Unknown

Chapter 1

SO MANY MISSING CHILDREN.

Their faces looked at me from the flat surfaces of posters and flyers, tacked to a long board opposite the row of chairs—a sad parade of even sadder stories.

Although several young girls with brown hair and vulnerable smiles looked back at me, Isabel Rocha’s picture was not on the wall. I found some comfort in that. I will find you, I promised her, as I did each day. On your mother and father’s souls, I will find you.

I had allowed her mother and father to be murdered. I would not allow Isabel to share the same fate.

I sat with Luis Rocha in the hallway outside of the offices of the FBI, which he had carefully explained was a place where I could not, for any reason, cause trouble. I failed to understand why this hallway should be different from any other in the city of Albuquerque, but I had agreed, with a good bit of annoyance.

Luis was in no mood to debate with me. “Just do it,” he snapped, and then fell into a dark, restless silence.

I watched him pace in front of me as his dark gaze took in the wall of photos, a tense, revolted expression on his face. He stopped, and the expression altered into a frown. He pointed one flyer out to me. “That’s Ben Hession’s kid. Ben’s a Fire Warden.”

I nodded, but I doubt he noticed. He lowered his finger, but his hands formed into fists at his sides, emphasizing the sinuous flame tattoos licking up and down his arms. Once again, I wondered at the choice; Luis Rocha controlled Earth, not Fire. In that, he and his brother Manny had been alike, though Luis’s power outstripped Manny’s by leagues.

Manny had been my Warden partner, assigned to me by the highest levels of his organization to teach me to live as a human and use my powers—for I still had some, although nowhere near as many as I had as a Djinn—usefully. How to become a Warden in my own right. Manny had been a sweet, patient soul who had given of himself to sustain me in this new life.

And I had let him die. Now it was Luis’s responsibility to look after me, and mine to never allow such a thing to happen again.

A tired-looking man in a rumpled suit stepped outside of his office and gestured to us. As he did, his coat swung open to reveal the holstered butt of a gun attached to his belt. For an ice-cold instant I had an unguarded memory, a sense-memory of the shock and rage washing over me as I watched the bullets strike Manny, strike Angela . . .

It’s a memory I don’t care to relive.

Something must have changed in my face or my manner, because his altered in response. His eyes sharpened their focus, narrowing on me, and his hand moved closer to his body. Closer to the weapon.

I looked away, at Luis. “He has a gun,” I said.

“He’s FBI,” Luis told me, and folded his arms across his chest. “He has to carry one. It’s a tool for him.”

“I don’t like it,” I said. He shrugged.

“Deal.”

The FBI man stared at me as if I had said or done something that alarmed him, then transferred his attention back to Luis. “Luis Rocha?”

Luis nodded and walked toward him. I rose to follow. “That’s Cassiel,” he said. “You might have heard.”

“I heard,” the FBI man said. “I just didn’t believe it. Guess they weren’t kidding.” He offered me a half- nod—not a welcome, just an acknowledgment. I returned it exactly. “Inside. I don’t want to talk in the hall.” He looked right and left, as if someone might be listening although no one was in view except the silent, sad wall of photographs. Luis moved ahead of him into the office.

I stopped for a moment to lock gazes with the man again. He was tall, though only an inch or so taller than I, and whipcord thin. He had a bland, quiet face and dark, oddly empty eyes, as if he hid everything except what he wished me to see. His clothing was just as bland—a plain shirt beneath a plain dark suit and tie.

“Inside,” he repeated. “Please.”

There was something about him I could not explain, something beneath the surface. It occurred to me, finally, as he swung the door shut behind me, closing the three of us within a plain box of a room with tinted windows along one wall. I turned and said, “You’re a Warden.”

“Undercover,” he said. “It pays to have a few of us seeded inside the various intelligence-gathering agencies, so we can keep on top of things. First time I’ve been contacted directly, though.” His gaze found me again, very briefly. “Also the first time I’ve met a Djinn face-to-face.”

“You still haven’t,” I said. “I am no longer a Djinn.” It still hurt to say it.

“You’re not exactly human either, the way I understand it. Close enough for government work,” he said, and indicated the chairs on our side of the plain, institutional desk as he took the battered one behind it. “So, why come to me?”

“Because the FBI investigates cases of missing children,” I said. “And we have a missing child.”

“We,” he repeated a little slowly. “The two of you.”

