by Rachel Caine
For answer, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a single crystal tooth, about the size of a small switch-blade. He held it in his palm for a moment, weighing it, and then handed it to me. “Careful,” he said. “Sharp.”
He was right; it still held a wicked edge. I wrapped it in handfuls of tissue paper from the box on the night-stand and put it in my own pocket for later study.
“Do we know if there are more on board?” I asked. “Because we really don’t need another ugly surprise.”
David got up and opened the cabin door. In walked another Djinn, a brawny, bald-headed sort who looked like he might have moonlighted on a cleaner bottle from time to time. His skin was a dull metallic gray, and his eyes were the color of rust.
He looked around the sparse cabin with an expression like he’d bitten a bug in half, then dragged over the small side chair. Cherise wasn’t in at the moment, for which I was grateful; she’d gone off in search of medicinal ice cream. I could imagine her running commentary on this scene.
“This is Lyle,” David said.
“Seriously?” I blurted. They both shot me an odd look. “I mean, come on. Lyle?”
Lyle smiled. He’d filed his teeth into sharp little points. “You got a problem with that?” He had a surprising Deep South accent, slow and warm. It didn’t sound artificial, as if he was mocking me, either.
Another oddity.
“Uh, no, no problem,” I said. “It’s just not exactly the kind of name I’m used to hearing from supernatural beings. A little too—”
“Human?”
“Country,” I said. “Not even a little bit rock and roll.”
David decided it was time to intervene before my conversational skills cost me a bruise or two. “Lyle became a Djinn during one of the World Wars.”
“Which one?”
“They come so close together,” David said. “First?”
Lyle nodded. “I kept my human name. A lot of Djinn don’t bother. Sorry it doesn’t meet with your approval, Warden.”
“No, you’re not,” I said, and he smiled again. This time, he’d put away the scary teeth, and his dentition was blindingly white and perfectly human-normal.
If anything, that was weirder.
“Lyle was checking for energy signatures,” David said. “Did you find anything?”
“Yes. Weaker than the one you two tripped across, though, and well hidden.” Lyle’s rust-colored eyes darkened just a shade. “They’re hiding as humans.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Two more?” My throat threatened to close up around the words, and Lyle sent me a sharp look. I needed to work on my poker face. “What do we know about them?”
“They’re wearing skins,” Lyle said. “The skins used to be people, so they have history and weight in the aetheric. They took care not to kill the skins. I think they knew it was a good disguise. Good enough to fool most Djinn, even.”
He was trying to describe something that I was trying equally hard not to imagine. “These people—can we save them?”
“Not people,” Lyle said. “Like I said, they’re just skins now. Nothing inside.”
I wished he hadn’t said that. Or at least, hadn’t sounded so matter-of-fact about it.
“Why haven’t they attacked us already?” I asked. “They probably know their big brother’s gone, right? What are they waiting for, the all-you-can-eat-buffet light to go on?”
“They’re definitely waiting on some type of signal, if they haven’t struck at us yet,” David said. “They can afford to bide their time. We don’t even really know what they’re capable of doing, not yet.”
“No,” I said slowly. “They did strike already. They killed the Djinn we found in the hallway outside my old cabin. We just don’t know why, because we can’t figure out who she was or what she was doing at the time.”
It was the perfect dead end, and it was wasted on David and Lyle, who looked at each other as if silently thinking that I’d gone just slightly nuts. Humans, Lyle’s shrug said. Who knows what goes on in their tiny heads?
“We need to backtrack and figure out why they felt threatened by that Djinn,” I said. “Or why they had to stop what she was doing. David—” He was still giving me that blank look. “Never mind. I’ll figure it out. Anyway, one good thing about it—they’re probably worried about how we managed to kill their strongest monster already.” I swallowed. “Please tell me that it was the strongest one.”
“It was,” David said. I heaved a deep sigh of relief.
“We should kill them now,” Lyle said.
