"Relax, honey," the nurse said, unbending a little bit when she saw the obvious distress in my face. "You had a pretty high dose of radiation. You're getting treatment, though."
The water had lubricated my vocal cords. "Where am I?"
"Extension Hospital Fourteen," she said, which meant I was in the Warden system, not general human health care. Thank God. "I'm sorry we didn't have anybody with you, but you've been out for a while, and we had other patients. Do you have a lot of pain?"
I managed to keep my nod to a measured sort of response, not a frantic oh-my-God-yes-give-me-drugs sort of gesture. She got the point, though, and showed me the meds button, which I pushed for all it was worth. Liquid gold painkillers slid through my veins, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Even tasting blood didn't seem that disturbing, suddenly.
"David?" I asked. My voice sounded horribly weak.
The nurse hesitated and didn't quite meet my eyes. "Your friend and Lewis Orwell brought you in, but they had to leave. Some kind of emergency."
"Haven't been back?"
"No, not yet. But I'm sure they'll be back as soon as they can."
Not good. That meant something had happened. She'd said it had been days. . . .
Someone else hip-bumped open the door, and came in carrying two tall coffees. It was Cherise. She looked tired, but still glamorously touseled, and the smile she gave me was pure relief. "I knew a mocha would get you up," she said, and flopped into a chair next to me. "You are so predictable. So. How are you?"
"Sick," I said. "What the hell happened?"
The nurse cautioned her about hot liquids and my invalid state, which both of us ignored, and left the room. Cherise leaned forward and helped me manage the mocha. It was warm, not scalding, and the caffeine/ sugar/fat combo made me feel much steadier inside. "Well," Cherise said, "you pretty much freaked everybody the hell out. Including people I've never heard of, who flew over from Switzerland and Australia and places like that."
"Wardens?"
"Some of them, yeah. There's some kind of big meeting going on. That's where everybody is." Cherise's big blue eyes focused on mine, and I saw an internal debate going on for a few seconds before she said, "Your friend's dead."
"I - what?"
"Your friend Mr. Silverton. He didn't make it, Jo. They tried, but he was too far gone. David and Lewis both tried, but nothing worked. They were scared about you, too." Cherise's expression told me everything I didn't want to know about how bad off I really was. Bleeding gums were the least of my problems. "You're going to have to rest up this time. Seriously."
"But . . . did they say anything about the Djinn? The dead one? And the - "
"They said that under no circumstances was Joanne Baldwin supposed to jump out of bed and charge to anybody's rescue. Seriously, Jo. Not your problem. Not anymore." She reached out and smoothed hair back from my face. "You look like crap, by the way."
"Gee, thanks. So glad you're my affirmation girl." I actually was glad, but I couldn't let her know that. There was love, real and soothing, in the touch of her fingers. It lulled as much as the morphine. I felt sharp grief at the death of Jerome Silverton, and guilt. We'd gotten in over our heads, and that was the last thing we'd intended. I'd counted on Jerome, as the expert, to know when to back off. Instead, he'd continued though he'd known it was likely a suicide run. I guessed he thought it was necessary.
"He wrote you a note," Cherise said. "While he could still write. Do you want it?"
Cherise was a better mind reader than most of my magic-gifted colleagues. I sighed and nodded, feeling the hot prickle of tears in my eyes. She dug paper from the front pocket of her jeans, unfolded it, and handed it over.
Jerome's handwriting was messy. I couldn't tell if that was normal for him, or if the damage was taking its toll. It took me a while to work out what the note said, but when I did, it hit me hard.
It said, I was wrong. Thought I could control it. Not your fault.
And, on a separate line, Hope you're okay.
I folded it up, closed my eyes, and fought back wave after wave of useless tears. When I'd managed to get control again, I handed the note back to Cherise, who exchanged it for a box of tissues.
"The dead Djinn?" I asked.
"Well, that's the weird thing," Cherise said. "I mean, I wasn't there, obviously, but I heard people talking. According to David, the Djinn wasn't there."
