Cape Storm

Chapter Four

It wasn’t heaven, but it was damn close. For the next couple of hours I slept, curled in David’s protective arms, feeling safe for the first time I could remember. The motion of the ship was rhythmic and soothing, and for a little while the world did go away, after all.

I could almost—almost—believe it was a honeymoon cruise.

Right up until Cherise threw open the bedroom door and stood there, panting, staring at us with eyes that didn’t really see us at all.

“You’d better get out here,” she said, as David sat up. I did too, swiping hair back from my face and grabbing at the thousand-thread-count sheets as they threatened to slide away. Cherise, shockingly, didn’t seem to notice any of that—not even David’s exposed chest, which frankly should have at least gotten a double take, or a stare, or a patented Cherise come-on.

She just delivered her message and dashed away.

“That’s not like her,” David said, swinging his legs out of bed. “Is it?”

“Nope. Clothes?”

“Closet.” He was already heading there. He pulled open the door and inside was a rainbow of choices, some for him, some for me.

“Underwear?” I asked.

He raised eyebrows. “Is it absolutely necessary?”

“Right now? Yes.”

“Top drawer.” He nodded toward a delicate-looking dresser, something that would have made 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. Fifteen.”

“Then where did this one come from?”

He couldn’t answer that. It was like his brain locked up and refused to produce an answer. Instead, he shook his head, stubbornly unable to get past the paradox.

“Maybe Ashan sent another Djinn,” I said. “A new one.”

“You’re sure this isn’t one of his four?” Lewis asked.

“I’m sure.” I’d seen the four of them, and Venna had been the only one representing herself as female. While the Djinn could change sexes, in my experience they rarely did it without a damn good reason. “This is insane. Can you get Ashan on the line and ask him?”

David’s attention went elsewhere, but only for a moment, and then he shook his head in the negative. “Venna’s coming,” he said. Before he finished the sentence, I caught sight of Venna’s sparkly pink shirt at the end of the hall. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry, but in the next breath she was there, standing at David’s side.

“What’s this?” she asked, staring down at the dead Djinn with academic interest. It was creepy.

“We were hoping you could tell us,” Lewis said. “Anything?”

She studied the body intently, then shook her head. “No. I don’t know what it is.”

I cleared my throat. “Radiation?”

“Nothing dangerous left on the body,” Lewis said. “It looks as if she died the same way the other Djinn did, from antimatter poisoning—but there’s no residual energy. She’s just—dust.”

There wasn’t any way to resolve this, not through the Djinn, in any case. “Thanks,” I said to Venna. “Don’t worry about it.”

She didn’t give it a second thought. She skipped off down the corridor as if stepping around dead, dust-and-ash bodies was an everyday occurrence.

“I’ll be back,” David said abruptly, and misted out before Lewis or I could protest. He was deeply bothered; I could see that, but there was no way I could help him. He’d have to come to terms with this, or not, in his own time.

“So what do we do?” Cherise asked. I’d almost forgotten about her. She was standing a few feet away, arms wrapped around her chest as if she was fighting off a chill. “We can’t just leave the poor thing out here. God. I can’t believe this is happening. This is just awful.”

Lewis and I looked at each other, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was: the way the body had disintegrated into dust and ash, I wasn’t sure moving her was much of an option.

But it seemed like the only decent thing to do was to try.

“We’ll save a sample,” Lewis said. “Maybe we’ll find some kind of clue if we analyze it in detail. But Cherise is right—we can’t leave her here. And there doesn’t seem much reason to store the body.”

No, because we both knew the body was going to disintegrate as soon as we started trying to move it.

We retrieved a shower curtain and repurposed it as a body bag. There was something very disturbing about having pieces of the dead Djinn break off and float away as we went about it, but we managed to get her scraped onto the makeshift bier and carried her away. Cherise didn’t follow. She stood there, staring at the flecks and smears that littered the carpet. It looked like a spilled ashtray.

