by Trisha Telep
Seth sat across from her. “You guess?”
“My son’s father. We live together.” Lived together. Grief bubbled through her, and she blinked rapidly as her hands around the coffee cup blurred. She’d never get used to this.
“You have a son?” he said.
“Yes. He’s two. And I need to get home to him.”
Seth didn’t say anything. She looked at him, and the disturbed expression on his face made her cold all over again. “I’m afraid that’s going to be difficult,” he said.
“Why?”
“This place is a good fifty, sixty miles from anywhere. That’s a straight shot, not using the paths. And I don’t own any transportation besides my feet.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.” He sipped at his own coffee. “I grow or trap everything I eat. This coffee? Made from dandelion roots. Not bad, either.”
“But you have store-made clothes. Shampoo. Dishes.” She wouldn’t mention the radio or the camera. Not until she knew what the hell was going on. Not ever, if she could help it. She’d be long gone as soon as she got something useful from him. “You couldn’t have made those.”
“I have a deal with a couple of forest rangers. They come around once a month, bring me supplies, visit a while.” He frowned again. “They were just here two days ago.”
Shit. No way she’d hang around here for a month. “Well, you must have a phone, right? Or a CB or something. For emergencies. I know somebody who’d come get me.” Much as she hated to admit it, roads or not, Ian could get here. He could fly.
He shook his head. “No reception towers in range. Even if there was, it’s almost impossible to find the place.”
“My friend could find it.”
He gave a gentle laugh. “Maybe you did hit your head.”
“Yeah.” She had, damn it. So why wasn’t she hurt? A horrifying idea occurred to her, one that made her lightheaded and nauseous all over again. “Seth,” she said. “How long have I been here?”
“Just since last night.” He smirked. “And I still don’t know your name.”
Last night. So she hadn’t been unconscious for weeks, at least. For some reason that didn’t bring much relief. “It’s Jazz,” she said.
“Jazz. With the beautiful eyes.”
Her breath caught. She’d always hated her eyes – they were different colours. One brown, one green. Donatti had loved them. Called them her goddess gaze, with the same unmistakable husky tone Seth had just used. The one that said he wished for a private room and a few hours alone. She and Donatti hadn’t gotten much of that since he came back. Now they never would.
“I’m sorry,” Seth said before she could get good and annoyed. “That was uncalled for.”
“I want to see the wreck.”
He stared at her. “The what?”
“The car. The crash site. Donatti.” Her throat closed around his name. “I just can’t believe he’s . . . gone. I have to see.” And maybe she could salvage her cell phone. If she could, she’d walk the paved road, in the direction she should’ve chosen, until she got a signal.
Damn it. If she’d just turned around at the first sign of weirdness, that ghostly overgrown DeSoto, Donatti would still be alive. She’d killed him. And gotten herself more lost than he ever could have.
Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She should’ve apologized. She owed him that.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Seth spoke gently, as if comforting a child. “It’s not pretty, Jazz. Not at all.”
She glared across the table. “I want to see him. Take me there.”
“Okay.” He held up a hand. “I’ll take you. But please, relax for a few minutes. Drink your coffee. I’ll fix something to eat, and then we’ll go.”
She didn’t want any goddamn coffee. She wanted to go home, to hold her baby and find some way to tell him his daddy was never coming back, to share her grief with someone who knew her, knew Donatti. But Seth had agreed to take her, and being pushy or demanding might change his mind. She’d never find it without him.
“All right,” she finally said, and added, “Thank you,” because it seemed appropriate.
He smiled tentatively. “Toast okay?”
“Perfect.” She managed to smile back.
While he stood and walked to a cupboard, Jazz eyed the mug suspiciously. Dandelion coffee, huh? She half expected to see little yellow petals floating in it. But it looked like coffee, and smelled like coffee. She raised it to her mouth and took a tentative sip.
It tasted like heaven.
“My God,” she murmured. Another swallow, and the taste coated her throat – silky smooth, nutty and sweet, better than anything Starbucks ever dreamed about serving. And somehow, familiar. “This is dandelions?”
