“Only if you don’t lose control of him, and he’s already fooled you once, Luis. Managing a captive Djinn is something that even the elder Wardens did carefully. You can’t expect someone like Rashid to just let you order him. Free him. He’ll help you of his own will.”
Luis shook his head. “I can’t count on it. There are too many lives at stake, and this is too important. There’s no traitor at the school, Cass. I have control of the Djinn. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”
I gave him a long, dark look and turned away to mount my bike. I felt filthy, inside and out. Betrayed in a way that I’d never expected.
“Wait.” Luis leaned on the handlebars of the Victory, stopping me as I kicked the engine to life. “You need power before you go. Let me do that, at least.”
I hated it. I hated himfor it. But I hated myself, worst of all, for accepting. Luis took my hand in his, and the familiar hot surge of energy swept through me, healing and sure. I would have sworn that the man wielding that power could never have betrayed me, or deceived me ... but he had.
And it sickened and frightened me, that I could so misjudge him in this.
As soon as it was practical, I pulled free of him and turned the bike on the narrow trail to head back the way I’d come.
“Are you okay?” Luis asked me. The warmth in his voice made me feel a little more betrayed, a little more angry. “Cassiel—”
“Think on this,” I said. “If you’re not the traitor, who created the mudslide that almost killed me on the way here?”
He had no answer for that.
“Watch yourself,” I said. “And watch Rashid. He’ll betray you if he can.” I stopped short of saying what I felt: And you would deserve it.
Because even though I agreed with that, I loved him, dear God, I loved him, and that was utterly damning.
I put the Victory in gear and roared away.
Chapter 8
MANY HOURS LATER,I stopped for gasoline and a meal at a diner that proved to be delicious enough, though I avoided any kind of beef, in honor of my recent new friends from the cattle truck. It was, by that time, nearly six in the morning, and I dialed my friend in the FBI with great pleasure. “Hello, Agent Turner,” I said, with a good deal more cheer than was perhaps called for. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Matter of fact, you didn’t. Sorry about that, Cassiel.”
“I would never wish to cause you inconvenience.”
“I thought the Djinn didn’t lie.”
“Who ever told you that?”
“Huh, good point. Where are you?”
“A diner outside of Albuquerque—the Adobe Bowl. You know where it is?”
“I’m not that far away. Stay put. I’ll come to you.”
“I’ll be here.” I hung up without any kind of conventional end to the conversation; in my experience, that left the other party feeling off balance and frustrated. I liked to have Turner frustrated; he tended to give more away than he intended.
I ordered pie and coffee, and nursed both while the sunrise turned the land to intense bands of color—purple for the mountains, dark green for the foothills, ochre and gold for the flatlands. There was a television running silently in the corner of the diner, tuned to a news channel. One of the stories was about an abduction of children that began in Denver and ended in Chicago, which had been foiled by a fast-thinking citizen. All the children had been recovered safely, and the kidnappers either dead in the ensuing gun battle with police or fled. A manhunt was under way.
I doubted they would ever find the bodies of those who’d “fled.” Rashid had not been in a very good mood, and after posing as the “fast-thinking citizen,” he would want his pound of flesh.
The children were safe. That made me feel a distant, cold satisfaction, if not happiness; but even the satisfaction was wiped out by the next story, which involved the grisly discovery of a shooting victim in the woods, two men dead of apparent natural causes and one who’d been torn apart by wild animals.
Luis had gotten what he’d wanted from me. Full value.
They hadn’t found the one who’d been sealed alive inside the tree, but he was as dead as the others, no question about it.
“Gruesome stuff,” said Turner as he slid into the booth across from me, a porcelain cup of coffee already in his hand. He was a thin, bland sort of man, and as usual he was dressed in what I considered the FBI uniform—a dark suit, a plain tie, a white shirt. Turner was, however, also a Warden—not very powerful but well trained, at least. I doubted his FBI bosses had knowledge of that particular aspect of his life. “What kind of pie was that?”
“Good,” I said. He sighed, motioned to a waitress, and pointed at my pie.
“Another one of those, unless it’s cherry. I don’t like cherry.”
“Coconut,” the woman said. “That okay?”
“Brilliant.” He sipped coffee and returned his attention to me. He’d showered recently; the ends of his hair were still dark and damp against his neck, and his face seemed freshly shaved. By contrast, his shirt seemed wrinkled and stale, and his suit hadn’t seen recent cleaning, either. “Nice trip?” He glanced over his shoulder at the TV. “You pass that place along the way, the one with the dead guys?”
“I think I would remember something like that.”
Turner had enough experience with me to recognize a non-answer when he heard one, and for a moment I thought he might continue to pursue it, but he decided not to, as his slice of pie was deposited in front of him. “I’m sure they needed killing,” he said. “That would be the usual excuse, even if you’re not from Texas.”
“I thought you investigated things like that.”
“Murder isn’t a federal crime,” he said, “luckily for you. Abductions are, which is why I was tracking this Denver thing until miraculously everything just went wrong for the kidnappers. Kids got out of it fine, which was another miracle considering the bullets that started flying around. Incidentally, although this isn’t going out to the media, all of the adults in the plot were either recent converts to the Church of the New World or hired guns paid as muscle. And the kids were all Warden kids. You got any insights?”
“None that would be useful to you,” I said. “But you didn’t call me because of those kidnappings.”
“Not originally,” he agreed, and considered his next words over a bite of pie. “You said the FBI wanted you to come in for a case. Truth is, there is no case. They want you to consult on some hypothetical scenarios.”
“Consult,” I repeated, frowning. “I don’t think I understand your meaning.”
“I did some digging around to get this, so please, tip generously. I mean that some eggheads up in Quantico have developed a what-if idea about what could happen if our relationship with the Wardens goes sour, and they’d like you to render an expert opinion about how likely the FBI and other governmental agencies are to be able to contain the situation.”
It was frankly laughable to think that, should humans somehow go to war with Wardens—much less with Djinn—there would be any scenario at all under which they would live, much less win, but I gazed back at him with what I hoped was a politely interested expression. “I should be glad to render my opinion,” I said. “But I don’t have time for such things at present.”
“I’m afraid their response to that is that you’re going to make the time,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to meet you out here instead of at my offices. They’re going to, ah, require your immediate assistance. You understand what I’m saying?”
I thought so, and ate the last bites of pie instead of offering an immediate reply. “You think they will take me into custody and force me to do it.”
“I think they’d try. Look, I don’t agree with eighty percent of what the Wardens are up to these days, but I could say the same about the FBI, and that’s why I think I’m getting less than half the story at any one time. Wardens don’t trust me; my colleagues at the day job trust me even less. Officially what they’re telling me is that you’re under no obligation to help them, but I’m placing my bets that if you say no, you get strongly reminded that you’re now a citizen of the United States of America, and there’ll be some statute they invoke to make damn sure you don’t go anywhere until they’re ready to let you off the hook.” He paused, licking coconut cream from his fork. “I know you well enough to know that detaining you when you want to be somewhere else is a really awful idea. So in the interests of you not melting down a wing of a government building and putting yourself on the Most Wanted list, along with every Warden who ever met you, let’s get you heading somewhere else. Fast.”