Forbidden (The Djinn Wars Book 6)

by Christine Pope

  “It’s a nice day for a walk,” she said, and stopped herself there. The last thing she wanted was for him to start in on her again for her foolishness in the hot sun yesterday.

  As it was, he seemed to be thinking about the same thing, for the slightest of frowns pulled at his brows as he shot a quick glance upward at the overcast skies. To her relief, however, he didn’t make any more comment than that. Instead, he slung a fabric bag off one shoulder and extended it to her.

  “I found this for you.”

  Mystified, she took the bag from him. It was made of patchwork fabric, some of the pieces embroidered. Not djinn work, though; the bag looked similar to others she’d seen in boutiques that specialized in imports from India. She opened it, and saw that inside were several pieces of mesh cloth, already marked with designs for needlepoint, along with skeins of the fine wool thread needed for that sort of project.

  Her heart caught. Maybe there were other things she could have done to fill her time, but this — this was familiar, something that would help to soothe her soul and spirit. “Th-thank you, Aldair.”

  He shrugged, his expression almost too blank. “I recalled that you said you practiced these sorts of needle arts. I found these items in one of the houses. Perhaps it will be a…less risky…form of amusement for you.”

  She almost wanted to argue, to tell him that she could manage her own amusements very well, but she held her tongue. Here he’d done something thoughtful for her. Throwing it in his face wouldn’t help the current state of affairs at all. Hadn’t she just been thinking that their situation couldn’t go on like this forever?

  “Well, it will definitely help me stay cool,” she said. “In fact, I think I’ll go inside and get started now.”

  “Good. Patches has had enough exercise for the morning, I think, so I will leave him here with you.”

  “You’re going back out?”

  Piercing blue eyes met hers, and she looked down quickly, pretending to fiddle with the strap of the bag she held. “Yes,” he said. “I hadn’t quite finished.”

  She didn’t dare ask him, Finished with what? Instead, she made herself nod, then added, “Well, keep an eye on the weather. I think it’s going to rain sooner or later.”

  “No worries. I am a djinn of the air. I always know when a storm is coming.”

  And then he was gone, disappearing into the air that was his element. Jillian’s breath caught, although she tried to tell herself she should be used to that sort of thing by now. Down by her feet, Patches shifted, then gazed imploringly up into her face.

  “Well, kid,” she said. “Looks like it’s just you and me for a while.”

  Matters did seem to improve somewhat after that exchange. The gift of the needlecraft seemed to have mollified Jillian. Or at least, it gave her something to do, something that made her happy. No doubt she found comfort in its familiarity, when the rest of the world had changed so utterly for her.

  Even so, he did not try to presume on the small change in her attitude. He could tell that she chafed at being kept here, even though she had made no further arguments for him to let her go. But he thought he had also learned something of her temperament during the time they had spent together. While she did not seem afraid to stand up for herself when necessary, she was not the sort of woman who thrived on conflict, and indeed did what she could to avoid it. They achieved a somewhat fragile peace as the week wore on, and he made sure not to upset that peace.

  What he did do was continue his explorations in the local area, finding at first a hamlet off to the northwest called Cerrillos, a town even tinier than Madrid. Nothing lived there except a pack of stray dogs, all of whom looked healthy and strong, if not terribly thrilled to see him. He let them alone, once he’d determined there was nothing left in the place that could aid him and Jillian.

  After that, he ranged south, finding miles and miles of open land, with the occasional ranch or other settlement to break up the monotony. No survivors here, either, which surprised him not at all. Even if anyone in these places had lived through the Dying, they had either possessed enough wits or luck to join the rest of the Immune in Los Alamos, or they had been picked off by the djinn whose role it was to scour the Earth of any humans who remained after the Heat had done its work.

  It was also clear enough to him that this area had been deemed unworthy to be settled by djinn, for he sensed no others of his kind, no one at all. Emboldened, he finally ventured all the way to Albuquerque, where he encountered a most unusual sight. The miles and miles of urban and suburban sprawl were utterly devoid of any signs of life that went on two legs, and yet at the city’s center, he saw evidence that someone had been at work here — an earth elemental, if his eyes and his instincts did not deceive him. Almost all the buildings in that area had been knocked down, except one tall edifice that appeared to have once been a hotel. Open grassland waved around it, dotted with indigenous shrubs and trees, and a stream meandered past before ending in a small lake. Wildflowers, fed by the monsoon rains, bloomed everywhere.

  If he didn’t know better, he would have said that one of his fellow djinn had begun reconstructing the city into something that pleased him better, only to be interrupted in that work. Who — or what — might have interrupted that unknown djinn, Aldair couldn’t begin to guess. Once a land grant had been given by the elders, it could not be taken away. It was supposed to be eternal.

  But clearly no one lived here now. Aldair wandered into the hotel and saw that it was furnished with the sort of splendor a djinn might very well want to claim for his own, with carved ceilings above and grottoes where fountains once played. For a moment, he wondered if he might bring Jillian here, for certainly this was a place that appealed to him far more than the glorified farmhouse where they currently dwelled.

