"Guess we're not going to have a problem after all, Shasa," Luis said, and gave her his famously seductive grin. "Sorry. I know you were looking forward to a bare-knuckle throw-down. Must get pretty dull out here."
She smiled back, but there was nothing seductive about it. It was pure malice. "Next time," she said, and kissed her fingers at him. Ben turned and looked at her, eyebrows raised; she gave him a dark, burning look and stalked away. There was a black SUV parked just at the bend of the road that became visible as she walked toward it. Shasa, I realized, was the one with the talent for disguise, not Janice. Unusual in a Fire Warden.
Ben finally came forward, to me, and offered his hand. "Hey," he said. "Ben Samms. Pleased to meet you, ah--" He fumbled for my name.
"Cassiel," I supplied, and we shook. "Yes, I was a Djinn once, before you ask."
His face took on a faintly pink tinge, as if he was surprised I'd anticipated the question, and he glanced over at Luis, who was watching us with an expression of mild interest. "Warden Rocha." Ben nodded, and got a nod in turn. "Hey. Nice to meet you. I've heard a lot of good things."
"Thanks," Luis said. "Nice gale you blew up on us. Took some skill, man."
"Thanks. I've been working at it."
Janice and Isabel were no longer hugging, but Ibby held on to the older woman's hand, looking happier than I had seen her in some time. Another stab of jealousy, followed by guilt, found its mark inside me, and twisted. "We should get going," Janice said. "Isabel, you want to ride with us, or with your uncle?"
"With you," Ibby said. "Can I bring Spike with me? He needs to stay warm."
"Spike?" Janice said, raising her eyebrows at Luis.
"Lizard," he said, and held out his palms to indicate the short span equating to Spike's size. "He's okay."
"Oh, certainly. All right, you get Spike," Janice said. Ibby climbed up into the truck, got Spike's container and supplies, and ran to the black SUV. I saw the flash of pain go across Luis's face, but it was only a flash, and then he smiled.
"Right, let's get moving, then," he said. "Cass? Time to mount up."
I was grateful to get back on my motorcycle. Things seemed simple there, stripped to bare essentials. While I was moving, slipping like a shadow through the world, I didn't feel so vulnerable to a child's smile, or an old woman's pity.
Or Luis's pain, which, like mine, had an edge of jealousy and guilt to it.
We passed through increasing layers of Warden security, some of it Djinn-provided, to reach the school itself, which lay in a snowy, shadowed valley surrounded by dramatic forested hills. A small frozen stream wandered its way through, gleaming silver in the light, and came within fifty feet of the fence that surrounded the school.
It was the fence that made me think of a prison. Twenty feet high, built of strong metal links fringed with icicles and topped with razor wire, it hardly seemed reassuring, but I also understood the need; it was as much to protect the children from those who might wish to harm them as it was to keep them contained, though the children might not see it that way. I wondered how Ibby would interpret it, and was suddenly glad that she was riding under the calming influence of Janice Worthing. That might prevent any unpleasantness, at least for now.
The fence opened for our little convoy of vehicles--not a gate, but an accordion-like folding of the metal that I was certain was done by Janice, or another Earth Warden. As the last car (Luis's) passed through, the fence repaired itself seamlessly.
Luis opened a communication channel in my ear. Mira, he whispered, I hope they don't go and lose all their Earth Wardens at one time. That would be awkward.
Especially if one of them was you, I replied soberly. I hoped that Marion Bearheart had thought all this through; I did not know her well enough to feel confidence in her decisions. Not that I really had confidence in anyone when it came to my safety or the safety of those I loved. A human saying had always struck me as apt: Trust, but verify. It might seem paranoid to some, but it made excellent sense to me.
At least they kept the interior of the compound refreshingly free of snow. I supposed that would be light work for a Weather Warden, creating a microclimate just large enough to protect those within from the winter weather. It felt warmer, though not by any stretch warm.
