Free djinn wars 01 - chosen by Christine Pope Page A

longer.
    Just as suddenly, the presence was gone. I held on to the tile of the kitchen counter, feeling the cool surface beneath my fingertips. In that moment, I truly wondered if I’d lost my mind.
    What other explanation could there be?

Chapter Five

    More because I knew I should eat something than because I had any appetite at all, I gathered myself enough to put a few slices of wheat bread in the toaster. Once they were done, I buttered them and set them on a plate, then headed back out to the living room, where Rachmaninoff still played to the empty space. Just as I was setting my plate down on the coffee table, the lights flickered and went out, and the CD slurred to a halt. Silence reigned once more.
    Heart slamming painfully in my chest, I waited a second, then another. Surely this had to be just a glitch. In a second or two, the power would come back on.
    But it didn’t. How could the power plants run, with no one left to manage them?
    The blackness was absolute. From my camping days, I knew how dark, how very dark, our desert skies could be. This seemed worse, though, because this wasn’t the expected dark of a night out under the stars. I was in the heart of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
    Luckily, my mother loved candles, and so there were already a pair of pillars in wrought-iron sconces on the mantel, and another pillar candle sitting on a metal leaf-shaped dish on an end table. She kept a long-handled lighter in one of the coffee table’s drawers, so I reached in and fumbled around for a few seconds before locating it. As soon as I pulled it out of the drawer, I pressed the button to activate the flame. That pushed back on the darkness a little, and it got that much better when I lit the candle on the table next to me. Then I had enough illumination that I could get up and light the candles on the mantel.
    From there I went into the kitchen and found the sugar cookie–scented jar candle sitting on the breakfast bar, and lit that as well. Upstairs — well, I’d worry about that later. At least now I wasn’t blundering around in total darkness…and the candle flames weren’t bright enough that they would be seen through the drapes and blinds, all of which I quickly closed.
    All the same, I knew there was one thing I really needed to do.
    On the ground floor was a study that my parents shared, although in reality it was mostly my mother’s space, housing her desk and computer and several shelves full of books. On the opposite wall, though, was my father’s gun safe.
    I knew the combination. He’d trusted me with that, just as he trusted me to be responsible when we went shooting and to clean the guns I used and follow all the safety rules he’d taught me. I wasn’t sure if Devin had known the combination, although I somehow doubted it; my father hadn’t given me that information until I turned twenty-one. And even though I might be the only person left alive in Albuquerque, no way was I sitting alone in this house without some means to protect myself.
    The lock turned easily, of course. My father took as good care of the safe as he did the guns inside. There were a lot, too — in addition to his service Glock, he owned an AR-15 rifle, two shotguns, a small .22-caliber hunting rifle, a Ruger, a Beretta, and my favorite, the Smith & Wesson .357. Sort of an old-fashioned gun, but my accuracy had always been good with it. Besides, with a revolver, you didn’t have to worry about the gun jamming.
    I set the candle I’d brought with me down on my mother’s desk, then opened the safe. Hanging from one of the sleeves on the door was the .357, and on the shelf directly opposite the gun, boxes of spare ammo. My father wasn’t exactly what you’d call a survivalist type, but he did believe in maintaining his supplies. If necessary, I could waste a lot of bad guys before I ran out. Not that there were probably any bad guys left. This was more for my own peace of mind than