djinn wars 02 - taken (23 page)

It was my turn to slump against the booth and stare at her. Right then, I was pretty much certain something must have gone wrong with my hearing. Otherwise, that would mean Julia Innes didn’t believe every single djinn was completely evil…that she might turn out to be the most unlikely of allies.

“That’s…surprising,” I said eventually, then swallowed some more wine. “I take it Captain Margolis doesn’t have any idea as to what you actually think on the subject?”

“God, no.” Her lips pressed together for a second. Then she went on, “He’s not the type who cares to hear about anyone’s opinions but his own, so I don’t offer mine, unless it’s something to do with how I manage the office. He will actually listen to me when it comes to that sort of thing. But trying to convince him that it’s unjust for us to hold those two? As they used to say, fuggedaboutit.”

The word I was looking for was gobsmacked. That about summed up the way I felt as I continued to stare at her, not really believing that those words were coming out of her mouth.

“The funny thing was,” Julia continued, “
he
was looking very quiet and sad when I came in this afternoon. I knew that device of Miles was hurting him. I hate that. They don’t need to crank it the way they do, since a much more tolerable level is still effective at blocking a djinn’s powers, but everyone else who pulls watch duty seems to regard it as their own piece of personal revenge.”

I must have made some small, despairing sound, because she glanced away from me then, as if embarrassed by the actions of her fellow survivors.

“So I turned it down, and then he got the most — I don’t know how else to describe it — beatific look on his face. I could’ve said it was just the relief from the constant pain, but it was more than that, wasn’t it?”

Somehow I managed to nod. “We — we could communicate. Just for a few minutes, because then Margolis came in, and that was the end of it. But at least — at least I knew Jace was still alive. I’d kept hoping, but I didn’t have any proof. Not until then.” Tears began to sting at my eyes, and I blinked, willing them away. Having a meltdown in Pajarito’s, even on a slow night, was not a good way to avoid unwanted attention.

Silence for a few moments then, during which Stacy showed up with our bowls of chili and some fresh-baked rolls. Julia thanked her, while I made a show of drinking some more wine so it wouldn’t look odd that I wasn’t saying anything.

Once she’d determined the coast was clear, Julia said quietly, “You really do love him, don’t you?”

“M-more than anything.”

She went still then, her expression wistful, sad. “You’re lucky.” Without looking at me, she spooned up some of her chili and ate a mouthful.

I hesitated, feeling as if she might be finally on the verge of discussing her past with me, and worried that if I pushed or asked the wrong question, she’d clam up again. And also, I sort of wanted to go over and give her a hug, both for her unexpected support of my relationship with Jace, and because she looked as if she could use one.

But I didn’t, mostly because there was no way to do that sort of thing while sitting across from someone in a booth in a restaurant. It would have also attracted way too much notice, which was something I knew neither one of us wanted.

“You didn’t…have someone like that?” I asked, my voice tentative. I seemed to recall her making a very oblique reference to a “we” when she and I first met, but she’d never said anything like that since, in contrast to a lot of the other survivors, who seemed to invoke the memories of their lost loved ones quite often, as if to keep those memories from beginning to fade away. It was harder to keep your anger alive if you had started to forget.

“Not like that,” she replied, then drained the rest of her wine. A lift of her hand, though, and Stacy was back over at our table, carrying two little carafes with refills for both of us. Neat trick.

“Then…like what?”

Julia’s expression hardened. “Let’s just say that not everyone is angry with the djinn for wiping the board clean, so to speak. For some of us, it was like a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

I blinked at her, again not sure I was hearing her correctly. “You mean, you’re glad they killed all those people?”

“No, of course not. It was terrible. Horrible. It’s just….” She let her sentence die away into silence as she reached out to pour more wine into her glass. “In my case, they did me a favor. I was too scared to leave and didn’t see any way out. Then the djinn just sort of…took care of it.”

It didn’t take a master’s in English to read between the lines of that particular story. Julia’s was an old, sad one, the kind of thing my father had seen way too often. He always said the domestic abuse calls were some of the worst.

“Your husband…hit you?” I asked, barely above a whisper.

