The realization came to me slowly, but it brought with it a massive shift of perspective. Luis wasn’t surprised by Rashid’s presence ... because he knew that the Djinn was there.
He knew why the Djinn was there.
And there was only one person who could know that.
I stared at Luis, and after a moment he reached in his pocket and took out a small, thick bottle sealed with a simple rubber stopper. He held it up for me to see, then put it back.
“You,” I said. “You have Rashid.”
“Yes.”
“Before I left you?”
“Yes,” Luis said. His voice was soft, but definite. “After you told me you were taking off, he showed up, carrying a message from the other Wardens. It was a God-given opportunity, Cass. I couldn’t take the risk that Ibby would be left without a last line of defense. That’s what he’s for.”
“You enslaved Rashid.” I felt sick, lost, and deeply betrayed. “Knowing what you know, you still did it, by force.”
Luis had the grace to look away. “I wasn’t sure it would work,” he said. “But I had to have something in reserve. I couldn’t depend on you; I knew that. You told me that, straight out.”
I had. I just hadn’t expected him to take me so literally.
“You’re not turning against the Wardens, or the school,” I said. “Then why—?”
“It was a strategy with Marion. We knew you’d leave us; we needed to flush out the threats along the way. I wanted to warn you. I tried to warn you.” Luis seemed uncomfortable now, and reluctant to spell it out; Rashid, on the other hand, smiled and picked up the thread.
“What your faithful lover is trying to say is that Marion ordered Warden Harley to his position in the first place. When you left, Luis arranged for me to send you there as well—expecting that with Harley a sitting target, any opposition would be drawn to him.” He shrugged. “I admit, the bargain to destroy Warden Harley was all my doing. But you didn’t have to kill him yourself. No harm done.”
“Shut up,” Luis said, and uncorked the container.
Rashid gave him a sudden, startlingly violent look that dripped of hatred. “A moment,” he said, voice still smooth despite the depth of that emotion. “She needs to know this.”
“What?” I asked.
“You can’t believe him,” Luis said.
“You can’t believe him,” I corrected him. “He has no reason to lie to me. Rashid?”
“The children from Chicago,” the Djinn said. “I know where they were being taken.”
“It doesn’t matter—she could have moved them anywhere . . .”
He smiled, but it wasn’t at all friendly. “I was thorough . Their final destination was in New Jersey.”
I could believe him or not, and clearly Luis wasn’t prepared to trust his word, but something in Rashid’s gaze prompted me to believe. I inclined my head slowly. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Destroy the bitch. That’s why you’re here, not for this mortal nonsense.”
That broke Luis’s temper with an almost visible snap. “Back inside the bottle, Rashid. Now.”
Rashid stretched himself out into a thin black mist and flowed into the glass. Luis slammed the cork home and dropped it into his pocket. “I said it before—you can’t believe him. He was supposed to warn you before sending you in there,” he said. “I told him to do it, but I didn’t make it an order. I didn’t think I had to. I thought he was your friend.”
“He was an ally,” I corrected. “And it wasn’t a strike at me; it was a strike at you. I was incidental. Also, I thought you were my friend. But you used me.”
“Had to. We needed to make sure we got all of Pearl’s scouts.”
“You sent me out blind. Knowing the odds.”
“Yeah, that’s how it worked out,” he said softly. “What, did you think you were the only hard-ass on the team, Cass? The only one who could make the hard choices? I chose to do what I had to. I had to protect this school and the kids inside. I trusted you to do what you had to do to protect yourself. I didn’t think it would send you running back here.”
I bared my teeth. “I came running back here to save you.”
“I know that now,” he said, and stepped forward. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you more than that, but I really thought Rashid would warn you. I really did.”
I took in a deep breath. “Give me the bottle.”
“I can’t do that. We need him. He’s the last defense for the kids.”
“Only if you don’t lose control of him, and he’s already fooled you once, Luis. Managing a captive Djinn is something that even the elder Wardens did carefully. You can’t expect someone like Rashid to just let you order him. Free him. He’ll help you of his own will.”
Luis shook his head. “I can’t count on it. There are too many lives at stake, and this is too important. There’s no traitor at the school, Cass. I have control of the Djinn. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”
I gave him a long, dark look and turned away to mount my bike. I felt filthy, inside and out. Betrayed in a way that I’d never expected.
“Wait.” Luis leaned on the handlebars of the Victory, stopping me as I kicked the engine to life. “You need power before you go. Let me do that, at least.”
I hated it. I hated him for it. But I hated myself, worst of all, for accepting. Luis took my hand in his, and the familiar hot surge of energy swept through me, healing and sure. I would have sworn that the man wielding that power could never have betrayed me, or deceived me ... but he had.
And it sickened and frightened me, that I could so misjudge him in this.
As soon as it was practical, I pulled free of him and turned the bike on the narrow trail to head back the way I’d come.
“Are you okay?” Luis asked me. The warmth in his voice made me feel a little more betrayed, a little more angry. “Cassiel—”
“Think on this,” I said. “If you’re not the traitor, who created the mudslide that almost killed me on the way here?”
He had no answer for that.
