Unknown (2 page)

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

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

It’s a memory I don’t care to relive.

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

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

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

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

“Deal.”

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

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

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

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

“Inside,” he repeated. “Please.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luis looked at me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Like the Ma’at.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pearl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luis did not know me at all.

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

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

“That would be a different kind of day.”

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

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

It would be soon, though.

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

Police.

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

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

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

“How can we help you?”

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

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

Perhaps literally.

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

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

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

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

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

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