djinn wars 03 - fallen (34 page)

I didn’t pretend to understand all of it, but it seemed that when the elders spoke, the rest of the djinn listened. If they didn’t want us in Taos, even now that Khalim and the rest of his followers couldn’t lay claim to it, then we’d move. Apparently the elders had decided that no djinn should call Taos home, now that they had been here themselves and felt whatever “power” existed in the Rio Grande river gorge and the mountain lakes the people of the pueblo had once called their own sacred places.

Part of me was really hoping that Jace and I could go back to the house outside town, but when I asked, he shook his head sadly. “It’s not safe.”

“Why?” I demanded, even as I shoved the last of my things into my duffle bag. Off to one side, Dutchie was watching the proceedings with a resigned air, as if she knew we were about to change our base of operations once again. “We don’t have to worry about the renegade djinn anymore.”

“True, but Richard Margolis and his followers are still out there, and they’re still in possession of two of Miles’s devices.”

Crap. I’d almost let the entire conundrum of the Los Alamos community slip from my mind. Jace’s words brought them to the forefront, unfortunately. The good part was that Miles was with us — for now, anyway — and so my nightmarish visions of Margolis being able to wield dozens of the damn djinn-neutralizing things would never come to pass. That didn’t mean the commander and his followers might not put the ones they still had to bad use, however.

Interpreting my silence correctly, Jace went on, “I doubt they’ll come after a group as large as ours, especially if we stay more or less in and around the city center. But our house back in the canyon is too remote. We would be easy prey there, especially since Margolis already knows where it’s located. And if he brought a device to block my powers, I would not be able to call out for help.”

“
I
could help,” I grumbled. “I’d meet him at the door with a machine gun and tell him to say hello to my little friend.”

Apparently
Scarface
wasn’t in Jace’s pop-culture database, because he frowned slightly and said, “Beloved, I admire your bravery, but he brought seven men with him last time, and most likely would bring even more the next. It’s simply not worth the risk.”

He was right. It wasn’t worth the risk, and it wasn’t worth arguing about. I went over to him and put my arms around his waist, then laid my head on his chest. As his arms wrapped around me, I told him, “I know. And it doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we’re together.”

A light kiss brushed against the top of my head. “Exactly. Besides, I think Zahrias will do his best to accommodate us. After all, Santa Fe appeared to be a lovely town, from what I saw of it. There are actually far more options for housing there than here.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I told myself to give Zahrias some credit, and wait and see where we’d end up.

Well, I doubted anyone had the nerve to accuse Zahrias of playing favorites, but I also doubted it was coincidence that Jace and I ended up in a quaint little five-bedroom pueblo-style mansion only a few blocks off the square, with Zahrias in an even larger house just down the street. The rest of the Taos community weren’t all that far away, in an area probably just a little bigger than the mile-radius safe zone we’d been allowed back in Taos.

I couldn’t blame everyone for still being a little spooked, even though the rogue djinn had been safely hauled off and exiled to the outer circles. After we were more or less settled in our house, and I’d carefully gathered up any personal belongings from the former owners — there weren’t many, which led me to believe this enormous place had been a second or even a third home — I asked Jace, “Just what
are
the outer circles, anyway?”

He’d been silent for a moment, apparently considering his reply. Then he said, “Picture the place your people called Death Valley, but with the atmosphere of Venus.”

Ouch. No wonder we mere mortals wouldn’t last more than a few minutes there. And having to spend all of eternity in such a place….

No, I wouldn’t feel sorry for Khalim and Aldair and the rest, since they didn’t deserve my pity. At the same time, the mental image of the outer circles that Jace’s words conjured made me wince. Those djinn must have really hated us humans to have taken such an enormous risk.

Or maybe they’d thought the elders just wouldn’t care, and wouldn’t act against them. Thank God they’d been wrong.

But our community had obviously decided there was strength in numbers, and since there wasn’t any shortage of housing near the center of town, everyone seemed to get more or less situated in a place that suited them. Martine was returned to her djinn lover and seemed to be slowly recovering from her ordeal, while the other girl rescued from Khalim’s band of rogue djinn, Emma, also went back to the partner who thought he had lost her forever. Aldair’s erstwhile Chosen, Katelyn, moved into a casita on the grounds of Dani’s and Lauren’s place, where they did their best to look after the shell-shocked young woman. She still didn’t seem to recall exactly what had happened to her, which was probably for the best.

And Julia took a townhouse only a block or two from the Plaza, explaining, “I’d feel silly in anything bigger. It’s just me, after all.”

I didn’t press her. If that was where she felt comfortable, fine. And if things happened to change in the not-too-distant future, well, I’d be more than happy to help her move her things. Not that there was any sign of something like that going on. Once we were in Santa Fe, Zahrias seemed content to settle into his enormous home and direct things from there. Lauren and Dani were just down the street, so she could still act as Zahrias’ de facto secretary.

“Not that I plan to do that forever,” she told me one day, a little more than a week after we’d migrated the colony from Taos. Dani had gone over to Zahrias’ house, and Lauren and I were having a little “girl” time, shopping in one of the stores on the main square, the kind of place neither of us probably could have afforded to frequent back before the Dying made consumer culture more or less irrelevant. “I’m hoping Julia might take over, if she’s willing.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. From what I could tell, Lauren seemed to enjoy acting as Zahrias’ right-hand woman.

