He turned and started for the door. I called a question after him. “How bad is it? Out there in the aetheric?”
“Come with me,” he said, and disappeared down the hall. I followed. “While you were sleeping, you’ve missed the party.”
I was unprepared for a living room full of people. There were at least thirty or forty crowded in. Djinn of every size, shape, description, color, and dressed in every conceivable style. Some evidently had a whole god complex going; the silks and satins were way over the top, not to mention the jewelry. It made Rahel’s traditionally neon color scheme look positively corporate.
Jonathan carved an easy path through the crowd and stood next to the fireplace, watching the jockeying for position; when he caught sight of me standing at the back, he jerked his head in a come heregesture that had nothing to do with concern. More like he wanted to keep his enemies close. I grabbed wall space at his shoulder and tried to look insignificant, which turned out to be difficult, since I was drawing stares and whispers. Jonathan held up his hands for quiet. Instant obedience.
“This is Joanne,” he said, and pointed a thumb in my direction.
A tanned, fit-looking guy in what looked like a hand-tailored suit and iron gray tie looked me over with eyes of a pure, unsettling teal color. “She doesn’t belong here.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Jonathan said, but in a tone that didn’t invite anyone to actually try. “Right. Here’s the thing. We’re what’s left.”
A short, pregnant silence. “What?” someone in the back ventured, looking around. Adding up numbers. “So few?”
“So many lost?” An alarmed, high-pitched voice from up front, I didn’t see who. “Impossible!”
“I didn’t say they were lost. I know right where they are,” Jonathan said. “Just can’t get to them right now. Most are in their bottles, waiting it out. Some… some got trapped on the aetheric. Some can’t hold themselves together anymore because of the—what’d you call it?” He turned to me.
“Coldlight. Sparklies. Fairy dust.”
“Right. That stuff.” He looked back at the audience, face bland and notably free of panic. “Which is coming out of the rift.”
Gray Suit said, “Then someone must go up and close the rift.”
If the previous silence had been pregnant, this one was stillborn. They all looked at each other. Jonathan waited. I finally raised my hand, very slowly. “Um… can I say something?”
He looked over his shoulder at me, did a double take, and half turned my way. “I don’t know, can you?”
Great. A grammar teacher, on top of everything else. “Sorry. May I?”
“Sure.”
“Lewis sent me to seal the rift. I tried, but it didn’t hold.”
Nobody spoke, but a ripple went through the room, like an electric charge rolling between contact points. Polarizing. Jonathan broke the silence in a deliberately soft voice. “You tried? Great. Amateur hour. Lewis should have known better. Probably made things a hundred times worse.”
“He tried to get some of youto help,” I shot back. “But I understand you had a gut shortage around here that day.”
Yeah, that wasn’t smart, but I was tired and cranky and Jonathan was pissing me off, what with all the sarcasm. The room seemed to shudder with disapproval.
Surprisingly, Jonathan didn’t seem to take offense. He swept me from head to toe, giving me a new appraisal.
“That the new you?” he asked.
“Old me,” I said. “Getting sick of being politically correct.”
“I like it. Now shut up.” He turned back to the assembled Djinn, who were agitated enough that I was surprised we didn’t have spontaneous firestarting. “The ones who are trapped out on the aetheric are in trouble. The ones who can’t hold themselves together anymore may be dead. We need to do this fast, do it well, and then make sure the Wardens don’t screw it up even worse than they usually do.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Gray Suit again.
“That we clean up after them, as we always do? Let the humans stand responsible for their crimes. Let them clear the aetheric.”
He wasn’t much impressed by Jonathan, which I thought was interesting, given the extreme respect the rest of them seemed to accord him. Gray Suit had a pale complexion, sharp hatchet-faced bones, and gave off a sense of ruthless energy. I’d still put my money on Jonathan, if it came to a showdown, but I wouldn’t have given generous odds, either.
“Yeah. We’ll just hang out here, watching our own people die. That’s a hell of a plan, Ashan. Right up there with your best.” He punctuated it with a friendly I have an idea! gesture. “Tell you what. Yougo out and tell them we’re going to let them die.”
“More of us die if we go out there,” Ashan said without blinking. He had the no-blinking thing down. “But then you seem not to worry about that. Since you, of course, never leave the safety of your nest.”
Silence. Most of the Djinn were studying Jonathan. Jonathan stared at Ashan.
“Um…” I tried to make it sound deferential, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded. “Shouldn’t we find out who opened the rip in the first place?” Jonathan fixed me with a look dire enough to qualify as neurosur-gery without anesthetic. Naturally, it didn’t stop me. “Well, isn’t it a good question? I mean, somebodyripped it open. Somebody with a lot of power and not enough conscience. Was it a Djinn?”
“What part of shut upwas unclear to you?”
I returned the stare, full force. Since last he’d intimidated me, I’d had the hard-core lesson in How To Be A Djinn, and the whole god-of-your-new-existence routine wasn’t going to cut it anymore. “Answer the question. Was it a Djinn who did it?”
“Oh, we are sogoing to talk about this later,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a yes. I’m just going on magical theory, here…” Because unlike the Djinn, I’d actually had class time learning about all of the physics of the stuff, the rules, and the various consequences. “… but it seems to me that whoever ripped it open would have a pretty good idea of how to close it. Since he must have known what he was doing. I mean, the thing was pretty well camouflaged when I got there. Discreet, you know?”
I had him. He blinked.
“Or was that stating the obvious?” I asked, and tilted my head to the side.
Neurosurgery. Without anesthetic. With a dull butter knife.
“We can’t ask the one who opened it,” he said.
“Because?”
The argument had taken on a tennis-match quality. The room full of Djinn was just watching us, shifting from one to the other, eyes avid. Rooting against me, no doubt. I didn’t care. There was only one opponent who mattered.
“Because he’s not here.” Jonathan’s fierce eyes were absolutely fiery. “Drop it already.”
I might have been slow on the uptake, but I finally got it. David. I know it registered on my face, because I felt it like an earthquake inside. David opened the rift…
“Why?” I whispered. “Why in God’s name would he…”
Jonathan gave me a pitying look, like I was the stupidest creature in the universe. Which, at that moment, I supposed I was. “For love,” he said. “Why else?”
David had opened the rift when he’d made me a Djinn. You’ve broken laws. Rahel had said that, and I hadn’t listened. Jonathan himself had tried to tell me how serious it was, what we’d done.
David had opened the rift, and drawn on something on the other side when he brought me back to life.
It was our fault the Djinn were dying.
Three
Nobody had much to say, after Jonathan made it clear the tennis match was over and the subject was closed. Neither of us had come right out and said what we were thinking, which was good; I wasn’t sure I wanted all of these extremely powerful and extremely arrogant creatures to take offense at me. Especially not Ashan, who looked like he could bore a hole in titanium with a sideways glance. There was already an overload of mumbling and fiercely predatory looks toward me. I wished Rahel would show up; she was at least marginally congenial to me. Even Patrick would be welcome right about now, and not because I wanted to body-slam him into the wall; he’d been through this process before me, and survived it. The world had survived. The Djinn had survived. I needed to find out how, and I was pretty sure I couldn’t.