The answer drowned in static, and then myher?voice came back strong, again. have to stay away, Mom, do you understand?

There was a particularly violent shriek of feedback, and the connection cut off. I was surprised there wasnt smoke curling up out of the receiver, as loud as that had been. I waited, but the phone didnt ring again.

The Djinn behind the wheelstill driving top speed on very treacherous roadswas staring straight at me, not at the road. Jo? Davids voice, out of the radio. Jo, was it Imara?

Yes. Can you reach her? Is she okay?

I cant see her. Like the Fire Oracle, I think shes hidden herself. Ill try to get through.

Hurry, I said, and chewed my lip nervously. I think she could be in trouble.

Were all in trouble, David said, which wasnt the most inspirational speech hed ever delivered. The radio shut down. The Djinn turned back toward the road.

I turned around to look in the backseat. Cherise was asleep, cuddled up with Tommy in a camouflage-patterned sleeping bag. Wed stopped in at a sports outfitter in Oklahoma CityMuzak still playing over the speakers, although shoppers were noticeably rattled and tense, and buying survival gear instead of lawn gamesand stocked up on things like insulating blankets, sturdy boots and clothes, portable shelters, water and survival foods. Next best thing to Army surplus. And a lot more expensive, since it catered to the weekend wannabe warrior market.

It had felt deeply surreal to be signing a credit card slip while the world was in the throes of chaos, but I supposed one way or another, Id be paying off my debts.

Cherise looked tired and pale, and from the way she was whimpering in her sleep, she had bad dreams. I reached back and smoothed her hair until the whimpering went away. Baby Tommy seemed to have adapted much more easily; hed taken to Cherise quickly, and he was a happy kid, smiling and burbling most of the time. From the way he filled his diapers, he was healthy enough. I would have felt better having him checked out by an honest-to-goodness Earth Warden or, at the very least, a pediatrician, but for now, we were all doing okay. Cherise was out of the braces. Her legs had healed straight, and although she continued to be weak and tired, she was recovering remarkably well from having just about died. The jury was still out on how she was going to deal with Kevins death, long term.

If we had any long term, of course.

Up ahead, traffic was snarled, again. As we got into more civilized areas, it was perversely harder to get around these days, what with people frantically trying to get to their survivalist mountain hideouts, or to their relatives, or just to the store to stock up on emergency batteries. We were coming into Amarillonot exactly a major metropolitan area, but busier than the deserted Texas Panhandle highway had been. The air was dry and stable overhead, and the landscape was mostly flat and scrubby, with tough vegetation. Very different from the trees where wed left Kevin.

I hoped I wouldnt end up dying somewhere without trees. I liked trees.

Even the Djinns prodigious driving skills couldnt cope with the jam of traffic, and pretty soon we were cooling our engine at an idle, watching brake lights. Funny; this type of backup on the East Coast would have been a howling chorus of impatient horns sounding. Not here in the Southwest. People just . . . waited, listening to their music or talk radio, poking at their hair, arguing with whoever was in the car along with them. Or with themselves, apparently. I didnt hear a single angry honk.

This is restful, I said, to nobody in particular. The Djinn wasnt exactly chatty company. Cherise was asleep. The radio stayed quiet, not falling for my opening gambit. David? Do you think we should stop?

You all need rest, he said. Ill find you a place to stay for a few hours, and someplace to eat.

That sounded heavenly. Not that I couldnt sleep in the car and eat bagged food, but stretching out on real sheets was better than sex right now. The mere thought of fresh food made me salivate.

We should probably push on, I said, being the brave little toaster. Its only about another ten hours to Sedona, and thats not counting the bat out of hell multiplier.

Youd get there exhausted, he said. Its been hard, and its going to get worse, I think. You need to rest while you can. He spoke with authority, and I remembered that in his brief human life hed been a soldier. Hed been used to exhaustion, to snatching what little rest and relief he could in between fighting for his life.

I gave in. Truthfully, it had been a token protest anyway, and Imaras inexplicable warning had made me worried. My daughter, like David, had a much wider view of things than I ever could. What if we were making things worse instead of better? What if we were actually forcing the battle instead of preventing it?

I couldnt think straight anymore. Id been holding back emotions for a while now, but theres one thing about emotions: they never really go away if theyre strong. You can bury them, but like a vampire they keep lurching back up. I knew that I was still numb about the loss of Kevin, but it was going to come out, and probably soon. Id rather suffer through that in private, lying in a bed and hugging a pillow. It wouldnt help Cherise to see me lose it.

Id put him in the ground myself. Id felt the unmistakable absence in him, the void where his life had been.

No, I didnt want to remember how it had felt to hold his empty shell, or how hed looked so pale, bound up in that cheap motel sheetbut the image wouldnt go away.

With a shocking intensity, that mental picture suddenly shifted, and it was Lewiss face pale and still, it was Lewis lying in my arms as I abandoned him to the dirtalone, cold, unmarked. I almost gasped out loud with the emotion that brought rolling through me, and rested my burning forehead against the glass as I squeezed my eyes shut. No. No, thats not going to happen.

David and I had our powers back. Cherise had survived. Wed saved some lives along the way. We were winning, dammit. I couldnt get spooked now. I couldnt lose focus. That was another good reason to recharge. When I was in the throes of exhaustion, it was far too easy to let things overwhelm me, even the unlikely threats. I lost all ability to filter.

While I was thinking, David had been acting, and I felt the Mustang suddenly leap forward. I looked up and saw we were hurtling straight for the back of a stopped eighteen-wheel truck . . . and then the car lurched sideways with a scream of tires, jumped over a curb, and bumped down on the other side, onto an off ramp. Free of the traffic block, we rocketed down the access road toward a nice, neat- looking, moderately priced hotel/ motel.

We passed it. I looked back as it receded into the distance and said, Uh, that one would have been okay

No, it wouldnt have been, sugar. Whitneys accent never failed to make me want to roll my eyes. She could not have been more annoying about how thick she laid it on. Youre going to have company coming soon. Wont do to put you up someplace thats going to just come down on you. Again. She sounded utterly certain of herself, and casual about the threat, too. Lovely.

What kind of company?

The kind you dont want to stand up to, not that you could. You remember little Venna.

Ouch. Venna was the very last Djinn Id want to have on my tail right noweven worse than Rahel. Venna was impossibly strong, and she was clever, too. Great friend, awesomely bad enemy. I thought about that little girl, the image of innocence, with those ghostly white eyes like Id seen in Rahel.

I shuddered. Where can we go?

Im working on that, Whitney said. Im taking over the car now.

We blurred past a lot of inviting-looking roadside inns, took some turns, and ended up on the northeast side of town, as best I could tell. Businesses of any kind thinned out and stopped.