Unseen

Chapter 13

THE CORPSE I’D TRIPPED over was someone I didn’t recognize—a man, dressed in dark clothing. He had a rifle with him, and a handgun holstered on his belt. I tugged it free, picked up the rifle, and slung it across my shoulder as I rose to my knees.

Ashan had brought me back to the school, but the school was unrecognizable. It was a burning inferno, only vaguely defined by the shapes of walls; the fire was incredibly hot and violent, with the flames in places leaping fifty feet into the night sky. Trees burned from their leafy crowns downward all around me. At first I thought that the school had been in the path of a forest fire, but that made no sense; there were powerful Fire Wardens present who should have been able to turn the flames away, even if they hadn’t been able to extinguish them completely.

No, this was an attack.

And a successful one.

I didn’t hear the sound of the shot fired at me, but I felt the bullet slice across the meat of my upper arm, drawing a bloody slash; it felt like a hot poker applied to my skin, and for a second I didn’t register what had occurred. My instincts saved me; I threw myself flat and crawled to take the only shelter available—behind the corpse that I’d fallen over earlier. I rolled him on his side and curled up, unshipped the rifle, and carefully looked around for my assailant. It was impossible to hear the shots, but I saw a spark of misplaced flame from the trees—a muzzle flash in the darkness—and aimed and fired, using the power of the Earth to guide my shot to its target.

I sensed the shock of the bullet’s impact through bone, brain, and out the other side as my shot found its home, and then I took another moment to study the scene more carefully. He seemed to have been the only remaining gunman, or the one assigned to prevent reinforcements from arriving; no one else fired on me.

But I felt a harsh ripple on the aetheric, and turned toward it just as I saw the trees bending, whipping, and cracking. Something was coming for me, coming fast, and it was big. Very big.

I glimpsed something dark, but it wasn’t an animal; the power driving it felt alien at its core, cold and lifeless. Void. Someone was driving a moving sphere of void through the forest, devouring all it touched, and it was heading straight for me.

I couldn’t fight that, and it was too late to run. I got up to my feet, took three long steps, and prepared myself. There was a dead tree trunk lying at an angle nearby, and I ran for it, up its incline, and on the last step channeled power into my legs and jumped.

The black sphere charged through the space where I’d been while I hung at the apogee of my jump, fifty feet overhead, and then landed crouched on the branch of a tree above. It hesitated, circling, and then zipped off in a different direction. It had found another target, and I heard someone scream.

It was quickly cut off.

From this vantage, with the treetop aflame above me, I could see the devastation wrought on the Wardens’ stronghold. The attack had shredded the metal fencing around the building, but it was the building itself that had sustained the most damage—concrete walls shattered, wood burned away, and now almost every part of the interior seemed to be burning with a white-hot intensity that was at odds with a normal blaze. It was being fed by a Fire Warden of abnormal power and concentration ... one of Pearl’s, I imagined. I could feel the dark shimmer of her power in the air, though I couldn’t locate her presence.

Evidently her adept that was managing the Void was less well equipped, because after several moments the black sphere faltered, smashed through a few more unlucky trees, then abruptly shrank to a pinpoint and vanished with an implosive pop louder even than the roar of the fire. I jumped down from the tree and began hunting for the rest of Pearl’s attacking force.

Instead, I saw a Warden—one I recognized, though I didn’t know her name—waving at me frantically as she rose from behind the cover of some bushes and dropped what must have been a very, very good veil. I raced to her, keeping low, and as I ducked behind the brush I saw that she wasn’t alone—she had dozens with her, including most of the other Wardens. Almost all of them were injured or exhausted from the fight. “Thank God,” she said. She was holding a bloody bandage to her side, and offered me a real, though tense, smile of welcome. “I’m Gayle.”

I nodded, scanning the weary faces. “Where are the rest?” There were too few children, and no sign of Luis and Ibby. Gayle’s smile faded, and she looked back at the burning inferno of the school.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We couldn’t reach them. Marion, Janice, Luis, Shasa, Ben—at least five of the kids. We tried, but we were under attack. We had to save those we could reach. I’m so sorry.”

I shouldn’t have blamed them for that, but in that moment I felt a surge of pure hatred nevertheless. You left them to die. Gayle must have known that, must have seen it burning in my eyes, but to her credit, she didn’t back away. Maybe she was simply too tired, and too badly wounded.

I turned away and stared at the burning ruins. Adrenaline and fear made it difficult to sort out my emotions, but I calmed myself and listened, listened for that tiny whisper that always existed—that fragile yet steely-strong connection with Luis.

I felt a discordant jangle of emotions not my own.

Alive. He was alive, somewhere in there.

I opened my eyes, turned to Gayle, and said, “They’re inside. We must get them out.”

She looked at her exhausted, wounded band, and the huddled, frightened children they protected. “I can’t. I’m sorry, but we have to concentrate on protecting these kids. We can’t go back in there. I have only one living Fire Warden, and she’s badly injured.”

I couldn’t fault her logic, or her judgment, but I wasn’t willing to accept defeat that easily. Not when it meant the lives of those I loved. “Then watch my back,” I said. I handed her the rifle, and she checked the clip with a competence that gave me confidence.

“Good luck.” She nodded. “If you can get them out, head for the fire road to the east. If everything works right, we should have rescue transportation coming in the next twenty minutes, but we can’t wait for you for long if it means risking the lives of those we already have.”

I rolled to my feet and ran, keeping low, around the side of the school. The flames weren’t as intense here—in fact, part of the wall seemed intact, though heavy iron gray smoke poured through shattered windows. The door was open, and two small bodies lay huddled together on the bare ground outside.

I ran for the fence, still largely intact on this side, ripped it apart with Earth power, and left it dangling open behind me as I scooped up the two children and dragged them away from danger. Both were almost unrecognizable under the thick layers of soot on their faces, but I knew the bright red blaze of her hair—the girl was Gillian. It took me longer to work out the boy’s identity, but of course it was Mike, her constant companion and protector.

Mike was dead. I checked him to be sure, and tried all the techniques I knew to revive the boy, but his spirit was gone, and his body unresponsive. He’d been badly burned, his lungs scorched beyond any survival. Mike, the Fire Warden, had been overwhelmed by the blaze he’d tried to manage.

But he’d saved Gillian—no doubt at his own expense. She was unconscious, and suffering from smoke inhalation, but alive. I poured power into her to stabilize her condition, and then plunged back through the fence and handed her off to Gayle, who put her with the other injured children.

