by Rachel Caine
Chapter Twenty-nine
Very elegant and expensive-looking.
I took it in slowly. My brain had handled too many shocks today. I wasn't prepared for being the victim on the guerilla warfare version of Trading Spaces. I'd just been nearly killed twice, for God's sake. I wasn't ready for redecorating.
"Well?" Sarah asked anxiously. "I know the walls still look plain, but I thought later this week we could go to one of those home stores and get something to sponge-paint with in here-maybe metallic gold, what do you think? And some throw pillows. I didn't get enough throw pillows. "
My eyes wandered to the bedside table.
It was gone.
Gone.
In its place was a black lacquer stand with one delicate-looking drawer instead of the two large ones I'd had before.
My paralysis broke. I yanked free of Sarah's hold and lunged for the nightstand, pulled open the drawer and found the familiar collection of junk that tended to congregate in such places. Books. Magazines. A zippered cosmetic case I sincerely hoped she hadn't opened.
A few things were missing. Some half-empty tubes of hand lotion, for instance.
Some out-of-date sale catalogs.
The case containing David's bottle.
I turned and looked at her, and whatever was in my expression caused her to fall back a step.
"Where's the padded case?" I asked.
"What?" She took another step back. I followed, well aware I must have looked dangerous and not caring at all.
"Sarah, I'm not going to ask you again. Where's the padded case with the damn bottle in it?" I screamed it, lunged at her and shoved her back against the apothecary cabinet. Temple dogs and goddesses rattled nervously behind her.
Sarah's eyes went wide with panic.
"Case. . . there's a case still in there. . . ?"
"THE OTHER ONE!" I didn't know I could yell that loudly. Even my own eardrums hurt.
Sarah looked entirely terrified. "Well, um. . . yes. . . there was another case. . . isn't it in there? You had-um-empty bottles of lotion and stuff-and-did you want to keep them? Why would you want to keep them? Jo, I don't understand! They weren't special formulas or anything!"
I wanted to kill her. I found myself hyperventilating, saw spots, and let go before I could act on the impulse. Fought for control.
"Sarah," I said with utter, merciless precision, "what did you do with the zippered case that was in the bedside table and had a bottle in it?"
She went pale as milk. "I don't know. Is it important?"
"Yes!"
"Well, I-I-it should be in there, I thought I took everything out. . . maybe, um, maybe I left it in the old nightstand. "
I didn't have time. "Where did you put the old furniture?"
She bit her lip. Her hands were twisting each other anxiously. "Um. . . the furniture guys hauled it off. I paid them extra to take everything to the dump. "
Any second now, I was going to lose control. I reeled unsteadily and ended up sitting on the edge of the bed. It gave with an ease and firmness that spoke of memory foam somewhere in the construction. Sarah had gone all out to make me happy. Except that she'd done the one thing guaranteed to destroy my life.
Maybe the life of every person on the planet, if I stretched things out to their logical conclusion.
I put my head down and forced myself to focus, to be still and calm.
"What did I do?" she asked in a meek, little-girl voice. "Jo, just tell me, what did I do?"
I couldn't exactly explain that she'd just tossed away the love of my life in a garbage truck. Oh God, David. . . This was surreal, it was so ridiculous.
Sarah, of course, came to exactly the wrong conclusion. She clapped both hands over her mouth, tears forming in her eyes, and then ventured, "Oh God, Jo. . . Was it drugs? Are you on drugs? Did I throw away your stash?"
I laughed. I couldn't help it. It came out as a kind of mad, despairing burst of sound, and I covered my face with my hands and stood there for a moment, shaking. Dragging in one gulp of air after another.
Sarah's hand fell on my shoulder, warm but tentative.
"I screwed up," she said. "I get it. I'm sorry. Look, I'll do whatever I have to do to get it back for you. I'm sorry, believe me, I thought-we thought we were doing something good for you-"
Oh yeah, it was good. I had an apartment full of furniture I didn't want, the Djinn were at war, Wardens were dying, and my boyfriend had gone out with the trash.
I stood up and walked to the closet.
"Jo? Where-where are you going?"
I didn't even look back as I pulled out industrial-strength jeans and tossed my hiking boots onto the brand-new bed.