“Nobody even knows her name,” she said. “That is just so—sad.”

Burial at sea was the best we could give our nameless victim. As Lewis and I tipped the crumbling remains over the railing, I felt we ought to say something, anything, but nothing came to my mind.

It did to Lewis’s, though. “You may be forgotten,” he said, “but you won’t go unavenged. I promise you that. We’ll find out what happened to you.”

Her corpse disintegrated almost instantly in the pounding waves, returning to the embrace of nature. I hoped that the vast intelligence that made up this world remembered her, named her, gathered her close.

I hoped that her life had mattered to some human, somewhere, who still had fond thoughts of her.

White spray was soaking my thin shirt and leaving my skin cold and stiff. Lewis’s warm hand touched my back. “Inside,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

“I’m tired of hearing that,” I said. “I’m really tired of being helpless. Aren’t you?”

Turning, I caught the flash of outright rage in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “And we’re not going to be helpless much longer, I promise you that. Come on.”

He stalked away from the rail.

I followed.

“Where are we going?” I called, as Lewis’s long legs pulled him several steps ahead of me. The hallways were narrow, even in these upper-class areas, but they were nicely appointed, with paneling and original artworks, some of them by artists I recognized. He wasn’t giving me time to sightsee. I hustled past the art so fast that it could have been clown paintings, for all I knew.

He didn’t answer.

When our little mini-parade came to the less exclusive areas, the design standards changed. Still nice but less art, more lithographs. Cheaper carpeting, and the wood was trim, not wall. I glimpsed a sign that said we were heading for the Main Gallery, whatever that was.

“Lewis, dammit, slow down!” I wasn’t slow, but he was acting like this was an Olympic event. “Where are we going?”

We turned a corner and stepped out into upper-middle-class opulence. Maybe even nouveau riche opulence. There was a waterfall in the middle of the open space that spilled a graceful, sinuous wave over curved rock three stories tall, with lush tropical vegetation carefully complementing the lines of the design. Five levels of decks, all with railings circling this part of the ship. As I looked over, I saw that two of the dining areas were below, at the foot of the waterfall—one casual, one formal. All eerily vacant at the moment, except for some staff—I guessed they were staff—taking advantage of the slow moments to grab themselves lunch and drinks. A few Wardens were wandering around in groups of two or three, rubbernecking while they had the luxury of not being marked for death.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, Celine Dion was singing again, dammit. Well, one thing was certain, my heart would not go on, not if this voyage went badly, and I wished she’d just shut the hell up.

Lewis turned, leaning on the rail, with the waterfall as a backdrop. Its hissing rain formed white noise around us.

“I wanted to go someplace we could talk uninterrupted,” he said. “And someplace it would be harder to overhear.”

“You think someone’s watching us?”

“I don’t think we can assume that our enemies are on the beach perfecting their tans.” He shook his head and leaned against the railing, weight on his elbows. Mist from the impossible waterfall behind him made pearly rainbows around the lights. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do this. I really tried.” He sounded genuinely dispirited and angry about it, whatever it was.

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re fighting shadows,” he said. “We’re guessing and flying blind. I didn’t want to have to use the resources I knew we had.”

“What kind of resources?”

He didn’t answer me, not directly. “I’ve been thinking about Paul.”

The name hit me hard, in unguarded places. Paul had been my friend, my mentor in many ways, and somebody I’d thought I could always count on in a pinch.

But he had betrayed us, and I’d killed him for it. I hadn’t meant to do it—it had been in the heat of battle, and my real enemy had used him as a human shield. I didn’t know when Paul had chosen the wrong side, or how, or why; all I knew was that at that last, desperate minute, he’d been standing next to Bad Bob, and that had destroyed him.

I’d destroyed him.

“I’m wondering,” Lewis said, “if Paul was really planning to funnel information back to us. He could have betrayed Kevin and Rahel anytime he wanted. He didn’t. I think he was trying to do the right thing. Maybe he was still on our side after all.”