She shook her head at once. “No. That is, one time. The problem was, I knew it wouldn’t be only the one time if I stayed. It was a question of when, not if. And he wasn’t my husband. He was my fiancé. Sort of made it worse, in a way. I mean, we weren’t tied together legally. But he was one of those smooth-talking, controlling types. And I was stupid.”

“You are not stupid.” Hell, no. Julia Innes was one of the most capable women I’d ever met. Unfortunately, as my father had said more than once, being with an abuser had nothing to do with how smart or capable you were. It was all about having someone in your life who was trying to control you, who knew how to push all the right buttons. That was another reason why I’d felt so stupid about my ex-boyfriend Colin cheating on me. I should’ve seen the signs. At least he wasn’t abusive, just…indifferent.

“I do feel stupid. I had a condo, one I’d bought with my own money after busting my ass for five years as a paralegal. He told me to sell it, since I was moving in with him anyway. So I did, and I put the money in our joint account.”

“He
spent
it?” I asked, aghast, my mind going to the obvious conclusion.

“No.” Not looking at me, she said, “It wasn’t about the money with him. He was a lawyer. He had plenty of money. He just didn’t want me having anything of my own. The one time he hit me, it was because I’d gone shopping for a car without him.” Her hand went up to her cheekbone, as if feeling the spot where her fiancé had hit her. Still staring down at the tabletop, she added, “The Heat came along only a few days after that. And Julia’s little problem was solved.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her shoulders lifted. “He went early, and I was glad he was dead. And then I was guilty for feeling glad, especially when it turned out almost everyone else was dead, too. I didn’t mind the hand of God coming down to smite Ian, but I certainly never wanted anyone else to get hurt. I didn’t have too much time to brood over it, though, because then Captain Margolis came along, and I could concentrate on living from day to day, on helping the other survivors.” At last she raised her head and gave me a weary smile. “So there’s my dirty little secret. It’s far worse than yours.”

“I don’t think you can beat yourself up too much for that,” I said gently. “I mean, I probably would have felt the same way if I’d been in your situation.”

“Ah, but you wouldn’t have been in my situation. I’ve been watching you, Jessica. You’re tough. The first time a guy like Ian tried to pull that kind of crap on you, you would have walked out.” She ran her fingers up and down the stem of her wine glass, gaze still not quite meeting mine. “But I don’t have that kind of strength.”

I hated to see her continuing to rake herself over the coals for something that really wasn’t her fault. In a way, she was giving this former fiancé of hers power still, even though he was months dead. “You can’t blame yourself. My father was a cop, and he saw way too much of this kind of thing. He always said abusers were crafty and clever, and way better at manipulating people than they had any right to be.”

“Sounds like you were lucky in your father. Mine was an abusive bastard, and I always swore I’d never be like my mother.” Another one of those tired little smiles, so incongruous when contrasted with the polish of her appearance. Unlike most of us survivors, who went around in jeans and boots and sweaters and jackets more notable for their warmth than their sense of style, Julia almost always wore skirts, albeit with high-heeled boots. You could take the girl out of the law office, and all that. “And then Ian came along, and I got trapped right in the same goddamn cycle.”

“I think you would’ve left,” I told her. “You just ended up not having to make that decision, because of the Dying.”

“I appreciate your confidence in me.” Despite those words, her expression appeared far from convinced. Lowering her voice, she added, “And I won’t tell anyone about — about
him
.”

“Thank you.” I could tell she wanted to leave the subject of her past for now, so I asked, also in an undertone, “Do you know how many of those devices Miles has made so far?”

She hesitated, eyes flicking up toward me, slightly wary now. “Why?”

“I think you know why.”

Another long pause, her manicured nails tapping on the tabletop. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“Neither do I,” I said at once. It was the simple truth. Just because I wanted to get Jace out of here didn’t mean that I intended to leave a trail of destruction behind me. “Really, I’ve got nothing against anyone in Los Alamos. I’m sure they thought they were doing the right thing when they took Jace and Natila. This isn’t about revenge.”

“That’s…noble.”

“It’s the truth.” Then, as her expression still appeared to be more than a little dubious, I added, “Well, okay, if the opportunity arose to give Captain Margolis a little grief, I might not pass it up.”

Her lips compressed. “I can’t blame you for that.”