"We," I corrected her. "We are going dump-diving. Get dressed. "
I don't know if you've ever been to a big-city dump at twilight, but it's definitely an adventure. I'd come prepared for the worst-my trashed-out blue jeans, thick, long-sleeved tee, hiking boots, hair twisted up in a knot, face mask and gloves. Sarah wore brand-new jeans, a delicate pink top, and old tennis shoes. After some top-of-my-voice persuasion, she'd decided against the new, expensive footwear.
At least the rain had stopped. If it had been storming, I don't think even I could have bullied her into it.
Armed with the name of the furniture company, we arrived at the dump an hour before closing, and tracked the delivery to a huge pit that was earmarked for furniture, appliances, and other large junk. Trucks were still arriving. As we pulled up in the minivan, a commercial truck backed up to the dropoff, sounded a beeping alarm, and tilted its bed slowly into the air.
An avalanche of twisted metal, old, splintered furniture, and busted TVs joined the mass grave.
Sarah was fidgeting before we'd parked the mommy-van. "Oh, my God! Jo, it smells out here!"
"Yes," I said, and handed her a face mask and gloves. "You're sure you left it in the drawer of the nightstand?"
"Yes, why?"
"Because otherwise we're in the other pit. The one with the biodegradable garbage like rotten food and old diapers. And believe me, you'll like this better. "
She shuddered, pinching her nose shut. "I'm dure. " She sounded like a wacky 1940s comedienne. "Thid id awful!"
"Yeah, no shit. Watch out for rats. "
"Rats?" she squeaked.
"Rats. " I'd had a friend once whose boss had sent her to the dump to retrieve legal papers from a trash bag. I decided not to tell Sarah about the scary cockroaches. "Take the flashlight. It may be dark down there. "
"Dark?" Sarah's commitment to make things right was rapidly eroding and gaining qualifiers like so long as it's convenient and so long as I don't get my hands dirty.
I ignored her, popped the door, and got out. The newer arrivals seemed to be dumped toward the right-hand side, and I scanned the mass of crap to try to spot something familiar. It was like trying to identify pieces of your life after a tornado, the familiar pureed into rubbish. I gulped down a choking sense of panic and kept systematically looking. According to the map they'd given me, the furniture company had dumped in grid E-7. Of course, a map in a dump lacked landmarks, but since the cheerful, flannel-clad guy on duty had said they were currently dumping in E-12, I had a pretty good general range. I scanned junk, which all looked, well, the same, and finally caught a flash of white among all of the gray and brown.
I jumped down from the packed earth ledge into the pit, braced myself with one hand on the wall, and started carefully picking my way over the junk pile. It was dangerous. Sharp corners and nails and jagged metal. Glass. Broken mirrors.
The place was a tetanus shot waiting to happen.
Even though I was completely focused on the mission at hand, my eyes kept focusing on interesting bits of garbage. A broken, tiger-maple chest that looked antique. A massive, carved teak table that was magnificently in one piece and probably would be until the sun consumed the earth, as hard
as teak was-I couldn't believe somebody had actually moved it in the first place. It made me exhausted just looking at it.
I tripped over a big, dented brass pot and nearly fell into a steel cabinet, but managed to brace myself. I looked over my shoulder to make sure Sarah was okay.
She was picking her way slowly behind me, testing every step twice before putting her weight on anything, one hand always outstretched to catch herself.
The other held a flashlight in a death grip, not that she really needed it yet.
The face mask and cherry pink top made quite a fashion statement.
I climbed a small, slippery hill of appliances-somebody had thrown out a gigantic Maytag washer-and saw something that might have been the leg of a French Provincial nightstand. I reached for it and yanked; it was a slender, delicately curved leg, freshly broken off, with faded gilt on white.
Definitely from Sarah's room. Or, okay, somebody else with the bad taste to have French Provincial bedroom furniture. But I doubted there'd be two of us contributing to the city dump on the same afternoon.
"It's somewhere around here!" I yelled. She nodded breathlessly and climbed up to join me. She found the first piece of my bedroom suite-the headboard-and yelled in triumph as if she'd discovered King Tut's tomb. I scrambled over to haul it to the side. Underneath was a broken drawer from my dresser. Empty.
We worked silently, panting, sweating, as night brushed closer and darker. Alarms sounded the everybody out, along with loudspeaker announcements. Floodlights snapped on, harsh and white, throwing everything into alien relief.