"What?" He most certainly had been there. I could still remember Silverton's knife slicing his body open, remember the elastic tension of holding open the edges of the incision so Silverton could pull out the black glass shard.
"Well, the Wardens say he's there. The Djinn say he's not. They say there's a body, but it's not Djinn. They can't see the black thingy, either. Nothing."
I opened my mouth and shut it again, thinking hard. "David, too?" I finally asked.
"Yup. None of them can see it, sense it, whatever. It's just not there for them."
Oh, man. Not good. "So what are the Wardens doing about it?"
"They're 'containing the situation.' " Cherise made air quotes around the phrase, and rolled her eyes. "Some of them are talking about encasing it in a big block of lead. Some are talking about shooting it into space. Nobody knows what the hell to do, but everybody agrees, it's way too dangerous where it is."
"Everybody except the Djinn." I couldn't leave that alone. "Seriously, they can't see it? How can they not see it?"
"No clue."
"What does Lewis say?"
"He can see it, and yeah, he knows it's a problem. The Djinn thinks the Wardens have some kind of psychosis. They say that if the thing was there, they'd be able to sense it."
Great. "How do they explain Silverton? Me?"
Cherise looked grim. "They think one of you screwed up, accessed something you shouldn't have. They can't explain it, but they don't believe the Wardens' explanation, either."
"Not even David?"
"No," she said softly. "Not even David. Sorry, babe."
Wow. That was . . . strange. And I was too tired and too sick to do anything about it. Cherise didn't need to worry about me going all heroic and crazy on her; all I wanted to do was hide under my blankets and pretend it was all just a bad dream.
And for a while, that was exactly what I did, as the morphine dragged me off to a dream-rich sleep.
Two days later, I was interrogated by a panel of Warden elders: Guillard from Switzerland, Jones from Australia, and Lewis representing the U.S. I felt a little better, and they'd let me walk to the shower and wash my hair, which made a difference in both body and soul.
There was also a Djinn in the mix - a short, round little thing with that indefinable glimmer to her skin and eyes. She was introduced as Zenaya, and gave me a slight nod but no other indication of how she stood on the subject of me.
No David. That was deeply troubling.
I went through things, step by step, detailing what I'd seen and experienced. Zenaya said nothing, but her eyes flashed an eerie green when I talked about the dead Djinn, and the manner of his death. I addressed a question to her. "Wouldn't you know if one of your people disappeared?" I asked. She shrugged slightly. "Wouldn't David know?"
"Yes," she said. "But he says he finds no one missing."
"Ashan?"
Another green flash to her eyes. She folded her arms. "Ashan says his Djinn are all well. He says nothing more."
Which might or might not mean anything. Ashan wasn't chatty at the best of times. "But I saw him. And trust me, he was a Djinn."
"How could you tell?" Zenaya asked me, very reasonably. I started to answer, then hesitated.
Because I really wasn't sure how I knew. I just . . . knew. "His aetheric signature," I finally said. "Only the Djinn look like that."
"Leaving aside that point," Guillard said, in his rich, dark chocolate voice, "clearly you came into contact with something highly dangerous. Earth Wardens have not been able to correct some of the damage you sustained. We are dependent on simple human methods, which is why we've had to hospitalize you for so long."
Lewis nodded. He wasn't looking at me; he kept his gaze focused on the window, on the rain outside. "Sometimes damage just surpasses our ability," he said. "That could have been the case this time."
"No," I said. "David tried to heal me, and you know he should have been able to. He has before."
Lewis had no answer to that. Whatever he was thinking, he was keeping it close to the vest, and he wouldn't damn well look at me. I wondered why. Was he angry about Silverton? He had every right to be, I supposed. I'd screwed up, big time, and a Warden had paid with his life.
Guillard asked more questions about the black shard, things to which I had no real answers except to give a recitation of my conversation with Silverton in the basement. And then the whole thing was over; Jones and Guillard wished me well and departed, and Zenaya left without a backward glance.
