"That isn't going to happen." Come on, confidence--get it in gear!

"And we're wasting time. You want to leave this up to Kevin and Cherise?"

He winced. "Definitely not."

"Then let's go."

We walked together, hands clasped, down the gravel path. Except for the crunch of our shoes, it was like moving through a dream, full of color and light but nothing else. The essential life of the place was gone, or at least hidden.

The door to the mausoleum we wanted was standing wide open. Darkness was a thick, black square in the doorway, like a hole in the world, and I hesitated, glancing at David. "Well?" I asked.

He nodded, shut his eyes, and walked forward into it, still holding my hand tightly in his.

The darkness slipped over him like water, not shadow--it had a thickness to it, and its own surface tension. I watched him disappear into it, staring at our linked fingers until his were gone and mine touched the dark.

It was cold. Very cold.

Like David, I took a deep breath and went in anyway.

The trip through the cold felt as if it took forever, an eternity of freezing to the bone, and when it stopped, when I finally was able to move again, I found myself shaking violently, almost unable to stand. The darkness was gone, at least, and the air felt warm.

No. The air felt hot.

I pulled in my first breath, and it scorched my lungs. David was already coughing, and as my eyes adjusted to the sudden dazzle of light, I realized we were standing not three feet away from a blazing inferno of red, gold, and white flames that seemed to have no upward limit. The fire just dissolved into a haze of lurid glow at the top.

We were in a small rock chamber, round and rough-hewn. It was basically a big chimney, much taller than it was wide, with an opening in the center through which the fire blazed.

It was not a safe place to be standing, but there were no doors, no windows, not even a handy alcove in which to try to hide. To make it even worse, I was still violently shivering from the passage through the cold, even while my skin was registering burning pain. I smelled the distinct, bitter odor of hair crisping.

Someone came at us from the other side of the brilliant blaze, and suddenly I felt the pressure of the heat ease back. It didn't leave completely, but I wasn't in danger of becoming baked goods.

Kevin. He looked singed and breathless and wild around the edges. His movements were fast and jerky, fueled by way too much adrenaline. "We have to get out of here!" he yelled.

"It's trying to kill us!"

He'd extended some kind of fire protection over me and David, which was damn nice of him, considering. I wondered if Cherise had smacked the back of his head to make him think of it. "If it had wanted to kill us, we'd be dead!" I yelled back, over the roar of the flames. "Has it said anything?"

Kevin gave me a blank look. "It's a fire."

"Trust me. It talks!" Even with Kevin's power canceling out the fire--and this went well beyond the kind of power that Kevin the Fire Warden could have summoned up; it was more on the scale of a Djinn, which fit with the flickers of poison green in Kevin's eyes--the air pressed boiling hot against my skin, and I could feel it hungering for me. Not that it had anything against me, personally; it just devoured. That was the nature of fire.

My body tried to sweat, to protect me, but that was like spitting in a volcano. Wisps of steam rose off my skin, but it didn't cool at all.

Kevin stared at me in utter confusion, working through what I'd told him, and then turned to face the fire. "Hello?" he said. It would have been cute if it hadn't been so dire.

"Uh--hi? Anybody home?"

Cherise staggered around the far curve of the room and headed for us. She looked like I expected I would have in her place, if I'd stumbled in here with a haphazard set of borrowed powers I didn't know how to use, only to find myself in a killing trap.

In other words, not happy.

"What are you doing?" she yelled at Kevin. He gave her a harassed glance. "We have to get out!"

Before I could stop her, she turned to the rock wall and slapped her palm against it.

As she did, she let loose a furious burst of Earth power--uncontrolled, instinctual, driven by her panic and fury. What was it I'd said? She's like a baby with a nuclear bomb and a shiny red button.

She'd just pushed the button.

