Taken

Chapter 2-2

“‘Knew’?” I repeated, puzzled.

The smile stretched into a grin. “Let’s just say my gaydar was pinging, if you know what I mean.”

Now I felt like an i***t. “Oh, right.”

“It didn’t take long before we were together, and I was just fine with that. I’d never met anyone like her before. And I was thinking, Hey, it might be the end of the world, but so far it’s working out okay for me.”

“So she didn’t tell you who she really was?”

At that question, Evony gave me a very sharp look. “Not at first. But about a week after we met, I said something about having to go scouting for more water, since the bottled stuff at the casino was running out — no big surprise, since we’d been using it to bathe as well as drink. And then Natila got all quiet for a minute, and she told me she had something she wanted me to see. I made some crack about how I knew she did, but she just shook her head and led me into the bathroom. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, so I followed her. Then she lifted her hand toward the shower, and water came pouring out of the shower head, just as if it was all working perfectly and the Dying had never happened. For a second or two, I just stood there and stared at it, and then I asked her what the hell was going on.”

“And that’s when she told you?” I asked.

“Yeah. Explained the whole thing. Of course, at first I didn’t want to believe her — how could I believe something that crazy…I mean, djinn? — but there was the way she’d just made the water go on, and how would she have been able to fake something like that?”

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t have had to, because clearly this Natila controlled water in the same way that Jasreel had command over the air, or Zahrias was attended by dancing flames wherever he went. They were djinn, elementals. I didn’t pretend to understand their powers.

“Did you freak out?” I asked. “Because I sure as hell did.”

“Of course I freaked,” Evony replied. “But I couldn’t deny what I was seeing with my own eyes. And Natila talked me down — told me how I’d been Chosen, how I’d be safe with her and that all I had to do was trust her, and she would take care of me.”

“Weren’t you angry, though? I mean — ”

“About what the djinn had done?” Shockingly, she shrugged, a negligent lift of her shoulders. “I mean, it was horrible, but in a way it was so big that I couldn’t really wrap my head around it. Anyway, Natila hadn’t done it. None of the Thousand were involved in making the virus or spreading it. They were the good guys. They’d tried to stop it, but there weren’t enough of them to make a difference. All they could do was save their Chosen. So I wasn’t angry at her, you know?”

Then Evony had reacted with a lot more equanimity than I had. Eventually, I’d worked past my anger, but it was something I’d had to take a day to sort through.

She seemed to guess something of what was passing through my mind right then, because she continued, “I found out a lot sooner than you did, though. I mean, it was only a week after we met that Natila told me who and what she was. Jace kept lying to you for, what, more than two months?”

“He did not — ” I began angrily, and then subsided. He’d had his reasons, but the hard truth of it was that he could have told me about his true identity much sooner and, for whatever reason, had chosen not to. Actually, I knew why he’d kept his silence. He’d been so afraid of destroying the love that was growing between us that he’d purposely let me believe he was a mortal man.

I’d since forgiven him, true. It didn’t change what had happened, though. Lifting an eyebrow, I pinned Evony with what I hoped was a piercing stare. “How do you know all that about me and Jace, anyway?”

“Because Zahrias knew, and I heard him talking to Natila.”

I thought of the hard-faced djinn who’d come to see Jasreel, and shivered a little, despite the warmth of the fire at my back. “He visited you, too?”

Evony seemed to shut down. Her face went still, and she wouldn’t quite look at me. “The day before yesterday. He came to warn us — said there were Chosen gone missing, and something was up at Los Alamos. He said we needed to come to Taos, and Natila actually agreed, but — ”

“But?” I prompted, even though I had a feeling her story was going to end almost the same way mine had.

“But we didn’t get out in time.” She hugged the pillow again, and I realized for all her hard-faced bravado, Evony was just as scared and worried as I was. “We were packing up our stuff, which in hindsight was stupid, because we could’ve just helped ourselves to anything we needed from all those fancy boutiques in Taos. And that’s when the Los Alamos crew showed up.”

“A bunch of guys in Hummers?”

“Yeah, and that squirrelly-looking one with the funky box. I don’t know what it was for, but it sure did something to f**k up Natila, because all of a sudden she got pale and couldn’t breathe.”

My heart squeezed then as I recalled Jace suffering the same way, how all the strength seemed to be taken from him. “And they took her away.”

Evony seemed to be staring past my shoulder, at the window, although there wasn’t anything to see with the curtains tightly closed. “Yeah,” she said heavily. “They took her away. And then I heard her in my head, you know — ”

I nodded.