"We'll never find it!" Sarah wailed. She straightened up, yanked down her mask, and wiped her streaming forehead with the back of her forearm. Dirt smudged her face in a circle around the mask, and her normally cute hair was plastered lankly around her skull. Her desire to please had ebbed into pure, disgusted exhaustion. "Dammit, Jo, just forget about it, would you? What was it, cocaine? Jesus! Bill me for it!"
I yanked a shattered television aside-yes, that was mine; I remembered it with a lurch of affection because I'd bought that crappy little thing with my own hard-earned money at a yard sale-and uncovered another dresser drawer. Blank, except for a coating of liner paper. I kicked it out of the way with unnecessary violence.
"It wasn't cocaine, you idiot!" I yelled back, and felt my hands curling into fists at my sides. "Maybe that's your lifestyle of the rich and blameless, but-"
"Hey! I'm hip-deep in garbage trying to help you, you know-"
"Excuse me, but you showed up begging me for help, if I remember! And all you've done is cost me money and fuck up my life!"
I didn't mean to say that. . . exactly. But it was true. I watched Sarah's flushed face drain of color and bit back an impulse to apologize.
"Fine," she said, with unnatural control. "I thought I was doing something nice for you, Joanne. I took the little bit of money I got from my deadbeat bastard of an abusive husband and I spent it on you to make up for imposing on you. I'm sorry that it interfered with your stupid bottle collection!"
She turned and scrambled away, graceless and angry.
"Hey!" I yelled.
"Fuck off!" she yelled back, and kept going. "Find it yourself!"
Fine. Whatever. My back hurt, my head ached, I was sweaty and exhausted and I could hear-and feel-a black ugly mutter of thunder out to sea. The vultures were coming home to roost.
And I had to find David's bottle. I just had to. It couldn't end this way.
I uncovered the shattered shell of my dresser. It was too big to move. I cried for a little while, tears soaking into the gauze mask, and then grabbed hold and kicked the damn thing with my hiking boots until it splintered into pieces small enough to drag out of the way.
As the last one came free, I saw the nightstand, and it was all in one piece.
I gave a wordless, breathless yell, and hauled it out of the heap of junk it was buried in, leaned it against a rusted-out harvest gold washing machine, and slowly opened the drawer.
It was full of stuff. Old lotion bottles with half a handful left in each one.
My out-of-date sale catalogs.
A zippered bag full of foam cushioning.
I grabbed it, hugged it like a little girl reunited with her favorite stuffed animal, and unzipped it with shaking gloved fingers.
There was nothing inside.
Nothing.
I screamed, bit my lip, and forced myself to do things slowly. One piece at a time, taken out, examined, and tossed aside. Foam padding last.
It wasn't there.
David's bottle wasn't fucking there.
In the dark, under the glare of the floodlights, I saw the cold green gleam of eyes out in the dark. Rats? Cats? They winked on and off in the shadows, too cautious to come near me, but too close for comfort.
One of those legendary giant cockroaches crawled out of the heap and began trundling like a shiny brown bus over heaps of metal.
The bottle wasn't in the drawer, and it wasn't in the bag where it was supposed to be. Night was falling. I couldn't do this once the floodlights shut off, and tomorrow another layer of junk would arrive and bury any chance I had. . .
I had to do it. "David," I said, and closed my eyes. "David, come to me. David, come to me. David, come to me. " Rule of three. Even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't refuse to obey that, not even as an Ifrit, so long as he was bound to a bottle. I had to know if the bottle was intact, at least. If David was still bound.
Out in the shadows, something moved. It was unsettlingly like that giant cockroach, the way it caught the floodlights in shiny angles and sharp points.
Skin like coal. Nothing human about it.
"David?" I whispered.
The Ifrit stood there, motionless. I got nothing from it. No sense of connection, no sense of it even existing beyond the evidence of my eyes.
If he'd come when I called, he was still bound to the bottle. Worst possible news. I felt tears burning in my eyes again. "God, no. David, I'm so sorry. I'm going to find you. There's got to be a way to make this right, to make this-"
He moved. Quicker than a Djinn, scarier, he was touching-close in less time than it took my nerves to fire an impulse to scream. His black-clawed hands slashed through me and plunged into. . .