Unseen

Chapter 9

CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.

I was no Fire Warden, but I didn’t need to be one to disrupt the bullets in his gun; in the past few moments, I’d chemically changed the powder in all of their bullets into a similar but inert compound that wouldn’t fire, no matter how many times he pulled the trigger.

Rostow’s eyes widened, but he took the shock in stride, and his people were well trained. It was close quarters, and they swarmed me ... or tried to. But it was a metal van, and I was an Earth Warden. Metal flowed up over their feet, trapping them in place, tripping them up and binding them to the floor of the van wherever they hit.

I didn’t kill anyone.

I didn’t have to.

I’d left Rostow unbound, to make the point. His chair rolled a few inches, and stopped as it bumped into the leg of one of his two assistants, who was pinned to the wall of the van with a thick band of metal.

“I didn’t have to be so nice,” I said. “Do we have an understanding now about why you don’t want to make me angry?”

He was beaten, and he knew it. Rostow looked down at the gun in his hand, flicked the safety back on, and holstered it with a quick, fluid motion. “What do you want?” His voice was clipped and businesslike now. He was done trying to persuade or reassure me. “If you’ve hurt any of them ...”

“Bruises,” I said. “And you tried to put three bullets through my skull, Agent Rostow, so I would suggest you have no grounds to expect too much in the way of restraint from me. What I want is for you to tell me how the people in that compound come and go.”

“They don’t,” he snapped.

“They must. They can’t be totally self-sufficient. Not yet.”

He hesitated, then said, “They bring in supplies and new recruits once a month. One of them leaves to pick up the supplies and recruits in a minivan.”

“Where do the recruits come from?”

“The Church has people out there proselytizing. We catch them sometimes, but not often. They’ve formed a kind of underground railroad that ferries converts from one place to another. The rally points change every time; we don’t know where the next one will be.”

“But you do know where they go for supplies?”

“They vary that, too. We haven’t figured out how they place the order; probably through someone on the outside, because we’re monitoring phones, cell frequencies, Internet, et cetera. We follow them when they leave, but we can’t get ahead of them. What bugs we’ve managed to slip in have been intercepted and destroyed before they get inside.”

That was not as much information as I’d hoped, but what had I expected—that Pearl would leave this facility as sloppily run as the one in California? No, she learned from mistakes, most definitely.

“Have you managed to get anyone inside the compound undercover?” I asked.

Without a flicker, he said, “Not yet.” I couldn’t tell whether he was lying; it was entirely possible he meant what he’d said. Still. it never hurts to cultivate a reputation for supernatural keenness, and so I gave him a slow, wicked smile, and said, “Liar. You do have someone inside. Who?”

He frowned, just a slight groove between his eyebrows. “Where are you getting that? I just told you we don’t.”

“I’m an Earth Warden. We know a lie when we hear one. Please, don’t insult me by continuing to bluff.”

For a long moment, I thought that my bluff had been called, but then he shook his head and said, “We did, until two days ago.”

“What happened two days ago?”

“Our agent walked out of the gates, came to find me, and told me that she’d seen the error of her ways and she was quitting the bureau. Then she turned and walked back inside.” He turned to the monitors, looking at each in turn, and then pointed at one of them—the field, and the people out in the sun using the hoes. “There. That’s her.”

“You’re sure she wasn’t just trying to get in deeper with them, or preserve her cover?”

Rostow’s mouth set in a flat, grim line. “I know Stephanie,” he said. “Known her a long time. I can tell you that wasn’t an act, and it damn sure wasn’t Stephanie. What went into that compound was a great agent; what came out to quit was a true believer. She got turned. I know it in here.” He tapped his gut with one hand. I believed him. There was no reason for him to lie about it, and there was real pain in his expression. “I hate losing people, but I’d rather lose them honestly than have them brainwashed into a cult.”

“You realize that she will have already told them everything she could about you, your operation here, and anything else that could be helpful to them.”

His eyes turned blank and hard. “No shit. Surprisingly enough, I did think of it. So what other stunning revelations do you have to share with me, Warden?”

“If you help me get inside, I can get information back to you freely.”

That made him frown. “Freely. As in, anytime you want.”

“Exactly.”

“How?”

I smiled, just a little, and fluttered his eardrum in a whisper. I just can, I said, and he jerked in surprise and clapped a hand over his left ear. “What the hell?”

“Warden abilities,” I said. “You won’t be able to communicate back to me, but I can talk to you across a considerable distance, as long as I can find you on the aetheric.”

“I’m going to pretend that last part made sense,” he said, “because I like the first part a lot. Trouble is, you’re just a tad recognizable—maybe not as a Djinn, but you sure don’t look like a likely recruit, either.”

“I can manage.”

“Do you have any idea of your own arrogance, lady?”

“Yes,” I said. “Do you have any idea of yours?” One of the FBI agents pinned to the van let out a choked sound that was almost a laugh. I didn’t blink. “I will let your people go if you promise good behavior. If not, you may wish to invest in some kind of welding equipment.”

Rostow considered all that, and it was obvious that he really, really wanted to tell me to go to hell, but he finally nodded reluctantly. “All right,” he said. “Last thing I want to do is piss off the Wardens right now. Let them go. I promise we’ll play nice.”

That did not seem to me to be an exact enough definition of cooperation—not for a Djinn—but he seemed sincere enough. I extended my hand, and after a hesitation he accepted the gesture and shook firmly.

As he did so, I released his people from their bonds. Some, overbalanced, sprawled on the van floor; others grabbed for their weapons. “Enough of that!” Rostow snapped, still shaking my hand. “Stand down. Not sure your guns will fire any better than mine, and we don’t need more excitement in close quarters right now.”

The agents quieted down, positioning themselves carefully. I noticed they did so with an eye to firing cleanly at me, should that be necessary. I didn’t mind. I would restore their ability to fire their weapons, but not until I left the van.

“Now,” I said, looking Rostow in the eye, “tell me how you plan to get me into the compound.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. You’ve already selected another agent, and you’re planning to infiltrate within the next few days.”

