"Relax," he said. "Trust me."
He guided it to his lap, and began to stroke his fingers over the swollen skin.
Where he touched, the hot skin-which had been screaming in agony for hours-began to cool and regain its shape. It was deliciously, amazingly wonderful.
"You should open a spa," I said, and leaned my head back against the cushions of a chair. He smiled down at my foot as he stroked his fingers across the skin.
"For you, I should open a hospital," he said. "Jo-somebody helped us down there, in the sand. We were dying, and somebody came."
I didn't answer.
"Was it David?"
I felt tears start to burn, and wiped them away with shaking hands. His caress on my burned skin stopped for a second, then resumed.
"I thought I could save him," I said. "I really thought-"
I couldn't think about this, couldn't feel this, couldn't handle anything right now. The tears were uncontrollable. They hurt. Lewis continued to stroke the burn out of my foot, pressing just hard enough on the instep to work out the ache along the way. Undemanding and unassuming, as ever.
"You're not losing him," Lewis said. "You'll never lose him until he's dead. Or you are."
My left foot felt cool and soothed and sated. He gently put it back on the carpet and took my right one. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sheer animal comfort he was offering me.
"Then it's already over," I said softly. "I think he is dead. I think what's left... oh God, Lewis. You don't know what they're like. The Ifrit. You can see who they were, and sometimes they know who they were..."
"Shhhh," he whispered. "Close your eyes. Don't think."
I fell asleep with his fingers slowly, methodically taking away the pain.
When I woke up, I was in bed. Somebody-probably Lewis-had carried me in. I checked: still dressed in the jogging clothes. I felt sand in every fold of skin. I itched all over, and whatever sleep I'd gotten wasn't nearly enough.
I sat up and pulled David's bottle out of the nightstand. It was silent and inert, and there was no connection to it. No sense of his presence at all. It was just a container, fragile and limited. Like a human body.
Was that what a Djinn really was? A soul, unhoused? Then what was an Ifrit? What was a Demon? The classes at Warden U. hadn't exactly prepared me for the big questions. It was a technical school. Philosophy wasn't considered important to the curriculum.
But now I was starting to wonder if philosophy was what the Wardens were missing, and had been missing all along. The Ma'at might be a bunch of upright assholes, but at least they understood what they were doing, and why. All we did was react. React to this disaster, that crisis. We were the world's paramedics, and maybe we were spreading as much disease as we were curing.
"I love you," I whispered to the bottle, and pressed my warm cheek against it. "God, David, I do, I do, I do. Please believe me."
I fell asleep again with the bottle in my hands, still dressed in my gritty jogging clothes, and dreamed that a dark, jagged shape in the corner, like a broken nightmare, watched me the rest of the night.
INTERLUDE
The storm drives clear skies ahead of it. Warm weather, soft breezes. There is no sense of danger coming, no hint of the chaos moving on the horizon like an invading, destroying army.
The island nation in the way is fat, prosperous, and complacent about its safety. In all of its recorded history, which stretches back a thousand years, it has never been conquered. It is a paradise, a center of trade and culture and learning for half the human world. Its harbors are vast and constantly busy.
It doesn't matter. Humans have more energy than smaller animals, and the storm craves it.
The storm changes its course, unfurling its killing tentacles toward them.
First warning is the unnaturally clear sky, wrong for the season. Towards evening, the first breezes begin to arrive, and waves come faster, hit harder. A constant roar of surf crashes on high cliffs in explosions of white foam.
In the morning, people gather in the morning's soft, green-tinted light and find the sea itself boiling in distress where it meets the land. Out toward the far horizon, the storm shows itself in a black line stretching across the curve of the sky. The ocean humps toward them in long, rolling swells, each higher than the last.
The beaches go first, swallowed by wave after wave after wave. There is no alarm, at first. They have seen flooding before. Those living in the valleys and by the sea gather their families and possessions and start a trek inland, whether they will shelter with families or friends.
But the sea keeps rising, and as the storm's breath begins to blow, they realize that this is no ordinary rain coming to their fair and quiet land.
By the time they ring alarm bells, drawing the people to the temples, to the highest hills, the wind is slashing apart trees and the surge is bringing down everything in its path. They hope for divine intervention, but the wise among them already know the end of the story.
SIX
Two hours? Not enough sleep. Oh, no.
I stumbled up and into the shower, where I finally washed away the blood and sand of the night's adventures, and realized halfway through that I was still wearing my pull-on jog bra. Ever tried to get one of those off when it's wet?
Not a pretty picture.
I stumbled comatose out of my bedroom, barely remembering to belt my bathrobe along the way, and started coffee. The asthmatic chug-hiss-chug of the machine echoed through the predawn stillness. Lewis was sprawled out on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. Kevin looked boneless and well rested on the couch. He slept open-mouthed.
War refugees. I felt a prickle along my spine, a dizzying sense that all this was just prelude to something a whole lot worse. I hoped I was wrong.
Not a sound from Sarah's bedroom. I tapped gently on the closed door, then eased it open.
The two of them were asleep, wrapped tightly around each other. Eamon, in sleep, looked younger and almost angelic, that sharp intelligence missing and a kind of gentleness in its place. His arms were around Sarah. Her back was pressed against his front, and his forehead rested on the disordered silk of her hair.
It looked... sweet. And definitely postcoital.
I shut the door without waking them and went back to stare blankly at the coffeemaker as it peed into the carafe.
A hand on my shoulder made me jump. It was Lewis, yawning, all lean and shirtless and tousled, hair sticking in a dozen directions, eyes heavy-lidded.
"Hey," I said, and moved away from him. "I made a big pot."
"I'm going to need a syringe to inject it directly into my bloodstream."
"IV kit, third cabinet. Rinse it out when you're done. I'll need it later," I said. My hair was still wet. I leaned over the sink and twisted it into a rope, drizzling out a stream of silver water. Lewis busied himself with coffee cup retrieval, sorted through the thrift-store assortment, and handed me a GOT COFFEE? mug with a pop-eyed, jittery Too Much Coffee Man on it. He took Garfield.
"Did you sleep?" he asked me.
"A little." I'd dreamed, too. Not good dreams. "I'm sorry I got weepy on you. Bad night."
"I understand." He poured himself a cup, mutely offered the same to me, and I nodded. "David doesn't love you."
I nearly fumbled the cup he was holding out. "What?"