Unbroken

Chapter 5

OUR GIRLS WERE QUIET for the most part, although Esmeralda was grumpy and restless; this was not, I found, shocking. Iz seemed too quiet, too withdrawn, and I tried to engage her in conversation for a while before abandoning the attempt and letting her ride in silence, staring out the window.

“Couple of hours more,” Luis said. “It’s going to get more dangerous the closer we get to Seattle, so stay alert. Cass, I need you up on the aetheric if you can manage it. Keep a lookout for any trouble.”

I nodded and took his hand; physical contact between the two of us made access to the aetheric realm easier for me. A small burst of power sent me soaring up, out of my body, and the world took on the nacreous shimmer of mother of pearl, then dissolved into lines, light, whispers, fog. My native environment, as a Djinn, but I was no longer at home in it, and I felt the steady, though small, drain of power required to sustain me here. It was a risk, doing this; Luis was still weak, and his reserves of power were less than either of us might have wished. Mine were still shallow, too, but I was more concerned about him; I could only channel power through him, and draining him past safety put us both at risk.

For now, though, it was only a minimal exposure.

The forest around us was very much the same on the aetheric as it was in the human world; more impressionistic, perhaps, suggestions of trees and shadows of animals moving through them in streaks of subtle color. Life was bright, even plant life; the trees pulsed with slow whispers of golden energy. Beautiful, and calming.

But there was trouble everywhere around us.

The road on which the van traveled was a thick dead slice through all that life, a thing of man’s making, too recent to have any real history and place on the aetheric, where time was as much a visible dimension as the others. Not everything mankind created looked so awkward here, but new construction did. The town we’d left behind had more weight and natural ease to it, because its history gave it reality as much as the wood and glass and metal of which it was built. Time had given it life of its own, and the memories and events that had taken place there, good or bad, had created its own aura. It was, I thought, a good place to live, full of small joys and long peaces. No human place was free of sadness, madness, death, but in their town, at least, that was outweighed by something I could only call… happiness.

I didn’t wish to, but I found my aethereal body turning slowly, facing another direction… toward Hemmington.

The town was a blackened scar. For all its apparent peace and silence in the human plane, here it was a shriek, a vibrating well of agony, an open wound in the world. Something had happened there, something great and terrible, and the death that had followed hadn’t left only human corpses; it had rendered that entire town, and everything in it, poisonous.

It was a trap, but instead of something that would blow up intruders, it would lure them in, lull them, and then destroy. My own trauma there had added to the scarring, I realized; so had Isabel’s.

I looked at the girl, sitting silently in the van below me, and saw the taint of that place inside her. It had infected her in subtle, awful ways. She’d heal, I thought, but for now, the germs of it continued to fester. I mourned that, and the blackening of the roots of her power that she’d done to herself. Isabel was still beautiful, a shining star on the aetheric, but she glittered more darkly than she ought.

I turned away from Hemmington, extending my vision farther out. Not far away, Portland burned. The Wardens had withdrawn their forces, fallen back to Seattle. By the standards of human cities, Portland was a young place—only a little over a hundred years of buildings and settlements, and little that had lasted for any length of time. It had held a significant population, though most had scattered now, in bright groups that fled in all directions. The forces pummeling Portland were full of bright, bloodred fury… flames that seared away what humans had built and returned it to ashes.

The death toll must have been significant, but the suffering was done now; what was left in that city belonged to the Djinn and to the Mother. Humans had no place there now.

Not so far away—and too close for comfort—the Wardens had regrouped and gathered their forces near Seattle. They’d kept the destruction confined to Portland so far; I could see that their efforts were focused on evacuating the people and finding them safety, not on trying to douse the unnaturally bright flames that continued to devour what had once been one of America’s great cities. It was, I knew, far from the only disaster they were facing; there was a great, dark energy rising from the midwest of the continent, where floods raced out of control and Weather Wardens struggled to divert storms and tame rivers. It would not end well, from the raw, bleeding colors of the aetheric. There was more—the harsh stabbing oranges and stark ripping greens of earthquakes were flashing along long-dormant rifts, toppling houses and rocking the tall towers of distant cities. The ocean’s tides were rising under the whipping winds of forming hurricanes far out to sea.

There was death coming, and it would not stop.

I already knew it, but staring at it here, in this way, it shook me how fragile the Wardens were, how utterly useless their defenses. I’d heard the grim despair in Lewis Orwell’s voice, and now I felt it, as well; this was a fight to the death, but the winner was a foregone conclusion. All we could do was bind up wounds and defend for as long as we could. Without more Wardens, without the supporting power of Djinn, humanity had very little time left as masters of the world.

If they’d ever truly held that title, other than in their own minds.

We had avoided truly being attacked thus far, mainly because nature was directing its hatred toward the largest concentrations of what it perceived as threats… toward cities, and the Wardens who clumped to defend them. As we came closer to Seattle, we’d start drawing unwelcome attention; Isabel’s bright power would ensure that we couldn’t pass completely unnoticed. Even Luis had an impressive presence on the aetheric, though Iz’s light effectively hid his, and I presumed mine as well.