“Watch yourself,” I said. “And watch Rashid. He’ll betray you if he can.” I stopped short of saying what I felt: And you would deserve it.
Because even though I agreed with that, I loved him, dear God, I loved him, and that was utterly damning.
I put the Victory in gear and roared away.
Chapter 8
MANY HOURS LATER, I stopped for gasoline and a meal at a diner that proved to be delicious enough, though I avoided any kind of beef, in honor of my recent new friends from the cattle truck. It was, by that time, nearly six in the morning, and I dialed my friend in the FBI with great pleasure. “Hello, Agent Turner,” I said, with a good deal more cheer than was perhaps called for. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Matter of fact, you didn’t. Sorry about that, Cassiel.”
“I would never wish to cause you inconvenience.”
“I thought the Djinn didn’t lie.”
“Who ever told you that?”
“Huh, good point. Where are you?”
“A diner outside of Albuquerque—the Adobe Bowl. You know where it is?”
“I’m not that far away. Stay put. I’ll come to you.”
“I’ll be here.” I hung up without any kind of conventional end to the conversation; in my experience, that left the other party feeling off balance and frustrated. I liked to have Turner frustrated; he tended to give more away than he intended.
I ordered pie and coffee, and nursed both while the sunrise turned the land to intense bands of color—purple for the mountains, dark green for the foothills, ochre and gold for the flatlands. There was a television running silently in the corner of the diner, tuned to a news channel. One of the stories was about an abduction of children that began in Denver and ended in Chicago, which had been foiled by a fast-thinking citizen. All the children had been recovered safely, and the kidnappers either dead in the ensuing gun batt
le with police or fled. A manhunt was under way.
I doubted they would ever find the bodies of those who’d “fled.” Rashid had not been in a very good mood, and after posing as the “fast-thinking citizen,” he would want his pound of flesh.
The children were safe. That made me feel a distant, cold satisfaction, if not happiness; but even the satisfaction was wiped out by the next story, which involved the grisly discovery of a shooting victim in the woods, two men dead of apparent natural causes and one who’d been torn apart by wild animals.
Luis had gotten what he’d wanted from me. Full value.
They hadn’t found the one who’d been sealed alive inside the tree, but he was as dead as the others, no question about it.
“Gruesome stuff,” said Turner as he slid into the booth across from me, a porcelain cup of coffee already in his hand. He was a thin, bland sort of man, and as usual he was dressed in what I considered the FBI uniform—a dark suit, a plain tie, a white shirt. Turner was, however, also a Warden—not very powerful but well trained, at least. I doubted his FBI bosses had knowledge of that particular aspect of his life. “What kind of pie was that?”
“Good,” I said. He sighed, motioned to a waitress, and pointed at my pie.
“Another one of those, unless it’s cherry. I don’t like cherry.”
“Coconut,” the woman said. “That okay?”
“Brilliant.” He sipped coffee and returned his attention to me. He’d showered recently; the ends of his hair were still dark and damp against his neck, and his face seemed freshly shaved. By contrast, his shirt seemed wrinkled and stale, and his suit hadn’t seen recent cleaning, either. “Nice trip?” He glanced over his shoulder at the TV. “You pass that place along the way, the one with the dead guys?”
“I think I would remember something like that.”
Turner had enough experience with me to recognize a non-answer when he heard one, and for a moment I thought he might continue to pursue it, but he decided not to, as his slice of pie was deposited in front of him. “I’m sure they needed killing,” he said. “That would be the usual excuse, even if you’re not from Texas.”
“I thought you investigated things like that.”
“Murder isn’t a federal crime,” he said, “luckily for you. Abductions are, which is why I was tracking this Denver thing until miraculously everything just went wrong for the kidnappers. Kids got out of it fine, which was another miracle considering the bullets that started flying around. Incidentally, although this isn’t going out to the media, all of the adults in the plot were either recent converts to the Church of the New World or hired guns paid as muscle. And the kids were all Warden kids. You got any insights?”
“None that would be useful to you,” I said. “But you didn’t call me because of those kidnappings.”
“Not originally,” he agreed, and considered his next words over a bite of pie. “You said the FBI wanted you to come in for a case. Truth is, there is no case. They want you to consult on some hypothetical scenarios.”
“Consult,” I repeated, frowning. “I don’t think I understand your meaning.”
“I did some digging around to get this, so please, tip generously. I mean that some eggheads up in Quantico have developed a what-if idea about what could happen if our relationship with the Wardens goes sour, and they’d like you to render an expert opinion about how likely the FBI and other governmental agencies are to be able to contain the situation.”
It was frankly laughable to think that, should humans somehow go to war with Wardens—much less with Djinn—there would be any scenario at all under which they would live, much less win, but I gazed back at him with what I hoped was a politely interested expression. “I should be glad to render my opinion,” I said. “But I don’t have time for such things at present.”
“I’m afraid their response to that is that you’re going to make the time,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to meet you out here instead of at my offices. They’re going to, ah, require your immediate assistance. You understand what I’m saying?”
I thought so, and ate the last bites of pie instead of offering an immediate reply. “You think they will take me into custody and force me to do it.”
