Her warmth changed, cooled, became gentle against my skin. I felt my wounds starting to heal, though very slowly. My body began murmuring a shocked report of damages, but I told it to be quiet. Shock felt nice, at the moment. Soothing. I'd take whatever comfort I could get just now.
David reached us a second later, wrapping his arms around us both. "All right?" he asked, and looked into my eyes. He didn't like what he saw there, clearly, but he liked what he saw in Venna a whole lot less.
I didn't blame him.
"It's one of them," Venna said. "One of the ghosts. It didn't belong here. It can't be here. " The confidence of the Old Djinn in their well-ordered universe had just been shattered, and beings that had never feared much in their long, long lives looked into the abyss that humans faced every day - the dark chasm of uncertainty of the future.
"It's okay, Venna," I said, and smoothed her long blond hair. "You did great. Ghost or not, you completely kicked its ass."
"I can't do it again." Venna looked at David and took a deep breath. "It took part of my ass with it. And I don't think I can get any of that back. Maybe ever." Cynthia Clark hadn't boarded with a personal trainer, as it turned out. In fact, she didn't remember a thing about the entire incident. There didn't seem to be much point in trying to convince her that she'd been hypnotized into covering up for some otherworldly demonic glass monster. She wouldn't even believe that David and I hadn't set her room on fire deliberately, so I figured the whole monster thing was right off the table.
I staggered away to the nearest public lounge while David tried to settle things to everyone's satisfaction. I was checked out by a small army of Warden medics and Lewis himself - none of whom were happy with me, or my descriptions of events, come to think of it - and eventually was told that I was in no imminent danger of death or coma, but healing was a long way off.
I was still lying there, feet up, grateful to be breathing, when I spotted Aldonza hurrying past, rolling a luggage cart. She did a quick jerk of surprise when she saw me, and loitered.
"Are you okay, miss?" she asked, which told me just how terrible I looked. "Can I get you something?"
I didn't raise my head from the leather pillow. "I'm okay, Aldonza. Sorry about the cabin."
"The cabin?"
"Miss Clark's cabin. It's - ah - kind of a mess."
Aldonza got a blank, terrified look on her face and hurried on. I could hear her horrified cry all the way down the hallway.
A half hour later, a whole phalanx of stewards rolled by, carting La Clark's salvaged baggage and armloads of expensive clothes. They were moving her to a new cabin.
They moved her into mine, as it turned out. I didn't find that out until I struggled up from my temporary resting place and met Cherise in the hall, dragging her suitcase and looking half-mournful, half-impressed. "Did you know that Cynthia Clark is going to be sleeping in your bed?" she asked. "That's kind of awesome, in a sucky kind of way. Anyway, we're down the hall, and Moses on a motorcycle, what the hell happened to you, bitch?" I was better, really I was. I was limping - broken bones had been repaired into merely cracked and hurting bones - and I was singed and bloody and looked like some Halloween fright mask, but hey, I was breathing, upright, and thinking straight again. "You should see the other guy," I said, and coughed. It turned into a lung-bursting hack like a fifteen-pack-a-day smoker's. I could still taste that awful taint of death, even though I thought that it was all in my head now.
"Uh, thanks, I faint at the sight of gross anatomy. Come on, sweetie. You need a bunk." I didn't argue about it. I'd been inclined to think I could walk it all off until I'd walked about ten feet, and then priorities had shifted again, drastically.
Rest seemed like a very good idea. I accepted Cherise's support, staggering the rest of the way to our new cabin.
"Ouch," Cher sighed, as the door swung open on a cramped little room with two narrow beds facing each other. "Looks like we've been bumped to coach. Or maybe servants' quarters."
"Don't care." I sank down on the closest flat surface - luckily, it had a mattress - and covered my eyes with my forearm. I needed to think. How had that creature gotten on the ship? And why? Was it just biding its time, waiting to kill as many Wardens as possible?
Had it killed the nameless Djinn we'd found in the hallway?
Most importantly - were there more?
David had sensed it, though not with any accuracy. Venna had been able to nuke it, though only at a drastic cost to herself.
We just couldn't fight an army of these things, and I had the sense that these were just incidental players in Bad Bob's upcoming melodrama.
Crap.Why did this keep happening to me?
"Jo?" The mattress dented on my left side as Cherise perched on the edge. "You crying?"
"No," I lied. "Fuck." I swallowed hard. "I can't do this. We can't do this. We're sailing away into the middle of nowhere with a bunch of innocent people and we're all going to die, Cher.
I can't stop it. God, we've screwed this up."
"Hey." She moved my arm away from my eyes and looked down at me with such gravity that she didn't look like Cherise at all. "What's going on?"
"Did you hear me? We just about got our asses kicked!"
"But you didn't," she said. "You told me before we got on this ship that it was going to be hard, and people were going to die, because you can't go to war if you don't expect casualties. You didn't want me to come with, remember. You wussing out on me now, Rambette?"
I sniffled. "No."
"Good, don't even. You're a Warden. You don't let anything stand in the way of what you think is right. You have the most lustworthy guy I've ever seen madly in love with you. You have fabulous hair. You're strong and beautiful and smart and evil pees itself when it sees you coming. So don't you fold up on me, Jo." Cherise's mask slipped, just a little. "Because if you do, I don't think I can keep it together on my own."
"Bullshit," I said. "You're way tougher than me." I hugged her. "I'm just so tired. I just want to rest."
"Then rest," she said, and let go. I settled back on the bed. "But don't you dare think you're not up to this. You're a hero, babe. Heroes don't wuss."
"Do they whine?"
"Only to their bosom sidekicks." She flashed me her bosom to prove she had the cred.
Cherise, motivational speaker to the stars.
I managed a weak laugh. I didn't feel like a hero, not at all. I didn't think Venna did, either, and I knew David didn't. He was too worried for me, and his anxiety was feeding mine, like a deadly and accelerating loop.
I took some deep breaths. Then I took some more, and let myself drift away from the pain and fear. I imagined myself floating in water, in a sparkling blue pool, with calm clouds whispering by overhead. The sun was warm and soft and kind, and I had on the perfect blue bikini that David liked so much.
The Grand Paradise 's rocking motion lulled me into a mindless calm, and as I hung there, suspended, I felt my body reaching for relief. It healed itself, bit by bit, cell by cell, using power drawn from the energy around me. The temperature of the cabin lowered in response, and I heard Cherise get up and check the thermostat, then break out the blankets. One settled over me, thick and soft.