djinn wars 03 - fallen (24 page)

She sighed. “You’re right. It would probably help if I stopped looking in the mirror. But I keep checking, hoping that it’ll be gone the next time I look.”

My heart ached for her. All I could do was pray that she’d allow herself to get past this, and that sooner rather than later she’d realize she’d done nothing wrong and that no one could possibly hold her responsible for Margolis’ actions. The problem was, Julia had been an abused woman before the Heat had done her the favor of killing off her asshole fiancé, and so she already had a tendency to assign blame to herself when it wasn’t warranted.

Getting out would do her some good. I said, “Let’s go down to the lab. Miles hates getting interrupted, but maybe he’ll make an exception when he sees it’s you.”

She gave a half-hearted chuckle. “I kind of doubt it. But we’ll see.”

We left the room. I purposely took the long way around so I could lead her out into the courtyard area, where the wind could ruffle her hair and the sun could shine on her. It did seem to help; she paused on the bridge and breathed in deeply.

“It must be absolutely gorgeous here in the spring,” she said, looking around. “I mean, it’s still beautiful now, but once the trees leaf out and the irises start blooming? It’ll be stunning.”

“Hopefully, that won’t be too far off,” I replied. “I’m not sure, though. I’ve heard that winter can last a long time here in Taos, but I’m an Albuquerque girl. I don’t have much frame of reference.”

“Neither do I.” Her hair was blowing around her head in a torrent of dark gold. I’d always been perfectly fine with being a brunette, but I had to admit there was something glorious about that mane of Julia’s.

Even though the day was fine, the air still had a bite to it. Neither of us were wearing jackets, so she didn’t protest when I said we should head on to the lab. By then it past eleven, and so I doubted we’d be interrupting Miles’s beauty sleep or anything.

That was definitely not the case. The door stood open, so Julia and I went ahead and entered the basement workshop. Miles sat on a stool next to the workbench, but he wasn’t tinkering with the device. Instead, he was typing away on the laptop we’d brought from his Los Alamos lab, his back to us. Because the laptop’s screen was angled toward us, I could see what he was working on.

Correction — I could see the numbers and symbols flowing across the screen, and what looked like 3D models of strange vortex-appearing objects spinning up and then collapsing. But just because I could see it didn’t mean I was able to make heads or tails of it.

He must have heard us approach, because he swiveled on the stool, brows creasing. The frown seemed to increase as he took in the two of us. “Oh. I thought you were Lindsay. Where is she? She’s not always the most conscientious about her hours here, but — ”

If it had been anyone else, I might have been surprised by his lack of reaction to Julia’s presence. But because it was Miles, I put that aside for now. “No one’s been down to tell you?”

“Tell me what?” he snapped.

“Several of our djinn went outside the barrier and attempted to reach their own world. One of them didn’t make it. That was Rafi.”

Miles stared at me, expression so blank that I felt compelled to add,

“Lindsay was his Chosen. She’s pretty upset, as you might guess. So I’m not really sure when she’s going to feel up to returning to work here.”

Still that stare. Then Miles frowned and said, “That was foolish of them. After so many weeks of having their powers blocked, they wouldn’t have been able to summon the energy quickly enough to open the portal they required.”

I really hadn’t expected him to offer any words of condolence, but calling the three djinn “foolish” so soon after Rafi’s death seemed awfully cold to me. Voice hardening, I replied, “Maybe not as foolish as you think. Two of them did actually manage to get away.”

“Hmm.” Miles seemed to finally register Julia’s presence, since he gave her a faint nod. “It’s rather surprising to see you here, Julia.”

She must have been a lot more used to his foibles than I, because she smiled at him and said, “Well, I’d say it was surprising to see you here, too, except I had a suspicion this is where you went when you disappeared.”

“Was kidnapped,” he corrected her.

“You look well,” she responded, apparently not wanting to address the whole kidnapping issue. After surveying the lab, she added, “It doesn’t look like you’ve slowed down too much.”

“They brought some of my equipment. And the young woman who’s been assisting me has a surprisingly quick mind.”

That was a comment I hadn’t been expecting. Most of the time, Miles seemed to only tolerate Lindsay’s presence. Was he attempting to be kind now because of her recent loss? Trying to figure out his thought processes was beyond me most of the time.

But since Julia didn’t know anything about the history between Miles and Lindsay, she only nodded. “I’m glad you have someone working with you. And hopefully she’ll want to resume her work soon, if only to have something to keep her mind occupied.”

For some reason, that remark made Miles appear distinctly uncomfortable. He shifted on his stool and turned his attention back to the laptop’s screen. Without looking up at either of us, he said, “When she feels she’s ready.”

Julia appeared to have a better grip on Miles’s reactions than I did, because she said, “Well, we don’t want to keep you from your work. I just wanted to stop by and let you know that I’m grateful to you for sticking up for me with Margolis.”

He still didn’t glance away from the laptop. “He was only going on a hunch, with no real evidence. While I realize that we don’t have a true judicial system in place any longer, I still believe we should do our best to present evidence as to someone’s guilt before pronouncing any kind of sentence.”

“True…but you knew I was guilty, didn’t you, Miles?” There was the slightest sly note in Julia’s voice as she asked the question, as if she was inquiring mainly because she wanted to see how he would react.

“Yes, but I didn’t have any real evidence, either.” This time he did finally look up; the familiar abstracted frown was pulling at his brows, deepening the line in between them. “And besides….”

“Besides what?”

“Margolis was wrong. I was wrong.”

Julia and I exchanged a bewildered glance.

“Wrong about what?” she asked softly.