The door into the building was firmly closed and blazing hot, but so far there were no flames at the window where the two children must have escaped—only a thick black river of smoke pouring out.

I climbed in.

The smoke closed around me like hot, smothering cloth, and I immediately dropped to the floor to try to find anything like breathable air. It was there, but very thin and tasting of toxins. I couldn’t see well—between the billows of gray and the dazzling leap of fire on the far wall, it took me a moment to realize that I’d dropped into some kind of library. Books were aflame at the far end of the room. A plastic chair and table were in place, but melting into surrealistic shapes as the flames approached. I crawled, feeling the synthetic carpet clinging and sticky beneath me. It, too, was melting from the heat. Breathing turned more difficult as I approached the far doorway; there were flames pouring through it, but moving along the ceiling, and only gradually descending toward the walls.

Still possible, if not safe.

In the hallway, I came across another body—a Warden. It was young Ben. He’d been shot in the back three times—center chest twice and once in the head. Dead. I left him and crawled on, not knowing if it was even possible to find the others. All I knew was that Luis, at least, was still alive, somewhere in this inferno.

And I had to find him. I couldn’t leave him to face this alone.

At the end of the hallway, a curtain of intensely hot flames burned—intensely hot, and oddly directed. Focused. Pearl’s attackers were focusing their efforts here, which meant that there was some reason for it.

Someone was conducting a spirited and lasting defense.

It was counterintuitive to head for the worst of the blaze—not to mention insane—but I sensed the roil of power that overlaid the conflagration. That wasn’t merely fire ahead of me; it was a weapon, wielded by a master.

And there was an equally expert defense, mounted from the other side.

I had no protection I could summon up for the risk of burning, but there was no question in my mind of turning back. Luis was beyond that thick wall of destruction. Isabel would be there with him.

And I would not abandon them.

I should have taken Ashan’s offer. As a Djinn, I could have entered this fight with significant advantages ... but at the risk of losing what made me want to fight so hard. It was the losses I’d suffered that made me part of this world; Djinn had no such connection. Not the Djinn I had known, or been.

I couldn’t give up my hard-won humanity for power. I had to find a way. I rose to a crouch, readied myself, and closed my eyes.

And then I raced forward, into the fire.

Humans have an atavistic terror of burning, and I hadn’t counted on it being so strongly encoded in the cells of my body, but the instant I felt the flames hiss through my hair and clothes, my body went into terrified overdrive, releasing massive amounts of adrenaline, blocking out pain. The world shrank to a single, unalterable imperative: run.

And I ran, straight and fast, through a roaring fury of heat. Even with the deadening influence of the adrenaline, I distantly felt the lash of pain as my clothing caught fire and burned around me. Every step forward seemed to take a nightmare hour, though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before I hit the barrier at the end of the fire.

It was an impenetrable barrier of stone, flung up out of the Earth’s bones.

I couldn’t stop. I reached out to Luis and pulled an enormous, crippling flood of power that melted the stone in front of me in a rippling wave. It was extraordinarily dangerous, and I felt the pressure being exerted from the other side to block me out. The stone hardened, and I faced a nightmare possibility of being trapped, sealed in the rock, crushed ... but then the pressure fell away, and I tumbled through into hot, smoky air that felt as cold as ice against my scorched body. I hit the smoldering wooden floor and rolled. Someone threw thick cloth over me, and I felt hands slapping at me, trying to douse the flames. At the same time, someone sent an enormous burst of power toward the stone wall through which I’d come, to seal it shut again.

The first face I saw as the blanket was withdrawn was Luis’s. His eyes widened, and his lips parted in either horror or astonishment—it could have been either, given my current state—but then he pulled me up to a sitting position and hugged me fiercely. The adrenaline was fading as quickly as it had dumped into my bloodstream, and the pain that flashed through me was agonizing ... and then muted, as his healing power began to do its work.

No, not just his power ... Isabel’s, as well. She was beside me, too, and her hand was resting on my shoulder. The two complex signatures of power, as distinctive as types of wine, mixed inside me and exploded in a powerful new way, driving my cells to heal at a dizzying rate.

I hugged them both close, shuddering in shock and gratitude, and felt Isabel’s arms wind around my neck. Oh, child. Beautiful child. I kissed Luis quickly, put my hand on his unshaven cheek, and said, “Ben’s dead. So is the boy, Mike. Gillian is alive—I got her outside the fence. Gayle has most of the others hidden outside, waiting for transportation.”

“We’ve got almost everyone else,” Luis said. “It happened fast. I don’t know how; Ben must have been taken out first just as the fireworks got started. They meant to burn us all.”

I didn’t think so. I looked up at the others, who were sitting or lying in the small defensive space left to them. Marion still had her wheelchair, and she took time to spare me a quick look from her maintenance of the barrier that held back the ravening fire. “Thanks for joining us,” she said. “But it might not have been a good idea. We’re not doing so well.”

She was right about that; the situation looked bad. Earth could defend against Fire, but not for long. Ben’s Weather skills had been their best possible option; he could have kept the air fresh and clear, and starved the fire, given enough time and power.

The elderly Earth Warden, Janice, was in charge of the children, who were huddled close against her for comfort. She’d put two of them under, and they seemed to be sleeping with unnatural peacefulness. When I met Janice’s eyes, she said, “We can’t have them panicking.” And she was right about that; having these extraordinary children losing control of their talents here, now, would be deadly to us all.

Isabel tugged on my sleeve. I looked down at her in distracted affection and kissed her forehead, but she only tugged harder. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, “We’re in trouble.”

“I know that, Ibby.”

“No, we’re in trouble. Really.”

“Can you get through the fire and get out?”

“Sure,” she said, and shrugged. “But I can’t get anybody else out. They’ll let me go; they already told me so. And Sanjay and Elijah, too. But nobody else. And I can’t leave Uncle Luis.”

“You may have to,” I told her. “You may have to take the other two and leave, if they’ll let you.”

She gave me a long, sober look. “That’s what they want us to do. They want us to go back to the Lady.”

My arms tightened around her. I thought of Zedala, of those other fanatical children; Ibby, Sanjay, and Elijah would make perfect assassins, if she continued their indoctrination. I couldn’t allow that to happen to them.

But at least they’d be alive. My alternative might be to watch them die in a particularly horrible way.

I turned to Luis, but he was moving toward Marion, who was beckoning for his help. He was limping, and there was a broad, bloody stain on the leg of his pants. A bullet wound, but one he was managing well.

