djinn wars 03 - fallen Read online

  Do you know when they’re leaving?

  A faint head shake, and then he asked, “Do you want me to have anything sent up for Julia as well?”

  I hesitated. She would be ravenous when she woke up, no doubt, but that could be hours from now. “Probably not. I think it’s better to wait until she’s really awake. I’ll call for you then.”

  “Of course.”

  “Probably just soup to start,” Miguel warned us. “We don’t know how long it’s been since she’s had solid food. Then we’ll go from there.”

  “And in the meantime, we should allow her some peace and quiet,” Zahrias interjected. “The rest will do her more good than anything else.”

  It wasn’t exactly a command, but it might as well have been. Miguel and Jace nodded, and stepped out into the corridor. Zahrias hung back for a moment, gazing down at Julia’s bruised and dirty face.

  “I wonder what happened to her,” he said, then ducked out as well, leaving me alone with the sleeping woman.

  I was wondering, too. Leaving aside the question of what had compelled her to abandon the refuge of Los Alamos in the first place, how had she survived the journey here? You’d have thought she’d be easy prey for the rogue djinn.

  But she had survived…somehow. And now all I could do was sit and wait, and wonder.

  Five or ten minutes after the men had left, Lauren reappeared, poking her head inside the door. In her hands she held several pieces of folded clothing. “I brought these for her,” she murmured, then stepped into the room and set the items on top of the dresser.

  “Thanks,” I said in the same undertone. “I’m hoping that after she sleeps for a while and then gets something to eat, she’ll be up for a warm bath.”

  “It looks like she’s earned one,” Lauren replied, worried eyes taking in Julia’s grimy face. “You really think she walked all the way here?”

  “Well, I didn’t see a car anywhere,” I said grimly. “Or a scooter, or even a bike. She was on foot. Maybe she drove part of the way, but we won’t know for sure until she wakes up.”

  “Damn.” Then Lauren seemed to gather herself. “I have to get back, but just send word if there’s anything else she needs.”

  “I will.”

  She left then, and I folded my hands on my lap, willing myself to be calm and watchful. There wasn’t much else I could do, really. The day had been mild enough that no one had bothered to light a fire in the fireplace, although the logs and kindling had already been set up. I figured that getting the fire going was one task I could perform that would make Julia more comfortable. It would still drop close to freezing tonight, no matter how deceptively pleasant the daytime hours had been.

  I got up from my chair and went to the fireplace, then struck a match and held it against the kindling. It caught immediately, the flames catching before licking upward against the pyramidal stack of logs that had been placed there. The warmth moved outward, seeming to caress my face. Maybe it had been colder in the room than I’d first thought.

  “That feels good.”

  At once I turned. Julia was watching me, eyes clear enough, if shadowed.

  I hurried over to the bed. “How do you feel?”

  “Probably about how I look…like hell. But this bed feels good. And so does that fire.” Her voice sounded stronger with every word, and I heaved an inner sigh of relief.

  “Do you want some more water?”

  “Please.”

  I took the glass, went to the bathroom, and filled the cup a little more than halfway. Julia reached for it as soon as I approached the bed, so I let her take it from me. If she spilled, well, I’d just mop it up as best I could.

  But she didn’t. Her hand shook a little, but she was able to raise the glass to her mouth and drink the water without incident. Then she set it down on the nightstand.

  “Better.”

  “Are you hungry?” I asked. If she was up to drinking that much, then it seemed the logical next step was to get some food inside her.

  To my surprise, she shook her head. “No. I know I should be, and I probably will be in a little while, but not now.” As she looked down at herself, her mouth pursed in distaste. “What I really want is a shower.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to that?” From what I’d seen so far, she certainly didn’t look strong enough to stand up for the amount of time a shower would require.

  But she nodded. “I think so. And I really — I really just want to wash all that off me.”

