"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?"