Текст книги "Cape Storm"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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“I’m pretty sure that for us there is no such thing as off-limits. We’re not regular guests. You know what I mean?”

She did, but her smile instantly froze solid. “I—I am sorry, but I can’t—we’re not allowed—”

“Aldonza.” I interrupted her gently enough, but firmly, and took her hand in both of mine. “You signed the waivers, right? The Wardens explained to you what kind of risk was involved in staying on this ship?”

She nodded mutely. I could sense that she wanted to pull away from me, but also that her curiosity was burning a hole in her head. Instead of asking, she just waited.

“The fact is, we’re not going to be regular passengers,” I said. “Think of us as policemen, or military personnel. We don’t need coddling, but we do need to know everything about this ship we can, from the technical stuff to the most insignificant details. It could mean the difference between life and death for everybody on board if things get worse.”

I watched that sink in, but Aldonza still shook her head in refusal. “I can’t let you in, not without someone telling me I can. It’s strictly against regulations.”

“Okay, you can tell me how to get there, and if I happen to stumble accidentally into the crew areas, then it’s not your fault, right?” She hesitated. “Please, Aldonza. It could be important. I promise, I’ll talk to Security and to the Chief Engineer too, but in my experience, the bosses don’t know everything.They thinkthey know everything. You are the guys who really understand the ship.”

She actually laughed, covering her mouth with her hand, as if too loud a sound was definitely Not Done in the posh areas, at least not when wearing a uniform. “That’s true,” she agreed, but she sobered from her brief burst of laughter far too quickly. “It’s not possible for you to go through the crew area without being seen and stopped. The ship has lots of surveillance. Cameras everywhere. We all know each other. We have to, living in such close quarters. If they don’t know you and you’re in off-limits areas, they’ll call security and escort you out.” She was shaking her head again, clearly talking herself out of even trying it. “We have very good security people. It’s not worth the risk. Talk to the captain or the Executive Officer.”

I tried to imagine any of the security people being prepared to deal with even a middle-grade Warden, much less somebody like me or Lewis or the Djinn. I failed. “Okay,” I said, because Aldonza clearly was feeling more and more uncomfortable. “I suppose it’s a bad idea anyway. I’ll take the long way around.—But, just for future reference, what do the crew-area doors look like?”

Aldonza blinked. “I thought you knew.”

Huh? My confusion must have registered, because she looked behind me at a simple door with a swipe card lock labeled PRIVATE.

“Oh,” I said. “Right. Thanks.”

She clearly thought I was crazy, and she wasn’t about to get fired over it. From the glances she threw back at me as she moved down the hallway, she was trying to make sure I wouldn’t do anything wrong—at least not before she was safely away from the scene of the crime.

Couldn’t really blame her.

I pretended to read my map, waiting until she’d had plenty of escape time. I marked the location of the crew door on it and noted the locations of the surveillance cameras, too.

I couldpop the door right open, with a relatively minor pulse of power. I couldfritz out the cameras, too.

But the truth was, I could do that anytime I needed to, and right now it wasn’t my first choice. I just wanted to reach my soft, expensively appointed bed.

I looked up at the surveillance eyes focused on where I stood, sighed, and took the long way around.

I stillgot lost. This huge floating palace was like some creepily deserted amusement park—all the lights were on, but there seemed to be a faintly sinister edge to everything. It was made to be inhabited, to be full of life and fun and conversation, and instead there was just fear. The few people I spotted were staff (crew?) going about their business.

I somehow ended up on the Grand Promenade, or at least that was what I read on the map. It was the big railed expanse looking out over the ocean. Overhead, the sky was nail gray, and the water looked just as hard and unfriendly, with sharp-edged waves. The Grand Paradisewas big and heavy enough to cleave its way through like a knife, even at the labored speed we were moving.

The promenade was deserted, too. I stood in the clammy wind for a while, watching the endless rolling of the waves, and then I yawned and felt my eyelids growing even heavier.

So tired.

