Jedda didn’t know Razr.Didn’t trust him.And yet, there wassomething about him that made herwantto trust him.
“Jedda?”he prompted.“You can tell me.”
“No,” she rasped.“I can’t.”All around her, diamond dustpoofedinto the air, turning the kitchen into a pricelesssnow globe.
“Okay then.”With a little cough, Razr released her, keepingthe blood-soaked napkin.As he turned it over, a couple of sapphires pingedonto the tabletop.“I’ll tell you what I think’s going on.You sweat diamonddust and bleed precious gems, and you’re worried I’ll hang youbyyour feet and bleed you out for them.Am I right?”
He’d called it.Son of a bitch.She supposed there was nopoint in lying anymore, so she stared at the sparkling water as itdrip, drip, drippedto the floor.
“My species...we don’t locate priceless gems just to sell.We use them like fuel.They’re what our bodies are made of.Our bones, ourmuscles, our organs.We can sense them.Not to toot my own horn, but that’s whyI’m such a successful gemologist.”
Hecockedan eyebrow.“Do you needdifferent kinds of gems to survive?”
“You mean, could I live off, say, rubies, exclusively?”Athis nod, she shook her head.“Every gem has a different chemical and mineralcomposition, and our bodies need certain types of stones for differentfunctions.I need diamonds to cry and for the protective coating on my skin,for example.”
Reaching out, he trailed a finger along her bicep, leavingbehind a heated tingle.“Protective coating?”
“See how I sparkle in the right light?It’s diamond dust.When I’m in a mine and my body detects deadlygassesor excessive heat, it absorbs the worst of it and lets me go deeper and staylonger than humans.Topaz gives me night vision.Stuff like that.”She gesturedto the large gemstones she kept all around the flat, many displayed as works ofart, some just filling glass bowls, and others lying around waiting to bedusted.“They all give off their own unique, life-giving vibrations.We don’tabsorb them all—we surround ourselves with them too.Their energy is our fuel.”
Sitting back in his chair, he appeared to contemplate whatshe’d told him.“Is their energy infinite?Or do you have to replace the gemswhen their energy is depleted?”
She reached out and spun the table’s centerpiece, a crystaldish containing a mix of uncut gemstones, and watched the colors swirl in amulticolored blur.
“Stones we keep around us provide infinite, but mild energy.For more intense energy and special abilities, wehave toabsorb the gems.The small ones are drained within a few months, and even thelarger and most powerful ones can be depleted if we don’t return to our realmevery decade or so to recharge them.We can also hit capacity.”
“Capacity?”
She nodded.“I’m so full of hematite that I can’t absorbanother one unless I break a bone and need more to heal.”
“Are there ever any that you can’t be around?”
“Oh, yes.Some are so powerful that they can have acorrupting effect on us, like a drug that never wears off.”She’d seen thatmore times than she wanted to admit.“Of course, part of what makes us what weare is that we can’t resist gemstones like that.We want them, even though weknow we shouldn’tactually usethem.Those go intostorage.At least, those of us who aren’t crazy put them into storage.”
There was a long pause as he stared at her with suchintensity that she started to squirm.“Do you have any like that?”
“Several.”She pushed a piece of carrot around on her plate,her appetite ruined by the topic.“Most of them are there because they’reinfused with evil, and I don’t want them getting out into the world.I mean,can you imagine what would happen if someone like Shrike got hold of a lapislazuli that could turn water into arsenic on a large scale?”She shuddered.
“You have a lapis lazuli that can do that?”Razr stood andheaded into the kitchen.
“I have a lot of gems that are even worse,” she sighed.
No way was she letting any of them go, and she’d paid thedhampiresenough to keep the things stored for eternity.She especially didn’t want them to fall into the hands of evil gem elves.Members of her species were just too self-destructive when they went evil, asJedda knew all too well.Never again would she allow an evil gem to leave herpossession.
Razr fetched the garbage and started to clean up the brokenglass, refusing when she offered to help.“Okay, so you have this incredibleaffinity for gemstones.What makes you think you can’t find the Gems of Enoch?Sounds like if anyone can, it’s you.”
“I can’t just wish a gem into my possession,” she said,because that was the truth.“In order to find an enchanted stone at a distance,ithas tobe in use.That’s the only way it’ll sendout a strong enough signal.But even then, Ihave tobe somewhere close.”
He wiped up the last of the broken glass with a paper towel.“How close?”
She shrugged.“Once, aSvetnaludemon princess in northern Vietnam was using runes made from a lava beast, andI felt it from Malaysia.But that’s rare.Really rare.”
She and her sisters had felt the Gems of Enoch in use fromtwice as far away, but there was no way she was going to share that preciousnugget of information.
“Soyou’re saying you have no ideawhere any Enoch gems are, and you don’t know how to find them.”
She took intense, sudden interest in her plate so shewouldn’t have to look at him while she lied.“That’s what I’m saying,” shemumbled.
There was a long silence, and she sensed disappointmentrolling off him in a wave sostrongthat she swore sheexperienced it as well.Did sheactually feelbad thatshe couldn’t give him the gems?