Did he think that made it any better for me, carrying around the memory of his death? “I hope so,” I said. I really did. I’d much rather Paul died a hero.

“And now,” Lewis said, “I’m wondering the same things about you. Whether you’re really on our side . . . or not.”

I took a deep breath. It’d be too easy to turn this into a blame-fest, and the last thing we needed right now was to gouge pieces out of each other over nothing. Lewis was so exhausted I suspected he’d welcome a fight, just to keep his pulse moving, but I’d hurt enough people recently.

“You don’t think I’m loyal?” For answer, Lewis reached over and put his hand on my numbed shoulder. I shook him off with a little too much anger. “Screw you, Lewis. I’d die for these people. Hell, I have died for them!”

He held up a hand to stop me. “No offense, but in a certain sense, if I tell you what I’m thinking or doing, I may be whispering it in Bad Bob’s ear. You know that, don’t you? Can you guarantee me it isn’t true, or it won’t be tomorrow?”

That was a cold, hard slap of reality, and I smarted from the impact. He was right, of course—the black torch on my back might be controllable for the moment, and I might be convinced that I was my own person, beyond Bad Bob’s reach for now, but I couldn’t really know. I also couldn’t guarantee that it would stay that way five minutes from now, much less tomorrow.

“So now I’m the enemy,” I said, and tried to keep my tone as dry as a good martini. “Fine. You know a good Demon tattoo-removal guy? And can we work in a day spa visit, while we’re at it?”

He didn’t laugh, and he didn’t take the opportunity to lighten up. “I wanted to tell you that if I think you’re slipping away, I won’t hesitate. I’ll kill you. I’ll have to. Understand?”

I did. There was no room for misunderstanding in this. We both knew the stakes, and we both knew the consequences.

“Yeah, I understand,” I said. “You’re sure you can take me if you have to?”

“I can,” he said. “And I will.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“The problem is, it would probably kill us both in the end, and we both know that’s not a good outcome.”

“I promise not to fight back.”

“You can’t promise. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“So what are you asking me, Lewis?”

“I want to put in a fail-safe. I need your cooperation.”

Fail-safe.

This was something I’d heard about, rarely. It was generally used on Wardens who’d demonstrated behavioral problems—those who were mentally unbalanced. A crazy Warden was a very dangerous thing, and fail-safes were sometimes the only way to be absolutely sure you could stop a Warden before it was too late and the body count was too high.

I’d never thought I’d be facing the possibility myself.

“Fine,” I said, and my voice sounded thick and strange to my ears. “Do it.”

“I also need your consent.”

I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t I just say do it?”

His smile was very thin, and not at all happy. “I need you to say more than that. Informed consent.”

“What, you think I’m going to sue? Fine, here’s the cover-your-ass speech: I hereby authorize you to put a fail-safe switch in my brain, to be under your sole control, which you can use to shut me down if I present a clear and present danger to those around me.” I heard the sharp, angry edge in my voice and tried to moderate it. “I give you permission to kill me. How’s that for consent?”

He gazed at me with compassion, and a good deal of resentment. “You know I hate this, right?”

“Yeah. I’m not a big fan of the concept either, but I get why it’s necessary, so let’s get it done before David finds out what you’re thinking about.”

We probably looked like we were just meditating together, in front of the peaceful roaring waterfall. Two friends, standing calmly together, getting our Zen on.

Lewis held out his hands, palms up. I put mine over them, palms down.

I had to stand there, open and horribly vulnerable, as Lewis’s Earth power moved slowly through my nerves, climbing my arms, my shoulders, lighting a bright fire at the base of my neck and spreading out over the cap of my head.

It sank in like a net of light. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I felt it—a sharp, bright spark deep in my brain, quickly contained. My whole body jerked, and my eyes flew open, but I couldn’t see anything.

It took several seconds for my vision to come back. Just shadows at first, then smears of color, then a gradual definition to the edges of shapes.