I had only just dismounted my bike, feeling every cold mile of the road in my bones and aching flesh, when the front door of the school opened and a woman rolled down the ramp in a wheelchair, picking up speed and braking with a flair that landed her perfectly in front of us. Bearheart. I knew she had been injured during the Djinn rebellion, but I hadn't known how badly; it was plain, when I looked at her in Oversight, that she would never walk again. No matter the skill of the healer, there were some things that could not be fixed in the human body once shattered. In a way, she had that in common with Esmeralda, the Snake Girl.
Bearheart met my eyes with her dark, glittering ones, and said, "No need to pity me, Djinn," she said. "I'm satisfied I came out a winner. Plenty of my friends didn't--on both sides."
"I wasn't pitying you," I said. "I was wondering how much of a disadvantage you'd pose for us in a fight."
She laughed. "Don't make me roll over your foot. I'm heavier than I look, and I can build up a lot of momentum."
She was also one of the most powerful Earth Wardens I had ever seen in person, and I had certainly seen many thousands. Physically, she was in her late-middle age, with thick black hair worn long, threaded through with liberal silver. Her skin was a warm copper, her features sharp, and I noticed a sudden resemblance to the Fire Warden girl on the road, Shasa. There was something of the same commanding nose on both.
I took a guess. "Your--niece is impressive."
That took her a bit by surprise, but she nodded. "Shasa is my brother's kid. Bad temper, but a damn good Warden. Funny, most people think she's mine."
"I am not most people," I said gravely.
"Indeed you're not. I'm not sure you're people at all, actually. You're something else."
There was a great deal too much comprehension in her expression to please me, and I nodded toward Janice Worthing, who had gotten out of the SUV with Isabel. "Do you trust that one with Isabel?"
"I've not had the pleasure of meeting Isabel just yet, but I'm sure there's not a child in the world I wouldn't trust with Janice Worthing. She's the best there is." Bearheart fell silent a moment, watching me. "Unless you know something I need to know. Something other than what's in the official record?"
I shook my head. There was, in fact, nothing to incite my suspicions about anything I'd seen so far in this place. The Wardens had done a competent job of intercepting us and escorting us in, and I suspected my general distrust was a reflection of my own feelings. Until Isabel had turned her adoration on someone else, I hadn't realized how important the regard of the child was to me.
Without her, I felt ... less.
"I'll want to go over what you know," Bearheart said, clearly not convinced with my silent affirmation. "My office, one hour. Bring Warden Rocha once he's convinced we're not organizing a sweatshop and letting them run with scissors." A smile flickered over her lips, but it was thin and not very amused. "Not that I blame him. Wardens don't have the greatest track record when it comes down to dealing with our own kids. And yes, I've been part of that problem from time to time, to my regret. But we no longer have the luxury of worrying about each other's possible future bad behavior. We have far too much actual bad behavior."
With that, she pressed a control on her wheelchair and sped off to talk to Luis, meet Isabel, and generally do her duty. It said a great deal about her, I thought, that she turned her back on me so readily. Either she had underestimated me badly, or she had taken my measure exactly.
I wondered which it was.
When no one seemed to be watching me, I strolled around the side of the school, allowing the impressions to roll in. First, it appeared that the fence, though imposing, did not much reflect the quality of accommodations inside.
The building itself was large, built of an outer facing of wood but, I sensed, with a core of cement and steel worthy of a military bunker. There were no bars on the windows, and the side doors I passed seemed unguarded. They also proved to be unlocked, I found, because as I was passing the north side one opened and a girl of about ten came running out, almost barreling directly into me. She backpedaled to a swift, scrambling halt, and ran into the boy who was chasing her. He was about her age, but taller, and he wrapped his hands protectively around her shoulders and moved her behind him as he demanded, "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
He was a Fire Warden; that much seemed obvious. I could both see and sense the energy forming around his fingers. He was ready to stand and fight. I honored that.
"My name is Cassiel," I said. "I am a guest. And you?"
My polite tone must have reassured him, because he hesitated, then shook the fire off his fingers and nodded to me. Like Ibby, he was adult beyond his years. "Mike," he said. "Mike Holloway. We heard about you already."
Everyone had, it seemed. I wondered exactly what they had heard.
