Windfall

Marvin sputtered and twisted, but after all, he’d given his personal guarantee.

“Well,” he finally said, “I’ll take that bet. Because Marvelous Marvin stands by his predictions!”

The anchors clapped. So did the stagehands, who were all giving me—not Marvin—a big, double thumbs-up.

Marvin did a back-to-you, and the newscast resumed. They were about to interview a 110-year-old man from Coral Gables who had a pet tortoise nearly his own age.

The red camera light flicked off, and Marvin lunged at me. I danced back through the sand, stepped off the narrow ledge onto the cold floor of the studio, and mouthed at him, Want to see my ass?

And then I turned, pointed to it, and walked away, head held high. Put my arm around the squishy mass of Cherise’s costume, and walked her toward the door. I tossed the bathrobe over my shoulder on the way out and made sure that I was doing a full model’s sashay, the entire time.

When I looked over my shoulder, Marvin was doing a silent dance of fury, right in the director’s face. The stagehands were convulsed with silent laughter.

So endeth my career as Weather Girl. Sad, really. I was just getting to like it, in a perverse, kinky kind of way.

It occurred to me, on the drive back, that I had a lot to worry about.

Jonathan’s threat was still in force, and although he’d temporarily forgotten about me, he was almost certainly going to come reinforce his point anytime now.

And whatever wistful hopes I had to repair the damage to David were now officially dead, buried, and had grass growing on their graves.

David was an Ifrit, and I didn’t know how to get him back without human blood and the Ma’at. I was dangerously willing to get the human blood. The Ma’at, however, were notoriously not easy to convince, and with the Dji

When Jonathan showed up, I’d have to do what he said. I wouldn’t have any choices left.

I felt such a crashing wave of anguish that it left me breathless, tears cold on my cheeks, and I pulled into a strip mall parking lot to let it pass.

It didn’t pass. The waves kept coming, battering me, releasing more and more pain. It was as though a dam had broken inside of me, and I couldn’t stop the flood.

I found myself hunched over, head against the steering wheel, hands over my stomach. Protecting my unborn child, my child who was just an idea, a possibility, a spark.

David was already gone, but he wasn’t dead. He’d told me he had to die for the child to live. Probably.

I tried to sense something, anything, from her, but like the bottle that contained David in thick, obscuring glass, my own body refused to grant me a co

Please, I thought to her. Don’t go.

It took me an hour to dry my tears and feel up to facing what was waiting for me at home.

When I arrived, Lewis and Kevin were gone. That wasn’t totally a surprise; Lewis never had liked hanging around waiting for trouble, and he’d be thinking of Kevin, too. I wondered why the Ma’at weren’t rallying to protect him. Yet another thing I should have found the time to ask.

I wished I hadn’t missed Lewis, but at the same time, I was relieved. He’d have taken one look at my reddened eyes and known what I’d been crying about, and I wasn’t really sure I could stand the sympathy just now.

When I closed the door, I heard Sarah banging around in the kitchen. By banging I mean cooking, with punctuation. I saw Eamon standing in the living room, sipping coffee, and raised my eyebrows; he raised his back and nodded toward the source of the noise.

“I think she’s a bit unhappy,” he said. “Considering that she walked out of the bedroom thinking she’d be alone in the house and, well, she wasn’t.”

I blinked. “That was a problem?”

“It was the way she walked out of the bedroom.”

“You mean she was… ?”

“Naked as the day she was born,” he said with careful gravity. “I think the resulting shriek woke half your neighbors.”

I was going to hell for the fact that this actually cheered me up. I tried to be a dutiful sister. Tried very, very hard. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you, but you guys were asleep—”

“Oh, believe me, it’s not me you have to convince. I thought it was a lot fu

Eamon’s tone had just a bit of a question in it. I felt a blush coming on again.

“On television,” I clarified. “He said he was going to watch me on television. Not like rolling over in bed and saying I looked great or anything.”

“Ah.” Eyebrows up and down. “Of course.”

Hurricane Sarah was making omelets, apparently, with lots of agitated chopping of mushrooms and onions and peppers. Ham had already suffered the same fate.

When I came into the room, she pointed the chef’s knife at me and said, “You.”

“I surrender. I throw myself on your mercy. Please don’t mince me,” I said, and sat down at the table. There was a pitcher of orange juice out, so I helped myself to a glass. Tart and pulpy, just the way I liked it. I sipped liquid sunshine and waited for the storm to break as Sarah went back to her chopping.

And waited. And waited. She just kept chopping. Finally, I ventured, “So you’re mad, then.”

“Oh, you think?”

“Look, Lewis needed a place to stay for the night. It was late. I didn’t want to wake you—”

“Yes, all very logical, but you’re not the one who wandered out here naked and got ogled by that—lecher!”

“Lewis?” I blinked in surprise. Not that Lewis wouldn’t ogle—he was a guy, after all, and highly aware of women—but he was usually a lot more subtle about it.

“No, not him. The other one. The kid.”

Oh. Kevin. Of course. “Um, right. Sorry about that. Don’t take it personally. He’s a teenager. He’s constitutionally lecherous.” I edited out the response that began, If you weren’t so focused on shagging Cute British Guy, you might have thrown on a robe, and damn, I’ll bet it was fu