At least, I was tired until I felt a hot, seductive tingle on my back, just over the shoulder blade. That jerked me back to full alert like a jab from a cattle prod.

I didn’t make any more stops on my way.

Safely in the bedroom—no sign of Cherise downstairs—I sat down, closed my eyes, and focused on David. I can’t really describe the connection between the two of us; the ceremony and the vows—even though our wedding had been interrupted by Bad Bob’s attack, and technically not really finished—had pulled us together, bound us in ways that even now I couldn’t understand, except that it made it easier to call him when I needed him.

When I opened my eyes, David was forming out of the air in a swirl of gray and gold. There was something blank in his eyes this time, as if I’d taken him away from something both terrible and important. He’d been with Lewis. I wondered how bad it was.

Then he took a deep breath and willed it away, whatever it was.

“The mark is burning,” I said, without any preamble at all. He took on human form and flesh and sat down next to me. He felt warm as summer, and he smelled faintly of spices and real, human sweat, deliciously male. His fingers unbuttoned my cotton camisole and pushed it down my arms, and then he unhooked my bra and slid it off. There was no seduction in it, or at least not as much as I’d have liked; he was very focused on the job at hand.

When his fingertips pressed on the black torch mark on my back, we both gasped. He spread his whole left hand over it, and the heat spread, increased to an agonizing burn that felt as if it should come with the sound of sizzling. His right arm went around me, holding me up, keeping me from fighting him to get away from the pain.

With shocking suddenness, the fire turned to ice, a chill that ripped all the way through me, and I shuddered. When I exhaled, my breath frosted the air in delicate feathers that vanished in seconds.

I couldn’t feel the mark on my back anymore, and that was a huge relief. But, as David trailed his fingers over it, I realized that I could feel less of the area around it, too. The numb spot was growing.

I turned to look at him, and caught the unguarded pain in his face before he could hide it from me. He was tired, and he was anguished. Worse, he was despairing.

“Stop that,” I said. “What’s happening?”

“It’s getting larger,” he said. “I had to expand the containment to keep it within the boundaries. You can’t push yourself this hard.”

“I know that, and yet I’m not seeing I have much of a choice. How’s Lewis?”

He didn’t want to tell me, but I think he knew I wasn’t about to let him slip away without an explanation.“Fighting his guilt,” David finally said. “He blames himself for the deaths. He feels he made a tactical error.”

That wasn’t unexpected. “He made the right choices at the time. We had to give it a try.”

“I know. He’s afraid that he rushed into it. He’s afraid that he allowed personal issues to color the decision.”

“That’ll be the day,” I said, and then wondered what that meant. “Personal, how?” Please, let it not be about me.

“Rahel,” David said softly. “He can feel her suffering, just as I can. Bad Bob is making sure we can feel it.”

Bad Bob had a Djinn named Rahel in his clutches—one of David’s New Djinn, and someone I could almost call a friend. He could do whatever he wanted to her—the curse of a Djinn being bound to a bottle, of having her will taken away. And she couldn’t fight back. The nightmare dimensions of that stretched on and on into the darkness, because I knew how sick Bad Bob’s imagination had been even years back. God only knew how much worse he was these days, with so much Demon in his body that I wasn’t even sure the old Bad Bob was still around in any form I would recognize.

Rahel had done me some very kind favors in the past. She was never to be trifled with, or underestimated, but unlike a lot of the Djinn, she did care, however remotely, about the fate of individual humans—and the fate of the human race.

David, as her connection to the power source of Mother Earth, would feel every injury done to her. I wasn’t sure, but I thought that her connection to Lewis was more about personal feelings than old-fashioned lines of fealty. She liked him. He liked her. Maybe it went deeper than that. He’d never felt the need to tell me, and I didn’t ask. I had thought their relationship was more of a hookup than love, but I could have been wrong.

I put my hand on David’s cheek and looked him full in the face for a long, long moment. “How bad is it with her?” I asked him. I didn’t want a kind evasion. I didn’t want anything but the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, and he could sense that from me. “Is he going to destroy her?”