  However, after pondering the idea for a moment, he decided it would not do. If this place had once belonged to another djinn, then that meant it was not entirely off the radar, to use a human phrase. Someone else might happen along, or perhaps the djinn whose land it originally had been might return to inspect his or her property.

  Aldair went back out to the street and stood on the bit of sidewalk that still remained. All around him was utter silence, save the whisper of the wind in the tall grass. Again he sent his senses questing outward, but he felt nothing — certainly no humans, and no djinn, either.

  Looking to the north and east, he saw the impressive bulk of the mountain range known as the Sandias. Nestled among its foothills he could just make out the glint of windows, indicating that homes must have been built there. Large ones, too, if his sense of perspective meant anything. Perhaps one of those properties might warrant a closer look. It was hard to tell for sure from this distance, but it seemed as if they were set fairly far apart. Private. And perched up there, they would have a commanding view of the valley where most of Albuquerque lay. It would make for quite a defensible position.

  Nodding in approval, he took to the air once more, letting the wind’s currents help bear him to his destination. As he flew, his thoughts strayed to Jillian. If he found the perfect hideaway for the two of them, would she come willingly? Or would she view the change of location as another chance to escape?

  Only time would tell, he supposed.

  Aldair had been gone a long while. Over the past week, he’d begun to disappear for increasingly lengthy periods, but still something had kept Jillian from trying to make a run for it. Maybe it was only because she never quite knew when he would reappear — and he did so at the most unexpected times — making it difficult for her to determine how best to plan her escape.

  And also…well, she really didn’t want to admit to herself that she wasn’t quite as eager to get away from him as she had been only a few days earlier.

  They had both been civil, Jillian because she knew her time here was going to be much more exhausting if she continued to fight with him every second of the day, and Aldair because — actually, she didn’t know for sure why
he was being so nice. He’d brought her the needlepoint supplies, and that helped a great deal to pass the time, but it was more than that. He asked her what she would like for dinner, brought wildflowers to decorate the table, invited her along for his evening walks with Patches if it wasn’t too hot. The whole time, Jillian had to wonder if this was just another stratagem for getting into her pants. But he’d been such a gentleman that she began to doubt her own judgment, and to ask herself if she was inclined to think the worst of him because, in a way, that would make things easier for her. Disliking him was so much better than the alternative.

  You are not going to let yourself fall for him, she told herself sternly as she refilled the water in a cream-colored pitcher of heavy ceramic that held several exuberant bunches of sunflowers, brightening up the dining room table. Yes, he’s handsome, and yes, he’s been decent the past several days, but that’s all it is. It’s just — she broke off as she racked her brain for the word — it’s just propinquity. You’ve been thrown together in close proximity, and now you’re manufacturing an attraction because it seems like the logical thing to happen.

  Then she wanted to laugh at herself. Psych 101 did tend to resurface at the oddest times.

  Underneath, though, she couldn’t ignore her unease, as if she knew logic had nothing to do with any of this. Logic would have made her seek an escape the second she thought she had enough time to get away safely. Instead, she lingered here, doing her best to ignore what her irrational heart was trying to tell her.

  As she waited for Aldair to return, a certain restlessness sent her upstairs. She went into the room that had once been the owner’s studio and looked at the paintings there, both finished and unfinished. It would have been convenient if Jillian herself had been an artist; she would have had something else to occupy her time, and there were certainly ample supplies here to keep her happily painting and drawing for months and months, if not years. Unfortunately, she didn’t have an artistic bone in her body, except a certain eye for color, a talent that helped with the needlepoint and certainly when decorating the townhouse she and Jack had shared. But knowing which pillows would look best with your couch didn’t exactly make you Picasso.

  Up until now, Jillian had mostly ignored the room that once served as an office here in the house. She certainly wasn’t going to attempt to get past the password that protected the big iMac there, even if her talents had extended to computer hacking. Snooping around a dead woman’s computer was just wrong. The same went for the contents of her desk.

  However, on the desktop was a stack of office supplies, as if the home’s owner had recently gotten a shipment of the stuff right before the Heat rendered all that sort of thing useless. All right, not entirely useless; the stacks of Post-it notes and boxes of staples probably could have been put to good use up in Los Alamos, where they did tend to go through office supplies at a rate that couldn’t possibly be sustainable.

  What caught Jillian’s eye, though, were the two refills for the desk calendar, both of them still wrapped in plastic. One was for the year already past, and so she ignored that one. But the other could still be of some use. She pulled off the cellophane and inserted the stack of calendar pages into the little plastic holder, lining up the holes in the paper with the metal loops that held it in place. And then she began flipping through the calendar, thumbing ahead to what she hoped was today’s date. She knew the lab accident had happened on August 27th, because Miles always wrote the current date on one of the whiteboards there — probably to help him keep track as of his progress. And, ticking the days off on her fingers, she realized she had been here in Madrid for a full week. So she flipped the pages over, leaving today’s date to stare up at her.

  September 2nd.

  Her heart seized in her chest. Had she really been so oblivious that she hadn’t realized the day was coming around once again?