“I think they’d try. Look, I don’t agree with eighty percent of what the Wardens are up to these days, but I could say the same about the FBI, and that’s why I think I’m getting less than half the story at any one time. Wardens don’t trust me; my colleagues at the day job trust me even less. Officially what they’re telling me is that you’re under no obligation to help them, but I’m placing my bets that if you say no, you get strongly reminded that you’re now a citizen of the United States of America, and there’ll be some statute they invoke to make damn sure you don’t go anywhere until they’re ready to let you off the hook.” He paused, licking coconut cream from his fork. “I know you well enough to know that detaining you when you want to be somewhere else is a really awful idea. So in the interests of you not melting down a wing of a government building and putting yourself on the Most Wanted list, along with every Warden who ever met you, let’s get you heading somewhere else. Fast.”
It explained much, including why the government had initially wanted Luis to bring Ibby, and me, to an area they controlled ... Area 51. They wanted me, and they weren’t inclined to change their minds.
I signaled the waitress for another cup of coffee and, after due consideration, for another piece of pie. Watching him eat was making my taste buds crave another. “And you? They’ll know you spoke to me.”
“Yeah, they’ll know,” he said. “Fact is, though, they don’t know what we talked about, and technically I don’t know enough to have warned you off anyway. My story is that I tried to persuade you to come in, but you didn’t want anything to do with it. You told me you were heading for Mexico.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And where am I going?”
“Anywhere but Mexico. Look, I don’t care. I don’t want to know.” Turner was concentrating very carefully on his pie, and no longer meeting my eyes at all. “I’ve seen the stakes. You need to get where you’re going and put an end to this. I don’t care if you do it by our rules or not. I’ve seen what Pearl has done to these kids. So have you.” He suddenly looked around, frowning. “Where’s your shadow?”
“Who?”
“You know who I mean. Big, tall guy, badass tattoos ...?”
“Luis has other commitments,” I said coolly. “He’s not involved at present.”
“Huh.” Turner chewed his pie thoughtfully. “I’d have placed a bet that I’d never seen the two of you apart.”
“You’d lose,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be the only one.”
My pie and extra cup of coffee were delivered, and I slid the waitress a larger bill than necessary to pay for us both. “Margaret,” I said. She looked up, startled, and I focused on her tired, faded green eyes. “Margaret, we were never here. You don’t remember serving us at all.” The money was for my FBI friend’s benefit. The pulse of power—illegal to use in this way, for a Warden—was the real weapon I was wielding. In her mind, our faces blurred and became indistinct. “Keep the change.”
She smiled vaguely and wandered on. I ate my pie quickly, savoring every bite, and drained the coffee in one long gulp. “The sun’s up,” I said. “You should go before you’re late to work.”
He looked at his watch. “I’ve still got plenty of—”
“Ben.” Now I had his eyes, too. “No, you don’t. You need to go, now. I’m sure you have paperwork to com plete. Just forget you saw me today.”
I had him now, too, caught in the hold of my gaze, and my borrowed powers. The pupils of his eyes widened, and I sensed that he was thinking now about getting to work, and wondering vaguely why he’d come all the way out here to eat pie, of all things, for breakfast.
Before he could focus again, I slipped out of the booth and walked quickly away, out into the hot spill of the morning sun. In ten
seconds, I was on the bike and riding away.
I’d lost another ally. More critically, perhaps, I had gained an adversary of definite ability ... the entire system of human law enforcement, which could be easily brought to bear upon me because of its vast size and scope. I was no Djinn, to slip quietly away. I was flesh and blood—powerful, but fragile. I could be hurt, imprisoned, or killed.
So be it. I would risk all that, and more, in order to ensure that Pearl was stopped from hurting another child as she’d hurt Isabel.
That was my only mission now.
My first stop was at an Albuquerque map store that sold detailed laminated illustrations of every area of the United States. I bought sets detailing roads, another with painstaking topographical detail, and colored markers. Then I stored it all in a plastic tube that I slung across my back, and rode my motorcycle to the interstate. It didn’t much matter which direction I chose, so long as it was out of Albuquerque and heading toward a major city, so I picked the widest, straightest roads possible, and opened up the throttle. The buffeting of the wind numbed my skin and froze my hair into unruly spikes, and hours passed before I spotted a quiet, out-of-the-way motel that seemed clean. It had only two other vehicles in the parking lot—one, a battered pickup, almost certainly belonged to a staff member. The other was a dusty dark red sedan with out-of-state license tags and children’s toys in the back window.
I paid for a room. It was all I wanted—simple, well maintained, without any of the luxuries so many travelers seemed to expect. I bought a bottle of water from a machine, sat down at the old, narrow table with my maps, and put down everything I knew.
Then I rose up into the aetheric and zeroed in on the closest of Pearl’s compounds. That one, the Colorado facility, was long gone, dead and closed down, with nothing left to even mark it in the physical world. It wasn’t so easy to erase the stains in the aetheric, though. A darkness still hovered there, and I directed my insubstantial body to step inside that quivering cloud.
It felt like heat, and rot, and hate, and even the ghost of it made me feel drained and exhausted—but I had what I needed, as quick as the encounter had been. I had the taste of Pearl’s madness.
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