“It’s twenty more miles,” I said. “I’ll take Isabel, and we’ll find something suitable. We’ll come back for you both. Until then, rest yourself. You know you need it.”
“So do you,” he said, and lowered his voice as he took my hand. “Cass, you’re not a Djinn. You’re flesh and blood, like me. And you’ve done too much already.”
He was right, of course; my reserves of power were faint and shallow, but they had to come from him, through him. Resting would not help me as much as forcing him to rest.
“Isabel will protect me,” I said, and smiled a little. “I’m just the driver. Promise me you’ll rest. Promise.” Because now that I looked at him, in the cold afternoon light, he seemed so pale, and the dark rings around his eyes more pronounced.
But the smile was still as radiant as ever. “Chica, I get it. I promise.” He pulled me closer, and just for a moment, our lips met in a soft, sweet echo of that promise. No passion in it, not now, not here, but something even deeper than that.
Trust.
I drew in my breath slowly as I pulled back, and the wind stirred my pale hair and caressed his cheek with it. I didn’t want to let him go, but I knew that I had to do it. The longer I delayed, the worse our situation might be.
“Look after him,” I told Esmeralda. “If anything happens to him—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll make me into a coat, a pair of boots, and an awesome hat, I get it,” she said. “Just go. I’m sick of looking at your pale, bony ass.” She flicked a hand at me dismissively. I gave her a hard five-second stare before walking to my Victory. I’d laid it flat, but on the side not holding the precious bottle; I levered it upright, checked it—save for minor cosmetic damage, intact—and swung my leg over.
“Isabel,” I said. “Let’s go.”
She hopped on without a hesitation and put her arms around my waist. For a second I was reminded of her as a smaller child, in this same position on a different bike, on a different day. A more hopeful one, perhaps.
Then I shook my head, started the engine, and we left Esmeralda and Luis behind, with the dull smoke still staining the air above them.
I was worried about Isabel still; her use of power had lit up the aetheric again, like a lightning strike on an inky night… and it would draw attention. Right now, she might be the most powerful Warden not shrouded by that black corner, far out to sea, and that meant she would be a target.
But all the vigilance seemed to be in vain. We rode fast, but smoothly. The road was empty of traffic or threats. No wrecks littered the highway. The sun had slipped beneath the line of trees now, casting cool velvet shadows across the asphalt. I drove with part of my awareness on the aetheric. If the Djinn—or Pearl’s forces—decided to attack, they wouldn’t give much warning. A split second might mean the difference between life and death.
Less than fifteen minutes later, we topped a steep hill, and below us in a soft, mist-shrouded valley lay a small town. The billboard-large sign proclaimed it HEMMINGTON, A NICE PLACE TO LIVE, and proved it with an utterly artificial photo of a smiling family.
It was very quiet below.
I slowed the bike and stopped, idling. Isabel rose to look over my shoulder. “Why are we waiting?” she asked. “Come on—let’s go!”
“A moment,” I said. There was nothing unusual, either in my field of vision or on the aetheric, yet something gave me pause.
“Look, there’s a parking lot,” she said, and pointed. “Right there. We can get a van or something. We don’t even have to go that far.”
“We need food and water,” I said.
“Toilet paper,” she added. “For sure. Maybe that premoistened kind. There’s a store right there. C’mon, it’s fine. There’s nothing in there. The whole town’s empty.”
She was right—the place was ghostly silent. Lights burned, but I sensed no human habitation at all.
“In and out. Quickly,” I said. “You see to the van. I’ll drop you there and go on to the store. If there’s any trouble at all, take the wheels and go. You can drive, can’t you?”
She laughed. “I was a kid yesterday, but I can learn fast, Cassie. Don’t worry about me.”
There was no point in hesitating; the danger would be there, or not, and waiting wouldn’t improve our chances. I pressed the throttle and sent the Victory gliding down the long hill. I kept the rumbling to a minimum, out of instinct as much as caution.
Too many predators out, and none of them in clear view. Staying quiet and small was as good a defense as any.
The parking lot wasn’t large, but it had several choices of vehicles that would do; the largest was the work truck of some sort of contractor, and stocked with tools, from what I could make out of the interior. Not clean, but useful. I pointed to it as I rolled to a stop, and Isabel nodded as she slid off the bike. “Ibby. Be careful,” I said. She waved impatiently, and I felt a spark of power as she unlocked the door to climb inside. I felt a primitive impulse to stay with her, watch over her, but that would only increase our risks. Better to divide the job.
I drove the bike onto the sidewalk in front of the store. It was called Mike’s EZ Stop, and there were three cars out in front, all silent and deserted. When I killed the engine on the Victory, I could hear sounds—music, applause, talking voices, all of it softened by distance.
Televisions and radios. Not living souls.
The thick glass windows showed nothing—a brightly lit interior of shelves, groceries, coolers at the back fully stocked with cold drinks and packs of beer. I pushed open the door and heard a soft electronic tone, but no one appeared. The registers were open and bare, as if someone had methodically stripped them of cash, but there was no vandalism here.
I took two cloth bags from the environmentally friendly pile—ironic, now—and went shopping.
I checked the aisles methodically for anyone hiding as I grabbed two loaves of bread, peanut butter, jam, dried jerky, energy bars—anything that would keep without refrigeration. I avoided the canned goods, only because the water would be heavy enough; if this proved safe, we could always come back for more.
I was putting the last of the water into the bag when I rounded the corner and faced the last wall of coolers.
They did not contain beer.
The dead stared back at me, frosted and ice-eyed—employees still in aprons, a man in a tan jumpsuit who might have gone with the van Isabel was taking, a small boy crumpled into a fetal ball, a fat old woman in a flowered dress, more; they were stacked in the cooler in a horrifying mess.
Not all were intact.
It couldn’t be all of the town, as overwhelming as it seemed.
I backed up into a row of shelves, and jars of spaghetti sauce clinked together. One popped free and shattered in a mess of red and broken, jagged glass.
Out. Get out. Something screamed inside me, some instinct more human than Djinn, though there was alarm within my Djinn soul as well. I tightened my grip on the bags, whirled, and ran for the doors.
The glass suddenly went opaque with cracks.
I threw myself forward into a facedown slide on the linoleum floor just as all the windows shattered inward, shredding the interior of the store like a bomb. Wind. Not just any wind. No, this was traveling at insane force, blowing over shelves, ripping up counters, and flinging them into the air. I saw a register fly by overhead before it hit a sliding metal shelf and blew apart into sharp fragments of metal and plastic. The electrical power cord hissed wildly in the air like a living thing and slapped the floor only a few inches from my hand.
I had no defense against weather. Not in here.
The initial burst of air had destroyed things, but now it sucked out again, then turned, and turned, warm and cool colliding in an insane battle for supremacy. The debris swirled and sped up into a blur, and the roof of the little store ripped away with a shriek of cracking steel and timber.