“She’s lying to you,” I said. Not that I hadn’t almost gotten him killed on many occasions, but it was probably not the best time to parse the dynamics of that relationship. “Ibby, the lady who tells you these things, she isn’t your friend. And she lies. She wants to use you, all of you. She doesn’t care what happens to you.”

Isabel was no fool, and I saw her consider that. The children behind her, however, didn’t have our history together. Or, perhaps, the same flexibility of mind.

“You’re the liar! You’re the evil one!” one of them shouted, and clapped his hands together.

A hammer of air forced itself down the narrow hallway, hit me, and slammed me backward to the floor with such violence I saw black swarms of stars, and felt myself begin to disconnect from this world. I fought back, panting, and rolled to my side to get up.

The Weather Warden child hit me again, harder, sending me face- first into the wall. I slid down it, almost senseless, and sensed Isabel stepping forward. The assault stopped, mainly because the Weather Warden—the same boy who’d almost killed us in the chasm, perhaps?—couldn’t strike with Isabel in the way.

Isabel called fire into her hand. It came in a blue-white burst of energy, flickering red at the edges, and echoed eerily in her eyes as she advanced toward me.

“You wanted them dead,” she said. “My parents. All our parents. You killed Uncle Luis. You want to kill me and my friends. You want to kill the lady.”

Only one of those things was true, but it was the critical one; I did want to kill the lady. And however it had happened, Manny and Angela Rocha had died; Pearl could twist the facts to suit her cause, and it would be useless for me to try to deny them.

But Luis . . . I could prove she was lying about Luis.

“Stop,” I said, or tried to say; there was blood in my mouth, and I wasn’t sure that I had actually spoken at all. The second blow had been so hard that I couldn’t get my limbs to move, other than uncoordinated scrabbles. “He’s alive.” That sounded almost clear. “Your uncle is alive.”

“Liar,” Ibby said. “I saw you kill him. The lady showed me—you hurt him, you hurt him so bad he died. And now you’re going to burn, just like you burned him.”

She pulled her hand back.

I flung out a hand in useless denial . . . and felt a surge of horror at what had been done to Ibby. To all these children. She’d watched someone—even if it had not been Luis in truth—burn. Whether that had been illusion or reality, it was traumatic enough to leave unendurable scars.

In the instant before she launched the fire at me, I shouted, “Ibby, think! I’m like your uncle! I can’t use fire!”

Ibby blinked. She stayed there, poised on the edge of violence, fire flickering and hissing in her small, chubby hand.

“Your uncle is an Earth Warden,” I panted. “I share his power. I am an Earth Warden. I couldn’t burn him, even if I wanted to, do you understand? And I never would, Ibby. I love him, just as I love you.”

It was much for a child her age to understand, but she’d been forced to things far beyond her normal understanding already. She understood the nature of power because of what Pearl had already taught her.

Ibby quenched the fireball with a clench of her fist, leaving behind a smear of acrid smoke on the air. She looked at me with wide, lost eyes, frowning.

“But I saw,” she said. “I saw you do it. I know you did it.”

Children are literal. And Pearl had counted on that. “No, my dear,” I said softly, and heard the grief and tenderness in my voice. “I didn’t. And I won’t hurt him, or you. You have my promise.”

I felt the air move behind me, a cool breeze stirring my hair, and heard running, booted feet.

And then Luis said, “Ibby?”

In the first instant there was shock, then fear. She’d seen him die. This required a wrenching adjustment of her worldview, something difficult and painful.

Then I saw delight dawn. Her eyes rounded, and so did her perfect little rosebud of a mouth, and in that single moment, she seemed the child she had been. “Tío Luis?” Her voice was shaking and uncertain.

He lowered himself to one knee. “I’m here, mija. I’m right here.”

She took a step forward, then shook her head, violently, and backed away, into the safety of the other children. “No,” she said. “No, it’s a trick. You’re playing a trick.”

Luis didn’t move, not even a muscle. He didn’t even glance at me. “Mija, it’s no trick. I’m here to take you home. You want to go home, don’t you? I know you didn’t want to leave us. I know they made you go. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.”

She pulled in a trembling breath, and I saw tears glitter in her dark eyes. So young. So fragile.

“Isabel,” Luis whispered. “I love you. Please come home.”

“No,” said the Weather Warden boy, the one who’d slammed me into the walls. He was cold and utterly controlled, and he grabbed Ibby’s shoulder as she started to move toward us. “She’s not going anywhere. You’re not going to hurt her anymore.”

“I’m not going to hurt her.” Luis kept his voice low, and as gentle as possible. “I’m not going to hurt any of you. You can all come with us.”

“Why, so you can cut into our heads? Make us zombies?” The boy’s grip on Ibby’s shoulder must have hurt; I saw her wince. “That’s what you do, we know all about it. You take us away to your hospital and you cut us up and you lock us up. We’re not going to let you do that to us. Or to anyone else, ever again. We’re going to stop you.”

They thought they were the heroes.

Worse, there was a grain of truth in what the boy was saying, like all successful lies. The Wardens did operate on those whose powers were too dangerous, too uncontrollable. Some didn’t survive. Some survived grievously damaged. Pearl knew that.

She had twisted it in their minds, made it their inevitable fate. Made us all evil, predatory villains.

They’d fight, all right. Fight to the death, because they were the brightest, the strongest, the most courageous.

She was turning our future heroes against us.

“Ibby,” I coughed, and rolled up to my hands and knees. “Ibby, please don’t. Let us help you.”

“No,” the boy said, when Isabel tried to pull free. He shoved her behind him, and slapped his palms together again, driving a wall of force toward us. I collapsed to the floor this time before it hit me, presenting as little target as possible; even so, the impact almost drove me into unconsciousness.

It blew Luis backwards, sliding him ten feet down the hall with a yelp of pain.

“No!” Isabel shouted, and turned on the boy, shoving him back. “No, don’t hurt him!”

“That’s your enemy, dummy!” he yelled back, and shoved in turn. “How weak are you? Didn’t you learn anything? It’s probably not even him!”

“It is,” Isabel said, and turned toward Luis. “It is him.”

As she started toward us, the boy tried to grab her, but this time, Ibby was ready, and she slipped out of his hands and ran past me, toward her uncle. Luis rose, staggering a little, and she leaped into his arms.

He was driven back a step, but held on to her; there was a flash of pain on his face, quickly buried by waves of relief. He kissed her shining dark hair, hugged her, and murmured rapid calming phrases in Spanish, only half of which I could hear. Promising he loved her. Promising he would protect her.

I hoped that was true.

“The lady lied,” I managed to say to Isabel, and to the other children still facing us. “She lied to you. Do you understand? She’s trying to make you hurt innocent people. I know you don’t want to do that. You’re better than that.”

One looked horror-stricken, and backed up. He was clearly questioning everything he’d been shown, everything he’d been told; there was real doubt in his face, real pain. He was just a bit younger than the Weather Warden boy.