“I never asked you to do that!”
“You didn’t have to,” I said. “I fight for you because it’s my duty. And I fight because I love you, Luis, and because I love Ibby and I can’t bear to see either of you harmed again. And I always will love you, no matter how you feel. Because that’s the curse of being a Djinn; we don’t fall out of love the way humans do. That’s why we so seldom try to love at all. I thought you knew that.” I felt out of breath, saying it, and a little sick. There were some weaknesses Djinn don’t want to admit, and this was the worst. Our constancy.
I wanted to stop this. I wanted him to reach out to me, love me, forgive me. I neededthat from him, because I could never, ever go back to simply thinking of him as a friend, an ally, a disposable human being. He was real, and he had my heart.
Perhaps he could turn his back on what we’d built. As a Djinn, I didn’t have that option. The pain would echo forever in the empty places that were left.
I turned to leave. I suppose I was hoping that he’d stop me, say something, dosomething, and that there would be a shining, soul-easing moment of reconciliation between us.
And he said, very quietly, “Cassiel.”
I looked at him, and saw that a struggle was going on inside of him, one I didn’t fully understand. “Cass,” he said, “you’re doing what you’ve got to do. I know that. I don’t like it, and I don’t agree with it, but I know. But there are things I have to do, too. Things you aren’t going to like, either.”
I felt my forehead wrinkle into a frown. “What do you mean?”
“Since we talked I—I took some precautions. For Ibby’s sake.”
“I don’t understand. What precautions?”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t agree. Best I not tell you. But just remember—I didn’t do it for myself. Just remember that.”
He wasn’t going to admit anything to me, I realized, not directly. I studied him, still frowning, and then nodded. “Be careful,” I said. “Watch out for yourself, and her. And all of them.”
He nodded, without a single word of comfort, of understanding, of acknowledgment. It was only as I walked away, feeling the burning weight of my own pain, that I realized I hadn’t, in fact, told him good-bye at all.
But I believed that he had nevertheless understood what I meant.
Chapter 6
WELL BEFORE DAWN,I kicked my motorcycle to growling life in the fenced compound. Marion had gotten up to see me off, but there was still no sign of Luis. I felt ... unfinished. And deeply guilty, although I knew it was no fault of mine that duty drove me to this. I was acting to preserve him, and Ibby. I could do nothing else.
All I really wanted was his understanding, but it seemed he couldn’t give it to me. I hoped that eventually he would at least be able to grant me forgiveness.
I looked back over my shoulder to where Marion’s wheelchair sat on the porch; she was, as always, alert and seemed not to be tired, although I knew that the pace must be wearing her down. “Guess I can’t talk you out of it,” she said. “Even though you know you could do a lot of good here.”
“I can do a lot of good anywhere. You know I’m right about this,” I replied, over the engine’s noise. “Tell Luis ...” I didn’t know what to tell him. I didn’t know what he would accept from me.
Marion evidently did know, because she nodded. “I will,” she said. “He loves you, you know. That’s what makes this worse for him. He’s a proud man, and he wants to be with you.”
“And I want the same things,” I murmured, but I wasn’t sure she could hear me. “Marion, be careful.”
“Always. I’ve survived this long. I’ll survive a few more years, I promise you.” She held up her hand, palm out, in farewell. When I faced forward again, I saw a neat hole had been made in the fence for my motorcycle, an archway not unlike the entrance to an old church. Well, this was a holy place, in a sense. A place of refuge.
I hoped it remained that way until I was able to return.
The opening sealed behind me with a white-hot snap of power, and by the time I looked back, there was a veil over the entire school. No lights showed, nothing except blank, featureless woods covered in thick mounds of snow. Unless I took the trouble to mark its location on the aetheric, I’d never find it again. That eased some of my anxiety, but not all. Not nearly all.
Once I was on the road, which was mostly still navigable, though a challenge to even my driving skills, I triggered the cell phone embedded in my helmet, and called my FBI contact in Albuquerque, Ben Turner. “I’m heading back,” I told him.
“Jesus Christ, Cassiel, do you know what time it is?”
“Before dawn.”
“It’s three fucking o’clock in the morning. I don’t get up at this hour. I don’t even make love with my wife at this hour. What is so important?”
“I’m heading toward you,” I repeated patiently. “I should be there tomorrow morning. Where do you want me to go?”
That triggered an ominous silence, followed by, “You want to know where you should go tomorrow? At three in the morning?”
“I like to be prepared,” I said. I also enjoyed making Agent Turner’s life a living hell; he had done me a bad turn or two, fairly recently, and I still owed him all the petty annoyances I could imagine.
But I also meant what I’d said. I did like to be prepared.
“Luis got a phone call a few days ago,” I said. “Someone in the FBI would very much like it if we came back to be debriefed. Do you know why? Was it you?”
“No,” he said. “And at this hour, I mostly don’t care, either.”
“Find out,” I said. “I need to know what’s happening.”
He swore at me and hung up the phone. I smiled a little, in the secret shadows of the morning, and thought that the score might have righted itself just a tiny bit—but he had much, much more unpleasantness due to him. Lucky for him, Djinn are very inventive.
My smile faded as I tried to imagine what had proven dire enough for the FBI to demand our presence in the first place.
I had expected to be distracted by leaving Isabel and Luis behind. What I had not expected was how much it would continue to fester inside me, like an unhealed wound. I told myself that I didn’t need them; my reliance on Luis had been, in the beginning, purely practical, but I could drain power from any Warden, willing or not. I had no need to be tied down with the complications of an emotional relationship, with Luis or with a child. I had not been put here to indulge my own impulses. Ashan’s curse, which had reduced me to human flesh, was never meant to make me truly human, only to teach me the risks and humiliations of failing to meet my Djinn obligations.
And yet, it hurt to leave that odd, precious relationship behind me. It hurt so much that two hours into my drive, as the sun rose in a glory of gold and red above the trees, I couldn’t bear it any longer. The world had not changed. I had.
I pulled to the side of the narrow, still-shadowed road, yanked off my helmet, and threw myself into a run. I needed to feel my muscles working, my body screaming, but even then, it wasn’t enough. I stopped, breathless, and sank to my knees.
The scream welled up in primal fury out of the very core of me, and I howled my anguish out to the world. It tore the tranquil quiet to shreds, echoing from stone and sky, and stillit wasn’t enough.
I sat on the ground with my forehead pressed to my knees, shoulders shaking, as my grief poured out of me in agonizing waves. I wanted Luis’s arms around me. I wanted the warmth of Isabel’s smile. I wanted to feel part of them, instead of so ... cold. So alone.
But I wasalone. I had always been alone, in a very real way; alone even among the Djinn, my brothers and sisters.