by Rachel Caine
The others were worse. Elijah was a small African-American boy with a heartbreakingly beautiful smile, prone to sudden attacks of epileptic fits during which his artificially strong Earth power affected others around him. That connection triggered similar seizures at best, crushing injuries to the internal organs of others at worst. He had a constant Warden companion to monitor his status and try to head off the attacks, but they were becoming more and more frequent.
Little Sanjay couldn't speak, and his inarticulate rage triggered actual fiery explosions when his frustration grew too intense.
And they were not the most dire cases, by far. Janice, who was giving us an introductory tour, still radiated the warmth and soothing comfort that I now understood was so vital; even Sanjay, as angry and injured as he was, seemed calmer in her presence. But Janice couldn't be everywhere. There were, I realized, only four Earth Wardens present in the school, and only two were on duty at any one time, with rotating schedules. I could understand now why Marion had wanted us to stay. It was not merely for the benefit of Isabel--it was for the benefit of all her other charges as well, who had so little chance of long-term survival. She was hoping I would change my mind.
After the tours and introductions, we were served a quick, simple meal, and as I ate, I considered the future of these children. If Marion was successful in managing their conditions, then it was possible they could become useful Wardens and live approximately normal lives, for as long as their damaged bodies could sustain them. But that was not a cure, and I began to realize that there was never going to be a cure. Marion Bearheart was the best, most expert Earth Warden alive, and if she could not guarantee their health, then it could not be done.
Isabel had been dealt a mortal wound. It was simply killing her very, very slowly. That thought filled me with a sick, deadly rage that made me wild with the need to escape these walls, ride into the night, and exact revenge in the bloodiest way possible.
But Luis was right. I needed a plan, a real and solid one. Djinn were subtle, and we were known for our ability to outguess and outthink humans ... but I was going to have to outguess and outthink the ghost of a Djinn who had more experience of strategy. I had never bothered with strategy. I had been too powerful to need it.
In the end, it was Gillian, red-haired Gillian, who gave me the plan, although I doubt she meant to do so. We were sitting together, with Mike as her constant shadow, sharing hot cocoa in one of the comfortable, quiet common areas of the school. And Gillian was talking about Pearl, surprisingly; few of the children ever mentioned her, except in euphemisms (such as calling her "the Lady").
None of them answered my questions about what she was like, except Gillian.
"She was like you," she told me. Mike grabbed her hand, probably to warn her to shut up, but she shook him off. "Pretty, I mean. And really cold."
"She doesn't mean you're cold," Mike said. "Just--"
"Not like us," Gillian finished. "And yeah, I meant cold. Don't tell me what I meant."
"You shouldn't be talking about this."
"Why?" Gillian tossed her red hair over her shoulders in a gesture that practically dared Pearl to appear and strike her down. "I hate her. The Lady. She tried to make me love her, but I never did. I hated her then, and I really hate her now."
"Gillian," I said, "this is important. How often did you see her?"
"See her?" She paused for thought, then shook her head. "Almost never. But she was always there, you know? You could feel her all the time."
"But she did show herself."
"Only a couple of times. She didn't look--right. Like wax or something, not a real person. It was weird and creepy." Gillian considered for a few more seconds before she added, "When she was there, when she was like that, it did feel different, though."
"Different in what way?"
"Like--less. Like she wasn't watching us, except when she looked right at us. Does that make sense?"
It did, and I felt an unreasonable jolt of excitement. If Pearl's omniscience limited itself as she took physical form, even as rough a form as Gillian described, then there were ways to fool her. Ways to hurt her.
"When did she take form?" I asked. Gillian, for the first time, looked at Mike, who shook his head mutely. "Please. This is important. I need to know."
"I'm going to tell," Gillian said to Mike.
"You know what she said. She said she'd know."
"Well, I don't care if she does." Gillian looked right at me and said, "It was after they woke up our powers. When there was one they thought was special, she'd come to see. Sometimes she showed things to us. Sometimes."
"What kind of things?"
"It's hard to explain. She showed us the future, I guess. And the past. And she showed us how our parents were gone and she was all we had." A muscle jumped in Gillian's tensed jaw. "But she wasn't. We had each other." She was holding Mike's hand again, and her knuckles had gone pale. "We always had each other."
I nodded and stopped the conversation; I could sense that even Gillian, brave and angry as she was, would go no further with it. Mike pulled her away, leaving me alone to consider what she'd said.
As the fire burned down to ashes and the night settled in deep and cold, I murmured, "She comes to the camps. She comes in the flesh."
If I could get in, if I could get close, I could destroy her while she was in skin, or at least damage her badly. Gillian had given me the clue. She'd said that Pearl's omniscient presence had ceased when she was inside flesh. That meant Pearl couldn't maintain both things; she could be energy or she could be flesh.
Flesh was vulnerable. I knew that better than anyone.
I waited until the next day to speak to Luis, at the end of a silent meal. Our guides had left us, no doubt wanting us to process all the information we'd been given so far, although I had no illusions that there weren't ears listening, both mechanical and actual. "I'm going to say something you may not like."