  September 2nd. It would have been Jack’s thirtieth birthday today. A day they’d planned for, talked about. She’d joked and said he’d be her old man, since he was a year and a half older than she was. And he’d just grinned and told her he’d be honored, since the only thing he wanted was to grow old with her.

  The numbers on the calendar blurred before her eyes. Damn those tears, always threatening when she least expected them. She blinked, swallowing huge gulps of air, but somehow that didn’t seem to be good enough to prevent a sob from forcing its way up her throat. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything except push herself blindly away from the desk so she could get out of that office and down the stairs.

  Fresh air. That’s what she needed.

  The day had been another overcast one, the skies lowering, distant thunder echoing off the hillsides even though no rain had yet fallen. Now, though, as Jillian stumbled down the porch steps, the first drops of rain hit her face and arms, cold, stinging. Lightning flashed, with thunder following just a few seconds later, so loud that it seemed to reverberate in her very bones.

  Here it was Jack’s birthday, and she’d been grappling with the knowledge that somehow she’d let herself fall in love with a djinn. A djinn. They’d destroyed this world. They’d been responsible for Jack’s death and the deaths of so many others. Her parents. Jack’s younger brother, and her in-laws, and everyone else she’d known and loved or even liked. How on earth could she be so selfish as to think it was all right to give one of those creatures her heart?

  The rain began to fall in earnest, soaking through her clothes, plastering her hair to her forehead and neck and shoulders. But she hardly noticed. She staggered down the drive toward the highway, ignoring the rain, ignoring the blinding flash overhead as lightning pierced the sky once again. The thunder that followed was so loud, she clapped her hands to her ears.

  Even that didn’t stop her, however. She knew she had to get out of here. She had to get out before Aldair came back, Aldair with those blue, blue eyes that seemed to see every part of her, with a mouth that promised everything she knew she should be trying to avoid. If she let Aldair kiss her again, she’d forget herself. She’d forget Jack, and she knew she couldn’t let that happen. Because if she forgot him, he’d be truly gone, since there was no one left to remember who he was, who he’d been.

  Water was beginning to flow in little rivulets across the highway as the rain pounded down, so heavy she could barely see the buildings in “downtown” Madrid. But that was where she had to go. Through Madrid, and beyond. If she could just get to Santa Fe, the djinn and their Chosen there would help her get all the way home to Los Alamos. But no, Los Alamos wasn’t really home. No place had been home. Not since she lost Jack.

  She wouldn’t think about how the house here on the outskirts of Madrid had begun to feel like home, with Patches and Aldair and their quiet daily routine. She couldn’t think about that.

  Was she going crazy?

  Maybe. And the only way to stay sane was to get the hell out of here.

  She kept walking.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Aldair could feel the storm cell building off to the northeast. Over Madrid? Possibly. From here in Albuquerque, it was difficult to tell exactly, what with the bulk of the Sandia Mountains in the way. He had found a house he liked very much, one built on its own promontory in the foothills, with architecture that would not have been out of place in ancient Toledo — tile roofs and hidden courtyards, and hanging lanterns of dark wrought iron. It was beautiful, and far more to his taste than the rustic homestead where he’d been living for the past week. Would Jillian think it beautiful if he brought her here?

  The best way to know for certain was to ask her.

  Since he knew his destination, he blinked himself from the house above Albuquerque directly into the living room of the home in Madrid. Cool air surrounded him at once — almost too cool, for the air conditioning had been set at a certain temperature to keep the house comfortable in the summer heat, but the storm that raged in the little mountain town had made the air outside almost cold.

&nbs
p; Patches was sitting at the front door, looking despondent. Immediately, Aldair went over to the dog and bent so he could scratch behind his ears. “What is it?” he asked. “Does the thunder frighten you?”

  A shake, and then Patches scratched at the doorframe and whined softly.

  A thin trickle of cold that had nothing to do with the air conditioning made its way down Aldair’s spine. “And Jillian? Where is she?”

  Another whine.

  Aldair turned from the dog and called out into the depths of the house, “Jillian!”

  Only silence in reply, just as he’d feared there would be.

  He blinked himself upstairs and hurried over to her room. The door stood open, so he could see the bed was neatly made. A quick peek inside the closet told him that all her clothes were still there, except the ones on her back. The necklace he’d given her lay across the top of the dresser, but that in and of itself would not have normally worried him. She did not wear the piece all the time, although she did tend to put it on for dinner, as if to dress up whatever she was wearing.

  And yet, somehow he knew she was gone.

  Cursing under his breath, he blinked himself outside. Almost at once, the rain pouring from the skies soaked through the silk garments he wore, but he cared little for that. A djinn could not take a chill the way a human could, and he could use the winds to dry himself just as soon as he returned indoors.

  Because he did not know exactly where Jillian was, he could not send himself directly to her location. He was forced to fly along the highway, heading north since that seemed the most logical direction for her to have gone. Santa Fe lay to the north.

  No sign of her in the small section of Madrid where the shops and restaurants lay. He kept going, ignoring the crackle of lightning overhead and its answering thunder. Even if he should be struck directly, he would take no harm. At the same time, he could feel the way the storm cell had settled itself over the town. It clearly did not intend to go anywhere for some time.