“Tactics and strategy.” He sounded resigned, not happy. “All right. I’m ready.”

I nodded over his shoulder to Brett, who unzipped a pocket on his tactical vest and pulled out a small glass bottle with a cork. A little more ornate than I was used to seeing—probably something they had in the stores on the cruise ship, although the cork would have been a new addition.

“I’ve got your agreement to do this, right?” Brett asked. He was asking David. After a long moment, David nodded. “Be thou bound to my service. Be thou bound to my service. Be thou bound—”

“Wait,” I blurted, and took both of David’s hands in mine. “If this is the last time I see you, I need you to hear this.”

He waited, amber eyes glowing like suns. I fumbled for words. “I—just—David, if something happens to me, if this doesn’t go right, you have to promise me, vowto me, that you will look out for humanity’s good, not just the Djinn’s. Don’t punish the Wardens if I die. Please.”

He knew why I was asking that. “Lewis tried to kill you,” he said. “He didkill you. Are you asking me to forgive him?”

“I’m not going to ask the impossible. I’m asking that you not take revenge for something that turned out not to work anyway, that’s all.”

There’s something very unsettling about a Djinn that doesn’t blink when he’s talking to you—even one you love with a deep, desperate intensity. “You areasking the impossible,” he said. “Lewis hurt you. He did it as part of a plan. I can’t allow that to go unanswered.”

“You have to,” I said. “Please. I need a vow.”

“You know that I can’t say no to you, don’t you?” He wasn’t smiling, though. “Yet this time, I have to. The answer is still no, Jo. He can no longer be trusted by the Djinn.”

That really wasn’t good. “But you’ll still work with him? With the Wardens?”

“To a point,” he said. I could tell he wasn’t going to be more specific about where the point was.

That was all I was going to get from him, even now, even at this most vulnerable moment.

I nodded to Brett, who repeated the binding phrase again—three times, just to be sure.

David’s hands misted out of mine as the binding took effect. I felt the hammering blow of it shatter the aetheric between us, and then he was exploding into mist, and the mist was sucked into the bottle in Brett’s hands. He corked it with calm efficiency, and I watched him put the bottle in a special padded case, and then into the pocket of his tactical vest.

“With your life,” I told him. “You know that, right?”

“Yes,” he said. It was a simple answer, and it left no room for doubt at all. He’d do it. I couldn’t ask for better than that.

I fried the ship’s engine with a burst of pure Earth power, fusing metal parts together, gunking up everything that looked remotely important. The Sparrowsputtered and began to drift, dead in the water.

Josue stopped looking afraid and started looking alarmed, then angry. “You do something to my ship?”

“Why, is something wrong with it?” I kept my expression as innocent as possible. That was probably what made him glower at me as if he’d like to take me apart but wasn’t sure it was safe to try. “My friends on the cruise ship will help you. Oh, and I wouldn’t try any other guns you might have stashed. Serious mistake on so many levels.”

He gave me his most dangerous look. In earlier days, I might have actually been intimidated by it. Today . . . not so much. “Worst day of my life, the day I fished you out of the ocean, mermaid.”

“Really? The sad thing is, it wasn’t the worst day of mine.” I stepped up on the railing at the vee of the bow, balancing on the balls of my feet. He backed away, watching me. Not quite certain of what I was doing. “Good luck.”

He crossed himself. “Go with God, so long as you go.” His sudden piety didn’t convince me he wouldn’t stab me in the back if he could get a clear throw when I turned around. I gave Josue one last look, and then I dived from the railing of the Sparrowinto the open ocean water, heading south.

Bad Bob wasn’t on an island, after all. Well, to be accurate, he wason an island—but the island was floating and he was moving it wherever he wanted.

Neat trick. First, most islands aren’t all that prone to float, since they’re really the tops of underwater mountains. This one was able to drift, withstand the full force of a Category 5 hurricane, andnavigate at will.

It also explained why he was so crazy hard to track down. I wasted time and frustration until I figured out that I was heading not for a specific spot in the ocean but a mobilespot. I found it as the sunrise spilled over the long, rocky key of the island, which was moving away from me at a fairly rapid speed. I had an embarrassment of choices for first impressions, but you’ve got to be kidding mewas certainly in the hunt for first place.

The entire island was turning, the mirror image of the mouth of a black-and-green hurricane that was hovering above it, just . . . spinning.

Not even Bad Bob—I hoped—had the power to do this alone. No, he had to be augmenting it somehow . . . And then it occurred to me. I was filled with silvery aetheric light now, thanks to my connection to David; Bad Bob had a Djinn, too. Rahel. He’d taken her by force, and that explained the negative energy in what I saw hovering over the island.

Of course, Bad Bob himself was no Prince of Positive Thinking, either.

The scary thing was that with that much power, he could do almost anything he liked, and this floating fortress was just demented enough to amuse him.

I kept swimming. I’d been at it for hours, and I was very, very tired, but I also wasn’t about to give up. Besides, I was building up some fierce quadriceps.

Jo,a voice whispered in my ear. I gasped, startled, and sucked down a lungful of water. I paused, treading water. Jo, can you hear me?

It was Lewis’s voice. I shook my head and bopped myself in the ear, hoping I was just having a hallucination.

Stop hitting yourself. Yes, it’s me.

“How do you know I’m hitting myself?”

I can hear the pops in your eardrum. It’s an old Earth Warden trick. Works great for covert ops.Lewis was making an effort to sound like nothing had passed between us the past few days. Like it was all just the same old. How’s the swim?

“Long,” I said. My teeth were chattering. “You didn’t dial me up on the ear-phone to chat.”

He paused for a few seconds. With Lewis, that was weighty. Did David agree? Is he in the bottle?

“Yes.” Better not to overshare on that, I decided. “Could we speed this up? Water cold. Body tired.”

Can you do this? Are you sure?

What a dumb-ass question. “No, I’m not sure,” I snapped. “Of course I’m not sure. Why? Second thoughts?”

Yes. We’ve got one shot at this. He may not even let you get close. He may kill you before you get anywhere near him.

Cheery thought. “If he does, you’ve still got a shipful of Wardens and Djinn ready to bring the wrath of God down on him and—” It occurred to me suddenly why Lewis was taking the trouble to say these things. “David.”

You and I know that he’d stop at nothing to destroy what killed you.

Oh Christ.“You cannot be serious with this. Lewis. Please, tell me you’re not asking me to go and deliberately get my ass killed so that it will trigger David into a homicidal rampage against your enemies?”

It would work.

Sure it would. It would leave Bad Bob and whoever was around him radioactive dust. Including, probably, the cruise ship, which would become collateral damage.

The hideous thing was that as a nuclear option, it was not bad. So long as you accepted that the pile of bodies would be unthinkable, but at the end of the day, the enemy would be gone. . . .