Ben had also been shot, from behind, by someone he must have trusted. He’d been heading to join Marion, or to warn her. “Ibby,” I said. “You said we were in trouble. You didn’t mean the fire, did you?”

“I saw her shoot him,” Ibby said, still in that tense, quiet whisper. “I didn’t know how to stop it. You should have showed me how to stop the bullets from exploding, and I could have stopped her from killing Ben. But it was too late then. I couldn’t bring him back. Nobody else saw it, and I don’t think she knows that I know.”

My gaze moved around the room, and fell on Shasa, who was deep in concentration, hands held palms out. She was sending waves of control against the fire, but whatever or whoever directed it against us was stronger. She was shaking, and damp with sweat as much from effort as heat.

“Not her,” Ibby whispered. “Her.”

I turned and met Janice Worthing’s calm, kind eyes—only in that instant they weren’t calm, or kind. Only blank with calculation. And I felt something go still and very quiet inside me.

I had known. On some level, I’d been uneasy with the woman, though everything and everyone around me had given the lie to that instinct. I should have listened to my Djinn side, I realized, the cynical and mistrustful side that had refused to be swayed and charmed by her subtle use of power.

Janice Worthing had been the traitor in the heart of the school, and no one, not even Marion, had suspected her. I wondered how long she’d been waiting to strike—months, maybe years. Maybe she’d been an early convert of Pearl’s, or maybe she’d simply been for hire. She didn’t, even now, strike me as a true believer—more of a mercenary.

She was holding little Elijah, the youngest of the children, in her arms. He’d been sent into a deep artificial sleep; to all appearances, her cradling of his body was gentle and protective, but suddenly I saw it differently.

Suddenly, Elijah was a shield.

“Let go,” I said to Ibby. She shook her head. “Ibby, let go and go to your uncle. I don’t want you to get hurt.” This was, in many ways, more dangerous than anything else that might have happened ... that the traitor was locked in here with us, in this desperate last stand, ready to strike at will. I wondered why she hadn’t done it already, but I thought I knew. She didn’t dare strike until she could ensure that she would take out all of the remaining Wardens in one blow—Marion, Luis, Shasa, and now me, to complicate her problem. Janice’s mission must have been to gather the most powerful children and bring them out alive to Pearl.

She’d gathered them. Now she simply had to kill the rest of us to ensure her victory.

I peeled Isabel’s arms away from my neck and pointed her at Luis. “Stay with him,” I said, and she backed toward him, never taking her wide dark eyes from Janice.

Janice cocked her head slightly to one side, and I saw the recognition in her eyes. She knew that I knew, and that Ibby did as well. Her charade was ending.

“Well,” she said, “it was nice while it lasted.” She extended one hand toward Luis, and the bullet wound in his thigh suddenly broke open, pumping bright red blood in a fountain. Ibby stopped, shocked, and backed away from the spatter in instinctive horror. Luis let out a choked cry and grabbed for his thigh, squeezing with both hands; Marion spun her chair toward him and slapped her hand atop his. She was splitting her concentration dangerously, and as I’d noted when I’d left the school, she’d already been tired. She had to pull away as a fresh attack pounded against the stone walls she’d thrown up, and the bleeding increased again as Luis sank down to a sitting position on the floor. Ibby ran to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“No, no, Isabel, you’re in no shape to do that kind of work,” Janice said, and I felt a subtle, wrong shift in the energy coming from her. The edges of it brushed me, and I felt sick, wrong, twisted ... but it wasn’t directed at me.

It was directed at Isabel, who screamed and dropped to the floor beside her uncle, writhing in the grip of one of those seizures I’d witnessed before.

Janice had induced it. Deliberately.

I snarled and turned on her, every instinct—Djinn and human—screaming inside me to destroy the woman ... but I couldn’t. She had Elijah’s neck in her hands, and the boy was asleep. He couldn’t fight back.

“I’ll flay you,” I said, with an eerie control that I didn’t feel. “I’ll flay you and feed your skin to the pigs while you watch. Stop hurting them.”

“Back off, and I will,” Janice snapped. “Ah, ah, Marion, stay where you are. Don’t make me start thinning the herd.”

Marion’s face was frightening to behold, but she stopped her slow advance toward Janice. I could feel her gathering up her power, getting ready to strike, but like me, she was at a severe disadvantage.

As long as Janice had the children gathered around her, we were limited in what we could do.

Shasa’s concentration broke as the situation in the room finally dawned on her. She opened her eyes, startled, and glanced at Janice with a frown. “What the hell is going on?” It was only at that moment that I realized how much Shasa’s power had kept the ravening inferno at bay around us; smoke poured through tiny cracks in the stone, and the rock itself snapped and hissed under the pressure of the heat. Marion’s barrier couldn’t exist for long without Fire Warden assistance. “Janice? What’s she talking about?”

“Nothing,” Janice said in that warm, soothing voice that had lulled so many into trust. “She’s a traitor, Shas. She’s one of them. She left us to give them intel, and now she’s back to finish the job. She brought this on us, and we let her inside.”

That held just enough truth to distract Shasa for another critical moment ... and then Janice extended her hand and tapped the Fire Warden on the shoulder. Just a light tap, but I felt the cold breath of power settle around the girl.

Shasa collapsed as her eyes rolled back in her skull. She looked fragile, suddenly, like a broken doll. Without her power supporting it, the defenses around us began to snap and shift under the pressure of the forces outside.

Pearl’s forces.

My lips peeled back from my teeth. I glanced over at Luis, who looked pale and shaking, but he’d stripped off his belt and was twisting it around his thigh, attempting to slow the loss of blood. Isabel had collapsed against his side, trembling and writhing in the grip of the seizures, and the sight of that fueled my rage to dangerous levels.

I turned to Janice. “Put Elijah down,” I said. “Now. Or I destroy you. You’re no match for me.”

“Oh, you’re right about that,” she replied, and gave me her sweet little grandmotherly smile. I almost preferred Zedala’s fanaticism, in that moment; Janice’s violence and cruelty were coldly calculated, and in a sense that made it all the more horrible. “But then again, I’ve got some advantages, don’t I? If you want the bleeding to stop, and Ibby to survive this latest attack ... you’ll stand aside. I can call off the attack. We can arrange a peaceful exchange—these children for your lives.”

“And yours.”

