It's so strange, how quickly you can go back to normal life. The first shock came as the tires of the SUV hit blacktop. The sudden lack of vibration felt weird and unnatural, and for a second I had a nightmarish vision of myself as a backwoods four-wheeling fanatic like Emily, wearing oversize work shirts and thick-waisted jeans and clunky steel-toed boots. With a collection of trucker gimme caps.
Behind us, the forest fire was a lurid red fury, pouring blackness into the clouds. I felt sick, remembering how I'd left things with David. It already seemed more dream than reality.
I wiped tears from my grimy cheeks and thought longingly of a shower. A long, hot shower, followed by a deep, drug-induced sleep.
Paved road or not, I still had a half mile or so to go before we reached the actual highway. Not out of the woods yet. The fire had turned back, consolidated itself—fighting the Djinn now, instead of the Wardens. It might give us just enough breathing space.
Home. Where was home? Sure, I'd drop Emily off at her house, but where did I belong? Back at Warden HQ, helping Lewis oversee the end of the world? Back in Florida, salvaging whatever was left of my apartment after the big storm, and waiting for the next one to hit?
My home was David, and I couldn't be with him.
I fought the tears again—self-pitying bullshit tears, and I wasn't going to give in—and decided to go with the one-crisis-at-a-time theory. First, get Emily home. I'd saved her, at least. That was something. Not much, but something.
From the backseat, Imara said, "Where are you going?"
I yelped and flinched, and the Jeep veered wildly, tires squealing. I got it under control again and looked behind me in the rearview. Imara was sitting there, black hair blowing liquidly in the wind.
"Isn't this supposed to have doors?" she asked.
"Upgrade," I said hoarsely. "Where were you?"
"Trying to get help." She closed her eyes and rested her head against the upholstery. "I ran into Ashan. I wasn't very successful."
"Help," I repeated. "Wait, Ashan!…"
"I'm fine. It doesn't matter," she said. "But at least you're safe."
I laughed. It turned into a racking, smoky cough and ended up in a sob that I controlled with an effort. "Yeah. Safe," I said. "How's the fire doing back there?"
She didn't even open her eyes. "Father and some of the other Djinn are there, trying to hold it, but it's hard. The Mother's… I suppose the closest description is that she's having a nightmare. He's trying to shelter the Djinn from it, but it's getting stronger. He won't be able to keep it from them indefinitely."
"A nightmare," I said. "About what?"
Her eyes opened. Amber-brown. Very human. "About humanity."
Sorry I asked. I remembered the dead Wardens, the suffering on David's face. My responsibility, he'd said. If he'd been trying to hold the Djinn back from whatever bad vibes the earth was trying to send out, maybe he'd slipped. Lost himself.
Maybe I was still trying to make excuses for him, and it had been a cold-blooded choice. Lewis had warned me, not so very long ago, not to underestimate the alien nature of the Djinn. Even the ones I loved.
Of course, the same could be said for people…
"You're thinking about Father," she said. "Right?"
"Why do you say that?"
"You look sad," she said quietly. "He'd hate that he makes you sad."
Oh, dammit. I was going to cry, wasn't I? No. I wasn't. I gulped enough air to make myself belch instead. "Are they going to be able to contain the fire?"
"Yeah," she said, and looked away. "But there's something else in there. Something bad."
Tell me about it. "Don't worry about your father—he's fought bad things most of his life."
"I know," she whispered. "But it's all falling apart, Mom. Why does it have to happen just when I—?"
The second she's born, the world starts to collapse. I bit my lip, furious with Jonathan suddenly; this was too big a burden to give any kid. Even a Djinn-born one. "It's going to be okay," I told her.
"I know," she said. Wind whipped her hair over her face and hid her expression. "I trust you."
I didn't answer. Couldn't. My throat had locked up tight, fighting the tears. Deep breathing helped, and concentrating on the flashing yellow center stripe. Freeway up ahead, and a battalion of flashing emergency lights. I slowed for a barricade. Since there was an exodus from the fire, it didn't appear passports would be an issue. The Mountie manning it nodded to me and moved it aside, and then we were out, racing into the clear day.
Free.
I dropped Emily at her house. She woke up halfway home and subjected me to a foul-mouthed inquisition; she didn't remember anything past her collapse at the ranger station, as it turned out. Convenient, that. I didn't have to answer questions about the Djinn, or the Demon Mark, or any of that crap. She looked ill, but intact, and when I offered to keep her company, she brushed me off as rudely as ever.
The fire was down to normal size, up north, according to the radio, which blamed it on a lightning strike and credited the brave Canadian fire patrols for containing the blaze. No mention of fifteen dead bodies littering the landscape. I wondered if David had cleaned up after his hit squad.
"Where now?" Imara asked. She was behind the wheel of the Camaro when I arrived, and I was too tired and too sore to argue with her.
"Back toward Seacasket," I said. She gave me a long, frowning look. "I know. I said toward, not to. I just need to think for a while."
"I'm not taking you back there," she warned, and put the Camaro in gear. "Father doesn't want you near the Oracle."
Having a Djinn driver was pretty damn sweet, I decided. For one thing, she was fully capable of opening up the car to its fullest potential, and simultaneously hiding it from any observant highway patrol cars. The Camaro loved to run, and some of its joy bled off into me, easing the ache in my guts. I closed my eyes and let the road vibration shake some of the despair away.
I must have dozed off; when I opened my eyes again, the car was downshifting, and Imara was making a turn into a parking lot in front of a roadside motel. "What's this?" I asked.
"You could use a shower," she said.
I winced. "Tact, Imara. We'll discuss it later."
"I'm sorry to be blunt, but you need a shower, and real sleep. Also, this is as close as I can take you to Seacasket without attracting Father's attention."
I hated to admit it, but the kid wasn't wrong. I sniffed at myself. Ugh. I did reek.
I sent Imara in to get the room—one look at me, and they'd promptly light up the no vacancy sign—and lounged against the dusty hood of the car, waiting. She came out dangling a clunky-looking key, the old-fashioned metal kind with a diamond-shaped holder blazoned with the room number. Four was my lucky number, at least today.
While I was in the shower, shampooing for the third time, Imara knocked on the door and shouted, "I'm going to get you some clothes!"
By the time I'd rinsed off and strolled out of the heat-fogged bathroom, she was gone. I curled up under the covers and flipped channels on the TV. The news was full of bad stuff: fires, earthquakes, storms, volcanoes. Europe was locked in a sudden, unexpected deep freeze. India was facing floods. So was South America.
I turned it off and remembered the Oracle. I'd come so close… so close. Wasn't there anything I could do, anything at all? I remembered the rich, dizzying, overwhelming sensation that had come over me when I'd been holding his hand. It reminded me of the on-rushing music of my dream, when Jonathan had told me to leave.