Lewis’s face, intent and focused.

He sighed, and I felt the power drain away from me, heading toward my feet. It was a little like being embarrassed in slow motion, a wave of heat traveling through flesh until it terminated through the soles of my shoes.

“Done?” I asked. He nodded. “How does it work?”

“It’s a signature switch. I’m the only one who can trip it, and I have to do it a certain way, in a certain sequence.”

“And if you do, it’s lights-out in my head? Instantly?”

“Yes,” he said. He sounded beaten and very, very tired. “Lights-out.”

“No pain, though.”

“Very little. About like a pinprick. It’s over in about three seconds.”

“I can’t believe we’re even talking about this,” I said. “What’s to stop me from undoing it, especially if I go all Team Evil on you? And once I know, Bad Bob could know. He could just disable the kill switch.”

“I know,” Lewis said. He looked very sad, and very guilty. “That’s why I had to get you off alone before I did this. I needed to be sure I was the only one who knew about it.”

I didn’t get it. “But I know about it.”

He just stood there watching me, and the look in his eyes was intensely strange. “I need to say this,” he said. “Just this one time. I love you. I’ve loved you for half my life, it seems like. And I always will love you, even though I know it’s not possible for you to love me back. If you hadn’t met David, it might have been—things might have been different. But I know when I’m beaten.”

I was stunned. Lewis, of all people, was not a confessor. He didn’t blurt out his emo secrets, not to anyone, especially not to me.

“I . . . have no idea what you want me to say,” I said. “You know how I feel about you, you’re—you’re Lewis. God, why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I can. Because you won’t remember anything about it thirty seconds from now,” he said, and reached out and touched his finger to the exact center of my forehead.

“No—”

The world exploded into jagged shards.

What the hell had I just been saying?

I’d somehow managed to hypnotize myself by staring at the waterfall for too long. I shook off the blurring fascination and gave Lewis a doubtful look. “Jeez, I just spaced like mad,” I said. “I’m really tired. What was I saying?”

Lewis was leaning on the railing, staring into the falling curtain of water. “You were saying you’d die for us,” he said. “For the Wardens.”

You’d think I’d remember that. “Damn straight I would, bucko. Anything else?”

He seemed tempted to say something, but then he shook his head and shifted gears. I could tell from the way his body language changed, from contemplative to decisive. “Yes. I want a thorough check of every Warden. Make sure there are none of Bad Bob’s crew in our particular woodpile. When you’re done, interview the passengers and crew. I want everybody, absolutely everybody, checked out by you and David.”

So much for sweet, sweet bed rest. “That’s going to take all night.”

“Oh, at least. Let me know if you find anything.”

“You are such a bastard.” I sighed. “Is that all? Want me to build the Sistine Chapel out of paper clips in my spare time? You know, you didn’t need all this hush-hush privacy to tell me to do your scut work.”

“I know I didn’t,” he said. “I just wanted to show you the waterfall.”

I glanced at it. “Pretty,” I said. “Anything else, O Lord and Master?”

He continued to lean on the railing, staring into space. “That’ll about do it.”

I walked away, still wondering why the hell he’d dragged me here. Maybe he’d been about to ask me something personal. Maybe he’d been about to declare his undying love for me. Yeah, like that would ever happen.

Whatever it had been, he’d chickened out, and I could only think that was a good thing, given the circumstances.

I had a lot of work to do.

Sitting the Wardens down for their loyalty checks was easier than I figured it might be—mainly because they were shell-shocked after the disaster of trying to control the storm. Even the Fire Wardens, notoriously temperamental, and the Earth Wardens, notably hippie-nonconformist, decided to play nice.

I found nothing. If any of them were lying about their allegiances, it was beyond my ability—or David’s—to discover. If Bad Bob and his crew could go that deep cover, there was no way we were coming out of this alive, so I decided not to worry about it.

That left some thirty-odd rich folks who were confined to their cabins—hopefully—and a whole bunch of ship’s staff and crew.

