by Rachel Caine
“So would I,” Isabel said. I hadn’t seen her get out of the van, but she was now standing on the other side and facing Brennan from that angle. “And you wouldn’t like that, Mr. Brennan.”
“Oh, it’s just Brennan,” he said. “You’re a cutie, aren’t you? Don’t.” Once again, his voice went from warm and oddly gentle to utterly cold in the whiplash space of an instant. “If you think you’re going to whip up a little fiery surprise for me, I wouldn’t. See Miss Walinsky, there?” He nodded to a slight young woman in a violently purple hoodie, with blue streaks in her hair and a ring through her nose. “Miss Walinsky makes your normal firestarters look like wet rags. I don’t think either one of you wants to be getting into it. Portland already burned. We’re trying to keep that kind of behavior to a minimum here, so put a cork in it. So to speak.”
He returned his attention to me and held out his hand again. He didn’t need to speak.
And neither did I. I was an arm’s length from the edge, and now I took a giant step toward it, and held the bottle out, dangling it carelessly from two fingers over the drop. “I think we have room for negotiation,” I said. “Don’t we, Brennan? And the next time you threaten that child, I’ll take it out of you in flesh.”
His face went still and his eyes went empty, and for a second I couldn’t tell what he was doing or thinking. Then it was as if he flipped a switch, and he was all smiles. The hand lowered back to his side. “That would be interesting,” he said. “But let’s put a pin in that for now, shall we? Why don’t we get in out of the cold and have a nice, comfortable discussion? Always nice to see more Wardens. We damn well need the help. Okay, everybody stand down. Down. We’re all friends here.”
I sincerely doubted that, but he made gestures, and the armed military were the first to head back through the roof door. Then one by one the other Wardens followed. Miss Walinsky, I noticed, went next to last, and Brennan slowly backed up toward the exit while still carefully watching us. The pressure of wind against my body faltered, and stopped; I hadn’t even realized how much there had been until he released it. For a Weather Warden, he had an impressive amount of power and control.
“Come on down,” he said. “We’ve got coffee. And I promise, no more strong-arm tactics.”
This wasn’t because he had a moral aversion to them, I thought; it was because he was smart, and flexible, and he knew they wouldn’t work. Not with me.
I exchanged a look with my partner, and Luis shrugged, then winced from the twinges in his strained muscles. “Unless we want to live up here, no point in hanging around,” he said. “You realize he’s going to try to commandeer that bottle for the cause, right?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’d do the same in his place. But it’s not going to happen. The Wardens don’t do well with Djinn. They never have. And I’m not betraying Rashid to their tender mercies.”
“Well, there’s one good thing,” Luis said, and put his arm around Isabel as she came to join us. The van shifted on its flat tires, groaning, as Esmeralda slithered her way out as well. “We’re not on our own anymore. And there’s coffee. I don’t know about you, but I could use some of that.”
I agreed about the coffee, at least.
In fact, the coffee was excellent, but as Luis murmured to me, it was Seattle; hardly extraordinary, given their obsession with caffeinated drinks, that they knew how to properly make it. I sipped a cup and let the warmth soak into my abused body; I was Warden enough to ensure that there were no subtle chemicals included to, say, put me to sleep in order to liberate Rashid’s bottle. And Brennan, at least, wasn’t stupid enough to try that.
Instead, he was trying persuasion. And logic.
“Look, we’re happy you’re here,” he said as we took seats in what had once been some sort of corporate conference room; the chairs were opulent leather, the table large enough to seat thirty in comfort, and the lights were controlled from a remote that he operated with apparent expertise. On the far wall, a flat-screen television was tuned to a twenty-four-hour news channel. Both the chaotic footage and the scrawling text below reported mounting death tolls from the ongoing disasters around the country and the world. “As you can see, we need all the Warden power we can get.”
I remembered the still, breathless morning, and my conviction that it was the last peace the human race would know.
It was a pity I’d been right.
Esmeralda had declined to come with us; she’d ignored the shocked looks of the Wardens, and the outright white-knuckled fear of the military, and slithered into an office. She ordered food, a lot of it, and water, and slammed the door. I wasn’t expecting her to join the conversation anytime soon.
Isabel was with us, and the look she gave Brennan was unsettling. She didn’t like him much, and I supposed that was Brennan’s own fault, really—nevertheless, it was a pity. We needed to work together, and his actions had made that more difficult.
“Yeah, we were heading to join up with you,” Luis said. “I got a call from Warden HQ. They wanted to divert us to the mine problem.”
“Ah,” Brennan said. He sounded more subdued than he had before. “They got split off from us heading out of Portland. Going into the tunnels was the only way they could get away, but once they were in, there was no getting out. Their Earth Warden was killed, and without him, they’re stuck. They’re alive, but they need help, and we need them.”
“So you won’t mind if we go on and do that, then.”
“Not at all, but before you do, let’s talk about—”
“We’re not talking about the bottle,” I interrupted. “Because it stays with me. There’s no point in discussing it.”
Brennan settled back in his chair, dark eyes fixed on me. “You want to explain to me exactly how you managed to get a Djinn in a bottle? Because that trick stopped working some time ago, as far as I was aware. Not that I’d test it out.”
