djinn wars 03 - fallen (19 page)

“Thank you,” he said gravely. “And thank you, Aidan, for your assistance here.”

His words were clearly a dismissal. Luckily, Aidan didn’t seem to take offense at more or less being told to get out. He said easily, “Sure,” and then followed Lauren out of the room.

That left Zahrias and Jace and me. “Do you want us to go, too?” I asked. Not that I intended to. I just wanted to know if I’d have to put up a fight.

But Zahrias only said, “No. You should stay, since you knew her. It might be better for her to see a familiar face when she awakes.”

He was probably right about that. I moved closer to the bed and reached out to take Julia’s hand. Her fingers were cold. Was she in shock of some kind? Or had she merely passed out from exhaustion? She had cuts and bruises and scrapes all over, it seemed, but I couldn’t see any wounds severe enough to send her into shock.

Miguel appeared then, carrying a first aid kit he’d lifted from the urgent-care center down Highway 68. Without acknowledging any of us, he went around to the other side of the bed so he could set down the kit. He lifted Julia’s wrist, laying his fingers there so he could get her pulse.

“No sign of her waking up?” he asked after gently lowering her arm to the mattress.

“No,” I said. “She groaned a little when Aidan lifted her so he could bring her here, but she hasn’t made a sound since then.”

A nod, and then Miguel was fishing around in his kit. He pulled out the object of his search — a penlight — and bent toward Julia’s face, reaching with his free hand to open one of her eyes and shine the light in it. After that he tested her other eye.

“Pupils are responsive,” he said after putting the light back in the first aid kit. “I think she’s just dehydrated and suffering from exhaustion. We need to get some fluids in her.”

“Will she drink when she’s like that?” Jace asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s try it with a little water. If she can’t swallow, I’ll have to go back to the urgent-care center and see if they have the supplies for me to set up a saline drip.”

I swallowed. That sounded a little drastic to me, especially for someone who’d once confessed that he’d never completed his EMT certification. “Do you know how to do that?”

“Yes…in theory.”

Zahrias and Jace exchanged a glance.

“Well, let us hope we don’t have to take such extreme measures,” Zahrias said. Stepping away from the door, he headed to the bathroom, where the original toiletries from before the Dying appeared to still be laid out, including a set of plastic-wrapped glasses. He pulled the plastic off one of them and poured some water from the tap into it — not much, just enough to fill maybe the bottom third of the glass. He handed it to Miguel.

“Here goes,” he said, putting it up against her cracked lips. Then he tipped some water into her mouth.

It dribbled down her cheek and onto the stained shirt she wore. I cursed inwardly. But then she seemed to stiffen, and her lips parted slightly. Miguel tilted the glass once again, and this time she drank, greedily gulping at the water until it was gone.

Her eyelids fluttered, just for a second. “More,” she whispered.

Thank God. Miguel hurried into the bathroom and poured more water into the glass, and again she drank until it was gone. Then she opened her eyes for real this time, blinking in confusion at Miguel. Of course she wouldn’t know who he was. But after that her gaze slid toward me, and she smiled.

“So I made it,” she breathed.

“You sure did,” I told her. “You’re in Taos. You’re safe.”

She nodded, and her eyes closed.

“She needs to sleep, and she’s dehydrated,” Miguel said. “But I think she’s going to be okay. Someone should stay here with her, though, to give her some more water when she wakes up.”

I glanced up at Jace, and he nodded. I would have offered even if he didn’t want me to, but that wasn’t Jace. He understood that it was more important for me to be with Julia than with him, at least for now.

“I’ll have Phillip put together a tray for you,” he told me. “Dinnertime isn’t that far off now.”

“Thanks, Jace.” That was all I said aloud, but our eyes met and I added,
We’ll need to talk later.
There’s…stuff…going on.

You mean about Rafi and Alif and Nizar?

You knew?

Zahrias came and told me. It’s a foolish and dangerous errand, but we can’t stop them.

Do you know when they’re leaving?

A faint head shake, and then he asked, “Do you want me to have anything sent up for Julia as well?”