“Eventually,” he said, and gently took my wrist. “There’s nothing more I can do for Rahel just now. She would want me to focus on those I can help.”

“You’ve done all you can for me, too.”

“Yes,” he said, and I could see he hated to admit that. “I’m slowing it down, but that’s all I can do. It’s deep, and it’s still growing. But I intend to keep trying. I’m not giving up, not on either of you.”

He wasn’t saying anything we didn’t both know, but I could hear the frustration in his voice, and the anguish. I slipped my arms around his neck and the two of us cuddled close for a moment. His lips found mine, long and lingering.

“You’re tired,” he murmured. Like the gentleman he was at heart, David slipped the bra back up my arms, turned me around, and fastened it for me. He even buttoned up my camisole. “I want you to rest.”

I was more used to him undressing me. This felt . . . warm. Intimate in a way that seemed more personal than unbridled passion. It was the kind of thing a husband did for a wife—an everyday kind of gentleness.

It made me crave him so badly.

“David?” My voice came out very small. “I can’t sleep. Will you stay with me? Just for now?”

His arms wrapped around me and his head rested on my shoulder. I felt a shudder go through him, some emotion I couldn’t name. When he looked up, the intensity of it was enough to shatter my heart.

“I’ll stay,” he said, and eased me down onto the bed. “I’ll stay as long as you’re awake.”

“Big promises, Mister Big Shot,” I said. “What if a cat gets stuck up a tree in Peoria? I bet you’d go running off to the rescue.”

“You know how seriously I take a vow. Unless I made one to the cat, you’re my priority.” He tapped me gently on the nose, and there was humor in his face now. “Clothes off or on?”

“Oh God, off. Off off off.”

We were naked before our backs hit the mattress, thanks to David’s wondrous Djinn fabric-vanishing powers. The duvet settled over us like snowfall, but it was warm beneath it, so warm, and when his lips touched mine it was a dreamlike kiss, damp and gentle and sweet. I rested my head on the pillow of his arm and moved in closer, drawn without a word being spoken. His fingers brushed hair from my face and feathered it back, then lingered on my cheek, drawing heat down to my chin.

“Please,” I whispered. “Please make all this go away. Just for a while. Can you do that?”

“I’m only a Djinn,” he said. “Not God Himself. But I’ll do what I can.”

His lips brushed their heat down, taking all the time in the world, pausing in unexpected and vulnerable places. The inner aspect of my forearms. My wrists. The delicate skin just beneath my breasts. He began to suck, drawing my blood to the skin with slow deliberation. He left a map of visible kisses down my body, a slow and thorough awakening of my entire body that made me writhe silently, sheets fisted in my hands.

Oh, I forgot. I forgot everything.

Gradually, his mouth became demanding. Challenging. Nips of his teeth, strokes of his tongue. My control slipped, and I made a tortured sound in the back of my throat, rising up to meet him. I didn’t want seduction right now. I wanted to be ravished, and he could feel it echoing out of me like a ringing bell.

I could tell the exact second that his control slipped gears. His body language shifted, tensed, and he raised his head and looked at me. My already quickened pulse jumped, because the look in those Djinn-bronze eyes was feral. Wanting.I sat up and met him halfway through the space and devoured his mouth, hungry and desperate, full of feverish need and frantic energy. It fed back through the link between us, striking like lightning through a grounded circuit, shorting out whatever defenses we’d kept built between us.

When I pulled back, David’s eyes were no longer bronze. They were fire, with pupils of absolute darkness. Mine,I thought incoherently. Mine.I didn’t know if that came from me or from him. It had the force of a Djinn emotion, something vastly more complex than simple human possessiveness.

David growled and put a hand on my chest and pushed me all the way back full length on the bed. He followed, not quite putting his weight on me. Brushes of his hot skin teased and tortured us both. He ran his palm lightly over the rising tilt of my left nipple and flicked his tongue over the right, and the difference in sensations made me gasp. His hand was light, delicate, and burning hot; his mouth was heavy, demanding, and deliciously wet. I bit my lip and felt my whole body shudder in response. I heard an answering sound from David—need, lust, love, wordless reassurance.