I had to give him credit—he really didn’t allow me to shock him this time. “I don’t know where you’re getting this stuff, but it isn’t—”

“It must be,” I said, “because otherwise your superiors would be demanding action of some kind, and it’s been quiet and tranquil here in what I can only think is your command center. No demanding phone calls. No tension. So you have a plan, which you are in the process of executing.”

A couple of agents murmured in the background, while Rostow stared bleakly at me without speaking. I waited, then said, “All I ask for is a chance. Put me in the same way you’re introducing your own agent. I can serve as backup, which could be the difference between success and failure, or life and death. I’m offering you help. Take it.”

“Like I said”—he shrugged—“you’re don’t exactly blend in.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated on my physical body. It took a great deal of power—more than I could easily spare—but I slowly, carefully altered the black of my hair to a short, mousy brown, and my skin to something unremarkable for the area. My face I shifted to one I’d glimpsed in Albuquerque months ago—not pretty, not ugly, not memorable at all, except that I’d noted it for future reference. I shortened my stature and shifted the inert textures of my clothes to something bland, blocky, nothing of any identifiable style at all. After a moment’s thought, I roughened the condition, added dirt and spots of grime, and the smells of old food, smoke, and unwashed sweat.

I looked like any of the thousands of struggling, subsistence-level poor to be found in any city.

I opened my eyes, looked directly at Rostow, and said, “Do I blend in now?”

I sensed it wasn’t often that a man like him experienced amazement, but that was as close as he came—widened eyes, slightly open mouth that quickly snapped shut as he realized others were looking on. He needn’t have worried, though. His people all looked far more thoroughly impressed, and unnerved.

“I guess that’d do,” he said. “Can you—ah, do that whenever you want?”

I smiled faintly. He had no real idea of what it had just cost me. I had drained myself dangerously low, but the important thing had been to make a definitive impression. I felt the cost was justified. “No,” I said, and didn’t elaborate. “Will you trust me?”

“No,” Rostow said. “But you’ve got a good point about my agent needing on-site backup. So I may not trust you, but you’d be damn useful right about now.”

“You’ll send me in.”

“I’ll recommend it,” he said. “I’ve got bosses, lady.”

I actually thought he was lying. Not about the bosses, perhaps—I was sure he did, in fact, have those—but about the need to run the question by them for approval. It was much more likely that he just wanted time to think. I could understand that, and respect it, so I nodded my acceptance.

Everyone seemed to relax, including Rostow. “Right,” he said, and pointed to one of his agents. “Langston. Get the lady some coffee or something.”

“Water,” I said. “And a place of privacy, if you have one.”

Water, they could provide me; privacy, it turned out, was a bit more problematic. I finally walked away from the mobile truck, out into the surrounding trees, and sat down with my back to a tall, strong oak with roots that reached deep, both into the ground and into the past. There, I was able to sink into a light, comfortable trance and make connection with Luis through the aetheric.

He was asleep. Dreaming. I could see that in the muted blues and purples of his aetheric colors, and the way his body floated, weightless. The shapes of his dreams were faint whirls of color, slashes of blood red, white, night black. Luis’s dreams were not restful.

Oddly, they were dreams full of fire—almost a physical thing, burning him from the inside out. I could see it in eerie flickers around him. It reminded me of the flickers I’d glimpsed, from time to time, on his tattoos. He was no Fire Warden, and yet there was fire in him all the same.

Ibby had both Fire and Earth powers. I’d always assumed that was a recent addition to the family’s genetic heritage with her, but perhaps, in some small way, Luis had shared it as well.

In the aetheric, I put my hand on him, and breathed peace and light into him through the connection between us. The dreams hung on stubbornly, then subsided into warmer, kinder colors. I opened the connection wider and began to pull power from him.

The dreams darkened, and I felt both his aetheric and his physical body thrashing, trying to resist the draw. I slowed it, frustrated and shaking with need, but he could give only so much without distress, and I didn’t want to cause him pain. He’d once described the sensation of sending power to me as bleeding; it was no wonder that the feeling disconcerted him in his already troubled sleep.

Slowly, his power trickled through the connection, filling my empty reservoirs. I hadn’t realized how weak I had been until some strength returned to me. Dangerous, that—all too easy to overestimate what I could do and then fail at a critical moment. I was alone now, and despite his willingness to help, Luis could not always be counted on to put my mission first, or to be strong when I needed his strength. He needed power to heal and protect the children at the school as much as I needed it to pursue my own agenda.

I took as much as I dared, and then stayed with him, drifting slowly through the aetheric. There was something unguarded about him this way, something pure and poignant. It was hard to turn away, leave him to his dreams and nightmares, but I had nightmares of my own to face.

Alone.

I made my way back to the FBI trailer and found Rostow deep in conversation with a man of average height, with roughly cut sandy hair and thick eyebrows, with skin that had seen too much sun and taken on a leathery, prematurely aged look. He had icy gray eyes, startling in that tanned face, and his hands were rough and scarred. He looked like a laborer, and dressed like one as well, in battered denim and canvas. His shoes had split under hard use and been patched with dull silver tape. There was dirt ingrained under his fingernails, and when he said, “This her?” I noticed that his teeth were uneven and discolored.

Rostow nodded. “Cassiel,” he said. “But we’d better get you a name that isn’t quite so memorable.” He tapped one of his computer operators on the shoulder. “Jen, get her a good set of creds, something with a minor record—theft, vandalism, something like that. Something easy to remember.”

Agent Jen nodded, bent to work at her keyboard, and then left the trailer. She returned a few moments later with an envelope, which came with a receipt I was asked to sign. I did so, and found in the envelope an Arizona identification card and bus pass in the name of Laura Rose Larkin. There was also a detailed sheet giving the past of Laura Larkin—parents’ names, addresses, and dates of birth, schools attended, residence history, close associates, and crimes. It seemed very credible. Rostow nodded toward the paper in my hand and said, “Memorize it. You’ve got the night, but you need to be completely up to speed before we drop you and Merle here tomorrow. Oh, and this is Merle, by the way. You’re in good hands. He’s our best.”

