Nothing disturbed us for hours, and hours, except when we fell asleep at last curled together in delicious, delirious exhaustion.
Chapter 2
BEFORE DAWN,
there was a knock at the front door.
Luis woke up fast, sliding out of my arms and out of the bed before I’d finished opening my eyes. He had a pair of blue jeans draped at the end of the bed, and pulled them on with hardly a pause, still zipping and buttoning as he moved to unlock the bedroom door and go down the hall.
I found a thick black robe hanging on the back of the closet door, and belted it as I followed him. He’d already reached the door and was reaching for the knob as the knock came again—an official kind of summons, fast and confident.
“Yeah?” he yelled through the wood, and motioned me off to the side. “Who is it?”
“Police, Mr. Rocha,” said a male voice from the other side. “Open up, please.”
“Let’s see a badge first,” Luis said, and cracked the door just enough. I glimpsed something that glittered brass in the porch light, and Luis nodded and stepped back. A uniformed officer came inside, noticed me in the next instant, and I found myself being summed up in a quick, head-to-toe glance that held no trace of emotion—just analysis.
There was a strong tingle of power from him, and a quick look on the aetheric assured me that he was, in fact, a Warden. One of the few who had assumed a mainstream occupation ... but I supposed that there were considerable advantages to having Earth powers, as a police officer. Strength, and speed, and the ability to bring down a fleeing suspect with knots of grass and the flailing limbs of trees, to begin with—and I hadn’t considered how useful Earth powers might be for tracing a suspect, or evaluating clues left behind. Theoretically, an Earth Warden could be a walking laboratory, much like a Djinn, within those close confines of the limitations of his power.
If he was at all pleased to meet us, I couldn’t see any trace of it in his manner, which was cool and businesslike. “Warden Rocha,” he said, and held out his hand, palm out. The Warden’s stylized sun symbol glittered there briefly, fired by a tiny burst of power—another form of a badge of authority, and one I didn’t have, though I could have easily enough. He transferred his cold, guarded gaze to me. “Cassiel. I’m Lieutenant Cardenas.”
I supposed that I didn’t merit the title of Warden, even though I certainly did the work. Interesting. That offended me a little. “And which organization are you representing at the moment? The Albuquerque Police Department or the Wardens?”
“Warden Bearheart sent me,” he said, which was answer enough. “She wants you two to bring the girl with you and come to meet her people for handover.”
“Handover,” Luis repeated, in a voice that wasn’t anything like friendly. “What the hell do you mean,
handover
?”
Cardenas shrugged. “As in, you bring her, you hand her over, you drive away. That kind of handover. Didn’t think there was anything unclear about that.”
Luis made a move, and I grabbed his arm in a tight, sanity-inducing grip, hauling him to a stop. “No,” I said. “We’ve had enough trouble with the police.” I meant that
he
had, and he knew that; I saw the fury slowly bank itself down in him, and he took a deep breath and nodded to me to let go. I did, but I didn’t back off far.
“Maybe you don’t know,” Luis said, his tone gone carefully flat, “that my niece is only five years old.”
“Almost six,” Cardenas said. “And I understand how you feel, but this ain’t optional. She needs to go to Warden Bearheart. Nothing bad’s going to happen to her.”
“No.”
“You know what you’re saying?”
“No way is Ibby being
handed off
.”
“I ain’t arguing about it,” Cardenas said. “Just delivering the message, that’s all. You can do whatever you want about it. I’ve got plenty to do without being your own personal message service, so if you want to tell Bearheart no, you call her up yourself.”
Luis’s jaw was stubbornly set, but he wasn’t being reasonable; his reaction was emotional, and I intervened on his behalf. “And where would Warden Bearheart like us to go?” I asked. When Luis shot me a furious look, I said, “It doesn’t obligate us to anything to know the intended destination.”
He had to nod, unwillingly, at that. “All right,” he said. “And why do this now? Ibby’s under control. She’s doing just fine.”
