Thin Air (4 page)

I didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

“In answer to the original question, certain kinds of memories are stored differently in the human mind. Memories—memories of events, of people, of conversations—these are more vulnerable. They can be taken away more easily.”

“Why? Why would anybody do that? Wait a minute—
how
could anybody do that?”

Outside, the fire suddenly died to a banked glow. The tent flap moved, and Lewis, crouched uncomfortably low, ducked inside. He gave the two of us an unreadable look, then crawled over to the other sleeping bag.

“Earth Wardens could have done it,” Lewis said. “It's possible, if an Earth Warden had the right training and skill level, to remove selective memories. It's part of how Marion Bearheart's division drains away the powers of Wardens who have to be taken out of the organization and returned to the regular human population. Only they don't just take memories; they take away the core of power inside.” He stretched out, put his hands under his head, and stared at the glow of moonlight on the tent fabric. “But in your case it was done by a Djinn. His name is Ashan.”

“A Djinn,” I repeated. “Like you?” I pointed at David, whose eyebrows rose.

“Not anymore. But yes, Ashan was Djinn, and he did this to you. He didn't want to kill you; he wanted you to have never existed at all. And he had the power to do it. He made a good start on it.”

“So what stopped him?”

David and Lewis exchanged looks. It was Lewis who answered. “Let's get into that later.”

“Fine. General question.” I licked my lips and avoided staring directly at David. “What exactly is a Djinn?”

Lewis sighed and closed his eyes. “We've really got to get you fixed,” he said. “The Djinn are another race of beings on this planet. They can be corporeal when they want to, but their real existence is energy. They're…spirits. Spirits of fire and will.”

“Poetic, but not exactly the whole story,” David said. “We were once slaves to you. To the Wardens. You used us to amplify your powers.”

“Slaves?”

“Subject to your orders. And your whims.” He 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.

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. You need to keep the core of your body warm.”

“But…you're—”

“I'll be fine. One thing about Earth Wardens: We're not likely to die of the cold.” Maybe not, but his lips looked a little blue, and so did his fingernails. As I stared at his hands, he noticed, frowned at them, and dug a pair of insulated gloves from a zippered pocket in the backpack. He continued to break down the camp. I shoveled sand over the fire pit, smothering the embers, and looked around for something else to do. Nothing, really. I shoved my cold, aching fingers back into the pockets of the jacket.

There was still no sign of David. Lewis didn't refer to his absence. Neither did I. Lewis rolled the sleeping bags into tight little coils, tied them off, and then broke down the tent into a small pouch and some short telescoping rods. It all went into the backpack. He handed me a bottle of water and a granola bar—no coffee—and I frowned at the bottle and shook it.

Frozen solid. “Um…”

“Melt it,” he said.

“What?”

“Melt the ice,” he said. “You're a Weather Warden. Melt the ice.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I remembered the world that David had shown me, but I couldn't think how to apply
that
to the simple, practical problem in my hand.

Lewis let out a growl of frustration, took the bottle and held it in his hand for about two seconds, then handed it back.

It sloshed.

“How did you—”

“We don't have time for lessons,” he interrupted. “Let's move.”

“Um…shoes?”

He stopped in midstride and looked back at me. I was fully dressed down to the thermal socks, but those were rapidly getting muddy and damp.

“Shit,” he said, surprised. “I forgot all about—”

“I didn't,” said a voice from behind me. I whirled to find David walking out of the trees, making a grand entrance that I instinctively knew must be standard procedure for a Djinn. He was holding a pair of hiking boots.

And a fresh pair of thermal socks.

And a backpack.

“Shopping,” he said, and handed everything over.

“Don't suppose you bought a Jeep while you were out,” Lewis said.

“I can do a lot of things, but rearranging forest trails without attracting attention on the aetheric…”

“Rhetorical question.” Lewis kept not quite watching David, who'd picked up a stick and was idly poking it into the damp ground. “Any sign of trouble out there?” Which I supposed was a graceful way of asking if David had been off keeping watch, rather than brooding. Not that one precluded the other. I sat down on a fallen log, tugged off my muddied socks and put on fresh ones, then laced up the hiking boots. They fit perfectly.

“There's snowfall two miles away,” David said. “Heavy. You're keeping it to the south, I take it?”

“Trying,” Lewis said. “This whole region's soaked with moisture. Sooner or later it's going to start coming down. There's only so far you can push the system before it starts pushing back, and the last thing I want is to start a winter storm while we're trying to get out of here. How's Mom, by the way?”

