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"You get what that means, right?"
"Do pole vaulters get tips?" he asked innocently, and lifted the silver cover on one of the large platters on the tray. He reached in and snagged a piece of bacon, which made my mouth water suddenly; I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten. Ever.
Cherise stared at him with a wounded expression. "That's a joke, right? Please tell me you are joking, because if you're not joking, that is just tragic, and I'm going to have to stage an intervention. "
David munched bacon and explored the rest of the buffet she'd delivered as I got up from my chair. "Strippers. Poles. I understand. "
"Thank God. Because if a hottie like you had never seen a stripper, my faith in God was going to . . . " Cherise suddenly clammed up, which wasn't like her at all. She looked down, then around at the silent, still Djinn. "Yeah," she finished very quietly. "Guess that ship has sailed. And, oh look, we're on it. "
It wasn't like Cherise to fail to find the sunny side of the cloud, but then again, we'd been under clouds for what seemed like years at this point. I guessed that even the eternal optimist had to reevaluate, given the circumstances.
"How is everyone else?" David asked. I reached over him to take a slice of bacon as he poured coffee from the small thermal pot.
"The Wardens are all freaking out because they're Joe Normals," Cherise said. "For me, it's just another sunny day in paradise, really. Not that I'm in the mood to tan or anything. "
She really was depressed. Well, I could see why. . . . She was probably the only person on the entire ship, other than the hired crew, who couldn't feel anything odd about the area through which we sailed. The Wardens were reduced to shakes and panic, feeling suffocated by their isolation, and they probably resented her for her lack of suffering.
I was starting to actually get used to it. A little.
The food helped steady me, and I could see David's body language easing a little as well.
He hadn't needed to pay careful attention to his metabolism in, oh, about five thousand years or so, and since he'd originally been killed and reborn as a Djinn at the tender age of what was probably his early twenties, if that, it wasn't too likely he'd ever experienced the kind of human trials I was already starting to put up with.
My mother used to say that getting old isn't for sissies. Neither is being human, for that matter. And the fact that David had managed to pull himself together so fast, and so gracefully, was humbling. I hadn't functioned nearly so well when I'd, in turn, been pulled over to the Djinn side. That should have been a lot more fun than it turned out to be.
The ship's motion had increased a little--difficult to tell, in a ship this big, but I could feel the pitch and yaw deep in my guts. If I'd still been a Weather Warden, I'd have been able to tell a whole lot more--how the air was moving, the tides, the deep and complex breathing between the water and the air above. Two kinds of fluids, moving as one.
Symbiotic.
Now all I could tell was that my stomach was rolling with the motion. Great.
"The captain says we should be able to dock in a couple of days," Cherise said. "I don't know about you guys, but I could dig my toes in some sand. I'm starting to feel like I'm lost on Gilligan's Island. And I can't even be Ginger, because I don't have any evening gowns. "
David stopped in the act of lifting a grape to his mouth. Just . . . froze. And I thought maybe he was confused about the pop culture reference, but that wasn't like him, and anyway, he didn't usually just . . .
Every Djinn lying in the beds suddenly sat straight up and screamed.
It was an eerie, tormented, unearthly wailing sound, and shockingly loud. I staggered, dropping my glass, pressing both hands to my ears, and setting my back against the wall for primal protection. There was something wrong with that sound, deeply and horribly wrong. Cherise crouched, covering her head; if she was screaming I couldn't hear her over the incredible, deafening sound of raw pain coming from every one of the Djinn.
Every one of them but David, who was pale, standing frozen in place, and unable to make a sound or movement. His eyes, though--his eyes were screaming.
It seemed to go on forever, the needle-sharp sound piercing the fragile barrier of skin and bone I'd put over my ears. It shattered into my brain, filling it with a horror I'd never experienced and wasn't sure I could survive. I felt my heart racing, thudding in panic against my ribs, and my knees failed me. I slid down the bulkhead wall.
