djinn wars 02 - taken (6 page)

Instead, I told Evony, “I guess that’s something,” and then was silent for a moment, slowing us down even further as Highway 503 began to climb its way out of Nambe, the first hamlet on the High Road. The snow had well and truly stopped for the moment, but the skies remained gray, and I couldn’t be certain that the flurries might not start up again. Unfortunately, it didn’t snow all that often in Albuquerque, and definitely not heavily like this, unless some kind of freak storm was passing through.

So far we were doing okay, though, and I prayed that being cautious would be enough to get us up and over the passes, and into Taos. Fingers still wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, I commented, “You’d think the djinn would number a lot more than twenty thousand if they’re supposedly immortal. I mean, humans were overrunning the earth, and we only had an average lifespan of seventy-five or something.”

A shrug as Evony stared out the windshield at the snow-covered landscape passing by. “I don’t know for sure. I got the impression that sometimes they did die from time to time, for whatever reason, and that was when a new little djinn would come along. But it was rare.”

“And…with people?” I ventured then, asking a question that had been hovering in the back of my mind ever since I’d learned Jace wasn’t precisely human.

Evony shot me a sidelong glance from under her lashes. “Are you asking if humans and djinn can make little half-breed babies?”

“Well….” It was probably a stupid thing to ask. After all, it wasn’t as if Evony and Natila would’ve been reproducing together, unless djinn biology was very different from ours.

“I guess they can,” Evony said, her tone amused. “I mean, that wasn’t going to be an issue with me and Natila, which was just fine by me. I spent enough time around my little nieces and nephews and my cousins’ kids to know I sure as hell didn’t want any. Screaming and poop and…no, thanks.”

I decided it was better not to comment on that. Someone like my mother — or even my friend Tori — would’ve probably argued that Evony couldn’t possibly make that kind of decision when she was only twenty-two. But if that was how she felt about the subject, then that was her decision.

“It’s happened over the years, though. Not often,” she went on, shooting me another one of those sideways glances. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought she’d guessed about all those nights I hesitated over my little packet of pills and wondered whether I should just quietly stop taking them. “But a few times. So if you want to rescue Jace and have your little white picket fence and two point five kids or whatever it is these days, you should be able to manage it.”

“The house doesn’t have a white picket fence. It has an adobe wall,” I pointed out, and she only shrugged again.

“Whatever. You know what I mean.”

I supposed I did. Right then the road began to climb more steeply, though, and I felt the Cherokee’s tires slip. Shit. They caught before I could start to really worry, but I dropped my speed again, this time crawling along at something like ten point five miles per hour.

“Do we need to put on the chains?” Evony asked, the look of amusement slipping off her face as if it had never been there.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “We’re doing okay right now. Besides, I don’t even know where we would stop.”

That was nothing more than the truth. You kind of needed a clear space to put on chains, and it was just pure, virgin snow as far as the eye could see, covering the highway, mounded slightly higher on the western side of the road because of the way the wind had been blowing. The junipers were rounded blobs with some dark green showing underneath the snow, and slightly lower bumps and protrusions that had to be rocks or smaller bushes. At any rate, there certainly wasn’t a nice clear “chain up” area where we could pull off and get the chains on.

“True.” She surveyed the snow-covered landscape and shook her head. “That is one metric shit-ton of snow.”

Probably more than just one,
I thought, but I only gave her a grim smile and continued with our plodding forward motion. What else could I do? I wasn’t about to turn around…not that I was sure I could even manage such a feat, since it would’ve required crossing back over the deep, deep ruts we’d already cut in the snow. The best thing to do was just keep moving.

Luckily, I wasn’t moving too fast, or I might have missed the turnoff onto State Road 98. The sign was half covered in snow, but I caught sight of it just in time and eased the Cherokee over, glad that at least this new stretch didn’t seem too hilly. Well, the road did undulate, but with gentle rises and falls, not anything too taxing.

I didn’t let myself get complacent, though, and maintained our low speed. A quick glance at the clock told me it was now almost eleven in the morning. That made me blow out a worried breath, since we’d been on the road for more than two hours and were less than a quarter of the way to our destination. At this rate, we’d be lucky to make it to Taos before dark.

The last thing I wanted was to be navigating snow-covered mountain roads after nightfall. What if we missed a turn and went off the highway? What if we plowed into an elk that had decided to amble across the road?

Yeah, and maybe the Cherokee will get attacked by a pack of wolves, too,
I mocked myself, but I couldn’t quite banish the worry just by deriding my fears.

Those worries did lessen somewhat as we made it along 98 without any problem, and then turned right onto 76. The highway began to climb again, but the snow didn’t seem quite as thick here, for whatever reason, and I murmured a silent thank-you under my breath for that.

“Are we there yet?” Evony quipped as we passed a sign saying we were entering Truchas, whatever that was.

“No. Barely halfway.”

Her grin faded, and then her eyes widened and she said, “Wait — weren’t you supposed to go left back there?”

My first instinct was to hit the brakes, but I knew that would only end in disaster. Instead, I let us slow to a crawl and then came to a stop in a narrow little street bordered on either side by houses, half of which seemed to double as artists’ studios, judging by the signage. “This looks like the main street to me,” I said in irritation.

Without replying, Evony picked up the map from where it was lying half open on the console that separated the front seats. A frown pulled at her brows. “Well, it’s the main street of Truchas, according to this map, but it’s not the highway. See? It jogged to the left back there.”

