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From the sofa in the small living room, I heard Luis say, “You feeling better?”

“I am now,” I said, and drank yet another cup to the dregs, set the mug down, and clumsily made my way to the sofa to sink down beside him. The crutches clattered down on the floor.

Luis looked . . . himself. Bruised, yes, and some the worse for wear, but I saw no serious wounds or braces.
Lucky,
I thought. Or more skilled than I at surviving it.

“Thank you for the coffee,” I said.

“De nada,”
he replied. “I made it for myself. You got a side benefit.”

He turned, arm across the back of the sofa, and studied me with concern. I didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, I drew fingertips down my leg. “I don’t remember,” I said. “Being treated for this.”

“You wouldn’t. They kept you out. You were thrashing around like a caged lion. It’s okay, though. The brace is on just to keep you from doing something crazy. Bones are together.” He paused for a moment before saying, “Crazy being totally damn relative with you, by the way.”

I sighed and let my head fall back against the sofa. “At no point did I wish myself injured,” I told him. “I’m not by nature that sort of masochist. That’s a human trait.”

“No, you’re a sadist is what you are. You know what it’s like to be close to you, Cassiel? You know what it’s like to feel so . . . helpless? Watch you do this to yourself?” He stopped and rubbed his hand over his face. “Shit. It’s not your fault, I know that. I just hate it. I hate this. How did it get to be this way?”

“By slow steps,” I said. “By nobody’s will.” I twisted awkwardly, and met his gaze at last. “Isabel?”

“She’s all right.” He didn’t sound convinced of it, but more as if he was trying to make himself believe. “She’ll
be
all right, anyway. They did some unholy shit to these kids, you know. They made them think—all kinds of things. Used illusion to convince them the people they ought to trust were evil. There’s no pit deep enough for these bastards, I’m telling you that right now.”

“And her power?” I asked.

“We’re looking into it,” Luis said softly. “She’s got a dual gift. Or would have had, anyway. The Wardens don’t want to lose that. But they can’t have her running around with those kinds of uncontrolled powers, either. Neither can I. Not if I love her. But I don’t know how—I don’t know how I can let them neuter her like that.”

I felt that go through me like a bolt of electricity. “Neuter her?”

“You know, do the surgery. Take away her powers completely. It’s dangerous, and it might be fatal if they fuck it up. Worse, it’s not always effective. It could leave part of her power intact, to surface later, and she’d be even worse at dealing with it.”

Not to mention what damage it would do to Isabel herself. Some Wardens could walk away from their powers safely. Others . . . others crawled away, bloody and bleeding. Others would do anything to undo the choice they made.

Isabel wasn’t the sort of Warden who could walk away. I knew that already, I saw it in her. She was powerful, and she would only get more powerful.

Or more damaged.

Or both.

It was the nightmare that Pearl had promised them, and here it was, a terrible possibility.
I’d promised. I’d promised them . . .

“What will you do?” I asked him. He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers as if they pained him.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Wish to hell I did. I think—I think I have to take the chance to temporarily block her powers again. That’s dangerous in itself, and it doesn’t always work, but at least it’s not ... permanent. If we can delay things for another six, seven years, at least she’ll have enough physical maturity to handle what happens inside her body with the Earth power. That would be the right age for that to start emerging anyway. The other kids aren’t in as bad a shape.”

I nodded. It sounded best to me, too.

“She wants to see you,” he said. “I told her no, not right now. You need time to heal.” He swallowed. “And I have to ask what happened with that boy. The one who died.”

“You have to ask officially.”

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes. “I killed him.”

Silence. Outside I heard life going on—someone mowing the grass, children laughing, radios and televisions competing for attention through open windows. The drone of an airplane overhead. Car engines on the street beyond.

Luis said, “I don’t think you did, Cass. I examined the body. He was drained, just like the boy in the van. I know you wouldn’t do that. I know you couldn’t. It was Pearl.” He fell silent for a few seconds, then said, “Tell me what happened.”

I did, slowly, without any real emotion in my voice. I couldn’t feel much just now. Only exhaustion. Futility. When I was finished, Luis reached out and took my hand in his, and squeezed hard.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “I am so sorry.”

“It was my choice,” I said. “To go in. I thought it was right.”

“It was. We got Ibby and those other two back.”

He didn’t understand. Pearl had gotten exactly what she wanted.

Isabel had come back to us, and we had no idea what had really been done to her. I doubted Pearl had allowed us to take her without there being a deeper purpose in it.

And part of me had been burned black in the process—a critical part that connected me to the human race. “The boy,” I said. “What happened to his body?”

“We took it with us,” Luis said. “I looked into it myself. His parents are dead. He was an orphan. Disappeared from a foster family years ago. Nobody to mourn him but us.”

That wasn’t better.

“She’s using me,” I said. “Picadors and the bull. She’s driving me toward something, and soon I won’t have any choices left, Luis. Soon, I’ll have to destroy what I love, or see everything else taken. There’s no way out. She’s thought of everything. I can’t—”

“You can,” he interrupted me. “Cassiel. Ashan didn’t pick you for no damn reason. He picked you because you were the
only
Djinn who could do this. Who could face Pearl and win. Even he couldn’t do it, or he would have. You’re not done. We’re not done.”

“I’m tired of chasing her,” I said. “I have to find a way to get ahead of her.”

“Then we will,” he said.

“Just like that.”

“Yeah, pretty much. What did all those locations the FBI showed us have in common?”

I felt a stirring of something like interest. Like hope. “Ley lines,” I said. “They were following ley lines.”

“Then we follow them too. We start locking down places she could go. We start hemming her in, forcing her to play
our
game.” Luis’s hand felt warm against my face. “Look at me.”

I opened my eyes and focused on him. He was close now, and the fierce light in his eyes surprised me.

“Don’t let her take you down,” he said. “I know you, Cass. I’ve seen you. You’re part of me, and I’m part of you, and that’s how it is, all right? You can’t pull bullshit on me because I
know.
Whatever you used to be, however much of a badass Djinn, you are one of us now. Human. Fragile. Feeling. It’s all right to
feel
.”

I felt tears well up. Real tears, hot with anguish, with frustration, with awful fear. They burned in my eyes like Djinn fire.

His thumbs stroked them away as they fell.

“Don’t let her make you the villain,” he said, and kissed me. “Because I don’t want to be in love with the villain, okay?”

I clung to him desperately, tasting my tears on his lips, tasting the warm, sweet light beneath of his love for me.

He meant this.

And for a moment—just a moment—I found that peace, that gentle whispering calm, that came from the Earth herself.

Not alone, though.

There were two of us in that place of peace.

And that was enough, for the moment.

 

... To be continued in
Outcast Season: Unseen

As always, music is my muse—and sometimes my lifeline. Here are the tracks that helped steer me through the turns on
Outcast Season: Unknown.

Rachel Caine
is the internationally bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including the Weather Warden series. She was born at White Sands Missile Range, which people who know her say explains a lot. She has been an accountant, a professional musician, and an insurance investigator, and still carries on a secret identity in the corporate world. She and her husband, fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad, live in Texas with their iguanas, Popeye and Darwin. Visit her Web site at
www.rachelcaine.com
, and look for her on Twitter, LiveJournal, MySpace, and Facebook.