It was going to be a long stretch. Luckily, I had David along with me, which meant he was paying more attention to my energy levels than I was, and after thanking the last eerily compliant Earth Warden and shaking hands, he steered me in the direction of the only open restaurant.

“I’m not hungry!” I protested. He raised his eyebrows. “I can’t eat now. I’ve got work to do. Besides, I ate at the buffet when we had the meeting.”

“You ate a turkey sandwich. Before you dumped all your energy into the attempt to control the storm.”

David had a point—I’d burned profligate amounts of power, all day long, and now that I thought about it, my muscles had that oddly shaky feeling that meant I was about to crash. My head hurt, too.

I tried rejecting the whole problem again, but David knew when to press, and before I knew it, we were taking the big, sweeping gallery stairs down to the restaurant. It was called Le Fleur D’Or, and it was one of the smaller eating places on the ship—kind of an intimate date-type restaurant, with lots of dark woods and plush carpeting.

The hastily printed menu featured sandwiches, which I figured wasn’t the usual fare. The place (and the staff) looked more used to handling lobster and exotic salads than BLTs. They couldn’t resist foo-fooing them up by cutting crusts off the bread and making little triangles, but a sandwich is still a sandwich, even if it’s on challah bread. I think I ate a dozen, making sounds that probably would have been more appropriate in bed than at the table.

David didn’t need to eat—Djinn don’t—but they like to eat, to take advantage of all the human senses they assume in human form. So he had some kind of pasta thing and a glass of red wine. Could Djinn get drunk? I’d never really considered the question before. I tried to imagine David intoxicated; he’d probably be a sweet, sloppy drunk, not a mean one, I thought. He’d be throwing his arms around Lewis and mumbling about how much he loved the guy in no time.

Well, maybe not, but it was an intriguing fantasy.

“Thanks,” I said, pushing back from the crumb-dusted plate and swigging half of my iced tea in convulsive gulps. “I didn’t know I was that bad off.”

“You’ve got limits,” he said. “You should learn to pay attention to them occasionally.”

“Hey, that’s not fair. I see the blur as I blow past them.”

He came around, pulled my chair back, and handed me up to my feet in a courtly Old World gesture, very appropriate to this hushed, romantic restaurant with its subdued violin music. He combed his fingers through my curly hair in a slow, gentle gesture that left it straight and shining in the wake of his touch. “I was thinking more of actually staying within them.”

“Funny. So where do we start with the rich folks?”

David turned to the waiter still hovering near the table, eager for any chance to break out of his boredom. “Do you deliver room service?”

“No, sir, the cabin stewards do that.”

“Do they ever tell you about the difficult passengers?”

That got a big fat silence. I could imagine that passenger gossip was one of those major disciplinary no-no things.

“We won’t say who it came from,” I promised, and gestured to David, rubbing my fingers together. He reached in the back pocket of his pants, pulled out a wallet, and peeled off a hundred-dollar bill, which he placed on the table as a tip.

The waiter’s eyes widened. “Cabin seventeen in first class,” he said. “If you’re looking for the biggest jerk.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Mr. Prince?”

David offered me his arm in another of those dashingly gallant gestures. “Mrs. Prince,” he said. “Cabin seventeen it is.”

Cabin seventeen was located only a few doors down from my own spacious digs. As we headed in that direction, I saw Aldonza, the cabin stewardess, closing the door to room 22. She had a tray of used dishes balanced in her hands. I waved. She gave me a professional, polished smile in return, as impartial as a Swiss banker.

“Aldonza,” I said, “can I ask you a question?”

“Yes, miss,” she said, and tried not to stare at David too openly. “Of course.”

She was carrying about twenty pounds on that tray, and she was a slight little thing. As I glanced at David, I saw he’d already reached the same conclusion. He reached out and took the tray from her, despite her shocked gasp.

“To the restaurant?” he asked. She gave him a stunned nod.

