“You have to ask officially.”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes. “I killed him.”
Silence. Outside I heard life going on—someone mowing the grass, children laughing, radios and televisions competing for attention through open windows. The drone of an airplane overhead. Car engines on the street beyond.
Luis said, “I don’t think you did, Cass. I examined the body. He was drained, just like the boy in the van. I know you wouldn’t do that. I know you couldn’t. It was Pearl.” He fell silent for a few seconds, then said, “Tell me what happened.”
I did, slowly, without any real emotion in my voice. I couldn’t feel much just now. Only exhaustion. Futility. When I was finished, Luis reached out and took my hand in his, and squeezed hard.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “I am so sorry.”
“It was my choice,” I said. “To go in. I thought it was right.”
“It was. We got Ibby and those other two back.”
He didn’t understand. Pearl had gotten exactly what she wanted.
Isabel had come back to us, and we had no idea what had really been done to her. I doubted Pearl had allowed us to take her without there being a deeper purpose in it.
And part of me had been burned black in the process—a critical part that connected me to the human race. “The boy,” I said. “What happened to his body?”
“We took it with us,” Luis said. “I looked into it myself. His parents are dead. He was an orphan. Disappeared from a foster family years ago. Nobody to mourn him but us.”
That wasn’t better.
“She’s using me,” I said. “Picadors and the bull. She’s driving me toward something, and soon I won’t have any choices left, Luis. Soon, I’ll have to destroy what I love, or see everything else taken. There’s no way out. She’s thought of everything. I can’t—”
“You can,” he interrupted me. “Cassiel. Ashan didn’t pick you for no damn reason. He picked you because you were the onlyDjinn who could do this. Who could face Pearl and win. Even he couldn’t do it, or he would have. You’re not done. We’re not done.”
“I’m tired of chasing her,” I said. “I have to find a way to get ahead of her.”
“Then we will,” he said.
“Just like that.”
“Yeah, pretty much. What did all those locations the FBI showed us have in common?”
I felt a stirring of something like interest. Like hope. “Ley lines,” I said. “They were following ley lines.”
“Then we follow them too. We start locking down places she could go. We start hemming her in, forcing her to play ourgame.” Luis’s hand felt warm against my face. “Look at me.”
I opened my eyes and focused on him. He was close now, and the fierce light in his eyes surprised me.
“Don’t let her take you down,” he said. “I know you, Cass. I’ve seen you. You’re part of me, and I’m part of you, and that’s how it is, all right? You can’t pull bullshit on me because I know.Whatever you used to be, however much of a badass Djinn, you are one of us now. Human. Fragile. Feeling. It’s all right to feel.”
I felt tears well up. Real tears, hot with anguish, with frustration, with awful fear. They burned in my eyes like Djinn fire.
His thumbs stroked them away as they fell.
“Don’t let her make you the villain,” he said, and kissed me. “Because I don’t want to be in love with the villain, okay?”
I clung to him desperately, tasting my tears on his lips, tasting the warm, sweet light beneath of his love for me.
He meant this.
He meant it.
And for a moment—just a moment—I found that peace, that gentle whispering calm, that came from the Earth herself.
Not alone, though.
There were two of us in that place of peace.
And that was enough, for the moment.
TRACK LIST
As always, music is my muse—and sometimes my lifeline. Here are the tracks that helped steer me through the turns on Outcast Season: Unknown.
"Under the Gun" Supreme Beings of Leisure
"John Barleycorn" Traffic
"Glory Box" Portishead
"The Hop" Radio Citizen featuring Bajka
"Roads" Portishead
"My Old Self" Wide Mouth Mason
"I Got Mine" The Black Keys
"C'mon C'mon" The Von Bodies
"Every Inambition" The Trews
"Ladylike" Big Wreck
"Six-Pack" The Perpetrators
"Best Way to Die" Jet Set Satellite
"Little Toy Gun" Honehoney
"WannaBe in L.A." Eagles of Death Metal
"I Don't Care (Single Version)" Fall Out Boy
"Many Shades of Black" The Raconteurs
"Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet" Fall Out Boy
"U.R.A. Fever" The Kills
"Manic Girl" Radio Iodine
"Take Me to the Speedway" The Dexateens
"Alsatian" White Rose Movement
"Poison Whiskey" Tishamingo
"Welcome Home" Coheed & Cambria
"Tick Tick Boom" The Hives
"Jockey Full of Bourbon" Joe Bonamassa
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" Beck
"The Ballad of John Henry" Joe Bonamassa
"Funkier Than Mosquito's Tweeter" Joe Bonamassa
"Happier Times" Joe Bonamassa
"Faster" Rachael Yamagata
"Around the Bend (Radio Edit)" The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
"Slow Dance with a Stranger" Danger Radio
"Ardmore" Cardinal Trait
"Bounce" The Cab
"Figure It Out" Plain White T's
"I'm Not Cool" Sohodolls
"Under the Gun" Supreme Beings of Leisure
"All the Same to Me" Anya Marina
"Cut Up" Duchess Says
"Night Train (Bonus Track)" The Kills
"The Trick Is to Keep Breathing" Garbage
"Homecoming" Hey Monday
"Baby, You're on Your Own" The Steepwater Band
"I'm Not Jesus (feat. Corey Taylor)" Apocalyptica
"Under the Gun" Supreme Beings of Leisure
"The Little Things" Danny Elfman
"Prayer" Lizzie West
"Down by the River" P. J. Harvey
"Cruel" Tori Amos
"Welcome to the World" Kevin Rudolf & Rick Ross
"Lighten Up, Francis" Puscifer
"Time Bomb" Jessy Greene
"Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" Cage the Elephant
"That's Not My Name" The Ting Tings
"Goodbye" Kristina DeBarge
"With Me Tonight" Aynsley Lister
"As the Rush Comes (Radio Edit)" Motorcycle
"In One Ear" Cage the Elephant
"Top Yourself" The Raconteurs
"Time's Up" Aynsley Lister
"Running Out on Me" Aynsley Lister
"Sugar Low" Aynsley Lister
"Disorderly Me" Aynsley Lister
"Fruit Machine" The Ting Tings
"Take Me on the Floor" Veronicas
"28" Starewell
"Sugar" Respectables
"Close Your Eyes" Grey Eye Glances
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Caineis the internationally bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including the Weather Warden series. She was born at White Sands Missile Range, which people who know her say explains a lot. She has been an accountant, a professional musician, and an insurance investigator, and still carries on a secret identity in the corporate world. She and her husband, fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad, live in Texas with their iguanas, Popeye and Darwin. Visit her Web site at www.rachelcaine.com, and look for her on Twitter, LiveJournal, MySpace, and Facebook.