“And I can’t give it. In whatever form.” I swallowed hard. “Choose something else.”
He was silent. There was a subtle shift in his body; it still lookedcalm and meditative, but I sensed a readiness to move, to act, a restless hunger at odds with his outer stillness. “You’re certain. If it’s merely a matter of your scruples, I can play the villain. Force you to compliance.”
“No,” I said flatly. “No bargain.”
“Not even for the life of the one you do love?” Rashid knew. He understood why I had refused. Hence, the cold darkness in his eyes. Djinn do not understand rejection. They do not bear it well. “He is suffering now. Greatly. Soon, he will die, and what will your morality matter then? It’s a matter of flesh, nothing more.”
“If it was nothing more, why would you want it?” I shot back, and saw his face change. His eyes flickered just a little, with hot blue. “Name another price, Rashid. Anythingelse except the scroll, or being your lover.”
He shrugged. “Your firstborn.”
Surely he was joking. That was an ancient human folktale. Djinn did not collect children; they had no use for them. The idea that Rashid would want to make a pet out of my child—presuming I could even create life within me in that way, which seemed impossible—was ridiculous, and strangely chilling.
“My firstborn,” I repeated. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am,” he said. “Your firstborn child. You will give him to me. Swear this.”
“No.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Twice you refused me. Once more, and I will go.”
“Then change what you want!”
“No,” he said. “Firstborn. Or I go.”
It was a foolish bargain for us both. First, I had no interest in becoming a mother in the primal human way, although I had great fondness for little Ibby. Second, I could not imagine a circumstance under which Rashid would find it desirable to collect on his bargain for a child, no matter what he claimed.
I passed a sign that glowed green and white in the headlights, and announced that I was nearing Rose Canyon. The area seemed deserted, sleeping under the cold moonlight; trees swayed, clouds drifted, nothing else moved.
It was a huge, empty area. Without Rashid’s help, I would be too late to find Luis. And too weak to save him.
The fact was that Rashid was the only Djinn still willing to treat with me at all, and by the laws of bargaining, I could only reject his bargains three times before the bargaining ended.
This was my last chance. My very last. And for whatever unfathomable reason, Rashid seemed fixed on his demand.
“Yes,” I said. “My firstborn child, offered in exchange for your guidance to Luis Rocha and your aid in this fight to rescue the Wardens and humans. Are we agreed?”
“We are agreed,” Rashid said, and a silvery glow slid across his skin, and pooled in his eyes for a moment before he blinked it away. “Go left.”
There was a turnoff ahead. I took it, moving from a smooth paved road to one that was still paved, but less smooth—cracked, humped in places, poorly patched. It immediately reminded me of the stillness and isolation of the area of Colorado that Pearl had chosen for her fortress before—something faintly alive about this place, as if the Mother’s spirit dwelt a little closer to the world here than in other spots. Maybe it was simply the lack of human presence, the wildness of it.
We drove on, the big ambulance bouncing and creaking as I steered it through narrow, winding turns and across a bridge over an unseen creek. There was little to be seen in detail; the moonlight gave vague outlines of shapes, but the subtlety of that was overridden by the glare of the headlights as we drove. I considered switching them off, and as I reached down for them, they went off without my physical assistance.
Rashid. He was facing forward now, staring intently through the front glass and frowning. I slowed as my eyes fought to adjust to the sudden darkness. He glanced aside at me. “Change places,” he said. “I will drive.”
I nodded and shifted over; he brushed against me on the way, and his skin felt summer- hot, and less like skin than burnished metal; with a shock, I realized that he felt like my replacement bronze left hand. It felt as if the merest touch of him would leave a burn, and my flesh tingled in passing.
Rashid’s lonely need was a physical thing, radiating from him into me.
I tried not to allow that to show.
Rashid pressed the accelerator, and the ambulance leapt forward, tires biting hard and engine growling against the weight it was dragging. He drove too fast for a human, especially in the dark, but Djinn reflexes were supernatural. I was safe enough, so long as he had nothing to gain from causing an accident.
We didn’t speak. I focused on Luis again, but though I could hear him breathing in odd, uneven jerks, he didn’t try to communicate with me. Not even to scream. Fear tightened in white-hot bands around my stomach and my throat, and I could only wait.
Wait as Rashid reached the end of the paved road, twisted the wheel, and suddenly crashed the ambulance into a boiling green mass of foliage on the right.
It concealed a road. Gravel at first, then raw dirt—neatly maintained, almost flat. The sides were precisely drawn, and there was no grass growing over the lines.
It was a great deal too precise, for nature, and that spoke of Earth Wardens maintaining the landscape. It seemed a foolish waste of power, until I considered that as a training exercise, it would have been useful in itself—teaching acolytes the control and uses of their power. A Warden who could neatly control grass, trees and bushes from encroaching on the road could also do the opposite—block or destroy a road quickly with the same tools.
It meant that we would have a difficult time getting out once they’d been alerted to our presence.
But I already knew that.
The road wound down a steep hill, twisting like a snake through treacherous switchbacks. Rashid flew down it at an insane speed, teeth bared, eyes flaring bright with pure, risk-taking joy.
He lost his smile for a bare instant, and said, “Hold.” It was all he had time to say before I saw the ground ahead of us crumble and disappear into a sudden, dramatic sinkhole less than five feet from the hood of the ambulance. The hole was at least twenty feet across, and there was no chance of stopping. Still less chance of a clumsy, non- aerodynamic vehicle like an ambulance somehow jumping the chasm.
But Rashid did both. He stopped the van so abruptly that the momentum pitched the back of the vehicle up in an arc, straight up, flipping the ambulance in a sickening full, whipping revolution twice. I clung to the dashboard and the handle above the door, struggling not to lose my grip as gravity’s pull tugged one way, then another . . . and then I saw the road coming up at us from below on the last revolution.
We were somehow right side up. The front tires hit first, and Rashid pressed the gas.
The back wheels slipped into the chasm, but the momentum and the front wheels’ grip dragged them up with a bump, and then we were flying again, moving so fast that the world passed in a twisting blur.
“Five seconds,” he told me. “Be ready.” Rashid sounded utterly focused and calm.
I was still openmouthed and amazed that we had survived that impossible maneuver.
You made a good bargain,some part of myself said. It was probably right. My mission would have ended there in that sinkhole if I hadn’t swallowed my pride to accept Rashid’s help.
I had no idea what we would be coming into in the promised seconds, but the seconds counted down to zero.
Rashid hit the brakes with a violence that threw me forward, then back, and before I could open my passenger door he was out and pulling it open to drag me out. As he did, the ambulance disappeared.No, it was still there, but he had successfully hidden it, shifted it between times and realities. It was a rare Djinn skill, one I had never mastered; I hadn’t known Rashid was capable of such things.