I was watching the ongoing battle of the Wardens when I felt the first stirring of… awareness. It was not so much something seen as felt… the power that was consuming Portland, that mindless beast seemed to pause and look. I felt the impact of its stare, like clouds over the face of the sun. All of the aetheric seemed to dim and go quiet.

It was looking at us.

I did not dare to move, not even to drift down into my body. There was a sense of a vast, predatory interest focused on us, and any tiny mistake could bring disaster.

The flames in Portland faltered and began to fall silent, but the energy behind them did not fall away; no, it gathered itself, a beast tensing to spring.

We were too close.

Freezing like prey wouldn’t save us, I realized. I dropped back into my body with a breathless, icy rush, lunged forward to brace myself against the dashboard of the van, and gasped out, “Turn! Get off this road!”

“What?” Luis asked. “Jesus, Cass, what is it?”

“Get off the road. Do it now!”

“Chica, there’s nowhere to go!”

“Turn around!” My shout must have conveyed the true depths of my alarm, because he didn’t hesitate anymore. Luis hit the brakes, brought the van into a shuddering, tire-burning slide. Momentum threatened to tip us, but he controlled it somehow and accelerated into the drift. The tires caught traction, and suddenly we jerked forward, heading back the way we’d come.

“Faster!” I yelled. “Get us off this road!”

Luis didn’t ask any more questions, just pressed the accelerator to the floor. When the van responded sluggishly, I felt him working the engine with Earth power, opening up clogged valves to pull more power out of the churning metal parts.

It wasn’t going to be enough.

I could see it now, through the back window—a blazing arrow of power coming behind us, like liquid sunlight flowing down the road. The trees on either side were igniting into brilliant orange. Everything it touched died.

And it was going to catch us.

“Stop,” Isabel said.

“Can’t do that,” Luis said. “Cass is right. We can’t fight this.”

“You can’t run fast enough,” she said. She sounded scared, but certain. “Cassie, we need him.”

She was talking about Rashid, but Rashid would be of no real help to us; he might possibly be able to preserve our lives, but this power would simply drown us, consume us, and even a Djinn’s power was limited by his master’s endurance. Sooner or later, he would lose that battle, and we would be dissolved, digested, gone.

The benefit for Rashid would be that the glass of his bottle wouldn’t last, either; he’d be free again, free to join the crusade against the hunted remains of humanity. Though I wondered whether he would take quite so much joy in it as others.

“Cassie!” she shouted. We had seconds, if that. She was right. There was nothing else we could do, not against this vast force of nature that rolled toward us.

I lunged over the seat, into the back of the van, thumping down next to Esmeralda, who was staring out the window with a grim, silent concentration that was not quite fear and not quite delight. An uneasy mix of the two. “Beautiful,” she said. “Death’s really beautiful, you know.”

“Shut up,” I said, and ripped open the saddlebag of the Victory, parked beside her coils. Her rattle stirred with a dry hiss, but I kicked it out of the way and grabbed Rashid’s bottle. I ripped the foam stopper out. “Rashid! You’re called!”

He could have dawdled; any enterprising Djinn could have used delay to his advantage, especially one with a grudge, but instead he was instantaneously crouched in front of me, silver eyes gleaming, naked indigo body coiled almost as sinuously as Esmeralda’s reptilian form. His teeth glittered as his lips cut in a smile. “What will you?” he asked me.

“Take us safely to the Wardens in Seattle,” I said. “Now.”

“You forgot to say painlessly,” he said.

Too late.

Rashid wasn’t one of the Djinn capable of transporting humans cleanly through the aetheric.… That was a skill only a very few possessed, and those who did hardly ever bothered to use it. What he could do, however, was pick up the entire van and move it at speed the mechanical beast was never meant to achieve—speed that flattened me back against the van’s wall, drove the scream back into my chest. Bones creaked under the strain, and my cuts reopened, sending red trickles rippling not down, but up and back, driven by the incredible force of our passage.

It took seconds, but it felt like an eternity, trapped and terrified. When it passed, it did so suddenly, a deceleration that sent me slamming with stunning force against the metal van doors at the end, with a hail of unsecured metal tools around me. Rashid was kind enough to ensure that I wasn’t killed by them, but he didn’t bother with minor injuries—more cuts and bruises to add to my collection.

Esmeralda fared better, but only because she’d coiled herself tightly and wedged herself between the van’s driver’s seat and the bolted racks of tools. Even then, as my vision cleared, I saw that her nose was bleeding, and so were her ears. Even her eyes had turned ruddy in the whites.

I fumbled for the van’s door and tumbled out onto a cold, hard surface—and almost off the edge of a roof twenty stories high. I caught myself in time, just barely, and slowly edged backward.

The van was precariously on the edge, well off the center of a yellow painted circle that was, I suddenly realized, meant for helicopters. The paint on the van had blistered and peeled away in places, and as I watched, it settled slowly down as all four tires deflated.

The driver’s side door opened, and Luis fell out. Luckily, he was not so close to the edge of the roof as I’d been. He flopped over on his back, staring up at the sky, gasping hoarsely. Like Esmeralda, his face was gory with blood from ruptured blood vessels, and he coughed and spat up more red, then groaned.