Luis cleared his throat and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Yeah, well, the missing girl is my niece,” he said. “Cassiel’s an interested party. And my partner.” He let two seconds go by, then added, “Not that way, okay?”

“Okay,” the FBI man said, without a flicker of expression. The nameplate on his desk read SA BEN TURNER. “So tell me what you’ve got.”

I let Luis tell it, in his own way—the abduction of his recently orphaned niece, our pursuit, our discovery that the children of Wardens were being selectively abducted and taken to a hidden location, where they were being trained. Molded.

Turner did not interrupt. Not once. He listened almost without blinking, and when Luis finally paused, he said, “So who is this you’re talking about? What’s their goal?”

Luis looked at me.

“The one who leads them was once a Djinn,” I said. “You would call her Pearl. She . . . is extraordinarily dangerous, and she is insane. As to goals, I think the children—and all humanity—are insignificant to her. Her goal is much larger.”

“Larger,” Turner repeated, and shook his head. “And that’s officially out of my depth. So let the Djinn stop her.”

“They can’t,” I said. “Or won’t. She’s already gained enough of a foothold in this world that she can destroy any Djinn who approaches too closely. I believe that is her goal, to destroy the Djinn and replace them in the Mother’s affections. She would welcome an open war, which is why Ashan ordered me to destroy her power source.”

Turner’s eyebrows rose. “Sounds like a plan. What’s her power source?”

“You,” I said. “Humanity. How do you feel about the plan now?” I let that sit in silence for a moment, then said, “I declined.”

Turner sat slowly back in his chair, staring at me, and then looked over at Luis again. “She’s serious?”

“As fucking cancer,” Luis said. “It’s still her nuclear option, if we can’t get this under control and find a way to stop Pearl.”

“So out of my depth,” Turner muttered, and shook his head. “And you’ve been in touch with Headquarters? Lewis?”

Everybody knew Lewis Orwell, the head of the Wardens organization. Everyone also assumed that Lewis was a sort of magic button to press whenever one wanted a particular outcome. Nonsense. Lewis might be a supremely powerful man, but he was only a man. This was far beyond him, and the Wardens as a whole. They were being used, yes, but Pearl was not interested in them, except as levers to move the world in her direction.

“Most of the high-level Wardens are out of contact, including Orwell,” Luis said. “We’re not going to find the answers there. We’re on our own to deal with this, and that means we have to get creative. That’s why I’m here.”

Turner was looking steadily less comfortable with the turns the conversation was taking. “If your niece is in the system as a missing or abducted child, she’s already getting the full-court press from the FBI as well as local law enforcement,” he said. “What else do you want me to do?”

“Make it your case,” Luis said. “You’re a Warden. These are Warden children. I’ll give you a list of those we’ve identified so far as missing, but there may be more. Maybe a lot more, if some of them were foster children, orphans, nobody to miss them. Here’s the catch: In at least one case we know of, one of the parents was complicit in the kidnapping. They’re recruiting fanatics, and they’ve been successful. Think terrorists, only with potential Warden powers.”

“Christ,” Turner whispered, and briefly shut his eyes. “You’ve got no idea what kind of night sweats I’ve had thinking about that for the last ten years, anyway. We’ve got some contingency plans, but I still don’t think they’re up to the job, not for a serious threat.” He focused attention back on me, speaking directly. “What can you tell me about their organization?”

“Well armed,” I said. “Paramilitary, at the very least. And they’ve recruited some disaffected former Wardens, or possibly artificially enhanced the powers of some who were not gifted enough to be recruited as Wardens in the beginning.”

“Like the Ma’at.”

I nodded. The Ma’at were a separate organization, a kind of shadow of the Wardens, built out of those with some hints of latent power who were not deemed to be either strong enough to train as Wardens, nor dangerous enough to receive the Wardens’ typical treatment for those they rejected—a kind of psychic surgery to rip away their powers. The Ma’at had discovered it was possible to combine powers in groups, especially with the voluntary assistance of Djinn, to right the balance of the forces of the Earth—forces the Wardens seemed often to neglect to keep in the proper proportions.

In a certain way, the Ma’at were the maintenance workers of the supernatural world around us. I had always had a small amount of respect for their efforts—as much as I had ever harbored for any human endeavor, in any case.

“They’re our next stop,” Luis said. “We’re paying a visit to their top guys, seeing if we can get an organized effort around this thing.”

