I paid for a room. It was all I wanted—simple, well maintained, without any of the luxuries so many travelers seemed to expect. I bought a bottle of water from a machine, sat down at the old, narrow table with my maps, and put down everything I knew.

Then I rose up into the aetheric and zeroed in on the closest of Pearl’s compounds. That one, the Colorado facility, was long gone, dead and closed down, with nothing left to even mark it in the physical world. It wasn’t so easy to erase the stains in the aetheric, though. A darkness still hovered there, and I directed my insubstantial body to step inside that quivering cloud.

It felt like heat, and rot, and hate, and even the ghost of it made me feel drained and exhausted—but I had what I needed, as quick as the encounter had been. I had the taste of Pearl’s madness.

Now all I had to do was verify the information Rashid had given me ... information that could be a lie, a trap, a useless waste of time, or—and this I believed—a golden opportunity to finish Pearl once and for all.

Tracking on the aetheric is simple for Djinn since it’s their primary home, the environment in which they feel most alive, most comfortable. For humans, it is a closed door. For Wardens, there is access, but it is limited, and even the most gifted find it extraordinarily difficult to read the subtleties of that world; human senses, enhanced though they might be, are not meant to take in what is natural for Djinn.

But I had an advantage—I was a blind woman remembering sight. I could interpret what I could see in ways that most of the Wardens never could.

Distance was no barrier on the aetheric; my self-projection could travel easily enough without regard to the laws that governed the natural world. My next stop was California, where Pearl had established her second known camp. Like Colorado, this place had been closed and abandoned, but the traces were stronger. I didn’t dare venture too close. The shimmering blackness above it warned me that it would burn. I recalled the fate of my friend Gallan all too well—he’d been the first Djinn to come in too close to Pearl’s orbit, and he’d been destroyed. Utterly destroyed—unwound from the world, erased from existence. There were ways to kill Djinn, but in my opinion that was the worst.

The California facility still had a faint black shadow stretching out into the aetheric, fading to a thread-thin line. I followed it, careful to stay out of accidental touching range. Around me, lights flared and rolled in confusing shapes, coming and going in a brilliant neon flood. I was in an area rich with human history, from the ancient tribes who had first inhabited it to the flood of immigrants searching for land and gold to the modern-day prospectors panning for fame and fortune in an inhospitable land. Djinn were more difficult to spot than Wardens—Wardens flared with brilliant sparks, but Djinn were subtler, more inclined to fade into their natural environment.

I avoided them all as I raced after the fading trail of Pearl’s influence on the world. Where are you, sister?

The thread ended, fraying into gray smoke.

Gone.

I cast about, feeling more tired than I should. There was no sign of Pearl, nor of any other Warden or Djinn. I was standing in an utterly featureless area, one that held the soothing, nacreous colors of a shell.

Ah. I was over the ocean. The huge amount of the Earth’s surface covered by water had its own aetheric energy, but few features; humans traversed it, but made little lasting impact. Had I been Djinn, I could have seen the magnificent depth and variety of the life around me, but Wardens were not so perceptive.

I had lost Pearl at sea.

I marked the spot and opened my eyes into the mortal world while holding the aetheric steady as well, overlaying the two, and found the spot on the map where Pearl’s trace had disappeared. I colored it with a thick black dot, then drew a line from the rancid California compound to where she’d last left a mark.

Off the coast of Florida.

Journeying on the aetheric was tiring, and I was quickly burning through the power that I’d received before leaving the school. I should have taken power from Turner, my FBI friend and enemy, but delay might have cost me more than I would have gained. He wasn’t especially powerful, on his own.

No, all in all, I really had very little choice. I was cut off from the powerful Warden friends I might normally call upon—Lewis Orwell and Joanne Baldwin, so nearly equal in power and influence, had taken the majority of significant Wardens with them out to sea, seeking to stop a rogue Warden—or, possibly, something worse—from ripping a hole between universes and allowing destruction to pour forth. They’d been gone some time now, and the news had been ominously silent. We would know if they failed, of course. Success might well be heralded by a bland wave of sameness—and only the Wardens themselves could rejoice at that.

But whether success or failure awaited them, one thing was certain: My most powerful allies couldn’t help me now. My options were small, and dwindling all the time.

I could still draw power from Luis without speaking to him; it would be a simple matter, since the connection between us still existed. My entire being resisted that necessity, but I am nothing if not practical.

I knew he wouldn’t stop me, but I was reluctant to act like a parasite, preying on him for nothing more than existence. Even given what he’d done to breach the trust between us. I tentatively tugged on the connection between us, and got no response. I tugged harder, trying to open the flow of the low-level trickle that always existed between us, but he had blocked me.

I had no choice but to pick up the phone and call him. It was a difficult thing, to press the keys and initiate the contact. ... I didn’t want to talk with him, truly I didn’t, and yet some part of me yearned to hear his voice. I wondered if he felt the same anger, anguish, need, and desire, all rolled into a dangerously spiked ball. I couldn’t tell, truly. He was guarded now, more guarded than ever before.

Luis answered on the third ring, but said nothing. For a moment, it was a war of silence and static, and then I said, “I am close to finding a way to Pearl, but I’m running out of power. Will you help me?”

He was quiet for a long few seconds, and then he said, “Sure.”

“Why didn’t you simply let me draw what I needed?”

The pause this time was longer, and his voice was weary as he said, “Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice. Make sure you were okay.”

That hit me hard, and I took the phone away from my ear for a few seconds, struggling to sort out my own torrent of feelings. I finally took a deep breath and said, “I am fine.”

“Fine. Really.”

“Yes.” I wasn’t, not now, not listening to his breathing, his voice, knowing how far separated we were by both distance and emotion. “Luis—”

“Yeah?”

I couldn’t bring myself to forgive him, or even to acknowledge that I understood the decisions he’d made. I admired his ruthless dedication, but the scars were still too bloody. “How is Isabel?”

“Better,” he said. He sounded relieved that it was a less controversial topic. “She’s settling in, and the seizures are coming under control; Marion thinks we’re making good progress. She helps out with Elijah; he likes her better than any of the others.”

“But she’s suffered more seizures.”

“Yeah, one more,” he said. “Not as bad as the first one.”

“Have you given any thought to what I said? About the possibility of someone acting against you inside the school?” I hadn’t discussed it with him, but that mudslide had not been any sort of natural occurrence, not at that time of year. It had been brought down on me by a Weather Warden, one subtle enough to do it without tipping his hand early.