djinn wars 03 - fallen

by Christine Pope

  That sort of strategy would have to wait for another day. For now, I wanted to focus on getting enough caffeine and carbs into my system that I’d be up to facing what was left of the morning. Next, a shower.

  I hurried through that, then blotted my hair dry. Blowing it out would take too long and use up too much precious electricity, so I just ran a comb through it and called it a day. Clothes, shoes, tinted lip balm. That was enough to make me more or less presentable.

  Still no sign of Jace even after all that. Frowning, I let myself out of the room. Jace? I ventured.

  You’re awake.

  Thank you for not saying “finally.”

  A chuckle. I certainly wouldn’t begrudge you some much-needed rest. I’m with Zahrias and the others.

  Is Julia there?

  No, I haven’t seen her yet this morning.

  I’d been debating whether to go see Julia or Lindsay first, but that seemed to decide things. Lindsay had suffered a hideous loss, but at least she had people around who knew her, whereas Julia was more or less surrounded by strangers. Well, all right, she knew Miles Odekirk, but his wasn’t exactly the most comforting of presences. Besides, he spent so much time holed up in the lab, I didn’t know whether he’d even heard that Julia was here…or what had happened to Rafi. I pictured Miles complaining to himself about Lindsay being late once again, with no actual idea of what had caused her to avoid the lab this morning, and shook my head.

  The hallways were deserted, although I thought I detected voices coming from the dining area. That made sense; it was usually in that spot where Zahrias made his announcements. I wished I could be there, but Jace could fill me in later. For now, I thought it was more important to see Julia.

  She replied, “Come in,” to my knock, so I opened the door and let myself into her room. The bed was made, and she was sitting in the chair by the window, where the curtains were drawn to allow the morning sun to pour in. She’d traded the yoga pants and long-sleeved T-shirt she’d worn to sleep in for a pair of jeans and a dark blue sweater.

  I found myself reflecting that I didn’t think I would look that good after walking sixty-plus miles, dehydrated and hungry. “Sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” I said. “I overslept.”

  “It’s all right.” Her expression darkened. “Jace stopped by earlier and brought me some breakfast. He told me what happened last night.”

  “Oh.” There was only the one chair, so I came over to her and perched uncertainly on the edge of the bed. “Yes, it was pretty bad. The djinn aren’t really used to losing one of their own.”

  “No, I suppose they wouldn’t be.” She hesitated, then asked, “Jessica, where’s Evony? I’d sort of thought she might have stopped by to see me.”

  Oh, shit. I swallowed past the lump in my throat. The pain of Evony’s loss had started to smooth itself out over the past few weeks, but now that Julia had asked about her, it almost felt as if I’d just seen her die the day before. “She — she died defending us from the rogue djinn on our way back from taking Miles Odekirk.”

  Blue-gray eyes widened. With a shaking hand, Julia reached for the half-drunk cup of coffee sitting on the table before her and gulped it down. “That’s…terrible.”

  “I know. But….” I hesitated, uncertain of how to say the words without sounding uncaring. Then I realized that Julia had been there, and had seen how Evony had reacted to Natila’s death. “She took it really hard, losing her djinn. Maybe with time she would have bounced back, but I can’t help thinking that Evony went out in her own personal blaze of glory because she just didn’t want to be here anymore.”

  “Damn him,” Julia murmured, and I looked at her in question. Mouth hardening, she said, “Margolis. Damn Margolis. That bastard has left a horrible trail of destruction behind him. And no one in Los Alamos will question his judgment, or ask whether he’s finally gone too far, because he’s keeping them safe.” She spat the last word as if it tasted foul on her tongue.

  I didn’t argue. I agreed with her. If the residents of Los Alamos would only stand up to their resident bully, then maybe they’d have a chance. Or maybe not. The problem was that the decent people, the ones who only wanted to start over after the Dying had changed the world forever, probably didn’t have the courage it required to face down someone like Margolis, who had his own personal hit squad made up of goons like Mitch Kosky and Butch MacElroy.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t as if Jace and I could lead an army to go rescue the community at Los Alamos from their own private dictator. We had our own problems to deal with, and at the moment, those seemed far more pressing.