Turner shrugged. “Good luck with that. Okay, here’s what I’ll do: I’ll take your list, start digging, and see if I can make any more connections with missing kids. If you’re right, though, there may be a whole lot of this that’s off the FBI radar right now. How much do you want me to wave the flag?”

“Hard and fast,” Luis said, and stood up to offer his hand for a farewell shake. “We’re going to need every damn advantage we can get if we’re going to make this end well.”

Turner’s eyes flicked to me again, and I knew what he was thinking—not because I could read his thoughts, but because I understood his fears. “No,” I said, in answer to his unvoiced question. “Luis cannot stop me, if I choose to accept Ashan’s assignment and destroy your people. No one can stop me. Agreement is all I need to regain my powers as a Djinn.”

No one could stop me except, possibly, the enemy we all feared.

Pearl.

Turner didn’t offer any kind of commentary about that. He just said, “I’ll make your niece my top priority,” and ushered us out of his office. I followed Luis down the hallway, past all those silent, haunting pictures, to the elevators. He pushed the button, but I kept going, to the sign that marked access to stairs. With a sigh, he fell in behind me.

“You know, we need to talk about your claustrophobia,” he said.

“I am not claustrophobic,” I said. “I do not care for small spaces that operate at the mercy of thin cables and human engineering, and are easily manipulated by my enemies.” The door slammed and locked behind him, sealing us in the silent cool stairwell, and I turned to him on the broad concrete landing.

He looked little different than he had the first moment I had met him—strong and lean, with skin the color of caramel and dark, secretive eyes. Hair worn a bit long around his sharply angled face. On his muscled arms, the flame tattoos caught the light in shadowy flickers.

“You think he’ll help?” I asked. Luis shrugged.

“No idea. But we’ve got to pull every string we can reach.”

“And if he is working for Pearl and her people?”

“Then they know we’re serious. Can’t think that’s a bad thing. They already know we’re not going to quit. I want her to know we’re prepared to take drastic measures if we have to, to stop her.”

Except Luis didn’t believe it. He still, deep down, did not believe that I would shed my human form, rise up as a Djinn, and destroy humanity.

Luis did not know me at all.

“So we go to the Ma’at,” I said, and took the first flight of steps, heading down six floors. “By plane, yes?”

“It’s faster,” he said. “Hopefully, nobody will try to kill us today.”

“That would be a different kind of day.”

In fact, I suspected that someone would try to kill us, possibly even in the narrow confines of the concrete and metal stairs, but we reached the bottom- floor exit without incident, and walked out into the open lobby. We turned in our visitor badges at the security desk and exited through a heavily armored door, out into the Albuquerque afternoon sun. The dry air held the scent of fragrant mesquite wood burning in fireplaces, the sharp bite of pine, the greasy and ever-present stench of car exhaust. Overhead, a jet painted orange and blue climbed the clear sky and left a contrail behind.

Luis and I walked to the distant parking lot where we had left his large pickup truck—black, with dramatic bursts of colorful flames on both sides. He’d recently had it washed and polished, and it shone like ebony in the sun. I thought longingly of my motorcycle, which I’d reluctantly left behind; I preferred the simplicity and freedom of that transportation, not the enclosed space of the narrow metal box. But the windows did roll down, and although the day had grown cool, it was not yet cold.

It would be soon, though.

Before we reached the car, two people stepped into our path—a tall, wide man and a shorter, darker one. They held out black leather cases with gold-washed badges of identification.

Police.

I glanced at Luis as we both came to a stop, and he knew what I was asking: comply, or fight and run? I was unimpressed by human authority figures, except that I understood they could complicate my ability to operate in the already complex maze of human existence. Prison would be inconvenient.

Luis held out one hand to me, a clear wait gesture. I held myself ready to follow his cues.

“Detectives,” he said, and nodded to the two men.

“How can we help you?”

“You can get your ass up against the truck,” the shorter one said. “Hands on the hood. Feet apart. You two, Pink.”

He was referring, I assumed, to the fading shade of pink that still clung to my pale hair. I had not yet decided whether or not to scrub the last of it away, or renew it into a hot blaze of magenta. The contempt in the way he addressed me made me want to turn his hair into a burning pink bonfire.

Perhaps literally.

