purposefully in my direction. “Holy crap.”
“Joanne Baldwin?” The reporter got out in front, framed the two-shot, and made sure her best side was to the camera. “My name is Sylvia Simons, and I’m an investigative reporter for-”
My paralysis snapped, replaced by a quivering all-over tremor.
“I don’t care who you’re with,” I interrupted, and started pumping the jack again. The tire crept upward, cleared the asphalt, and I repurposed the jack to start removing the lugs. “Get lost.”
“Ma’am, do you have any comment about what happened back there on the beach?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “And I don’t know any Joanne Baldwin. You’ve got the wrong-”
“I interviewed your sister a few weeks ago. She gave us a photo,” Sylvia Simons interrupted, and held out a picture of me and Sarah, which had been removed from its frame. We looked happy and stupid. I still felt stupid, but I certainly wasn’t very happy. “She told us that you’re a member of an organization called the Wardens. Can you tell me something about that?”
“No,” I said. Four lug nuts off. I kept moving, careless of the grease and grime on my hands or what was getting on my clothes.
“My understanding is that you have some kind of responsibility for protecting the general public from natural disasters,” Simons continued. Lug nut five came off, then six, and I slid the tire free with a screech of metal and let it thump down on the road between us. I wiped sweat from my forehead and ignored her as she leaned closer. “She claimed it was magic. Care to tell us exactly what that means? We’ll get the information some other way if you don’t, but this is your chance to tell your side of the story…”
I could tell they weren’t going to. They’d been digging, and struck gold. Sarah had dropped the dime and taken the money after ensuring that the white van and the reporters knew to keep on my trail. And maybe she’d called somebody else, too. Somebody who’d dispatched a killer to silence me before I could talk. That way she’d have the money from the reporters free and clear, and no Wardens after her.
“Tell you what,” I said, spinning lug nuts down with both hands. I didn’t look at the reporter directly, wary of being even more on-camera. “If you turn around and leave now, nothing’s going to happen to your nice digital equipment.”
Simons made a surprised face, and looked at the camera as if she wanted to be sure it caught her amazement. “Are you threatening us, Ms. Baldwin?”
“Nope.” I finished finger-tightening the nuts, and released the jack to let the car settle back on four tires. I began applying the tire iron to finish the job of making the wheel road ready. “But things do happen.”
And right then, things did happen. The camera guy said, “What the…?” and a whisper of smoke suddenly oozed out of three or four places in his equipment. I heard a cooking sound from inside the electronics.
“What’s wrong?” Simons asked, and moved toward him. Together, with the sound guy craning in for a look, they reviewed the damage. Which, I could have told them, was catastrophic. Yay, me.
I shoved the old flat tire and all the equipment in the trunk, slammed it, and said, “I think the phrase I’m searching for here is ‘no comment.’”
Simons stared at me with a grim, set expression as I got in the Camaro and headed off down the road.
When the van tried to follow, its engine blew in a spectacular white cloud of steam.
“I should be ashamed. That,” I said to Venna, “was really low. Then again, blowing out my tire was pretty low in the first place, Venna. Shame on you.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But you needed to know. So you won’t trust your sister again.”
“No,” I said grimly. “I don’t think I will.”
Driving is therapy for me. Interesting thing to discover about yourself…There was something hypnotic about the road, the freedom, the feeling of being in control and having a direction. I drove fast, but not recklessly, and if Venna had anything to say, she said it to herself.
I had a lot of time to think. After a couple of hours of that, I said, “Venna. Why haven’t you given me
She raised her eyebrows. Pint-sized haughtiness. She was still wearing the blue jeans and pink shirt; I was getting used to the less formal look, but I didn’t let it fool me. There was nothing informal about Venna.
“You couldn’t handle it,” she said. “Djinn memory isn’t the same as human. We see things differently. We see time differently. It wouldn’t make sense to you, the way human memories do.”
“But…you can become human, right?”
“We can take human form. That doesn’t mean we become human. Not really.”
So even though David had fathered a child with me, he hadn’t been…human. Not inside. Comforting thought.
I edged a bit more speed out of the accelerator. “You said David would be on her side, not mine. Are you guessing, or do you know that?”
She didn’t answer me.
In a way, I supposed, that was answer enough.
The countryside began feeling weirdly familiar. If I’d put together the pieces properly, Sedona had been the last place I’d been seen before my absence from the world, followed by my appearance, naked and memory-free, in the forest. I felt like I
I was, quite simply, too tired. Sedona had motels, and I had cash, and although Venna was contemptuous of the whole idea, I checked myself in for the day, took a long, hot bath, and crawled into a clean bed for eight blissful hours. When I got up, the sun had already set.
Venna was watching a game show, something loud that seemed to involve people shouting at briefcases. She was cross-legged on the end of the bed, her chin resting on her fists, and she was absolutely enraptured.
“Well,” I said as I zipped up my black jeans, “I guess now I know who the target audience is for reality TV.”
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she was embarrassed. She slid off the bed, and the TV flicked off without her hand coming anywhere near a remote control. She folded her arms. “Are you done sleeping?” she asked.
“Obviously, yes.”
“Good. It’s such a waste of good time.” She moved the curtain aside and looked out. “We should go.”
We pulled out of the parking lot and cruised slowly through town. Venna navigated, my very own supernatural GPS, pointing me through the streets until I was thoroughly lost. Sedona looked pretty much like any other town- maybe a little funkier, with more New Age shops and Southwest architecture, but McDonald’s looked the same. So did Starbucks.
“Are we close?” I asked. I was still tired, but it was a pleasant kind of tired, and for the first time in a long time I felt like I was going into trouble with a clear mind. The road vibration was almost as good as a massage.
“That way.” Venna pointed. I didn’t ask questions. We made turns, crawled along a road that led into the hills, and eventually stopped in a parking lot at the foot of a bluff whose definitions were lost in the growing darkness.
The sign said, CHAPEL OF THE HOLY CROSS.
Venna said, very quietly, “We’re here.”
“Where’s Ashan?”
“Safe,” she said. “I’ll bring him here when we’re ready. If he panics, he can be hard to control.”
A Djinn-well, former Djinn-who had panic attacks. That was a new one. I parked the Camaro in a convenient spot, killed the engine, and sat listening to the metal tick as it cooled. Outside, there was a living silence that pressed heavily against the car windows.
I didn’t like it here.
“This is hard for you,” Venna said. “Yes?”
