Rachel Caine - Unknown

Her face just shut down, becoming a still, empty mask far too old and experienced for her few years. “They’re not important,” she said. “The lady said so.”

“The lady,” I said. “Who is the lady?”

Pammy turned her face away, pressing it against Lu-is’s neck.

“Hey,” he said, and jiggled her gently in his arms.

“That’s Cassiel. She’s nice. She won’t hurt you.”

“She will,” Pammy said. “Just like the lady.”

Some of the paralysis among the medical staff finally broke, and as if by common consent, a swarm of them broke the invisible barrier at the threshold and surged around us. A nurse plucked Pammy from Luis’s arms, and as she yelled in protest I saw a flash of pain and fear go across his face. “Wait!” he snapped. The nurse paused, frowning, struggling to hold the flailing child. Luis put a hand on Pammy’s forehead and murmured, “Sleep now, sweetheart. You’re safe. You have to trust these people, they want to make you better. Okay?”

He was using his powers in a strong but subtle way, a kind of sedation that swept over the girl and relaxed her body. Her eyes drifted closed, and she rested her head on the nurse’s shoulder.

Luis removed his hand. “She should stay asleep for a while,” he said. “Keep someone with her. I left a suggestion with her that she’ll trust you, but if she gets frightened that could change. Keep her calm and you shouldn’t have any trouble. Don’t leave her alone.” He reached in his pocket, took out a small notepad and scribbled down a note, which he handed to the woman. “Call that number. It’s the Warden hotline, they’ll assign someone with the right power profile to come help. If nobody’s available, I’ll come back. My number’s on there too.”

“All right, let’s move her to a fresh room. Somebody get maintenance in here! And call the fire department—they have to sign off on this!” the head doctor bellowed. The nurse took Pammy away, heading from the room. Luis and I followed, but he stopped once we were in the hallway. The air reeked less of smoke and melted plastic, and I took several grateful breaths.

“You understand what she said?” he asked. “What just happened?”

“The child was a latent Warden,” I said. “Someone woke her powers, far too early for safety. Someone female. Someone like me.”

“A Djinn,” Luis agreed. “And I think we both know who that would be.”

Pearl.

Pammy had been at the Ranch, where Pearl trained her captured Warden children—but trained them for what? To do what? “She was rejected,” I said. We had seen other examples of it—children who had been brought to Pearl for evaluation or training, but had failed whatever obscure standard she had applied. Many had been used as perimeter guards for the Ranch, where the group kept a stronghold.

Pammy had either escaped, or been returned because she had become uselessly sick. “Pearl had to change her location,” I said. “Perhaps she’s changed tactics as well.” We had found her stronghold in Colorado, and by the time we had assembled sufficient strength to try to take it, it had been destroyed, only her expendable human allies left behind. She’d taken the children with her.

We had spent weeks trying to find any sign of where she might have gone.

“Maybe,” Luis said, “and maybe this is her goal—maybe Pammy didn’t fail. Maybe she’s exactly what Pearl wants her to be: a child time bomb.”

I considered it, then slowly shook my head. “No. Pearl is not interested in random destruction. She has a purpose, though the purpose is not yet clear. But if she returned this child, Pammy fell short of her expectations.”

That put a bleak light in Luis’s eyes. “Christ,” he said. “The kid could probably blow up the hospital if she got angry enough. That’s not enough power?”

“Not for Pearl,” I said. “Not yet.”

He sighed. “I need three shots of whiskey and about a day and a half of sleep. We can’t keep going like this. Time to stand down for a while.”

I didn’t want to, but I also felt the drag of exhaustion, and the faint, fine trembling in my muscles. My flagging brain interpreted sights and sounds as too slow, too fast, too bright, too loud; I did need rest, and if I needed it, Luis desperately needed it.

“Home?” I asked.

“Home,” he said. “Now.”

HOME FOR LUISwas his brother’s home, which he had decided to keep after Manny and Angela’s death. Partly this had been to allow little Isabel some continuity and familiarity in her life, although expecting her to return was less logic than sheer, bloody-minded determination. Partly it was convenience. Luis had moved from Florida, and had not yet rented an apartment before the murders.

I had an apartment, but it was not a home—merely a way station where I kept my few belongings, slept, and cleaned my body.

The Rocha home was . . . more.

“I should take you back to your place,” Luis said as he unlocked the front door of the small, neat house; that took a while, because he had installed new locks and an alarm system. His words lacked conviction, and I ignored them, moving through the opened doorway into the familiar living room. It was comfortably furnished, with things that did not quite match—the sign of people who had bought their possessions over time, and because of love, not fashion. Unlike his brother and sister- in-law, Luis kept it very neat, but there was a sense of peace in it. Order. Love. Some sadness.

It eased some anxious, tired knot in my soul.

I locked the door behind me and sat down on the couch. Luis glanced at me without speaking and went into the kitchen. He came out again with two glasses—both decorated with colorful cartoon characters—and a bottle of amber liquid, which he set on the coffee table before sinking down next to me with a sigh that spoke of utter weariness. “Drink?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do I?”

He poured me a thin line of liquor and handed it to me. “Try.”

I sipped carefully and made a startled, strangled sound as the fiery, smoky flavor coated my tongue and throat. Luis leaned forward and tipped a much more generous portion into his own glass, lifted it vaguely in my direction, and said, “ Salud, ” before downing the liquid in two heavy gulps. I took a larger sip. It didn’t burn as much the second time, and had more flavor.

Luis refilled his glass. I drained mine in three more slow sips, feeling an odd calm begin to work through me. Distilled chemical sedation. I began to understand why people sometimes pursued this course of action.

Luis put his glass down empty, refilled mine, and poured himself a third helping. “Last call,” he said, and capped the bottle. “How is it?”

“Interesting,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure I approved of the changes in my metabolism, but somehow that disapproval remained theoretical, and far away from the warmth that coursed through my body. I felt looser now, less on guard.

Less constrained. It sparked dangerous memories of being free, powerful, utterly different than what I was now.

Luis watched me over the rim of his glass as he drank—this time, much slower, almost matching my careful sips. “You were good today,” he said. “ We were good today.”

It wasn’t often the case. Luis and I didn’t know each other as well as Manny and I had; I had been comfortable with Manny, and I had understood the dynamics of our relationship, which were almost all professional in nature.

Luis was . . . complicated. I responded to him more strongly, both in terms of the power passed between us, and in purely physical ways. Since becoming human, my flesh had surprised me more than once, and continued to act in mysterious ways that seemed divorced from the cold logic of my thoughts. I was not sure how humans combined these things. Or Djinn, for that matter; I had never been one of those who enjoyed assuming human form and playing at being mortal. Some, like David, almost were human. Others, like Ashan, wore flesh as a skin-deep suit, nothing more.