djinn wars 02 - taken (9 page)

“Speaking of dinner,” Evony went on, giving my drab ensemble a jaundiced look, “you are not wearing
that
to go meet all those Chosen and their djinn, are you?”

“Well, sorry. I guess I plum forgot to pack any party clothes.”

She sighed. “I figured. Let me go get you something.”

“It doesn’t matter — ” I began to protest, and she held up a hand.

“It matters to
me
. I don’t want to show up with someone who looks like something the cat dragged in.”

“What, am I your date now or something?”

Her lip curled. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

I couldn’t help grinning, and she went back out. Since Dutchie was occupied with inhaling her dinner, I went over to the window and looked out while I waited for Evony to return. There was actually more to see than I thought; snow still fell, but the lights in the garden area outside were on, illuminating the bare trees and shrubs, and the thicker, darker shapes of the pines and junipers that dotted the landscaping. It was probably very beautiful in the spring and summer, but right now it just looked bleak, abandoned. I also had to wonder about the electricity. Were the djinn powering the grid somehow? Had to be; all this couldn’t be running on stored solar energy alone.

Since I hadn’t locked the door, when Evony came back, she let herself in. In one hand she held a small makeup bag, while a bright kelly-green sweater was draped over her other arm.

“I don’t think we have time for a makeover,” I began, but she ignored me and went into the dressing area in the bathroom, then set the makeup bag down on the counter.

“This isn’t a makeover,” she said. “Just a quick sprucing-up. Take off that trash bag you’re wearing and put this on.” She tossed the sweater to me, and I caught it. I would’ve said that she and I were roughly the same size, although I was about an inch taller, but that sweater looked too small for either of us.

From the glint in her eye, I could tell she was poised and ready to counter any argument I might give her, so I decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. Instead, I took the sweater and pulled the one I was wearing over my head, then drew on the one she’d given me. As I’d feared, it was tight. Not “I can’t breathe” tight, but a lot more snug than anything I’d worn for months, even the slinky black dress I’d put on for Thanksgiving.

But I shouldn’t have thought of that dress, because then I recalled how Jace’s eyes had lit up when he caught sight of me, the way he’d told me I was beautiful. While I was keeping myself busy, I could stop myself from worrying about him, but if I let my guard down, like in moments such as this…well, I could feel the worry seize me again, the sharp burn of tears at the back of my eyes.

Don’t,
I told myself.
Just don’t.

So I managed to swallow, hard, and force the tears back to wherever they’d come from. At the same time, I twitched the sweater more or less into position. Since I was wearing jeans tucked into knee-high boots, it didn’t look too mismatched. I hoped.

“Come here,” Evony commanded, so I went into the dressing area. She eyed me critically and nodded. “That’s a good color on you. And your hair doesn’t look quite so much like home-fried crap now that you’ve brushed it.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said.

One corner of her mouth quirked slightly, but she just handed me a tube of lipstick. “Try this one. It’s nice and festive.”

I took it from her but looked down at it dubiously. To say I wasn’t a lipstick kind of girl was an understatement. Lately, all I’d been wearing was colored lip balm, and even when I used to get dressed up, I always went for gloss. Lipstick felt sort of old lady-ish to me, unless you were going for Evony’s clearly intentional retro look.

But since she obviously wanted me to put it on, and I just wanted to get done with the primping so I could get some food in my stomach, I spread a light coating over my lips. It looked garish against my pale skin, but Evony gave a satisfied nod.

“Much better. Don’t suppose you packed any mascara?”

“No,” I replied. Lip balm and deodorant and a toothbrush and toothpaste, yes. Makeup had been pretty far down on my list of priorities.

“Too bad.” She squinted at me and then shrugged. “Good thing you have nice eyelashes anyway. I know people who would’ve killed for those.”

I actually always had been proud of my lashes — a feature I’d inherited from my mother — but for obvious reasons, I hadn’t been paying much attention to them lately. At least at the moment they’d save me from having to put on mascara, though.

“It’s all in the genes, I guess,” I said lightly. “Are you ready?” I figured she must be, since she looked like she was about to go out on a hot date instead of have Christmas dinner with a bunch of strangers.

