Windfall (35 page)

Please, let her be with him. Existing, somehow. Not just . . .

Not just gone.

In the shelter of the minivan, where nobody could see it happen, I fell apart. All the fury, all the fear, all the pain came out in sudden, wrenching sobs, in pounding on the steering wheel, in outright screams of rage. This wasn't right, and it shouldn't be this way—I hadn't come this far just to see the world die around me. Or to let David slip into darkness.

Or to lose a child I barely knew.

There's an answer,
I told myself, hands pressing hard enough against my eyes to create white sparks, tears slicking my cheeks in cold sheets.
There's a goddamn answer to this, there has to be.

Lightning shivered overhead, raw and uncontrolled. It hit a transformer across the city and blew it into a blue-white shower of sparks. Several square blocks of lights went out, and overhead, the clouds swirled in from the ocean, carrying the smell of rain and the promise of worse.

I had to get home.

 

By the time I trudged up the steps to my apartment I was exhausted, stinky, smoke-stained, and dispirited. Now that I was full of borrowed power again, I could sense the incredible roiling of the aetheric, mirrored by the wild fury of the sky overhead. The rain was the least of what was coming. I wondered what Marvelous Marvin would be making of it. Probably churning out revised predictions and ordering Ella to make it happen—not that Ella could, at this stage. Things were far too chaotic for any one Warden to try to influence them.

With John Foster dead, and Ella's loyalties questionable at best, it left this part of Florida lightly protected. The same was probably true up and down the Eastern seaboard. The Wardens were falling apart, and the Djinn didn't care about the consequences. And the regular people, the ones the Wardens were sworn to protect? No clue what was coming.

At least I could protect Sarah. That was something, anyway.

I dug my key out of my purse, unlocked the front door, and walked into . . .

. . . a stranger's apartment.

For a brief, surreal moment, I thought I really
had
walked into the wrong apartment, proving that urban legend that apartment keys work on every lock in the building . . . but then I recognized little, familiar things. The ding on the wall next to the TV—which was now plasma flat-screen, and the size of a small theater. The pictures on the coffee table of Mom, Sarah, an ancient one of our grandparents—although they were encased in new silver frames, all matching. One of the rugs on the floor looked familiar. It even had a coffee stain on it from when I'd tripped one morning, half-asleep.

Apart from those touchstones, it was a whole new place.

I stood frozen in shock, eyes wide, and Sarah came bustling breathlessly around the corner, wiping her hands on a towel.

“There you are!” she cried, and threw her arms around me. Then immediately withdrew. “Ugh! You smell awful; where have you been?”

“In a fire,” I said absently. “What the hell . . . ?”

In typical Sarah fashion, she skipped right over that, whirled away and did an honest-to-God Mary Tyler Moore pirouette in the middle of the living room. “You like it? Tell me you like it!”

I stared at her, trying to work out what she was talking about. None of this was making sense. “Um—”

She beamed. “I had to do something to make up for the burden I've been on you. Honestly, you've been such a saint these past few days, and I've done nothing but mooch off of you.” She looked so bright and shiny, so thrilled. “Chrêtien finally came through with an alimony check; it showed up this morning—of course, the stupid bank won't cash it, they have to hold it until it clears, but Eamon let me have the cash in the meantime. So I decided to give you a makeover!”

Makeover? I blinked. Not that I was unwilling to go be pampered somewhere, but in the middle of an approaching apocalypse probably wasn't the best possible time . . .

Oh. She was talking about the furniture.

“Isn't it gorgeous? Look, there's a new sofa, and chairs, and the TV of course, Eamon helped pick that one out—” She grabbed my hand and pulled me through to the bedrooms. Threw open her door. “I got rid of that terrible French Provincial and went for a nice maple. . . . You know, I've been watching those home improvement shows on BBC America, they have all the best ideas, don't you think? It's just so much fun. Look, see how the maroon pillows complement the sponging on the wall . . .”

It was all dissolving into nonsense word balloons. Obviously, Sarah had gotten in money, and obviously, she'd been shopping. Her bedroom looked like a showroom in a furniture store, with gleaming, highly polished wood and a lace bedspread over some kind of silky throw. Every detail excruciatingly precise. She must have spent hours with a Feng Shui manual.

