Luis was right. We would not survive this.

You’re afraid, the Djinn ghost of me whispered. Like a human.

And once, I might have found that ridiculous or a matter for contempt. Now I found it a matter of survival. Every nerve in my body screamed in anguish. I wanted to hide, to curl up in a protective ball and wait for this terrible thing to pass me by.

That’s your flesh thinking, the Djinn ghost of me said. That’s what they want you to do. And she was right about that. If this was a Warden-driven storm, it could hover in place, flaying the leather from my back, the skin from my body, like being caught in a sandblaster.

I picked a direction based purely on instinct, and hit the throttle full speed. If I ran off the road into the sand, we’d crash and die in the storm. I won’t, I told the screaming panic inside me. I am in control.

The tires chewed loose gravel in the dark. I took in a gasp, choked, coughed. My mouth was coated with dust.

The handlebars of the Victory danced with hot blue sparks.

I veered left again, off of the shoulder, found the edge by trial and error, and concentrated on short, shallow breaths as we sped into the boiling, punishing darkness.

Something hard and hot slammed into my thigh and dragged loose. Metal, I thought. Wire, most likely.

Faster.

The storm could not last forever. Not even the most powerful Warden, the greatest Djinn, could keep this focus for long. Weather was the most unstable of forces, spinning apart under its own weight.

Oversight showed me nothing, a chaos, an unending sea of flashes and smoke and fog.

And then, dimly, a light.

My scoured, abraded faceplate cracked with a sound like thunder, and the drift of dust behind it became a rushing torrent into my face. I squeezed my aching eyes shut. I was driving blind in any case.

There was no way to draw breath, so I held it, struggling against the impulse to cough.

Almost there. Almost . . .

We burst out of the back side of the sandstorm, into stillness and drifting, smokelike dust. Overhead, the sky was a dull orange, the sun a shriveled dot.

There was no road, only a flatter area of sand.

I skidded the motorcycle to a stop and clawed at my helmet. The buckles seemed frozen in place, but it finally popped free, and as I removed it, the faceplate fell off in two pieces. The plastic was as gray and foggy as the eyes of a corpse.

My helmet, on the front side, had been stripped of paint, reduced to dull gray. A fountain of dirt cascaded out as I dropped it to the road. More dust spilled as I bent my head. I coughed uncontrollably, spitting up dirty mouthfuls, and I finally felt Luis’s hands let go of me. I’d have bruises where he’d gripped, I thought, with every finger clearly imprinted.

Luis got off the motorcycle and staggered a few steps as he tried to wrestle off his own helmet. He’d been protected by my body, but even so, when he turned, his face was a muddy mask of sweat and dirt. He coughed and spat, bracing himself with both hands on his knees, and shook his head.

“Can’t believe we made it,” he croaked. I couldn’t speak at all, I discovered. My throat wouldn’t cooperate. “You okay?”

I gave him a thumbs-up gesture. Running through my abused body was a rush of warmth, of ecstatic satisfaction.

I had survived. I had forced myself through, and I had survived.

As a Djinn, I had never understood how it felt to win against such odds. It’s only adrenaline, that old part of me scoffed. Illusion and hormones.

Behind us, the sandstorm rolled on, howling, black as night. There was nothing we could do to stop its progress, nor was I inclined to try.

I set my face forward, toward Colorado, where Isabel’s track still led.

Neither of us could go on for long without some kind of relief. It appeared in the form of a dilapidated, barely operating roadside motel just shy of the state line. If it had a name, I didn’t see it, only the rusting, flapping sign that said MOTEL, and below that COLOR TV AND AIR-CONDITIONING.

The Victory was coughing as much as I was, and I hoped that it had not been badly damaged by the sandstorm. It had blasted edges, pitted and smoothed, but seemed to have come through relatively unscathed. The same could not be said for me.

I rented a room using gestures and the Warden credit card that bore the name of Leslie Raine. The attendant behind the ancient, cracked counter looked young and far too excited to see a customer. “Y’all were in that sandstorm?” he asked as he hand-cranked a machine to get an imprint of the card. I nodded. “Y’all are lucky to be alive,” he said. “Here ya go. Sign here.”

I signed where he told me, using the name on the card. The boy was fascinated with my pink hair—still visible, though coated with dirt. “Not from around here,” he decided. “Dallas? LA? Las Vegas?”

“Albuquerque,” Luis said, and coughed. “Water?”

“Machine out front,” the boy said. “Cost you a dollar and a quarter, though. Water fountain right there for free. Well water; no city water.” He said it proudly. I raised an eyebrow at Luis, who gave me a mud-caked thin smile in return. As Wardens, we both understood well that natural did not equal safe. I mutely handed Luis several dollars, and he left to patronize the less risky choice.

The boy looked disappointed in our lack of moral courage. “Okay, then,” he said, and handed me a grimy key on an even grimier orange plastic dangle, which was marked with the number 2. “Here you go. A/C’s working, clean sheets, adult channel no charge.”

I gave him a long stare for that last, and walked out into the brilliant sunlight. Luis was retrieving the last of four cold bottles of water from a sun-faded vending machine. I walked past him to the door that matched the key, opened it, and surveyed our temporary refuge. It wasn’t even as much as the motel in which I’d stayed in Albuquerque, but the desk clerk had not lied—there was a bed, neatly made, and once I’d switched the air conditioner on, the blasting breeze was cool. I dropped the key on a table and started shedding layers of clothing on my way to the bathroom, sending cascades of gritty sand down to the carpet. Beneath the layers my skin was filthy and abraded, in places down to the muscle.

I stood under the water for a long time, until what swirled down the drain was clear instead of sandy, and as soon as I stepped out Luis was moving past me, naked, heading in. We said nothing to each other. He averted his eyes from me, and after my first glance, I did him the same. I shook out my clothing and cleaned it with a small burst of power, then did the same for his as the shower continued to run in the bathroom. Fully dressed again, I drank two bottles of water and stared out the motel room’s window at the sandstorm, which was proceeding toward the horizon.

I heard the shower shut off, and in a few minutes the rustle of cloth behind me as Luis began to dress. We had said nothing, but there seemed to be communication between us nevertheless. I was acutely aware of him, every movement, and I wondered if he had the same sensation of me.

I handed him a bottle of water, which he thirstily guzzled, and then the second. It was only as he neared the end of that one that Luis said, “You still have the trace?”

I nodded and sipped.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Maybe this isn’t about us at all. Maybe it’s about Isabel.”

That surprised me, and I turned toward him. “How can it be? She’s a child.” My voice had returned, but it was thin and scratchy. I cleared my throat and drank more water.

“Yeah, I know, but hear me out. It seems like they’re not in the kidnap-for-ransom business—they haven’t called in any kind of demand, not even to get us to back off. They had to have been watching the house to find an opportunity to grab her. So what if all of this has been to grab Ibby, not to kill Manny or Angela or me or you? We’re just—”