Merle didn’t smile. He didn’t seem to be much prone to it. I couldn’t detect much in the way of emotion from him at all; I supposed that if he was, as he seemed, a professional undercover agent, then he’d long ago learned how damaging emotions could be. “Better know that stuff backward and forward,” he said. “Word is, these guys test pretty thoroughly. You make mistakes, they’ll dump you quick.”

“I won’t make mistakes.”

“Well,” Merle said, looking at Rostow, “she’s confident. Give her that.”

“If she screws up, don’t go down with the ship,” his boss replied. “Cut her loose. You don’t know her; you just wound up standing in the same space. You, same thing. You don’t know him. You’ve got zero history.”

“Then we shouldn’t be building one now,” Merle said, and nodded to me. “See ya.” He left, slamming the door behind him, and I raised my eyebrows at Rostow.

“Learn your stuff,” he said. “Don’t expect Merle to cover your ass. You’re there to back him up, not vice versa. Understood? Good. Now go get some sleep. Jen will show you to the racks. We’ll get you up in a few hours and start moving you around. You’re going to get off a bus in Trenton. We’ll give you directions from there. You won’t see Merle again until you’re both met by the recruiters. Got it?”

There was nothing not to get, but I acknowledged with a slight nod. Agent Jen got up from her computer and walked me from the trailer down a path through the woods, which opened into a clearing where a small camouflage tent was pitched. A latrine tent was situated near the tree line.

“Rules,” she said, as she opened the flap of the main structure. “Don’t talk to anybody. Don’t touch anything that isn’t on your bunk. And if you snore, prepare to be smothered in your sleep. We don’t get much downtime. What we get, we value.”

I liked Agent Jen. She was forthright. She handed me a plate of fruit and sliced meats and bread, gave me a bottle of water, needlessly pointed out the latrine, and showed me to a narrow, neatly made bunk with a thin pillow and light blanket. I ate, then spent two hours reading over and over the material that I’d been given. When I was certain that it was as natural to me as any other thing in my unnatural life, I stretched out, wrapped myself in the thin blanket, and was asleep—unsnoring—by the time the next agent came to claim his bunk.

The next morning was a grim march. I was woken early, when the sky was still black, and hustled into a rusted pickup truck driven by a silent Hispanic man wearing a battered straw hat, who drove me two hours in the darkness to a deserted bus station. “Next bus,” he said, which was two more words than he’d exchanged with me thus far. He handed me some crushed folded bills, soft from use, and a handful of loose change. “Get off in Trenton. Look for a blond kid in a hoodie passed out on a bench and with a skateboard and a backpack. Wake him up. He’ll tell you where to go next.”

That was the extent of our friendship. He drove off almost before the truck door had slammed, leaving me feeling unexpectedly alone and exposed under the glare of a spotlight in front of the closed bus station. I waited, pacing to ward off the cold, until a lone bus arrived in a huff of air brakes. I climbed on board and paid the driver, then huddled—like the others—in a plush but battered seat. No one noticed me; as I looked around, I saw a bus full of people wrapped in their own personal struggles and tragedies, with no interest in mine.

It was perfect.

Dawn broke as we arrived in Trenton, and I found the sleeping skateboarder, who looked hardly old enough to be in the FBI. He glared at me through glazed eyes, and then muttered an address. I repeated it, and he rolled over and went back to sleep, apparently. The bus station had a map on the wall, and I used it to locate the address, which was more than a mile away. I walked, hands in my pockets, head down, as the city began to come alive around me. I looked needy, poor, and a little desperate, and I soon realized that these were things that served to isolate me as surely as if I had been walking the street alone.

I found the address, which was a dreary-looking coffee shop. I didn’t have instructions on what to do, so I ordered the smallest, cheapest drink I could with my remaining crumpled cash and sat in a corner, sipping slowly, practicing a dull, weary stare.

I was still practicing it when a woman came in dressed in an expensive business suit and ordered coffee. Once she had it, I expected her to hurry on, as most everyone had done, but she picked up her briefcase and walked over to me with sharp, confident steps. She sat, opened her briefcase, took out an envelope, and looked at me as she sipped her coffee. Bright brown eyes, and an even, regular face. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Laura,” I said. “Larkin. Hi.”

“You come far, Laura?”

I nodded. “From Arizona,” I said.

“Really?” She blew on the surface of her coffee lightly. “Whereabouts?”

“Tucson,” I said.

“Where’d you hear about us?”

This was gray area, and I shrugged. “Around.”

“Around where?”

“California,” I said. That was a safe bet, I thought; it was reasonably close to Arizona, and not unlikely that if I’d been struggling to find food and shelter, I’d have made my way there at some point. “Near San Diego, I think.”

She watched me for a few seconds, and I realized that this woman, whoever she was, had a shrewd sense about her—almost a Warden sense, perhaps. “You living rough?” she asked. “On the streets?”

“I get by.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I lost my last apartment,” I said. “My job went away. Not my fault.”

She sipped her coffee, and finally said, “There’s something about you, Laura. Something—special.”

I didn’t want, at this moment, to be special, not at all. I tried to think what I might have said or done that would create such an impression, but couldn’t. Instead of letting that agitation show, however, I forced myself to seem encouraged. People always wanted to feel special, apart from their fellows. It was something ingrained in human DNA, and my reaction seemed to please the woman, who smiled slightly in response. “Yes,” she said. “Very special. What skills do you have?”

“Um ... I cook,” I said. Laura Rose Larkin had been prepared with a specific set of things; I hoped no one would immediately ask me for proof. “And I’m good with the stuff nobody likes to do, washing, cleaning, that kind of thing.”

“Not afraid of work?”

“No, just haven’t had a lot of luck,” I said. “Like a lot of people.”

“Oh, I doubt you’re like a lot of other people,” she said. “Our job is to find the things that make you different, Laura. To bring out your gifts. Everyone has a gift. Pearl’s taught us that.”

Pearl’s teachings were convenient for her, to say the least; she preyed on the human desire to become something more, something special, and slowly but surely warped that desire out of true, into her own tool.

But I nodded. “I want to learn,” I said.

