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 Djinn at all, especially now that we were both in an incorporeal state. He felt… hotter. Stronger. More present, somehow.
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 Djinn who’d taken refuge in there. He hadn’t seemed all that positive in his outlook. It’s going to be one giant blue snow globe in here soon.
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, stunned into silence and nearly into unconsciousness. My mist form spread out into an uncoordinated cloud, then slowly, slowly formed itself back around the thread.
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 Djinn safely in their bottles, but the Free Djinn… they had no such protection. Just crawling inside some old Jim Beam container wouldn’t do it; it wasn’t the bottle that made the difference, it was magic. Without the magic, glass was just glass.
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 thinner, thinner, almost to nothing.
A sense of being dragged through thick, quick-setting cement. Of intense, murderous pressure.
Pop.
Free. I arrowed along the thread fast, driven by the force of the pull, with the close-following shadow of Jonathan sailing in my wake. The distant sunrise on the horizon grew brighter. Hotter. Closer. I could sense David now, but he felt… different. Muted.
I didn’t slow down.
I tumbled back into human form, all arms and legs and curling hair, hit the ground awkwardly and went to hands and knees. I was suddenly grateful for my newly demure clothing choices. What looked awkward in blue jeans would have looked downright kinky in a leather miniskirt and lime green Manolos.
Especially in a grungy city alleyway.
I’d expected to materialize in Yvette’s perfectly kept living room, but no such luck—on my hands and knees in garbage, looking up at a grungy guy dressed in geologic layers of oily, tattered clothes, a bottle of Thunderbird halfway to his lips. He stared at me without any real comprehension.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” I climbed up to my feet and wiped crud from my hands. “How you doing?”
He gestured vaguely with the bottle. As answers went, it was perfectly understandable.