I smiled, instead, and as Luis moved to obey the orders, I did as well, placing my hands on the cool, slick finish and spreading my feet to a distance of about a shoulder’s width. When the shorter detective stepped up behind me, I said, very quietly, “I don’t enjoy being touched.”

“She’s not kidding,” Luis said. “You really don’t want to test her on that.”

“Got to pat you down for weapons,” the detective said. “And if you resist, I’ll Taser your fine albino ass and haul you to the county jail. Is that clear?”

“Oh man,” Luis sighed. “Just roll with it, okay?”

I supposed he meant that for me. I wasn’t quite certain what he wanted me to do, but I gathered, from the way he caught and held my eyes, that he wanted me to do nothing.

So, with a great deal of distaste, I allowed the stranger to put his hands on me, moving up my sides, across my back, down my legs and back up between them. Calm, I told myself. Remain calm. That was a great deal harder than I’d expected, but by continuing to stare hard into Luis’s wide, dark eyes, I found a certain measure of balance.

The detective stepped back. “She’s clean. Okay, your turn, Rocha.”

Luis smiled, very much as if he was used to this sort of treatment. “No problem. I know you enjoy this kind of thing.”

That drove whatever good humor there had been in the stranger completely away, and he slammed Luis forward with the bar of his forearm against Luis’s back, crushing him against the hood of the pickup truck.

I leaned back, taking my weight off the balls of my feet, and said, “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Shut up, punk,” the older, broader man said. “Hands on the hood. Hands on the hood!”

“Why?” I didn’t comply. As much as I hated being touched and treated with contempt, my fury was well and truly ignited now not for myself, but for Luis. The shorter man was slapping his hand down Luis’s sides and legs with more violence than he’d shown me. “What have we done?”

“You think I need a reason to roust a Norteño asshole?” he shot back. “Think again.”

“I’m not Norteño,” Luis gritted out, face still smashed against the truck. “Haven’t been for years. Better get a new playbook, detective.”

“If you’re not Norteño, then why did the gang shoot up your brother and sister-in-law? Just for the fun of it?”

“I left. They didn’t like it. I just got back in town. You can check it out.”

The older man nodded to the younger, who let Luis go and stepped back. Luis got himself upright again and stepped back from the truck turning to face the two men. “What’s this about?” he asked.

“You.” The older man pointed at me. “Name.”

“Leslie Raine,” I said. It was as good as any, and I had Warden-produced identification to prove it was mine.

“Where you from?”

“Here.”

“Yeah, you look like a fucking native.” He dismissed me and turned back to Luis. “What are you doing hanging around the Federal Building?”

“I’m not hanging around,” Luis said. “We just came from seeing the FBI. Special Agent Turner. He’ll verify that.”

The two men exchanged a fast, unreadable look. “How’s an asshole like you rate time with a fed?”

“It’s not your business,” I said, with all the cold hauteur an eternity of being immortal had taught me.

That got me a longer appraisal from both men. “So what are you, some kind of a fed? Rocha’s some kind of informant?”

I smiled, slowly. “Do you really want to talk about this here? In the open?”

On the street, people were slowing down in cars to stare at us; in a storefront opposite, someone stood still, taking a photograph with his cell phone. I sent a pulse of power over the distance between us, squeezing metal and glass, and the phone gave a sad little electronic pop and died. The man frowned at his dead device and shook it impotently, as if he could shake life back into it. Then, seeing my expression, he quickly moved on.

I don’t like it when people stare.

Whether the two policemen believed me or not, they opted for caution. The older one nodded, and the younger one walked to an anonymous gray sedan nearby and opened the back door. “Inside,” he said.

“Are we under arrest?”

“Why? You got something we ought to arrest you for?”

I shrugged and got into the car. Luis took the opposite side, and the two doors thumped closed as the policemen moved to the front. Immediately, I began to feel constricted. This car was not as fragrant as most, but it was still deeply unpleasant, redolent of plastic, hot metal, unwashed flesh, and old food. I studied the interior door. There were no release handles; however, I comforted myself that this would hardly slow either of us down, should we choose to leave. Earth Wardens are not easily caged; Djinn, no matter how humiliated and cast out, even less so. But there are disadvantages to having such powers; for one thing, one cannot always find a useful way to apply them.

As now.

The policemen entered the car. It was warm inside, though not oppressively so; still, I felt stifled, and panic rose inside me. I closed my eyes tightly and concentrated on breathing, pushing air in and out of my fragile lungs, trying not to imagine what it might be like to be robbed of air, of breath.