I hesitated. She would be ravenous when she woke up, no doubt, but that could be hours from now. “Probably not. I think it’s better to wait until she’s really awake. I’ll call for you then.”

“Of course.”

“Probably just soup to start,” Miguel warned us. “We don’t know how long it’s been since she’s had solid food. Then we’ll go from there.”

“And in the meantime, we should allow her some peace and quiet,” Zahrias interjected. “The rest will do her more good than anything else.”

It wasn’t exactly a command, but it might as well have been. Miguel and Jace nodded, and stepped out into the corridor. Zahrias hung back for a moment, gazing down at Julia’s bruised and dirty face.

“I wonder what happened to her,” he said, then ducked out as well, leaving me alone with the sleeping woman.

I was wondering, too. Leaving aside the question of what had compelled her to abandon the refuge of Los Alamos in the first place, how had she survived the journey here? You’d have thought she’d be easy prey for the rogue djinn.

But she had survived…somehow. And now all I could do was sit and wait, and wonder.

Five or ten minutes after the men had left, Lauren reappeared, poking her head inside the door. In her hands she held several pieces of folded clothing. “I brought these for her,” she murmured, then stepped into the room and set the items on top of the dresser.

“Thanks,” I said in the same undertone. “I’m hoping that after she sleeps for a while and then gets something to eat, she’ll be up for a warm bath.”

“It looks like she’s earned one,” Lauren replied, worried eyes taking in Julia’s grimy face. “You really think she walked all the way here?”

“Well, I didn’t see a car anywhere,” I said grimly. “Or a scooter, or even a bike. She was on foot. Maybe she drove part of the way, but we won’t know for sure until she wakes up.”

“Damn.” Then Lauren seemed to gather herself. “I have to get back, but just send word if there’s anything else she needs.”

“I will.”

She left then, and I folded my hands on my lap, willing myself to be calm and watchful. There wasn’t much else I could do, really. The day had been mild enough that no one had bothered to light a fire in the fireplace, although the logs and kindling had already been set up. I figured that getting the fire going was one task I could perform that would make Julia more comfortable. It would still drop close to freezing tonight, no matter how deceptively pleasant the daytime hours had been.

I got up from my chair and went to the fireplace, then struck a match and held it against the kindling. It caught immediately, the flames catching before licking upward against the pyramidal stack of logs that had been placed there. The warmth moved outward, seeming to caress my face. Maybe it had been colder in the room than I’d first thought.

“That feels good.”

At once I turned. Julia was watching me, eyes clear enough, if shadowed.

I hurried over to the bed. “How do you feel?”

“Probably about how I look…like hell. But this bed feels good. And so does that fire.” Her voice sounded stronger with every word, and I heaved an inner sigh of relief.

“Do you want some more water?”

“Please.”

I took the glass, went to the bathroom, and filled the cup a little more than halfway. Julia reached for it as soon as I approached the bed, so I let her take it from me. If she spilled, well, I’d just mop it up as best I could.

But she didn’t. Her hand shook a little, but she was able to raise the glass to her mouth and drink the water without incident. Then she set it down on the nightstand.

“Better.”

“Are you hungry?” I asked. If she was up to drinking that much, then it seemed the logical next step was to get some food inside her.

To my surprise, she shook her head. “No. I know I should be, and I probably will be in a little while, but not now.” As she looked down at herself, her mouth pursed in distaste. “What I really want is a shower.”

“Are you sure you’re up to that?” From what I’d seen so far, she certainly didn’t look strong enough to stand up for the amount of time a shower would require.

But she nodded. “I think so. And I really — I really just want to wash all that off me.”

What she meant by “all that,” I didn’t know, but if allowing her to take a shower meant the possibility of hearing her story, then I’d help her any way I could. And I’d wait right outside the door in case she ended up needing my assistance.

So I said, “All right,” and extended a hand so she could pull herself upright. She wobbled a bit as she stood, but her grip on my hand was surprisingly strong as I guided her inside the bathroom.