“Well”—she shrugged—“naturally someone has to go with them to take care of them. And I’m one of the best.” The smile turned hard around the edges. “Even Marion said so.”

Marion remained silent, but her expression could have shattered stone. I’d never seen a human look so implacably angry. That was the kind of rage that Wardens tried to avoid—the kind that drove them to extremes even a Djinn couldn’t comprehend. This offended her in every way possible, from her compassion for the children to the massive and unthinkable betrayal of trust Janice had perpetrated.

“I think Cassiel is wrong,” she finally said, very softly. “Flaying is too good for you, Janice. I’ll have to think of something ... better.”

Janice lost her smile altogether. “The New Mother is going to kill you all, in ways worse than you’d ever think of trying on me,” she said. I realized, with a grim, bleak amusement, that Pearl had given herself a title. How very like her. “Don’t be stupid. Let me have the kids. Let me walk away. I can guarantee you’ll live to lick your wounds.”

“She’s lying,” Marion said. “She doesn’t intend to let any of us out of here alive.”

“And I don’t intend to allow her to live, either,” I said. “Stalemate.”

Janice laughed. “Is it getting hotter in here, or is that just me?”

It was. The stone around us was cracking, friable under the unrelenting pressure of the fire. Smoke poured thinly through the cracks, adding to the oppressive heaviness of the air. I realized I was breathing more and more deeply. The fire outside was turning the air toxic, and without a Weather Warden to cleanse it, we had very little time left, even if the fire didn’t reach us first.

Janice was no match for me, not in strength; that was why she had Elijah, and the other children. Human shields. Any of us would hesitate to use full power with them in the way; it would be hideously easy for her, as an Earth Warden, to kill them before we could act.

“If I’d been able to keep Gillian, I could have solved this little problem,” Janice said. “You can blame that one on Ben. He lost his backbone.”

Ben. Weather Warden. I suddenly understood who it was who’d ambushed me with the mudslide on my way back to the school, before ... It was Ben; it had to be. Janice had recruited him, or he’d been placed, like her, in the heart of the school ... but he’d had a change of heart. Probably, I thought, because of the children. I’d seen him with them, and he’d seemed genuinely moved by their plight. I’d been an easy, justifiable enemy for him.

Not the children.

He’d been shot ensuring that Mike and Gillian were able to escape ... or Gillian, at least. In that end, there had been honor.

“You can’t want this,” I said. “I’ve seen you working with the children. You’re not cruel, Janice. You care for them. You can’t want them to be used, twisted, made into killers.”

“You think these children aren’t already killers?” Janice touched Elijah’s forehead, then Sanjay’s. Both boys stirred, looking dazed. She altered her tone again and projected a subtle variation of her normal warm reassurance—this one had an edge of fear, and pleading. “I need you, boys. You have to protect each other, and protect me, too.”

Sanjay looked up at her with absolute trust and devotion. “Miss? From what?”

“From them,” she said, and nodded at Luis, Marion, and me. “From our enemies.”

And like the good soldiers that Janice must have made them behind Marion’s back, Sanjay and Elijah climbed to their feet and faced us with identical expressions of determination.

Ready to fight, and die, for the cause.

“No,” Marion breathed. She sounded aghast, and deeply betrayed. I could understand that. ... She’d been just as seduced by Janice’s powers as anyone else. Janice had a rare gift of influence, one that had served Pearl far better than stronger, more overt talents. She’d manipulated absolutely everyone, to one extent or another. I was willing to bet that gathering the children at the school, logical though it might have seemed at the time, was also an idea that sprang from Janice’s suggestions.

While Marion had been focused on healing the children’s physical damage, Janice had been conducting a different kind of campaign ... one of steady, damning indoctrination, taking place right under the noses of the Wardens set to guard the children. Even Luis, warned that there was a traitor, had been blind to her.

As cynical and suspicious as I was, I would have chosen her last. There was something about her that simply defied reasonable doubts.

“Sanjay, Elijah,” Marion said, “don’t do this. We’re not your enemies. Your enemies are out there. They’re the ones trying to hurt us all.”

“No,” Janice responded. “She’s lying to you. Those people out there, they’re trying to get to us. To save us. We need to help them.”

“She’s right. They’re trying to save us,” Sanjay said. He sounded utterly certain of it. “You want to hurt us.”

“No, sweetheart, I don’t.” Marion’s anguish was palpable, but it was not reassuring; the boys drew a step closer to Janice, seeking the numbing, gentle warmth that she radiated. Only Ibby had broken with it, and only, I thought, because she’d seen Janice without that mask while she killed Ben. “Please don’t do this. You know we’re trying to help you. We’ve always tried to help.”

Her argument wasn’t going to win; I could see that. Sanjay and Elijah had both endured pain in the healing process, and they were too young and fragile to understand that the pain was necessary. Janice had chosen her willing avatars well, because even I, pragmatic as I was, wouldn’t strike against them unless forced to do so. They were a deadly combination—too small, and far too powerful.

Marion cast out a sudden strike of power, meant to send the boys to sleep, but Elijah batted it away with contemptuous ease. It was the wrong move, although if it had succeeded, we might have had a chance. As it was, whatever doubts the boys might have held were wiped away in the face of what they saw as an attack against them.

Elijah pushed power outward in a bone-crushing wave, directly at us. That, Marion and I blocked easily enough; it was our own specialty.

But he wasn’t our only problem.

“Down!” I yelled, and toppled Marion’s wheelchair to one side as Sanjay raised a hand. Flames exploded from the padding of her chair, but I pulled her safely out before she could be more than singed.

“I have to hold the wall!” she shouted at me, and I saw the torment and fury in her face. “I can’t split my attention; I’m too tired. You have to take them down, Cassiel. Do it fast.”

Elijah must have heard, because he sent another attack flying at us—no, not at us. At Luis and Ibby, wounded and defenseless now. I lunged in front of it and turned the power back at him in a hot golden flare. It knocked him backward in surprise—but not down.

I rolled out of the way of another bolt of power from Sanjay, which splashed against the stone ... directly into another send by Elijah, which closed crushingly around my bones, trying to shatter them like glass. He could squeeze me to a pulp in an instant before I could get my defenses in order ... but something interfered with him.

Isabel. She was lying on her side, eyes wide, face pale and ghostly under a coating of sweat. She was weak and terribly vulnerable, but she threw out just enough power to disrupt Elijah’s hold on me. Just enough to allow me to break it and throw him back, again.

