“Jo.” David’s voice was rough, not quite steady. When I looked up into his eyes, I recognized the expression. “I see I can’t make the world stop for long. And you think too much.”
“I was just thinking what a terrible risk that was,” I said. “Because—”
“Because of the mark.”
I nodded. He lifted himself up on one elbow and looked down at me, golden skin still shimmering in the light, flushed in all the right places.
“I know,” he said, and trailed his fingertips over the line of my collarbone. “But you’re my wife, and no matter what the risks might be, that matters more to me.”
“I love you,” I whispered. “But you need to be careful. Especially with me.”
His smile was warm enough to light every candle in the world. “I was, at first. But I fell in love with you instead. Now there is no safety from you.”
I burrowed close to him, and his arms wrapped around me, and for the moment it was all quiet. All peace.
“For as long as we live,” he said, and kissed the top of my head. “Which means forever, if I have any say in it.”
Chapter Four
It wasn’t heaven, but it was damn close. For the next couple of hours I slept, curled in David’s protective arms, feeling safe for the first time I could remember. The motion of the ship was rhythmic and soothing, and for a little while the world did go away, after all.
I could almost—almost—believe it was a honeymoon cruise.
Right up until Cherise threw open the bedroom door and stood there, panting, staring at us with eyes that didn’t really see us at all.
“You’d better get out here,” she said, as David sat up. I did too, swiping hair back from my face and grabbing at the thousand-thread-count sheets as they threatened to slide away. Cherise, shockingly, didn’t seem to notice any of that—not even David’s exposed chest, which frankly should have at least gotten a double take, or a stare, or a patented Cherise come-on.
She just delivered her message and dashed away.
“That’s not like her,” David said, swinging his legs out of bed. “Is it?”
“Nope. Clothes?”
“Closet.” He was already heading there. He pulled open the door and inside was a rainbow of choices, some for him, some for me.
“Underwear?” I asked.
He raised eyebrows. “Is it absolutely necessary?”
“Right now? Yes.”
“Top drawer.” He nodded toward a delicate-looking dresser, something that would have made Antiques Roadshow stars buzz with excitement. In it, I found new bras, panties, stockings—pretty much anything I might need, or crave. Or David might crave. I picked out something plain and put it on. As I turned, David threw me a shirt and pants. Jeans, and a navy blue shirt that clung in all the right places.
He was dressing too, the old-fashioned way. As a Djinn, he could have easily just gone the magic route, but I stole a few precious seconds enjoying the sight of him wiggling into Joe Boxers, which might have been intended, from the smile he gave me.
Even with mutual appreciation, it took us only about a minute to dress, and then we headed down the stairs.
Cherise was there. So was Lewis. He was self-contained again, only the shadow of trauma left in his dark eyes.
“I need you,” he said bluntly. He turned and walked out of the cabin, moving fast. David and I exchanged a look and followed.
There was a dead body in the hallway. I stopped when I saw her, shock slamming through me. She looked like she’d been turned to crumbling clay, or ash—lifeless, a mockery of something that had once been real and vital.
“God,” I whispered, and slowly crouched without touching the corpse. Lewis knelt on the other side of it. “Who—?”
“That’s the problem,” Lewis said. “I don’t know. I think she’s one of the Djinn.”
I looked up at David, who was staring down at the two of us with a frown. He focused on the body on the floor.
“That isn’t a Djinn,” he said. “I don’t know what that is.”
He realized, then, what he was saying. Djinn couldn’t not know, in the normal course of events; they could spool back the history of things. They saw time—it was a real sense to them, the way touch and taste were to humans.
The only way he couldn’t know who this person was, was if this was a Djinn and the Djinn had been murdered by Unmaking, the special new weapon of Bad Bob Biringanine.
Antimatter. It was deadly to the Djinn in all kinds of hideous ways.
The next thought came to me with sickening speed and impact. He had access to the ship.
I snapped a lightning-fast glance at Lewis, and saw that this was not news to him. He’d already come to the same conclusion, presumably well before he’d come to summon us. David’s reaction was just his confirmation. “Fuck,” I said. “He’s been here, on board, or at least he’s gotten one of his minions through our defenses. We should have known. Our early warning system—”
“Clearly isn’t working,” Lewis finished. “Which means he, or any of his people, could be here. This place is big enough to hide an army if they didn’t want to be found.”
“But if hiding was the point, why leave this poor lady right here in the open?” I asked. “They could have hidden her anywhere. Her Conduit wouldn’t even know she was missing.” Which was the awful part of it. David, as Conduit for the Djinn, had a personal connection to each and every one he was responsible for. Ashan had the same connection to his half of their numbers. Bad Bob’s weapon of choice did worse than kill; it erased. The Djinn couldn’t recognize their own dead, or the weapons that killed them. The moment the victim died, it ceased to have ever been.
My nightmare was that it might be David lying here, with another Djinn staring at him in that same annoyed confusion, not even remembering his existence.
There was something so chilling in it that I had a hard time wrapping my head around it.
“That’s not a Djinn,” David murmured. He wasn’t trying to convince us, only himself. “It can’t be.” We’d been through this. He understood, intellectually, what was happening, but this was a kind of phobia for the Djinn—a blind spot that left them vulnerable, one that couldn’t be overcome by knowledge or experience. It wasn’t seated in the rational parts of their brains.
“Count your people,” Lewis said. He said it quietly, a little regretfully, as if he didn’t really want to know, either. David continued to stare at the corpse.
“Counting myself,” he said, “fifteen Djinn are on this vessel.” In other words—exactly the number we’d started with.
I exchanged a baffled stare with Lewis. “You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Ten of my people, myself, and four of Ashan’s. Fifteen.”
“Then where did this one come from?”
He couldn’t answer that. It was like his brain locked up and refused to produce an answer. Instead, he shook his head, stubbornly unable to get past the paradox.
“Maybe Ashan sent another Djinn,” I said. “A new one.”
“You’re sure this isn’t one of his four?” Lewis asked.
“I’m sure.” I’d seen the four of them, and Venna had been the only one representing herself as female. While the Djinn could change sexes, in my experience they rarely did it without a damn good reason. “This is insane. Can you get Ashan on the line and ask him?”
David’s attention went elsewhere, but only for a moment, and then he shook his head in the negative. “Venna’s coming,” he said. Before he finished the sentence, I caught sight of Venna’s sparkly pink shirt at the end of the hall. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry, but in the next breath she was there, standing at David’s side.