I stared at him, expressionless, until I knew I’d made him uncomfortable (though he was better at most in hiding it), then said, “All you need do is wait for a Djinn to try to kill you, have a bottle ready, and be able to hold him off long enough to repeat the ritual three times. Of course, your chances are somewhat slim.”
Brennan shook his head. “Slim,” he repeated. “I don’t think that’s the word I’d choose. Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Yes,” I said. “Do.”
Luis, sensing the tension between the two of us—oh, and it was thick, for reasons even I did not completely understand—leaned forward, sipped his coffee, and said, “Okay, so, we need to make sure that the girls will be safe here with you while we’re gone.”
“And how do you propose I guarantee that, Mr. Rocha?” Brennan asked. “I can’t guarantee anything to anyone, as of yesterday, and you should know that better than anyone.”
Isabel was frowning now, and she looked at Luis with her arms folded. “I don’t want to stay here,” she said. “I can go with you.”
“No, you can’t, mija,” he said. “Where we’re going is very dangerous, and I want you here, where you can do the most good, okay? The Wardens need your strength. We won’t be long, I promise.”
Her frown stayed, but she didn’t say anything more. Giving in so easily wasn’t like Isabel, and I wondered what she was plotting under the cover of that silence. Nothing I’d like, almost certainly.
“She’ll be just fine here,” Brennan said. “I just can’t give you any absolutes, of course, but we’ve got other young Wardens here as well. They’re being very helpful. I suppose you know about Portland…?”
“Of course,” I said.
“They came here to help defend Seattle after what happened there. Just arrived a few hours ago, but already they’ve been tremendously helpful. I’m sure your girl will do very well with them.”
I felt a sudden surge of alarm, and looked over at my partner. He had put down his coffee cup and pressed both palms flat against the conference room table. “Warden kids,” he said. “How
many?”
“Four,” Brennan replied. “Pretty damn gifted, too. They came with their guardian.”
I held out no hope that it was Marion Bearheart, or another truly qualified Warden, but I forced a smile. “I see,” I said. “That’s very fortunate. Perhaps we could meet them so Isabel could get to know them…?”
Brennan shrugged. “Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do than to make you two feel comfortable.” His sarcasm was thick enough to score steel. “Come on, I’ll introduce you. Maybe you can all huddle up and sing ‘Kumbaya.’”
“I’ll go,” I said to Luis and Isabel. “You stay here.”
He understood, and nodded. “You be careful.”
Brennan gave us an odd, impatient look, but shrugged and led the way out into the hallway to the bank of elevators. It was evident no one had been concerned with cleaning for a few days; the steel surfaces were smudged with fingerprints and—in one case—spattered with what looked like dried blood.
“Were these Warden offices?” I asked. They were generic enough to have housed anything from consultants to bankers, with neutral reproduction paintings and sturdy mock-antique desks. The receptionist’s desk opposite the elevators was manned by a burly tattooed man with a shaved head who picked up the ringing phone and ordered whoever was on the line to hold before stabbing a thick finger at another flashing button. He didn’t look like the clerical type.
“No, they were my cousin’s,” Brennan said. “Well, not his, but he ran the office for his company.”
“And they don’t mind you taking them over?”
“Their headquarters were in Portland,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to mind much anymore, at least for a while. My cousin sent everybody home and handed over the place. It was easier than commandeering a motel, and it’s got better infrastructure, for as long as the phones and computers last.”
He was right—they wouldn’t work forever; as more of the world fell apart, those delicate systems would be among the first to shatter, isolating people more, giving rise to ever-increasing panic and paranoia. Humans clung to the illusion of normality, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, but communication was what fed the illusion; starved of that, they would begin to band together in protective small groups, and those affiliations would create discord, even where none existed.
Society didn’t take long to break down, once the trappings of it were taken away. For now, it was merely smudges on the surface of an elevator, but once the electricity failed, once there were no more news announcers to urge calm and give some kind of perspective, however skewed, it would rapidly grow worse. We were days from anarchy, and Brennan knew that. I could see it in the tight lines around his mouth and eyes. He seemed sardonic and uninvolved, but that wasn’t true.
We were all involved now.
The elevator dinged its pleasant, civilized chime, and the doors slid open, revealing a windowless, airless box framed in wood. It was as small as a coffin, and I hesitated, then took a step back. “Are there stairs?” I asked him.
“Problem, Warden?”
“Yes. I don’t wish to leave my survival suspended on a mechanical cable and a whim,” I said. “Stairs?”
He shrugged and led the way off to the side, where an EXIT sign glowed red. “They’re fire doors,” he said. “It’ll be locked in the stairwell, no reentry. You’re an Earth warden, so I don’t expect you’ll need any key card to finesse the locks around here. Just bang on the door if you get stuck.”
The stairwell was clear and cold, and we walked down five floors before Brennan used his key card on a swipe pad at another door and clicked it open. “After you,” he said, and held it for me. “Down the hall and on the left. We put them in the smaller conference room.”