“Mountain grown. The best kind,” Seth said without turning.
“It’s fantastic.” She’d tasted this before. Impossible, but she knew the flavour. She drank again, trying to remember. It seemed important.
Her eyelids grew heavy. At once, she wanted nothing more than to stretch out, right here on the table, and close them. But she shouldn’t want that. “Seth,” she said thickly. “I think . . .”
He turned, and his concerned features appeared to distort. “Maybe you should rest before we go,” he said. “Just for a little while. You’ve had such a hard night.”
“Rest,” she slurred. “I need rest.”
You need to get out! He’s drugged you!
Even if her mind had managed to grasp the warning, her body couldn’t obey. She slid smoothly into sleep, the mug falling from her fingers and toppling on the table. An errant phrase, stark and baffling, imprinted on her thoughts just before she dropped into unconsciousness.
The nectar of the gods.
Somebody was banging on the door.
“Go ’way,” Jazz muttered, pulling a pillow over her sickly throbbing head. Good lord, what had she done last night? This was one killer fucking hangover.
Killer. Last night, she’d crashed the car. Killed Donatti. And was in a remote, inaccessible cabin with a lunatic who’d drugged her to sleep.
She bolted upright. Same bedroom, same french doors, still wide open on an expanse of woods that glowed a rich gold in the slant of late afternoon light. Seth hadn’t tried to lock her in. Probably because he knew she had nowhere to go if she ran. So he hadn’t been lying about the miles-from-nowhere thing.
The pounding came again, from the front of the cabin. No sign of Seth answering the door. Maybe he was the one banging – but why would he knock at his own place? Sluggish hope stirred in her. She got up and headed out of the room, holding her breath. Maybe the rangers had found the car, and come back to see if Seth knew anything about it.
The bastard knew a lot about it. Too much.
She passed through a hall, the kitchen, a den and into a living room. Didn’t see Seth anywhere. There, the front door. More knocking sounded as she approached it – shorter, weaker. Like whoever was out there had decided nobody was home, but they’d try one more time anyway.
Halfway across the room, she froze. She had no idea who or what was on the other side of that door. It could be a friend of Seth’s, even an accomplice. She scanned the room for something useful and weapon-like, spotted a fireplace and a neatly corralled set of iron tools beside it. Perfect. She crossed to it, grabbed the heavy poker and went back to the door.
A thud from outside shook the house.
Drawing the poker back for a quick strike, Jazz turned the knob and yanked the door open. For a split second she saw no one. Then she spotted a bedraggled figure leaning on the outer wall, just to the left of the jamb.
Male, filthy, gasping for breath. Bruised and bloodied.
Donatti. Alive.
The poker fell from her numb fingers. She rushed out to him, unable to speak. Embraced him mud, blood and all. He was soaked, fever-hot beneath his torn clothes. But so real. So very not dead.
“Jazz. Thank God.” He straine
d to speak, returned the embrace one-armed. “Knew I’d find you. Sorry it . . . took so long.”
The thousand questions she wanted to ask would have to wait. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “Can you walk?”
He gave a rusty laugh. “Walked here. Would prefer to stop walking now.”
“Sorry. Short version – the guy who lives here told me you were dead, and drugged me when I said I wanted to see the wreck.”
“So . . . no hot shower, huh. No soft bed.”
“No. And no mirrors or windows. Just block glass.”
He focused on her, blue eyes filling with shock. “What?”
“Yeah. I didn’t like it, either.” She kissed him, fast and urgent. “I’m sorry, Donatti. Don’t ask why. I’ll tell you later.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “You’re the boss.”
“Right.” She hesitated, then moved to the door and picked up the poker. “I’m bringing this. Can you find your way back to the car?”
“Think so.” He frowned. “Why? It’s totalled. Can’t even fix it with magic.”
“My phone,” she said. “Hopefully, it’s not too busted. Maybe you can fix that if it is. And we’ll just keep going until we get a signal, and call Ian.”
