I couldn’t. I watched Rashid’s face for a long, silent moment, imagining what it would be like to know one’s child had been devoured alive, eaten by a creature that existed by ending other Djinn. Rashid would have felt it, I thought. Connected by power and heritage, he would have felt every second of his progeny’s ending.
“Why now?” I asked him. “Why here? You must have had months to gain your revenge.”
Rashid’s face changed again, melting back into its pleasing lines. “Oh, I tried,” he said. “He had another bottle and another Djinn he could torture and destroy as he wished. He bargained for her release, under the condition that I should never harm him. I made this deal.” That grin came again, but this time it had darkness in it, and cruel amusement seemed to fuel his glowing eyes to even greater brightness. “I made that bargain to save an innocent life. You should understand that, Cassiel. But I never said I wouldn’t find othersto harm him.”
That was the Djinn’s way; bargains were sacred, but there was no deal a human could make that a Djinn couldn’t find a way around, or through, or under. We’d had too long to learn our skills, and by nature we were twisting and devious. It was part of our charm.
“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” I asked him. Rashid might be lying to me, for any number of reasons of his own; there were no codes between us that prevented lying to achieve a goal. If I failed to ask the relevant questions, then that was my problem, not his. And Rashid could spin a tale, a good one.
I felt that this one might actually be true, however.
“I’ll swear,” he said immediately. “Thrice. On anything you think necessary.”
That was an open oath, and very powerful to us. I considered for a second, then nodded. “Swear upon the Mother,” I said. No Djinn would swear on the Mother and not mean it. “Swear that every word you have said to me during this conversation has been true in every aspect.”
He considered, too; I was asking for something exacting, and if he’d lied in even the smallest detail, he wouldn’t swear. The consequences were too great.
Instead, he nodded, and said, “I swear on the Mother, and the blood of the Mother, that every word I have spoken to you during this conversation today has been true,” he said. “I have not lied. Is that sufficient?”
“Swear it three times,” I said. There was nothing more binding than that. And, to my surprise, he did so without blinking.
I said, “If I fulfill your request to me, you’ll overtake those who’ve abducted the children in Denver, stop them, and return the children to their families, or at least to the place from which they were taken?”
“I so swear,” he said. “If that Warden dies, I’ll save your children. I’m the only one who can, Cassiel. But I won’t act until he’s dead.”
That seemed fair enough. “Done,” I said.
“Done,” Rashid repeated. “The deal is struck.”
He leaned back, and gathered shadows around him. When they settled, they’d formed a black suit, cloth that slithered like silk, draping him in perfectly tailored lines. On his feet shoes formed, in the latest style, polished and perfect. He even added a tie that looked spun of moonbeams and dreams and diamonds. It suited him very well.
“Next time,” he said, “we’ll bargain for something more intimate.” His grin was half a leer this time. “I’ll wait here until it’s done.”
“Where is he?”
For answer, he created a map in midair in front of me, glowing golden lines with a bloodred star marking the location of my quarry. He was right; it was about an hour’s ride, and I didn’t look back as I gunned the engine, leaned forward, and sped off on my mission.
I hadn’t intended to be an assassin, but sometimes one must do the unpleasant to prevent the unthinkable. Having more children twisted, destroyed, and dying was unthinkable.
This was merely unpleasant pest control.
The white dot indicating my location moved steadily over the map, as miles disappeared beneath my tires; despite the piled snow, the sky was clear. The Vision glided like a shark between the shadows as the sun climbed into the sky, and when the trees parted the silver gleamed knife-bright. My hair rippled in the icy wind, and I felt the air hissing over my exposed skin. I extended my Earth sense into the trees, feeling the slow, constant strength there, the bright sparks of life moving on their own journeys large and small. For the first time in a long time I felt like a Djinn again—free.
And that carried its own guilt, and sadness.
After almost an hour, my white mark was rapidly encroaching on the red dot, and I slowed to begin examining the road and forest more carefully. There, off to the east, I located the large ripple on the aetheric that indicated a human Warden’s presence. A Weather Warden, from the feel of it. A man, of middle age. His aetheric signature was muddy to me, constrained as I was in flesh; had I been truly Djinn, I could have read his past, known the truth of what Rashid had told me written in the whispers that followed him through time. Some acts left ghosts. The one Rashid had described to me would have left screaming, bloody trails.
It troubled me that I couldn’t read those signs, not now, not as human as I was.
I pulled the bike over and killed the engine; in the silence, the sounds of the world around me took on weight and depth. Birdsong, sweet and constant. The wet thump of melting snow falling from branches. The whispering rustle of trees, constantly in motion as they struggled for power, for position, for light and life. The smaller noises of rodents and mammals making their little lives.
And from a distance, the entirely inappropriate music of the Beach Boys came echoing through the trees.
I left the bike and walked on, dodging trees, maneuvering through thick brush that choked the areas between. Leaf litter coated the ground where the snow had melted, thick and spongy and filling the air with a thick, piney scent of decomposition. I sensed a snake making its sluggish, cool way through the leaves toward the sun, and changed course to avoid it.
Then, quite suddenly, I was in a clearing that was bathed in golden morning sunlight, and there was a dark green canvas tent angling among the surrounding trees. The grass in the clearing was artificially thick and green, and the man had scraped a round bare circle for a fire pit and lined it with stones. There was nothing in the pit now but ash and embers, burned down overnight.
The tent flap was unzipped and open, and a man sat cross-legged on a striped blanket in front, in the sun. He was dressed in a thick flannel shirt of red and blue checks, a sleeveless down vest, and a pair of much-worn and seldom-washed blue jeans, with battered hiking boots. His salt-and-pepper hair had scarce acquaintance with a barber, and he wore a three-day growth of beard, some of which glinted silver in the sun.
He was drinking a cup of something that steamed hot wisps into the cool air, and as I emerged from the trees he stopped in mid-gulp, staring at me.
He was, for a human, reasonably attractive, though worn by time—lines around his eyes, and at the corners of his mouth. He spent much time in the open, I thought, because his skin was leathery and well tanned. I could smell him from where I stood, a rich mixture of sweat, leather, and unwashed clothing.
He put down the coffee—I could smell it, too, now—and said, “Hello, there. You lost?” He turned down the machine next to him, which had finished playing the Beach Boys and moved on to another musical group I couldn’t identify. He couldn’t have missed my exotic look—the pale, pink-tinted ragged hair, the white cast of my skin, the vivid, not-quite-human green of my eyes. His face went hard and a little pale, and he put his hands down on his knees, affecting an unconcerned sort of body language. “So to what do I owe a visit from the Djinn?”
I didn’t have to speak with him; my commission from Rashid didn’t require me to know him at all, this man who’d committed such crimes against my brothers and sisters. But I inclined my head and said, “My name is Cassiel.”