He and Sanjay had an excellent strategy working ... I had no effective counter to Sanjay, but avoiding the strikes left me off balance and vulnerable to Elijah, whom I could counter, if given an instant to prepare.

They didn’t intend to give me that instant. Sooner or later, I would make an error, fall short, and they’d have me. Both of them. I needed Luis, but he was even weaker than Isabel; the bleeding from his leg continued, slowed but not stopped by the tourniquet he’d applied. Neither Marion nor I had the time or space to apply any kind of healing, and he was too weak to try it on himself. Earth Wardens were notoriously bad at self-administering their power, in any case.

Hold on, I begged him silently through our link. Please hold on.

We have an ace, he whispered back. Time to use it.

I didn’t understand for an instant, and then I did, as Luis fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small, thick bottle topped with a black rubber stopper.

He put his thumb on the stopper, preparing to pop it open. Preparing to release Rashid, and order him to save us.

“No!” I screamed. “Luis, don’t!”

He seemed startled to hear me say it, and shook his head. He was starting to lose focus from the bleeding; I could see the vagueness in his eyes. “Only way,” he said. “Need his help.”

“He’ll kill you! You’re in no condition to manage a Djinn!”

He wasn’t listening. I lunged. He pulled back, but I didn’t have time to wrestle with him for the bottle; I balled up my fist, put a burst of Earth power through the muscles of my arm, and punched him in the jaw, a neat right uppercut that snapped his head back and sent him reeling.

He let go of the bottle, still stoppered. I caught it, fought off his dazed attempt to get it back, and retreated to the middle of the room. Across from me, one of the stone walls that Marion had erected shattered under the force of the flames beyond, and a rippling wall of fire burst through, seeking the cooler air of our little shelter. Marion flinched, but she couldn’t seem to repair the damage. She crawled to Shasa’s side, fending off an attack from Elijah as she did, and shook her awake just as a huge white-hot fireball shot through the opening. I lunged for Luis and Ibby, covering them as it bloomed overhead, filling the room with unbearable heat and glare.

Shasa came upright, screamed out raw defiance, and crushed the fireball into a marble-sized ball of plasma, which she grabbed and threw back out to the other side of the gap. I felt her shield go back up, and for the next few seconds, at least, she held off the attack.

Sanjay closed in on Marion, who was struggling to put the stone barrier back up.

Isabel squirmed out from beneath me, staggered to her feet, and got in his way.

“No!” Marion shouted, but it was too late; Isabel channeled a raw amount of force that shocked even my Djinn senses and sent Sanjay flying against Janice before he could pull enough power to strike. “No, Cassiel, stop her! She’s not ready—this will kill her!” She choked and coughed, retching as the almost unbreathable air finally became too much.

We were all in danger of death, I thought, but didn’t have the breath left to speak. The air was thick and fetid, and it was an effort to even try to draw it in, as shimmering and hot as it was. Around us, the school was crumbling under the attack, and our circle of safety felt now like a slower, crueler way to die.

I looked down at the bottle in my hand and scrambled up to my knees. Luis struggled to get up, wiping blood from his mouth, but he was done. There was little strength left in him now. Certainly not enough to manage a Djinn imprisoned against his will, like Rashid.

Rashid would help us. Perhaps. But like all Djinn, he hated being compelled to do anything. Even his regard for me, even his distant appreciation for the humans around me, might not be enough.

He might find a way to allow us to die, simply out of a basic, inhuman need for revenge. It would be easy for him, so easy.

I couldn’t give him a reason.

I dropped the bottle to the floor, unopened, and grabbed a fallen slab of rock. Luis, guessing what I was about to do, flailed a weakened hand toward me, but he was too late.

I smashed the bottle with the stone, and felt a gust of something that was not quite wind, not quite power blow through us like a shock wave. It felt like a sigh.

“No,” Luis whispered. There were tears in his eyes as he collapsed with his cheek against the stone. “No, Cass, why? Why did you—”

“No other choice,” I choked, and fell beside him. Even Janice had collapsed to her knees, though Elijah and Sanjay were still moving, still a threat. “Can’t compel him.”

He was our last hope, but Rashid didn’t appear. Seconds ticked by, brutal and hopeless. Isabel went down, and Shasa; I dropped the stone and crawled to her, pulling her into my weak arms. The power inside me boiled impotently. There was nothing it could do. I tried to soften the stone beneath us, provide an escape route, but our enemies had thought of that, too.

No way out.

Elijah began to claw at the walls with his power, fighting Marion for control. He had more power, and he was winning.

“Give up,” Janice said between coughs. Her eyes were bloodshot and strained from gasping for what little air was left. She no longer radiated warmth and comfort, only desperation and fury. “Why won’t you just give up? Do you really think you can win?”

I didn’t give up because I couldn’t. That, I thought was something Janice, a mercenary at heart, could never really understand ... that there were some battles too important to retreat from, at any cost.

I’d gambled on Rashid, but that might have been my own blindness. I trusted a Djinn because I’d once been a Djinn, and yet I knew all too well that he had no obligation, no reason to help us. Luis had been ruthless, but he might have been right to keep Rashid captive.

No. I had done right.

I would die doing right.

I would die beside Luis, holding Isabel, and at least we would be together. At least that.

A blast of fresh air swept through the room, sweet and cold, and I gasped it in with helpless hunger. Luis’s lungs heaved, too, and Isabel’s. It braced all of us, and gave us a precious few more moments.

Unfortunately, it also gave Sanjay the fuel he needed to ignite an intense, tightly compacted fireball in the palm of his small hand, and fling it directly at me.

I had no chance of avoiding it, or of turning it aside. I reached for Earth power to try to form a shield of stone, but he’d acted so quickly I was drastically unprepared.

Luis lunged across me and intercepted the strike. The incandescent ball of boiling plasma hit him in the chest, and threw him like a rag doll into the cracked, smoking wall. He screamed, and convulsed, and I tried to get to him. I tried, but Sanjay threw another bolt, and this time I was able to raise the stone in time to block it, but Luis ...

He was lying motionless, limp as an animal broken at the side of the road.

The scream that came from my throat left it bloody and raw, and instead of relying on power I rushed the boy, shocking him, and grabbed him in my arms in a tackle. He felt scalding-hot, as if in the grip of a killing fever. I put my hand flat on his forehead and managed to moderate the power that I poured into him, although my instincts were to kill, to punish. ... But it wasn’t the boy I needed to kill.