  What she meant by “all that,” I didn’t know, but if allowing her to take a shower meant the possibility of hearing her story, then I’d help her any way I could. And I’d wait right outside the door in case she ended up needing my assistance.

  So I said, “All right,” and extended a hand so she could pull herself upright. She wobbled a bit as she stood, but her grip on my hand was surprisingly strong as I guided her inside the bathroom.

  “It looks like all the toiletries are still in here,” I said, twitching aside the shower curtain so I could put the miniature bottles of shampoo and conditioner and the small bar of soap on the ledge inside the shower stall. “We aren’t running on djinn power anymore, though, so try to keep it short if you can. We’ve all been trying to keep our showers to five minutes, but I think you’ve earned a little bit more than that.”

  Julia’s eyes seemed to fill with questions at my comment about not having access to djinn power, but she only nodded. After turning on the hot water, I slipped back out to the bedroom and grabbed the stack of clothes Lauren had left behind.

  “Here’s something to change into,” I told Julia, who nodded and took the pile from me. “And now I’ll just let myself out.”

  She managed a tired smile at that, then shut the bathroom door. My chair was all the way on the other side of the room, and I didn’t want to be that far in case Julia fell or otherwise needed me to help her out. I supposed I could drag it closer, but then it would be partially blocking the door to the bathroom, since the space really wasn’t all that big. Instead, I decided to lean up against the dresser and wait.

  Even as exhausted and wrung-out as she obviously was, Julia still managed to be her usual efficient self. The water shut off almost exactly five minutes after I’d propped up myself against the dresser, and a few minutes after that, Julia emerged, now wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and some yoga pants. She was finger-combing her hair, and I realized that although the bathroom had soap and shampoo and that sort of thing, it wasn’t stocked with combs or brushes — or a toothbrush and toothpaste, either. Lauren hadn’t left any of those items behind, maybe because she hadn’t thought Julia would be up and functioning quite so quickly.

  “Sorry there wasn’t a comb,” I began, but she just shrugged.

  “It’s okay. This’ll do for now.” Moving past me, she climbed back into bed and plumped up the pillows behind her. Now that she was clean, I could see how nasty that bruise on the left side of her face actually was. It must have been worse at one time, since it had now faded to a ghastly collection of greens and yellows.

  Despite that, it looked suspiciously like someone had plowed his fist into her jaw.

  She must have noticed my staring, because she raised one hand and touched her face. “It’s getting better,” she said quietly. “It used to be blue and purple.”

  I couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Julia, what happened?”

  A small sigh escaped her as her fingers played with the edges of the blanket. She’d never been one for nail polish, but her fingernails had always been on the long side, beautifully shaped. Now they were cracked and broken. Without looking at me, she said, “Dan’s dead.”

  “What?” The question exploded out of me before I could stop it.

  “A little over a week ago. At least, I think that’s when it happened.” She paused then and tilted her head to one side, frowning, even as her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I think I lost track of time there for a while.”

  I needed
to sit down. I went back over to my chair and more or less collapsed on it. “I don’t understand. What — what happened to Dan?” My throat seemed to be closing up. No, I hadn’t ever been with Dan and hadn’t wanted to be, but I’d liked him very much. He was one of the good guys, an all-around decent person.

  Which seemed to be a sure ticket to an early death these days.

  Julia blinked, then swallowed. Hard. “Can — can I have some more water?”

  Even though I’d just sat down, I got right back up again, retrieved her glass, then went to the bathroom to refill it. After I handed it to her, she drank half its contents, and nodded.

  “Thank you, Jessica.” She pulled in a breath, one I could hear hitch in her throat. That made the tears in my eyes sting all the more, but I told myself I needed to keep it together. Julia had survived whatever ordeal she’d been through, so the least I could do was maintain my calm while she related her story.

