“By slow steps,” I said. “By nobody’s will.” I twisted awkwardly, and met his gaze at last. “Isabel?”

“She’s all right.” He didn’t sound convinced of it, but more as if he was trying to make himself believe. “She’ll be all right, anyway. They did some unholy shit to these kids, you know. They made them think—all kinds of things. Used illusion to convince them the people they ought to trust were evil. There’s no pit deep enough for these bastards, I’m telling you that right now.”

“And her power?” I asked.

“We’re looking into it,” Luis said softly. “She’s got a dual gift. Or would have had, anyway. The Wardens don’t want to lose that. But they can’t have her running around with those kinds of uncontrolled powers, either. Neither can I. Not if I love her. But I don’t know how—I don’t know how I can let them neuter her like that.”

I felt that go through me like a bolt of electricity. “Neuter her?”

“You know, do the surgery. Take away her powers completely. It’s dangerous, and it might be fatal if they fuck it up. Worse, it’s not always effective. It could leave part of her power intact, to surface later, and she’d be even worse at dealing with it.”

Not to mention what damage it would do to Isabel herself. Some Wardens could walk away from their powers safely. Others . . . others crawled away, bloody and bleeding. Others would do anything to undo the choice they made.

Isabel wasn’t the sort of Warden who could walk away. I knew that already, I saw it in her. She was powerful, and she would only get more powerful.

Or more damaged.

Or both.

It was the nightmare that Pearl had promised them, and here it was, a terrible possibility. I’d promised. I’d promised them . . .

“What will you do?” I asked him. He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers as if they pained him.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Wish to hell I did. I think—I think I have to take the chance to temporarily block her powers again. That’s dangerous in itself, and it doesn’t always work, but at least it’s not ... permanent. If we can delay things for another six, seven years, at least she’ll have enough physical maturity to handle what happens inside her body with the Earth power. That would be the right age for that to start emerging anyway. The other kids aren’t in as bad a shape.”

I nodded. It sounded best to me, too.

“She wants to see you,” he said. “I told her no, not right now. You need time to heal.” He swallowed. “And I have to ask what happened with that boy. The one who died.”

“You have to ask officially.”

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes. “I killed him.”

Silence. Outside I heard life going on—someone mowing the grass, children laughing, radios and televisions competing for attention through open windows. The drone of an airplane overhead. Car engines on the street beyond.

Luis said, “I don’t think you did, Cass. I examined the body. He was drained, just like the boy in the van. I know you wouldn’t do that. I know you couldn’t. It was Pearl.” He fell silent for a few seconds, then said, “Tell me what happened.”

I did, slowly, without any real emotion in my voice. I couldn’t feel much just now. Only exhaustion. Futility. When I was finished, Luis reached out and took my hand in his, and squeezed hard.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “I am so sorry.”

“It was my choice,” I said. “To go in. I thought it was right.”

“It was. We got Ibby and those other two back.”

He didn’t understand. Pearl had gotten exactly what she wanted.

Isabel had come back to us, and we had no idea what had really been done to her. I doubted Pearl had allowed us to take her without there being a deeper purpose in it.

And part of me had been burned black in the process—a critical part that connected me to the human race. “The boy,” I said. “What happened to his body?”

“We took it with us,” Luis said. “I looked into it myself. His parents are dead. He was an orphan. Disappeared from a foster family years ago. Nobody to mourn him but us.”

That wasn’t better.

“She’s using me,” I said. “Picadors and the bull. She’s driving me toward something, and soon I won’t have any choices left, Luis. Soon, I’ll have to destroy what I love, or see everything else taken. There’s no way out. She’s thought of everything. I can’t—”

“You can,” he interrupted me. “Cassiel. Ashan didn’t pick you for no damn reason. He picked you because you were the only Djinn who could do this. Who could face Pearl and win. Even he couldn’t do it, or he would have. You’re not done. We’re not done.”

“I’m tired of chasing her,” I said. “I have to find a way to get ahead of her.”

“Then we will,” he said.

“Just like that.”

“Yeah, pretty much. What did all those locations the FBI showed us have in common?”

I felt a stirring of something like interest. Like hope. “Ley lines,” I said. “They were following ley lines.”

“Then we follow them too. We start locking down places she could go. We start hemming her in, forcing her to play our game.” Luis’s hand felt warm against my face. “Look at me.”

I opened my eyes and focused on him. He was close now, and the fierce light in his eyes surprised me.

“Don’t let her take you down,” he said. “I know you, Cass. I’ve seen you. You’re part of me, and I’m part of you, and that’s how it is, all right? You can’t pull bullshit on me because I know. Whatever you used to be, however much of a badass Djinn, you are one of us now. Human. Fragile. Feeling. It’s all right to feel.”

I felt tears well up. Real tears, hot with anguish, with frustration, with awful fear. They burned in my eyes like Djinn fire.

His thumbs stroked them away as they fell.

“Don’t let her make you the villain,” he said, and kissed me. “Because I don’t want to be in love with the villain, okay?”

I clung to him desperately, tasting my tears on his lips, tasting the warm, sweet light beneath of his love for me.

He meant this.

He meant it.

And for a moment—just a moment—I found that peace, that gentle whispering calm, that came from the Earth herself.

Not alone, though.

There were two of us in that place of peace.

And that was enough, for the moment.

TRACK LIST

As always, music is my muse—and sometimes my lifeline. Here are the tracks that helped steer me through the turns on Outcast Season: Unknown.

"Under the Gun" Supreme Beings of Leisure

"John Barleycorn" Traffic

"Glory Box" Portishead

"The Hop" Radio Citizen featuring Bajka

"Roads" Portishead

"My Old Self" Wide Mouth Mason

"I Got Mine" The Black Keys

"C'mon C'mon" The Von Bodies

"Every Inambition" The Trews

"Ladylike" Big Wreck

"Six-Pack" The Perpetrators

"Best Way to Die" Jet Set Satellite

"Little Toy Gun" Honehoney

"WannaBe in L.A." Eagles of Death Metal

"I Don't Care (Single Version)" Fall Out Boy

"Many Shades of Black" The Raconteurs

"Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet" Fall Out Boy

"U.R.A. Fever" The Kills

"Manic Girl" Radio Iodine

"Take Me to the Speedway" The Dexateens

"Alsatian" White Rose Movement

"Poison Whiskey" Tishamingo

"Welcome Home" Coheed & Cambria

"Tick Tick Boom" The Hives

"Jockey Full of Bourbon" Joe Bonamassa

"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" Beck

"The Ballad of John Henry" Joe Bonamassa

"Funkier Than Mosquito's Tweeter" Joe Bonamassa