It was the old woman, with her fixed and mocking smile, who watched from behind Elijah, with her other sleeping hostages around her. I lunged for her.

Elijah simply batted me aside, as if I were an insect, and sliced his hand down at my neck. I sensed the force he was wielding, blunt and brutal; he’d have crushed my flesh and bones, destroyed me without a single moment of mercy.

Something caught his hand on the way down.

Rashid.

The Djinn’s perfect suit and tie were at odds with the feral twist of his lips and the fire in his eyes—silver and as hot as the blaze bursting the stones around us. He held Elijah by the arm and looked down at where I lay dazed on the floor. “Get up,” he said. “And don’t think this makes us even, Cassiel. Your human owes me debts that will take generations to repay.”

“I know,” I said, and rolled to my feet. “Is the air your gift?”

“I couldn’t have you dying before I reaped my rewards.” Rashid looked down at the boy, who was struggling to break free. “This one’s stronger than I’d expect.” And Rashid was controlling him without much apparent effort. Impressive.

“Don’t harm him,” I said.

“Really, do you think I am so cruel?” Rashid did a good job of seeming offended, but I knew he wasn’t; I knew him too well to think he would blink at any action, no matter how morally offensive to a human. “Hush, child. Enough.” He touched a fingertip to Elijah’s forehead, and the boy went limp. Rashid dropped him to the floor and extended his hand to me. I wasn’t too proud to accept the help.

“Luis,” I said, with dawning horror. “Luis was hit—”

“Yes.” Rashid didn’t move; he didn’t so much as glance at where Luis lay. I rushed past Rashid, but he caught me and dragged me to a sliding stop. “Wait.” He held up a sharp finger to silence me, more of a threat than a gesture. Then he tilted it toward Luis.

Who was sitting up, staring down at the charred hole in his shirt. It was a black-edged gap of more than ten inches across. Beneath it, his skin looked normal and undamaged.

I wasn’t imagining it this time. His flame tattoos moved, shifting like shadows in nervous flickers, and then went still again.

Luis touched the burned edges of the fabric and looked up at me, lips parted in wonder.

“What happened?” he asked. He still looked pale and ill, but he should have been dead. That plasma ball from Sanjay had hit him with full force, and as an Earth Warden he had no real defense against it.

As an Earth Warden.

Luis, whether he recognized it or not, was manifesting a critical second power. I’d seen it, from time to time; I’d felt it in those inked tattoos, but I hadn’t understood what it was. But I did know that this time it had saved his life, and mine as well.

“As you see,” Rashid said, “he’s in no immediate need of my help. Not that I would give it.”

“He’s still bleeding,” I said.

“Survivable. And also not my problem.”

I had half expected that. “Then can you help us out of here?”

Rashid’s handsome, inhumanly sharp face relaxed into an unexpectedly charming smile. “For a price, of course.”

There were too many lives at stake to play this game. “I freed you,” I said, and held his gaze. It wasn’t easy, with those hot silver eyes boring into mine. “I freed you, and that is price enough, Rashid. Don’t push your luck.”

“Don’t push yours, friend Cassiel. One day you’ll need me more than you need me today.”

I looked around at the collapsing shell of our safety. At Shasa, somehow holding back the fire, at the last edge of her strength. At Marion, doing the same with the crumbling stone barrier. At Luis, Isabel, the fallen children. “If I need you more than this,” I said, “then I don’t think even you will be enough.”

Rashid cocked his head, as if surprised by that, and nodded. “Await me,” he said, and walked out, through the barrier of flames. Fire didn’t bother Djinn. In fact, it strengthened them. Djinn were born of inferno, long ago; that was why we’d been named devils, from time to time. But we were simpler than that.

And much, much more.

The attack against us fell into confusion, and then died away. The fires, left undirected by someone with that affinity, snuffed themselves out; they’d long ago exhausted their natural fuel. A few guttered in the ashes, but most of it was smoke, and even that quickly thinned.

Rashid came back, dragging two bodies. I didn’t know either one, but he hadn’t left much to recognize, either. He dropped them at my feet, like a cat leaving kills for its owner, and turned toward Janice.

I’d almost forgotten her. She was moving quietly toward the back of the room, where the stones had broken. No doubt she’d planned to slip out while we were distracted.

She was carrying the two boys in her arms, one on each hip.

Rashid looked at me. “Yours?” he asked.

“Mine,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Oh, there will be a charge. We’ll discuss that later. Privately.” He grinned again, and then turned his attention to Luis. “And later for you, too, Warden.”

Luis didn’t try to speak. He just shook his head. I glanced at him, tormented; he needed healing, and quickly. Rashid wasn’t about to do it; in fact, as I turned toward him, the Djinn evaporated into flickers of darkness and was gone.

Marion waved me on. “I’ll take care of him,” she said. “Go. Get her.”

I rolled the tension out of my shoulders and walked toward Janice. She tried to move toward the exit, but I easily outmaneuvered her. Anger made me quick, and feral.

“I can still kill them,” she warned me. “Doesn’t take much. You know that.”

“It wouldn’t take much to kill you, either,” I said. “And I’d do it before I let you go. I don’t want the boys harmed, but if you do it, it’s your choice. Mine is to stop you.”

“At any cost,” she said. “Really.”

“Yes.” I felt more like a Djinn in that moment than at any point I could remember since falling into flesh. “I promise you, you won’t leave here alive unless you put those boys down, safely.”

Janice flinched. What she saw in me woke fear, and obedience. She bent and carefully laid Sanjay down, then Elijah. As she straightened, she held up her hands in surrender. “All right,” she said. “They’re down. Deal?”

“Deal,” I agreed. And on the aetheric level, I wrapped power around her rapidly beating heart. She tried to stop me, but in the end, without her glamour, she was far weaker than I’d expected. “I didn’t tell you I would let you leave alive. Only that you wouldn’t if you failed to do what I said. You bargain badly.”

And then I killed her.

It was a great deal more merciful than she deserved.

Marion was dangerously weak, but her power and mine sufficed to heal the ragged tear in Luis’s artery, at least well enough that he could move safely. The volume of blood he’d lost was another matter. We accelerated the production of it, but it would be days before he was himself again. Still, he was conscious, steady, and able to walk, if stiffly; that was a great deal better than either of us had expected.

There was a bruise forming on his chin. He rubbed it as I helped him to his feet. “Damn, girl, you didn’t have to make your point quite that hard.”