I opened the door he indicated, and found a room half the size of the one above us where Isabel and Luis waited. In it, two small forms lay still in sleeping bags in the corners, and three people sat at the table, talking. They immediately fell silent when we entered.
Two of those at the table were children, no older than nine years old—a boy and a girl, neither of whom registered strongly with me at the moment. No, I focused on the woman sitting in the middle.
The guardian.
She rose and bowed to me, graceful and unhurried. She was of Japanese descent, lovely and fragile, with the calm precision of one who’d been trained from birth to be beautiful, and she was, oh yes, she was. I didn’t know her, but it didn’t matter what the history of the flesh might be, because flesh was all it was.
The power that resonated out of her was utterly inhuman, and utterly unmistakable to someone who’d fought her to the death once before.
“Hello, sister,” I said. Next to me, Brennan gave me a sharp look.
“My dear Cassiel,” she said, and inclined her head as she folded her hands together.
The flesh didn’t matter.
What was inside her, glowing and feverish with power and madness, was my sister. My enemy.
Pearl.
Chapter 6
THE SILENCE HELD BETWEEN US, deep and thick as polar ice, and neither of us moved. Brennan finally cleared his throat and entered the room; he was no fool, in that he took up a point out of the line of fire, and equidistant from us both. “So you two know each other.”
“After a fashion,” Pearl said. “Many years ago. But we have been… out of touch. Isn’t that right?”
I didn’t answer her. I was considering options, and none of them were good; Luis was getting stronger again as he rested, but it would take time for him to be up to full strength and, even then, taking on Pearl meant taking on her four child-followers. She wouldn’t be here, in flesh, unless they were her best possible bodyguards, which meant they would be hideously strong and—no doubt—impossible to persuade of her real motivations. True believers were always the most dangerous, and children were more dangerous than most.
I finally said, “Yes, we’ve been out of touch. I confess, I preferred it that way, Pearl.”
“Shinju,” she said, and pressed a delicate hand to her chest. “My name is Shinju now.”
“Still Pearl, just translated into a different language,” I said. “Don’t play games.”
“I’m not. We have common foes, my sister. I’m here to help, with my children.”
“They’re not yours,” I shot back. “They have families, and they were taken from them.”
“These? No. These children came willingly. Their parents wanted them safe and protected, trained and nurtured. And I have done this, as you have with Isabel.” Her eyes were dark, and so was what dwelled in them. “This is Pamela. At the age of four, she was able to start fires with her mind, but she didn’t understand what she was doing; there were accidents, tragedies. Her family gave her up so that she might learn how to protect herself and those around her.” The girl looked up from the plate of unnaturally golden macaroni and cheese in front of her, and gave me a look that was eerily identical to Pearl’s; there was no real feeling in it, only assessment.
Pearl put her hand on the other girl’s shoulder now, and she straightened in evident pride. “Edie was medicated to stop her from tantrums,” she said. “But she didn’t need medication; she needed only reassurance and training in her craft. Weather, you see. Like Mr. Brennan. She can create a drop of water or a storm with equal ease. I’m sure you appreciate how valuable that skill can be to us now, in these dangerous times.”
“The kids are amazingly powerful,” Brennan said. “Let’s face it—we need every hand at the wheel right now. It’s not like we’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell as it stands without them.” He couldn’t mean it, not entirely; there was something about Pearl—Shinju—that radiated darkness, and he had to feel that, no matter how desperate the need… didn’t he? “The good thing is that they’ve committed to guarding our position here. As defenses go, they’re about as good as we can possibly have.”
“But they’re not being sent to rescue your Wardens trapped in the
tunnels,” I said. “I find it curious that they’re so powerful yet unable to do such a simple thing.”
“You can’t expect me to risk these children,” Pearl said, raising her delicate eyebrows. “I must protect them at all costs, mustn’t I? Isn’t that what any responsible adult would do? What you would do?”
Protect. The hypocrisy of the word coming from her lips made me so angry that for a moment all I could see was the red sheer curtain of blood, and her face smiling through it; I felt power surging inside me, hungry for release. She was mocking me, mocking us all. Pearl had no interest in the welfare of her children; they were tools, to be honed, used, broken, and replaced. She’d treated Isabel no better, and she’d gladly take possession of her again just to use and break her again.
It occurred to me, with an unpleasant shock, that Pearl could have gone anywhere, shown up in any Warden encampment, and been welcomed with open arms… but she’d come here. To Seattle. She’d tracked me and anticipated where I would go.
She wanted Isabel back.
“No,” I said aloud.
Her eyebrow slanted up in elegant mockery. “I should not protect them? Is that what you mean, sister? Shall I leave these poor children to the mercy of the world, to those who fear and hate them? Do you imagine their lives would be better? Their families were terrified of them. The human world had no answer for it. The Wardens turned their backs, saying they were too young. Only I could step in and keep them safe. How could I have done otherwise?”
The utter self-serving mockery turned my stomach. The children might believe it—I was certain they did believe that she cared for them; they’d hardly have that manic glow in their eyes, that love, if they thought otherwise. But Pearl had no love in her, no concern, no honor. It was all just flash and theater to her, the people in this world no more real to her than paper dolls.
