“Two weeks, as such things are counted here. Time enough.” The stranger straightened, his eyes on a level with Jace’s. “I am telling you this because your safety here is not guaranteed. Better for you to be with the rest of us.” Then he paused, and my heart seemed to stop in my chest as he glanced over in my direction. “Your paramour is awake. It seems she was not quite as deeply asleep as you thought. You will have some explaining to do, I think.”
That appeared to be his parting shot, because after he made that remark, the flames which had been licking at his feet seemed to grow and swell, rising until they engulfed him. Then they went out, and Jace was alone in the living room.
His eyes met mine, and I saw him draw in a breath, then lower himself to the floor. As he did so, his appearance shifted back to the Jace I knew…or thought I knew. At the same time, the lamp in the corner of the room flared to life, although neither of us had touched a light switch.
“Jessica,” he said, his arms reaching out to me as he began to move in my direction.
“Don’t,” I retorted, still hugging the wall. “Stay back.”
He stopped at once, but I could see the pleading in his dark eyes. “Jessica, I can explain — ”
“Oh, you’d better explain.” The cool plaster of the wall against my back gave me a little courage. At least this way, he’d have to face me, couldn’t sneak up on me from behind. “Who — what are you?”
His shoulders seemed to droop then. He looked so pitiful that, under normal circumstances, I would have gone to him at once and put my arms around him, attempted to comfort him. But there would be no comfort here. Not after what I had just seen.
“Please, come and sit down,” he said. “We must have this conversation, but we don’t need to have it like this.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Jessica.” This time he sounded different, his voice deeper, the way it had been when he was speaking with that — whoever he was. At the same time, he backed off, going to sit down on the couch. “Look. Here I am. You can sit in that chair. I promise I won’t move unless you say it’s all right.”
For a second or two, I didn’t do anything, only watched him through narrowed eyes. He was sitting there quietly, his hands planted on his knees. He certainly didn’t look as if he intended to launch at me, but how could I trust him when it was clear he was definitely not who he had pretended to be?
Then again, I did want answers, and if he might be more inclined to give them if I sat down as he’d asked, then that seemed to be what I should do. Not taking my eyes off him, I crossed over to the chair and sank into it. Actually, that did feel a bit better, although the spurious sensation of relief could have had something to do with the rug under my bare, icy feet and the warmth of the fire as it reached out to heat the room.
I pulled in a breath. “So…this you I’m looking at right now. Is it the real you, or the other one?”
In answer, his features seemed to shift and harden, becoming those of the man I’d seen floating above the floor a few minutes earlier. Still handsome…in a way, more handsome, because those features had somehow become more chiseled, more refined, even though he was recognizable as the Jace I’d thought I had known. “This is my true aspect,” he said.
Right then, I wasn’t sure which was upsetting me more — knowing that Jace wasn’t real, was some sort of disguise worn by this…being — or the casual way he flipped from one appearance to the other. I tightened my fingers on my knees, feeling the soft nap of the robe I wore and realizing that now it was giving me absolutely no comfort. “And your true name?”
“Jasreel.”
So he was still Jace, in a way…although I doubted I’d ever feel comfortable enough to call him that again. The thought made incongruous tears sting my eyes, and I swallowed. Could I mourn the loss of something I’d never truly had?
Maybe, at some point. Right then, I had to man up and get some answers.
“So what are you?” I asked, my voice deliberately hard. “Some kind of demon…angel…what?”
“Neither.” He reached up to touch the smooth stone he wore around his neck, and I wondered then if it was some sort of talisman, rather than the simple souvenir I’d thought it must be. “I am a djinn.”
I blinked at him. “What, you mean like I Dream of Jeannie, and the big blue guy in the lamp from Aladdin?”
His mouth tightened. “Not like that at all, even though your people have simplified the idea of the djinn to something as foolish as a being who can grant wishes.”
“So you don’t grant wishes?”
“When called by a powerful enough magician, perhaps. But we do not enjoy the process and will do whatever we can do free ourselves from such bonds.”
Okay. First djinn…and now magicians? My head was spinning. “All right, so you’re a djinn. I can’t really deny that, not when I saw you floating two feet above the floor and watched your friend vanish in a puff of smoke.”
Jace’s…Jasreel’s…brows drew together. “He is not my friend, not in any way you would understand.”
I decided to let it go for now. That other djinn had seemed like a nasty customer anyway. There was a far more important question I wanted to ask. “All right, then…why?”
A long, long silence. He stared at me, dark eyes sorrowful. “You should know…beloved.”
Every single vein in my body seemed to be filled with ice. I tried to draw in a breath, but it got caught somewhere in my throat, choking me. I stared at him, then finally forced the words out. “That was you? The voice was you?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “I had chosen you, and so I would do whatever was necessary to keep you safe.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw Chris Bowman’s limp body being thrown across the yard as if it had been made of rags, saw a bullet stop an inch away from my face, then bounce harmlessly off some invisible shield. Yes, this Jasreel had been there all along, watching over me, then leading me here. But for what purpose? I found it hard to believe that some sort of supernatural, supremely powerful being would go to all that trouble just for a little booty.
