From the way Hasan frowned at this comment, Jordan got a distinct impression that the djinn was not nearly as impressed with Dr. Odekirk as she was. “As far as I know, he is there, along with the rest of the Los Alamos community. As you may have guessed, I would not precisely be welcome in that human stronghold, but word does get around nonetheless.”
She supposed it would. No doubt the djinn had tried to come up with all sorts of schemes for destroying that bastion of humanity. It seemed that so far they’d been unsuccessful, however. That made things easier for her. If she left, she wouldn’t have to worry about whether she was walking toward a mirage, a fantasy she’d built up in her head, because Hasan had just confirmed that Los Alamos and the people who lived there were very real.
Did she dare ask the one last question that preyed on her mind? She wouldn’t bother to ask Hasan why he didn’t have a Chosen; his comments about humans over the past few days told her exactly what she needed to know on that subject. Why he had seen her as a romantic interest rather than yet another human to be exterminated, she wasn’t sure, but she knew that his overall opinion of humanity was extremely low. He had had no reason to be among the One Thousand, the djinns’ conscientious objectors.
He’d been amazingly truthful with her so far. Maybe that encounter with his former lover and her thuggish new boyfriend had put the fear of God in him. Anyway, nothing ventured….
“Hasan,” she began, then hesitated. This time he did look directly at her, his eyes so deep and dark and inky blue that she thought she might drown in them. Steeling herself, she went on, the words coming out in a rush, “Why wasn’t I Chosen? I was the right age.”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s no answer.”
With an impatient movement, he pushed himself out of the chair where he sat and went to the window. Outside, the day was sunny and bright, belying the slight chill carried on the breeze, the one that whispered of winter coming. “It is the only answer I can give you, Jordan. Where you lived — that was not part of my territory. I do not know the djinn who settled there, except Danya. I have heard that the settlement of djinn and Chosen is in Aspen — ”
“Figures,” she remarked, and Hasan raised an eyebrow.
“What figures?”
“Well, the djinn here are in Santa Fe, and the ones in Colorado are in Aspen. High-end vacation spots. Not exactly slumming, you know?”
“I suppose you have a point. That is neither here nor there. What I was about to say is that, if you wanted a true answer to your question, you would need to go to Aspen and make your inquiries there. Only they can provide you with the answers you need, because they are the ones who made that choice.” His fingers played with the edge of the curtain for a second or two. “I will admit that I am rather surprised no djinn selected you. After all, as you pointed out, you would have been the correct age. And, in addition to that, you are intelligent and resourceful and beautiful. But, as you humans were fond of saying, there is no accounting for taste.”
Beautiful. He thought she was beautiful. Oh, her college boyfriend Liam had told her that, and she’d heard more or less the same from her Aunt Liz — Jordan’s mother had never been fond of heaping that sort of praise on her daughter, not wanting her to get bound up in her looks to the exclusion of all else — but for some reason, the praise meant a great deal more when it came from Hasan. A djinn, she thought, would be much more discriminating about such things. After all, now that Jordan had seen a djinn woman, she had a better understanding of the sort of standard she’d be compared to. Danya, even though she seemed like a serious bitch, was so beautiful she didn’t look quite real, like a porcelain figurine come to life. Jordan was pretty sure that no one would ever compare her to a porcelain figurine.
In the end, though, what did it matter? If Hasan had been of the temperament to choose a mortal for his partner, he would have done so already. And apparently there were rules in place to prevent djinn from participating in the kind of intimacies the two of them had already shared, although she thought they really weren’t guilty of all that much. A few stolen kisses. Were these elders such hard-asses that they couldn’t let something so minor slip by?
Hasan moved away from the window and came over to the sofa, then sat down next to her. She liked the way the leather creaked from his weight, liked the warmth that seemed to flow from him. He didn’t reach out to touch her, though, but kept his hands folded in his lap.
Jordan wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
For some reason, tears stung her eyes. She blinked, kept her face angled away from him. Hasan already thought humans were weak, so the last thing she wanted was for him to see her bleary-eyed and weepy, especially when nothing had been decided between the two of them.
Or…had it? If he wanted to keep her around, he had to make her his Chosen. Danya had basically said as much, and the explanations Hasan had just given Jordan, those stories about the One Thousand and the various communities they’d set up around the world, also pointed out what appeared to be on irrefutable fact: A djinn could only be with a human if he — or she — made that person their Chosen. No loopholes, no workarounds.
“I was headed to Los Alamos when I came here,” she said, not exactly sure where she was going with that remark, although she had a feeling it would place her on a path from which there would be no turning back.
“I guessed as much,” Hasan responded. “It was the only logical destination for you.”
Jordan knotted her fingers together. She wished she was still wearing the jewelry Hasan had loaned her the night before. At least that way she’d have something to fiddle with, something to focus on rather than his grave, handsome face, the way his shoulder-length hair brushed against his fine jaw. She wished she had the courage to turn toward him, to run her fingers through that heavy, glossy hair. But she didn’t. She just barely had the courage to do what she knew must be done.