Lewis stayed. He still wouldn't look at me. Out of sheer stubbornness, I refused to speak first. I sipped water and tugged irritably at my drying hair, trying to get it to stop poodle-curling around my face. I used to have straight hair. I liked my old straight hair.
When I finally turned my attention back to my guest, Lewis was staring at me, and what was in his eyes wasn't anger at all. Or even disappointment. It was something neither one of us could ever really acknowledge, and it was big and powerful and breathtaking.
He cleared his throat and looked down, and said, "You scared the shit out of me."
"Yeah. Sorry, I had no idea it was going to be that dangerous, or I'd have done more, taken better precautions - "
He waved that aside. "Silverton was your expert; you were listening to him. So if there's blame, it's his, and he's beyond all that now, poor bastard. Even if you'd pulled back as soon as you found the dead Djinn, it would have been too late to keep you from getting sick. This stuff is badly toxic. We couldn't have left it there. As it is, we've had to inform NEST, and they're following up with radiation treatments for anyone who reports in sick to the hospitals." NEST was the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, out of Homeland Security. I didn't want to imagine how that conversation had gone.
"But by taking it out of the Djinn's body - "
"The Djinn's body must have been containing it, to a certain extent. You exposed yourselves to a massive dose," he said. "Silverton more than you, because he actually touched it, even with protective gloves."
It could have just as easily been me. Maybe Silverton had known the risks when he'd reached into that cavity to grab the thing; maybe he'd just been unlucky. No way to know. I'd come close to dying lots of times - I'd actually gone over the edge, once or twice - but this felt different.
This left me shaky and deeply unsettled.
"Is it true? That the Djinn really can't sense it at all?"
"The Djinn think we're all suffering from some kind of mass hallucination," Lewis said. "David's being kind about it, but it's a blind spot for them. A big one. I don't know how we're going to convince them."
"If me lying in this hospital bed doesn't - " I felt light-headed, short of breath. "David has to believe me. He has to."
Lewis gazed at me, expressionless. "I hope he does," he finally said. He leaned over and kissed me chastely on the forehead. "About your wedding - "
Oh, man. I'd known we'd have to have this conversation sometime, but I really wasn't ready for it. "Lewis, I'm sorry - "
"Don't," he said. "Trust me. It won't make things any better. I'm okay. And I'm happy for you. I'm just worried. This thing - the Sentinels. They already didn't like you. I can't imagine they'll be sending any congratulations about the ultimate mixed marriage."
He left before I could say anything else.
I closed my eyes and floated in a morphine cloud, trying to figure out who, outside of the Djinn, could create the black shard that I'd seen. Who was capable of that kind of lethal, subtle action?
I didn't know.
I had dreams of distorted, screaming Djinn, of people being destroyed one by one, of the city in flames, of myself, walking through the rubble in a beautiful, perfect wedding gown.
Of David lying in the street, dead, with a black shard driven entirely through his body.
I woke up shaking.
Chapter Four
So . . . I healed.
David came to visit, of course, and he stayed as long as his duties would allow - longer than he should have, by the expressions of the Djinn sent to remind him of other duties at hand. But despite what I'd confidently said to Lewis, I could tell that David didn't wholly believe me about the black shard, or the dead Djinn. He couldn't. There was some kind of selective blindness that he couldn't control, and that was weird and scary. It didn't matter, though. The Wardens figured it out without the help of the Djinn.
Somehow - I don't know how - Lewis and a few other top-level Wardens managed to remove the black shard and take it to a containment facility, where experts, brought in under high-level security clearances, agreed that in fact it was, as Silverton had said, antimatter. Antimatter in some kind of stabilizing matrix. When I asked where the stuff was, and how it was being contained, I was told it was need-to-know, and I didn't. Frankly, I was a little bit relieved. I was busy recovering, trying to get my strength back. My muscles seemed loose and weak, and once the doctors let me out of bed I spent my time mostly in the physical therapy room, working hard to get myself back in shape again. The pain went away. After a few weeks of natural healing, they tried Earth Wardens on me again, and this time, it worked; burns and scars smoothed out and disappeared, and I was left with glossy skin badly in need of a tanning session.