The girl, irritated, shoved Mike's protective grip away and said, "I'm Gillian." She raised her chin, almost daring me to do ... what? Declare myself the villain, attack, froth at the mouth like a rabid vole?
I smiled. "Gillian," I said, and bowed slightly. "I am sorry I alarmed you."
"You don't scare me," Gillian shot back. "I don't scare that easy. Right, Mike?"
"Right," he said. I could tell he really wanted to put his arm around her, but had good enough sense to know that she wouldn't welcome it. "Gillian is badass. It's the hair. Redheads are always badass."
Gillian did, indeed, have fiery red hair, of a brilliance that put me in mind of bright new bronze. She had it pulled back in a small queue at the back of her neck, tied up with some complicated arrangement of rubber bands that looked as if they'd be impossible to untangle without yanking out entire hanks. Gillian was a Weather Warden, and I could tell that beneath the surface bravado she was terrified of me.
Whether she was terrified because I was simply a stranger or because she knew that I'd once been a Djinn, it was obvious to me, as it must have been to Mike. She could raise her chin and pretend, but there was no doubt that I held some kind of very real terror for her.
I liked her for nevertheless standing her ground and glaring defiance.
"You a new teacher?" Mike asked me.
"Perhaps," I said. "For a short time. I don't know yet. I'll be speaking with Warden Bearheart in a moment."
"Well ..." He eyed me doubtfully. "We need teachers who aren't afraid of us. You know--of what we can do."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"Yeah, I can see that." Mike grinned suddenly. "But you haven't seen what we can do yet."
"We haven't seen what she can do, either," Gillian put in. She punched Mike in the shoulder, hard enough that he winced. "Come on, we've got work to do."
With that, they escaped back inside through the still-open door and banged it shut between us. I eyed it thoughtfully. There were no handles to enter, but obviously it was unlocked from the inside. A fire exit.
Interesting.
I completed my perambulation, and arrived back at the front to find Marion Bearheart and Luis standing in the shade of the porch, talking. She waved to me impatiently, and wheeled herself inside.
I paused next to Luis, who said, "Do I sound paranoid if I say I don't like all this?"
"Yes," I said. "But I don't like it, either."
"Excellent. Glad I'm not the only one." He gave me a quick, furtive kiss as I moved around him toward the door, for which I rewarded him with a wide-eyed look of surprise and then, considering, backed him up against the wall and kissed him long and thoroughly. Which I felt was highly appropriate, given that it had been a very long drive and I could see no conceivable way that we would have a night of unfettered passion within the confines of this school.
After going still with utter shock, he finally joined in with a will, his lips warm and soft and sweet around mine, his hands moving slowly up my back as we kissed. It soothed some wild need in me that I hadn't actually known was present until it howled for release. Luis finally sighed into my open mouth, ran his tongue around my lips (which made me flare even hotter inside), and drew back to whisper, "We're keeping the boss lady waiting."
"No," Marion said, from the doorway. She had glided up unheard in her chair and was watching us with eyes that I was fairly sure seemed amused, and perhaps a little envious. "You're reminding the boss lady of what it is we're supposed to be fighting for. I'm all in favor of kissing breaks. But now you're keeping me waiting, so move your asses."
She zipped off, and with a shake of his head and a muttered imprecation in Spanish that I didn't bother to try to understand, Luis followed.
The interior door slid shut behind me as I stepped in, and I saw our friendly Weather Warden Ben standing off to the side, in a booth that was likely bulletproof as well as fireproof; he touched a series of controls, putting in motion security measures that I was fairly sure would come as a nasty surprise to any intruders. Which, I was also sure, applied to us, since we were not recognized as being part of the group as yet.
"Don't worry," Marion called back over her shoulder as she disappeared through another doorway. "You'll get DNA-keyed when we're done talking. All the doors will open for you, unless I override it."
The fact that someone still held the final power of life and death did not reassure me, even if it was someone so theoretically benign as Marion. "Explain the security, please."
"No," she said, very calmly but just as firmly. "I don't discuss the security arrangements with anyone but those on duty. Only I know all of the safeguards, and I'd like to keep it that way."
