Windfall

“Or?”

“You don’t want to test me.” He took a measured step forward. I felt the ozone crackling in the air, felt the menace in the clouds overhead. Wispy things, but firming up as the disruptions in the aetheric mirrored themselves into the physical world… whipping, uncontrolled winds in the mesosphere; cold spots; a streak of heat from Ashan that cut through weather patterns like a spearhead.

I could feel the electricity in the air trying to find a way to ground itself.

He could fry me right here on the patio, and with my powers currently registering somewhere from zero to dead, I couldn’t even defend myself. “David is fond of humans. I’m not. I don’t care if I level this entire building to make my point.”

“Dji

I didn’t see him move, but I felt the blow—hard enough to temporarily white out my nervous system and send me reeling to slam back against stucco and brick. I’d missed the plate-glass doors, at least. That was a relief. When sensation came flooding back, it brought with it a tide of stinging-hot ache along the side of my face. It had been an open-handed slap, but damn, he hadn’t pulled it. I put my hand to my cheek and felt heat. My eyes were watering.

Ashan took another step forward. “I’m not interested in how clever you imagine yourself to be, and if you think your human body interests me, you’re deluded,” he said. “I only find it interesting in how many creative ways I might be able to take it apart. Now, go and get the bottle.”

He couldn’t touch the bottle. He couldn’t take it away from me. Even Jonathan hadn’t been able to do that. Was it a bluff? Or did he just want to know where it was?

I slipped open the sliding glass door and backed inside, then slammed it shut.

For all the good it would do, of course. Outside, Ashan stood silhouetted against the failing twilight, gray as a dead man, with those eyes swirling cold and silver.

“Hey,” Sarah said. She was still deep in her culinary trance, doing something now involving bread and the oven. The kitchen smelled like rosemary and olive oil and roasting chicken. Heaven. I wished I could appreciate it; I was shaking, shaken, and scared. I watched her slide the tray into the slot and close the oven door, then strip off oven mitts and turn toward me with a smile. “It’s nice out there, isn’t it? Kind of peaceful. Maybe we can have di

“Yeah,” I said. “Great. Okay.” What a horrible idea. I started to move past her to the bedroom.

She reached out and grabbed my arms, pulling me to a stop. Her frown creased into faint lines. “Jo? What happened to your face?”

“Um…” I was drawing a blank. “I tripped.”

“Tripped?”

“It’s nothing, Sarah.” I tried to pull free. My sister was stronger than she looked.

“Bullshit, nothing. You look spooked, Jo. Is it that guy? That van guy?” Now she looked angry as well. “Dammit… I’m calling the police. Right now.”

“No! No, look, it’s nothing like that—” This was all getting way too complicated. I yanked free of her grip. She lunged for the phone. I grabbed it away from her and slammed it down hard on the table. “Sarah! It’s my business, all right? And the guy in the van is a cop!”

She stared at me, astonished. “He’s what?”

“A cop.” I had trouble controlling my breathing. Panic was getting the better of me. “I had some trouble in Las Vegas a couple of months ago. It’s temporary.”

“Jesus Christ, what did you do? Kill somebody?”

“Do I look like a murderer to you? You’re my sister! You’re supposed to believe in me!”

I hadn’t answered the question, but luckily I’d hit the right guilt buttons. “Jo …” Sarah flapped her manicured hands helplessly. “Fine. All right. I believe you. But why is he following you?”

“He thinks I know something about a crime that happened while I was—before you ask, no. I didn’t.” She opened her mouth to fire off another question, and I hastily searched for an excuse to escape. “Sorry. I have to use the bathroom.”

Even persistent people don’t want to argue with full bladders. She let me go. I hurried through the doorway into the living room, heading for my closed private space, and… the doorbell rang.

JESUS! “Get that!” I yelled over my shoulder, and kept moving. I ran into the bedroom, slid open the bedside table, and grabbed David’s blue glass bottle. My heart was hammering. I was about to take a huge gamble, and it was likely to get me hurt or killed in the process. I went back out into the living room, passing Sarah on her way to answer the doorbell, frowning at me; she’d taken the time to remove her apron and fluff her hair.

I slid the sliding glass door open and stepped out onto the patio. Ashan turned from contemplation of the ocean to stare at me. His eyes flicked toward the bottle in my hand.

“At least you take direction properly,” he said. “Call him.”

“You don’t want me to do that,” I said.

Ashan’s eyes went stormcloud-dark, tinged with lightning blue. “I won’t tell you again.”

“You want to kill him.”

Ashan smiled. Not nicely.

I closed my eyes, opened them, and said, “David, come out of the bottle.”

For a long second I was sure that I’d made a terrible mistake, that he’d never gone back in the bottle at all, and then a shadow detached itself from the corner and stood, swaying and angular, at my side. It wasn’t David. It wasn’t … anything I could recognize. But it answered to the name, and evidently I still had some control over it.

Ashan took a step back. That predatory smile went south, fast.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him, and this time, my voice stayed steady and cool. “You wanted David. Here he is.”

“Ifrit.”

“Oh, now that’s just mean. You shouldn’t judge a Dji

Ashan screamed, backed up, hit the railing, and began raking the Ifrit—I couldn’t think of him as David—with silver claws. Ashan’s form changed, flowed, became something larger and only barely human in form. Gray and vague and shot through with vivid streaks of white.

The two of them misted through the railing and plunged down, twisting, falling.

The Ifrit had two misshapen, angular limbs plunged deep into the Dji

He’s in pain. Not Ashan, David… I could feel it. I could feel his agony, and it made me stagger and grab for the railing and bite back a scream. The co

And then, suddenly, just when the pain was about to drive me to my knees, it stopped. There was a floating sensation, an overwhelming burst of peace, and I saw the Ifrit change.

Twist.

Take on color and shape and form.

David was crouched on top of a prone Ashan, hands sunk to the wrist into the other Dji

He yanked his hands free of Ashan’s chest. They were smeared with silvery residue. Ashan, for his part, lay there motionless, staring up at the darkening, cloud-littered sky.

Lightning jumped from one cloud to another, a hot, white flare that I felt along my nerve endings. Thunder slammed through the air and buffeted my chest, such a physical presence that it set off car alarms.