“What, getting myself backed into a corner to be chopped up by the walking meat slicer? Yeah, spectacular job. Mom would be proud.”
“I don’t think many humans could have stood against it at all,” he said. “Fewer still would have tried. I talked with Venna about how she destroyed it. She vibrated it. I think you could do the same?”
“Vibrated—” Of course. Crystalline structure in its bones and claws and teeth. Strong, but hit it with the right oscillated frequency, and you could hurt it, maybe destroy it. “I’d need to experiment to get it right. I don’t suppose you have any remains . . . ?”
For answer, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a single crystal tooth, about the size of a small switch-blade. He held it in his palm for a moment, weighing it, and then handed it to me. “Careful,” he said. “Sharp.”
He was right; it still held a wicked edge. I wrapped it in handfuls of tissue paper from the box on the night-stand and put it in my own pocket for later study.
“Do we know if there are more on board?” I asked. “Because we really don’t need another ugly surprise.”
David got up and opened the cabin door. In walked another Djinn, a brawny, bald-headed sort who looked like he might have moonlighted on a cleaner bottle from time to time. His skin was a dull metallic gray, and his eyes were the color of rust.
He looked around the sparse cabin with an expression like he’d bitten a bug in half, then dragged over the small side chair. Cherise wasn’t in at the moment, for which I was grateful; she’d gone off in search of medicinal ice cream. I could imagine her running commentary on this scene.
“This is Lyle,” David said.
“Seriously?” I blurted. They both shot me an odd look. “I mean, come on. Lyle?”
Lyle smiled. He’d filed his teeth into sharp little points. “You got a problem with that?” He had a surprising Deep South accent, slow and warm. It didn’t sound artificial, as if he was mocking me, either.
Another oddity.
“Uh, no, no problem,” I said. “It’s just not exactly the kind of name I’m used to hearing from supernatural beings. A little too—”
“Human?”
“Country,” I said. “Not even a little bit rock and roll.”
David decided it was time to intervene before my conversational skills cost me a bruise or two. “Lyle became a Djinn during one of the World Wars.”
“Which one?”
“They come so close together,” David said. “First?”
Lyle nodded. “I kept my human name. A lot of Djinn don’t bother. Sorry it doesn’t meet with your approval, Warden.”
“No, you’re not,” I said, and he smiled again. This time, he’d put away the scary teeth, and his dentition was blindingly white and perfectly human-normal.
If anything, that was weirder.
“Lyle was checking for energy signatures,” David said. “Did you find anything?”
“Yes. Weaker than the one you two tripped across, though, and well hidden.” Lyle’s rust-colored eyes darkened just a shade. “They’re hiding as humans.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Two more?” My throat threatened to close up around the words, and Lyle sent me a sharp look. I needed to work on my poker face. “What do we know about them?”
“They’re wearing skins,” Lyle said. “The skins used to be people, so they have history and weight in the aetheric. They took care not to kill the skins. I think they knew it was a good disguise. Good enough to fool most Djinn, even.”
He was trying to describe something that I was trying equally hard not to imagine. “These people—can we save them?”
“Not people,” Lyle said. “Like I said, they’re just skins now. Nothing inside.”
I wished he hadn’t said that. Or at least, hadn’t sounded so matter-of-fact about it.
“Why haven’t they attacked us already?” I asked. “They probably know their big brother’s gone, right? What are they waiting for, the all-you-can-eat-buffet light to go on?”
“They’re definitely waiting on some type of signal, if they haven’t struck at us yet,” David said. “They can afford to bide their time. We don’t even really know what they’re capable of doing, not yet.”
“No,” I said slowly. “They did strike already. They killed the Djinn we found in the hallway outside my old cabin. We just don’t know why, because we can’t figure out who she was or what she was doing at the time.”
It was the perfect dead end, and it was wasted on David and Lyle, who looked at each other as if silently thinking that I’d gone just slightly nuts. Humans, Lyle’s shrug said. Who knows what goes on in their tiny heads?
“We need to backtrack and figure out why they felt threatened by that Djinn,” I said. “Or why they had to stop what she was doing. David—” He was still giving me that blank look. “Never mind. I’ll figure it out. Anyway, one good thing about it—they’re probably worried about how we managed to kill their strongest monster already.” I swallowed. “Please tell me that it was the strongest one.”
“It was,” David said. I heaved a deep sigh of relief.
“We should kill them now,” Lyle said.
“How? Just one of them was capable of nearly killing me, fighting David to a standstill, and halfway destroying Venna,” I said. “So I’m not feeling real good about our chances with taking on two of them at once. Any other options?”
Lyle cocked one thin eyebrow. “Swim back to shore.”
“Just run away.”
“Unless you want to wait for them to strike first.”
“You weren’t serious about the running away, right?”
“Oh, he was,” David said.
Lyle nodded. Lyle was turning out to be the least confrontational supernatural being I’d ever met. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a refreshing change, but considering that I wanted a bunch of fire-eating, hard-charging badasses to back me up right now . . . not so much.
We both looked at David, who seemed to be half a world away. He dragged himself back with an effort. “We bide our time,” he said. “It’s too dangerous to go after them right now. Venna can’t be used against them again, and we need to know more than we know now. Joanne—”
“Yeah, got it. Find out the right frequencies to do damage, and get everybody up to speed on the info, quietly. Oh, you probably should tell me just who I’m avoiding, here. Not Wardens?” Because I’d hate to have missed that in my initial checks.
“No,” Lyle said, relieving me of screwups. “One is crew, an engineering mate below passenger decks. The other is hiding as a stowaway in the ship’s hold. He will be difficult to reach, and harder to trap.”
“Let them hide for now,” David said. “Watch them. Any change, any indication something’s happening, report it as soon as you can. If they try to sabotage the ship—” I hadn’t even thought of that, and the idea twisted me deep in the gut. “Could they?”
“Of course. But not easily, and probably not fatally. With the Wardens and Djinn aboard, most damage can be repaired immediately.” David sounded a lot more confident than I felt at the moment. I guess I was glad somebody was. “If you need help—”
Lyle gave a very human-sounding snort. “Why would I?”
“Because Joanne’s right,” David said. “One of these things nearly won against two Djinn and a powerful Warden. Don’t let your confidence blind you to the possibility of losing spectacularly.” At that moment, I thought he sounded a whole lot like his predecessor, Jonathan—calm, acidic, absolutely in control. And Lyle must have thought so too, because he inclined his head a bit and looked contrite.
“Their names,” I said.
“What?” Both Djinn looked at me.
“The people. I’d like to know their names.”
“Why does it matter?” Lyle asked. “They’re skins. I told you, they’re empty.”
“You also told me the skins used to be real people. Real histories. Families. Friends.” I held his gaze. Good thing I’d had practice with that, because Lyle had the eerie Djinn thing down pat. “I want to know because it’s the only way we can honor their memories.”