“The weird thing was, all I heard was Jace’s name —except she called him Jasreel — followed by a string of numbers.”

“‘Numbers’?” I repeated blankly.

“Yeah, numbers.” She set the pillow aside. “I’m weirdly good with numbers. Not crazy advanced math or anything, but doing arithmetic in my head, remembering locker combinations, that kind of thing. I never thought of it as much more than a parlor trick, but after the Los Alamos guys left and I was alone at the casino, I went and wrote them down.”

“So what were they?”

A wry smile. “Coordinates. GPS coordinates for your house, actually. It took me a while to figure it out, but once I did, I found a GPS unit at a Walmart and plugged them in. I figured since Natila had said Jace’s name right before she sent me the numbers, it had to mean those coordinates were for where he was holed up. So I came here to warn you. Guess I was too late.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I mean, who would’ve thought those bastards would be out collecting djinn on Christmas Eve?”

“Oh, s**t, is it?” Evony shifted on the couch so she could see down the hall and into the living room, where the tree Jace had brought me stood in the corner. “I sort of lost track of time when I was with Natila. Merry f*****g Christmas, huh?”

Funny how her words echoed exactly what I had been thinking earlier. “Yeah. I guess the whole ‘goodwill toward men’ thing doesn’t extend to djinn.” I paused, recalling what she’d said when I first opened the door and let her in. “So what’s your plan?”

A look of confusion passed over her features. “Plan?”

“Plan,” I said in some impatience. “You told me that I’d better let you in if I ever wanted to see my djinn lover alive again. That kind of remark leads me to believe you must have some kind of plan.”

“Uh, well….” Once again her gaze shifted away from mine, and under its coating of matte red lipstick, her mouth tightened. “I actually just said that because I wasn’t sure you’d let me inside otherwise. I really don’t have a plan. I guess I just figured that it would be better to have the two of us working together than separately.”

Oh, for Chrissake…. I ground my teeth, pushing back the retort that lying to me wasn’t exactly the best way to get on my good side. But I realized I needed to cut Evony some slack. She’d experienced a terrible loss today, just as I had, and in a way, she was right. The two of us were better off together — for safety’s sake, if nothing else.

As far as what we should do next, I hadn’t a clue. I only knew that staying here wasn’t an option. Tonight, sure. It was snowing, and night had fallen, and I knew we wouldn’t get very far. It wasn’t as if someone would come along to plow the roads, and although the Cherokee could manage just fine in snow, I wouldn’t risk that kind of driving without some daylight to help us along.

“Well,” I said, “I suppose in the morning we’ll go to Los Alamos and see what we can do.”

Her eyebrows went shooting up so far they almost disappeared into her short, heavy bangs. “Are you crazy? Have you ever been to Los Alamos?”

I shook my head.

“Well, as far as I know, it’s one road in, one road out. And both those roads have got to be heavily guarded, Christmas or not. If you think you can just slip in and do some scouting with no one noticing, you’re nuts.”

That didn’t sound good. Right then I wished my family had done more exploring in that part of the state, but we’d never made it to Los Alamos. I had to take Evony’s word for it that the place was as remote as she described. It actually made sense that the town would be built that way, considering its origins as the birthplace of the atomic bomb. And it made even more sense that a group of survivors would gather there, using the natural geography of the area as a way to keep them safe and protected.

“All right,” I said wearily. “Then we’ll have to go to Taos and see if any of the djinn or Chosen there have any more information, know of anything that might help us.”

That prospect didn’t seem much more appealing to her than Los Alamos. “How could they? Zahrias said the Chosen they’d sent to Los Alamos had never come back, and the djinn can’t see anything because of whatever the Immune are doing to hide themselves.”

“Maybe so, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Maybe Zahrias wasn’t telling the whole truth. Maybe he was just saying what he thought Natila and Jasreel needed to hear so they’d pack up and join the rest of their kind. You don’t know for sure, do you?”

For a long moment, Evony didn’t say anything. Her fingers kept playing with the silver and onyx ring she wore on her right hand — Navajo work, by the look of it — twisting it around and around as she appeared to wrestle with her thoughts. At last she said, “Okay. Not because I think it’ll help, necessarily, but mostly because I can’t think of anything else to do.”

A weight I hadn’t even realized was pressing on my neck and shoulders seemed to lift itself then, and I allowed myself the first cautious sensation of hope I’d felt that day. Maybe it wasn’t the best of plans, but at least it was a plan, something to do that didn’t involve sitting here in the house and worrying about Jasreel.

The next day, we would take the road to Taos.