I was weeping hysterically, struggling to catch any hint of a breath. It felt as if the sound itself were a weight on me, driving the air from my body. . . .
And then, as suddenly as it had started, it cut off. Not because the Djinn stopped screaming.
Because the Djinn, every single one of them except David, had vanished in a flicker of cold blue light.
Gone.
David fell hard, eyes still wide and locked in a terrible, panicked stare. I peeled my hands away from my ears, gathered strength, and managed to crawl on shaking hands to where he lay. I sat and pulled his head and shoulders into my lap as I stroked his hair and face. His skin felt ice-cold and clammy. His color was awful.
I couldn't hear anything, just the ringing echo of that awful, eternal scream. I wondered whether I'd gone deaf. I thought I'd hear that sound for the rest of my life, or until I went mad, but I realized it was slowly fading. I could hear Cherise gasping and crying a few feet away. She'd collapsed on her side, curled into a ball. Her hands were still pressed to her ears.
"Baby," I whispered to David. "Baby, talk to me. Talk to me. "
He tried. His lips parted. Nothing came out, or if it did my damaged ears couldn't separate it from the still-ringing echoes of the screams.
He was shuddering. As I watched, he curled himself on his side, like Cherise, and pulled his knees up.
What just happened?
In seconds the sick bay door slammed open, and at least a dozen Wardens pelted into the room, with Lewis in the lead. He looked as shell-shocked as I felt, but at least he was on his feet and moving. He took it in at a single glance--Cherise, me, David, the empty beds where the Djinn had been.
The breath went out of him, and he went pale. Lewis took a slow, deliberate second, then turned to face the other Wardens. "Kevin, see to Cherise," he said. "Bree, Xavier--get David into a bed. Warm blankets. " He crouched down to put our eyes level, and whatever he was seeing in my face, it obviously didn't comfort him. "Jo?"
I tried to speak, then wetted my lips and tried again. The two Wardens he'd delegated were taking hold of David's arms and helping him rise. He wasn't able to offer much in the way of assistance. "I don't know," I finally managed to say. "Something--happened. "
"Where did the Djinn go?"
I just shook my head. My eyes blurred with tears. I felt lost, alone, cut off, horribly frightened. Lewis reached out and gripped my hands in his.
"Jo," he said. "Jo, listen to me. I need you to focus. You need to tell me what you saw. Tell me what you heard. "
I tried to remember, but the instant I did, that sound filled my head again, as fresh and hot and painful as before. Shatteringly loud. I clapped my hands over my ears again, and dimly heard myself screaming, begging him to make it stop.
The next thing I knew, I felt a small, hot pain in my arm, and then the sound was fading, drifting away along with the light and the pain and everything in the world.
Darkness.
Silence.
Chapter Two
The first thing I heard when I woke up was a distant, soft echo of screaming. With it came a jolt of adrenaline, a feeling of drowning, of being consumed by something . . . massive.
Then it receded, like a tide, and I was left shaking and cold despite the piles of warm blankets on top of me. Lewis was asleep in a chair next to my bed, leaning forward with his head resting on the covers next to me. One long-fingered hand was touching mine, very lightly.
; He was snoring.
I smiled wearily and ruffled his hair. "Hey," I said. "How can anybody sleep with that noise?"
Lewis sat up, blinking, wiping his mouth, and looking so cutely rumpled and abashed that I felt something in me wobble off its axis. Don't look like that. Oh, and please don't look at me like that while you're doing it.
He was tough enough to resist when he wasn't being adorable.
"Sorry," he mumbled, and scrubbed his stubbly face with both hands. "Bad night. " Some focus came back into his eyes, and I was able to get that wobbling part of me back in balance. "How are your ears?"
"I could hear you snoring like a chain saw. I must be healed. "
That got a grin from him, brief as it was. "Then I guess they're intact. "
I looked around. David was lying in the next bed over, still asleep. He looked pale and tired and anxious, even resting.
Cherise was curled in on herself in the next bed after David.
