Total Eclipse Read Free Page A

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 something else. Something more.
    Something that mattered to me more than my own life. I’m not going to lose him, too , I told myself. I wondered whether that panic and determination showed in my face. I hoped not.
    Just as David was pulling up a chair next to me at Rahel’s bedside, the door to the ship’s hospital opened, and Cherise staggered in, burdened by a tray so huge that it should have come with wheels and its own parade clowns. She was a tiny little thing, drop-dead gorgeous even under the ridiculously stressful conditions. Somehow she’d found the time to shower, make her hair shampoo-commercial shiny and full of body, and scrounge up clean, attractive sexy-girl clothes, which today included shorts and a striped shirt—a look I was sure I couldn’t have pulled off without looking like a very sad Old Navy reject. She had no makeup on, but then again, Cherise didn’t really need any. She had that kind of skin.
    I got to my feet to help, but David was already there, taking the tray and setting it on a side table. Cherise let out a long sigh and shook her hands and arms to release the stress. “Man,” she said. “I forgot how hard it is to be a waitress. Remind me not to work for tips again, unless it involves a pole.” She looked up at David and flashed him an infectious smile. “You get what that means, right?”
    “Do pole vaulters get tips?” he asked innocently, and lifted the silver cover on one of the large platters on the tray. He reached in and snagged a piece of bacon, which made my mouth water suddenly; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.