“Yes.” Despite her reply, she looked a little uneasy. Maybe it was just the prospect of having to face a room full of people she didn’t know, but in my short acquaintance with her, Evony hadn’t exactly struck me as the sort of person who was lacking in confidence.

Or maybe it was having to go meet a group of Chosen, and know that your own djinn partner was in captivity miles and miles away. I could relate to that feeling.

But I’d told Lauren I would go. Anyway, I was hungry, and I guessed that Evony must be starving, too, since she hadn’t eaten much more on the drive here than I had.

I patted Dutchie on the head, told her I’d be back soon, and then closed the door behind me and went to the hall, where Evony had been waiting for me while I attended to the dog. We were both quiet as we walked back toward the more public areas of the resort, following the signs to the restaurant.

Which was already full when we got there. Evony and I both hung back a little, watching as people moved to and from an enormous buffet that had been set up on a series of long tables off to one side. Christmas music played in the background, and everyone seemed to be laughing and chatting and generally having a good time.

After so many months of only being around Jace, of hearing very little music — the real estate developer’s music collection hadn’t been much to my taste — the assortment of sounds seemed almost deafening. My first instinct was to duck back toward the lobby and hide in my room, and it seemed as if Evony was feeling about the same way.

But then Lauren approached us, smiling, and said, “I’ve been saving seats for you two. Let me take you over to my table.”

Oh, thank God. Hers was the only halfway familiar face I’d seen so far, and, with any luck, her table would be somewhere tucked away to one side where we could mostly escape notice.

No such luck. It was out in the middle of the dining room, and I could feel everyone watching as Evony and I made our way over to it and took the chairs Lauren indicated. Not wanting to be obvious about staring, I’d only gathered scattered impressions of the people in attendance, but it seemed to me that the Chosen were all in their twenties and extremely good-looking. There didn’t seem to be any djinn here. In a way, that made sense; I sort of doubted they were the type to celebrate Christmas. No, this party was for the mortals living here in Taos, a way for them to feel somewhat normal in a world that would never be normal again.

To my surprise, I did recognize the two people sitting at Lauren’s table. They were the guys from the roadblock out on the highway, now wearing sweaters instead of the heavy parkas they’d had on while performing guard duty. Their plates were mostly empty already, so it looked as if Evony and I had gotten here later than I’d thought.

“Hey,” said the blond one. “Glad to see you again. I’m Aidan.”

“Hi,” I said, while Evony murmured a half-hearted greeting.

“And I’m David,” the dark-haired young man put in. “Have a seat.”

Evony and I sat down, and Aidan picked up one of the bottles of wine at the center of the table and asked, “Red okay?”

“God, yes,” Evony replied, eagerly holding out her glass.

I picked up my glass as well, and he stood and poured for us. Lauren resumed her seat on the other side of David’s chair, then took her own glass, which was a little less than half full.

“So,” Evony said, glancing around the room. “No djinn?”

Lauren and David exchanged a quick glance. “No,” Lauren responded. “This is our party. That is, I think some of them may drop by, just to see how things are going, but they wanted this to be for us.”

“It looks great,” I said, even though I was a little disappointed. I wanted to see how the djinn interacted with their Chosen, what their relationships appeared to be like. Since I was still planning to leave for Los Alamos the next day, weather permitting, I knew I might not get a lot of chances to observe these people with their otherworldly partners.

But, despite my disappointment, the place really did look beautiful. Someone had set a large fir tree in one corner, and, judging by the cohesive look of the ornaments hanging from it, they had to have raided the resort’s holiday decorations to trim the tree. Evergreen garlands swagged the staircase off to one side of the room, and everyone was nicely dressed. Well, why wouldn’t they be? They had all the shops and boutiques in town to choose from when it came to putting together their holiday wardrobes.

“Well, I’m going to load up my plate,” Evony announced. “You ready to eat?”