“Hey, what’s wrong with your friend?” the smaller detective asked. I didn’t open my eyes. “You ain’t gonna puke, are you? If you do, you’re cleaning it up.”

“She doesn’t like cars,” Luis said. “Especially ones that stink like last night’s drunk tank. Now that we’re away from prying ears, what the hell do you want?”

The larger detective turned around, arm over the back of the seat, and said, “You’re an Earth Warden, right?”

I opened my eyes for that. Luis didn’t react in the slightest, not even by a change in his heart rate or respiration. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“I do environmental work. Big business these days, you know? Thinking green and all that.”

“Don’t bullshit me. You’re a Warden.”

Luis didn’t say anything, just watched him. The big man finally sighed and ran a square hand over his face.

“I know all about it,” he said. “Shit, you people made a big freaking splash all over the television, remember? Besides, my sister-in-law’s one of them Weather Wardens. Beatrice Halley. Works out of Chicago, does stuff with the lakes up there.”

Luis sat back a little. “I know Bea Halley,” he said.

“You must be Frank Halley. She said her brother- in-law was a cop.”

“Yeah, well, she don’t like me much, and the feeling’s mutual, but whatever. This ain’t about that.”

“So what is it about?”

“I got a job for you,” Halley said. “Sick kid.”

A shadow passed over Luis’s face. I knew he hated saying no to people, but at the same time, Earth Wardens didn’t normally agree to healing for the general public. It was harsh, but necessary; if word got out about what they could do, it would bring an endless stream of sufferers to their doorsteps, and it would prevent them from carrying out their larger duties.

“I know it’s not normal,” Halley said, “but this kid’s kind of special. She showed up half starved, dehydrated, with a nasty case of infection; no family, no missing kid bulletin out on her. She’s about five years old.”

Hope flared hot in Luis’s eyes, and I know it must have registered in my expression as well. “No name?”

“She’s too sick to talk.”

Halley was, I believed, deliberately vague as to details. He was allowing Luis’s desperation to fill in information.

I thought I understood why. “This girl,” I said. “She is not Isabel Rocha. You wish us to think she could be, to bring Luis face-to-face with her. You believe he could not refuse once he saw her, even if she isn’t his niece.”

Halley and his partner stared at me. I didn’t blink.

“Yeah,” Halley finally said. “That’s true. Look, the kid’s in bad shape. They’ve tried all the treatments, even the IV antibiotics. She’s dying. I figure you’re about the only shot she’s got left, unless Saint Joseph works a miracle.” He paused, studying Luis. “You a religious man?”

“I been to mass a time or two.” He was, in fact, much more religious than that; I’d heard him praying, from time to time, that we would find Isabel. Or avenge her. “Why?”

Halley shrugged. “Always wondered is all. You Wardens, you’re practically gods, what with all the slinging lightning bolts and healing the sick. Bea ain’t religious. So I just wondered.”

“We’re not any kind of gods, big G or small,” Luis said. “Ain’t even angels, man. We’re just people. Smart Wardens know that better than anybody. You play God, people die.”

Halley looked like he wanted to keep on talking, but I broke in to say, “If the girl is as sick as you say, we shouldn’t waste time.”

Both policemen looked startled, although they covered it quickly. “So you’ll go?” Halley asked, and started the car’s engine.

“Of course he’ll go,” I said, without so much as a glance at Luis. The bond between us was strong enough that I had no doubts of it; I wouldn’t have doubted it in any case, because it was exactly the sort of thing Luis would do, whether or not it was wise. “You should have just asked.”

Halley rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Shoulda thought of that.”

The girl was in the hospital. I had never visited one before, although of course I knew the theory; there had been no need, when Manny and Angela were shot, because their wounds had been immediately fatal. If they had been taken to the hospital—and I supposed that they might have been—they would not have been placed in one of these complicated beds, hooked to machines, reduced to a limp, suffering sack of dying meat.

I did not like the hospital.

The child was so small. Smaller than Isabel, and nothing at all like her in coloring: blond, rosy pink skin, a delicate rosebud mouth. I could not see the color of her eyes; she was deeply unconscious.

Parts of her body were deeply discolored and bruised. The infection Detective Halley had mentioned, but not a violent attack. This child was thin, ill-looked-after, but her fight was against a much more ruthless enemy.