“Nice,” I said numbly. “Right, it's great. Look, I just need to take a shower and lie down for a while . . .”

“Wait! I'm not done!”

She towed me next door.

My room was . . . gone. Gutted. There was a new bed, sleek black lacquer and inlaid mother-of-pearl on the headboard in geometric designs. The dumpy dresser was MIA, replaced by something that looked like a giant Chinese apothecary cabinet in the same black lacquer with brass accents. My knickknacks—not that there had been many—were gone, replaced by red temple dogs and jade goddesses. Very elegant and expensive-looking.

I took it in slowly. My brain had handled too many shocks today. I wasn't prepared for being the victim on the guerilla warfare version of
Trading Spaces
. I'd just been nearly killed
twice,
for God's sake. I wasn't ready for redecorating.

“Well?” Sarah asked anxiously. “I know the walls still look plain, but I thought later this week we could go to one of those home stores and get something to sponge-paint with in here—maybe metallic gold, what do you think? And some throw pillows. I didn't get enough throw pillows.”

My eyes wandered to the bedside table.

It was gone.

Gone.

In its place was a black lacquer stand with one delicate-looking drawer instead of the two large ones I'd had before.

My paralysis broke. I yanked free of Sarah's hold and lunged for the nightstand, pulled open the drawer and found the familiar collection of junk that tended to congregate in such places. Books. Magazines. A zippered cosmetic case I sincerely hoped she hadn't opened.

A few things were missing. Some half-empty tubes of hand lotion, for instance. Some out-of-date sale catalogs.

The case containing David's bottle.

I turned and looked at her, and whatever was in my expression caused her to fall back a step.

“Where's the padded case?” I asked.

“What?” She took another step back. I followed, well aware I must have looked dangerous and not caring at all.

“Sarah, I'm not going to ask you again.
Where's the padded case with the damn bottle in it?
” I screamed it, lunged at her and shoved her back against the apothecary cabinet. Temple dogs and goddesses rattled nervously behind her. Sarah's eyes went wide with panic.

“Case . . . there's a case still in there . . . ?”

“THE OTHER ONE!”
I didn't know I could yell that loudly. Even my own eardrums hurt.

Sarah looked entirely terrified. “Well, um . . . yes . . . there
was
another case . . . isn't it in there? You had—um—empty bottles of lotion and stuff—and—did you want to keep them? Why would you want to keep them? Jo, I don't understand! They weren't special formulas or anything!”

I wanted to kill her. I found myself hyperventilating, saw spots, and let go before I could act on the impulse. Fought for control.

“Sarah,” I said with utter, merciless precision, “what did you do with
the zippered case that was in the bedside table and had a bottle in it
?”

She went pale as milk. “I don't know. Is it important?”

“Yes!”

“Well, I—I—it should be in there, I thought I took everything out . . . maybe, um, maybe I left it in the old nightstand.”

I didn't have time. “Where did you put the old furniture?”

She bit her lip. Her hands were twisting each other anxiously. “Um . . . the furniture guys hauled it off. I paid them extra to take everything to the dump.”

Any second now, I was going to lose control. I reeled unsteadily and ended up sitting on the edge of the bed. It gave with an ease and firmness that spoke of memory foam somewhere in the construction. Sarah had gone all out to make me happy. Except that she'd done the one thing guaranteed to destroy my life.

Maybe the life of every person on the planet, if I stretched things out to their logical conclusion.

I put my head down and forced myself to focus, to be still and calm.

“What did I do?” she asked in a meek, little-girl voice. “Jo, just tell me, what did I do?”

I couldn't exactly explain that she'd just tossed away the love of my life in a garbage truck.
Oh God, David . . .
This was surreal, it was so ridiculous.

Sarah, of course, came to exactly the wrong conclusion. She clapped both hands over her mouth, tears forming in her eyes, and then ventured, “Oh God, Jo . . . Was it drugs? Are you on drugs? Did I throw away your stash?”