“How? Just one of them was capable of nearly killing me, fighting David to a standstill, and halfway destroying Venna,” I said. “So I’m not feeling real good about our chances with taking on two of them at once. Any other options?”
Lyle cocked one thin eyebrow. “Swim back to shore.”
“Just run away.”
“Unless you want to wait for them to strike first.”
“You weren’t serious about the running away, right?”
“Oh, he was,” David said.
Lyle nodded. Lyle was turning out to be the least confrontational supernatural being I’d ever met. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a refreshing change, but considering that I wanted a bunch of fire-eating, hard-charging badasses to back me up right now . . . not so much.
We both looked at David, who seemed to be half a world away. He dragged himself back with an effort. “We bide our time,” he said. “It’s too dangerous to go after them right now. Venna can’t be used against them again, and we need to know more than we know now. Joanne—”
“Yeah, got it. Find out the right frequencies to do damage, and get everybody up to speed on the info, quietly. Oh, you probably should tell me just who I’m avoiding, here. Not Wardens?” Because I’d hate to have missed that in my initial checks.
“No,” Lyle said, relieving me of screwups. “One is crew, an engineering mate below passenger decks. The other is hiding as a stowaway in the ship’s hold. He will be difficult to reach, and harder to trap.”
“Let them hide for now,” David said. “Watch them. Any change, any indication something’s happening, report it as soon as you can. If they try to sabotage the ship—” I hadn’t even thought of that, and the idea twisted me deep in the gut. “Could they?”
“Of course. But not easily, and probably not fatally. With the Wardens and Djinn aboard, most damage can be repaired immediately.” David sounded a lot more confident than I felt at the moment. I guess I was glad somebody was. “If you need help—”
Lyle gave a very human-sounding snort. “Why would I?”
“Because Joanne’s right,” David said. “One of these things nearly won against two Djinn and a powerful Warden. Don’t let your confidence blind you to the possibility of losing spectacularly.” At that moment, I thought he sounded a whole lot like his predecessor, Jonathan—calm, acidic, absolutely in control. And Lyle must have thought so too, because he inclined his head a bit and looked contrite.
“Their names,” I said.
“What?” Both Djinn looked at me.
“The people. I’d like to know their names.”
“Why does it matter?” Lyle asked. “They’re skins. I told you, they’re empty.”
“You also told me the skins used to be real people. Real histories. Families. Friends.” I held his gaze. Good thing I’d had practice with that, because Lyle had the eerie Djinn thing down pat. “I want to know because it’s the only way we can honor their memories.”
He seemed to understand that. “The engineer’s mate is Jason Ng. He joined the crew twelve years ago. He had a wife and three children in New Orleans, and a mistress in Brazil. The other was once named Angelo Marconi, from Naples. His sister owns a restaurant there. His family thinks he’s still away at school.”
“School,” I murmured. “How old—”
“He is dead, Warden.”
“How old?�
��
“The skin is sixteen,” Lyle said. “I’m sorry. But you can’t let what they’re wearing fool you into hesitating. You know that, don’t you?”
I knew. I also knew that if push came to shove, if I had to stand there and sling fire at a sixteen-year-old boy, I wasn’t going to be very good at it.
But I knew someone who would be.
I found Kevin Prentiss on the ship’s main promenade deck, standing at the railing. He was watching the thick gray foaming clouds and the iron-colored water with its lacings of white, and he looked—as always—like a punk streetwise kid who needed to learn the concept of personal hygiene.
The difference these days was that Kevin had pulled himself together, to a greater extent than I’d ever thought possible. He’d earned himself some respect from his fellow Fire Wardens. He’d learned something from his apprenticeship to Lewis. He still looked greasy, but it was mostly hair product and deliberately baggy clothing. He had at least a handshake acquaintance with regular bathing.
However, Kevin still hated me. The look he sent me as I approached was a shot across my own personal bow, warning me to steer clear. I ignored it and took up a post at the rail beside him, leaning on the wood and bracing myself against the rise and fall of the deck with my feet well spread.
