That wouldn't be too hard. Cherise was looking more and more like an out-of-her-depth undergrad.
"So what do we know?" Tasked, and slid into an empty chair. Cherise hastily took the one next to me. I scanned faces around the room and saw about twelve I recognized. Way too many were missing. I had to hope they were still somewhere out there, doing their jobs. I exchanged quick nods with the people I knew.
"We started losing contact with Wardens all over the country about three days ago. Started with just a few, but it spread like wildfire," a lean, weathered woman of about forty said. "It took us a while to understand that they were being attacked by Djinn. No survivors until they came after Marion."
I glanced down the table into shadows, alarmed. I'd seen Marion… Yes, there she was, half-hidden near the end. Marion was an Earth Warden, and her skill was healing, but self-healing was a chancy undertaking at the best of times. She looked terrible. I exchanged another nod with her.
"Marion, I'm so sorry. Your Djinn—?" I didn't know how to finish that question, because Marion and I knew things about each other that really weren't suited to sharing with a table full of strangers. Such as, I knew that Marion had taken enormous risks to recover her lost Djinn, not so very long ago, and it hadn't been out of selfless duty; she and her Djinn were lovers. That fell under the "forbidden tragic love" section of the Warden code, even under normal circumstances; I just didn't know for certain how tragic it had turned out this time.
She took me off the hook. "My Djinn helped me take out the two who came to—to freehim. Then he asked me to put him back into his bottle. I did, and sealed it."
"First good advice we had," Paul said. "We've been getting hold of every Warden we can find and telling them the same thing. Get your Djinn safe and seal the bottles until we know what the hell's going on. You got anything, Jo?"
I stretched my hands flat on the scarred wood surface. "Afraid so. Here's the deal. The Djinn were serving us only because of an agreement made a few thousand years ago between the first Wardens and the most powerful Djinn in the world. His name is—was—Jonathan."
Silence, and then… "Kind of a modern name, isn't it?" Cherise asked. "Jonathan, I mean. Wouldn't he have an Egyptian name or—"
"Cherise. This is my story. You talk later. The thing is, once Jonathan made the agreement, which was supposed to be temporary, the Wardens didn't keep their end of the bargain. They didn't let the Djinn go once the emergency was past all those thousands of years ago. There was always some disaster or another to serve as an extension on the contract, and then they didn't even bother making up excuses. Some of the Djinn have had enough of waiting for the Wardens to grow a conscience, and the Wardens forgot that any such agreement ever existed. So the Free Djinn—"
That term caused a rustle of throat-clearing and shifting in chairs, and the inevitable interruption. "There aren't any such thing as—" someone began to declare, in much the same way people once insisted the world was flat.
"Yes there are, Rosa." That was Marion, and her tone was surprisingly sharp, coming from a woman who was normally so level and soothing in manner. But then, we'd all had a damn hard few days. I could see that it might be difficult to suffer fools with the same level of grace she usually displayed.
"Continue," Paul said, watching me.
I swallowed, wished in vain for a drink of water, and got on with it. "So some of the Free Djinn started killing Wardens, trying to free their brethren, as well. But some didn't agree with that tactic, so there was fighting in the Djinn ranks. Jonathan—" What the hell hadhappened to Jonathan? Something catastrophic. "Jonathan died. And when he died, the agreement between the Djinn and the Wardens, the one that kept them under our command, that went sideways. We don't own the Djinn anymore. Not as of the moment he stopped existing."
Paul's face went a paler shade of scared. "You mean, they're no longer under our control at all?"
"Yes, that's what I mean."
"Well, that's just great. You drove all the way from Florida to tell me we're dead?"
"You want me to go on, or what?" I glared back. He finally closed his drug-glazed eyes and nodded. "Right. Well, we've always thought we were fighting the planet, one on one. A fair contest. But I have to tell you, it isn't fair, and it isn't even a contest. She hasn't even been awake." Inarticulate noises of protest and denial. I ignored them. "She's not even concentrating on us at all. We're like little mosquitoes she's been swatting in her sleep."
Paul's face had drained of what little color he had. "Jo—"
"Hang on, I'm still getting to the bad news." I sucked in a deep breath, then blew it out. "She's starting to wake up. Once she does, she can control the Djinn absolutely, and that means we'll face a thousand times the power we did before. Maybe worse than that. And without any help from the usual sources."
He looked glassy-eyed. "Was that the bad news? Because for fuck's sake, don't tell me it gets worse than that."
"Yeah, that was it."
He didn't say anything. The silence ticked off, one cold second at a time, until Marion murmured, "Then that would be the end of it."
Paul looked up sharply. "I'm not throwing in the towel, and you're not either," he snapped. "Jo. What else you got for us? Anything on the plus side?"
"I may—" I edited myself carefully, well aware of the way this might go. "I may know of a Djinn who can still help us."
"I'm the guy in charge of handing out life preservers on the Titanic. Anything you got that can help, let's have it. I mean, we're talking about Band-Aids on a sucking chest wound, but—"
"I don't know if this Djinn has the ability to do much," I said quickly. It wouldn't do to get anybody's hopes up, and I wasn't even sure where Imara was, or what she was up to. "But I'll check into it. Maybe we can get some intelligence about what's happening to the Djinn without too much risk. Meanwhile, we have to get off our asses. We're powerful in our own right, but we've been relying on the Djinn for too long. You need to get all hands on deck, make them quit playing politics and doing under-the-table deals. Put them to workfor a change." I bit my lip, debating, and then continued, "And get the Ma'at on board. The Wardens got lazy, using the Djinn to help them. We have to learn a whole new way of doing things. The Ma'at can help."
There was another stir of resistance. Not denial—this was confusion. Marion knew about the Ma'at, and I'd presumed she'd reported everything to Paul, but surprise… he wasn't looking like he recognized the name, and neither did anyone else. I shot Marion an alarmed, semidesperate glance. She raised an inscrutable you're on your owneyebrow.
I tried for a calm tone. "I thought you knew, Paul. The Ma'at. I guess you'd call them a rival organization, who can raise up powers that can influence the same things we can. I met them in Vegas."
"Rival organization? Vegas?" Paul's face went from white to an alarming shade of maroon. "Vegas? You're telling me you knew about all this months ago?"
Well, crap, I'd quit, hadn't I? Why would I have narked on the Ma'at, at that point? "You guys weren't exactly keeping the communication channels open, you know! The Ma'at aren't as powerful as we are. Okay, to be honest, I don't know how powerful they are, but I know they're not as widespread. Still, they have a different approach. They might be able to help."
"Are you working for them?".