“That word,” I said. “Chosen. I heard your visitor mention it, too. What does it mean, really?”
Jasreel stared at me with those sad, sad eyes. How could I be terrified of him, and angry with him…and yet still want to reach out to comfort him? No, that was crazy. Bad enough that only a few hours earlier we’d —
My brain shut down that line of thought with an almost audible click. I could not let myself think about that, or I really would go mad.
“It will be difficult to hear,” he said quietly.
“And it’ll be even more difficult for me not to know the truth,” I replied. “So tell me.”
His fingers clenched on his knees. For the first time, I noticed that although his face and body had shifted to those of what he called his true self, he wasn’t wearing those silk pantaloon things, but a pair of flannel pajama bottoms he routinely wore to bed when he was pretending to be “Jace.” The contrast was jarring.
Then he said, “This world was ours once, uncounted ages ago. When God made man, He — ”
“Wait, what?” I broke in. “God? Like, the God?”
“Yes, the God.” This was accompanied by a flicker of a smile, but Jasreel’s expression sobered quickly enough afterward. “When God made man, the djinn were cast out, and this world given over to mankind. We are not flesh precisely as you understand it, although we can make ourselves corporeal as it suits us. We spent long ages in exile, only coming to this world when summoned, or during brief stolen moments. During that time, the world changed a good deal, and mankind along with it. We watched from our exile, saw how you were destroying this gift you were given. And so, among certain quarters, the decision was made to take back that which had been stolen from us.”
That did not sound good at all. I pulled my robe more tightly around me, although I didn’t think that was going to do much to comba
t the chill which seemed to be creeping through every limb.
“Many years were given over to the task, but at last the means of mankind’s destruction was perfected — an illness so grave that it would take almost the entire population of the earth with it.”
“You — you did that?” I demanded, sour bile churning in my stomach at the thought that this — thing — had been behind the death and destruction of everyone and everything I had cared about. I got to my feet, not even thinking, just knowing I had to get away from him, had to run —
But he’d risen as well, his hand clamping on my arm like iron, preventing me from fleeing. “No, I did not do that. There were those of us who protested, who said we could not support such a vile act. We were outnumbered, though, overruled.”
His fingers felt as if they were burning into my flesh. “Let go of me,” I gritted from between clenched teeth.
To my surprise, he did release me, raising his hands as if in surrender. “Jessica, I am sorry. The only compromise we were allowed was that those of us who did not support such extreme measures would be able to choose from among the Immune, to find someone who would be under our protection, who would not be subject to the final purge.”
“‘Final purge’?” I echoed, my stomach clenching once again. Just when I’d thought it couldn’t get any worse. “What are you talking about?”
He pulled in a breath, although I noticed he kept his gaze fixed on my face and didn’t try to look away. “Those who created the virus knew that no illness would have a perfect mortality rate. There are now perhaps two million people left alive, scattered across the face of the planet. And so the next task is to eradicate the Immune, leaving behind only the Chosen.”
It was so awful that I truly couldn’t begin to comprehend the scope of what he was telling me. Two million out of seven billion seemed like a paltry number, but obviously the djinn in charge wouldn’t be satisfied with even that many human beings left alive.
My legs gave way, and I slumped back down into my chair. “How many?” I asked. “How many Chosen?”
“A thousand.”
One thousand people, out of two million. All those who’d thought they had survived the worst, who even now were struggling to pick up the pieces of a world that had utterly fallen apart…they would have all that stolen from them.
“What will happen to the Immune?” I asked. I wasn’t sure where those words had come from. It wasn’t as if I’d consciously decided to ask that question.
Jasreel sat down as well, expression troubled. In a way, I was surprised I could read his face so easily, since he wasn’t even human. But he looked human enough at the moment, and he’d certainly done a good job of fooling me these past few months.
“They will be hunted down,” he said at last. “As one of the dissenters, I am not privy to exactly how and why, and truly, I don’t wish to know. I cannot stop it.”
“You’re really that powerless? How many dissenters are there?”
“As many as there are Chosen. One thousand. The djinn do not number anywhere near what mankind once did, but there are still some twenty thousand of my people, far too many for any of us dissenters to even contemplate confronting them.” He sent me an imploring look then, as if pleading for me to understand. “Jessica, we did everything we could to stop this thing from happening. It was beyond our power. All we could do was save that chosen one thousand of you.”
My protests died on my lips then. Yes, he had lied about who and what he was, but this Jasreel had been by my side for the better part of two months now, and I saw nothing in his face in that moment but regret and sorrow. Whatever horrors his people had perpetrated, he’d wanted nothing to do with them.
Which left only one question. “Then…why me? Why did you choose me? I’m no one.”
He was off the couch and on his knees in one fluid movement. So close, and yet I noticed he didn’t try to reach out and touch me. He wouldn’t, I realized then, unless I told him it was all right.
Whether or not that would happen…even I didn’t know for sure.
His voice was pitched low, but no less intense for all that. “Beloved, you are not no one. I recognized your beauty and your strength, and I knew you were the choice of my heart, even out of several million survivors.”