  “Okay,” she said, then breathed deeply again. “After — well, after you and Evony escaped with Jace, Margolis lost it. He refused to listen to anything Dan or I had to say. He was convinced we were connected to your escape. Which we were, of course. I suppose we’d just been hoping that allowing ourselves to be clocked with a gun and knocked out would be enough to convince the commander we were innocent. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I had to ask. “What did he do?”

  “It wasn’t that bad at first,” she replied. Her fingers kept knotting in the blanket, however, seeming to give the lie to her words. “He locked us both up, but we were expecting that. There really wasn’t any evidence, you know, since I’d killed the security feeds, and most of the people in the building were off at Ernie’s birthday party. Of course, Margolis thought it was suspicious that the security camera was out — which it was — but again, there wasn’t anything to prove that I’d tampered with the system, since it was pretty temperamental anyway.”

  “But then?”

  She glanced away from me, over at the watercolor of the Rio Grande gorge that hung on the opposite wall. “We’d been locked up for about a week, I think, when he came roaring down into the holding cells. I really thought he’d lost his mind — he kept yelling at us, ‘How did they do it? Why did they take him?’”

  Uh-oh. The sick feeling in my stomach told me who that particular “him” probably was.

  Something must have showed in my face, because she said, “So it was you. I figured it must have been someone from Taos who came and took Miles away. But…I guess that’s one thing Margolis and I have in common. We both can’t figure out…why?”

  The last thing I wanted was to interrupt her story with a recounting of everything that had gone wrong in Taos since I got back. Julia needed some context, though, so as quickly as I could, I told her about the rogue djinn and having to use Miles’s device here to keep us safe.

  “But the djinn can’t keep on like this forever,” I said. “That’s why we took Miles. We desperately need him to modify the device so it can protect us without sapping all their powers.”

  “And he’s actually cooperating?” she asked, expression indicating she didn’t think such a thing was possible.

  “Yes. But he hasn’t had much luck so far.”

  She seemed to absorb that, leaning against the pillows, her dark finely arched brows drawing together. “It sounds like you might have done Miles a favor in the long run, getting him away from Margolis. I can only hope he figures that out. For a brilliant person, he can be pretty dense sometimes.” Her eyes shut, and I wondered if what she’d told me so far had sapped her strength enough that she didn’t want to continue. I couldn’t bear that. I dreaded hearing what had gone on back in Los Alamos, but I needed to know what had happened to her and Dan.

  But she blinked then, and focused her gaze on me. “I’d thought Margolis had lost it before, locking us up like that. But that was nothing. He came in and pulled Dan out of his cell, took him someplace. I don’t know where, but I’m guessing up to the labs, since that was where he had his goons torturing your djinn.”

  I winced, and she added,

  “Sorry. I’m just — I’m tired.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. Past was past, but we still needed to hear about it so we could formulate our plans for the future.

  “No, it’s not.” A shiver went over her, even though the room was quite warm now that the fire was dancing away happily in the hearth. “Anyway, Dan came back with two black eyes and a broken nose. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, locked up in my own cell the way I was. We couldn’t even really talk because of the security camera. All I could do was watch him huddle in a corner and try to stop the bleeding with a piece of fabric he tore off from one of the sheets on his cot.”

  I almost stopped her there. Hearing the way they’d hurt Dan, someone who’d survived the Dying with his dignity intact, who’d protected Stacy from the more predatory survivors…well, unless you counted Margolis among those predators…it made me want to scream at the injustice of it all. Problem was, I had a good idea that there was far worse news yet to come.

  “But they didn’t leave it at that,” I said, almost in a whisper.

  “No. They beat him up for…I’m not sure, but I think it was at least four days in a row. Maybe five. Then Margolis came down and stared at me in that way he has — you know, where your skin wants to crawl right off your body?”

  Unfortunately, I knew all too well. And he hadn’t even done anything to me, except send a few leers in my direction. He’d been occupied with other things…other women…and so, thank God, he’d never expended too much energy on me. I nodded, but didn’t reply.