"No!" The scream tore itself out of my throat, but I was too late; she'd used enough power that a sharp crack formed in the rock where her hand had slammed down. Encouraged, she did it again. She would have done it a third time, but David got to her first, grabbed her from behind, and pinned her arms behind her; even human, he had a lot of strength in those muscles, and as small as Cherise was ...

She used Earth power, which, dammit, I'd taught her how to pull, and threw him off, almost into the fire. I grabbed him around the waist and tackled him down, landing both of us on the hard rocky floor only a few inches from the blaze. I felt my hair cook, and rolled us both as far from danger as possible.

Cherise hit the rock wall a third time.

There was a mystical significance in threes for the Djinn. Ask a bound Djinn any question three times, and they're forced to answer--maybe not the way you wanted, but they have to take action.

Cherise triggered the Rule of Three in a much more active way.

The Oracle's fire formed into a huge, white-hot ball, and flew at her. Cherise screamed and ducked, but it was so large that even hitting the floor like me and David, several feet away, wouldn't have saved her.

Kevin saved her.

He stepped into its way, eyes flaring with an unholy Djinn light. He didn't try to put up his hands or fight it, or even stop it. He just stood there.

It was very likely one of the bravest things I'd ever seen. And it was Kevin.

Surely, one of the primary signs of the End Times.

The fireball slowed, and coasted to a halt, flicking little hissing tongues of flames at his face from a distance of no more than inches. He didn't blink. He didn't back up. It drifted closer. I knew, instinctively, that if it touched him, he'd go up like an oil- soaked rag, and dread clenched my stomach into a trembling knot.

The ball lengthened to the vague shape of a man--red as lava on the surface, and clothed in fire, but with that same white-hot core shining from its center. It chose the same height and build as Kevin.

And it didn't back off.

Something like a mouth formed in its blind, masklike head, and some kind of sound came out of it, but it was like nothing I could recognize as speech. I thought it was what it would sound like as the marrow boiled in your bones. Threatening and fatal.

Kevin bared his teeth and kept on staring back. "Do it," he said. "But you go through me first."

The sound from the Oracle stopped abruptly, and the mouth disappeared.

It turned--well, no, that was how my purely human senses wanted to interpret it. Actually, it just reversed its body, putting its head on the other way, and walked the few steps back to the center of the pit where the pillar of flame had been.

Then it sat down in midair, floating, legs crossed in a lotus position, hands turned palms up.

Kevin blinked, and some of the insane Djinn shine drained out of him. "Uh--what's he doing?"

"You're asking me?" I asked. "No idea!"

"He's listening," David said. "Talk." He offered me a hand up as he rolled to his feet. He was favoring his side again, and I hoped that wasn't fresh blood. "Say something."

"Me?" I asked.

"No, he can't hear us," David said. "Either of us. It's as if--human voices don't register within the range of his ears. That's the best I can explain it."

"But he can hear me?" Kevin asked. He was helping Cherise to her feet. She was dusting herself off, shaken but not hurt. Behind her, that dark crack promised escape--to her mind--and she kept looking toward it. "What about Cher?"

"Maybe," David said. "I don't know. Jo could be heard, but she was a special case. I'm not sure about Cherise."

"Guess that makes you our spokesmodel, Boy Wonder," Cher said. "Go on. Get us out."

"Uh, I think we came for a reason first."

"Screw that. We need to go." For the first time since I'd met her, Cherise sounded like a petulant child, sulky and stubborn and used to having her own way. "Now, Kev!"

Kevin frowned at her, like he was having the same thoughts I was. "Chill, we're fine. Look, it's not even that hot in here anymore."

"Compared to what, the inside of a nuclear furnace?"

Kevin looked at me and David, clearly wondering when, as the supposed authority figures in the room, we'd step in. David held up his hands. "She already tried to kill me," he said.

"You're on your own."

I sighed, walked over to Cherise, and put my arm around her. She jerked in surprise but let me do it. "You really need to calm down, Cher," I said. She gave me a furious look, and I saw that the panic and instability in her was reaching critical levels. "Cher. Deep breaths."