  Thinking it might be better to change the subject, I asked, “Has anyone except Jace come to see you?”

  Julia shook her head. “There was some more stuff outside my door this morning — more toiletries and clothes, but I don’t know who dropped it off. And then Jace came by a little before nine to bring me some breakfast, but that’s all.”

  So maybe Miles really didn’t know she was here. Or didn’t care.

  “I thought I’d better sit tight until you came by,” she continued. “Jace obviously had pressing business to take care of, and I didn’t know if it was kosher for me to be wandering around by myself.”

  “Oh, it’s fine,” I reassured her. “It’s not as if we’re keeping any state secrets here or anything. It might have felt strange for you to be around so many djinn, but because they can’t access their powers right now….”

  “It’s not as if they can turn me into a newt.” She was smiling a little as she made the remark, so I guessed she hadn’t meant it seriously.

  I didn’t know if that was a power the djinn even possessed. Control of the elements, the ability to pop in and out of this plane of existence as it pleased them…those were things I’d witnessed for myself. How much more they could do was still a mystery, and also a moot point, if Miles couldn’t manage to modify his device.

  “Would you like to see Miles?” I asked then, albeit rather hesitantly. The two of them knew each other, but I had no idea whether Julia had much of an opinion of Miles or not. After all, he’d participated in some fairly dubious behavior while working with Richard Margolis, and she’d made her opinion of the commander pretty clear.

  But she nodded. “He — well, I think he tried to come my defense. Whether it was out of misplaced chivalry or because his scientific mind was offended by the lack of empirical evidence proving my guilt, I don’t know for sure. But I heard him arguing with Margolis once. They were standing in the hallway just past the detention area, and the door hadn’t closed all the way. So I guess I would like to see him, if only to say thank you.”

  For some reason, I was relieved to hear that. After what had happened to Natila, I’d had the worst opinion possible of Miles Odekirk. And though his actions over the past weeks seemed to indicate he’d had a change of heart, I wasn’t sure if I believed it. Not really. That he’d tried to defend Julia, though, raised my estimation of him several notches.

  “Then I’ll take you to the lab,” I said. “And show you around a little on the way. It’ll probably feel good to get out and stretch your legs.”

  “My legs had plenty of stretching over the past few days, but you’re right.” She got up from her chair and went to the mirror, grimacing as she inspected the bruise on her jaw. It seemed to have faded a little more, but it still stood out against her skin, which looked as if it had picked up a bit of a tan during her long walk to Taos. Unfortunately, even the tan couldn’t hide the mark Margolis had left on her. “I hate this. I can try to pretend it didn’t happen, but every time I look in the mirror, it’s like I’ve got this big red letter ‘A’ written on my face.”

  Right then I wished I had a gun in my hand and Richard Margolis standing in front of me. I would have drilled a hole in his diseased brain without batting an eyelash. But he wasn’t there, so I said gently, “Julia, only Jace and I know what happened, and neither of us would ever say anything to anyone about it. If anyone as
ks, you got roughed up while they were questioning you. No one’s going to think anything strange about that.”

  She sighed. “You’re right. It would probably help if I stopped looking in the mirror. But I keep checking, hoping that it’ll be gone the next time I look.”

  My heart ached for her. All I could do was pray that she’d allow herself to get past this, and that sooner rather than later she’d realize she’d done nothing wrong and that no one could possibly hold her responsible for Margolis’ actions. The problem was, Julia had been an abused woman before the Heat had done her the favor of killing off her asshole fiancé, and so she already had a tendency to assign blame to herself when it wasn’t warranted.

  Getting out would do her some good. I said, “Let’s go down to the lab. Miles hates getting interrupted, but maybe he’ll make an exception when he sees it’s you.”

  She gave a half-hearted chuckle. “I kind of doubt it. But we’ll see.”