We were both on the knife-edge of control. David had never fully let his Djinn instincts out to play before, not like this. I think he’d been too afraid—afraid of hurting me, afraid that I’d be shocked by the depths of his needs and desires.

I knew better. I put my hands around his face and held him still for a moment, staring deep into those inhuman eyes.

And then I nodded. No words, and none necessary.

His skin took on a dusting of gold, and then darker shades, until he seemed more metal than flesh—but it was flesh to the touch, warm and soft and firm. He tasted like exotic spices—cardamom, saffron, wild honey from the rocks. Everything about him was different, and yet everything was exactly the same.

His hand slipped lower down my body, into the slick folds between my thighs. The sensation was overwhelming—burning and cooling at the same time. His thumb pressed and stroked while his long, lovely fingers slipped within. His mouth closed over mine, cinnamon-hot, and I sucked his tongue and tasted fire.

Ecstasy to the power of infinity.

The old, wild magic spiraled up inside of me, exultant, slow pulses that built on each other. Yes, God, yes . . .When I came I did it silently, rigidly, holding the awesome force of it inside and giving it to David through the link between us.

It drove him beyond human disguises, and light exploded in the room. I heard him gasping, struggling to stay with me in flesh, because flesh was what we both needed just now.

He solidified again into skin, hot and firm against me. I rolled over and up to my hands and knees, and felt the fiery stroke of his hands over my back, down my hips, between my thighs . . .

I gasped and dropped my head to the pillow as the relentless pleasure of him filled me. Nothing mattered in that moment—only the need, the all-encompassing need to feel.Every thrust traveled through my body in shattering waves, as intense as any sensation I’d ever known. I heard David whispering in that liquid, sibilant language that I knew must have been his native tongue, the language of fire, of Djinn. I didn’t know the words, but I heard the music—dark, delicious, and utterly abandoned.

He knew just the right spot to hit to shatter me completely. I screamed as another orgasm flooded me like boiling light. It spilled into him, triggering a matching explosion that rocked us both to the core.

The room was full of light.

I caught my breath to hold on to the pure, silvery perfection of that moment, riding the waves, feeling them slowly and gently diminish.

We hadn’t said a word, not in English. David still didn’t. He continued to move inside me—slow, gentle strokes—and kissed the small of my back. It was the gentlest gesture after such an aggressive, passionate coupling, and it promised me, without the luxury of words, that whatever boundaries we found ourselves crossing, he would always lead me back.

David eased down next to me on the bed, flushed and glowing and triumphant. Human, and not.

So much power and control, made vulnerable through me.

I felt a tingle of heat in my back. No. Not now.It faded, more like a warning than an attack.

I curled into David’s body and recovered my breath. Despite everything the past few hours flooded back, bringing guilt and regret. What right do I have to be happy?I had none. Maybe I never would. That wasn’t safe.I couldn’t surrender control like that, not with Bad Bob’s mark on my back. What if he’d taken advantage of that moment to strike? What if he’d taken control?

“Jo.” David’s voice was rough, not quite steady. When I looked up into his eyes, I recognized the expression. “I see I can’t make the world stop for long. And you think too much.”

“I was just thinking what a terrible risk that was,” I said. “Because—”

“Because of the mark.”

I nodded. He lifted himself up on one elbow and looked down at me, golden skin still shimmering in the light, flushed in all the right places.

“I know,” he said, and trailed his fingertips over the line of my collarbone. “But you’re my wife, and no matter what the risks might be, that matters more to me.”

“I love you,” I whispered. “But you need to be careful. Especially with me.”

His smile was warm enough to light every candle in the world. “I was, at first. But I fell in love with you instead. Now there is no safety from you.”

I burrowed close to him, and his arms wrapped around me, and for the moment it was all quiet. All peace.

“For as long as we live,” he said, and kissed the top of my head. “Which means forever, if I have any say in it.”

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 Roadshowstars 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 notknow, 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 couldchange 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 notgo 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.