“It looks like all the toiletries are still in here,” I said, twitching aside the shower curtain so I could put the miniature bottles of shampoo and conditioner and the small bar of soap on the ledge inside the shower stall. “We aren’t running on djinn power anymore, though, so try to keep it short if you can. We’ve all been trying to keep our showers to five minutes, but I think you’ve earned a little bit more than that.”

Julia’s eyes seemed to fill with questions at my comment about not having access to djinn power, but she only nodded. After turning on the hot water, I slipped back out to the bedroom and grabbed the stack of clothes Lauren had left behind.

“Here’s something to change into,” I told Julia, who nodded and took the pile from me. “And now I’ll just let myself out.”

She managed a tired smile at that, then shut the bathroom door. My chair was all the way on the other side of the room, and I didn’t want to be that far in case Julia fell or otherwise needed me to help her out. I supposed I could drag it closer, but then it would be partially blocking the door to the bathroom, since the space really wasn’t all that big. Instead, I decided to lean up against the dresser and wait.

Even as exhausted and wrung-out as she obviously was, Julia still managed to be her usual efficient self. The water shut off almost exactly five minutes after I’d propped up myself against the dresser, and a few minutes after that, Julia emerged, now wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and some yoga pants. She was finger-combing her hair, and I realized that although the bathroom had soap and shampoo and that sort of thing, it wasn’t stocked with combs or brushes — or a toothbrush and toothpaste, either. Lauren hadn’t left any of those items behind, maybe because she hadn’t thought Julia would be up and functioning quite so quickly.

“Sorry there wasn’t a comb,” I began, but she just shrugged.

“It’s okay. This’ll do for now.” Moving past me, she climbed back into bed and plumped up the pillows behind her. Now that she was clean, I could see how nasty that bruise on the left side of her face actually was. It must have been worse at one time, since it had now faded to a ghastly collection of greens and yellows.

Despite that, it looked suspiciously like someone had plowed his fist into her jaw.

She must have noticed my staring, because she raised one hand and touched her face. “It’s getting better,” she said quietly. “It used to be blue and purple.”

I couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Julia, what happened?”

A small sigh escaped her as her fingers played with the edges of the blanket. She’d never been one for nail polish, but her fingernails had always been on the long side, beautifully shaped. Now they were cracked and broken. Without looking at me, she said, “Dan’s dead.”

“
What?
” The question exploded out of me before I could stop it.

“A little over a week ago. At least, I think that’s when it happened.” She paused then and tilted her head to one side, frowning, even as her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I think I lost track of time there for a while.”

I needed to sit down. I went back over to my chair and more or less collapsed on it. “I don’t understand. What — what happened to Dan?” My throat seemed to be closing up. No, I hadn’t ever been with Dan and hadn’t wanted to be, but I’d liked him very much. He was one of the good guys, an all-around decent person.

Which seemed to be a sure ticket to an early death these days.

Julia blinked, then swallowed. Hard. “Can — can I have some more water?”

Even though I’d just sat down, I got right back up again, retrieved her glass, then went to the bathroom to refill it. After I handed it to her, she drank half its contents, and nodded.

“Thank you, Jessica.” She pulled in a breath, one I could hear hitch in her throat. That made the tears in my eyes sting all the more, but I told myself I needed to keep it together. Julia had survived whatever ordeal she’d been through, so the least I could do was maintain my calm while she related her story.

“Okay,” she said, then breathed deeply again. “After — well, after you and Evony escaped with Jace, Margolis lost it. He refused to listen to anything Dan or I had to say. He was convinced we were connected to your escape. Which we were, of course. I suppose we’d just been hoping that allowing ourselves to be clocked with a gun and knocked out would be enough to convince the commander we were innocent. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I had to ask. “What did he do?”

“It wasn’t that bad at first,” she replied. Her fingers kept knotting in the blanket, however, seeming to give the lie to her words. “He locked us both up, but we were expecting that. There really wasn’t any evidence, you know, since I’d killed the security feeds, and most of the people in the building were off at Ernie’s birthday party. Of course, Margolis thought it was suspicious that the security camera was out — which it was — but again, there wasn’t anything to prove that I’d tampered with the system, since it was pretty temperamental anyway.”