Driving is therapy for me. Interesting thing to discover about yourself...There was something hypnotic about the road, the freedom, the feeling of being in control and having a direction. I drove fast, but not recklessly, and if Venna had anything to say, she said it to herself.
I had a lot of time to think. After a couple of hours of that, I said, "Venna. Why haven't you given me your memories?"
She raised her eyebrows. Pint-sized haughtiness. She was still wearing the blue jeans and pink shirt; I was getting used to the less formal look, but I didn't let it fool me. There was nothing informal about Venna.
"You couldn't handle it," she said. "Djinn memory isn't the same as human. We see things differently. We see time differently. It wouldn't make sense to you, the way human memories do."
"But...you can become human, right?"
"We can take human form. That doesn't mean we become human. Not really."
So even though David had fathered a child with me, he hadn't been...human. Not inside. Comforting thought.
I edged a bit more speed out of the accelerator. "You said David would be on her side, not mine. Are you guessing, or do you know that?"
She didn't answer me.
In a way, I supposed, that was answer enough.
The countryside began feeling weirdly familiar. If I'd put together the pieces properly, Sedona had been the last place I'd been seen before my absence from the world, followed by my appearance, naked and memory-free, in the forest. I felt like I ought to remember it.
I was, quite simply, too tired. Sedona had motels, and I had cash, and although Venna was contemptuous of the whole idea, I checked myself in for the day, took a long, hot bath, and crawled into a clean bed for eight blissful hours. When I got up, the sun had already set.
Venna was watching a game show, something loud that seemed to involve people shouting at briefcases. She was cross-legged on the end of the bed, her chin resting on her fists, and she was absolutely enraptured.
"Well," I said as I zipped up my black jeans, "I guess now I know who the target audience is for reality TV."
If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought she was embarrassed. She slid off the bed, and the TV flicked off without her hand coming anywhere near a remote control. She folded her arms. "Are you done sleeping?" she asked.
"Obviously, yes."
"Good. It's such a waste of good time." She moved the curtain aside and looked out. "We should go."
We pulled out of the parking lot and cruised slowly through town. Venna navigated, my very own supernatural GPS, pointing me through the streets until I was thoroughly lost. Sedona looked pretty much like any other town-maybe a little funkier, with more New Age shops and Southwest architecture, but McDonald's looked the same. So did Starbucks.
"Are we close?" I asked. I was still tired, but it was a pleasant kind of tired, and for the first time in a long time I felt like I was going into trouble with a clear mind. The road vibration was almost as good as a massage.
"That way." Venna pointed. I didn't ask questions. We made turns, crawled along a road that led into the hills, and eventually stopped in a parking lot at the foot of a bluff whose definitions were lost in the growing darkness.
The sign said, CHAPEL OF THE HOLY CROSS.
Venna said, very quietly, "We're here."
"Where's Ashan?"
"Safe," she said. "I'll bring him here when we're ready. If he panics, he can be hard to control."
A Djinn-well, former Djinn-who had panic attacks. That was a new one. I parked the Camaro in a convenient spot, killed the engine, and sat listening to the metal tick as it cooled. Outside, there was a living silence that pressed heavily against the car windows.
I didn't like it here.
"This is hard for you," Venna said. "Yes?"
"Yes."
She turned those blue, blue eyes on me and said, "Do you know why?"
I silently shook my head. I didn't think I wanted to know.
We got out of the car and walked to a steep set of concrete stairs leading up into the dark. Motion-sensitive lights bathed the steps dusty white, a startling contrast to the reddish rocks. I put my foot on the first one, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.
Venna took my hand. "I know," she said quietly. "This place remembers. It remembers everything." She put her head down, as if there were things she didn't want to see. I could understand that. I could feel it brushing at the edges of my consciousness, and without meaning to I drifted up into the aetheric...
And I saw chaos.
Raw fury. Horror. Anguish. An abiding, keening grief that had reduced this place, on the aetheric level, to a black hole of emotion.
"My God," I whispered numbly. "What did this?"
Venna glanced up at me, then back down. "You did," she said. "David did. We all did. When she died-"
She shut up, fast, but not before I put the pieces together. "Imara," I said. "Imara died here."
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "We didn't know what to do. She was part human, and that part couldn't be saved. He tried, after you were...after you disappeared."
"David tried to save her."
Venna bit her lip and nodded. She looked genuinely distressed. No wonder there was so much pain here, so much grief. David's agony, staining this place like ink.
Maybe mine, too.
"We'd better go," she said, and took my hand. Hers felt warm, childlike, human. "It'll be better at the top."
It wasn't exactly easy ascending those stairs; I felt as if I were moving through the same quicksand I'd fought through back on the beach. The handrail felt sticky. I looked at my hand, almost sure I'd see bloodstains, but no...nothing. Up above, stars were twinkling in the dark blue sky; there was still a band of pale blue toward the horizon, shot through with threads of red and gold. Beautiful.
There seemed to be a thousand steps, and every one of them a sacrifice.
When we made it to the landing I was gasping for breath and shaking; Venna let go of my hand and moved to the door of the chapel, which was closed and had a sign on the front that gave the hours it was open-which didn't include the hour of now.
That didn't seem to matter to Venna, who simply pulled, and the door opened with a faint snick. The puff of air from the darkened interior smelled of incense and cedar, a timeless scent that carried none of the horror present outside.
Except for the flicker of a couple of red candles here and there, it was quite dark inside; the dim, fading sunset showed a small chamber, inked in shadow at the corners, with a few plain wood pews facing the huge expanse of glass windows. It was breathtaking, and it was, without a doubt, a holy kind of place.