Cape Storm Page 0,26

Antiques Roadshow stars buzz with excitement. In it, I found new bras, panties, stockings - pretty much anything I might need, or crave. Or David might crave. I picked out something plain and put it on. As I turned, David threw me a shirt and pants. Jeans, and a navy blue shirt that clung in all the right places.

He was dressing too, the old-fashioned way. As a Djinn, he could have easily just gone the magic route, but I stole a few precious seconds enjoying the sight of him wiggling into Joe Boxers, which might have been intended, from the smile he gave me.

Even with mutual appreciation, it took us only about a minute to dress, and then we headed down the stairs.

Cherise was there. So was Lewis. He was self-contained again, only the shadow of trauma left in his dark eyes.

"I need you," he said bluntly. He turned and walked out of the cabin, moving fast. David and I exchanged a look and followed.

There was a dead body in the hallway. I stopped when I saw her, shock slamming through me. She looked like she'd been turned to crumbling clay, or ash - lifeless, a mockery of something that had once been real and vital.

"God," I whispered, and slowly crouched without touching the corpse. Lewis knelt on the other side of it. "Who - ?"

"That's the problem," Lewis said. "I don't know. I think she's one of the Djinn." I looked up at David, who was staring down at the two of us with a frown. He focused on the body on the floor.

"That isn't a Djinn," he said. "I don't know what that is." He realized, then, what he was saying. Djinn couldn't not know, in the normal course of events; they could spool back the history of things. They saw time - it was a real sense to them, the way touch and taste were to humans.

The only way he couldn't know who this person was, was if this was a Djinn and the Djinn had been murdered by Unmaking, the special new weapon of Bad Bob Biringanine.

Antimatter. It was deadly to the Djinn in all kinds of hideous ways.

The next thought came to me with sickening speed and impact. He had access to the ship.

I snapped a lightning-fast glance at Lewis, and saw that this was not news to him. He'd already come to the same conclusion, presumably well before he'd come to summon us.

David's reaction was just his confirmation. "Fuck," I said. "He's been here, on board, or at least he's gotten one of his minions through our defenses. We should have known. Our early warning system - "

"Clearly isn't working," Lewis finished. "Which means he, or any of his people, could be here. This place is big enough to hide an army if they didn't want to be found."

"But if hiding was the point, why leave this poor lady right here in the open?" I asked.

"They could have hidden her anywhere. Her Conduit wouldn't even know she was missing." Which was the awful part of it. David, as Conduit for the Djinn, had a personal connection to each and every one he was responsible for. Ashan had the same connection to his half of their numbers. Bad Bob's weapon of choice did worse than kill; it erased. The Djinn couldn't recognize their own dead, or the weapons that killed them. The moment the victim died, it ceased to have ever been.

My nightmare was that it might be David lying here, with another Djinn staring at him in that same annoyed confusion, not even remembering his existence.

There was something so chilling in it that I had a hard time wrapping my head around it.

"That's not a Djinn," David murmured. He wasn't trying to convince us, only himself. "It can't be. " We'd been through this. He understood, intellectually, what was happening, but this was a kind of phobia for the Djinn - a blind spot that left them vulnerable, one that couldn't be overcome by knowledge or experience. It wasn't seated in the rational parts of their brains.

"Count your people," Lewis said. He said it quietly, a little regretfully, as if he didn't really want to know, either. David continued to stare at the corpse.

"Counting myself," he said, "fifteen Djinn are on this vessel." In other words - exactly the number we'd started with.

I exchanged a baffled stare with Lewis. "You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Ten of my people, myself, and four of Ashan's.