djinn wars 02 - taken

by Christine Pope

  That’s…horrible, I managed at last.

  It is unpleasant, true. But the woman who has come to watch me —

  Julia, I supplied.

  Yes, Julia. She has lowered it slightly. At the current level, it still interferes with the majority of my powers, but I can breathe…and I can reach out to you, beloved, since you are not so far away. A pause, and then he asked, But are you well? They haven’t hurt you?

  No, I replied at once. I’ve convinced them that I had a change of heart, that I don’t want anything to do with you. And so I’ve been living here pretty normally, more or less. Evony and I have a house together and everything.

  He didn’t ask who Evony was, and I assumed that was because he already knew. A long pause, followed by, And have you?

  Have I what?

  Had a change of heart?

  Of course not! I lied so I could stay here and figure out a way to free you. I would never give up on you, Jace. Never.

  Another of those hesitations. Then I felt a — well, it was hard to describe, but it almost seemed as if a wave of warmth passed over my body, as if Jace had somehow managed to gather up the energy of his love for me and send it outward, rising through the floors of the building so that it could warm me and comfort me. I shut my eyes and breathed in, fancying I could almost detect the delectable scent of his skin. In that moment, I realized how much I truly had missed him. I’d pushed away the longing and the need because I had to function on a daily basis, but feeling him again now, I knew I would do whatever it took to get him out of that damn cell and away to someplace safe.

  I have to get you out of there. Can you tell me something about the place where they’re keeping you?

  Beloved, I don’t want you to risk yourself.

  But I want to risk myself. They have no right to keep you there. Fine if they want to go hunting the bad djinn, the ones who are out there killing off everyone else they can find, but —

  His mental voice seemed to alter subtly. You know this for a fact?

  Julia said they’d lost contact with the other survivors. There were some in Las Cruces, and also in Flagstaff and L.A. But they haven’t heard anything for weeks now.

  He seemed to sigh. Ah. I had hoped that perhaps, at the end, they would change their minds. Clearly, I was being too much of an optimist.

  Clearly. Since I didn’t want to dwell on what might or might not be happening to the survivors who weren’t under a djinn’s protection, or safe here in Los Alamos, I said, It’s horrible, but it still doesn’t give the people here the right to keep you imprisoned, or Natila. You saved me, and she saved Evony, just as all those other djinn saved the Chosen we met in Taos.

  You went to Taos? He sounded sharper now, and I wondered why he would be upset that I had gone to the djinn stronghold. After all, he’d intended to take me there himself, but had been intercepted by Captain Margolis & Co. before he could do that.

  Yes. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought maybe someone there would help us, like Zahrias.

  Zahrias? The name was followed by the mental equivalent of a chuckle. Zahrias is not much in the habit of helping mortals.

  I crossed my arms and scowled, even though I knew Jace couldn’t see me. Actually, he was — well, all right, not kind, exactly, but he did take good enough care of us while we were there. In fact, he wanted us to stay, and said we would be safe in Taos.

  Of course, I was leaving out the part where Zahrias urged me to stay so that Aldair would have a new Chosen. I’d refused, so what did it matter? Even so, I thought it better not to mention the other djinn. I had a feeling that wasn’t the sort of thing Jace really needed to hear right then.

  I am surprised to hear that. A pause, and then, with a flicker of amusement in his mental voice, Perhaps Zahrias was overcome by the spirit of Christmas.

  I couldn’t help smiling, although I quelled the expression quickly, since I didn’t want anyone who might walk into the office to see me sitting there and grinning like an idiot at nothing. I kind of doubt that. But I will admit that he wasn’t quite as scary as I expected him to be.

  Let’s hope he never hears you say that. I think he’ll be quite disappointed in himself.

  “Ms. Monroe?”

  Startled, I looked up to see Captain Margolis coming in through the office suite’s double doors. Shit. Talk about your crappy timing.

  And, just as suddenly, I felt Jace’s touch slip away from my mind. It was like having a warm blanket you’d wrapped around yourself torn away, leaving you exposed to the freezing night air. Somehow I managed not to react, even summoned a smile as I said, “Evening, Captain Margolis.”

  He paused by the desk and gave me one of those looks I hated, not quite a leer, but close enough that it still made my flesh crawl every time he did it. I’d intercepted quite a few by now, but verbally at least he’d been extremely polite, maybe because Julia had always been around.

  Now, though, she was several floors below me, and I didn’t even know how many people were still left in the building. The clock on the wall said it was now a quarter after six. There would be a skeleton staff, of course, since there were always a few guards around if nothing else, but that didn’t mean any of them were patrolling this particular floor at the moment.

  “So,” the commander said, “what keeps you with us this late?”

  “Julia,” I replied promptly. “She had to cover for Nancy, and so I’m covering for her. I think Nancy’s relief should be coming in shortly, though.” That was a lie, since I didn’t know for sure exactly when Tony was expected to take over his shift at djinn-watching duty. But it was now full dark, so he had to be back down off the mountain, if nothing else. Probably off dumping his load of fresh-cut lumber before coming back to the justice center. I had a vague idea that they were using the gymnasium at one of the local schools to store all the logs before they were parceled out to the community, but I’d never been there and didn’t know for sure how far away it was.