  We left the room. I purposely took the long way around so I could lead her out into the courtyard area, where the wind could ruffle her hair and the sun could shine on her. It did seem to help; she paused on the bridge and breathed in deeply.

  “It must be absolutely gorgeous here in the spring,” she said, looking around. “I mean, it’s still beautiful now, but once the trees leaf out and the irises start blooming? It’ll be stunning.”

  “Hopefully, that won’t be too far off,” I replied. “I’m not sure, though. I’ve heard that winter can last a long time here in Taos, but I’m an Albuquerque girl. I don’t have much frame of reference.”

  “Neither do I.” Her hair was blowing around her head in a torrent of dark gold. I’d always been perfectly fine with being a brunette, but I had to admit there was something glorious about that mane of Julia’s.

  Even though the day was fine, the air still had a bite to it. Neither of us were wearing jackets, so she didn’t protest when I said we should head on to the lab. By then it past eleven, and so I doubted we’d be interrupting Miles’s beauty sleep or anything.

  That was definitely not the case. The door stood open, so Julia and I went ahead and entered the basement workshop. Miles sat on a stool next to the workbench, but he wasn’t tinkering with the device. Instead, he was typing away on the laptop we’d brought from his Los Alamos lab, his back to us. Because the laptop’s screen was angled toward us, I could see what he was working on.

  Correction — I could see the numbers and symbols flowing across the screen, and what looked like 3D models of strange vortex-appearing objects spinning up and then collapsing. But just because I could see it didn’t mean I was able to make heads or tails of it.

  He must have heard us approach, because he swiveled on the stool, brows creasing. The frown seemed to increase as he took in the two of us. “Oh. I thought you were Lindsay. Where is she? She’s not always the most conscientious about her hours here, but — ”

  If it had been anyone else, I might have been surprised by his lack of reaction to Julia’s presence. But because it was Miles, I put that aside for now. “No one’s been down to tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” he snapped.

  “Several of our djinn went outside the barrier and attempted to reach their own world. One of them didn’t make it. That was Rafi.”

  Miles stared at me, expression so blank that I felt compelled to add,

  “Lindsay was his Chosen. She’s pretty upset, as you might guess. So I’m not really sure when she’s going to feel up to returning to work here.”

  Still that stare. Then Miles frowned and said, “That was foolish of them. After so many weeks of having their powers blocked, they wouldn’t have been able to summon the energy quickly enough to open the portal they required.”

  I really hadn’t expected him to offer any words of condolence, but calling the three djinn “foolish” so soon after Rafi’s death seemed awfully cold to me. Voice hardening, I replied, “Maybe not as foolish as you think. Two of them did actually manage to get away.”

  “Hmm.” Miles seemed to finally register Julia’s presence, since he gave her a faint nod. “It’s rather surprising to see you here, Julia.”

  She must have been a lot more used to his foibles than I, because she smiled at him and said, “Well, I’d say it was surprising to see you here, too, except I had a suspicion this is where you went when you disappeared.”

  “Was kidnapped,” he corrected her.

  “You look well,” she responded, apparently not wanting to address the whole kidnapping issue. After surveying the lab, she added, “It doesn’t look like you’ve slowed down too much.”

  “They brought some of my equipment. And the young woman who’s been assisting me has a surprisingly quick mind.”

  That was a comment I hadn’t been expecting. Most of the time, Miles seemed to only tolerate Lindsay’s presence. Was he attempting to be kind now because of her recent loss? Trying to figure out his thought processes was beyond me most of the time.

  But since Julia didn’t know anything about the history between Miles and Lindsay, she only nodded. “I’m glad you have someone working with you. And hopefully she’ll want to resume her work soon, if only to have something to keep her mind occupied.”

  For some reason, that remark made Miles appear distinctly uncomfortable. He shifted on his stool and turned his attention back to the laptop’s screen. Without looking up at either of us, he said, “When she feels she’s ready.”