“But, sir, you can’t—”

He could. David was quite enjoying being free of the Djinn secrecy restrictions; he misted away with the tray in full view of Aldonza, and her pretty face went pale with shock. She crossed herself and murmured something in Spanish.

“He’s okay,” I promised her. “More like an angel than, you know, the other thing.” She stared at me blankly, shaking her head as if she simply wanted the whole thing to go away. “I need to ask you about one of your guests. Cabin seventeen?”

That snapped her out of her fugue state. Color flooded back into her face, and then she made a visible effort to stay calm and professional. “Mr. Trent Cole,” she said.

“Nice guy?”

“I can’t talk about my guests, miss.” Her lips twitched. “Not even about you and the angel.”

“Eh, don’t worry about us. You can talk all you want. We’ve been on CNN.” She snorted, then covered her mouth with her hand as if she was appalled at her bad behavior. I winked. “Look, about Mr. Cole—I’m about to go talk to him. Anything you can tell me about him that might help me decide if he’s a threat or not?”

She hesitated, and I could see the good-girl/gossip-girl conflict being played out for a solid three seconds before the gossip girl pulled a smackdown. “He has a gun,” she said. “I saw it. He put it in the pocket of his bathrobe. He doesn’t like anyone coming into his room, and he’s very rude. He doesn’t let me do any cleaning, and that makes it so hard, because he can complain that I’m not doing my job, and if a passenger makes a complaint like that I can be fired and left at the next port—”

Man, when Aldonza decided to talk, it was hard to stop her. “What kind of a gun?” I asked. She looked puzzled. “Small? Big? Revolver? Automatic?”

“Big. An automatic.”

“Okay. I just want to know what we’re dealing with,” I said. “Aldonza—did Mr. Cole threaten you? Hurt you?”

From the rigid set of her posture, I thought he had, but she shook her head. Maybe not even her gossip-girl side could voice that complaint. At least, not to a mere passenger.

“Okay,” I said. I felt David coming back, and saw her eyes shift and widen as he whispered into existence behind me. “Thank you very much for your information. David—” I did the finger-rubbing thing again. He produced his wallet, Aldonza got a hundred-dollar bill, and as we walked away, David handed me the wallet. “What?”

“I just thought it might be more convenient,” he said. “In case you want to bribe anybody in cabin seventeen.”

“I want to intimidate the holy living shit out of cabin seventeen,” I said. “How would that be?”

He gave me a slow, evil smile. “You only love me for my ability to terrify.”

“And your ability to produce money out of thin air. That’s important, too.”

“I’m glad I’m well-rounded.”

“In oh so many ways.”

Mr. Trent Cole, aka Cabin Seventeen, decided that he wasn’t going to submit to answering any questions, no matter how nicely we asked. In fact, Mr. Cole wouldn’t even open his door.

Yeah, like that was going to keep us impotently standing outside.

“We’re not Housekeeping,” I called through the door. “Open it or we’re coming in anyway.”

“Like hell you are! I know my rights!” Mr. Personality screamed back at me.

David moved me out of the way—my own personal Djinn shield—and put a single finger on the surface of the glossy wooden door. When he pushed, the lock snapped and shattered like glass.

Nice. I liked the economy of his violence.

He stepped over the threshold, and Trent Cole fired three bullets into his chest, point-blank. He did it like a guy who’d had practice, but when David didn’t fall down—didn’t even flinch—Cole’s expression turned from murderous to completely confused.

David stepped forward, took the gun (Aldonza was right, it was a big black semiautomatic), and handed it to me. I dumped it in the ice bucket on the bar, after burning my fingers on the barrel. If David was bothered in the least by someone trying to kill him, he didn’t let it show in his cool smile, or the absolute ease with which he stiff-armed Mr. Cole toward the sofa.

