Thin Air Page 0,8

was watching me with half-closed eyes, and when I turned I saw sparks flying in them. "We're free now."

"So you're...all-powerful?" I had to laugh as I said it. "Snap your fingers and make it so, or something like that?"

He smiled, but the sparks were still flying. "Djinn move energy-that's all. We take it from point A to point B. Transform it. But we can't create, and we can't destroy, not at the primal levels. That's why I think we may be able to undo what was done to you-because at least on some level, the energy is never lost."

"Great! So, just..." I snapped my fingers. "You know. Make it so."

"I can't," David said, "or I'd already have done it. Time was Ashan's specialty. I was never very good at manipulating it. Jonathan-" He stopped, and-if anything-looked even bleaker. "You don't remember Jonathan."

I shook my head.

"It would take a Jonathan or an Ashan to undo what was done."

"Can't you just go get one of them?" I asked.

"Jonathan's dead," David said, "and Ashan's...not what he was. Besides, I can't find him. He's been very successful at hiding."

"Too bad," I said. "I was going to offer to bear your children if you could get me out of this icebox and onto a nice, warm beach somewhere."

I was kidding, but whatever I'd said hit him hard. It hurt. He got up and moved back to his original position at my feet, breaking the connection, breaking eye contact. There was a tension in his body now, as if I'd said something really terrible.

Lewis covered his eyes with the heels of his hands, digging deeply. "She doesn't remember," he said. "David. She doesn't remember."

"I know," David said, and his voice scared me. Raw, anguished, fragile. "But I thought...if anything..."

"She can't. You know that. It's not her fault."

No answer. David said nothing. I opened my mouth a couple of times, but I couldn't think what to ask, what to say; I'd put my foot in it big-time, but I had no idea why.

No, I realized after a slow-dawning, horrified moment. I did know. Or at least, I guessed.

"Did you and I...do we have children?" I asked. Because I wasn't ready to be a mother. What could I possibly have to teach a child when I couldn't remember my own life, my own childhood? My own family?

The question I'd addressed aloud to David seemed to drop into a velvet black pool of silence. After a very long time he said tonelessly, "No. We don't have any children."

And poof. He was gone. Vanished into thin air.

"What the hell...?"

Lewis didn't answer. Not directly. He rolled over on his side, turning his back to me. "Sleep," he told me. "We'll get into this tomorrow."

I rolled over on my side, too, putting me back-to-back with Lewis with a blank view of a blue nylon tent wall. Uncomfortably close, close enough to be in the corona of his body heat. He needed a bath. So did I.

"Lewis?" I asked. "Please tell me. Do I have a kid?"

A long, long silence. "No," he said. "No, you don't."

I didn't remember anything about my life. For all intents and purposes, I'd been born a few hours ago, on a bed of icy leaves and mud. I'd been dropped out of the sky into a bewildering world that wasn't what my instincts told me was normal...into the lives of two men who each had some agenda that I wasn't sure I could understand.

But one thing I knew for sure: Lewis was lying to me. I was certain of that. For good reasons, maybe...and maybe not. I didn't really know him. Lewis and David...they were just strangers. Strangers who'd helped me, yes, but still. I didn't know them. I didn't know what they wanted from me.

Deep down, I was scared that the next time I asked questions, they were going to start telling me the truth.

Chapter Two

TWO

We broke camp at dawn-well, Lewis broke camp, moving as if doing it were as normal as stumbling out of bed and making coffee. I mostly sat off to the side, huddled in his down jacket. Lewis had layered on all the clothes he had in the backpack-thermals next to his skin, and T-shirts, flannel, and sweaters over it.

He was going to die if he didn't have a coat. I was still shivering, and I was practically certified for the arctic in the down jacket.

I made a halfhearted attempt to give it back.

"No," he said, not even pausing. "Zip it up.