“You look like shit,” Kevin said, and flipped half a lit cigarette into the air. Before it hit the water, it had burst into flame. Nothing but ash to litter the ocean. “Congratulations on the improvement.”
“Well, you know me, I’m all about the cutting-edge fashion trends.”
“What, beat to shit is the new black?” Kevin abandoned the ocean to turn and face me. He still needed a haircut, but his pimples were mostly gone now, and he’d filled out while I wasn’t looking, turning from a skinny beanpole to something closer to lean and hungry. I supposed some girls went for that.
Like Cherise, now that I thought about it. The kid was legal age. I knew she’d originally been attracted to him because he was needy, broken, and bad; I also knew that she’d been the perfect foil for him, to remind him that he had better things inside.
Kevin liked to put on the badass hat, though. And always would.
He studied me out of the corner of his eye. “You want something,” he said.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you never talk to me unless you want something.”
“So not true,” I said. I held my breath for a second, then let it out. “Okay, I want something.”
He didn’t even have to waste his breath on an I told you so. “Big or small?”
“Pretty big.”
“And I’d do it for you because . . . ?”
“Because you’re a good man, somewhere deep underneath all that greasy stupid kid disguise,” I said. “Because you want to be, or you wouldn’t be out here on this insanely stupid trip. And because you don’t want anything to happen to Cherise.”
He straightened up. He was getting taller all the time, and now his body language reminded me less of skate parks and more of Lewis in a really foul mood. “You should never have dragged her off with us.”
“I didn’t. Cher goes everywhere with her eyes wide open, you know that. I’m just saying that of all of us, she’s the least able to defend herself if something bad happens, so she’s a good reminder note, because we both care about her.”
Kevin muttered something impolite under his breath that I pretended not to hear, and turned back to glare at the ocean. Steam rose from a couple of waves before he got himself back under control. I was impressed. A few months ago, he’d have vaporized a few metric tons of ocean in a fit of pique.
Of course, not having a fit of pique would be better still, but baby steps.
“What do you want?” he asked, in a different kind of tone than before. Actually asking for information instead of confronting. Good for him. And good for me, of course.
“I want you to make friends with a Djinn named Lyle,” I said. “Pick a team and stay alert. You may have to react quickly.”
“Lyle?” Kevin let out a braying laugh that got whipped away by the fiercely driven wind. I licked my lips, and tasted salt and metal. “You’re shitting me. Okay, never mind, I won’t even ask. React quickly to what?”
“He’s going to be keeping watch on a couple of people who aren’t supposed to be here.” I reached out and grabbed Kevin’s shoulder, turning him toward me. “Kevin. Pay attention. This isn’t a joke. These two are very, very dangerous, even to the Djinn. Even to you. So don’t get cocky.”
“Me?” He gave me a look so ironic it was practically tipped over into sincerity. “You’re not telling me something. Or, like, anything.”
“I told you they’re dangerous.”
“How, toxic body odor? Really sour attitudes? Can they kill me with their brains?”
I gave up, and held on to the rail as the ship took a particularly hard dip into the water, almost a bounce. The waves were getting thicker and deeper, and the storm behind us was finding gangs of friends to our port and up ahead. It was going to hit us sooner rather than later.
“They’re not human,” I said. “They’re fast, they’re deadly. Think Alien, made out of indestructible crystal, only with human skin.”
“Wouldn’t that be Terminator or something?”
“Enough of the movies. This isn’t funny, Kevin, it’s serious. The one in the ship’s hold is wearing the body of a sixteen-year-old boy.” There, I’d said it.
And he understood it. “And that’s easier for me, right? Because I won’t see him as just a kid. I see him as more of an equal.”
I nodded unwillingly. “I’m not putting you out there alone,” I said. “But I know you. I know you won’t hesitate if—”
“If I have to kill somebody who looks like he just got passed up for his junior prom? Yeah, I’m definitely that guy.”