I laughed. I couldn't help it. It came out as a kind of mad, despairing burst of sound, and I covered my face with my hands and stood there for a moment, shaking. Dragging in one gulp of air after another.

Sarah's hand fell on my shoulder, warm but tentative.

“I screwed up,” she said. “I get it. I'm sorry. Look, I'll do whatever I have to do to get it back for you. I'm sorry, believe me, I thought—we thought we were doing something good for you—”

Oh yeah, it was good. I had an apartment full of furniture I didn't want, the Djinn were at war, Wardens were dying, and my boyfriend had gone out with the trash.

I stood up and walked to the closet.

“Jo? Where—where are you going?”

I didn't even look back as I pulled out industrial-strength jeans and tossed my hiking boots onto the brand-new bed.

“We,” I corrected her. “We are going dump-diving. Get dressed.”

 

I don't know if you've ever been to a big-city dump at twilight, but it's definitely an adventure. I'd come prepared for the worst—my trashed-out blue jeans, thick, long-sleeved tee, hiking boots, hair twisted up in a knot, face mask and gloves. Sarah wore brand-new jeans, a delicate pink top, and old tennis shoes. After some top-of-my-voice persuasion, she'd decided against the new, expensive footwear.

At least the rain had stopped. If it had been storming, I don't think even I could have bullied her into it.

Armed with the name of the furniture company, we arrived at the dump an hour before closing, and tracked the delivery to a huge pit that was earmarked for furniture, appliances, and other large junk. Trucks were still arriving. As we pulled up in the minivan, a commercial truck backed up to the dropoff, sounded a beeping alarm, and tilted its bed slowly into the air.

An avalanche of twisted metal, old, splintered furniture, and busted TVs joined the mass grave.

Sarah was fidgeting before we'd parked the mommy-van. “Oh, my God! Jo, it
smells
out here!”

“Yes,” I said, and handed her a face mask and gloves. “You're sure you left it in the drawer of the nightstand?”

“Yes, why?”

“Because otherwise we're in the other pit. The one with the biodegradable garbage like rotten food and old diapers. And believe me, you'll like this better.”

She shuddered, pinching her nose shut. “I'm dure.” She sounded like a wacky 1940s comedienne. “Thid id awful!”

“Yeah, no shit. Watch out for rats.”

“Rats?” she squeaked.

“Rats.” I'd had a friend once whose boss had sent her to the dump to retrieve legal papers from a trash bag. I decided not to tell Sarah about the scary cockroaches. “Take the flashlight. It may be dark down there.”

“Dark?” Sarah's commitment to make things right was rapidly eroding and gaining qualifiers like
so long as it's convenient
and
so long as I don't get my hands dirty
.

I ignored her, popped the door, and got out. The newer arrivals seemed to be dumped toward the right-hand side, and I scanned the mass of crap to try to spot something familiar. It was like trying to identify pieces of your life after a tornado, the familiar pureed into rubbish. I gulped down a choking sense of panic and kept systematically looking. According to the map they'd given me, the furniture company had dumped in grid E-7. Of course, a map in a dump lacked landmarks, but since the cheerful, flannel-clad guy on duty had said they were currently dumping in E-12, I had a pretty good general range. I scanned junk, which all looked, well, the same, and finally caught a flash of white among all of the gray and brown.

I jumped down from the packed earth ledge into the pit, braced myself with one hand on the wall, and started carefully picking my way over the junk pile. It was dangerous. Sharp corners and nails and jagged metal. Glass. Broken mirrors. The place was a tetanus shot waiting to happen.

Even though I was completely focused on the mission at hand, my eyes kept focusing on interesting bits of garbage. A broken, tiger-maple chest that looked antique. A massive, carved teak table that was magnificently in one piece and probably would be until the sun consumed the earth, as hard as teak was—I couldn't believe somebody had actually moved it in the first place. It made me exhausted just looking at it.

I tripped over a big, dented brass pot and nearly fell into a steel cabinet, but managed to brace myself. I looked over my shoulder to make sure Sarah was okay. She was picking her way slowly behind me, testing every step twice before putting her weight on anything, one hand always outstretched to catch herself. The other held a flashlight in a death grip, not that she really needed it yet.