He slipped a hand into the pocket that I knew held my bottle, but he didn’t bring it out. It was almost like he was clutching a rabbit’s foot… his own personal lucky charm.
“You’ll come back?” he asked. “Promise?”
“I swear.”
I held him for another few seconds, which ended when I felt a palm slide down to my butt. “Hey! Hands!”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, and moved back. “Don’t— don’t let her hurt you. And come back.”
I reached out and kissed him. One chaste, gentle kiss. When I pulled away he was staring at me with wide, stunned eyes.
Never been kissed. Nothing sweet about the sixteen he was living.
I spread my arms, ready to rise into the aetheric.
“Stop!” Kevin cried. I looked at him and saw that he’d taken the perfume vial out of his pocket. His knuckles were white around it. “Wait. I can’t. You’re all I have.” A deep, chest-heaving breath, like a sob.
“Kevin, no—”
“Back in the bottle. Sorry.”
I screamed out my frustration, but the gray swirl was already sucking me down, helpless, into oblivion.
I didn’t want to dream, because I knew what it would be. Something bad. I’d come to the conclusion that the only things Djinn ever dreamed, trapped in oblivion, were really nightmares.
I hate being right.
In my dream, the Djinn were dying.
Each of the three sentient events out there—the forming earthquake, the strengthening fire in Yellowstone, the storm cell gathering in the Atlantic— had drawn Wardens in response. Of those, the top masters of each area had Djinn to focus and amplify their powers. Perhaps a hundred, all total…
… a hundred victims.
I watched, helpless, as the sparklies saturated in a slow, graceful rain through the aetheric, bathing the Djinn like radiation; the more power each Djinn sourced, the greater the concentration of cold blue rain around them. They knew. They knew it was killing them, and they couldn’t prevent it.
Some of the Wardens understood what was happening. They pulled their Djinn back, sealed them in bottles, hoped that the damage could be contained.
The rest pushed blindly ahead, focused on the objectives.
In California, tectonic plates rippled, shifted, slid. Earth Wardens were pushed aside by the forces at work, their weakened Djinn useless. The first shudders began, working deep in the earth.
In Yellowstone, fire flowed unchecked, like a river; it crested a hill and raced down, leaping from treetop to treetop, lapping the trunks in a molten river of flame. Trees cracked and exploded with sounds like gunshots as sap boiled inside. There were no animals running ahead of it; the superheated air had raced ahead, killing everything in its path.
Fire Wardens were struggling to build containments, but it was useless. Their Djinn were failing.
Yellowstone was going to burn. Again.
I couldn’t even bear to look at the raging fury that was forming out to sea. Please. Tell me how I can stop this.
The combined might of the Wardens couldn’t stop it. The idea that I could do anything, anything at all, was sheer lunacy.
I felt a presence with me. Something cool and peaceful.
Next to me sat a tall woman with unearthly beautiful features, hair white as snow, eyes pure amethyst.
Sara, I said. She gave me a sad, gentle smile.
Am I? She looked out at the devastation below. So much pain, for so little. I wish this would end. I wish I could stop it.
Can anyone? I asked. Rhetorical question. I rested my chin on raised knees like a little girl, and watched the end of the world in fire and flood and the slow rolling of the earth.
Oh, yes. Sara seemed surprised I didn’t know. Of course. You can.
I straightened up and met her eyes. Such cool, deep eyes, all the flecks and facets of a jewel. No wonder Patrick loved her. No wonder he’d do anything, no matter how horrible, to ensure her survival.
Me?
She nodded slightly. Tears formed in her eyes, ran down her smooth, perfectly pale cheeks.
Patrick knew, she said. From the first moment he saw you.
That I could close the rift?
That you are the rift.
I didn’t have time to feel the shock of that, because just then the pain started. Sara winced too, laid her hands over her chest and bent forward. It felt like we were being pulled by a fishhook, right through our bodies… tugged somewhere.
What the hell…
Sara looked up. Her eyes were flat black now, the jewel color lost, and her hair was twisting and blackening into a burned and petrified ruin.
It’s time to go. Remember. Remember.
And then it was lost, all a gray dream, floating in oblivion.
Pop goes the perfume cork.
I was ready, this time—I came boiling out, took form as soon as I was free of the bottle, was already moving to grab Kevin’s T-shirt and back him up against the wall.