“Good plan.” He moved a step forward, groaned and dropped to his knees. “Then again, maybe not.”
Jazz bit her lip. She hated to force him into this, ached to see him so battered, but they couldn’t stay here. Seth obviously didn’t want Donatti around. He’d left him for dead. “You got a better one?” she said.
“No.” Jaw clenched, he struggled to one knee and got on his feet. “Let’s go. I feel great. We’ll run a marathon.”
She blinked back tears and grabbed his hand. “You’re a lousy liar, Donatti.”
“Yep. Right this way, lady.”
He led her off the porch, across a small lawn towards the beginnings of a thin forest. A worn dirt path, barely visible through dead leaves and browned pine needles, trickled between skinny pines and young maples. Donatti limped along at first, but managed to gain an almost normal walking pace.
Just as they set foot on the path, laughter rumbled and echoed through the air around them, as though it came from the mountain itself.
“That’s Seth,” Jazz whispered. “The crazy guy. How . . .”
“You survived,” the rolling voice said. “How entertaining. Let the games begin.”
A chill drizzled down her spine. “Oh, fuck,” she said. “I remember now. The drink he gave me. The nectar of the gods.” She swallowed, and it felt like a mouthful of rusted nails. “Akila made it for me a few times. Donatti . . . I think Seth is a djinn.”
More cold laughter pelted them. “Run, rabbits. Find a hole and hide. I’ll seek you.”
Somehow, they ran.
It wasn’t long before the flight was aborted. Donatti tripped over an exposed root, went down hard and didn’t get up. “Gotta stop a minute,” he muttered into the ground. “Sorry, babe.”
Jazz glanced back. At least they were out of sight of the cabin. She crouched next to him, helped him crawl to the nearest tree and sit propped against it, cringing when he winced at her touch. “How bad is it?” she said softly.
“Don’t know. Couple busted ribs, a bum arm. Don’t think it’s broken. Hurts like hell, though.”
“Which one?”
He nodded at his left shoulder.
“Let me look.” She eased the torn remains of his jacket down the arm and saw the problem. “It’s dislocated,” she said. “I can put it back. You’ll feel a little better.”
“Go for it.”
She straightened his arm and bent the elbow up. “This is going to hurt.”
He grunted. “Figures.”
“Try to relax.”
“Got any booze?”
“Fresh out.”
“Okay. I’ll just man up and faint.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
She debated doing it the fast way – a lot of pain, over quickly. But she didn’t want to do any more damage if she could help it. The slow way was just as painful and drawn out, with a lot less chance of tearing muscle or ligaments. She grabbed his wrist, moved his hand against his chest and rotated arm and shoulder out slowly. He hissed through clenched teeth, let out a guttural shout when she hit full extension.
It took three tries to set the joint back. By the time she finished, sweat bathed his face and washed away some of the grime. “Oh, Christ,” he gasped. “Thank . . . you . . .”
“I did warn you.”
“No, I mean it’s better. A hundred times better. Shit, I think I really can run a marathon now.” He grinned at her. “Or at least walk one. Just have to . . . sit a minute.”
“I’ll join you.” She plopped on the ground next to him and scanned the area, taking in the increasing density of the trees, the waning light. They had maybe an hour before full dark. Should be able to make a mile. Of course, they also had no idea what Seth was planning. “Maybe we should talk. Try to figure things out,” she said. “Let’s start with you.”
Donatti pulled himself straighter. “Well, I couldn’t make anything happen to the car,” he said. “I tried, but it was resisting or something. Then I got knocked out in the crash.”
Jazz frowned. “Resisting?”
“Yeah. Pushing me back, kind of. Damn. Ian’s really going to have to explain this magic stuff better.” He paused, winced and pressed a hand to his ribs. “Anyway, when I came around, you were gone. I freaked out. Got away from the car – think I was screaming for you. And while I was flopping around in the mud, an animal attacked me. A fox. Big one.” His brow furrowed. “Thing went straight for my throat. Not very fox-like. I thought maybe I was hallucinating.”