“About the djinn. About Natila.” His face twisted, and I saw his hands clench on the edges of the stool where he sat, knuckles turning white. “I wanted to stop him, but I knew he wouldn’t listen to me. So I stood there and watched. And then afterward, when he wanted me to cut her up, I did. It was wrong.”

I didn’t dare breathe, and beside me, Julia also held herself still. The horror of seeing Natila die had only been compounded by the knowledge that she was being dissected afterward, like some kind of science experiment. At the time, I sure as hell hadn’t seen any remorse or hesitation in Miles Odekirk.

Maybe he’d hidden it because he, like pretty much everyone else in Los Alamos, was scared shitless of going up against Richard Margolis.

“And you know what was ironic about that?” Miles went on, almost appearing to address the air, since he wouldn’t look directly at either Julia or me. “There was absolutely nothing anomalous about her, except that she was in perfect physical condition. Nothing to distinguish her from a human being. Margolis didn’t like that at all.”

No, he probably didn’t. He’d wanted evidence that the djinn were completely other, despite their appearance.

“I wanted to bury her. Margolis had no use for her any longer, since there was nothing he could point to as being obviously different from the rest of us
homo sapiens
. But the ground was too cold. So I used the crematorium in the funeral home, and I placed her ashes in one of the urns I found in the display case. And then I put her on the mantel in the sitting room there, since I didn’t know what else to do.”

He sounded completely lost, so very un-Miles-like, that I didn’t know what I should do, either. Julia, however, roused herself and went to him, taking one of his hands in hers.

“It’s okay, Miles,” she said. “I know you did what you could.”

“But I didn’t. I should have tried to stop him — ”

“You couldn’t have,” she cut in, but gently. “You would’ve just ended up in jail like me — or worse — if you’d tried to interfere.”

For a long moment, he only stared at her, eyes wide and haunted behind the rimless glasses. Then she did something I knew I would never have had the courage to do — she let go of his hands and put her arms around him, hugging him wordlessly. I could almost see him stiffen in shock, but then he sighed and allowed himself to relax into the embrace. They stayed that way for some time. At last she let go of him and backed away, but she still held his gaze.

“If you need to talk, I’m here.”

He nodded, but then seemed to realize I’d been watching that moment of supposed weakness. His back went stiff, and he returned to typing on the laptop.

“Let’s go,” Julia murmured, and we both turned away from Miles and headed out of the lab, pausing only to shut the door behind us.

When we were almost to the stairs, I stopped and said, “How could you do that?”

“Do what?” Her expression was genuinely curious, as if she couldn’t quite figure out what I was driving at.

“I don’t know — comfort him like that, after everything he’s done?”

The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, but it wasn’t precisely a smile. Her eyes were too sad for that. “He’s sorry. It won’t change what happened, but…it’s obvious he didn’t really want to do it. He’s not evil. Margolis — now, I won’t argue with you if you want to call
him
evil.” She was silent for a second, then went on, “There’s nothing wrong with offering someone a little grace. If we can’t manage that, how does that make us any different from the bad djinn?”

I stared at her, and had no answer.

Chapter Thirteen

By the time we got back to the main floor and had wandered toward the dining area, it was empty. Obviously, whatever announcement Zahrias had gathered everyone to hear was long over. Just as well, probably. I didn’t know whether Julia was up to facing that many strangers at once. It would probably be better if she met them gradually, rather than in one big group.

I was explaining to her how we’d marked off the perimeter of the safe zone, making it easy to come and go within its boundaries — and also making it easy to go down to the plaza and “shop” for clothes and shoes and jewelry — when we ran into Jace and Zahrias, who had just turned a corner in the corridor that led to Julia’s room.

“How are you faring today, Ms. Innes?” Zahrias asked politely. He had the cane with him but didn’t seem to require it at the moment, since it was looped over one arm.

“Julia,” she said quickly. I couldn’t help noticing the way her gaze swiftly tracked from the bare muscled chest revealed by his robes, then up to his face, as if she was embarrassed to be caught staring.

No worries, Julia,
I thought.
If I weren’t with Jace, I’d probably be staring, too.

Zahrias didn’t appear to detect anything odd about her response. He said, “It seems as if you’re recovering very rapidly.”

“I am,” she replied. “Thank you so much for the care you’ve given me, and for taking me in.”

“It’s the least we could do. You rendered a very great service to Jasreel and Jessica, and so we must repay the debt as best we can.” He glanced over at me. “Everyone has been informed about Rafi. The farewell will be tomorrow morning.”

“How did they take it?” I asked.

A grim smile touched Zahrias’ lips, and I saw the way he and Jace exchanged a single charged glance, one that seemed to say,
This isn’t over yet.

But the djinn leader only replied, “As well as can be expected. At least, after what happened to Rafi, none of them are demanding that we send more of our people for assistance.”

No, I supposed they wouldn’t. Nothing like seeing one of your own die horribly to turn you off from wanting to attempt the same thing.

There wasn’t any way to turn the conversation toward lighter topics, not really. But I figured I might as well try. “Miles was grumbling about not having Lindsay to assist him.”

“She’s in no shape for that,” Jace said. I could tell from the downward droop of his mouth that he was very worried about her, possibly because he’d seen how Evony had reacted when she lost her djinn lover. “And she’ll decide when she’s ready, and not have Miles pushing her into something she’s not emotionally equipped for.”

“I don’t think that’s what Jessica meant,” Julia said, coming to my rescue. Or maybe it was a little of Miles’s rescue, too. He’d seemed irritated that he wouldn’t have Lindsay to assist him, but at least he hadn’t made any noises about putting pressure on her to come back to the lab right away. “It sounded like Lindsay was valuable in his research, that’s all.”