“There wasn’t time for polite argument,” I said. “And you deserved it.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I kinda did. But you’re not going to hear it again. I’m blaming it on the blood loss.”

His sense of humor was back, for which I was heartily grateful. I braced him until he could stand on his own, and tried to step away.

He didn’t let me. His hands went around my upper arms, and held me in place, close to him. “You bet our lives,” he said. “On a Djinn’s goodwill.”

“It was better than betting it on his obedience,” I said. “You tricked him into the bottle. It wasn’t his choice. This was. You have to trust Djinn, Luis. You can’t force them to be what you want them to be.”

I was speaking of Rashid, most certainly, but I was also speaking of myself. And he knew that.

“You still hate me?” he asked. “Don’t go saying you didn’t. I felt it. I know how much it hurt you, what I did. What I said, sure, but mostly what I did. I never wanted that, Cass. Never.”

“And I never wanted to leave you,” I said. “Please believe that.”

He nodded, eyes gone dark. “Did you find her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hurt her?”

“Some,” I said, and shook my head. “Not enough. Not nearly enough.”

“You will.”

“We will.”

“Yes.” He kissed my forehead, with so much tenderness it melted the last of the icy pain within me. “We will.”

We left the ruins behind.

The other Wardens had met us on the way to the fire road, to the east ... a ragtag, injured bunch, but they hadn’t lost anyone else. A few asked about Janice. None of us commented on her loss with more than a brief acknowledgment of it. I wondered what Marion would say, in the end. She, more than anyone else, had made a catastrophic mistake in allowing Janice such unfettered, trusted access to her most vulnerable charges. The pain of that weighed heavily on her—visibly, in fact, in the slump of her shoulders and the new lines on her face. I’d managed to retrieve her wheelchair from the ruins, but the electrical power had been destroyed, and no one had the energy left to repair it. She pushed herself along the rocky path, face welded into an emotionless mask. Alone with her thoughts, and her failures.

Miraculously, only one of the children had died: Mike, whom I’d found outside of the building. Gillian seemed inconsolable; she’d sought out Isabel, and the two girls walked together, hands clasped. I wondered how that friendship had developed. They didn’t seem at all similar, really.

Humans often confused me, though.

The Wardens traveled in unexpected silence, communicating in careful whispers and gestures as we moved down the twisting path. At regular intervals, we paused to take a head count.

Just before we reached the fire road, we stopped for the last one. Luis and I stood together, not touching but closer than we’d felt since the decision to bring Isabel here. I still didn’t know if that had been a mistake, or a necessary evil; she seemed better, despite the desperate last stand in the school. Maybe Marion’s treatments had helped, though the seizures she’d suffered still frightened me, as did the pessimistic estimate of her chance of long-term survival.

I looked around for her, but there were two other Warden children behind us. “Ibby?”

Someone shushed me. Gayle passed me, rapidly conducting her head count. Then she came back, frowning, counting again.

Dread gathered in my stomach. I stopped her. “What is it?”

“Two short,” she said. “I didn’t see anyone leave.”

Neither had I, and it alarmed me. I’d been vigilant. Whoever had left the party had done so under cover of a veil, and a very good one.

Luis and I exchanged a look of perfect understanding, and spun away in separate directions, checking faces. When I reached the end of the line, I turned and ran back to meet him halfway. We instinctively grabbed hold of each other.

“She’s not here,” Luis panted. “Ibby’s gone. The other girl, too. Gillian.”

Gillian, who had been so distraught. But had they gone on their own, or had they been taken?

“We have to look for them,” Luis said. “They’ve only been gone fifteen minutes, since the last check. Can’t have gone far.”

Gayle grabbed him and pulled him to a halt. “Hey!” she hissed. “We’ve got refugees and wounded, and we don’t know that they’re safe yet! We can’t go tearing through the woods shouting!”

He shoved her back, but he must have known, as I did, that she was right. “Then what?” he spat back, but quietly enough. “Someone took her! I’m not just giving up on her!”

“We may be able to track her on the aetheric,” I said quietly. “And we don’t know that she was taken, Luis. We don’t know that at all.”

I was trying to prepare him, because I didn’t believe, not for a moment, that Ibby had been spirited away against her will. The child was, if nothing else, a fighter; she’d been taken once, and she would never go quietly again. Added to that, she was in the midst of a group, and no one had noticed her, or Gillian’s, disappearance.

She’d gone willingly, wherever she had gone. And she’d taken Gillian with her.

“Well?” Gayle whispered. “We can’t wait. I have to keep them moving. We’re vulnerable out here.”

“Go,” Luis said. “We’re staying.” I nodded. We stepped out of the group, and Gayle, after a troubled frown, led the others on into the dark. It took surprisingly little time before we were lost in the dark again, just the two of us.

Luis limped over to me as I stood surveying the dark, cold woods. The school’s fires had gone out, or at least sunk to sullen ashes; it was once again full, true night, and a moonless one. “Let’s go,” he said, and limped on, back toward the trail. “We might be able to pick up their tracks where they left the group.” I didn’t move. After several steps, he stopped and looked back. “Cass?”

“Stay where you are,” I said softly. “Don’t move.”

I heard a soft, whispering laugh through the trees. “You’re good; I’ll give you that,” said a woman’s voice. I recognized it all too easily. “Mira, he’s a tasty one. Yours?”

Luis started to turn, but Esmeralda—Snake Girl—whipped out of the shadows with blinding, reptilian speed, wrapping coils around him with crushing force. Her human half rose up, beautiful and terrifying as she hissed and bared her venomous fangs. Luis struggled, but Esmeralda was too physically strong to budge ... and when I tried to break her hold, my Earth-based powers bounced off of her without effect. In a very real sense, Esmeralda was part of that power. It had taken a Djinn’s death to seal her in the form she was in and take away much of her strength; that only served notice of how incredibly powerful and dangerous she’d once been.

I thought I could defeat her, but not with Luis held hostage in those muscular, tensing coils. She could crush him before I could save him.

“Very tasty,” Esmeralda said, and lowered herself to look into Luis’s eyes. “You have good instincts, Djinn. This one’s no rabbit. He’s more of a tiger.”

Luis tried something—I couldn’t tell what, but it didn’t matter; at the first sign of his drawing power, Esmeralda tightened her coils, and I heard bones and muscles creaking under the stress. He gasped, and then couldn’t pull in another breath to replace the one he’d lost. The panic in his face made her smile. “Definitely a tiger,” she said. “But tigers die just like rabbits, hombre. So play nice.”