“Ibby,” I whispered. I managed to scramble upright, clinging a moment to the van’s open back door, and then felt my way around to the passenger side.

Isabel lay across the seat, eyes tightly shut. Her face was paper white, and her nose was still bleeding. I fumbled in the glove compartment and found a box of tissues; I grabbed a handful and used them to mop the blood from her face. Her eyes fluttered open, and she took the tissues and pressed them to her nose herself.

We didn’t speak. I smoothed her hair with one trembling hand and realized that I was still holding Rashid’s bottle in the other, uncorked.

Rashid was standing just at the edge of the roof, balanced on his bare toes, staring down. He still hadn’t bothered with clothing, and now he turned and faced me, hands on his hips. “No gratitude?” he asked. “I suppose I deserve that. But you’re safe, and the Wardens are on the floors below. On their way to you now.” In a sudden rush, he was standing at the van’s door, leaning in on me. His eyes had gone from silver to an even more unsettling steel color. “A word of advice, Cassiel: You’ve woken a devil, and it will come for you. The Wardens won’t welcome you.”

“In the bottle,” I said. “Now.”

He grinned at me in a way that made me think of the amusement of cannibals, and vanished in a puff of soft blue smoke. Theatrical now. But not a liar, I thought.

I’d lost the foam sponge, but Esmeralda held it up as she leaned over the seat to look at Isabel. I nodded thanks and squeezed it into the neck of the bottle as Esmeralda asked, “How is she?”

I didn’t need to answer. Isabel gave us a thumbs-up gesture, took the tissues from her nose, and sniffled cautiously.

“I think it’s stopped,” she said, and sat up. “Yeah, it’s stopped. Es? Are you okay?”

“Five by five,” Esmeralda said. “Your uncle don’t look so good.”

Luis was still lying on his back, staring at the cloudy sky. I took more tissues from the box and went to sit next to him. As he wiped the blood from his face, he said, “Next time, tell me about the goddamn Djinn in the goddamn bottle before you pull that shit.” He sounded tired, but oddly calm. “Good call, though. We weren’t going to make it. If ever there was a time for a panic button, that was it. How’d you get him?”

I shrugged. Every muscle in my body ached now, as if it had been stretched on a rack. “Luck,” I said. “And I think he let me, in a way. Rashid isn’t one who’s been longing for the end of the human race. In a strange sort of way, I think he likes you humans.”

“You’re one of us,” Luis pointed out. “Which you keep forgetting, by the way. Doesn’t make me feel better about our future.”

“We don’t have one,” I said. “Any of us.”

“Ouch.” He rolled over on his side, then up to his feet, with an assist from me. “Damn, that feels about as good as I expected it would. What the hell did he do?”

“I think it’s best we don’t ask in detail. The Wardens are on the way—”

I was wrong, I realized, as the door on the other side of the roof banged open, and a stream of people poured out. Some were regular humans dressed in military uniforms and carrying weapons; some were unarmed, but far from regular. Power glimmered around them, even to the human eye. There were five Wardens, by the time they’d all arranged themselves around us, and an equal number of armed military personnel.

One of the Wardens stepped forward: male, older than Luis, with short black hair graying at the temples and a whippet-thin build. He had an unusual face, I thought—handsome, but with a strangely ironic twist, and very dark eyes. There was something very strong about him, and very dangerous. “Luis Rocha,” he said, and turned that stare on me for a second. “Cassiel.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Luis said. He was leaning on me, but now he straightened and centered himself. “That’s my niece Isabel in the van. And her friend Esmeralda.”

The Warden inclined his head just a touch, not so much agreement as acknowledgment. “I’m Brennan,” he said. “Nice parking job. Want to tell me exactly how you managed that? Because I’m pretty sure that only a Djinn could have blasted through our defenses and landed you so neat and pretty on our roof. Twenty-two floors up.”

“I’m a Djinn,” I said.

“Was,” he corrected, and extended his hand. “Hand it over.”

“What?”

“The bottle you used to get here,” he said. “Hand it over, or you’re going to get to street level without the benefit of the elevator.” Brennan was, I realized, a Weather Warden, and a powerful one. I felt a sudden, damp gust of air slam against me—a bully’s warning shove.

“I’m disappointed,” Luis said. “Considering you’ve got all those shiny guns.”

Brennan snorted. “Yes, Bre’r Rabbit, I’m going to walk you into the briar patch,” he said. “Threatening Earth Wardens with guns. That’s a winning strategy.” He sounded genuinely amused, but in the next snap of a second, that was utterly gone. “Hand it over, or I’ll hand you over to gravity, and I assure you, she isn’t as kind as I am.”

I smiled thinly. “No.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Excuse me, I think I heard you say no. I must have been wrong about that because—” Suddenly, the wind’s shove turned into a persistent, strong push that, despite my efforts to stabilize, moved both Luis and me back over the roof toward the edge; not quite over, but the distance was halved before he finished his sentence. “Because that would really be very sad. I’d have a moment.”

“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.