  Julia appeared to have a better grip on Miles’s reactions than I did, because she said, “Well, we don’t want to keep you from your work. I just wanted to stop by and let you know that I’m grateful to you for sticking up for me with Margolis.”

  He still didn’t glance away from the laptop. “He was only going on a hunch, with no real evidence. While I realize that we don’t have a true judicial system in place any longer, I still believe we should do our best to present evidence as to someone’s guilt before pronouncing any kind of sentence.”

  “True…but you knew I was guilty, didn’t you, Miles?” There was the slightest sly note in Julia’s voice as she asked the question, as if she was inquiring mainly because she wanted to see how he would react.

  “Yes, but I didn’t have any real evidence, either.” This time he did finally look up; the familiar abstracted frown was pulling at his brows, deepening the line in between them. “And besides….”

  “Besides what?”

  “Margolis was wrong. I was wrong.”

  Julia and I exchanged a bewildered glance.

  “Wrong about what?” she asked softly.

  “About the djinn. About Natila.” His face twisted, and I saw his hands clench on the edges of the stool where he sat, knuckles turning white. “I wanted to stop him, but I knew he wouldn’t listen to me. So I stood there and watched. And then afterward, when he wanted me to cut her up, I did. It was wrong.”

  I didn’t dare breathe, and beside me, Julia also held herself still. The horror of seeing Natila die had only been compounded by the knowledge that she was being dissected afterward, like some kind of science experiment. At the time, I sure as hell hadn’t seen any remorse or hesitation in Miles Odekirk.

  Maybe he’d hidden it because he, like pretty much everyone else in Los Alamos, was scared shitless of going up against Richard Margolis.

  “And you know what was ironic about that?” Miles went on, almost appearing to address the air, since he wouldn’t look directly at either Julia or me. “There was absolutely nothing anomalous about her, except that she was in perfect physical condition. Nothing to distinguish her from a human being. Margolis didn’t like that at all.”

  No, he probably didn’t. He’d wanted evidence that the djinn were completely other, despite their appearance.

  “I wanted to bury her. Margolis had no use for her any longer, since there was nothing he could point to as being obviously different from the rest of us homo sapiens. But the ground was too cold. So I used the crematorium in the funeral home,
and I placed her ashes in one of the urns I found in the display case. And then I put her on the mantel in the sitting room there, since I didn’t know what else to do.”

  He sounded completely lost, so very un-Miles-like, that I didn’t know what I should do, either. Julia, however, roused herself and went to him, taking one of his hands in hers.

  “It’s okay, Miles,” she said. “I know you did what you could.”

  “But I didn’t. I should have tried to stop him — ”

  “You couldn’t have,” she cut in, but gently. “You would’ve just ended up in jail like me — or worse — if you’d tried to interfere.”

  For a long moment, he only stared at her, eyes wide and haunted behind the rimless glasses. Then she did something I knew I would never have had the courage to do — she let go of his hands and put her arms around him, hugging him wordlessly. I could almost see him stiffen in shock, but then he sighed and allowed himself to relax into the embrace. They stayed that way for some time. At last she let go of him and backed away, but she still held his gaze.

  “If you need to talk, I’m here.”

  He nodded, but then seemed to realize I’d been watching that moment of supposed weakness. His back went stiff, and he returned to typing on the laptop.

  “Let’s go,” Julia murmured, and we both turned away from Miles and headed out of the lab, pausing only to shut the door behind us.

  When we were almost to the stairs, I stopped and said, “How could you do that?”

  “Do what?” Her expression was genuinely curious, as if she couldn’t quite figure out what I was driving at.

  “I don’t know — comfort him like that, after everything he’s done?”

  The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, but it wasn’t precisely a smile. Her eyes were too sad for that. “He’s sorry. It won’t change what happened, but…it’s obvious he didn’t really want to do it. He’s not evil. Margolis — now, I won’t argue with you if you want to call him evil.” She was silent for a second, then went on, “There’s nothing wrong with offering someone a little grace. If we can’t manage that, how does that make us any different from the bad djinn?”