“That was beautiful,” Cherise said, even though I knew she hadn’t understood it any more than I had.
“It’s our prayer for the dead,” said David’s voice. “Given to those who fall in battle.”
When he said
I squeezed his hand. “It is beautiful,” I said. “Promise me you’ll use it for me if it comes to that.”
“No,” he said. “I won’t. Because I won’t be here to do it if you’re gone.”
We stayed a while longer, but the air was getting cool, and we had miles to go.
The Djinn carried Cherise back to the waiting Mustang, which had only suffered a few scratches and dings out in the parking lot during the general destruction. Good. I’d destroyed way too many automotive works of art in my time. I didn’t want to leave the Boss behind, too.
I looked back at the place where Kevin Prentiss had died until it fell away in the rear window, just another wide spot in the road. Nothing special.
It was special now. It always would be, for me.
I waited for the tears, but they stayed where they were, simmering, angry,
“Floor it,” I said to the Djinn, and to David through him. “I want to see our daughter.”
He didn’t respond, but the Mustang leaped up to a whole new level of fast.
Chapter Eight
Weirdly enough, nothing else was happening in Missouri, or in Oklahoma as we dropped down toward our Arizona destination. Open roads, lots of traffic. Some towns still had power and some sense of normalcy, including—improbably—Oklahoma City.
People were actually
I supposed that was a good sign; life had to go on, until it became impossible. It was just . . . strange.
I rose up into the aetheric and found a powerful bunch of Wardens at work—Earth, Fire, and Weather all locked in a tight- knit unit, constantly repelling attacks on any number of levels. They were stretched thin, but coping. I soared up higher into the spirit world, looking at the patterns of lights and color, shadows and twisted representations of the physical world.
Lewis had figured it out. He’d teamed up his people in those triangular bases of power, positioning them at strategic locations. I looked back toward the east, where the chaos had been the worst, and it was dying down. For now, the Wardens were handling it, even against all the odds.
It wasn’t a battle we could win, but we could fight to a standstill—for a while.
I spotted Lewis on the aetheric. I’d expected him to be in Seattle, but he was a brilliant, incandescent blaze of power located in Nevada right now. I couldn’t imagine what had drawn him there, but it was unmistakably him. And he was still moving, though not as quickly as I was, given the jet-powered chariot skills of the Mustang.
He was going wherever the battle was the fiercest, I thought. As he should.
I cut my grip on the aetheric and dropped back into my body with that familiar, faintly disorienting jolt, then pulled out my cell phone and checked it. The grid was back up, and I speed-dialed Lewis.
No answer. I wanted to tell him about Kevin, but this wasn’t something that would be good for voice mail. I’d wait until I could tell him on the phone, or face to face. The news wasn’t going to get worse, or better, with time.
I was just hanging up when the phone rang, startling me into a frantic juggling act. When I’d renewed my grip on it, I accepted the call and held the phone to my ear.
Piercing shrieks of static. I yanked the phone away again, no doubt making one of those pained faces, and then carefully eased it back as the feedback diminished into a thick net of noise. The screen said PRIVATE CALLER. I had no idea who it was.
And then I did.
It was me. My voice. And it said, “You need to stop. Stop now.”
I took the phone away and looked at it again. Yep, there was a call. Private Caller. And it was my voice.
Saying, again, “Are you listening to me? Don’t come here!”
“Excuse me, who am I talking to?” I asked, which was a pretty reasonable question at the moment, if a bit existential. This took
The answer drowned in static, and then my—her?—voice came back strong, again. “—have to stay away, Mom, do you understand?”
There was a particularly violent shriek of feedback, and the connection cut off. I was surprised there wasn’t smoke curling up out of the receiver, as loud as that had been. I waited, but the phone didn’t ring again.
The Djinn behind the wheel—still driving top speed on very treacherous roads—was staring straight at me, not at the road. “Jo?” David’s voice, out of the radio. “Jo, was it Imara?”
“Yes. Can you reach her? Is she okay?”
“I can’t see her. Like the Fire Oracle, I think she’s hidden herself. I’ll try to get through.”
“Hurry,” I said, and chewed my lip nervously. “I think she could be in trouble.”
“We’re all in trouble,” David said, which wasn’t the most inspirational speech he’d ever delivered. The radio shut down. The Djinn turned back toward the road.
I turned around to look in the backseat. Cherise was asleep, cuddled up with Tommy in a camouflage- patterned sleeping bag. We’d stopped in at a sports outfitter in Oklahoma City—Muzak still playing over the speakers, although shoppers were noticeably rattled and tense, and buying survival gear instead of lawn games— and stocked up on things like insulating blankets, sturdy boots and clothes, portable shelters, water and survival foods. Next best thing to Army surplus. And a lot more expensive, since it catered to the weekend wannabe warrior market.
It had felt deeply surreal to be signing a credit card slip while the world was in the throes of chaos, but I supposed one way or another, I’d be paying off my debts.
Cherise looked tired and pale, and from the way she was whimpering in her sleep, she had bad dreams. I reached back and smoothed her hair until the whimpering went away. Baby Tommy seemed to have adapted much more easily; he’d taken to Cherise quickly, and he was a happy kid, smiling and burbling most of the time. From the way he filled his diapers, he was healthy enough. I would have felt better having him checked out by an honest-to-goodness Earth Warden or, at the very least, a pediatrician, but for now, we were all doing okay. Cherise was out of the braces. Her legs had healed straight, and although she continued to be weak and tired, she was recovering remarkably well from having just about died. The jury was still out on how she was going to deal with Kevin’s death, long term.
If we had any long term, of course.
Up ahead, traffic was snarled, again. As we got into more civilized areas, it was perversely harder to get around these days, what with people frantically trying to get to their survivalist mountain hideouts, or to their relatives, or just to the store to stock up on emergency batteries. We were coming into Amarillo—not exactly a major metropolitan area, but busier than the deserted Texas Panhandle highway had been. The air was dry and stable overhead, and the landscape was mostly flat and scrubby, with tough vegetation. Very different from the trees where we’d left Kevin.
I hoped I wouldn’t end up dying somewhere without trees. I liked trees.
Even the Djinn’s prodigious driving skills couldn’t cope with the jam of traffic, and pretty soon we were cooling our engine at an idle, watching brake lights. Funny; this type of backup on the East Coast would have been a howling chorus of impatient horns sounding. Not here in the Southwest. People just . . . waited, listening to their music or talk radio, poking at their hair, arguing with whoever was in the car along with them. Or with themselves, apparently. I didn’t hear a single angry honk.