“And you’ve got nowhere else to go.” I looked away, turning my empty cup in my hands. The woman reached out and patted me on the shoulder. “Nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. “We get all kinds of people—people like me, who just aren’t happy with the life that’s supposed to be so great. We also get people who are lost and alone, even people who bring special skills because they believe in the cause. We’re all unique, and we’re all equal.”

She said that, but I could sense from her that she didn’t believe it, and never would; she believed that she was more important, and that sense of entitlement allowed her to speak to me as if I was a lost child that needed saving. No, I reminded myself. Laura Rose needs saving.

The part of me that was still stubbornly Cassiel didn’t like it.

“So,” she was saying, as she drained the last of her own coffee. “Here’s what you do. You write down your name and social security number on the outside of the envelope, and take what’s inside. We’ll be back in touch.”

She handed me a pen. I laboriously wrote Laura Rose Larkin and the number that I’d been given by the FBI, making sure that my handwriting was as bad as I could make it while still legible. She nodded, then took the pen back, and I shook out the contents of the envelope.

A cell phone, small and cheap. A small, bound number of bills. A blank business card with a number written on it in pen—not a phone number but a five-digit number.

“The cell won’t make outgoing calls,” the woman said. “It only receives calls. When you get a call, give them that number on the back of the card.”

I looked up as she snapped shut the latches on her briefcase. “What do I do now?”

“Whatever you want,” she said. “We’ll find you.”

She dumped her cup and walked out into the bright morning sunlight. I watched her from the window as she hailed a taxi and was gone in only a minute.

The phone, I was reasonably certain, functioned as a tracking device. I considered shorting it out, but that seemed unwise, given the circumstances. Instead, I put the money and phone in my pocket, along with the business card, and set out to walk the streets until I was called.

It took two days, during which I slept at cheap motels and ate even cheaper food; even with the frugality, my money didn’t last long, and my stomach was growling in frustration as I considered the dollar left to support me through the night. I was carefully weighing the options between fat, sugar, or both when a new sound filtered up from my pocket.

The cell phone.

I pulled it out, pushed TALK, and heard a businesslike voice say, “Identification number, please.”

I recited it from memory. There was a short pause, and then the voice said, “Go directly to the Trenton bus station where you came in and wait. Someone will be along.”

It was dark, and chilly. I could have thickened the material of my coat, but it occurred to me that they would have been photographing and observing me these past few days. Anything out of the ordinary would be noticed.

I would, as Rostow had said, be dropped.

At the bus station, motionless people slept sprawled in chairs and on benches, or wandered aimlessly. There was a minivan parked outside, and a man beckoned to me as he slid back the door. Inside were four others. One was Merle, but he looked at me blankly, and I forced myself to give him the same basic regard as I dropped into a seat in front of him. The driver shut the door, climbed behind the wheel, and drove us on into the dark. Nobody spoke.

“Phone.” I hadn’t noticed, but someone was sitting in the passenger seat in the front, and was now turned toward me and holding out her hand. It was the woman I’d last seen in the coffee shop. Funny, I should have seen her; again, I felt the telltale tingle of some kind of power. She’d veiled herself—I was almost sure of it. I found my cell phone and handed it over, along with the business card. She tossed the phone into a bag with others. “Put on your seat belt, Laura.”

I nodded and fastened it as the van sped on into the unknown.

To my surprise, we were not taken to the encampment that the FBI had been observing. We were taken instead to an old building on the outskirts of the city, which seemed to be unsettlingly isolated—I worried not so much for myself as for the others, excluding Merle, who seemed as expressionless as before. Our companions seemed to be honestly frightened for their safety.

I was not sure they were wrong.

“Inside,” said the driver, and shoved open the front door. Light spilled out in a blinding fan, and we were hustled through quickly, not given time for our eyes to adjust. Merle, who was in the lead, suddenly froze and held up his hands in a position of surrender. I saw why, a second later; there were two men in the room, each in a separate corner, pointing guns at us.

Large guns.

“Sit,” said the driver, and pushed the last woman into the room before slamming the door behind himself and locking it. Merle settled into one of the four dented chairs, and I sank down next to him, followed by our other two recruits

“One of you is a spy,” the driver said, and walked in front of us. He was a big man, and it was hard to focus on his face. I realized that once again I’d lost track of the woman in the business suit. She was here, somewhere; I could feel her presence. With a little effort I could have broken through her veil, but I let it stand.

Nobody had responded to the big man’s declaration, so he said it again. “One of you is a spy, sent by the government. I’ll give you one chance: Say who you are, and we’ll let you go.”

I felt a perverse sense of relief. With two of us infiltrating, his supposedly insider knowledge seemed a throw of the dice at best. I almost glared at him, and remembered my timid exterior at the last second. Instead, I glared down at my own frail, shaking hands lying impotently in my lap.

“Ain’t me,” said the man on my left, a rawboned young man with smooth, dark skin and big, wickedly amused eyes. “Don’t suppose they’d have me, anyway.”

He seemed strangely cheerful about it. Maybe he found having a gun pointed at him exciting, which I found curious; I could count on surviving such an encounter. He couldn’t. When the man kept focusing on him, the younger man lost his smile. “Dawg, you think you’re scary? I been shot by grannies scarier than you.”

“Show me,” the man said. The young man stared at him for a second, then grinned in a flash of perfect teeth, stood up, and skinned his shirt up to hang around his neck.

“This one I got in a drive-by when I was ten,” he said, pointing to a scarred dimple low on his right side. “Got this one two years ago.” The other scar was both more recent and more impressive; it was in his chest, and it looked dire. He also had tattoos, a lot of them, subtle and dark against the tone of his skin. It reminded me irresistibly of Luis and his flame tattoos.

“All right. It isn’t you,” the man said. “Put your shirt back on.”

The young man laughed and yanked it down as he sat. I risked a quick glance up to find that the gunman was staring at me. I looked down again and folded my trembling hands together. From my peripheral vision, I saw him shake his head. “Not you, either.”

Merle sat back, arms folded. Unlike me, he was staring straight at the man, as stone-faced and immovable as ever. He didn’t say anything. The gunman assessed him for a long moment, and then jerked his head suddenly to stare at the last one in our little group, a woman. “You,” he said. “Talk.”