I didn’t answer that, because there was a new note in his voice: self-loathing. Kevin hadn’t lived an easy life. He was more pragmatic than most kids I’d ever met, and tougher, too. But that didn’t mean he wanted to be, even though he wore his damage like a badge of honor.
“I’m sorry,” I said, finally. “I wish I didn’t have to ask you.”
“I wish I wasn’t the go-to guy to kill monsters dressed as teens, but there you go.” He shrugged. “At least I’ve got experience.”
And that was the heart of it, at last. I’d come to Kevin because I’d seen him kill without hesitation, and without remorse. Granted, he’d had plenty of personal hatred built up, but it took a special kind of detachment to do what he’d done and never suffer much guilt about it. He mostly resented the fact that we all knew about it—not that he’d been forced to do it.
“I’m not your pet psycho.” I flinched, because Kevin could have been reading my mind. “But yeah, I’ll find Lyle and do this. Just don’t put me on speed dial the next time you have to push a school bus off a cliff or something. So. What’s our approved monster-killing technique?”
I pulled the tissue-wrapped crystal tooth out of my pocket. “Let’s find out.” The thing glittered like a diamond in the dull light.
We took the fragment with us, found a crew member to open up the gym for us, and moved equipment to get clear floor space for our experiments. Kevin took to the scientific method with enthusiasm, because there’s nothing a teenage kid likes better than trying to destroy something that’s indestructible. Kevin tried so many kinds of fire that even I was impressed with the variety and breadth of control he had over it, especially since he didn’t kill us in the process.
Except that nothing worked, and eventually Kevin tried stomping on the thing in frustration. That didn’t work so well, either.
“Let me,” I said, and crouched down across from where the glittering crystal shard lay between us. Kevin mimicked me from about four feet away.
“No fair using Earth powers,” he said. “I’ll call bullshit.”
“You’ll be working with an Earth warden, idiot,�
�� I said. “Watch and learn. I’m going to start with super-low frequencies and work my way up. You watch the structure with me. If you see any response at all, tell me.”
“If I’d known this favor of yours would mean sitting around watching you use a vibrator, I would’ve said hell yeah earlier—”
“Bite me,” I said. He flipped me off. I ignored him—mostly—and paid attention to the structure of the crystal.
It took the better part of an hour, but we pinpointed the frequency range that had the greatest effect on the thing. I couldn’t get to Venna’s epic pulverizing effect, but I figured that anything that cracked and shattered the bone would do. At the very least, it would distract the holy living hell out of the enemy.
“Yeah, that’s great,” Kevin said, as I wrote down the numbers. “Big problem. I can’t do that, genius. It takes a tree hugger.”
“And I’ll get one for you,” I said. “But I wouldn’t call her a tree hugger if I was you. She’ll make your face grow backwards if you piss her off.” I wrote down the name—Maida Manning. Three hundred pounds of extremely sarcastic Earth Warden who wouldn’t take any of Kevin’s bullshit. Maida also had a vicious sense of humor. I could see a beautiful friendship developing, unless of course they managed to kill each other first.
I’m so public-spirited.
“Give her this,” I said, and handed him the written instructions. “Tell her I’ll give her a raise if she manages to not kill you before you kill the bad guys. But whatever you do, wait for Lyle to give a signal to move. Got it?”
“Of course I’ve got it. I’ve got an IQ above your dress size.” He paused. “Then again, it might be the other way around. I mean, do they even make dress sizes in the hundred and fifties?”
Cherise was having a terrible influence on the kid. I decided that one of us really needed to stay focused on professional dignity, and so I settled for a rude gesture instead of a comeback.
“Score,” he said. He walked away, just another bad-attitude teen from his messy, uncombed hair to his dragging, world-weary sneakers.
It takes a special kind of courage to know your own darkness, I thought. I wished he didn’t have to be such an expert, but as long as he was, I had no choice but to take advantage of his skills.