I’d been wondering exactly what the nature of their relationship was. “He hasn’t….” I began, then stopped myself. Did I really want to force her into making revelations she’d rather were kept hidden?

But to my surprise, one corner of her mouth gave an ironic lift. “God, no. That is, I’m sure he wanted to, but that was one area where Ian actually turned out to be useful. When Margolis tried to put a move on me, I told him I was mourning my fiancé, and he let it go. I’m certainly not trying to defend his behavior, but at least he’s not into forcing women. I think he’d prefer to think of himself as some sort of post-apocalyptic Don Juan.”

Shuddering, I took a sip of wine in an attempt to get the bad taste out of mouth. “Yuck.”

“That about sums up my feelings on the subject. Some people aren’t quite so picky, but it’s their choice. Or maybe it’s not much of a choice when it comes down to getting a nicer place to live and a better food allotment.”

Somehow that seemed even sleazier than out-and-out seduction. “Seriously?”

She shook her head — at my naïveté, probably. “Why else would someone like Stacy be living in what used to be a half-million-dollar house? She’s a nice girl, but she didn’t have any real skills to contribute to the community. Not like you and the tutoring, or Evony with the car-repair know-how. By all rights, you should have the nicer house.”

“But — ” I wasn’t a complete idiot; I understood that all sorts of sordid sexual crap used to go on in the workplace all the time, a good deal of it much worse than putting out so you could get a nice big house handed to you on a silver platter. “But he’s old enough to be her father!”

“Since when has that stopped anybody? Besides, not all of us were lucky enough to be with lovers who looked like Greek gods or something.” She paused then. “Well, actually, maybe not Greek, in your case. Native American gods, I guess.”

I shot her a pained look, mostly because I didn’t know how exactly I should be reacting. Anyway, there were a whole hell of a lot of intermediate steps between Richard Margolis and Jace when it came to looks. Dan Lowery, for instance. He was very attractive, although I hadn’t noticed Stacy paying any particular attention to him. Did Margolis expect fidelity from his conquests, even though he himself was running around like a dog in heat? I had to hope for everyone’s sake he was using condoms.

But I didn’t mention Dan, mostly because I’d never seen him pay any particular attention to Stacy, either, whereas he was on the verge of being just a little too friendly with me. If I brought him up at that point in the conversation, I had a feeling the best I could expect from Julia was a very knowing look, and I did not want to go there right then. Or at all, if possible.

“Maybe,” I allowed. “And I don’t want to judge anyone.”

“Good.” She sat up a little straighter, then said, “Three.”

“Three what?” I asked, confused as to where that had come from.

Her eyebrow went up at an ironic angle, and then comprehension dawned as I went back and picked up an earlier thread from our conversation. There was my answer. Miles Odekirk had somehow managed to build three of those goddamn boxes.

“Does he — does he use all of them at once?”

“I don’t know. There’s the one at the justice center, obviously. And I think he has one deployed on the edge of town to extend the coverage they provide.”

So the field each device generated had its limitations. “Do you know what the range of the boxes is?”

“Not exactly. I think it depends on how high it’s dialed up. The higher the setting, the smaller the field.”

“You think they’d take that into consideration when they’re playing their little torture games with it,” I said bitterly.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure Dr. Odekirk’s had words with a few of the guards, but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. And now that he has three of them online, he’s not as concerned about it, I suppose.”

Julia’s tone was subtly disapproving. Whether that disapproval stemmed from the way the guards were treating Jace, or Miles Odekirk’s apparent indifference to their cruelty, now that there were enough devices to adequately protect the town, I couldn’t be sure.

I sat back in the booth, considering her words. She’d been fairly open with me, but I didn’t know if I was brave enough to ask her whether she would help me free Jace and Natila. It was one thing to believe the community’s treatment of their djinn captives was unfair, and quite another to risk everything she’d built here on what I had to admit to myself was a long shot. Also, Evony and I had someplace to go. I knew Zahrias would give us a place to stay in Taos, if we managed to make it there. But Julia was no one’s Chosen, and although I would certainly plead her case and ask that she be given sanctuary, I couldn’t guarantee that Zahrias or the other djinn there would be willing to take her in.