  Julia drew up her knees and clutched them against her body. Staring at the watercolor on the wall, she said, “He told me that Dan had confessed to helping Jace escape, and then to assisting with the kidnapping of Miles. He said that Dan was a traitor, and there was only one thing they did to traitors.”

  “Execute them,” I whispered.

  “And that’s what they did. I didn’t see the execution, of course. No, Margolis wanted to keep me safely locked up. Only his own people were allowed to bring me food and water, keep watch over me. Maybe he thought I might have a few allies in town, so the best way to keep me completely isolated was to only allow the people he trusted implicitly to see me. But Stacy told me later. She didn’t go into a lot of detail, but it was enough. I knew anyway, though, even without being told. It’s pretty obvious what’s happened when your cellmate is taken away and never comes back.”

  I had no words. Funny, how I’d heard people say that before, but I hadn’t really believed it. There was always something you could say. But now — hearing how a good and decent man had been killed because he’d dared to do the right thing, it seemed as if every single word of condolence I’d ever heard had just shrunk up and melted away.

  Problem was, I feared that still wasn’t the worst of it. Not completely, anyway.

  With a shaking hand, Julia reached over for her water glass and drank what remained in it. She stared down at it for a few seconds, then remarked with very little emotion in her voice, “Too bad that wasn’t Scotch.”

  “We have some here at the resort,” I said, “but I don’t really recommend drinking it on an empty stomach.”

  The faintest ghost of a smile touched the corners of her mouth. Except for the bruise on her jaw, and the shadowing under her eyes, she really did look much more like the Julia I remembered. But that darkness in her, that thing I couldn’t quite figure out until she told me about her abusive fiancé — that darkness seemed magnified now. There was something even more distant, more reserved, in her manner, as if the only way she could deal with any of this was to put up a wall between herself and what had happened.

  Still in that same flat voice, Julia went on, “It was the day after Dan was taken away and never came back. Or night, maybe. There aren’t any windows down there in the holdi
ng area.”

  I nodded, and she grimaced.

  “Sorry. Forgot for a moment that you’d been there, too. So.” She stopped then, fingers running through the damp strands of her hair. As it dried, it was taking on a faint wave. I’d remembered it as straight, but she’d probably blow-dried or flat-ironed it. She picked up one lock, holding it between her index and middle finger, then let it fall again. “That night, or afternoon, or whatever. I’d been dozing, probably because I didn’t have anything better to do, and it could have been nighttime. But then I opened my eyes and saw Margolis standing there outside my cell. He looked…smug, like he knew a secret that I didn’t. And then — ”

  Her head tilted upward, as if she found something vitally important in the dark wood beams that crossed the ceiling. I knew that probably wasn’t it, that she just wanted to avoid looking at me.

  A taut silence filled the room. Not sure whether I should say anything, I nonetheless blurted out, “You don’t have to tell me. It’s okay.”

  The quiet was so thick, it seemed to throb against my eardrums. “No,” she said at last, her tone brittle, calm. “I’m not going to hide from it. I’ve done too much hiding in my life. He came into my cell and locked it behind him. And then” — she swallowed, and I could see tears shimmering in her eyes — “then he did what he’d come there to do. All in silence. Not one word. He didn’t have to tell me why. This was his way of getting revenge. I knew that the whole time. And so I endured it, and didn’t say anything, either. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. And then he got up and left.”

  My stomach twisted. Right then I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything. “Julia, I’m so sorry — ”

  “It’s all right. I lived through it.” A blink, and the tears seemed to recede. “I’m not going to give him power over me by dwelling on it. Anyway, that went on for… a couple of days, maybe a week. I started to lose track. The whole time I was wondering whether he planned to keep me down there forever, or whether he was going to kill me, too, once he got tired of me. But then he started working on me, saying he didn’t want to keep me a prisoner anymore. All I had to do was confess to helping Dan, and he’d let me out.”