This had all been a fantasy anyway. An interlude. A handsome stranger, an isolated house. Never mind that the stranger was of an immortal race with a vengeful streak, someone who had the deaths of probably hundreds of people on his hands. She could never forgive that. She didn’t want to forgive him, because in doing so, she might make it seem that those deaths didn’t matter. Well, they did matter. Each and every one of them, those nameless victims of a cruel revenge.
Good thing all she and Hasan had done was kiss each other.
“It still is, isn’t it?” she asked then. “I mean, the only logical destination.”
For a long moment, he didn’t reply. His fingers brushed the tops of his knees, restless. No jewelry for him — his beauty didn’t need it, and the frame of his rich djinn clothing was enough. A faint gust of a breath, almost a sigh but not quite. “I suppose it is.”
Why was it so hard to breathe? Her throat was thick, closed up, as though she was suddenly having an allergic reaction to a bee sting or something. That wasn’t it, though; what choked her now was only those tears surging forth, weeping on the inside because she wouldn’t allow herself to actually cry in front of him.
She pushed herself up from the couch. “Then I guess I had better pack my things.”
“Jordan — ”
She shook her head. “No, it’s all right. I knew I couldn’t stay — it was just….” Might as well stop herself there, since she didn’t even know what she’d meant to say. Her brain was stuttering, trying to keep up, failing miserably.
Hasan rose to his feet as well. “I cannot let you walk all that way. Not with Farid out there, or those who might be in league with him. Let me take you.”
“But you can’t,” Jordan protested. Somehow, it was worse that he was offering to help her. She wanted to be able to walk away, pack weighing on her shoulders but her head held high. In a few weeks or months, she might be able to forgive herself for beginning to care. “You told me yourself that Los Alamos is protected. You can’t go there.”
“Not all the way,” he said calmly. His f
ace was calm as well, features grave and perfect, like a statue come to life. “But I can take you to the borders of their protected territory. You can pass within the perimeter, and then I won’t have to worry that Farid or anyone else might do you harm.”
Did such concern mean that he cared, or was he only trying to spare himself the guilt of yet another death? It probably didn’t matter one way or another. Besides, it was a very generous offer. She knew she should accept it. Hasan could blink her there, and then she would be with the Los Alamos group, among her own kind again.
It was where she belonged.
“Thank you,” she said. “It would help a lot. I’ll go get my things together now.”
“Very well,” he said. “I will wait for you here.”
There really was nothing else to be said. She bowed her head, whether in resignation or acceptance, she wasn’t sure, and turned away from him so she could go upstairs.
Thank God her back was to him. That way, he wouldn’t be able to see the tears finally begin to track their way down her cheeks.
Chapter Eleven
This was all a mistake. There should be some way of taking it back. But he couldn’t find the words to stop her, even as he knew in his heart this was the right thing to do. He’d vowed long ago that he would never commit to just one woman, and he certainly wouldn’t change that vow for a human.
Jordan had wept; her eyes were reddened, her nose slightly puffy. Even so, she was almost heartbreakingly beautiful as she came back down the stairs, heavy backpack on her shoulders, hair tied out of the way so he could clearly see the smooth oval of her face, the determined little chin.
And now he had her in his arms again — not to embrace her, as he probably should, but to carry her away from his home to a place near the perimeter of Los Alamos land. Actually, that border was now a good distance from the true border of Los Alamos itself, for in his reconnoitering, he’d realized that the community of survivors had expanded down into Española and some of the surrounding farmlands. Not to live, as far as he could tell, but to go down there during the day and work the fields, watch over the orchards and gather their fruit, so they would have enough to feed all the people they’d taken into their fold.
But they hadn’t yet moved up into the canyon where the Rio Grande wound its way down from the higher country above. Here had once been tiny hamlets clustered near the bank of the river, and places where people cultivated small vineyards. Hasan decided it would be best to reappear there, in a wide spot in the road that had once been called Velarde, and where once there had been a busy wine-tasting room, a place where tourists had stopped on the way to Taos. From that spot, Jordan would only have to walk a quarter-mile or so to reach the first of the fields that the Los Alamos survivors cultivated.
When his feet touched solid ground again, he held on to Jordan for a second or two longer than necessary. Only so he might recall the feel of her in his arms, the faint sweet scent of her hair. Had she noticed? He couldn’t tell for sure, since her head had been tilted downward, as though she needed to focus on her grip around his waist so she might not slip off and be lost in that other space the djinn used to travel from place to place.
Then he let go, and she stepped away from him, using the pretext of straightening the pack she wore to keep from looking him in the face.
“Follow the highway,” he said. “In a quarter-mile or so, there’ll be a turnoff for a road numbered 582. Once you pass into the fields, you’ll be in an area protected by Miles Odekirk’s devices. Keep following that road, and eventually you’ll come down into Española. I’m sure once you’re there, you’ll encounter someone from the Los Alamos group.”
She looked down the road, her face in profile to him. Such a lovely profile, too, with its fine chin and straight nose. A breeze caught at the end of her ponytail, ruffling it. Down here, the air was warmer, the sense of onrushing autumn not so intense.
