Authors: christine pope

djinn wars 01 - chosen (39 page)

But having the gate locked made me feel a little better, if nothing else, and I needed to feel better. I needed to tell myself there was still hope, that this would all somehow work out in the end. Right then I couldn’t see how that was possible, but when the Heat had swept through Albuquerque, I was sure I would die along with everyone else, and yet here I was.

Good enough for now.

We went back inside, and I piled a few more logs on the fireplace. A long, empty afternoon stretched in front of me. Funny how it hadn’t felt that way when Jace was around. We’d always had plenty to occupy us. Well, in a few hours I’d need to go out and feed the chickens and the goats, make sure they had fresh water, but what I was supposed to do between now and then, I didn’t know. Sit down with one of the new-looking paperback mysteries from the shelves in the office and pretend my world hadn’t just ended?

No way.

I did go into the office, but ignored the paperbacks in favor of the manuals that sat on one of the shelves. There actually was a book on basic electronics, but when I picked it up and started flipping through it, my eyes wanted to cross at all the diagrams and the figures and formulas I found in it, and I felt like crying all over again. After all, there was a reason why I’d been getting my master’s in English and not in electrical engineering or something.

A meltdown was not something I’d allow myself, though. I made a few desultory notes, peered outside and saw the snow had finally arrived, then decided I’d better take care of the animals early before it got too bad.

The goats had already taken shelter in their shed, so I filled their trough with pellets. Their water still looked good — Jace had handled that in the morning — so I left it for now. Same thing with the chickens, although there were a few new eggs. I scooped them into my pockets before heading back to the house, dodging snowflakes the whole way. It seemed the storm had decided to arrive in earnest.

Inside it was snug and warm enough, though, and I puttered here and there, forcing myself to focus on the commonplaces, like bringing in more wood from the log room on the side of the house and stoking up all the fireplaces to combat the rapidly dropping temperatures outside. Busyness helped a little, although I couldn’t help feeling the gnawing, aching sensation somewhere in my midsection, the one that told me Jace was gone and I had absolutely no idea of how to get him back.

It isn’t fair,
I thought irrationally.
To survive the Dying, to lose everyone I cared about, and then to lose him, too?

Well, as my parents had been too fond of pointing out, life wasn’t fair. And right then I wasn’t about to dissect the cognitive dissonance that stemmed from knowing Jace’s people were the ones responsible for the Dying, and yet to miss him, to want him, to know that I loved him in a way I hadn’t thought I could ever love anyone. My anger at him for deceiving me regarding his true identity had been as intense as a summer monsoon storm, but just as short-lived. Now I only wanted him back.

Sitting at the table in the breakfast nook where we’d shared too many meals hurt far too much, and so did the idea of trying to eat at that vast dining room table. I took my dinner of heated-up canned soup and toasted bread to the living room where I could eat in front of the fireplace, although even the warmth of that fire didn’t seem strong enough to penetrate the core of cold at the very center of my being. Nothing could dispel that inner chill, except Jace’s touch.

I wondered if I should leave here the next day, head up to Taos and see if the djinn there could do anything to help me. But no, that wouldn’t work. Zahrias had said his people were unable to penetrate the veil around Los Alamos, and had resorted to sending some of their Chosen to that enclave of the Immune to see what they could discover. Since none of the Chosen had returned, I had to believe that either they’d been captured as spies, or had a change of heart once they were safe and among their own kind.

No, that didn’t seem right. I knew that being around the other survivors wouldn’t have changed how I felt about Jace; if anything, it would have made me work harder to convince them that not all the djinn were evil. Those other Chosen must have been captured. Would they also be put on trial as traitors?

I didn’t know for sure. The leader of the group that had captured Jace had appeared interested in convincing me to join them, and not because he seemed to think I was guilty of crimes against humanity or whatever. No, I’d seen that look on enough guys’ faces at bars or clubs to know what it meant — that he wouldn’t mind getting into my pants in the near future.

There was a joke. I would rather have jumped into bed with Zahrias than with that bastard.

But it was still a weakness I might be able to exploit at a later date, and it also told me that he wasn’t too worried about my fraternizing with Jace, as long as all that was safely in the past.

All right, I’d found an angle. What exactly I was supposed to do with it, I didn’t know. I also couldn’t help wondering if Jace had told me to stay away simply because he wanted me to be safe, and not because he thought I actually had a better chance of rescuing him if I was out in the world where I could find an ally, some assistance. It would be just like him to think of my safety and not his own survival.

That wouldn’t stop me, though. He could be as noble and selfless as he wanted, but in this matter, I intended to be utterly selfish. I wanted him back. I wanted
him
. No matter what.

All right, so I was resolved to rescue him. That still wasn’t a plan.

Scowling, I picked up my plate and bowl and took them to the kitchen, then poured my half-eaten soup down the drain. Completely wasteful, and not like me at all, but in that moment I couldn’t really force myself to care. There was pallet after pallet of canned soup down in the storage area in the basement, far more than I could probably eat before it went bad.

Especially now that I was the only one around to eat it.

That thick, choking feeling, that one of despair, caught at my throat, and I grasped the kitchen counter, forcing myself to breathe. To calm down. Jace was alive for now. I had to believe that. Otherwise, I might as well lie down and die, too, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen. Not after everything I’d already survived.

The clock in the living room chimed. Seven o’clock. And in one of those moments of pure incongruity, I realized it was Christmas Eve.

Merry fucking Christmas.

I went back out to the living room and stood there for a long moment, staring at the tree Jace had brought me. How had a djinn known that such a silly thing could be so important to me?

Because he hadn’t been thinking like a djinn. He’d been thinking like the man who loved me.

The doorbell sounded, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. At least, I thought that completely out-of-place chime was the doorbell. I’d never heard it before.

My frazzled brain eventually processed the meaning of that doorbell ringing. Someone was outside. How had they gotten into the compound? Climbed over the gate? Then I decided that really wasn’t the important consideration here.

Someone was outside.

And irritated, too, by the way they rang the doorbell again, then started banging on the door.

An unfamiliar voice — a woman’s voice — called out, “I know you’re in there, Jessica! Open the goddamn door! It’s freezing out here!”

That someone was a woman, and she knew my name. What the ever-loving hell?

Before I even stopped to think about what I was doing, I crossed the living room to the front door. Then I did hesitate for a few seconds. That could be anyone out there. Someone from the Los Alamos group, come to finish me off. That didn’t sound right, though. I hadn’t seen a single woman in their group; clearly, they didn’t appear to think women made good enforcers.

You’re crazy, Jessica,
I thought, just before I turned the deadbolt and opened the door. Outside on the porch stood a young woman around my age, a pretty Hispanic girl wearing a red and green Nordic-style knitted cap and a bulky red parka, both of which were dusted with snow.

I’d never seen her before.

We stared at each other for a few seconds, and then she said impatiently, “Are you going to let me in? Because you’d better, if you ever want to see your djinn lover alive again.”

The Djinn Wars continue in
Taken
, due out in April 2015. To be notified about new releases by Christine Pope, please sign up
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Chosen
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