She was not, in fact, fine, and he knew that, but I understood his intense desire to protect the child from more trauma and harm. The Wardens didn’t have a spotless reputation for caring for their own, and I knew that made him wary, and very reluctant. Still, I had heard no ill of Marion Bearheart, and nothing but good about her healing craft. If anyone could heal Ibby’s wounds, it would be someone like her.
“There’s a rendezvous point in Nevada,” said the police officer. “I was told to give you the map.” He reached into a breast pocket and took out a compactly folded piece of paper. It was simply a computer printout of a state map, with no directions or locations highlighted. He held it out to Luis, who didn’t make a move to take it. I passed my hand over the map, using a small amount of power even as Cardenas said, “That won’t work; I already tried it. It’s—” His voice died, because under my touch, an invisible route sparked to life in glowing blue. I quickly killed the glow before it could reveal much. The Wardens were being secretive with the purpose of all this, and highly security-conscious. This map had been keyed specifically to Luis and me. I folded the paper.
“Thank you,” I said very firmly. “Was there anything else?”
“Guess not,” Cardenas said, and turned to go. Luis stopped him at the door.
“Wait. Did she say anything about why she wanted Ibby? Does she think we’re not safe here?”
“No clue. Like I said, I’m just the messenger. You want answers, get Bearheart on the phone. If she’ll take your call, you’re higher up than me.”
Luis weighed the risks, and finally nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Cardenas the Warden disappeared, and Cardenas the policeman reasserted himself. “Sorry about your loss, by the way. I worked that drive-by of your brother and sister-in-law. Bad stuff. I heard the gang’s almost out of business these days. Local
jefe
had himself some kind of meltdown, decided to go straight and start doing charity work.” There was knowledge in that stare, and it worried me; Luis had taken steps on his own, and I’d seen him do it. In altering the gang leader’s mind, he had violated one of the principal ethical codes of Earth Wardens. Of course, luckily for him, the Wardens were pressed on all sides now with emerging threats, so disciplining their own probably didn’t rank highly at the moment.
“Sounds like a good outcome for a scumbag like that,” Luis said. “Better if he’d had his change of heart before he pulled a gun on my family.”
“Yeah.” Cardenas nodded. “Better if that had been the timing, for sure. How’s the little girl doing?”
“Nightmares,” I said. “But she seems to be adapting.”
“Kids do that. Got two myself.” He touched the shiny brim of his uniform cap. “If something like that happened to my family, I might want the same kind of change of heart for that guy, too. If I couldn’t put a bullet in him, I mean.”
He was, I realized, obliquely telling Luis that although he knew—or at least suspected—the illegal alterations Luis had performed on the gang leader, he wasn’t going to report it. I hadn’t realized how much of a danger that might have been until I felt the cold, close passage of it.
Luis had gone just a fraction of a shade more tense, and now he nodded and opened the door. Cardenas gave us both good-byes and walked down the path to the police cruiser waiting at the curb. We watched it drive away. I still had the piece of paper clutched in my hand.
“Let’s see it,” Luis said. I unfolded the map out on the nearest flat surface, and moved my palm over it to wake the glowing symbols again. Blue flowed down roads, over what appeared to be open spaces, ending in a deserted area marked by a simple sun symbol. On the map, there were borders, but no reference marks.
Luis whistled. “What do you think about that?”
I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t think anything.” Because I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Area 51?” When I didn’t react, his eyes widened. “Come on, seriously? You never heard of Area 51? Dreamland?” When I shook my head, he sighed. “Got to get you a pop culture makeover one of these days. Boiling it down, this means the spooks all of a sudden like us enough to throw open the borders to one of their most secure facilities. Wardens have never been welcomed there before; maybe they’re letting us in because they don’t like all this weird Church business a whole lot more. They’ve had some bad experiences dealing with those kinds of cults.”
His moment’s fascination with the map faded, and he walked away, clearly thinking.
“What?” I asked him. I couldn’t follow what logical—or illogical—leaps he was making, but I could sense the changes in his mood quickly enough, and it had darkened considerably.
“Area 51’s a hell of a secure spot,” he said. “But I really can’t see the government letting the Wardens set up shop in there. If they’re letting us in at all, they’ve got some kind of ulterior motive about it.”