He grunted and took a sip of Diet Coke. "Yeah, that's not really new, you know. You do that a lot."
I let the silence stretch for a moment, long enough that his smile faded, and I felt him tense in readiness for what I was about to say. "I'm not staying here."
He stopped, watching my face. I couldn't tell, in that moment, what he was thinking, but I knew what he was feeling: the same slow, rolling anger he'd been carrying since he'd first realized how damaged Isabel had become. The anger we shared, and the need for action. The difference between us was how we defined actions to be taken. "Why?"
"Because my fight is out there. Can I be of value here? Yes. But I could be of value anywhere, in any hospital, any war zone, any disaster. My duty is to find Pearl and stop her. I can't do that from here."
"You think I don't want to run off and get my revenge on? Damn straight," he said. "But I can't leave Ibby to face this alone. And neither can you. I know you better than that."
I swallowed. "You're wrong. I can."
It was black and brutal to say, but I needed to leave no doubt, and I was dreading the violence of his response ... but not for the first time, Luis surprised me.
He looked back down at his plate, picked up a potato chip, and ate it with careful deliberation. Then he said, "You know these kids need our protection," he said. "And our help. Isabel needs our help."
"These children are Pearl's failures. Her castoffs. Her rejects, Luis. She won't threaten them; it's to her advantage to have them seeded out here in the world, causing mayhem and absorbing the best efforts of our Wardens. She throws the wounded and dying in our path to slow us down. Don't you see that?"
"No. I see kids who need help, and who the fuck do you think you are, calling them failures?" Now I'd made him angry--or, more accurately, given him a target for his rage. Me. "It takes more courage for them just to get up every day and face the world than you're ever going to know your whole life. You calling Ibby a failure? A reject?"
I had, of course. "That isn't a personal judgment ..."
&nbs
p; "The hell it isn't!" He shoved his plate aside, got up, and paced, glaring at me with sullen fury. "You cold bitch. You can really sit there and say this to me. I always knew you were some kind of alien inside, but damn. I thought you cared."
"I do. I love Ibby," I said. "And I love you. But I know my duty, and it isn't here. It isn't doing this. This is nothing but bandages on a mortal wound."
Luis Rocha let out a harsh bark of laughter. "Love. Yeah, I figured you'd be bringing that up sooner or later. You always hurt the ones you love, right? Well, fuck you. That's not love; that's selfishness. We don't need you. Just get your shit and go, if you're going to cut and run. Ibby's better off without you dragging it out. So am I."
I'd been prepared for this to hurt, but not this much. Not as if my intestines were being dragged out and burned. Oddly enough, it wasn't only the hurt, though--it was anger, too. I was right, and Luis knew it. He just couldn't bear to hear it.
And that made me see him as weak. As human. It made it perversely easier to say, "If you don't want me here, there's no reason for me to stay, is there?"
"None," he said. His eyes had turned obsidian-hard, and there was no trace of the man I'd kissed just yesterday. The man who had held me and shown me the sweetness of human life in ways I'd never imagined. The one who'd made me lose myself in him.
That man had been an illusion, a ghost, and now he was gone.
I kept my voice steady with an effort. "Then I'll leave tomorrow," I said. "I can't delay any longer."
"Yeah, I know, you've got a destiny and shit," he said dismissively. "Too important for all us little people to stand in your way. Especially us failures and rejects."
Hearing the words from his lips, I felt their sting, but they were still true. The longer I stayed here, mired in the hopeless struggle of these children, the more damage Pearl could do. I needed to engage her, and quickly, before she could carry out whatever obscure plan she was pursuing. It involved the children of Wardens, and Djinn, and although the Wardens were now on guard against her, the Djinn were overconfident. Always overconfident.
The fact that all that was true didn't make the cruelty of my decision any less biting, and I couldn't think what to say to make it any easier. Luis would accept nothing short of complete compliance with his wish to stay close to Ibby; I couldn't give it, though I deeply desired to make them both happy. We were in a war, and there was triage to be done, no matter how much it hurt.
"How are you planning to stay alive?" he asked me bluntly. "You need me, Cass, unless you all of a sudden got some plug-in to the Djinn I don't know about." That was startling; we rarely talked about my ... disability in not being able to reach the aetheric realms the same way the Djinn could, to draw their life energy directly.
It was a handicap I didn't like to remember--and one that gave him unspoken power over me.
I stared steadily at him. "I plan to stay alive the same way I have so far," I said. "Do you really mean that you will cut me off from your power? That you'll send me away to die?"
His mouth opened and closed. I knew he wanted to strike at me, but even now he couldn't do that. Not that. He knew what a risk I was taking, and how much power he really held over me. But he also knew that he couldn't stop me, not with threats. Not even with action.
Cutting me off from his power would damage me, weaken me, force me to find other sources ... but it wouldn't change my mind.
"No," he said. "I wouldn't do that. I know what's at stake here. But you're wrong, Cassiel. You're wrong to go off after her like this."
"And you're wrong to hide," I said. "Because this fight has to go to her. She's already brought it to us, and she'll keep hurting us until we're unable to fight at all. I have to do it. Please understand."