What was I supposed to say in response to such a declaration? I stared at him, at a face that was like Jace’s, but wasn’t, at the broad shoulders, the arms thick with muscle. He looked human, and yet I knew he was anything but a mortal man.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please don’t call me that. I don’t — I don’t know what to think.”
A stillness settled on his features in that moment, as if he’d finally realized that I wasn’t simply going to say, Oh, it’s all right, I still love you, too, all is forgiven. He glanced away from me, over at the fire, and then back. “I realize this is all difficult for you.”
“‘Difficult’?” I repeated. “I think we passed difficult about ten minutes ago.” I pulled in a breath, then pushed the chair back so I could stand up without bumping into him. “I just — I need some time to process this, okay?”
He didn’t get up, but remained there on his knees, still staring up at me with that blank expression on his face. A muscle twitched in his cheek as he said, “You can have as much time as you need.”
“Good.” I sidled away from the chair, moving toward the hallway. “And — don’t come to the bedroom. Go back to your old room. That is, if djinn even need to sleep.”
With that parting shot, I made my escape, all but running to get away from him. Even so, I couldn’t help taking a quick backward glance as I left the living room. He was still kneeling on the floor, but now his head was bowed, his elbows on the coffee table, as if he needed that support to keep himself from collapsing completely.
At that sight, my throat tightened, and the hallway around me blurred, tears welling to my eyes and spilling down my cheeks. I stumbled into the master suite and then fell on the bed — the bed where Jace had made love to me so many times — sobs tearing themselves out of my chest. I didn’t even know exactly what I was crying about. The loss of what I thought I’d had with Jace? The realization that the Dying had come about not because of some horrible accident of nature, but from directed, malevolent intention? Or knowing that the Dying wasn’t even over, and that the survivors, the Immune, would soon be attacked by the djinn, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it?
All of those, and so much more.
Dutchie jumped up on the bed and licked my face, and I gave a strangled laugh, then pulled her close, burying my face in her soft fur. No, ordinarily she wasn’t allowed on the bed, but in that moment, she knew I needed her.
I clung to her the way a shipwreck survivor might cling to a life preserver, and finally let sleep take me to a place where I could try to forget all the horrors I had just been told.
Chapter Eighteen
I stalled as long as I could. I took a shower, dried my hair, even put on some lip gloss and mascara, things I hadn’t bothered with lately, not after I’d swiped some heavy-duty lip balm from REI on our one foraging run there. But all the preparation in the world could only take so much time, and eventually I had to emerge from the master suite, although I noticed that Dutchie had nudged the door open earlier and slipped away.
Or maybe Jasreel had let her out.
Despite my delaying tactics, I knew I wasn’t ready to face him. A cowardly part of me was praying that he’d packed up and left, had gone to “join the others,” as the strange, cruel-looking djinn had told him to do. Where that supernatural meet-up was supposed to take place, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
The smell of coffee told me Jasreel was still here, though. I stopped at the entrance to the kitchen and saw him standing at the counter, staring out at the bleak landscape beyond the false lushness of the garden. The goats were already grazing, which meant he must have gone and milked them, taken care of their water, then let them ou
t. Since the snow from the last storm had all melted by then, save for a few drifts directly under the eaves of the house, nothing was stopping them from cropping at the short, yellowed grass.
“You made coffee,” I said, my tone flat.
“I thought you could use some.”
I noticed he was wearing Jace’s clothes — flannel shirt, faded Levi’s, worn boots — and yet they couldn’t really be Jace’s clothes. This Jasreel was just enough bigger, more muscled, that dressing him would require a whole new wardrobe. No, these had to be counterfeits, copies, garments designed to look like what I was used to seeing him wear and therefore intended to put me at ease, when in fact they were doing the exact opposite. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and although his expression was serene enough this morning, his eyes looked shadowed. So could djinn suffer from sleepless nights, or was this his attempt at evoking some kind of pity in me?
Normally, I would have said thank you. This morning, though, I went to the cupboard in silence, got out a mug, and poured myself a cup. Getting some goat’s milk and a smidgen of sugar to leaven it used up some more time, a few minutes where I didn’t have to say anything. I could feel Jasreel’s eyes on me, watching every movement I made, and I didn’t like it at all.
At last I turned around and made myself face him, although it was one of the harder things I’d done. Now, in the morning light, I could see more of those differences, see how his brows were just slightly more arched, his jaw just a little more square. There were faint laugh lines around the dark, dark eyes, although they were the same, nearly black, and still circled by the kind of lashes most women would kill for.
“Why are you still here?” I asked abruptly, my fingers circled around the coffee mug I held, desperately trying to claim some of its warmth. My hands felt as icy as the world outside the kitchen.
The question seemed to surprise him. His eyebrows lifted, and he said, “You didn’t tell me to leave.”
All right, I hadn’t, in so many words. I’d said he could go back to his old bedroom, which in his mind seemed to have been an open-ended invitation to stay. Last night, I hadn’t exactly been thinking all that clearly.
Magic in the Desert: Three Paranormal Romance Series Starters Set in the American Southwest Page 50