“Like what?” I asked. He turned and looked at me for a long second, then shook his head.
“Could be Ibby,” he said. “Could be they want all these kids for themselves. Could be they want you, Cass.”
“Me,” I repeated, surprised. “Why?”
“Because the feds have never had an actual Djinn, they never could even come close to grabbing one. You, you’re vulnerable, and you’re the next best thing—you can spill all the weaknesses, and give them an idea of Djinn strength, too. I don’t like it, and no way am I going to risk Ibby, either.”
I had never thought of myself as vulnerable, and the idea surprised me far more than I’d expected. “I could fight them,” I said.
“Yeah, sure you could. But this is something you don’t understand about humanity,
querida
—you can kill one, or five, or ten, but they keep on coming. I guarantee you, in Area 51, if they want you, they’ve got you.”
Unsettling. “Then what do you want to do?” I asked.
He locked the door behind Cardenas. “I want to find out what the hell Marion thinks she’s doing, because I’m not taking Ibby—or you—blindly out into the field of fire. Not ever again.”
It took two hours to get a return call from Marion Bearheart. When it finally came, Ibby was eating cereal in the kitchen with us, and Luis gestured for me to finish pouring her orange juice and follow him into the other room. Ibby watched us go, too much awareness and calculation in her face, and I wondered just how much we could really keep from her. I leaned over to stroke her silky hair back from her face. “Just a moment,” I promised her. “You’ll drink your juice?”
That got a well-remembered, brilliant smile from her. “I know, juice is good for me,” Ibby said, which wasn’t the same thing.
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” she sighed, and reached for the glass to down a mighty mouthful, to prove her point. I kissed her forehead and followed Luis.
He was pacing, with the cordless phone held to his ear. I knew that particular style of restlessness in him; it meant he was deeply worried, and very angry on some level he was determined not to convey. His knuckles, however, were pale where he gripped the receiver. “Yeah,” he was saying. “Yeah, I
know
the kid needs help, Marion; that’s not what I—” He paused, clearly interrupted, and his dark eyes met mine briefly before the pacing carried him onward. “Ibby lost her mother and father; that’s enough trauma for any kid her age. Then those nutcases triggered her powers too early. They filled her head full of lies about the Wardens; they told her I was dead—showed her I was dead. They showed her how Cassiel killed me. And now you want to put her in some kind of
camp
—No, shut up and let me finish. I don’t care if you call it a ranch or a camp or a hospital or a school; it’s nothing but more of the same. She’s had enough terror and brainwashing for a lifetime, Marion. She needs a home, and I’m not sending her anywhere like that!”
Marion was patient—and kind—enough to allow him to finish his rant without interruption. Then she responded, something quiet and brief, and Luis hung up the phone. He stood there, head down, shoulder-length hair—now more than a bit ragged, from the fire we’d faced—hiding his expression, and then turned and walked away from me without saying a word.
I followed him into the kitchen. He poured coffee and sipped it, watching Isabel eat her cereal with narrowed eyes. She glanced up at him with a smile, and he smiled back. It looked almost natural.
“Ibby,” he said, “how would you feel about going away to school?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She looked up at him, no particular expression on her sweet-featured face—perfectly composed. There was an unsettling amount of calculation in the level stare she gave him, and then Ibby said, “I don’t like schools anymore.”
“I know,
mija
, but this is a good school, one that will help you.” He sank down at the table next to her and took her small hand in his large one. “You don’t say it, but you’re scared, aren’t you? And hurting. You still miss your
mami
and
papi
—I know you do.”
That broke through the crystal shell of her artificial calm, and she looked away and said, in a small voice, “All the time.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Luis said, and kissed the top of her head with such gentleness it made my heart ache. “I hate it that they’re gone and they can’t be here to tell you how brave you’ve been, and how strong you are. But being strong isn’t everything. It doesn’t make you happy, does it?”
He’d struck a nerve, one that I didn’t even understand. Why wouldn’t strength make one happy? Would weakness? No matter which direction I turned the question, it remained unanswerable for me. A quintessentially human thing, I supposed.