“Let him breathe,” I said. “Please.”

She glanced at me, raised her eyebrows, and tossed her dark hair back over her shoulders. “Since you ask so nice, sure.” Her smile was real, and vicious. “You want to ask me why I’m here?”

“I know why you’re here,” I said. “You’re here because Ibby told you to come here. When?”

That startled Snake Girl, and once again I saw that flash that betrayed her genuine youth. She might exude self-confidence, but beneath it she was still a girl, one who’d made tremendous mistakes. “Who says I come running when some little brat calls?”

“Because you liked her. Because you saw in her what you once were. And because she asked your name.”

“You think I’m that simple?”

“No,” I said. “I think you’re that lonely, Esmeralda. How did she send for you?”

Es slowly unwound herself from around Luis’s body, and he staggered and backed away toward me. The two of us against the monster ... but I wasn’t seeing a monster anymore.

Es settled her coils comfortably, a glistening mound of sinuous flesh, and propped her chin on one hand. Her elbow rested on the top of a coil. “She called the shop and left a message to tell me where she was. She said she liked it here, but she figured things would go wrong. She thought I could help. She said it was the least I could do.”

“Can you help?”

“Yeah, probably.” Es shrugged. She studied her fingernails, and frowned at the dirt she found beneath them. She’d been traveling a long way, I realized; her shirt—the only clothing she wore—was dirty and torn, and her previously shiny, perfect hair was rough and tangled. No doubt she could manage to hide herself effectively with what remained of her Earth powers, because otherwise her travels would have been brief, and full of general panic. But even then, she hadn’t had an easy time of it.

I was willing to bet it was the first time she’d risked the outside world in quite some while.

“The girls,” I said. “Do you know where they are?”

“Ibby and the redhead? Yeah. I know where they were going.”

“And you just let them go?” Luis said. His fists balled up, and I saw the black tattoos on his arms glitter in the starlight and start to smolder. His use of fire was purely instinctual now, not directed with anything like precision. I laid a hand on his shoulder, and felt him deliberately reach for calm. “Where are they?”

“Doing something brave,” Esmeralda said. “They knew somebody would be coming for the convoy you have on the road. They split off. They’re going to intercept them.”

Luis spat out a curse. “We already had perimeter security,” he said. “The last thing we need is two of these kids out there handling power they shouldn’t be touching!”

“Listen, man-cake, I already slithered past your so-called perimeter security, like, fifteen times.” Es sighed. “You Wardens. Es stupido. You’d do better with third-rate rent-a-cops; at least they’d have guns. Ibby was right. If you want to keep your convoy from getting trashed, you’d better get your best on it. And the kids, they’re good. Better than you.”

“Es,” I said, “the more those girls use their powers, the more broken they become. They started too young. You understand that better than anyone.”

The Snake Girl looked away, and didn’t comment. Her coils shifted restlessly, and there was a slight, instinctive buzz from her tail rattle. “They’ll be okay,” she said. “Look, you can’t protect them. They’re going to do what they’re going to do.”

“It’s killing them,” Luis said.

Esmeralda’s dark gaze flashed up to lock with his. “And?” she asked. “What do you think making them not use it is going to do? Kill them slower? Some of them won’t make it. Some will adapt. That’s the way things go in this world. You can’t stop it, and you’d better not get in the way.”

“I’m not letting her do this,” he said. “Cass. Let’s go.”

“You won’t find them,” Es said. “One thing that kid knows how to do is hide. You won’t find them unless you trip over them by accident in the dark.”

“Can you find them?” I asked.

Es considered the question, and then tilted her head a little. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I don’t want to, though.”

I had let this go on too long, I decided. I was a little fascinated with Esmeralda, the way a mongoose is fascinated with a snake, but enough was enough. Luis was right. We couldn’t allow a six-year-old child to fight a battle for us.

I had been sending tendrils of power out through the roots of trees around us, and now, with a snap of will, I triggered the trap. Branches slammed down, forming a thick, springy cage around her. Roots squirmed from the dirt and wrapped around the branches, weaving it together.

Esmeralda let out a hiss of surprise, and I heard the dry rattle of her alarm. She battered the cage with the coils of her body, but it was tightly woven, and impossible for her to get real force into her struggles. “Let me go, you cold bitch!” she screamed, and ripped at the wood with her hands—but those were merely human hands, without the strength necessary to shred the tough fibers. “Let me go!”

“Once you tell me where they are,” I said. “You know this is too dangerous for them. Don’t let them down, Esmeralda. They meant for you to tell us. They hoped you would.”

“That’s not what she said.” The snake’s coils pulsed against the cage, trying to push it apart, but the trees were firmly rooted deep in the earth. Esmeralda subsided, panting, glaring through the mesh at us. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the branches. “She said not to let anyone find her.”

“She’s a child,” Luis said. “And she’s too brave for her own good. She needs us. Tell us where she is or I swear to God I’ll rip off your rattle and feed it to you!”

Esmeralda was silent for so long I wondered if she would tell us, and then she finally said, “I’m not afraid of you. I’m telling you because I think the gringa bitch is right; the kids shouldn’t be doing this alone. I was going to go help them anyway.”

“Where. Is. She?” Luis almost snarled it, and I felt the burning aura of fire around him again, a kindling that raised the temperature by several degrees.

Esmeralda sensed it, too, and went very still. The dry buzz of her rattle grew louder as she reacted to his threat, but she had nowhere to run, and she couldn’t strike to defend herself. Luis wouldn’t burn her alive—at least I didn’t think he would—but his rage was clear.

“If you stand between me and Isabel, I’ll wipe you off the face of the earth,” he told her. “You take us to her. Do it now.”

He nodded to me, and I released the cage of branches, which sprang back into their normal positions with a creak and rustle of dry needles. The roots shriveled back into the ground.

Esmeralda was free, but she still didn’t move. The steady, unnerving buzzing continued, like bones in a bottle.

“You keep it in mind,” she said. “I’m not your bitch. I’ll crush you and eat you if you mess with me.”

Luis brushed it aside with an angry swipe of his hand. “We can kill each other later. Ibby. Now!”

She relaxed a little, and the rattling slowed, then stopped. “All right,” she said. “Try to keep up, asshole.”

She could move with astonishing speed, and with a quick, sinuous flash, she was already disappearing through the trees. The pale white of her rattle was the only visible sign of her.

“Run,” I said, and took off in pursuit.