“Quiet.”

Mom?
I debated it for a few seconds, then asked aloud. Both men turned to look at me as I tugged the laces tighter and knotted the right boot.

“Mother Earth,” Lewis said. “The primal intelligence of the planet. Mom. She's been a little…unhappy lately.”

I tried to figure out if he was joking, and decided—rather grimly—that he wasn't. Great. Wardens who could control all kinds of things. Spooky disappearing Djinn. And now the ground I was walking on had some kind of hidden intelligence.

Losing my memory was turning out to be a real education.

I tied off my left boot and stood up, shouldering my pack. David had balanced it well; it seemed to ride nicely, with no extra strain.

“I can take it if you get tired,” David said, walking past me.

I snorted. “I'm surprised you didn't try to take it in the first place.”

“I know better,” he said. “When you want help, you'll ask for it.”

We'd left the campsite and gone about a mile before I broached the question again. David was in front of me, Lewis ahead of him. It was as private as this was likely to get. “David? About last night…what I said…about children.”

No answer. He kept walking, long strides, following Lewis's progress. I had to hurry to keep up.

“Is there a child?” I asked. My heart was hammering, and I didn't think it was from the exercise. “Mine, yours, ours? What's going on?”

“Not now.”

“Yeah, now. Look, the way you reacted—”

“I can't talk about it now.”

“But—”

He turned, and I stumbled to a halt, suddenly aware of just how tall he was. He wasn't especially broad, but I'd had my hands pressing against his chest, and I knew that there was muscle under that checked shirt. Plus, he'd thrown Lewis across the clearing like a plush toy.

“What do you want to know?” he asked, face taut, voice intense. “That we had a child? We did. Her name was Imara. She was part of our souls, Jo, and how do you think it feels for me to know that you don't even recognize her
name
?”

He turned, olive coat belling in a gust of cold wind, and followed Lewis up the slope. Lewis had paused at the top, looking down at us.

He didn't say anything, just plunged down the other side. I saved my breath and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

Imara.
I kept repeating the name in my head, hoping for some kind of resonance, some spark of memory. I'd had a
daughter
, for God's sake. How could I remember the brand name of the shoes I was wearing and not remember my own child? Not remember carrying her, or holding her, or…

Or how she'd died. Because even though nobody had said it, that was what everybody meant. Imara had been born, and Imara had died, and I had no memory at all of any part of it.

And of everything I'd lost, that was the piece that made me feel desperately, horribly incomplete.

 

Lewis led us through what I could only guess was an old-growth forest of the Great Northwest. Oregon, Washington—somewhere in there. He set a brutal pace, moving fast to keep his body heat up. We didn't take breaks. When we finally stopped, I dropped my pack and staggered off into the woods to pee. When I came back, Lewis had another fire going, and he was wrapped in one of the unrolled sleeping bags, shivering.

His lips and eyelids had turned a delicate shade of lilac.

“Dammit, take the coat,” I demanded.

“No. I'll be fine.”

“Ask David to get you a jacket, then! Hell, he brought me shoes!”

Lewis's eyes flicked briefly past me, seeking out David, I was sure. “When I need one.”

“Unless you're modeling the new fall line of lipstick, and this season's color is Corpse Blue, you'd better damn well tell him to get you one now!”

“I didn't know you cared.” Shaky sarcasm. He was still strong enough to be putting up a good front, but it was all marshmallow and foam peanuts underneath.

“I don't. I care about getting stuck out here.” I didn't move my eyes away from Lewis. “David, could you please get him a coat?” Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw David cross his arms and lean against a tree. The expression on his face might have been a smile.

“Of course,” he said, and misted away.

Lewis took in a deep breath, and coughed until I was afraid he was going to spit up a lung. I did what any medically inarticulate person would do; I rubbed and pounded his back. Which probably didn't help at all, but he didn't seem to mind. When he'd stopped coughing, he leaned over, breathing in shallow gasps, face a dirty gray.

“What's wrong with you?” I asked. “And don't tell me you're tired, or you've been up for three days, or whatever bullshit you've been shoveling at David.”

He pressed a hand to his ribs. “Took a little fall. Maybe you saw it.”

Oh, shit.
David had thrown him across the clearing. Since he'd climbed up again, I hadn't figured it was any big deal.

Wrong.