“Yes.” She hesitated, and then I saw her hand go to her stomach. It looked completely flat to me, but….

“Wait — you and Dani?”

“In November sometime, I think.” Another pause, and then she glanced around, even though we were the only two people in the store. “We haven’t told anyone else yet, since it’s pretty early, but….”

I recalled how Jace had said it could be difficult for djinn and humans to conceive children. Apparently not as difficult as he had thought. “Congratulations!” I said, hoping I sounded enthusiastic enough. “That’s great news.”

“Thanks.” Lauren was smiling, but her expression grew serious a moment later. “It’s kind of frightening, though. I mean, it’s not as if I’ll be able to see an ob-gyn or get an epidural when the time comes, or whatever.”

“You’ll do fine,” I told her. “We have Miguel, and EMTs get training in delivering babies. Besides, women were having babies for thousands of years before anyone invented epidurals.”

“Yes, but I have a feeling they didn’t enjoy it.”

I stared at her for a second, and then we both burst out laughing. True, those women who’d had to endure natural childbirth back in the day probably hadn’t enjoyed it, but they’d still survived, which was the important thing. I knew Lauren would do fine. Hers would be the first baby born to our little group here, but it wouldn’t be the last. Slowly, the community would grow, mortals and djinn mingling their blood, creating a new line of people to inhabit the earth.

Was that the intention all along…that this separation between the two races would slowly crumble away, until there came a time when no one could remember when only man was the ruler of this world?

Well, some would remember. Just because a few djinn were having offspring with humans didn’t mean there wouldn’t still be plenty of pure-blood elementals around to recall the days when they’d been exiled from the planet they coveted so much.

Still, it was a step. One in the right direction, I hoped. And maybe someday Jace and I would have a child of our own. Would there be play dates in this future I imagined, helicopter parents, other carry-overs from the paranoid time before?

God, I hoped not. This world was ours, and safe enough for now. Sooner or later we’d have to deal with Margolis, though. I couldn’t imagine Zahrias allowing the current state of affairs to continue indefinitely. That would be like living with a brush fire on the horizon at all times. It might look out of range for the moment, but you’d never know when a sudden wind could fan the flames and send it raging right in your direction.

For the moment, though, I was willing to let it go. We’d earned our small measure of peace.

To my infinite surprise, Lindsay and Miles had taken up residence in a house on Canyon Road, at the outer edge of the area where we’d all settled. Not to say they were shacked up together or anything, but, according to Lindsay, so they could continue their work together.

“It’s built with the bedrooms in two separate wings,” she explained quickly, since my eyebrows began shooting up into my hairline when she stopped by to tell me where she was living. “He has his, and I have mine. But the important thing is that the place has a huge five-car garage with a workshop area, so it makes a great lab space. The cars weren’t there when we moved in, though. I think it was someone’s vacation house.”

Like the one I was living in. Intellectually, I knew there had been people who could afford to have million-dollar-plus houses scattered in strategic vacation spots around the globe, but my brain still boggled a bit at the idea. And that wasn’t the only thing it was boggling at. “You and Miles, living together,” I said flatly.

“In
separate wings
,” she repeated, although I couldn’t help noticing the way her gaze wouldn’t quite meet mine. She lifted her chin and went on, “It just made more sense to be there together. Most of the time I don’t even see him until we go out to work in the garage. The lab, I mean.”

“Okay,” I replied.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much
passed through my mind, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to push it. And it was entirely possible the whole thing was innocent…living arrangements of convenience, as it were. At least on Miles’s end. I sort of got the impression it had only barely registered with him that Lindsay was even female.

Changing the subject, I asked, “Why is Miles even still pushing the research? I mean, we don’t have to worry about protecting ourselves from the rogue djinn any more.”

A lift of the shoulders, followed by a smile I thought was a little too indulgent. “I think he’d go nuts if he wasn’t investigating some scientific mystery. Anyway, he says he thinks he might be on to something — my screw-up actually may have had some benefit, because it has him going in a different direction, trying to see if a certain series of adjustments may be the key to blocking the powers of only the djinn outside its radius, not the ones within it.”

Several days earlier, I would have rejoiced at hearing that news. Now, though, I couldn’t help thinking Miles’s research was an exercise in futility. The rebel factions in the djinn world seemed to have been quashed, and I was pretty sure the elders wouldn’t allow any more of that kind of nonsense, no matter how loosely they might govern otherwise.

But pursuing his research did keep Miles off the street, so to speak, and who knows — tweaking the device might have some use in the future. “I’m sure Zahrias will be interested to hear that,” I told Lindsay. “Have you said anything to him about it?”

“Not yet,” she replied. “Miles has been seeing some interesting results, but he’s not ready for field tests. For one thing, he’s not sure any of the djinn would even consent to them.”

That didn’t surprise me. I wasn’t a djinn, but even I could relate to wanting to avoid any further interruption of my powers after I’d finally gotten them back. “Well, maybe not right away. But after things have calmed down a little….”