I could feel myself scowling as well as I took the map from her and looked where she had pointed. Sure enough, 76 lay behind us. We were on 75, whatever that was. Not anyplace we wanted to be.

“Well, shit,” I growled.

“Just turn us around. It’s not that big a deal.”

Easy for her to say. The street was so narrow that the only way I could accomplish the maneuver was to pull into a driveway and then back out. And the snowdrifts looked awfully deep.

But sitting here in Truchas was really not an option, so I sucked in a breath and began turning the Cherokee, using the extra space in the driveway to our left to get us pointed in the right direction. All went okay until I put us in reverse so we could angle back onto the actual street. I heard a horrible grinding noise, and the Jeep shuddered but didn’t move.

“Crap,” I said.

“What?”

“I think we’re stuck.”

Evony winced. “Are you in four-wheel drive?”

“Of course I’m in four-wheel drive!” I snapped. “I’ve never been out of it since we left the house!”

“Oh.”

She didn’t offer any helpful advice after that. Telling myself to remain calm, I took my foot off the brake and gave the car a little gas. More grinding. With my luck, I was heating up the snow so it was melting and turning to ice under the tires, which would only make matters worse.

I let off the gas and shifted into neutral, letting the Cherokee idle while I thought. Maybe it was time to break out the snow shovel I’d packed in the cargo compartment so I could try to dig out the piled-up snow beneath us. Obviously, the drifts filling up that driveway had proven to be too much even for the Jeep.

Hesitating, I glanced quickly over at Evony. She was staring ahead, frowning, and didn’t seem to want to meet my eyes. I could guess the reason why, too — she had an idea of what was coming next and didn’t want to be the one to have to stagger out in the snow and start digging us out. Well, neither did I, especially since it made more sense for me to be the one behind the wheel. I had no idea whether she even knew how to manage a four-wheel drive.

I supposed it couldn’t hurt to try one more time. If that didn’t work, then I supposed one of us would have to get out and start digging. We could always flip a coin to see who got shovel duty.

Holding my breath, I took the Jeep out of neutral and into low gear, then applied as much gas as I dared. Again the tires ground against the snow and ice.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, adding a second mental curse at myself for missing the turn-off and stranding us here.

And then — well, I couldn’t say for sure exactly
what
happened, except that I felt something almost like an enormous hand shoving the rear of the Cherokee, and all of a sudden we were moving forward, leaving the snow-piled driveway behind us. I blinked, shocked at the abrupt change in our status, but recovered myself enough to apply a little more gas, getting us up to the fifteen or so miles per hour I’d been driving the entire trip.

“You did it!” Evony exclaimed, looking relieved beyond measure that she wouldn’t have to get out and shovel the back tires after all.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

The problem was, I didn’t think I actually
did
have anything to do with getting us unstuck. That shove had felt far more like something Jace might have done. However, I knew he couldn’t have, not locked up and with his powers stripped from him.

Exactly who…or what…had decided we needed a nudge to continue on our way?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.

Chapter Four

The light was just beginning to fail as we came down the mountain and into Taos. And as the day died, snow started to fall once again, lightly at first, then more thickly as we headed toward the center of town.

During the last half of our drive, Evony and I hadn’t spoken much. I was shaken after the incident in Truchas, my mind working at the way the Cherokee had been more or less magically freed from the snow. And Evony seemed to pick up on my unease and stared moodily out the window, only drinking water from time to time, and eventually digging a protein bar out of the supplies we’d brought with us. At least she’d been willing to take care of Dutchie, getting some food into her portable bowl and tipping some water into another container for her to drink. At the time, I hadn’t wanted to stop, had only wanted to keep crawling along the mountain road at our glacial seventeen or so miles per hour. Some part of me was scared that if we paused for anything, we’d get stuck in the snow, and there might not be an invisible hand this time to give us a much-needed push.

But now we were more or less back in civilization, although here on the outskirts of town, I didn’t see many signs of life. Maybe the djinn and their consorts were all holed up in the city center, in the hotels and B&Bs that clustered near the central plaza and the shops and the museums. That seemed to make more sense; I didn’t know if even the Los Alamos people had the guts to come to a place where so many djinn were congregated, but if they did, the elementals would do better if surrounded by more of their kind.

Sure enough, just as Evony and I passed Quesnel Road, we came to a sort of roadblock. Well, it was really only a couple of guys sitting in the middle of the road in a Toyota FJ Cruiser, but as soon as we slowed to a stop just before the intersection they occupied, they got out of their SUV and made their way over to my driver-side window. They weren’t djinn, but they were both extremely good-looking — in their twenties, like Evony and me, one dark, Hispanic or maybe Italian or Greek, the other with blond hair pulled back into a ponytail and with the burnished tan of someone who spent a lot of time on the ski slopes.

The dark-haired man pointed at my window, and I unrolled it, letting in a freezing blast of air as I did so. “Welcome to Taos, Jessica,” he said, and I started, even as Evony shifted in the passenger seat and gave him an unbelieving stare. She didn’t say anything, though, but instead watched the stranger with wary eyes.

“Hi,” I replied cautiously. I mean, what else was I supposed to say? But if you stopped to think about it, the djinn here weren’t interdicted by the device the Los Alamos people were using, and so they could’ve been using their powers to watch over Evony and me as we made our way to Taos. If nothing else, that would explain the “helping hand” we’d gotten back in Truchas.