The room stank of death. I paused at the door, swallowing convulsively, and Halley came to a stop with me.

“Sad,” he said. “Right?”

I didn’t answer. I watched Luis. He entered the sterile room in slow, deliberate steps, as if he was afraid he might frighten the child, who surely could not have known he was there. He was, by contrast to her tiny body, a large man, well muscled, heavily tattooed, and it struck me as I watched that a human chancing on this scene would have assumed Luis to be a criminal, intent on harming the child.

Until they saw his face, his eyes, the heartbreakingly gentle way he laid the back of his hand on the girl’s forehead and settled his weight on the bed beside her. He had large hands, but his fingers stroked gently through her hair, as if she might feel the comfort he offered.

“Cass,” he said. “I need you.”

He looked up into my eyes, and I felt it like a physical shock—a demand, but a kind one, with good intention behind it.

And more. More than that. A complicated mixture of need and desire, dread and worry. For a disorienting moment, I saw myself through his eyes: tall, pale, expressionless, and apparently free of all connection to the human world.

Apparently.

I was abruptly conscious of my body, all the complex and fascinating parts of it; I felt the chilled air of the room moving over my skin, and felt gooseflesh gather. My heart pounded harder, altering its rhythm. My mouth felt dry, and without conscious decision, I stepped forward, first one foot, then another, until I was standing across the child’s bed from Luis Rocha.

He held out his right hand, keeping his left in gentle contact with the girl’s forehead. My fingers closed over his, and the raw tactile pleasure of it took my breath away. I felt a tingle of power pulse through the link between us, and then through him. I touched the wellspring of power hidden deep in the Earth herself—slow, silent, strong power. The feel of it coursing through my nerves, through Luis’s, was enough to send my memories sparking to other times, other places, other lives. I had never been human, but I had been Djinn a very, very long time, and this, this feeling of touching the eternal . . .

I let out a shaky sigh, almost a moan, and began to refine the power, shape it, form it into a golden flood that Luis used his human expertise to direct into the child’s fragile body. This was a thing some Djinn could do, and others could not; I had never been very interested in healing, but I found myself fascinated with the gentle precision with which he worked. It was all out of proportion to his physical appearance, his intimidating aspect.

I found that pleasing.

Luis worked with great concentration, and it took a very long time—hours, in fact. The policemen left, returned, and left again. Doctors and nurses came and went, but no one bothered us; I wondered why, until I realized that there must have been some common consent that this last effort would be tolerated. There was no harm in it.

The mottled stains beneath her skin gradually began to fade. Luis stopped for a few moments then, gasping for breath, and I poured him a glass of water from the carafe standing next to the bed. He drank it in two convulsive gulps, and I realized that his shirt was dark with sweat, and his hair was dripping with it. His muscles trembled with the strain.

I put a pale, dry hand on his moist arm, over the flame-shaped tattoo, and said, “It’s enough.”

“No,” Luis said, and held out his glass for another pour from the carafe. “It’s still in her blood. Tough little buggers, but I’m getting them. I’ve got her major organs cleaned, but if I don’t kill it in her bloodstream, she’ll re-infect.” He paused to drink again—three gulps, this time. “You got enough to keep going?”

Did I? The question surprised me, and I quickly turned my appraisal back on myself. I was unused, still, to human limits, but he was right; my body was trembling, robbed of energy, and I was burningly thirsty.

I took the glass from him, refilled it, and downed it in two convulsive swallows. “I’m fine,” I said.

He took the carafe, shook it, and then shrugged and upended it to drink the last few mouthfuls, depositing it back on the table, empty. “Then let’s do it.”

I held on to his arm. “Luis.” I didn’t need to say more, and he didn’t need to do more than shake his head to reject my concern. “Very well,” I said.

My fingers felt burned when they left his skin; he was warm, so warm it felt wrong to me. Effort and power, consuming him from within.

He would not stop. I understood that very well.

It took the rest of the afternoon, and the sun was slipping below the horizon when Luis finally sighed, removed his hand from the girl’s forehead, and tried to get up. Tried, and failed. I grabbed his arm as he began to slide off the bed; I couldn’t hold him, but I broke his momentum from a fall to a controlled slide to a sitting position on the floor. Someone had refilled the water pitcher, and I grabbed it and moved around the bed toward him. My legs trembled violently, and I had to stop and brace myself against the wall for a moment as dark spots swam and drifted in my eyes. I then summoned up all the energy left in me to drop down next to Luis’s side.