"And if something happens to you?" Luis asked.
"My friend, if something happens to me, you've got much bigger issues than how many gunports there are in the walls." She cast a quick look back at us. "I'm not an idiot. I've made provisions for information to be available if you need it, but my goal is that you never do. Clear?"
"Clear," Luis said. "But I don't like it."
"Nobody said you had to. This is why I'd rather you'd handed the girl over at the rendezvous and stepped aside; everybody involved wants to overrule everyone else for the good of the kids. We have a chain of command here, and you're going to obey it or leave."
That was blunt, and it had the ring of absolute authority. I exchanged looks with Luis, shrugged, and followed Marion.
I spared a quick look for the entry hall, which was warmly furnished in wood paneling and comfortable chairs and sofas, but with a faintly new feel to it. This building hadn't been standing for long, or if it had, it had been repurposed and redecorated.
I noticed there were no windows in the entry hall, and a quick check on the aetheric told me that it was less a room than a fortress. Anyone entering this far could be sealed here, in a room thick with concrete and reinforced with steel, and safely dispatched from a distance.
However, the alarms didn't sound, and the steel fire doors didn't drop to seal us in. We passed through, into what was a meeting room of some kind, with a large oval-shaped table and several matching chairs. And windows, although reinforced with wire and aetheric security. All seemed quite new, again. Marion rolled herself up to a gap where a chair would have gone, and indicated two others for us to take across from her. There was a bowl of fruit, and Luis reached in and grabbed an apple, which he tossed to me, then picked out a banana for himself, which he peeled while Marion fixed us with a silent, assessing gaze. Luis didn't seem bothered by her regard in the slightest. He seemed more concerned with the brown spots on the fruit.
I followed his example, took a quick, crunchy bite of the apple, and chewed the sweet, tough fiber with gusto.
Marion snorted. "Yeah, you're cool, you two--I get it. Lucky for me, I've been cracking tougher nuts than you my whole career, children, so let's drop the drama. T
hank you for bringing the girl. It's going to save everyone a lot of trauma, not least little Isabel."
"Ibby," I said. "She prefers to be called Ibby."
"I'll make sure everyone knows. We want her to feel safe here, and at home." There was a manila folder sitting on the table in front of her, and Marion opened it and glanced inside. There were photographs; one was of Isabel, gap-toothed and smiling eagerly. The other was a family photo of Manny, Angela, and Isabel. I recognized the picture, because Luis carried one in his wallet and there was another framed on the mantel inside his house.
It was the last photo they had taken together before Manny and Angela had been gunned down.
"When exactly did the girl show her first signs of talent?" Marion asked. Luis took a bite of banana and shook his head. "Did her mother or father ever indicate they thought she might be manifesting any--"
"Nothing," Luis said bluntly. "Ibby was a normal kid, normal and sweet and perfect, right up until the moment she got snatched out of her grandmother's house. What they did to her made her like this ... It's not normal."
"I'm aware of that."
"Yeah? You aware that they took these kids in for weird tests every day? That the ones that failed got thrown out to live like little animals or die? That Ibby was one of the ones they decided to keep, and when they realized they couldn't make her believe we didn't love her they got inside her head and made her think I was dead and Cass had killed me? They showed it to her, Marion. Showed me burning to death, to a kid her age who'd already seen both her parents die." Luis tossed his half-eaten banana on the table and sat back, crossing his arms. "Jesus, what's normal about her now? She wanted to protect herself. She wanted revenge. So she not only let them jump-start her powers; she worked at it--she wanted it. She was scared to death. And what you get out of that is one hell of a strong Warden, untrained, way too young to handle that power."
Marion let him finish without saying a word, then looked down at her folder before she said, "I'm sorry that she's endured so much. I wish I could say it would get easier for her, but the simple fact is that it won't. There are only three paths from this point: She controls her powers; we shut down her powers; or she becomes a rogue." What Marion kindly didn't say was that there was a fourth option: death. Luis and I were already acutely aware of it.