It took all the strength he had to remain where he was, to not walk to the place where she stood and pull her into his arms again, then take her back with him to Chama. But no, such thoughts were mere foolishness. He had no wish to be tied down to anyone, let alone a human who must become his Chosen. To spend the rest of eternity with one person? He could never agree to such a thing.
“Thank you, Hasan.” Her voice was clear and strong, with no trace of the tears he knew she had wept not even an hour earlier. “I’ll make sure to let them know of your kindness.”
“There is no need for such a thing.” In contrast to Jordan’s words, his own sounded harsh, rough with an emotion he couldn’t keep entirely at bay. “In fact, it is better if they know nothing of me.”
Now she shifted so she was looking at him straight on. “Why not? It isn’t as if they would go after you, would they?”
“No,” he replied. “As far as I can tell, their main wish is to be left alone. But I didn’t think you would want them to know about….” He stopped there, not sure that he wanted to try to describe what he and the young woman had shared.
A sad little smile touched her mouth. “It’s all right, Hasan. I don’t think they’ll crucify me over a kiss.”
And with that she turned away from him once again, and began to make her way down the two-lane road.
He stood and watched her go, his hands clenched into fists. Nothing would move him from this spot until he knew she was safe. Her slender form grew smaller and smaller as she walked away from him. The barrier was an invisible one, nothing that could be seen with one’s eyes, and yet he was still able to sense the exact moment when she had passed through it, when she had come under the protection of Miles Odekirk’s device, when science and technology were her new friends.
She was gone, and in their world now.
Don’t cry, she told herself as she picked her way along the narrow road, probably already patched and bumpy even before the world ended, and now a mass of potholes and cracks. Don’t cry. You’ve cried enough already.
And for what? It wasn’t like she’d lost a relative, or broken up with a boyfriend of many years. She barely knew Hasan al-Abyad. Histrionics were entirely out of place here.
Even so, she had to blink fiercely, and sniffle more than a few times, before the tears receded and she could see the landscape clearly. Down here, a hundred and fifty miles south of Chama, the aspens hadn’t even begun to turn yet. The roadsides were riotous with desert broom and black-eyed Susans, their colors so warm, and yet still a signal that summer was gone.
Winter was on its way.
That didn’t matter. By the end of the day, she’d probably be in Los Alamos. What it would be like, she had no idea. She’d never visited that part of the world. She knew her own impressions of the place were probably dead wrong. It was where they’d built the atomic bomb, and she imagined it as a sort of deserty spot with lots of ugly, drab 1940s-style buildings. Or wait…maybe she was thinking of the Trinity site. Wasn’t that out near White Sands somewhere? Anyway, she figured she’d find out soon enough.
She wouldn’t bother to reflect on the irony of creating all that destructive power, only to have a destroyer you didn’t even know existed come along and really cause the end of the world.
The breeze here was mild, almost warm. It felt good, as did the sun that shone down upon her. Maybe it could help get rid of the chill that seemed to have descended into her bones, her gut, her heart.
No, don’t think about that. Think about something else.
She passed empty houses, abandoned cars. Not a lot of trucks or SUVs, though, which she thought was strange in a rural area like this. It was so quiet that she could hear the Rio Grande rushing along in its banks, even though she couldn’t actually see it at the moment.
This felt so exposed, walking along an empty road in full view of any djinn in the area. But no, there weren’t any djinn, because Miles Odekirk had invented some kind of machine that kept them at bay. She thought of the ultrasonic bug zapper her mother had hanging in the patio of their Colorado Springs ho
use and almost chuckled. Zap those djinn, just like pesky mosquitoes.
Jordan’s smile faded soon enough, though. She really didn’t want to imagine any harm coming to Hasan. What did Dr. Odekirk’s device do, anyway? Hasan hadn’t gone into any details. Was the field created by the machines fatal, or did it just make things so unpleasant that it wasn’t worth it for the djinn to come around?
She doubted she would ever find out.
The road crossed the river to the west bank and began to run parallel to it. Now she could see the fields Hasan had spoken of, some of them left to run wild, some green with alfalfa, several of them filled with the dry ghosts of cornstalks, left to rot into the ground now that the harvest had been gathered in. This seemed like a lot of ground to cover, and Jordan wondered how many people actually lived in Los Alamos. Enough that they apparently needed all these fields. It would be good to eat vegetables again, maybe even a salad of real lettuce instead of that dandelion crap they’d been living on in Pagosa Springs.
Yes, there should be a lot to look forward to. Being with people again, people who could live semi-normal lives because they didn’t have to worry about the djinn coming along and ruining everything. It would be quite a change from the life she’d led for the past few years.
Even so, she was saddened to see all the empty houses she passed by, mostly modest little one-story places probably built in the late ’50s or early ’60s, not unlike the home where she’d grown up. Her mother had been so proud of that house, so proud that she’d been able to afford it on her own, on just a waitress’s wages and with a child to raise. The house still stood, of course, because the djinns’ apocalypse wasn’t the sort that leveled buildings or destroyed all the works of man, but Jordan knew she’d never see it again.
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