“I will,” he said. If there was the slightest emphasis on the “I” part of that statement, I supposed he could be forgiven for it. “If you need power, take it. I’m out.”
And he was, ending the call without any further courtesies. He was learning bad habits, but probably from me.
I had learned so much from him, including how bitter a personal betrayal could be. It seemed only fair.
I closed my eyes, calmed my thoughts, and reached for the connection between us. It was a slender thing, but still strong, built of trust and experience; our recent discord had frayed that rope badly but not broken it. Over time, it would repair ... if we survived.
There was an oddness to doing this now, a kind of strange, tentative worry that rose in me as I began to draw power out of him. This felt less intimate and more like a clinical transaction. That should have been a good thing; it held far fewer complications, for both of us.
But as the power sank into me, heavy and golden as liquid sunlight, I found myself thinking about his face, his mouth, his body, his skin ... all the things that were now forbidden to me, by my own choice.
And it hurt, again.
I don’t know what Luis felt, or thought, but as soon as I could, I cut the flow of energy between us. The contact had left me feeling restless and wild at a very deep, almost cellular level. I craved ... something. And I didn’t dare define what it might be.
I glanced at the maps again, and at the network of black dots I was slowly forming. I’d marked all the places where the FBI had identified either locations or suspected groups of Pearl’s growing list of followers. I could visit each on the aetheric if I managed my power carefully enough. That would have been the smart, methodical way to approach it, but I believed Rashid. Right or wrong, I believed him. And if Pearl had planned to have those children brought to her in New Jersey, then it was possible that was where her training efforts were under way—and where she would be visible, flesh, and vulnerable.
I went straight to the camp location in New Jersey. As before, there was a thin, toxic shimmer to the aetheric mists over the location, but this was stronger than before—and it seemed to have a sense of me, as well. I stopped well short of the vague, twisting shapes that shrouded the area, but it seemed that I couldn’t stop drifting toward them. Troubling—and then I realized that I had stopped, after all.
The mists were reaching out for me.
I quickly propelled my aetheric body backward, but a whisper of dark shimmer brushed me as I did, and a black, cold pain shot through me. It shouldn’t have happened; nothing should have been able to affect me on the aetheric level, not in this form. But I felt it like a freezing electrical shock, and tumbled away from it, out of control, driven by a panic even I couldn’t fully understand.
There was something there. Something alive. Something hungry.
It wasn’t Pearl, but it was an aspect of her. An avatar, waiting for the unwary Djinn or Warden. The chill I’d felt had been her leech battening on me to drain away all of my aetheric energy ... all that I’d borrowed from Luis, and all that powered the cells of my human body as well. This was new, and deadly indeed, if it could attack Wardens, and not only the Djinn.
Pearl was growing stronger, and I’d allowed that to happen. It was as Ashan had told me in the beginning: She was drawing power from humans, and from Wardens, and if she wasn’t stopped, she’d soon have enough to destroy all of the Djinn as well—a ravening black hole consuming all that it touched.
I experimented a bit with the trembling black fog, seeing what triggered it to move closer and what it would ignore. That was a dangerous game, and it brought me into contact with the mist more than once. By the time I’d done my investigation, and gathered enough information, I was once again running dangerously thin on reserves—but it was worth it.
I knew enough to get a warning through.
My next call was to Luis, again, to give him the information, location, and findings; he would tell Marion, who would coordinate the Wardens and warn the Djinn, such as remained on speaking terms with us. Luis brought up the issue of power, for which I was thankful; I hadn’t wanted to ask a second time. This time, the flowing energy was stronger, and the images and desires it woke in me more pronounced.
Not something I could share with Luis, but I was relieved when he said, a little hesitantly, “Do you want me to stay on the phone? I’m on some downtime. I could go up with you to take a look, see what you’re up against.”
The idea of seeing him, even in aetheric form, was irresistible, and the tone of his voice seemed to indicate that he wanted at least some kind of reconciliation. I forced myself to hesitate before saying yes, hoping I didn’t sound as desperate as I felt; if he sensed it, he had the kindness not to say anything. Our good-byes were nonexistent again, but I left the phone on and the channel open, and rose into the aetheric. The cell phone would be a great help, since humans could not easily speak on the aetheric, and even Djinn sometimes found that their conversations took on confusing, unintended overtones in the realm of energy and intentions.
Finding each other was easy. The connection between us could be used as a guideline, and I flew toward him at dizzying speeds through the aetheric—native, to the Djinn, but confusing and wildly unreal to human senses. I felt the vibrations between us grow in intensity until I saw him hurtling toward me with equal urgency. I slowed, and so did he, until we were hovering just apart. His form glowed a soft gold now, with flickers of copper in the form of flames on his arms. Most Wardens chose other forms on the aetheric, but not Luis; he was himself, in all important aspects. I still wondered how he saw me here, in this place. It wasn’t a thing I could witness for myself.
Speaking was all but impossible between us, but the feelings that cascaded back and forth were not. His hand reached for mine, and as he touched me I saw that my fingers glowed moon-silver on the right, dull copper on the left, because half of my left arm had been replaced and reworked with Djinn power in metal on the physical plane. It made little difference to me; sensations still came through, even touch, though perhaps a bit muted. I actually forgot about it much of the time.
On the aetheric, though, the contrast was striking.
Intoxicating as being in his presence again was, I knew we couldn’t linger here; Luis’s time was limited, and he needed rest. There was an underlying flicker of gray around him that spoke of exhaustion.
But he’d come to me, despite everything. And I knew, because I could feel it, that his instinctive pleasure in my presence was as intense as mine in his.
I held his hand as we shot up in a parabolic arc through the mists and lights, dodging dimly seen figures of other Wardens on their own affairs and Djinn who registered in ghostly flickers. We came crashing down toward the flat representation of the world at the black spot on my map, near Trenton, New Jersey.
More of that black shimmering curtain, but this one rose higher and twisted with more power than before. It seemed to move like a silently blazing fire, reaching up to brush the roof of the aetheric world and stretching down into the physical world below—a burning black tree of power.
Of all the things that I had seen so far of Pearl’s influence, that was the most alarming. The power involved was staggering.
More than that—it felt aware.
She’s here.She might not have taken physical form yet, but it was a certainty that her energy was stored here, readying itself.
Something in me reacted to her presence with a kind of longing, and panic, and I dragged Luis to a halt, hovering well beyond any approach to the column of force. Shafts of multicolored light crackled within it, lightning without a storm’s logic, and on the real world I dimly heard Luis’s voice on the phone say, “We can’t handle this alone, Cass. This is way above our pay grade.”