"I need out!" she wailed, and tried to turn toward the wall.

I wasn't about to let her get us all killed, and I didn't think. I just dropped my arm from her shoulders, pulled my fist back, and hit her with a perfect right hook to the jaw.

She went down like a bowling pin. I caught her before she hit the ground and eased her flat. "Kev," I said. "Put her out. Now." Because I'd hit like a girl, just dazed her plenty, and she wasn't going to be at all thrilled when she shook it off. Kevin wasn't an Earth Warden, but he had David's power, and that meant he had everything he needed to do as I asked.

If he could access it.

Kevin crouched down and put his hand tentatively on her forehead. Cherise tried fitfully to bat it away. "Sorry," he said, and I saw a spark of fire catch green in his eyes as he channeled power. It probably was spectacular on the aetheric level, but here, with my human eyes, I could only see the faintest glow around his fingers.

Cherise went limp, breathing heavily. I checked her pulse--strong and steady--and gave a solid thumbs-up to Kevin, who looked deeply relieved. "Don't make me do that again," he said. "It feels really

weird. What if I get it wrong? What if I put her into a coma or something?"

"She'd still be alive," David said. "She won't be if she unleashes more power in here. The Oracle won't let it happen again. He'll just destroy her."

Kevin swallowed hard, looking at the serene, floating figure, wreathed in flames. "Yeah? What about me?"

"He sees you as Djinn. He expects it from you."

"I--" Kevin stared at David now, with the same kind of alarm he'd given to the figure of the Oracle. "What?"

David tried again, with strained patience. He was leaning against the wall now, and the hand holding his side was subtly trembling. I stepped up next to him to take some of his weight.

Also subtly. Or not. "You're the only one here who can talk to him, using the powers that I used to have. So do it. Explain it to him. Oracles see everything, but their context can be far different from ours. He needs to understand what all of it means to us. To humanity."

David had never put himself on that side of the us

before, except in relation to me. I stared at him in involuntary reaction. He shrugged. "I am one of you, for however long it lasts. It's--weirdly restful."

"You're in pain!"

"Yes, but it's a different kind of pain than I'm used to enduring. That's something."

That made about as little sense to me as talking with the Oracle would have, so I shut up.

Kevin didn't need side chatter. He was looking sweaty and scared and well aware of the stakes at play here, in this burning furnace of a room.

"Hi," he said to the Oracle. "Okay, I have no idea how to do this, but I'll try... ."

"Power," David said. "Use it."

Kevin closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, I saw a faint green shimmer in his eyes. Sort of like the Hulk, getting a little bit angry. "Hello," he said in a stronger voice. "Can you hear me?"

The Oracle didn't make any sign he did. More serene, though extremely fierce, hovering ensued, and the green glare in Kevin's eyes brightened steadily, like someone was turning up a dimmer switch in the back of his head. Eerie.

"Hear me," he said, when his eyes were utterly Djinn. It wasn't loud, but it was ...profoundly powerful.

The Oracle still hovered, but now features manifested on its face. Eyes opened, and they were the same green as Kevin's.

"I hear," the Oracle said. "Speak."

But that was the last thing Kevin said, at least that I could plainly hear; his lips didn't move, but the intense stare between the two of them continued.

It occurred to me, after a few long seconds, that it felt just a little hotter in the room.

No, I was wrong. It felt like it was getting steadily hotter, fast. Like a blower had come on, venting heat back into the room.

"Not good," David said. "Get low."

"Why?"

"Cool air sinks?"

Oh. I'd forgotten even the most basic physics now, thanks to the extreme state of death I was expecting to happen any second. I helped him down to his knees, then got face-first on the floor along with him.

Kevin was still standing. And now, flames were whipping around the floating lotus-position Oracle, flaring up and twisting in a miniature whirlwind--but never blocking the connection between his stare and Kevin's. As I watched, the flames stretched out, circling around Kevin.