I didn’t spill the water.

“You okay?” he asked me in a faint, rough voice. I handed him the carafe, and he guzzled down more than half its contents without a pause. “We need food. Protein and carbs, the more the better.”

I took the water from him and finished it before asking, in a voice I hardly recognized as my own, “The girl?”

Luis gave me a slow, exhausted smile. “She’ll be okay,” he said. The smile, warm and sweet, faded too quickly. “Physically, anyway. No idea what happened to bring her to this. Could be too bad to get over it as easily as this.”

If this had been easy, I could not imagine hard. I started to get up, but my legs wouldn’t respond. Luis took my hand.

I tried to pull away, but even in his weakened state, Luis was a strong man. “No,” I said. “You’ve spent too much power already.”

“You need it more than I do right now.” His last reserves of power cascaded into me, flooding warm through my nerves, sparking waves of pleasure as it passed. An echo only—he had little to give me, but it was enough to sustain me for another day, perhaps two, until he recovered.

If I didn’t use my power recklessly.

I didn’t mean to do it, but my hand seemed to move of its own volition, breaking away from his grip and moving up to touch his face.

Luis’s eyes widened, and for an instant we were staring at each other with all the doors open, all the walls thrown down.

Then I dropped my hand, dragged myself to my feet, and walked off in search of the proteins and carbohydrates his body so desperately needed to replace. I met Detective Halley in the hall heading toward the room, laden with a tray full of food. Hamburgers, hot dogs, some sort of stew in a bowl.

“She going to make it?” Halley asked, holding on to the tray.

“Are you withholding food from us if she doesn’t?”

He blinked, shook his head, and handed the food to me. “You tried. Can’t ask more than that, I guess.”

“Then I am pleased to tell you that Luis believes she will recover.” I started to take the food into the room, then turned back to him and asked, “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That we would need this.”

He shrugged. “I asked my sister- in-law. She said if you made it through, you’d be hungry as a cloud of locusts.”

Halley, I decided, would be allowed to live after all.

The girl woke up after a deep, but natural, sleep. That was not significant.

What was significant was how she woke up . . . crying, screaming, panicked, and desperate.

Her distress set the room on fire.

It happened very quickly—one moment the child was shrieking in terror, and the next, the bedding around her burst into hot orange flames. So did the cushions on the chairs nearby, and the cheerful yellow curtains draping the windows. Colorful characters charred on the walls.

This was the worst thing that could happen. Luis’s powers were focused around Earth; a Weather Warden could have found ways to shut down this sort of event, but for an Earth Warden it was much more difficult.

My powers were limited by Luis’s, though I could wield them more creatively; I quickly altered the composition of our skin and lungs to make us fire- resistant, though making us fireproof was beyond my capabilities. It was good that I did this, because Luis plunged into the flames, grabbed the child, and pulled her off the bed and into his arms. If he’d been a normal human, he would have sustained terrible burns.

The moment the girl was in Luis’s arms, the flames began to die away, hissing and sputtering into nothing an instant before the overhead fire-suppression system began raining and sounding its alarm. I cut the flow of power, and Luis’s body and mine reverted to their normal states.

“What the hell . . . ?” A crowd of people had formed in the doorway to the room, but two broke away from the pack to rush inside, looking very much in command. One, dressed in a white coat, I assumed was a doctor; the other was, of course, Detective Halley. It was Halley who’d spoken. “What happened in here?”

The doctor ignored such concerns and moved to take the girl from Luis’s arms. “No,” Luis said. “Not a good idea.”

“I need to examine her for burns!”

“She’s not hurt. She’s just scared.”

“And dangerous,” I said. “And wrong.”

Luis’s gaze brushed mine. He knew what was wrong with her her, just as I did; the child’s powers should have been dormant until her body had time to grow the channels through which they would run. She was too young—far too young—to bear this kind of burden. It would be difficult enough at adolescence, with the sort of raw ability she had just demonstrated.

“How did this happen?” I asked him quietly. Luis cradled the child in his arms, and she clung to him with her small arms around his neck, blue eyes wide and terrified. I retrieved a thick, nubby blanket from the closet, which was the only place in the room that had been protected from both the flames and water dousing, and took it to Luis. He wrapped it tight around the girl.

“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered, very seriously. “I really didn’t.”

