circumstances.
I had a lot of work to do.
Sitting the Wardens down for their loyalty checks was easier than I figured it might be—mainly because they were shell-shocked after the disaster of trying to control the storm. Even the Fire Wardens, notoriously temperamental, and the Earth Wardens, notably hippie-nonconformist, decided to play nice.
I found nothing. If any of them were lying about their allegiances, it was beyond my ability—or David’s—to discover. If Bad Bob and his crew could go that deep cover, there was no way we were coming out of this alive, so I decided not to worry about it.
That left some thirty-odd rich folks who were confined to their cabins—hopefully—and a whole bunch of ship’s staff and crew.
It was going to be a long stretch. Luckily, I had David along with me, which meant he was paying more attention to my energy levels than I was, and after thanking the last eerily compliant Earth Warden and shaking hands, he steered me in the direction of the only open restaurant.
“I’m not hungry!” I protested. He raised his eyebrows. “I can’t eat now. I’ve got work to do. Besides, I ate at the buffet when we had the meeting.”
“You ate a turkey sandwich. Before you dumped all your energy into the attempt to control the storm.”
David had a point—I’d burned profligate amounts of power, all day long, and now that I thought about it, my muscles had that oddly shaky feeling that meant I was about to crash. My head hurt, too.
I tried rejecting the whole problem again, but David knew when to press, and before I knew it, we were taking the big, sweeping gallery stairs down to the restaurant. It was called Le Fleur D’Or, and it was one of the smaller eating places on the ship—kind of an intimate date-type restaurant, with lots of dark woods and plush carpeting.
The hastily printed menu featured sandwiches, which I figured wasn’t the usual fare. The place (and the staff) looked more used to handling lobster and exotic salads than BLTs. They couldn’t resist foo-fooing them up by cutting crusts off the bread and making little triangles, but a sandwich is still a sandwich, even if it’s on challah bread. I think I ate a dozen, making sounds that probably would have been more appropriate in bed than at the table.
David didn’t need to eat—Djinn don’t—but they
Well, maybe not, but it was an intriguing fantasy.
“Thanks,” I said, pushing back from the crumb-dusted plate and swigging half of my iced tea in convulsive gulps. “I didn’t know I was that bad off.”
“You’ve got limits,” he said. “You should learn to pay attention to them occasionally.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. I see the blur as I blow past them.”
He came around, pulled my chair back, and handed me up to my feet in a courtly Old World gesture, very appropriate to this hushed, romantic restaurant with its subdued violin music. He combed his fingers through my curly hair in a slow, gentle gesture that left it straight and shining in the wake of his touch. “I was thinking more of actually staying within them.”
“Funny. So where do we start with the rich folks?”
David turned to the waiter still hovering near the table, eager for any chance to break out of his boredom. “Do you deliver room service?”
“No, sir, the cabin stewards do that.”
“Do they ever tell you about the difficult passengers?”
That got a big fat silence. I could imagine that passenger gossip was one of those major disciplinary no-no things.
“We won’t say who it came from,” I promised, and gestured to David, rubbing my fingers together. He reached in the back pocket of his pants, pulled out a wallet, and peeled off a hundred-dollar bill, which he placed on the table as a tip.
The waiter’s eyes widened. “Cabin seventeen in first class,” he said. “If you’re looking for the biggest jerk.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Mr. Prince?”
David offered me his arm in another of those dashingly gallant gestures. “Mrs. Prince,” he said. “Cabin seventeen it is.”
Cabin seventeen was located only a few doors down from my own spacious digs. As we headed in that direction, I saw Aldonza, the cabin stewardess, closing the door to room 22. She had a tray of used dishes balanced in her hands. I waved. She gave me a professional, polished smile in return, as impartial as a Swiss banker.
“Aldonza,” I said, “can I ask you a question?”
“Yes, miss,” she said, and tried not to stare at David too openly. “Of course.”
She was carrying about twenty pounds on that tray, and she was a slight little thing. As I glanced at David, I saw he’d already reached the same conclusion. He reached out and took the tray from her, despite her shocked gasp.
“To the restaurant?” he asked. She gave him a stunned nod.
“But, sir, you can’t—”
He could. David was quite enjoying being free of the Djinn secrecy restrictions; he misted away with the tray in full view of Aldonza, and her pretty face went pale with shock. She crossed herself and murmured something in Spanish.
“He’s okay,” I promised her. “More like an angel than, you know, the other thing.” She stared at me blankly, shaking her head as if she simply wanted the whole thing to go away. “I need to ask you about one of your guests. Cabin seventeen?”
That snapped her out of her fugue state. Color flooded back into her face, and then she made a visible effort to stay calm and professional. “Mr. Trent Cole,” she said.
“Nice guy?”
“I can’t talk about my guests, miss.” Her lips twitched. “Not even about you and the angel.”
“Eh, don’t worry about us. You can talk all you want. We’ve been on CNN.” She snorted, then covered her mouth with her hand as if she was appalled at her bad behavior. I winked. “Look, about Mr. Cole—I’m about to go talk to him. Anything you can tell me about him that might help me decide if he’s a threat or not?”
She hesitated, and I could see the good-girl/gossip-girl conflict being played out for a solid three seconds before the gossip girl pulled a smackdown. “He has a gun,” she said. “I saw it. He put it in the pocket of his bathrobe. He doesn’t like anyone coming into his room, and he’s very rude. He doesn’t let me do any cleaning, and that makes it so hard, because he can complain that I’m not doing my job, and if a passenger makes a complaint like that I can be fired and left at the next port—”
Man, when Aldonza decided to talk, it was hard to stop her. “What kind of a gun?” I asked. She looked puzzled. “Small? Big? Revolver? Automatic?”
“Big. An automatic.”
“Okay. I just want to know what we’re dealing with,” I said. “Aldonza—did Mr. Cole threaten you? Hurt you?”
From the rigid set of her posture, I thought he had, but she shook her head. Maybe not even her gossip-girl side could voice that complaint. At least, not to a mere passenger.
“Okay,” I said. I felt David coming back, and saw her eyes shift and widen as he whispered into existence behind me. “Thank you very much for your information. David—” I did the finger-rubbing thing again. He produced his wallet, Aldonza got a hundred-dollar bill, and as we walked away, David handed me the wallet. “What?”
“I just thought it might be more convenient,” he said. “In case you want to bribe anybody in cabin seventeen.”
“I want to intimidate the holy living shit out of cabin seventeen,” I said. “How would that be?”