"How are they?" I asked. I was afraid of the answer, but he just nodded briskly, and relief flooded in on me in a warm wave. "No lasting damage?"
"Worn-out," he said. "David was able to talk a little before he drifted off. Cherise just needs sleep. "
"He told you--" My brain flashed back to the screaming Djinn, that sound, and I felt the panic race back, slamming into my body and jolting me into a sudden sitting position. It wasn't as loud this time. Or I was getting used to hearing that awful, awful noise. I swallowed several times and concentrated hard, and the screaming died away.
I was holding Lewis's hand in a death grip. I eased off, remembering to breathe, and saw the worry and fear in his face. "I'm okay," I said. If I said it enough, maybe it would even be true. "David told you--"
"About the Djinn disappearing," Lewis said. "We heard the--the sound out there, everywhere in the ship. According to radio communications, we weren't the only ship that heard it. It blew out speakers on a tanker ten miles out. It came from the Djinn? You're sure?"
I nodded, not sure I could trust my voice just then. I was controlling the effects of the experience, but my body was still reacting in flight-or-fight mode. Finally, I said, "They just screamed and vanished. I don't know what happened. "
"I do," Lewis said. "We reached the edge of the black corner. "
I stared at him. I hadn't felt . . . anything.
No change in my perception of the world. No connections snapping back in place.
I was still cut off.
That shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. It felt as if all the props had just been knocked out from under me, as if some joker had pulled the handle on a trapdoor and I was going to fall forever. I'd said
I understood what had happened to me, but deep down inside, I'd believed--I'd believed that I was better than that. That my power would come snapping back, and once we were beyond the borders of the black corner, I'd be . . . myself.
Lewis could tell. I hated to see the pity in his face, so I looked away, fighting back the tears. I couldn't do much about the trembling, though. "So," I said, and forced my voice to be something like normal. "The Wardens are back in business?"
"More or less," he said, and broke up into a fit of wet coughing. Once he'd gotten that out of the way, he smiled ruefully. "Some are feeling better than others. Jo--"
"We knew this was going to happen," I interrupted him. "David and I. We knew our powers were . . . gone. We just have to figure out how to get them back. "
"It's possible that they'll come back on their own, over time. That your body will be able to repair the damage. "
"Don't bullshit me, Lewis. I'm not a child, and I don't want false hope. "
"I'm not offering any," he said. "Look, we just don't know. Things are--nothing makes sense right now. The Djinn . . . the way things feel--"
"What about the way things feel?" I thought he was talking about the two of us, and that was dangerous, uncertain territory. But he wasn't, as it turned out.
"The world isn't right," Lewis said. "Things are wrong out there. Badly wrong. Bad enough that it blew the Djinn out like candles once they came out into the storm. "
My breath caught in my throat, and I grabbed his hand again. "They're not--"
"I don't think they're dead," he said. "But they're not visible to us, not anymore. I can't reach any of them, even on the aetheric. It's like they've been--taken. "
"But what if they're more than gone? What if they're--"
"They're not dead," he repeated. "I'd know if they were. Hell, the whole world would know, I think. "
I shuddered, trying hard not to think about that. If the Djinn were gone, one of the key support structures in the delicate architecture of the planet had disappeared, sending us screaming off balance into the dark. We wouldn't survive that. Any of us, including Mother Earth herself. The Djinn were like antibodies in her bloodstream, designed to attack and defend her against dangerous infections. She needed them.
"So what now?" I asked. Lewis yawned, tried to cover it up, and failed miserably. "Besides about a month of bed rest for you, and inhalation therapy, and a boatload of antibiotics?"
"Yeah, like that's going to happen. We both know the reward for a good job is more work, only done faster and more difficult. "
He wasn't wrong about that, but I didn't know how much more Lewis could take. He'd been through as much as I had--more, maybe, depending on how you count such things. And he didn't have a loved one's strength to rely on. Lewis only had himself.