She laughed, a rich, whiskey-dark sort of sound. The least likely Djinn I’d ever met, and I’d met some doozies. I guessed that was why she’d made such an impression on David in the first place. Choosing Whitney for his backup as Conduit had been unorthodox, to say the least, and (I suspected) not exactly popular with the few thousand others who probably felt they had a better shot.
But she had qualities; I’d give her that. For one thing, none of the other Djinn would ever be able to get the better of her, because none of them could understand her. There was such a thing as being too human, and Whitney was the poster child.
“You are just full of it, Joanne,” she purred. “Nice to know some things just never change. Now, what were we talking about?”
“You said if it wasn’t Kevin . . .”
“Of course. Ain’t that obvious? If it isn’t Kevin, it’s whoever’s standing closest to you two. You didn’t really think the law of averages worked that way, that the two people you picked to tag along just happened to end up with your lost powers?”
When she put it like that, I had to admit, it did seem unlikely. There had been lots of people on board the ship, and any one of them could have received the power that had been ripped out of us in the formation of the black corner. . . . So why had it been the two people closest to us now?
“It’s not them,” I said slowly, working my way through it. “It’s us.”
“You’re not nearly as silly as you look,” Whitney said. “Fact is, whatever happened to you out there, it blew you apart and put you back together again, but somehow your power got left out. It’s like a ghost, trailing you around. It’ll settle into anybody you spend time with, including those two.”
David straightened up, which probably wasn’t smart; more blood darkened his shirt, and he pressed a hand to the wound. “Then we can get it back.”
“Can’t get it back,” Whitney said crisply. “Not like you are. You’re all locked off, and I have to tell you, you ain’t looking too good. Never mind that hole in your side. . . . You’re drying up like a water hole in the Sahara, running out of power. Won’t make it all that much farther, you know.”
I looked over at David in alarm. His face was set and pale, giving away nothing, but I knew it was true. Whitney wasn’t known for her tact, but she wouldn’t lie, not about that. “Nothing I can do about it,” he said. “If I can’t get my powers back . . .”
“Not on your own. But that’s why I’m taking you to someplace you can get some help.”
“Whitney, you can do it,” I said. “You’ve got the Conduit to the Earth now. You could fix this.”
“Could,” she agreed blandly. “But my orders were to stay right here, in this cozy little house with the roaring fire where nobody can get at me. And I like it here. You seen what’s going on out there? It’s messy.”
She was hiding out in Jonathan’s house, a peculiar little bubble of the aetheric that seemed to float apart from everything else. Time and space didn’t really exist there—or at least, they existed only as Jonathan had first created them to be. Which wasn’t like anywhere else. The advantage was that anything in that house was protected from the chaos here on Earth.
The downside was that the protection was very specific. Humans couldn’t reach the refuge, only Djinn, and only Djinn who were allowed in. David and I were completely out of luck.
“You have to come here,” I repeated. “Whitney, he’s . . .” Dying. I couldn’t really say it. Saying it would make it terrifyingly real. “Please come.”
Her radio-wave voice gentled, turned warm and compassionate. “I know,” she said. “I know how scared you are. But if I leave here, I’m gone, and you know it. Every Djinn out there is hers now, no thoughts, no personality. They’re just lashing out at whatever hurts her. You don’t want me out there. I wouldn’t help, and I’d be just as lost as the rest of them.”
Except, curiously, for the Djinn driving the car. I frowned, staring at him. He turned his head and stared back, not bothering to watch the blurring road. Djinn—they’re really not like us. And sometimes it’s really, really creepy.
“He’s empty,” Whitney said. “Something bad happened to him, a long time ago, poor thing. Mother Earth can’t lay a finger on him.”
“But you can.”
“Well, yeah.” Whitney sounded surprised. “You got to know how to do it, that’s all.”
I decided I really didn’t want to know. I was tired, beaten up, filthy, and David was . . . was really in need of help. “Where are you taking us?”
I must have sounded so miserable that even Whitney was moved, very slightly, toward pity. “Someplace safe,” she said. “You rest, now.”
I didn’t want to, but the Djinn reached out and past me, putting a hand over David’s shoulder. David let out a sigh and slumped against the car door. The bleeding from his side slowed, and I saw his color start to return to normal. Whitney, working her magic through her supernatural surrogate.
The Djinn let go and reached for me. I knocked his hand away. “No,” I said sharply. “I’ll stay awake.”
“Suit yourself,” Whitney said, back to her old bad attitude. “Want me to pinch you if you drop off?”
“Bite me, Whit.”
The Djinn made an unsettling teeth-snapping noise, and I looked sideways at him, scooting a couple of inches closer to David. When I was sure I was safe- ish, I looked back at Kevin and Cherise.
“You two okay?” I left it an open-ended question, and it was up to them whether that applied to injuries, mental instability, shock, or just plain hating the world.
“I don’t want this,” Kevin said, again. “I didn’t ask for this. It feels—wrong.” He licked his lips, his eyes haunted under the emo flop of hair. “It hurts when it comes out. I don’t think it’s safe.”
That made sense. In fact, I thought it was a credit to Kevin’s strength that it only hurt, because using the power of a Djinn Conduit would probably have torn apart most normal people. Even many Wardens. I wasn’t sure what it had done to him, but Kevin didn’t scare easily, and I felt for him.
“Sorry,” I told him, and reached over to touch his arm. He jerked away. “We’ll find a way to do this. I swear.”
“Well, I don’t mind,” Cherise said. “Because controlling the weather is awesome. I want to do more.”
“Well, you’re not going to,” I said, which sounded sternly authoritative but was a wet paper sack, so far as enforcement might go. “Cher, you need to stay away from it as much as possible. It may not seem like it’s hurting you, but it probably is. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
She normally would have smiled in response to that, but instead she just looked away out the window. “You say that until you need me. Then it’s all ‘bring it.’ ” That didn’t sound much like Cher, and it bothered me.
“Hey.” I tried to catch her eyes, but she kept looking away. “Cher, you know I care about you. You know I don’t want you hurt.”
This time she did look at me, squarely and calmly. “I know,” she said. “Until you don’t have a choice, and then you’ll do anything you have to do. It’s what I always like about you, Jo. That ruthless streak under all the girly polish.”
We had that in common, I realized. Cherise was sweet and compassionate, funny and talented . . . but she was also, deep down, a survivor, with a broad streak of ambition and a little bit of larceny baked right in. In another age, she might have been a charming criminal, holding up coaches at midnight on deserted roads and kissing all the pretty young men.
“We do what we’ve gotta do,” she said. “Right?”
“Right,” I said softly. “But until we’ve got to do it, don’t. Please.”
That won a smile, finally. “Sure,” she said. “Have all the fun yourself, then. Now—” She yawned broadly and bundled herself more comfortably against Kevin. “Now I need some beauty sleep. And a shower. But I’ll settle for sleep.”