She was an older woman, gray in her hair, heavy and tired. I didn’t need to be a Djinn to read the hardness of her life, the pain, the struggle. When she spoke, she had an accent—Eastern European, I thought. “I don’t like police,” she said. “I just want to have peace.”

The young man, the one who was so scarred, looked sharply at her, and I could see in him in that moment that he wanted the same thing. Peace. A place to be safe.

It made me angry that Pearl was betraying them.

The gunman prolonged his drama a few seconds longer, then made a show of clicking the safety on his gun and holstering it on his belt. “All right,” he said. “Wait here.”

He walked away, into the shadows at the end of the room. I stared after him, and willed the shadows to fade, just for an instant—long enough to see the woman I’d met in the coffee shop in the veil. She’d been reading us, of course, monitoring our heart rates, our aetheric pulses. Earth Wardens were difficult to fool when they were focused on determining the truth.

He came back another moment later and said, “Get up.” We did, with varying degrees of reluctance. “Go change your clothes. Strip down and leave everything, and I mean everything. Watches, jewelry, underwear, socks. You leave it all behind.”

It was a wise precaution, and it wouldn’t matter to me. I supposed Merle was prepared for it as well. I followed the gray-haired woman into the room indicated, and found that there were two stacks of clothing. I expected the fabric to be uncomfortable, but it felt surprisingly good against my skin. I left behind the items I’d been wearing—almost as colorless as what I had been given—and walked back to join the others. Merle and the young man were already in their chairs, dressed identically to me and, in another moment, the older woman.

Our driver then had us each stand up, and searched us, by hand. At the end of each search, he looked over his shoulder into the shadows, where the Earth Warden—or whatever she was—would be scanning us on the aetheric for any hint of concealed items. Merle was clean, as was I. The young man had tried to keep a thin, flexible knife, which was found in the search. The older woman had kept pictures, old and faded, of young children. She wept at giving them up, but give them up she did.

We drove a long, weary way.

When the van finally parked, I knew we were there. I felt the tingle of power hissing around us, exhilarating and menacing at once. None of the others seemed to notice it, and I was careful not to react outwardly. I was in the heart of the enemy, and if Pearl wanted to destroy me, it would be hideously easy for her, hardly as much effort as slapping a bug. My only defense was anonymity.

But it was difficult not to feel a fierce surge of adrenaline. I was here. I was going inside, and I would have a chance, just a chance, to end this.

I missed Luis. I missed knowing that he was with me, connected to me, caring for me. It hurt to feel so alone, but it would all be worth it if this worked.

The van door slid open on a brilliant clear sky, and warmer air rushed inside, smelling of freshly turned earth and trees. Instead of the armed driver, there were two young people smiling at us from the other side—dressed in identical outfits to what we now wore, but accessorized with bits of color: a red and white kerchief over the girl’s smooth brown hair, and a bright orange braided belt on the boy. They both looked well, happy, and eerily content. “Welcome,” the girl said, and held out her hand to help the older woman out of the van. “You’re very welcome here. I know the trip was a little scary, but you’re safe now. You’re with friends.”

She hugged the older woman, who seemed surprised, then hugged her back quickly and awkwardly, as if she’d forgotten the skill. I’d never really known it, but when the hug came for me, I was ready. No hug for Merle, who shook hands with the boy as he got out. The last one out was our younger companion on the journey, who was offered a handshake, too, and a hug. He seemed to enjoy the hug more. So did the girl.

The boy greeter produced a clipboard, consulted it, and said, “Merle?” Merle raised his hand. “You’re going to be in the second lodge. Kale?” That was our younger companion. “First lodge. Laura Rose?” I slowly raised my hand, not very high. “Third lodge. Oriana, you’re in third lodge, too. Everything’s in there for you—clothes, toiletries, a little gift to welcome you to the family.”

The girl took up the patter, smiling brightly. “A few rules before we let you go,” she said. “I know, rules, we come here to get away from them—but these are simple, I promise. We share work and resources, but don’t take anyone else’s personal things without permission. There’s no alcohol, drugs, or smoking allowed, because we believe in good health. We work hard, but we do have fun, too. Oh, and stay away from the fences. If you see any of the Outsiders, don’t talk to them. Just come and get one of us wearing colors; we’ll take care of it for you. Clear?”

The young man who’d come in with us, Kale, looked at her and said, very directly, “We got to go to church, too?”

“You don’t have to,” she said. “But we’d like it, of course. The Church is the core of our community. We’re not all true believers, though, and we don’t reject people just because they don’t worship as we do. We believe our truth will become clear.”

He looked doubtful, but also a little relieved. “And what about work?”

“We expect you to pull your weight, Kale. Nobody gets a free ride here; we’re not the Outside. But you do the work you can do, and want to do. We all pull together here, and we have a duty to one another and to our community.”

“We get paid?”

This time she laughed. “No, we don’t get paid. But we all get what we need. We’ve proved that you don’t need money to have a society; you just need community.”

She had the light and sparkle of a true believer, and even Kale—who I felt was probably as cynical as Merle, in his way—seemed charmed into agreement, at least for now.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you my name,” the girl said. “It’s Georgie. And this is Marcus.”

And that, it seemed, concluded our introduction. Georgie and Marcus walked away to talk to another group. The four of us, momentarily bonded by our shared experience, looked at one another, and then Merle, with a nod, set off for his lodge—a long, barracks-style building clearly marked with a number. Kale shrugged and followed, and Oriana and I headed for the third building.

The compound was both what I’d observed from the outside and a great deal different. The smell, for one thing—it had a rich, healthy sort of smell, of growing things, flowers, grasses, trees, the dark spice of fertilizer. I hadn’t expected the explosions of color—flower beds planted neatly along the paths, bordered with carefully arranged stones. The grass was kept clean and evenly trimmed.

It looked ... peaceful.

The people didn’t look the same as those I’d seen at the other encampments, either; they seemed to be happy, healthy, moving with purpose, and—when speaking or working with another—kind as well.

And there were children.