  “Ah.” Margolis just stood there for a few seconds more, staring down at me. I tried not to fidget, since I knew part of his game included putting people off-balance so he could feel more in control of a situation, but it was difficult. Everything in me wanted to glance away, to pretend I had something I needed to look at on the computer screen. But since I hadn’t actually been using the computer when Jace reached out to me, that would just look like exactly what it was — a move of desperation so I wouldn’t have to maintain eye contact.

  At last, though, he smiled another one of those hackle-raising smiles, then said, “Keep up the good work,” before heading into his office. He didn’t shut the door, though. That would’ve been too easy.

  I allowed myself to release a tiny sigh of relief, one that no one could have heard even if they’d been standing right next to me, and then went back to the draft report Julia had left for me to proof. Her writing was actually close to flawless most of the time, but even she had the occasional typo or dropped word. But at least it gave me an excuse to look as if I was occupied with something useful, and whatever the commander might have been doing in his office, it didn’t seem to include coming back out to check on me. Maybe he’d decided that he’d baited me enough for one day.

  About twenty minutes or so later, Julia reappeared. Her expression was her usual one of unruffled calm, but something about the way she moved told me she was feeling tired. Watching over the djinn didn’t seem to give her any pleasure — if anything, the opposite.

  But of course she didn’t make any comments on that subject, only offered me a smile and asked, “How does the report look?”

  “Fine.” I held up the piece of paper so she could see that I’d only made one or two marks on it. “Really, I doubt anyone else would have noticed either of these little mistakes.”

  “Maybe.” Her gaze seemed to shift toward Margolis’ open door, and I saw her square her shoulders. “I need to check on the commander, but after that we can head out to eat. I don’t know about you, but
I’m starving.”

  Actually, I was fairly hungry by that point, too, since I generally had a little snack when I got home. I nodded. “I’m ready to eat.”

  “This won’t take long.”

  She headed into his office, and I heard their voices a moment later. They were speaking low enough, however, that I couldn’t tell exactly what they were saying. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be urgent, since she came out soon enough.

  “The commander has a few more things he wants to work on, but he said it was all right for us to head out.”

  “Sounds good.” As I was getting my purse out of the desk drawer, though, I couldn’t help wondering what his reaction would be if he told us we needed to stay on, and I said no way, that I needed to eat. After all, this wasn’t exactly a normal manager/employee relationship.

  But he wielded the ultimate power in this community, and I had a good idea what his response would be if anyone tried to step out of line or shirk their responsibility. You couldn’t get fired, but you could get turned out from your nice safe house and sent back into the wild to take your chances with the dark djinn if you turned out to be a troublemaker.

  Come to think of it, that was probably a lot worse than merely getting a pink slip.

  “Want to just meet at Pajarito’s?” Julia asked once we were safely in the elevator. “That way we can both head straight home from there.”

  I agreed that it sounded like a good plan, and we went to our separate vehicles and drove the half-mile or so to the restaurant. Snow hadn’t fallen for a few days, so the streets were fairly clear. I still took it easy, though, just in case the dark spaces between the street lamps were hiding patches of black ice. To save energy, half of the street lights had been decommissioned, so the town wasn’t nearly as bright as its planners had originally intended.

  But I pulled into the parking lot without incident, and saw Julia’s Suburban slide into its own space a few seconds later. Luckily, Evony wouldn’t be too worried about me; we couldn’t send texts to inform each other of our whereabouts, but we’d decided early on that we wouldn’t worry about making sure to always have dinner together. She went off with Shawn and Brent sometimes, and occasionally I worked late, so if one of us wasn’t home by six-thirty, the other person made their own arrangements, and made sure Dutchie was fed and walked. No, it didn’t exactly cover a situation where one or the other of us might be in some kind of trouble, and something less innocuous than working overtime was our reason for being late. After almost a month here, though, we’d realized the likelihood of any real emergency coming up was fairly low.

  Well, except that now I know where Jace and Natila are, I thought, getting out of the Cherokee and picking my way carefully across the parking lot. Which means that sooner rather than later, I’m going to be doing my best to bust them out of there.

  That would have to wait until I could work out some sort of plan. In the meantime, I’d have to act as normal as possible around Julia. I couldn’t let on that I’d experienced something life-changing that afternoon — I’d heard Jace again, knew at last that I wasn’t hanging on to false hope.

  She smiled as we met at the door. “Good thing it’s a Wednesday, or we’d have a hard time getting a table at this time of night.”

  “What’s so special about Wednesdays?” I asked, giving a quick grin at Stacy, who led the two of us over to a booth in a corner. It did seem as if the restaurant was pretty sparsely populated at the moment.

  A lift of her shoulders. “Some of the guys have organized a darts league. They meet every Wednesday night at the youth center. It sounds like they also raid everyone’s beer supply to keep things going, so I’m not sure how much they’re hitting with those darts. But I suppose it gives them something to do, although I’m surprised more people don’t turn up Thursday morning with an assortment of puncture wounds.”

