“Under our supervision, yeah. What else were we supposed to do? Pretend like she didn’t have them? She wanted to act like a Warden, like her dad would have wanted. I’m not going to tell the kid she can’t help when she can save lives.”
“And so you brought her in direct contact—into conflict—with children with whom she trained at the Ranch. Do you think that was a good idea?”
Luis didn’t answer, partly because he was getting angry and partly because—I felt—he knew she was right. I stepped in. “With respect, Warden, there are few who could effectively counter these children. Is that not why you’ve set up this school? To handle the most dangerous yet most promising of them?”
She smiled, but didn’t raise her gaze to meet mine. “Do you think we have that simple an agenda?”
“Surely you are not using them for another purpose.” That gave me a very unpleasant sensation in the pit of my stomach that would rapidly build to fury. “These children have been used enough.”
This time she looked up, and her eyes were calm and direct. “I am not planning on indoctrinating them in any way,” she said, “other than by teaching them to properly use and judge their own strength and powers. But eventually they will be used, Cassiel, or they will be destroyed—make no mistake. Perhaps you’re not aware how dire the Wardens’ situation has become. There are things stirring beyond Pearl, and we have lost many, many more Wardens and Djinn than we could afford. So eventually these kids will have to fight. It’s my job to ensure that they fight well, and for the right side.” When Luis started to speak, she cut him off. “Don’t think I feel good about that, boy, because I don’t. These are children. They’re our own, and they should be loved and protected, and they’ve already been injured. But they may well be the only hope we have left, in the end.”
Marion’s words were bleak, and I sensed the conviction underlying them. “The Wardens who followed Joanne Baldwin and the leader of the New Djinn, David,” I said. “What’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody does, at the moment. They’ve been out of touch for a long time, and it doesn’t look good. We have to consider the strong possibility that they may not come back, and that’s an enormous blow. Possibly a killing one.”
That was a sobering thought—that the best and brightest, not just of the Wardens but of the Djinn as well, could already have been lost, somewhere far out to sea. “How many are left?”
“Wardens? Besides those here, about fifty, scattered across the United States, Canada, and South America. Maybe another two hundred in Europe and across Asia. Not so many, comes down to it, and most of them are scared out of their minds, and were second-rank talents to begin with.” She smiled slightly, but very grimly. “Present company excluded, of course. I had to fight some pretty heavy battles with Lewis to keep you two here.” Lewis being the head of the Wardens’ organization, and without question the most powerful Warden of them all.
“Yeah, in the middle of you describing how we’re all going to die, I’m going to worry about not getting flattered,” Luis said. “Seriously, that’s all? What about Djinn?”
“The ones who follow Ashan won’t communicate at all, so we have no idea of their strength, or if they’d lift a finger to help us anyway. David’s followers are working with us, and they’re all that’s held things together this long—but there aren’t many who can be truly relied upon. They’re Djinn. You can’t assume they’ll be willing to do it forever, or even into the next moment.” A glance at me. “No offense.”
“I take none,” I said. “Because you’re correct. Djinn will have little patience for the problems of Wardens, in the end. You’ve done little enough the past few thousand years to earn our trust, or our respect. Were I still Djinn, I would ignore you just as Ashan has done.”
That might have been too much honesty, considering the look that Luis gave me. I shrugged. It was the truth.
“What about Ibby?” Luis said. “I want to know what you’re going to do to help her. And I’d better hear everything, not just the sunny-side-up version—”
He would have continued, but there was a sudden shift in the mood of the room, something subtle but unmistakable. Marion shifted her weight in her wheelchair, staring behind her at the doorway, which banged open without so much as a courtesy knock.
“You’d better come,” Ben said. The young Warden looked out of breath, and his aura almost sizzled with alarm. “It’s Isabel. It’s started.”
We passed through a series of doors that I was certain were as secure as might be found in any prison, but I scarcely noticed, and I knew they made no impression on Luis. Nothing did—not the number of rooms, nor the number of people we passed. The only thing he was focused on was Isabel.
I confess, I was not much different.
Marion’s wheelchair was capable of great bursts of speed, and she quickly outdistanced us, shouting as she went, “Make a hole! Make a hole, people!” There must have been bodies in the way for her to make that outcry, but by the time we reached the blockage it was gone, withdrawn into the corners of the rooms. I had a blurred impression of children whispering, of older Wardens comforting them, and then Marion’s electric engine was slowing, bringing her chair to a gliding halt. Luis and I caught up only seconds later, but Marion blocked our way into the room—perhaps deliberately.
The room we saw through the doorway was small but comfortable—a twin bed, a small dresser and mirror, a chest in the corner, a television set, games, toys. It was a child’s room, but impersonal as yet, without a stamp of personality on it. Isabel’s new home. Spike’s tiny desert in its plastic container sat on one of the tables, and the lizard was watching all the furor in the room with perky, unemotional interest.
Ibby lay on the floor next to the bed, curled into a ball with her dark hair covering her face. Her whole body was shuddering, and she was sobbing wildly. Next to her sat Janice. The grandmotherly woman was trying to comfort Ibby, but each time she tried to touch her, Isabel flinched and screamed, and the terror in it ripped through me like hooks through flesh.
I didn’t think. I grabbed the handlebars of Marion’s wheelchair and hauled it out of my way, rushed in, and gathered Ibby into my arms, rocking her.
She screamed again, fighting me. I caught my breath, feeling that scream break something inside of me with a harsh, glassy snap—not a bone but something more vital, more ephemeral.
Had I been born human, it would have been a broken heart.
“Hush,” I whispered, and held her tight, rocking her. “Hush, Ibby. I’m here. Nothing will hurt you now. Hush.”
She collapsed against me like a wet doll, gasping for breath in damp hitches. “It hurts,” she whispered, a bare breath of sound. “It hurts inside and I can’t make it stop, Cassie. Please make it stop!”
I felt cold, and looked across at Janice, whose creased face was set in lines of grim sadness. I turned my attention to Ibby, using Oversight, mapping out the aetheric emanations of her body and spirit.
She was burning so brightly that it seemed to sear my inner eyes. I couldn’t distinguish colors, only an out-of-control conflagration of power that held a bloody core of violent crimson.
Something was wrong, very wrong. I’d seen her in pain before, but not like this.
“Hush,” I whispered again, and kissed her forehead. It burned, too, with an unnatural kind of fever. “Hush, my love, you’re safe now. I won’t let anything harm you.”
She cried for what seemed like an eternity, but eventually I felt the heat begin to cool inside her, and her tormented little body stilled in my arms, falling into a dazed sleep. It wasn’t healthy, not in any way. I looked up, and saw that Luis was crouched next to me, staring at Ibby with a ghostly pallor on his face. Marion, beyond him, looked grim, as did Janice. I saw Janice shake her head in response to a silent question from the wheelchair-bound Warden.