He did. He just couldn't admit it, and it made him unreasonably furious.
"Then you should go right now," he said. "I can explain to Ibby why you dropped her off like a puppy at the pound, but not if you stay a couple of extra days and then abandon her. I can't explain that at all."
"I know you think I'm cruel, but this is--"
"No," he said, and there was quiet venom in the word that stopped me cold. "No, don't you try to tell me all the reasons why you're right. I know you're right, I damn well know you're right, but I can't forgive you for it. Don't ask me to do that, because if you loved her, you wouldn't leave us." The rage was still there, but his voice broke at the last, and I sensed that the anger was a thin crust now over a bottomless well of grief. Like Ibby, he'd never truly come to terms with the loss of Manny and Angela; like Ibby, he still blamed me, deep down. He didn't want to, but he did.
And yet, he wanted me to stay here. With him. He wanted it so badly that it put tears shimmering in his eyes. He hid them by turning his back on me.
I was breaking his heart, and mine, and there was nothing I could do that would heal that wound. It was better to let it bleed out the poison ... if that was possible.
I wasn't sure that it wouldn't kill us both.
I got up and left the room, found Marion, and said, "I'm leaving tomorrow. What do you need of me tonight?"
She frowned, then looked from me to Luis, still seated in the conference room, head down. "Oh," she said, and there was a world of sad comprehension in her voice. "Oh. He's not going with you."
"No."
"I'm so sorry. That must be difficult."
So was I, deeply and achingly, but there could be no going back now. "It doesn't matter," I said. "I want to help while I can." And I wanted to keep busy, and away from the aching black hole of pain that formed inside me when I was in Luis's presence.
"All right, there's plenty to do around here," she said. "Come with me."
Marion Bearheart was brilliant, and untiring in ways that defied my understanding; she should have been exhausted, but even in Oversight I couldn't see any trace of it throughout the next few hours. I certainly tired quickly, because the delicacy of what Marion was doing in her sessions with these children was extremely difficult, and a profligate use of Earth powers; all that I was doing was amplifying and concentrating the power that she wielded, much as a nurse assists a surgeon wielding the finest laser scalpel, and of course I helped keep the children calmed and under deep sedation. I made it only halfway through the first session with Sanjay before I realized that I would need to draw power from Luis ... or from someone else. Preferably from someone else. I wasn't sure that his power wouldn't turn toxic between the two of us, as angry as he was with me now. He'd promised not to cut me off, but that didn't mean our relationship was the same as it had been--not in any way.
I didn't need to ask for help, after all. Marion looked up from what she was doing, met my eyes, and held out her hand without hesitation. I gripped her fingers, and a glorious flood of power spilled over me, warm and insubstantial as sunlight, sinking into every hungry cell of my body and filling the reservoirs completely in only a few seconds. Marion was a natural, almost frictionless conduit for the power of the Mother, and that was an amazing thing to experience. It was close to Djinn strength, and I acknowledged that with a hesitant dip of my head in honor of the fact. Marion smiled and went back to work. I put both hands on Sanjay's warm, sweating head, not so much to restrain him as to give him the comfort of simple human contact, and felt a tension inside of him ease. Children craved touch, even more than older humans did.
The fact that people were so hesitant to get near Sanjay was a sad additional burden of his condition. They were right to fear him, but that didn't mean it made his loneliness any easier to bear.
Two hours later, Marion sighed, lifted her hands from the boy's still form, and shook her head. "I can't do more for now," she said. "It should ease the frequency and severity of his attacks, but I can't prevent them; over time, with enough interventions, we should be able to reduce them to almost nothing, but the bigger issue is controlling his power and keeping him from accessing it. It's not going to be easy. I've put some blocks in place, but until the nerve pathways heal a
little I don't dare block it completely. He's going to be a danger for some time to come. The worst thing he can do is to try to use his power consciously; that would undo everything we've accomplished."
She stretched out her arms and rolled her shoulders to release tension, and Ben, who was still on duty, came into the room to take the boy back to his quarters. He could have simply rolled the bed along with its sleeping burden, but instead he picked the boy up and carried him in his arms. I was glad; the boy needed contact, needed it badly. Even sleeping, he would feel that someone loved him enough to risk that simple human touch.
"Right. That's enough, I think. I don't want you working on Isabel," Marion said, as she checked the schedule on the wall. "She's in here next. Are you still planning to leave us after sunrise?"
"Yes."
"Better sleep fast, then. You've only got about two hours, and you need it whether you know it or not."
"I could help with--"
"No, you couldn't," Marion said, and rolled her chair around to face me. "Soldiers learn to sleep when they can; who knows when you'll get your next downtime. The thing is, you're going out there alone, and we both know what a risk that is for you. You're a great asset to the Wardens out there, but you're vulnerable. I wish Luis was going with you. Do you want me to talk to him?"
I shook my head. "He won't leave Ibby, no matter what you say. Even if you did manage to convince him, it would poison the two of us for him to leave now." If I haven't irreparably poisoned us already.
"I see," Marion said. "You're probably right. I like Rocha, but he's got issues to work through."
"Don't we all?"