looked like a study. He liked fishing, I gathered. Lots of books on the subject, and some big mounted piscine specimens frozen in midthrash on the walls.

“Ashan?” Jonathan finished writing something down, reached in a desk drawer and took out a seal that looked massive and antique. He brought it gently down on the paper. When he took it away, there was a glowing design in the paper, nothing I could read or even vaguely recognize. “Kind of an asshole, I know, but he’s reliable. Anything ever happens to me, he gets the big chair.”

“Not David?”

“Not anymore.” The tone was so colorless I knew there was pain behind it. “You’re good to go?”

“Ready.” I wasn’t, really, but there didn’t seem to be any really good choices, otherwise. Jonathan put the paper on top of his desk, turned to me and gave me an after you Alphonse gesture.

I took a deep breath and flowed to mist.

In Oversight, the thread stretched out toward the horizon, thin and glittering and still somehow alive. I touched it, wrapped myself around it and started winding around it like a vine snake. Moving fast, but staying in the physical plane. The thread had aetheric properties, which worried me; I couldn’t stop to help Jonathan if he got badly infected. I couldn’t be sure, but I wasn’t seeing any blue sparkle, other than a stray particle here and there. So far the co

The thread traveled through Jonathan’s house, straight out through the roaring blaze in the fireplace. I didn’t dare phase out completely, but I tried a moderated waveform to travel on, to avoid the fire. If it was a real fire at all. Nothing around here was what it seemed, especially not Jonathan. He didn’t feel like a Dji

My waveform skirted perilously close to a place I didn’t want to go. I saw blue sparks dancing close, and dropped back down. Jonathan’s place was still relatively spark-free, at least so far. I wondered if his defenses were good enough to protect all of the Dji

Even as I watched, a single blue spark flared against my aura, then two more, drifting gently and then falling away. The stuff was getting through, after all, just very very slowly.

I flashed through a barely seen crisscross of bricks and mortar, winding along the silver thrumming thread as fast as I could. I moved out of the darkness, into what felt like sunlight. I soaked up the wild, undirected energy gratefully; without David’s infusions of blood-rich power, I was rapidly getting tired.

I looked behind me on the thread—directed my awareness, actually—and sensed that Jonathan was still with me, whispering his way along with every evidence of perfect ease. Well, well. I wasn’t overly surprised. I didn’t imagine there was much that Jonathan couldn’t do, if he really wanted to. Except that this might be the first time in a long time that he’d left his… sanctuary, and there might be a learning curve for him out here in the real world…

Wham!

It was like hitting the Great Wall of China in a bullet train. I stopped, stu

Whoops. Found the barrier. Damn. How had Sara gotten around it, when she’d brought me in at hyperspeed?

And why did the thread go right on through it?

No help for it; I had to get really thin. If the thread could pass through, I could slide myself along the thread through the barrier—theoretically. All I had to do was, ah, become the thread, right? Yeah. Be one with the thread.

Another blue fleck touched me and flared like a star. I was out of time. If Jonathan’s hideout was being invaded, there couldn’t be too many safe places left. I hoped whatever other Wardens were left had sense enough to keep their Dji

David. I sent it along the thread, because the barrier was holding. I wasn’t getting through. No response. I directed my attention backwards. Jonathan, can you drop this thing long enough for us to get through?

No, he sent back. It’s the only thing standing between them and what’s out there.

Any hints?

Try harder.

Yeah, that was good. Try harder.

I felt a giant-sized shove in the back, and grabbed on to the thread for dear life as it began to move. Slowly. Pulling through the barrier one torturous, tiny jerk at a time.

I thought it would scrape me right off, that wall of power. I compressed myself, spread thi