“Earth Wardens can't heal themselves real well,” he said. “It's coming along. Couple of broken ribs. Bit of a punctured lung. Nothing to alert the National Guard over.”

“Can't David just, you know, swoop us out of here? To wherever he goes to buy retail?”

Lewis shook his head. His breathing was easing up a little. “Free Djinn—well, I guess they're all Free Djinn now—can't take humans along with them when they do that. The times they've tried it, the results haven't been exactly encouraging.”

“Meaning?”

“Dead people.”

Great.
So David could go in and out, but we had to hoof it. “What about a helicopter? Some kind of rescue service?”

“We're still a pretty far hike from the closest place a helicopter can touch down. Believe me, I'll call for help as soon as I can.”

“Why the hell not now? We're stuck out here, you've got broken ribs, there's snow coming…Even if they can't land, maybe they can, you know, winch us up or something.”

“Trust me. We have to be very careful right now.” He looked vaguely apologetic. “It's not about you. It's about me.”

Ah.
I remembered what he'd blurted out when he'd first found me.
Listen, we're in trouble. Bad trouble. We need you. Things have gone wrong.
Like I was the go-to girl for that kind of thing. “What's happened?” I asked.

“That's the issue,” he said. “I don't know. I don't know if it's an isolated issue, somebody who just doesn't like me, or a genuine power grab within the Wardens' organization. Until I know, you're just going to have to bear with me.”

“And you want me to trust you?” I shook my head in admiration. “Unbelievable. So who's after you?”

“If I gave you a name, would you recognize it?” He sounded a little more snappy about that than was strictly necessary, really, and immediately looked sorry about it. “I told you. Trust me.”

“If I didn't trust you, I'd be running like hell right now,” I pointed out. “It's not like you could really stop me.”

“Don't kid yourself. I've got skills.”

“Apparently,” I said. “Since you're not dead yet, which with your winning personality amazes me.
I
want to kill you, and I barely know you.”

“Funny. I've said the same thing about you, once upon a time.” He started to laugh. It turned into more coughing, alarmingly. “Damn. You know, I never get hurt unless I'm hanging around with you.”

“If you'd just admitted you were hurt in the first place, maybe you wouldn't be this bad off right now. And what's that about, Mr. I Don't Need a Coat Because I'm the Tough-assed Mountain Man? Is this some kind of pissing contest with David?” No answer. Lewis pretended to be concentrating on the fire. “It is. David wasn't going to do you any favors unless you asked, and you weren't going to ask. Right? Jesus.
Men.
”

“Shhhh,” he said, and sat up.

“What?”

He shushed me again, urgently, and slipped the sleeping bag away from his shoulders. He reached in the backpack next to him and came up with the last thing, somehow, I expected to see in his hand.

Well, okay, not the
very
last. That would have been…a tulip or a Barbie doll or something. But a matte black semiautomatic pistol was pretty far down the list.

“What are you doing?” I kept it to an urgent hiss. He shushed me again, silently this time, and mimed for me to stay put while he got up.
Oh, no way.
I didn't remember anything about who I was, but I doubted it was in my general character to play it safe, especially when my currently assigned Sir Galahad had a punctured lung and a fifty-fifty chance of keeling over at any moment.

I got up, too, and whirled around at a sudden crash of brush to my right. If it was David, he was making an especially dramatic entrance this time….

It wasn't David.

There were two people stepping out of the underbrush. Naturally, I didn't recognize either one of them, but clearly Lewis did, because he turned and aimed the gun at the skinny, greasy young man first, then shifted his aim to split the distance between the boy and the blond little Venus with him, dressed in blue jeans and a hot magenta sweater.

“Whoa,” the girl said, and her hands shot up above her shoulders. The boy just glared. “Easy, Wyatt Earp.”

“Don't move,” Lewis said. He was absolutely steady, but I could see the sweat glistening on his face. “What are you two doing here? How'd you get here?”

“We were looking for you,” the boy said. “Obviously.”

“We're trying to help,” the girl put in. She tried a nervous smile, but she kept darting glances at me, as if she couldn't quite believe her eyes. “Jo? You okay?”

She didn't look familiar, but I was getting used to that. I gave Lewis a doubtful look; he wasn't lowering the gun. “I'm going to ask again,” he said. “How'd you get here? Because the two of you were supposed to be in California, last I heard.”

“You need help.” The girl, again. She sounded young and earnest, and she looked it, too. Underdressed for the weather, and that bothered me. “Lewis, man, put the gun down. You know us!”