  I grinned. “Sounds like it could be fun.” At least, I supposed it might. I’d never played darts, but the weather was too cold for any kind of outdoor team sports, and Los Alamos didn’t have a bowling alley.

  “As I said, it keeps them off the streets.”

  Stacy came by then and let us know what was being served that night — burgers or white chili — and we both opted for the chili, and a couple of glasses of white wine to go with it. After Stacy had left, Julia leaned back against the padded booth wall behind her and let out a sigh.

  “Rough time guarding…who do you have down in the jail, anyway?” I asked, hoping my tone was all innocent speculation. “Mitch Kosky, driving drunk?”

  At that question, she straightened, then crossed her arms and gave me a very direct look, one that made my heart beat a little bit faster. Eyes still fixed on mine, she said,

  “Jessica, I think you know exactly who we’re holding down there.”

  Chapter Twelve

  My breath strangled in my throat. I just stared at her, at the wry smile touching the corners of her mouth. Finally, I managed to get out, “Uh…excuse me?”

  Julia’s head tilted to one side, but she couldn’t reply right away, as Stacy showed up with our glasses of wine and set them down. Apparently not noticing the tension at the table…or possibly ignoring it…she said, “Chili’ll be right out.”

  “Thanks,” Julia and I both responded at the same time, and off Stacy went again.

  An awkward silence fell. Julia picked up her glass of white wine and took a sip, staring at me expectantly the entire time. Not knowing how I should respond, I wrapped my fingers around the stem of my own glass, but I didn’t drink any of it. Right then, I was wishing I’d ordered something a little stronger.

  At last I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I think you do. You’ve done a good job of faking everyone else out, but I can tell your heart isn’t in what you’re doing here. It feels to me like you’re biding your time.”

  Jesus. My hands wanted to shake, but I wouldn’t let them. No way could I let Julia see how much she’d rattled me. I did lift my wine glass then and take a swallow, more to give me time to gather my thoughts than because I really felt like having that glass of chardonnay. It tasted sour in my mouth…or was that just nerves?

  “Really, that’s not it at all. It just takes me time to, I don’t know, relax into a new situation.”

  Her blue-gray eyes were fixed on me. She had heavy dark lashes, a lot darker than her hair, but she didn’t have roots, so she had to be one of those lucky blondes who didn’t have fair lashes as well. Fingers tapping on the base of her wine glass, she said, “It’s okay, Jessica. I don’t blame you. For the record, I don’t agree with holding…those two. They’re not the ones to blame for the situation we’re in. But let’s just say I kind of have the minority opinion around here.”

  It was my turn to slump against the booth and stare at her. Right then, I was pretty much certain something must have gone wrong with my hearing. Otherwise, that would mean Julia Innes didn’t believe every single djinn was completely evil…that she might turn out to be the most unlikely of allies.

  “That’s…surprising,” I said eventually, then swallowed some more wine. “I take it Captain Margolis doesn’t have any idea as to what you actually think on the subject?”

  “God, no.” Her lips pressed together for a second. Then she went on, “He’s not the type who cares to hear about anyone’s opinions but his own, so I don’t offer mine, unless it’s something to do with how I manage the office. He will actually listen to me when it comes to that sort of thing. But trying to convince him that it’s unjust for us to hold those two? As they used to say, fuggedaboutit.”

  The word I was looking for was gobsmacked. That about summed up the way I felt as I continued to stare at her, not really believing that those words were coming out of her mouth.

  “The funny thing was,” Julia continued, “he was looking very quiet and sad when I came in this afternoon. I knew that device of Miles was hurting him. I hate that. They don’t need to crank
it the way they do, since a much more tolerable level is still effective at blocking a djinn’s powers, but everyone else who pulls watch duty seems to regard it as their own piece of personal revenge.”

  I must have made some small, despairing sound, because she glanced away from me then, as if embarrassed by the actions of her fellow survivors.

  “So I turned it down, and then he got the most — I don’t know how else to describe it — beatific look on his face. I could’ve said it was just the relief from the constant pain, but it was more than that, wasn’t it?”

  Somehow I managed to nod. “We — we could communicate. Just for a few minutes, because then Margolis came in, and that was the end of it. But at least — at least I knew Jace was still alive. I’d kept hoping, but I didn’t have any proof. Not until then.” Tears began to sting at my eyes, and I blinked, willing them away. Having a meltdown in Pajarito’s, even on a slow night, was not a good way to avoid unwanted attention.

  Silence for a few moments then, during which Stacy showed up with our bowls of chili and some fresh-baked rolls. Julia thanked her, while I made a show of drinking some more wine so it wouldn’t look odd that I wasn’t saying anything.

  Once she’d determined the coast was clear, Julia said quietly, “You really do love him, don’t you?”

  “M-more than anything.”

  She went still then, her expression wistful, sad. “You’re lucky.” Without looking at me, she spooned up some of her chili and ate a mouthful.

  I hesitated, feeling as if she might be finally on the verge of discussing her past with me, and worried that if I pushed or asked the wrong question, she’d clam up again. And also, I sort of wanted to go over and give her a hug, both for her unexpected support of my relationship with Jace, and because she looked as if she could use one.