Cole met the cushions at speed, and toppled like a tortoise onto his back, an awkward position at best. He was dressed in one of the ship’s fluffy robes, his big feet shoved into slippers that flopped around hilariously as he tried to right himself. He struggled up to a sitting position as David shut the door behind us and repaired the lock with a minor pulse of power.

There was a bottle of Perrier-Jouët champagne sweating on the coffee table, along with two full flutes of sparkling liquid.

“I see we’re in time for happy hour,” I said, and settled myself in the tapestry armchair across from the sofa. I poured myself a glistening flute and then appropriated the second one for David. We sipped. Mr. Cole, a bulky sort, grabbed at the flapping hem of his robe to avoid giving me a Full Monty as he swung his feet to the floor. David settled himself in one of those intimidating poses the Djinn had perfected several millennia ago, literally guarding my back.

Cole, uncertain what to do, leaned back on the sofa. Slowly. “You can’t just barge in here,” he said. “I’ve got rights, whoever you think you are.”

The champagne really was excellent.“You think those rights include shooting anyone who walks through your door?” I asked him. I craned my neck a bit to look up at David. “Speaking of that, you okay, honey?”

“I’m fine,” he said. He held out a fist. I opened my palm, and he dumped three perfect bullets into it. “Souvenirs.”

“For me? Thanks.” I fluttered my eyelashes at him, and got a slow, hot smile. We both loved this part. I focused back on Cole, who was staring at us like we were straight out of a big-budget special-effects movie. “You need these back? Maybe you recycle?”

He shook his head. I put them in the pocket of my jeans. You never know when you’ll need a good bullet.

“Now,” I said. “Thanks for seeing us, Mr. Cole. We’ll only be a minute. First question: Why do you feel the need to go all Wild West Show on friendly visitors? Bonus question: Why are you still on this ship? Because I think anybody who doesn’t have to be here must have a really good reason to be staying.”

Trent Cole was not accustomed to answering questions of any kind, much less from a plebeian like me. He struck me as nouveau riche, probably something to do with hedge funds or stocks or porn. Someone who had a lot of cash and was tremendously impressed with it.

He kept darting admiring looks at David. I was familiar with that. I just wasn’t so familiar with seeing it in a man.

“I was just defending myself,” Cole said. “I’m sorry. I got rattled.”

While he was speaking, I allowed myself to drift just a bit out of my body so I could examine him in Oversight. His aura was muddy and indistinct—so, a genuine regular human-type guy, no surprise there—and bloody around the edges with guilt and nerves.

“Rattled?” I repeated. “You looked pretty calm to me. Good grouping on your shots.”

“Center mass,” David supplied. “Very well aimed.”

Cole looked from one of us to the other, then fixed on David. His whole body relaxed. “You’re wearing a vest, right? Of course.”

For answer, David unbuttoned his shirt and displayed part of his bare chest.

“David, stop teasing the man,” I said. And me. “Mr. Cole. Look at me, please.” He did, not with any great pleasure, and I deepened my focus to get a better look at the inner Trent.

Not a terribly good experience.

“You’re protecting yourself,” I said aloud. “That’s why you didn’t leave the ship. You know you’re an obvious target if you do. You’re running from something.”

He flinched, but he didn’t move otherwise. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Do you know a man named Robert Biringanine?” This was the money question, but I got nothing from him. Just a continuing roil of anxiety and fury. He didn’t know Bad Bob, at least not by name.

David took his cue. “He looks like this.” And he transformed himself into a perfect replica of Bad Bob, from his flyaway white hair, bloodshot blue eyes, and pug-Irish nose to his bowlegs. In fact, it was so good that I pulled in a startled breath and clenched my fingers on the arms of the chair, then deliberately relaxed. It was just an image, nothing more, and David dismissed it with a flick of his fingers when Trent Cole shook his head.

“Okay,” I said, and tried to slow down the fast beat of my heart. “Who’s after you?”

“None of your business,” Cole barked.

“It is if you plan to go around shooting anybody who looks at you funny on this ship,” I said. “Let us help you. There’s no need to be afraid. Not now.”