I felt sick at the sight of them, here, in this place, but they were everywhere—dressed in bright colors, though in similar patterns to what the adults wore. I remember the feral children I’d seen in Colorado, but there was no evidence of that abuse here; these boys and girls ran and played happily. A guardian (or teacher) followed groups of them, but it didn’t appear to be a sinister sort of caretaking.

It took me a few moments to spot the underlying pattern, but when I did, the dread grew stronger. The groups of children were not, as I’d first assumed, random. No, they were all composed of the same number of children—eight—and within each group there were four sets, two wearing blue, two wearing orange, two wearing green, and two wearing a golden yellow. They weren’t organized by age, either; I saw older children and younger wearing the same color. Nor were they organized in any way by the gender of the child. In some groups, boys and girls were evenly distributed, but in others there was a predominance of one or the other.

I went back to the colors—blue, orange, green, gold.

Blue for water—Weather Wardens. Orange must be Fire, and green reserved for Earth.

But that left gold. And I didn’t know what it meant.

We reached the lodge marked with our number, and entered. Inside, it was exactly what I’d expected—a long, low building, filled with two-level cots. Each cot was neatly made, and contained exactly the same things—sheets, a pillow, a blanket, and a small black pouch hanging from the end like a saddlebag. There were warm woven rugs on the bare floor, and gooseneck lamps at each bed. The windows were plentiful, and sunlight poured in to make the room feel almost comfortable. It smelled pleasantly of herbs and soap.

A middle-aged woman came forward, wiping her hands on a red-checked towel, and smiled as she offered me her hand. Her grip was firm and a little moist. “Hello, you must be Laura Rose. And Oriana?” She repeated the handshake. “Wonderful to have you join us. Please, come with me. I’ll show you your bunks.”

Our beds were near the middle of the room, and each of us had been given a top berth. It occurred to me that placing us so, in the middle and up high, made it very difficult for us to do anything unobserved, or to easily slip out. Their warm welcome to the contrary, they didn’t yet trust us.

Under other circumstances, I would have approved of their caution.

On each bed was the same black saddlebag that I saw slung at the foot of each of the others in the room, but ours were sitting squarely in the center of the bed, and each had a small bouquet of flowers leaning against it.

“My name’s Willa,” our greeter said. “I’m the manager of the lodge, so if there’s anything you need, anything you see that needs to be fixed or causes you concern, please come to me. Just ask anybody for Willa; they’ll know me. Oh, and your kit there has soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, lotion, washcloths, towels. There are robes and slippers in the lockers at the back, so find some you like and put your name on the door. Any personal items you don’t have that you need, let me know—that includes medications, okay? We have a library in the center of the camp if you need reading material.”

Oriana looked nervous, but she said, “My doctor says I should take vitamins.”

“Of course. What kind? I can pull them from the stores.”

While Oriana stammered out her requests, I opened my saddlebag and examined the contents. One thing that Willa hadn’t mentioned was that they had included feminine hygiene in their welcome kit, and—surprisingly—a pack of condoms. I took it out, examining it, and held it up to show Willa. She laughed.

“We’re not prudes,” she said. “And we’re not crazy. Our rules are against people getting hurt, that’s all. If you meet someone special here, you should be able to enjoy that.”

Curious.

I dropped the condoms back into the saddlebag, closed it, and draped it at the end of the bed, fiddling until it matched the others in the room. Then, when Oriana turned away, I said, “So what do we do now?”

Willa was making a note on a clipboard, but she glanced up to say, “What do you want to do?”

“Sleep,” I said, and yawned to prove it.

“Then you should go ahead. You can always start your orientation tomorrow, if you’d like. I’ll wake you up for dinner.”

Willa did not seem the harsh taskmistress I’d expected. Oriana tentatively said that she, also, would like to rest, and Willa readily agreed to that as well. I took off my shirt and pants and shoes, and climbed up on the bunk. It was comfortable enough—better than I’d expected. The blankets were thick and warm, and the pillow soft, and to my surprise, I was almost immediately sleepy. It had, in fact, been a hard few days, and here, despite that low-level tingle of power, I felt ... peaceful. There was none of the ever-present noise that I’d come to associate with the modern human world; here, there was silence, except for Willa’s footsteps and the creak of metal as Oriana climbed up to her own rest. I heard the wind against the roof, and the sighing of trees. The distant murmur of voices, and laughter.

Before I slipped off into the darkness, I reached out and located Agent Rostow. It was more difficult connecting with an ungifted human at this distance, but I’d taken care to memorize his aetheric signature. I didn’t waste a lot on the report. Arrived, I vibrated the tiny bones in his ear to say. No trouble. I couldn’t think of anything more to say. If he had questions—and I was sure he would—I wouldn’t be able to hear them in any case.

After that I fell asleep without any hesitation.

I woke to the sound of murmurs and a gentle hand shaking my shoulder. “Time to wake up,” a voice said. Willa, coming to wake me as she’d promised. “Dinner.”

“Thank you,” I said, and sat up. The air was cool now, and I shivered as I put on my shirt and pants and slipped on the canvas shoes. Willa had draped a sweater over the end of the bed, of nubby gray material, and I put it on to cut the chill. I smelled spices, meats, fresh breads, and it made my stomach rumble in frustration. Willa had moved on to rousing Oriana, and as I hopped down from the bunk, she said, “Go on out. The food hall is next door; just follow your nose.”

I stepped outside. While I’d been sleeping, the day had slipped into twilight, and the sky was a translucent dark blue, with the black shapes of trees outlined against it. More surprising, though, were the streams of people moving past the lodge—gray-dressed men and women of all ages, all races, laughing and talking as they headed for their dinner break. I had expected a certain paranoia, a pervasive atmosphere of oppression, but it wasn’t so, not at all. Somehow, these people seemed ... happy.

I stood there for a moment, an outsider to the general feeling of community, and my gaze fixed on a man walking with a small group. Like all of them, they were animatedly talking, but there was something about him that caught my attention. A nice, mobile face, a little too firm in the jaw, and piercing gray eyes as he glanced my way. He had shaggy brown hair, and he was tall, with strength in the broad shoulders. I couldn’t guess his age immediately—anything between thirty and fifty, though I guessed closer to forty, based on the slender strands of gray in his hair.