“I know, mija,” he said. “Don’t you worry, nobody blames you. I’m Luis. What’s your name?”

She considered the question very seriously before answering, “Pammy.”

“Pammy, what’s your last name?”

“What’s yours?” she asked. Luis smiled.

“Rocha.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“Maybe so. It’s Spanish. Is yours funny?”

“Gegenwaller,” she said, very proudly. “It’s German.”

Luis shot a glance toward Detective Halley, who nodded and pushed his way out of the crowd in the doorway. He had the information he needed, and he would begin his search. “Pammy Gegenwaller,” he said, “where are your parents?”

Her face just shut down, becoming a still, empty mask far too old and experienced for her few years. “They’re not important,” she said. “The lady said so.”

“The lady,” I said. “Who is the lady?”

Pammy turned her face away, pressing it against Lu-is’s neck.

“Hey,” he said, and jiggled her gently in his arms.

“That’s Cassiel. She’s nice. She won’t hurt you.”

“She will,” Pammy said. “Just like the lady.”

Some of the paralysis among the medical staff finally broke, and as if by common consent, a swarm of them broke the invisible barrier at the threshold and surged around us. A nurse plucked Pammy from Luis’s arms, and as she yelled in protest I saw a flash of pain and fear go across his face. “Wait!” he snapped. The nurse paused, frowning, struggling to hold the flailing child. Luis put a hand on Pammy’s forehead and murmured, “Sleep now, sweetheart. You’re safe. You have to trust these people, they want to make you better. Okay?”

He was using his powers in a strong but subtle way, a kind of sedation that swept over the girl and relaxed her body. Her eyes drifted closed, and she rested her head on the nurse’s shoulder.

Luis removed his hand. “She should stay asleep for a while,” he said. “Keep someone with her. I left a suggestion with her that she’ll trust you, but if she gets frightened that could change. Keep her calm and you shouldn’t have any trouble. Don’t leave her alone.” He reached in his pocket, took out a small notepad and scribbled down a note, which he handed to the woman. “Call that number. It’s the Warden hotline, they’ll assign someone with the right power profile to come help. If nobody’s available, I’ll come back. My number’s on there too.”

“All right, let’s move her to a fresh room. Somebody get maintenance in here! And call the fire department—they have to sign off on this!” the head doctor bellowed. The nurse took Pammy away, heading from the room. Luis and I followed, but he stopped once we were in the hallway. The air reeked less of smoke and melted plastic, and I took several grateful breaths.

“You understand what she said?” he asked. “What just happened?”

“The child was a latent Warden,” I said. “Someone woke her powers, far too early for safety. Someone female. Someone like me.”

“A Djinn,” Luis agreed. “And I think we both know who that would be.”

Pearl.

Pammy had been at the Ranch, where Pearl trained her captured Warden children—but trained them for what? To do what? “She was rejected,” I said. We had seen other examples of it—children who had been brought to Pearl for evaluation or training, but had failed whatever obscure standard she had applied. Many had been used as perimeter guards for the Ranch, where the group kept a stronghold.

Pammy had either escaped, or been returned because she had become uselessly sick. “Pearl had to change her location,” I said. “Perhaps she’s changed tactics as well.” We had found her stronghold in Colorado, and by the time we had assembled sufficient strength to try to take it, it had been destroyed, only her expendable human allies left behind. She’d taken the children with her.

We had spent weeks trying to find any sign of where she might have gone.

“Maybe,” Luis said, “and maybe this is her goal—maybe Pammy didn’t fail. Maybe she’s exactly what Pearl wants her to be: a child time bomb.”

I considered it, then slowly shook my head. “No. Pearl is not interested in random destruction. She has a purpose, though the purpose is not yet clear. But if she returned this child, Pammy fell short of her expectations.”

That put a bleak light in Luis’s eyes. “Christ,” he said. “The kid could probably blow up the hospital if she got angry enough. That’s not enough power?”

“Not for Pearl,” I said. “Not yet.”

He sighed. “I need three shots of whiskey and about a day and a half of sleep. We can’t keep going like this. Time to stand down for a while.”

I didn’t want to, but I also felt the drag of exhaustion, and the faint, fine trembling in my muscles. My flagging brain interpreted sights and sounds as too slow, too fast, too bright, too loud; I did need rest, and if I needed it, Luis desperately needed it.

“Home?” I asked.

“Home,” he said. “Now.”