“I was ready hours ago,” I said, and my table companions smiled. After getting up from my seat, I followed Evony to the buffet line and, as she’d so eloquently described it, began to load up. Turkey and ham and wild rice stuffing and potatoes and…well, basically the sort of meal I hadn’t thought I’d ever eat again. With a small pang, I thought of the venison I’d left defrosting in the refrigerator back at the house in Santa Fe. I’d planned to make venison cutlets for Christmas Day dinner, but my discovery of Jace’s true identity and his subsequent kidnapping by the Los Alamos survivors had driven those plans right out of my head.

What were they feeding him? Probably not turkey and mashed potatoes.

I bit my lip and forced myself to concentrate on filling up the last section on my plate with what looked like homemade cranberry sauce. Where they’d gotten the cranberries, I had no idea, but I supposed they must have scrounged frozen ones from the supermarket. Anyway, I told myself that bursting into tears in front of everyone certainly wouldn’t solve anything, and besides, getting a good meal in me could only help restore my energy levels for the next day.

A final pause to pick up a dinner roll, and then I navigated between the tables back to where Aidan and Lauren and David were sitting. Their plates still held traces of dinner, so clearly they’d already eaten and were more or less hanging out at this point. I had to hope they wouldn’t mind Evony and me eating in front of them.

She sat down a minute after I got back, her plate looking even more packed with food than mine. Clearly, worry over what might be happening to Natila was not affecting Evony’s appetite.

It did feel a little strange to eat when the other three Chosen were just sitting there and drinking wine, chatting about the weather and the possibility of some skiing, but not discussing anything that I really wanted to hear. I wanted to know who their djinn were, how they had met them. How they had come here.

But maybe that was all old news to them. I had no idea how long Lauren or Aidan or David had been here in Taos. For all I knew, they’d gathered in the small tourist town not all that long after the Heat had done its dirty work, and therefore had known one another for months. From the easy way they conversed, joking and laughing, that seemed entirely possible.

They let Evony and me eat, for which I was grateful, because that way I didn’t have to attempt to make conversation. Eventually, though, I’d cleared off enough of the food on my plate that Aidan apparently thought it was safe to ask,

“So, you really came here by the High Road?”

I had no idea how he knew that. My intuition told me that Zahrias had been the one to give the Cherokee the push that got us out of the snowbank, and so I supposed it was possible that the story had originated with him and made the rounds from there. I didn’t know how much interaction he had with the Chosen, if any, but he could have always said something to one of the other djinn.

“Yes,” I replied.

“That must have been some driving,” David added, popping the last bit of the roll from his plate into his mouth.

Uncomfortable at being the center of all their attention, I could only shrug. “It wasn’t so bad. I just drove as slowly as I could. It felt like it took forever, but it got us here.”

“Why the High Road, though?” Lauren inquired. Her fingers were resting on the stem of her wine glass, but I noticed that she didn’t appear inclined to pick it up and take a sip. From the easy way she smiled, it looked to me as if she’d already had a few. Maybe she was trying to slow down a bit.

“Jessica was afraid we’d run into those Los Alamos assholes if we took the main highway,” Evony said, reaching out for one of the bottles of wine and refilling her glass.

Again, the three Chosen exchanged a glance that I couldn’t quite decipher. After an uncomfortable pause, Lauren remarked, “Well, I suppose that makes sense.”

I felt like I had to ask. “Have they tried to come up here?”

“To Taos?” David said, then smiled derisively. He had great teeth. I supposed they’d always stay that way, now that he was under his partner’s protection. “I’d like to see them try. They wouldn’t get within ten miles before the djinn blasted their asses off the face of the earth.”

“But could the djinn really do that?” I asked. “I mean, with that device the survivors have — ”

“What device?” Aidan asked, leaning forward and frowning. It was an expression I doubted he wore often; to me he looked almost too sunny and laid-back, the kind of guy whose biggest worry was how good the powder would be on the ski slopes that winter.

So they didn’t know about that scary little box? I shot a questioning look at Evony, and her shoulders lifted. It seemed the djinn weren’t exactly broadcasting the fact that the Immune from Los Alamos weren’t quite as defenseless as the community here in Taos seemed to think.