She understood where his thoughts were going. The djinn were born into clans named after animals, because they could assume their clan’s animal form. Ian was Dehbei, the wolf clan. She’d seen him go wolf once. Huge, beautiful, deadly wolf. And as a more-or-less human, he had shaggy, wolf-coloured hair, and a wolf’s eyes. “Seth has red hair,” she said. “And his eyes are . . . well, like a fox’s.”
“Motherfucker.” His jaw firmed. “Djinn can only kill humans when they’re animals. He told you I was gone because he thought I was. He sure as hell tried to make it that way.”
“So how’d you get out of it?”
He smirked. “I played dead. You’re supposed to do that with bears. Thought it might work for a fox. Apparently it works with a djinn, too.” One hand went to his throat. “Bastard tore me a good one. Blood everywhere. I think . . . I tried to heal myself. Must’ve done something right.”
“You’re not completely hopeless.”
“Coming from you, that’s a compliment.” He reached for her hand, and she gave it to him. “I could feel you,” he said hoarsely. “That’s how I found you. It was like you were whispering in my ear.”
“Oh, yeah?” She squeezed his hand. “What was I saying?”
“Let’s see. It was something like, ‘Get your ass here, right now, before I kick it all the way back upstate.’”
Her own laughter surprised her. “Yeah, that does sound like me,” she said.
“So there’s my story,” he said. “What’s yours?”
She told him everything, from waking up in the cabin bedroom thinking it was a dream, to realizing too late that she’d been drugged. “Those things he has in the bathroom. The radio, the camera,” she said. “They threw me when I thought he was just a guy who couldn’t be more than thirty. But he’s djinn.”
“And djinn don’t age,” Donatti said. “He wrecked the car. That was the resistance. How much you want to bet he did the same thing with those other cars we saw?”
“Jesus,” she whispered. “And the passengers . . .”
“Let’s not stick around long enough to find out what he does with them.”
The woods were strangely silent. Other than a faint wind rustling dry leaves and their own st
eps on the forest floor, there was nothing. Not a single creaking branch or calling bird. No signs of other life.
They’d been walking for about fifteen minutes when Jazz slowed and came to a stop beside a big fir tree. “Donatti,” she said. “Does this look familiar to you?”
“No. It’s a goddamn tree. We’re surrounded by trees, and—” He looked closer. His gaze found what she’d noticed already, the lower branch that was broken and splintered at the trunk, hanging at a sharp angle, almost touching the ground. “We passed this before,” he said.
“Yeah. We just walked in a big fucking circle.” She kicked at the ground, spraying a cloud of dead needles in the air. “This is still the path you came up, right? So apparently it’s changed directions in the past few hours.”
Something rustled in the brush ahead. A flash of red fur darted between branches and vanished again. The bastard was following them.
“Son of a bitch.” Jazz gripped the poker two-handed and strode for the brush.
Donatti grabbed her. “Whoa, killer,” he said. “That doesn’t work with djinn. Remember?”
“Yeah. I can’t take him out. But it’ll still hurt when I smash his fucking skull.” She’d always taken care of herself, so being defenceless pissed her off. Regular people couldn’t kill a djinn. In order to enter the human realm, they had to be bound to an object, a tether. And only destroying the tether would destroy the djinn. You could empty a machine gun into one and he – or she – would live through it. Since Donatti was only part djinn, he’d still die like a human.
Of course, he could destroy the djinn. With magic. That pissed her off, too.
“Don’t,” he murmured. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need this guy.”
“Why? You planning to make a coat out of him?”
“Let’s keep walking.” He tried to guide her ahead. She resisted. He frowned. “Jazz, please. Trust me.”
Right. Trust the man who couldn’t plan a takeout dinner without an instruction book and a personal coach. The man who’d ditched her, almost gotten her arrested, left her alone and pregnant, then damn near gotten her killed when he popped back into her life like nothing had happened.