Rachel Caine - Unknown

“No, I came back because I find your company so inspirational. Of course I found something.” His mouth stretched and settled into something that was almost a smile. “I found the boy’s bloodline. His sires are gone from the world.”

“Siblings?”

“No. Distant branches. Nothing close.”

I shook my head and translated that for Luis. “His parents are dead. No brothers, sisters, or cousins.”

“Yes,” Rashid confirmed. “His father was a Warden, killed in Ashan’s uprising. His mother was mere human, dead of disease.”

“Orphan,” Luis said. “An orphan with latent Warden powers.”

Rashid said, “He was listed so on the rolls.”

Both Turner and Luis sent him identical looks. “Rolls?” Turner was just a beat faster at the question than my Warden partner. “You mean there’s a list?”

Rashid lifted an eyebrow slowly. “You mean you don’t keep your own lists? How careless of you. How do you ensure your progeny are trained properly if you don’t have a record of their potential?”

Luis’s mouth opened, then shut, and he looked at me instead. “Let me get this straight, okay, just so there’s no confusion: The Djinn have a record of kids born with Warden powers?”

He was asking me. It was embarrassing, but I had to admit the truth. “I don’t know,” I said. “If it’s done, I had nothing to do with it. I had no interest in Wardens, much less regular humans.”

Luis stared for a beat, then went back to Rashid. “Can you get us that list?”

“Why?”

“Because the kids on that list are all at risk. It’s our best way to get ahead of this bitch and stop her from taking more kids. If we can lock down all these potential victims . . .”

“You forget,” I said. “Some of their parents are willing participants. And we don’t have enough Wardens to do this.”

“We’ve got enough FBI. And enough cops,” Luis shot back. “To hell with the Wardens, they’re not doing squat for us anyway. We work with law enforcement, we got plenty of firepower. And I don’t think she’ll have planned to fight her way through that. She’s looking for a magical resistance, not a physical one.”

Luis, I had to admit, had a point. But when I glanced at Rashid, I saw that his face was closed and hard. He said nothing.

Luis sighed. “Come on, man. I get it, you’re a bastard. You don’t care. Fine, whatever. I’ll give you all the respect you want, just give me the goddamn list.”

“I can’t,” Rashid said. “Whether I wished to or not, this list isn’t mine to give.”

“Yeah? Then who the hell do we have to talk to?”

I knew, with an ill feeling, before Rashid said anything. “The Earth Oracle.”

Rashid nodded once, sharply. Of course. My last encounter with the Earth Oracle—archangel to the Djinn’s angels—had been uncomfortable, and nearly shattering in its intensity. Not by her doing; the Oracle simply was. There was no being reachable by the Djinn who was as deeply rooted in the mind and soul of the Mother, not even the Fire Oracle, or the one with dominion over water and air. Each had separate, distinct powers and attitudes, and of all of them, the Earth Oracle was perhaps the most approachable—the most willing to understand and assist us with this matter.

It did not change the fact that she had once been halfling-born—the daughter of the Djinn David and his Warden love, Joanne. Imara, she had been called. And Imara had been a special sort of creation, one with no real place in the natural world until Ashan himself had violated the laws of the Djinn and murdered her within the sacred precincts of the Earth Oracle’s temple.

Imara not only had survived, but had become . . . more. Other. She wasn’t a half- powered Djinn anymore. She had gone vastly beyond all of that. Yet, some of her human heritage still lingered, and I retained enough of my Djinn snobbery to remain just a touch uncomfortable with that fact.

I wasn’t sure Imara had any great and lasting fondness for me, either. The last thing I wanted was another, perhaps less cordial, encounter.

“Get it for us,” I told Rashid. He shook his head. “You must be a special pet of hers, if you know of this list at all.”

“I know of it because David told me of it, not because I can lay my hands on it.”

David. I fumed quietly. He led half the Djinn—the less consequential half, by my reckoning—but he was nothing I wanted to cross. I had no connection to him, not as Rashid did; I would have to rely upon his pure goodwill. He had, however, been kind to me before—had, in fact, helped save my life, when Ashan cast me out. So it was possible. “Then I will ask David for it.”

“You could. He might even be inclined to grant it to you, knowing David; he’s so accommodating. ” Rashid made a face that implied he did not altogether approve of this trait. “Unfortunately, he cannot be located.”

That stopped me, Luis, and even Turner cold for a long, icy second. “You . . . can’t find him.”

Inconceivable. David was the Conduit of the New Djinn. He was the core and source of their power on Earth and in the aetheric. How could they not find him? It was akin to mislaying a part of your own body.

“He’s hidden from us,” Rashid clarified. “He told us, before he left, that he would be cut off from us.”

“Then there must be some replacement. Someone keeping open the Conduit for you.”

Rashid inclined his head, but didn’t answer.

“Rashid,” I said. “My patience is not just thin, it is starving, and moments from death. Just tell me. ”

Djinn do love their games, but Rashid seemed to understand that I was no longer playing. He turned to face forward, staring out at the road as the car hurtled along its smooth, straight surface, landscape whipping by in a blur of ocher, brown, and green.

“He would have preferred to give the responsibility to Rahel,” Rashid said. “But Rahel likewise cannot be reached. He’s walled both her and himself off from us, to protect us. There are risks.”

I growled softly, and the sound rumbled through the metal of the car. “You’re telling me who he did not choose. I only need to understand who he did choose.”

“Only to explain,” Rashid said. “Because we all acknowledge that Rahel would have been, in fact, the logical choice. Instead, we are saddled with . . . Whitney. ”

I was not at all certain I’d heard correctly. “Whitney. Who is Whitney?”

“Our newest Djinn,” he said. “And you will be very, very unimpressed. I confess that I am completely baffled by his logic. Perhaps the woman he’s consorting with has finally driven him insane.” Rashid sounded not just bored, but actively angry. Jealous, I assumed, not very charitably. Rashid did seem to me the type to think he was the natural heir apparent of all the powers in the universe.

Of course, from what I had seen of him so far, he might have been correct to do so.

“I will need to see Whitney, then,” I said.

“That might be a problem, since David ordered her not to leave Jonathan’s house.” Rashid cast a scornful glance over me. “I doubt you can go to her. Not in that form.”

He was right. Humans—and undeniably, I was trapped in human form, unable to shift from it without massive expenditure of power, more than I could safely draw from Luis or any other mortal—could not perform the trick of sifting through the planes of existence, like dialing the tumblers of a lock, to reach the nonspace that held the Djinn stronghold . . . a shifting place, out of phase with the rest of the realities. Once inside, Djinn were insulated from most, if not all, dangers outside; it would take the death of the universe itself to destroy Jonathan’s house.