It was my turn to flinch, inwardly at least. “Even had I been there, even had I used every ounce of power inside me and destroyed myself in the process, I could not have saved Angela. She was dead the moment the bullet entered her brain. It’s not likely I could have repaired the damage to Manny’s heart, either.”

He knew that. He was an Earth Warden; his analysis would have shown him the same thing, but he could not, would not, accept it.

The night stretched on in silence, and finally Luis said, “Get out. I don’t want you in their house.”

I rose to my feet, but didn’t move to the door. “Isabel—”

“She’s my niece. I’ll take care of her.” His bloodshot eyes fixed on mine. “Go away. Get your free lunch somewhere else. You don’t belong here.”

No one—human or Djinn—had ever spoken to me so, in such words, in such tones. It should have been a death sentence for him, with as much power as tingled in my veins.

Instead, I walked away. I left the house, closing the door quietly behind me, and as I stood out in the dark, I realized that I had no car and no way to get to my home.

I pointed myself in the right direction, and began to walk.

I did not go home. I walked to the building, but there was nothing inside it to draw me. Instead, I walked all night, thinking. The world passed in a blur of lights, noise, distant laughter. None of it mattered. I couldn’t leave the prison of my own body, and inside that cage I waited, trapped, for something.

In the morning, my cell phone began to ring. Messages from the Wardens organization. Manny had likely been right; they were assuming that I’d had a hand in the death of the Warden in El Paso.

It occurred to me that I did have something I could do. Something to channel this dark need inside of me.

Something to lash out at this world that had hurt me.

Manny’s superior officer in the Wardens, Scott Sands, lived in an expensive high-rise building in downtown Albuquerque, one that commanded a view of the pine-covered mountains. Once again, I walked; the feeling of movement was important to me, and I was in no great hurry. Not now.

The apartment building had electronic security, which was a simple thing to confound. I took the steps at a run. When there were no more steps, I opened the door to the top level—a quiet, carpeted hall with solid, expensive doors.

I could have knocked, perhaps.

Instead, I blew open the door to 1514, and then I shattered the plate glass windows that composed the entire back wall of the apartment. Cold mountain wind shrieked in, sending Scott Sands lurching to his feet in surprise. He was still in his bathrobe and slippers. I was happy to see that he lived alone—I would not have hesitated had he put his family in the line of fire, but neither would I have relished it.

But alone—ah, that was a different thing, and I could take my time about it.

He cowered before me, and then, of course, he remembered he was a Warden, and he counterattacked.

Electricity arced from every power outlet in the apartment, formed a pink-tinged bolt in the palm of his hand, and arrowed toward me.

I dodged it easily. It struck the walls of his apartment and splashed in a burning spray across his carpet, crisping it into stinking slag.

“Is that your best effort?” I asked, and began walking toward him. “I was expecting more from a hardened killer, Scott. Perhaps you should try again.”

He scrambled away from me, pale legs flashing beneath his fluffy black bathrobe. The wind pushed at him, sending papers flying in a white storm around us.

He used the wind, whipping the papers into a cutting vortex between us. I had no command of the wind, but because the power I’d taken was Earth power, I had command of the paper, and I sent it hurtling inward to cover him in a choking, smothering cloud. It rammed against his mouth, nose, and eyes, triggering panic.

He lost control of the vortex.

I had my hand around his throat before he could claw the clinging sheets from his eyes, and the Earth power coursing through my veins made me far stronger than a human of my size. It would have been easy to crush him.

I held him still instead, staring into his wide, frightened eyes. Thinking of Manny’s open eyes, the last time I had seen them. Open and so empty.

“You hired the Fire Warden to burn Manny Rocha’s office,” I said. “And to kill Manny and Luis, if possible. Yes?”

He clawed at my hand, but he would have had more luck opening a vise with feathers. “Yes,” he choked out. “Yes!”

“Were you responsible for the shooting?” He didn’t answer. His pupils were huge, his face growing purple. It occurred to me that he might need breath to speak, and I loosened my grip enough to let a trickle of air into his lungs. “I’m not in a good mood, Warden Sands. Please answer swiftly.”

“No,” he gasped. “No!”

“Why did you destroy Manny’s office, then?”

“I—can’t breathe—”

“That is the point of choking you,” I pointed out. “Haste, please, if you want to live.”

Scott’s face was distended, his eyes bulging, and there was true panic in him now. He’d kill me if he could, but I had the upper hand, and it was crushing his throat.

“Orders,” he managed to scrape out. “From the Ranch.”

“The Ranch,” I repeated. It meant nothing to me. “Whose ranch? Where?”

“Mistake,” he wheezed. “Papers. Had to kill them, in case they knew.”

He wouldn’t speak another word, not even when I squeezed tighter. At last, I dropped him semiconscious to the floor and crouched down next to him, staring into his eyes. The terror in him was close to madness.

“You fear your masters more than you fear me,” I said. I didn’t need his acknowledgment; it was clear enough. “Do you really think that’s wise, Warden Sands? I think you understand how little I care about your pathetic life just now.”

He blinked at me and said, “You don’t know. You don’t understand.”

“Clearly, I don’t care.”

He laughed. Laughed. It was a raw, broken sound, and then he rolled over to his hands and knees, the robe loose and dragging as he crawled.

He reached the windowsill and glanced back at me, and I saw the light of madness in his eyes.

“You can’t fight her,” he said. “I’d like to see you try, bitch.”

And then he pitched forward, out into empty space.

I moved to the window and slapped aside the blowing, lashing curtains. Beyond, the fragile blue of the New Mexico sky burned over the mountains, and the sun shone brightly.

There was no sign of Warden Scott Sands on the pavement below. It was as if he had . . . flown away.

Wardens had unique powers, it was true, but even had he been capable of such a feat, he would have still been visible against the clear morning sky.

He was simply . . . gone. As if—and this struck me deep, and badly—as if he had walked away, into the aetheric. Wardens could not. Djinn could . . . but Sands was no Djinn. And there were only a few of my kind capable of carrying humans unharmed through the aetheric. Fewer still who would be at the beck and call of humans.

I stayed where I was for a long moment, staring out at the impossible, and then I walked slowly across the broken glass to the shattered door. I heard the sirens below on the street, likely responding to my explosive entry into this apartment.

Once again, I felt the net drawing tight around me, and I didn’t know how to stop it. This was human business, Warden business, and a Djinn had no place in it.

My phone rang. This time, as I took the stairs down to street level, I answered it.

“Hey,” a male voice said. “It’s Lewis Orwell. And you’re in one hell of a lot of trouble.”

“I know,” I said.

“You kill anybody, Cassiel?”

“No.” Not technically. “Possibly the four in the car who shot Manny. Do they count?”

He sighed. “That’s a question we don’t have time to get into. You kill any Wardens?”