He slowed, and indicated me to his friends, then broke off to walk toward me. I was standing on a step that led up to the lodge, but even so, we were almost at eye level. “Welcome,” he said. He had a deep, warm voice, and his smile had a sweetness I didn’t expect. He held out a hand to me. “I’m Will. Very pleased to meet you ...”

I was surprised by the warmth of his grip, and it took a moment before I could order my thoughts enough to say, “Laura Rose.”

“Laura,” he repeated, and somehow, he gave my name a beauty that I didn’t think it should have possessed. “On your way to dinner, Laura?”

“I suppose.”

“Great, join us.” He beckoned to his friends, who came over, smiling. “Becca, Aiyana, Karl, Desmond—this is Laura.” A blur of faces—all dramatically different but somehow similar in their friendly welcome—wished me well. “We’ll show you the ropes. I know how strange the first day can be.”

I felt a bizarre gratitude for the warmth with which they surrounded me; I hadn’t realized how tense I had been until the muscles knotted inside me began to relax. Laura, I felt, would have been quiet and shy, so I said little as we walked to the food hall, but I listened to the others. They talked brightly about the day’s work, about trivial things, but the affection between them seemed almost to shimmer like flakes of gold in the air.

I was included, although I didn’t contribute; they glanced at me, shared smiles, touched me gently on the shoulders to guide me when I hesitated. I had never been a younger child in a family, but I imagined that was what it must have felt like.

When Will glanced my way, I felt a telltale illicit shiver, and wondered at my own odd behavior. Yes, I was lonely; yes, I missed Luis. But was it so easy for me to respond to another man’s looks, his light and casual touches? If it was, what worrying thing did it say about my character?

“The food’s good,” Will said, steering me with one hand on my shoulder blade toward the line of people forming near a buffet. “We all take our turns in the kitchen, but thankfully, most people are better at it than I am. I can chop a mean carrot, but seasoning’s best left up to the experts.”

The food was, indeed, fresh and colorful, and it smelled delicious, from the vegetables and crisp breads to the thin slices of meats. I took a modest-sized plate and followed Will to a long wooden table, with the others. As I sat down, I asked, “Do you raise your own animals, too?”

“Some,” Becca said, and nodded down at the slices of pork on her plate. “We’ve got some pigs, some sheep, chickens and some cows, but the chickens are for eggs, and the cows are mostly for milk. Horses, too, but not for eating, obviously.”

“Rabbits,” Desmond put in, mumbling around a mouthful of green vegetables I didn’t recognize. “Love them rabbits.”

“I hate to see them on the dinner list.” Aiyana sighed. “They’re so beautiful.”

“Aiyana’s vegetarian,” Will said, and passed her some bread. She had only greens and potatoes on her plate, I realized, and blushed a little as Will pointed it out. “She’d starve rather than kill a chicken.”

“That’s only because she doesn’t have to clean up after them,” Karl said. He had a distinct European accent, though I wasn’t sure if it came of German origin, or another neighboring country. “Right, Aiyana?”

She blushed further, and looked down at her plate. “I like the fields,” she said. “It’s peaceful.”

I cleared my throat and said, “Do we get a choice of what to do?”

“Not at first,” Will said. “You’ll rotate around, find what you’re good at doing. I work with the animals, and sometimes in the fields; I also do the doctoring, when it’s needed. Becca teaches the kids, but she does real good with cows, so she gets up early for the milking before class.”

Cows. I shook my head, wondering what I’d expected from this—certainly not this homespun rustic conversation about milking cows and cleaning up after chickens. Pearl’s followers were fanatics, and they were dangerous.

Yet they didn’t feel dangerous at all.

I accepted a glass of cloudy yellow liquid someone said was lemonade, and turned the topic to something else. “I don’t see the children in here. Do they have their own place to eat?”

“Oh, they eat earlier,” Becca said. “Great kids, very gifted, you know. We make sure they get to bed early; they get tired out from their days, poor things.”

I glanced around at the others, who were all eating. “Are any of them yours?” I asked. Will almost choked on his lemonade before he burst out with a laugh. Desmond pounded him on the back as he coughed.

“Definitely not,” Karl said, and grinned before he bit off a big chunk of his bread. “None of us, anyway. There are a few at the other tables whose kids qualified for the program.”

I—or Laura—blinked in wide-eyed confusion. “Are most of them orphans?”

My new friends looked at one another, and for the first time, I saw a slight hesitation ripple through them. Eventually, Aiyana said, “Most of them are. And the rest weren’t in good situations, you understand. They really were in danger. We’re saving their lives.”

Desmond followed that by saying, in a darkly determined way, “We’re not going to let anybody hurt them. Not again.”

That fit with what I’d understood—that Pearl had indoctrinated her followers to believe that the Warden children were abused, and in horrible danger of being killed by the very organization that should have been protecting them. It wasn’t true, but it was a powerful message, and there was just enough truth in it to give the lie a believable flavor.

The others murmured support for that sentiment. Will was looking right at me as he did so, and I nodded, making sure that my gaze held his. “I don’t like seeing kids hurt,” I said. “Especially the young ones. Somebody needs to protect them.”

That was all true; what they would not realize, I hoped, was that I would be protecting these young ones from them. At least, I planned to try.

Will seemed to suspect none of that. I felt no change in his warm regard of me. He finally scooped up a bite of pork and ate without further comment.

I spotted Oriana a few moments later, sitting with another group and talking animatedly, as if she’d woken from her earlier dull, almost drugged state. She seemed as happy as the others now.

It was difficult for me not to feel that way as well, as the evening slipped over us, and my newfound companions lulled me into a peaceful sense of belonging.

By the time we began to break up, it was full dark, and Will retrieved an oil lamp to walk me back to my lodge. It seemed peaceful and very beautiful here; I could hear no machines, not even the distant hum of traffic that seemed such a sound track to modern life. This setting reminded me of ancient times, as did the houses, the clothing, even Will’s open, unguarded smile.

