I frowned at him. "No games."
"No. This is a serious question." He slipped off the deck chair, and one knee touched the concrete balcony floor. He never looked away from my face, and he never let go of my hands. "This is a question that's going to need a serious answer."
My heart froze, then skipped to catch up on its beats. "I -- " I couldn't begin to think of what to say. I just waited. I probably had it all wrong anyway.
"Will you marry me?" he asked.
Oh. I didn't have it wrong at all.
My lips parted, and nothing, absolutely nothing, came out. Was he serious? He couldn't be serious. We were comfortable together, we had love, we had partnership, we had -- everything.
Everything except ... well, this. An official kind of commitment.
Not possible, some part of my brain reported briskly. David was a supernatural Djinn, only partly tied to the mortal world. I might have been a Warden, with extra powers over wind, water, air, earth, living things ... but I was just human, when it came down to brass tacks. He was immortal, I wasn't, and I was achingly aware of that, every day that passed between us.
"David ... " I came up against an absolute blank wall, inspirationally speaking. "I -- can we talk about this later?"
"Why? So you can come up with reasons to justify your fears about me leaving you?" He wasn't angry; he didn't mean it to hurt. It was matter of fact and strangely even gentle. "Jo, I need to know that you feel as I do. I need to have you with me. And -- it's mortal custom." He was clearly reaching on that last one.
"Have you been married before?" There, I'd asked it. We didn't go into his past a lot, but I knew it was ancient, and there had been plenty of relationships. Djinn as well as human.
He raised my hands to his lips, and I shivered at the warm, intimate kiss. "Yes," he said. "Ages ago. Before I knew what I was waiting to feel."
I stared at him. "And now you know."
"Of course I know," he said. His eyes had taken on the burning purity of newly minted copper. "I was waiting for you."
The phone rang. My gaze went to it, startled, but I didn't move to pick up. One ring, and it cut off. I wasn't sure if the caller had thought better of it, or David had severed the connection.
"If you say no, it's all right. I will stay with you as long as you want me to stay," he said. "You won't lose me. You don't have to agree if this doesn't feel right to you."
"But it's important to you."
"Yes. Or I wouldn't have brought it up." David looked troubled for a second, as if he was unsure of how much -- or little -- to say. Then he plunged ahead. "When humans make their vows to each other, it's the closest they can come to the depth of commitment a Djinn feels. You see? I just want -- I'm afraid of losing you."
And it had taken him a lot to risk the question, I knew that. David's feelings for me were fierce and constant; it was part of who the Djinn were. But human feelings were changeable, and I had no doubt he lived in fear that one day, I'd wake up and be a different person, one he couldn't reach.
Being married wouldn't lessen that risk, but it was a symbol. A trust.
It all came down to trust. His, and mine.
"This is crazy," I breathed. "What the hell are the Djinn going to say?"
"Nothing, if they know what's good for them." There was a glimmer of coldness to his tone. David was the leader of about half of the Djinn -- the good half, in my opinion, although there were exceptions. The other half was led by a Djinn named Ashan, a icy bastard who didn't like me very much, and wasn't especially warm toward David, either. "If you're worrying what it will do to my standing among them, don't."
But I had to think about that, didn't I? It wasn't just the two of us. The Wardens might have a thing or two to say about a human marrying a Djinn, too. And what minister was going to bless this union, anyway? Most of them didn't believe in the supernatural, at least in any good kind of way. And I knew David. He'd want complete honesty in this, no matter how hard that would be.
The day was getting darker, the sky darkening from denim to indigo. On the horizon, the sun was nearly down, pulling its glorious trailing rays with it.
Black, greasy smoke drifted into my eyes, and I blinked and coughed. David glanced at it, annoyed, and the smoke disappeared -- moved elsewhere. The air around us was fresh and clear.
"Jo," he said. "You don't have to answer now. I just -- had to ask the question."
I ought to say no. I knew that. I just knew.
"Yes," I said, and something in me broke loose with a wild, silent cry. I was off the cliff now, I realized, with a fierce joy, and that felt good. It felt free.
His eyes ignited into a color found only in the heart of the sun. "Yes?"
"Yes, already. I'll marry you. Yes. Hell, yes. What am I, stupid?"
The phone rang again. David let go of my hands, picked up the extension, and thumbed it on without looking away from my face. "Mr. Garrett, I'm taking my lover to bed," he said. "If you know what's good for you, you'll reschedule your deadline."
And he crushed the phone, like it was made of marshmallow crème, and dropped the smashed pieces on the patio table.
"Oh," I said faintly. "Problem solved. Good approach."
On the horizon, the fire in Alligator Alley continued to glow. I discovered that I didn't care at all, as David's hand pulled me to my feet and into his arms.
I woke up, hours later, to the sound of sirens, thumping, and screaming. The Wardens had majorly screwed up, again. My apartment complex was on fire. We were being evacuated.
That was it. I was never going on vacation again.
Chapter One
Getting married was like planning a military invasion of a distant foreign country, only instead of moving soldiers and guns, you were organizing bridesmaids and bouquets.
Of course, my bridesmaids were bound to be pretty tough chicks. I couldn't really be sure there wouldn't be guns.
"You know," said my best friend, Cherise, staring thoughtfully into the mirror and smoothing her hands down the clinging lines of her dress, "there's a math formula for wedding dresses."
I blinked at her. I was trying to figure out if the layer cake of tulle and lace I had on constituted romantic excess, or if it looked like I'd fought off a demented pastry chef and barely escaped with my life. "What?"
"The problem is, this dress looks totally fabulous on me. And the better the bridesmaid's gown looks on her, the fuglier the bride's. I'm just pointing it out because I'm a kindhearted person, you know."
