“David isn’t with her?” I couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would part him from her, in time of trouble. Not of his own accord.
“Yeah, well, that got complicated. As long as they both had no power, he could stick with her, but once she managed to get them both recharged and ready… Well, he’s a Djinn, and not just any Djinn. A conduit to the Mother. He had to get the hell away from her, for obvious reasons.”
David, once granted back his power, had been pulled into the mindless fury of the Mother. Of course. I didn’t know why I’d thought that he, of all the Djinn, would be different—none of us could resist her.
That was part of why Ashan had exacted his complicated, painful, wonderful toll on me, to make me human. In a sense, he’d protected me, left me free to act on my own when he could not. I hated to give him the credit, but it seemed likely now that he’d foreseen much of what had passed, and might still come.
I used a hospital-provided hairbrush to tame my fly-away hair, just a little, and looked at myself in the mirror. I seemed ready. There was a slight rose-colored flush in my cheeks, a lingering glow, and my green eyes were clear and steady. The punctures were healed and fading.
We will do this, I told myself. We must do this. Joanne Baldwin held almost as much strength as Lewis Orwell; the Wardens needed her, desperately. Orwell himself had told me that indirectly; what they were fighting was not a war. Wars could be won.
We stood an excellent chance of not living another day.
And yet I looked… peaceful. Ready. Alive.
“Humans,” I said aloud to the mirror, shook my head, and went to join Luis.
Chapter 10
WE DROVE THROUGH THE DAY, into the night, and saw the morning while still on the road. One benefit of being Earth Wardens: We had the ability to channel power to keep ourselves awake and alert, and although we’d need sleep eventually, it was simple enough to keep ourselves going on this journey. I rode my motorcycle, and Luis had appropriated a truck from a car lot; he’d found one that looked a great deal like his own, which made me raise an eyebrow and ask him how long it had taken to find that. He’d responded that if he was going to stand a damn good chance of dying in it, he wanted a truck that didn’t embarrass him.
I couldn’t argue with that. I was quite attached to the Victory.
We gave Portland a wide berth; the smoke of the dead city was a smear on the horizon, still burning. I kept my attention on the aetheric, watching for any signs of trouble ahead. The Djinn continued their relentless and unpredictable assaults; today, it seemed, they were focused on eradicating cities in Alaska and returning the entire state to wilderness.
There were few Wardens in Alaska. By midday, there were none. A night passed, and we kept moving.
We stopped, finally, as noon blazed in a cloudless sky; winter had lost its grip by the time we coasted to a halt in the small community of Farmington, New Mexico. Luis leaned out of the truck’s window and said, “Time to stop for food. Once we get hooked up with Baldwin, there’s no telling when we’ll have time to eat again. That girl is even more of a trouble magnet than you are.”
I shrugged, killed the Victory’s engine, and dismounted as he climbed down from the truck. We were in the parking lot of a small restaurant that still flickered a red OPEN light in the window, although there was only one other vehicle parked there. The town had seemed deserted; there’d been almost no traffic on the roads, and we’d seen no one out on the streets on foot, either.
But this little restaurant seemed to be carrying on despite all of the evidence around it that perhaps it was time to take a day off.
A bell rang softly as we entered through the glass door, but that seemed to be the only sound, until I heard some metal clattering, and a woman rushed out from the back, wiping her hands on a towel. She was dressed in plain blue jeans and a checked shirt, and she had the look of a woman used to hard work and disappointment—but for all that, her smile was brave. “Welcome!” she said. “Things are a little strange out there today, but I’m still cooking. You folks grab yourselves a seat anywhere. I’d bring you menus, but really, it doesn’t matter. I’ll make you whatever you’d like.”
Luis smiled at her and said, “How about a hamburger and a Coke?”
“Bread’s a couple of days old, if you can stand that, but my produce comes out of the back garden, and it’s still fresh,” the cook said. “Best hamburgers in the Four Corners area, and that’s a promise. You want cheese on that? And fries?”
“Sure. Cass?”
I ordered the same, which seemed to unreasonably delight the woman. She hustled off, and came back to deliver us drinks, frosty in mugs and fizzing with energy and sweetness. I sipped mine and watched as she hurried back to the kitchen. “Why is she so eager to serve us?” I asked. “Surely she knows how bad things are. And will become.”
“Oh, she knows,” Luis said. “Bet she doesn’t even charge us anything. Sometimes people just like to feel… normal. Like everything’s going to be okay. She likes to cook, and it makes her feel steadier. Gotta say, it makes me feel steadier, too. A little normal life in the middle of chaos—it’s not a bad thing.”
I didn’t think so, either, but it alarmed me a little that in the midst of chaos humans clung so strongly to the lost normality of their lives. Her smile was bright and friendly, and she seemed so desperate to make us part of her circle of safety.
The food, when it came, was excellent; she brought a plate of her own and put it on a separate table. “Sorry,” she said. “Proprietor’s gotta eat, too. I won’t bother you folks, and don’t be afraid to ask for anything if you need it.”
Luis scooted out a chair next to him. “Join us,” he said. “I’m Luis. This is Cass.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said. She was beaming as she picked up her glass and plate and sat down at our table. “You folks just passing through?” She laughed a little. “Stupid question. This ain’t a time when people are settling down.”
“Yeah, we’re on our way somewhere,” Luis said. “I guess this is your place?”
“Well, it is now,” she said. “The man who owned it—he just ran away, left the place wide open. He told me I could have it if I wanted, so I figured I’d just keep it open for anybody who needed some food. Probably can’t get much more in the way of supplies, but I’ll use up what we got. No need for it to go to waste. I’m Betty, by the way.”
“You from around here, Betty?”
She took a bite of her hamburger and shook her head as she chewed and swallowed. “Nope. I was what you might call on my own. Lost my house a couple of years back, been traveling hard ever since. I ended up here when our bus broke down, and then the driver couldn’t get it fixed, so he went off to find help and never came back. Been here for about four days now, I guess. Seems like longer. Figured I might as well make the best of it.”
“Well,” Luis said, “you make one hell of a good burger. Glad you decided to fire up the grill for us.”
“Ain’t no big thing. I always wanted to open a restaurant someday,” she said, and munched a French fry contemplatively before she asked, “You two trying to fix things?”
“Fix them, how exactly?” I asked.
“Don’t know, but you two seem… different. You’re not running from something. You’re running to it. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody quite like the two of you before.”
“Well,” Luis said, “Cass is extremely pale. It is kind of weird, even for a gringa.”
Betty choked on her drink—iced tea, from the look of it. “Not what I meant,” she said. “I seen them people on the TV, the ones who can do things. Magic and such. Strikes me you could be like that. I mean, I’m a good Christian woman. I’ve always thought magic came from, you know, the devil, but—but maybe it don’t, after all.”