Cole stared at me with a perplexed look on his face. Clearly, I wasn’t fitting the pigeonholes he was trying to stuff me into. I was used to that, actually.

“Who are you?” His gaze leaped from me to David, and then back again. “Are you with the government?”

“Yes,” I said. In fact, that was sort of true. And sort of not.

“I’m calling my attorney. He’s kicked the ass of everybody in the Justice Department, from the attorney general to the janitorial service. He’ll make short work of you two jokers.”

Cole reached for his cell phone.

It disappeared. Cole stared at the place where it had been, slapped his hand around, and looked at me with comically big eyes. “What the hell?”

David opened his right hand, and there was Cole’s cell phone. “If you want it back, play nice,” he said. Cole’s mouth dropped open, and he surged to his feet.

“Hey, fucking David Copperfield, give that back!” His face turned brick-red, which I was pretty sure wasn’t an indication of his general good health. “You sons of bitches, my life is in that phone!”

“Then I hold your life in my hand, don’t I?” David pointed out mildly. “Sit.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a suggestion or an order, but Cole’s ass hit the sofa cushions pretty quickly. His high-blood-pressure blush was already fading, as he realized that his biggest problem might not be in retrieving his contact list and scandalous text messages. “What the hell do you people want?” From Cole, that actually sounded kind of subdued.

“We want to be sure there’s no more trouble,” I said. “So we’ll be taking your gun. Anything else contraband in here we should know about? Purely for safety?”

His gaze flicked away from me, racing toward the sweeping staircase, and then returning just as fast. In the aetheric, his aura whispered a fast rainbow of anxiety and guilt. I sat back and looked up at David, who nodded and disappeared, taking Cole’s cell phone with him.

“What—” Cole’s mouth had dropped so far open that I could see all his impressive dental work. I guess he’d figured out that David might share a first name with a famous magician, but he was far, far more impressive. “What are you people?”

“Who said we were people?” I smiled coolly at him. That flummoxed him for a full ten seconds.

“Look, I’m not some terrorist or something, I’m just—Okay, I took some money. A lot of money. From some people I worked with. And they’re trying to get it back from me, that’s all. It’s just business.”

Business mob-style, I gathered. Which explained why he wanted to hole up in his suite with a warm gun, and why he hadn’t disembarked with the others. A common criminal.

I could live with that.

David ghosted back into view behind me and dropped a hand on my shoulder. I twisted to look at him.

“Boyfriend,” he said. “Up in the bedroom. He had this.” David deposited another gun in my lap, a match for the semiautomatic we’d confiscated from Cole. “Do you want to take a look?”

“Why, is he naked?”

It’s hard to get a complete double take from a Djinn, but I managed. “I didn’t notice,” he said. Which was, no doubt, a crushing blow to Mr. Cole. I was sad for him. “What do you think? Pass?”

“Pass,” I said. “Whatever problems he has aren’t any concern of ours. Mr. Cole, we’re done here. I’ll be taking your guns with me, though. If you have intruder problems, David will be happy to come to your rescue.” I batted my eyelashes again. David didn’t look pleased with being volunteered. “Thanks.”

“Thanks for what?” Cole asked, mystified. I walked over to the bar and retrieved the second pistol from the ice bucket. Nicely cooled down.

“Not shooting me, too,” I said. “That would have been awkward.”

“No,” David said. “That would have been fatal for Mr. Cole.”

I gathered that Mr. Cole was a man of few boundaries, but he recognized that one, and he nodded. “It won’t happen again. Sorry. Eh—what’s your name?”

“I’m David Prince. Her name is Joanne Baldwin,” David said. “But you can call her Mrs. Prince.”

I got a shiver out of that. A nice one.

We left Cole on the couch, still grappling with the utter destruction of his worldview.

All in all, not a bad first interrogation. Then again, my standards are pretty low. If I survive it, it can’t be that bad.