She was right - she did look totally fabulous in the dress. The color was a dark rose, one that wildly complemented Cherise's blond hair and beautiful skin. It was a simple sheath dress, clinging in all the right places, and it ended at the right length for her, just below the knee, to display her perfectly sculpted calves to full advantage. No dyed generic pumps for Cherise; she'd scoured the stores and come up with a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes that made me pray to the fashion gods for something half as great to appear in my closet.
The first time I'd ever met Cherise, she'd looked fantastic. Cherise could look delicious wearing an oversized foam-rubber sun - I know, I've seen her do it, back in the days we both worked for the local bottom-of-the-barrel TV station as weather girls.
I, on the other hand, did not look delicious. I looked like a wedding cake that hadn't quite risen properly. And white really wasn't my color.
"You're a true friend," I said, and unzipped my dress to let it slide into a confusion of frippery on the dressing room floor. The waiting dress wrangler rescued it, fussily dusted it, and put it back on a hanger and in a garment bag, the better to protect its doubtful charms. "Right. Something in off-white? With less - " I made a vague, poofy gesture with my hands. The salesclerk, who must have seen brides make a thousand terrible decisions, looked relieved. She nodded and turned to Cherise.
"Ma'am?" she asked. "Can I bring you some more selections?"
Cherise turned, hands on hips. "You're kidding, right? Look, I gave her fair warning. I am not giving up this dress. I'll be maid of honor, but not matronly of honor."
"Keep the dress," I said hastily. "It really does look great on you. So you're done. It's just me we're still working on."
Cherise, mollified, unzipped and shimmied out of the dress. She was the one who fussed with it, getting it hung just so, and zipped it into the garment bag before handing it to the salesclerk. "Be sure nothing happens to it," she said. "Put my name on it in giant letters: Cherise. In fact, if you've got a vault - "
"Cher," I said, "leave the poor lady alone. She's dealing with enough as it is. Your dress is safe."
"Maybe I should take it with me."
"Maybe you should put your clothes on. I'm feeling kind of outclassed, here."
Cherise grinned, undermining her Playboy Bunny appeal but making herself real in a way most pretty women weren't. She looked after herself with care, but she also didn't put too much emphasis on it. Cherise liked to do things that the Genetically Chosen Few generally didn't, like read, geek out on TV shows, indulge in online gaming. Her most prominent body decoration, which showed plainly as she turned to gather up her jeans and tank top from the bench, was a Gray - a little gray alien tattoo waving hello from the small of her back, where most beautiful women would have put a rose as a tramp stamp.
That was Cherise, cheerfully mowing down the barriers.
I sat down on the other bench, legs crossed, feeling exposed and vulnerable in my lacy underthings. I had a huge list of things still to do for the wedding, and I was running out of time, and the last thing I needed to be doing was obsessing about the dress. I mean, I had good taste in clothes, right? I could usually walk into a store, grab something right off the rack, and get it right.
Today, I'd gone through more dresses than I'd worn in the last year. Maybe I ought to try the designer line again. Or get married in a garbage bag. Add a couple of frills, a nice bow - couldn't be worse than what I'd just seen myself in today. There was a fashion hell. I'd been there.
"You okay?" Cherise finished buttoning up her jeans, skimmed her top down to street-legal levels, flipped her hair, and voilà, she was fantastic. She stepped out of the Jimmy Choo pumps and boxed them up with the care usually reserved for crown jewels or religious relics, and slid her perfectly pedicured toes into a pair of hot-pink flip-flops. "Because you look a little bit - "
"Spooked," I supplied sourly. "Worried. Scared. Nuts. Insane. Completely, utterly - "
"I was going to say hungry. It's already two hours after we should have had lunch."
Low blood sugar probably was impairing my impressive dress-choosing skills, and even though this was a full-service bridal store, I doubted that they catered. "Oh," I said. "Right. Lunch." Now that she mentioned it, my stomach growled impatiently, as if it had been trying to get my attention for a while and was ready to cannibalize another body part. I reached for my own jeans and top and began tugging them on. I wasn't as perfectly body-balanced as Cherise, but I had legs for days, and even in flats I topped her by several inches.
The hardworking clerk came back, sweating under a forklift's worth of alternate dress choices. I froze in the act of zipping up my pants. "Um - "
Cherise, rightly identifying a moment when a maid of honor could take one for the bridal team, smiled winningly at the clerk and said, "Sorry, but I've got a nail appointment. We'll have to come back later. Could you keep those out? I swear, it'll be an hour, tops." She caught my look. "Two, at the most."
The clerk looked around the dressing room, which had far fewer hooks than she had dresses, sighed, and nodded.
I had just finished fastening the top button on my pants when I felt the whole store distinctly shake, as if a giant hand had grabbed the place and yanked. I froze, bracing myself on the wall, and saw Cherise do the same. The clerk froze under her load of thousand-dollar frocks.
And then all hell broke loose. The floor bucked, walls undulated, cracks ripped through plaster, and the air exploded with the sounds of glass crashing, things falling, and timbers snapping. The salesclerk screamed, dropped the gowns, and flung herself into the doorway, bracing herself with both hands.
I should have taken cover - Cherise sensibly did, curling instantly into a ball under the nearest cover, which was the bench on her side.
What did I do? I stood there. And I launched myself hard into the aetheric, rising out of the physical world and into a plane of existence where the lines of force were more clearly visible.
Not good. The entire area of Fort Lauderdale was a boiling confusion of forces, most erupting out of a fault line running directly under the store in which I stood. It looked as if somebody had dropped a bucket of red and black dye into a washing machine and set it on full churn.
We were so screwed.
I sensed other Wardens rising into the aetheric, responding to the crisis; there were two or three of them relatively close whose signatures I recognized - two were Weather, which wasn't much help, but one was an Earth Warden, and a powerful one.
