Total Eclipse Page 0,2

hard. "What?"

Her lips took on the ghost of a smile. "I am glad that we have been friends. You remind me of someone I knew long ago. My cousin, in breathing days. You have her soul. And I am glad to have looked on that brightness again."

"Stop it," I said, my voice unsteady. "Just stop it. You're not going to die, Rahel. You can't."

"All things can. All things should, in the end." She didn't sound angry about it, or sad, or afraid. She just sounded resigned. "The world is changing. That is not a bad thing, you know. Just different."

Maybe she had the perspective of millennia, but I didn't, and I was sick and tired of things being changed. I wanted it all to go back to the way it was.

I wanted peace.

But I didn't say anything else to her, and she lapsed into a quiet, waiting stillness, conserving her energy. The room was eerily silent, all those immortal creatures counting the minutes until they ceased.

And it was my fault.

I put my head down on the crisp, clean sheets next to Rahel's hand, and silently wept.

I felt a hand touch my hair, and thought at first that it was Rahel. But no; her hand was still exactly where it had been, limp and unmoving on the covers. I took in a deep breath and sat up, swiping at my eyes and sniffling.

David looked down at me, and for a moment we didn't say anything at all. He looked almost as bad as the Djinn lying in the beds, although he'd been spared that particular fate; his decline was slower, more insidious.

There was still a connection between us despite the hit we'd taken when Bad Bob had done his worst at the end. Our powers were gone, and David was trapped in mortal flesh, but on some level he was able to bleed off just a little power from me. Enough to survive, at least temporarily.

The difference was that when we sailed out of the black corner, the Djinn would get better. David wouldn't get his powers back that way. Neither of us would. And if he couldn't reconnect to the aetheric, he would get weaker.

I read the misery and concern in his eyes, and took his hand in mine. Touching flesh would have to do; we couldn't touch in all those familiar supernatural ways. It felt oddly remote and clumsy.

"You okay?" he asked me.

I nodded. "As long as you're here. You?"

That won me a faint smile from him, and a widening of those honey brown eyes. He was still beautiful, even contained in human form. He'd lost that glowing, powerful edge, but what was left was pure David. As time went on, I had the sense that I was seeing the David he'd once been--a friend, a lover, a warrior in days that had come and gone well before any history we knew.

Not a good Djinn, but a good man.

Still, he hadn't been just a man in so, so long. And I wondered whether he could go back to being just that, just human, without dying inside of regrets.

David's smile faded as he looked at Rahel, replaced by that intense focus I knew so well.

He didn't speak, but I knew how deeply he was feeling his own helplessness. I was feeling exactly the same thing. I leaned my cheek against his warm, strong hand, and his thumb gently stroked my cheekbone.

Small comforts.

"Lewis left you alone here?"

Yeah, there was no part of that that didn't sound accusatory toward Lewis. "I made him leave. He was exhausted," I said. "And there's nothing he can do except what I'm doing.

What you're doing."

"Stand here and watch my brothers and sisters die?" He paused, shut his eyes for a second, and then said, "That sounded bitter, didn't it?" I measured off an inch of air between my thumb and forefinger. He sighed. "I feel that there ought to be something.

Something we can think of, do, try."

"We have, we did, and we will. But we're not exactly at the top of our game, honey."

"I don't know what this game is," David said softly. "I don't like the rules. And I don't like the stakes."

"Well, at least you have a good partner," I said. "Later, we can kick ass at table tennis, too."

He bent and kissed me--not a long kiss, not a passionate one, but one of those sweet and lingering sorts of promises that comes from deep, deep down. Passion we had, but we also had