“There you are,” he said, and raised the lamp to illuminate the steps to the lodge. He kept holding it up, and the golden light shimmered on his face and in his eyes. “I’m glad you joined us here, Laura. I think you’re going to like it.”

“I already do,” I said. That wasn’t a lie, either. I did like it, more than I had life outside of these artificially peaceful fences. Out there, it seemed trust was a dead language, and danger lurked around every corner. Here, I felt safe. And at peace. It was absurd, and yet it was true.

Will took my hand and, to my very great surprise, pressed a quick, warm kiss to my knuckles. It sent a marked wave of sensation through my body, from toes to the top of my head—a flash of heat I’d only ever felt at intensely personal moments, with Luis. It left me feeling shaken, and deeply vulnerable.

Luis. I closed my eyes for a second and felt the low, steady whisper of the connection I still retained with him. Images flashed through my mind—Luis, on his knees beside his murdered brother. Luis, holding me still as he healed me. Luis, with that incomparable light of passion in his eyes as he bent to kiss me.

This isn’t real, I told myself. Will isn’t real. Luis is. What I have with him can’t be duplicated.

But Luis wasn’t here, and there was something deeply, sweetly seductive about Will in a way that I had never encountered before. I felt a surge of panic. Djinn couldn’t be so changeable, so easily swayed ...

... But I was no longer a Djinn.

When I opened my eyes, Will was still holding my hand, watching me with those wide, lovely eyes. He started to say something, then evidently thought better of it, and turned away. I watched him go, bathed in golden light, until he disappeared into another lodge.

Then I went into my own new home, found my bunk among all its identical fellows, stripped off my gray clothes, and worried for only a few moments before I fell as deeply, peacefully asleep as I ever had since being reborn into the human world.

It seemed ironic that I should find the most peace I’d known in the most dangerous place I’d ever entered.

The next day came early, when dawn was still the same drab color as the clothes hanging at the end of my bunk. I woke to the creaking of metal springs, low-voiced conversations, the whisper of clothing, and the sound of water running in the bath at the end of the lodge. I stayed still for a long few moments, luxuriating in the sense of warm relaxation, and then regretfully rose, gathered clothing, and went on to the baths. These were communal showers, with no privacy to speak of, but the women seemed not to be much bothered by their displays of nudity. I had no ethical objections to it in any case, and enjoyed the hot water immensely, as well as the feeling of once again being clean. The soap was rougher than I’d expected—hand-milled, according to one of the other very wet women standing next to me under the spray. I passed the bar on to the next woman when I was done. It all seemed very ... civil.

Dressed and reasonably groomed, I made my way to the food hall, where coffee and tea were available, as well as eggs, bacon, and toast. I didn’t see Will or Becca, but Desmond, Karl, and Aiyana waved me over. We shared a pleasant few moments before they left on their morning duties, and I was finishing my toast when Will entered, filled a cup with coffee, and came to sit beside me.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked. It seemed a politely empty question, and I replied with the appropriate civility. “Any idea what you want to do today?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I thought I’d be assigned to something, I guess.” It was a little dangerous, but I hazarded it anyway: “Perhaps something to do with the children?”

Will didn’t pause in sipping his coffee, and he didn’t look directly at me, but I still felt that same odd hesitation tremble between us. “Maybe later,” he said. “They need some help on laundry duty today. Suzette’s out sick and Topher got roped into felling trees. You don’t mind doing laundry, do you?”

I did, in fact, but Laura Rose would not. “That’d be fine,” I said. “Where do I go?”

“I’ll show you.”

Our meal finished, Will walked me outside. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, and exchanged smiles and pleasantries with people we passed. I didn’t see weapons in evidence anywhere. The children streamed past us, heading toward what looked like a white-painted school. I saw no evidence of Pearl’s presence anywhere, other than the general whispering sense of power in this place.

“Aren’t there guards?” I asked. “I mean, it was pretty scary getting in. I thought someone would be—”

“Yeah, the vetting process is extreme, I keep telling them it’s not necessary,” Will said. “We always know when people try to get in who aren’t genuine about it. We’re not violent people. We don’t want to hurt anyone; we just want to live a little differently from the way others do. I don’t like it that they threaten people and try to scare them away. We don’t have guards here. It’s not a prison, Laura. It’s our home.”

“Are you in charge?” I asked it directly, and it startled a laugh from him—rich, full, and unguarded.

“Do I seem like a guy who’d be in charge?” he asked, and then sobered. “No, I’m not in charge. We don’t have that kind of relationship here. There’s no dictator; no government, exactly. We have an industry proctor who deals with work schedules, but that’s mostly paperwork. Our food proctor works out farm and husbandry details and does the menus. We have a services proctor for everything else.”

“How do you pick the proctors?”

“We all used to take turns,” he said. “But certain people have a talent for administration, so right now Violet’s our industry proctor, because she’s great at scheduling and making sure everyone gets varied work and rest. We’re still looking for someone to want the food and services proctor roles full-time; until then, we all take a week at it. Trust me, it works out. We’re not perfect, and we do have conflicts from time to time, but surprisingly few, really. We don’t need jails. We don’t need courts, or lawyers, or drug rehab.” Will hesitated, then shook his head to get long hair away from his eyes. “On the outside, I was a mess. I had a meth habit. I never fit in. Here, it’s all different, Laura. You can just be yourself here.”

That was ironic, considering what being myself meant, but at a certain level I actually craved the certainty I heard in his voice. He’d found his paradise. In a sense, I felt that under other circumstances it might have been mine as well.

But not for the children.

Pearl was the unseen cancer at the heart of this seemingly healthy community, and I hated her for it with a sudden, breathtaking intensity. Will would be broken in this, and so many others who didn’t deserve to have their dreams shattered.

It would be as much my fault as hers, or they would see it that way; they would see me as a betrayer of the worst kind.

Even now I could feel the early echoes of the pain I would cause.

“Laura?” Will was looking at me in concern. I forced a smile.

“I don’t know who I am,” I said, again quite honestly. “How can I really be myself?”

“You’ll find your way,” he said. “We all find our own ways.”