were broken out; the lower ones were boarded up with warping plywood. A sign on the door
announced NO TRESPASSING, in uneven Day-Glo letters.
Silverton, however, wasn't about to be warned off. He walked up to the double glass doors and,
without hesitation, yanked. Nothing happened. They were locked.
I cleared my throat. ''Maybe we should-''
Apparently, the end of that sentence was break in, because Silverton exerted a pulse of Earth
power, and the lock made a little metallic snapping sound, and the glass doors shivered and
sagged open. He shot me a look. ''You were saying?''
''Just wondering if we ought to alert the bail bonds-man now, or wait until they let us have our
one phone call,'' I said. ''Don't mind me. I'm fine.'' Well, I wasn't, really. ''Are we
radioactive?''
Silverton raised his eyebrows. ''Well, yes. Did the clicking not tip you off?'' He didn't wait for
my answer, which would not have been helpful anyway; he swung the door open, and a wave of
eau-de-abandoned-building swarmed over me. Old paper, turning to dust. Mold. Stale, still air.
A faintly unpleasant undertone of sewer problems, too.
Oh man. This was looking less like a good plan all the time. I had not worn the right shoes for
tramping through sewer water. In fact, I didn't own the right shoes for that, and hoped I never
would. Still, not cool to abandon the contractor you've hired to solve the problem.
So when Silverton strode on, into a dim entry hall, I followed.
Silverton was much better prepped than I'd thought; that even extended to flashlights, big heavy
ones that would double as clubs in an emergency. I was glad, because I could hear scuttling
somewhere upstairs. I know-big, bad Earth Warden afraid of things that scuttle. But it's all
context. I'm fine with Nature's way, as long as Nature keeps it out of my way.
I cautiously split my attention between the real world-which was full of hazardous broken
furniture, moldering carpet, and dangling wires-and the aetheric. The spirit world was tinted
bloodred here, and it felt hot . . . oven-hot. I didn't like it. Things had happened in this place, bad
things. Their ghosts still hung around, joyless and draining. Workplace shooting, maybe. Or
something equally horrible. Emotion stained this place, even over and above whatever our
radioactive target might prove to be.
Silverton reached the end of the hallway and turned a slow circle, then pointed at a dented metal
door that said MAINTENANCE ONLY. It was locked. He did the trick again, and beyond was a
pitch darkness that made my skin crawl. The flashlights weren't making a dent, really.
''Allow me,'' I said, and twisted a small thread of Fire into a wick, then set it alight inside a
bubble of air. I levitated it into the room ahead of us and turned up the brightness until the
flickering magic lantern revealed rusted metal steps, going down, and mold-streaked concrete
walls. ''You're sure about this?''
''You want to get to it; we go down there,'' Silverton said. ''Tell you what-makes you feel any
better, I'll let you go first.''
It didn't, but I was probably the best equipped to deal with any hostile force that popped up out
of the darkness. Damn, I hated being competent sometimes. ''How radioactive are we, exactly?''
''On a scale from one to ten?'' Silverton asked cheerily. ''Dead, ma'am. Or we would be, if we
weren't Earth Wardens. Got some natural immunity against that kind of thing.''
''Some?''
''The longer we stay, the worse off we are,'' he pointed out. Right. I was taking the lead.
Fantastic.
I stepped onto the rusting metal, heard something creak, and hastily pushed my awareness down
through the stairs, checking for structural integrity. They'd hold, thankfully, but just to be sure I
added a little stiffener at the welded joints.
Twenty-two steps later, I arrived at the basement level, where the building's power plant was
contained. At least that was what I assumed it was: a huge block of metal, dented and rusted,
with inert panels of darkened indicators. I summoned the floating light closer as I walked around
it.
''Should be close,'' Silverton said. In the dark, his voice sounded like the whisper of a ghost.
And there were ghosts down here; I could feel their presence on the aetheric. People had
definitely died hard in this place. Enough of them could have spawned a New Djinn. Nobody
knew where the Old Djinn, the ones from the dawn of time, had come from, but the newer ones
were born out of enough energy being set free at the same time. Disasters and mass killings were
particularly prone to it.
I kept looking into Oversight and templated it across the real world as I eased around the
generator. Whatever this thing was, it ought to be right there . . . and it was.
It was a severed head.
I screamed and recoiled-reflex-and slammed into Silverton's hard chest. He steadied me,
moved me out of the way, and crouched down to stare at the dead, still face.
''That's a Djinn,'' he said softly.
''Can't be.'' I was getting control of myself again, willing myself back to some kind of mental
balance. My heart was still thumping like a speed-metal drummer, but my hands were only
shaking a little. ''Djinn don't die. Not like that. And they don't leave corpses when they do.''
''This one did,'' Silverton said. ''Recognize him?''
I didn't. I didn't want to, either. ''How can you cut the head off a Djinn?''
''You can't.'' Silverton reached out and touched the head. It wobbled backward a little, but
didn't roll. ''He's buried in the concrete up to the neck.''
Okay, that was-if possible-even creepier. ''What about the black thing? Is it him?''
''No,'' Silverton said. ''It's inside him. We have to get him out.''
He put both hands flat on the floor, on either side of the Djinn's head, and the concrete began to
liquefy. Silverton reached into the wet concrete and gave me a glance. ''Grab his other arm.''
Last thing I wanted to do, but I did it. I reached down into the cool, wet cement and found
something that felt more like flesh than liquid, and pulled. Silverton matched me, and we stood
and walked backward, still pulling.
The Djinn's body slipped free, covered from the neck down in a gray, dripping mass. He was
naked, and he looked very, very . . . human. The only way I could tell that he wasn't entirely
human was the gauzy signature on the aetheric, barely perceptible now that we had him free of
the ground.
Silverton was right. The black knife was inside him, driven in like a spike. This close on the
aetheric it looked even deadlier than before. Glittering, sharp, lethal.
Silverton took a deep breath. ''We're going to have to open him up.''
I ran through all the reflexive denials and arguments in my head, and finally said, ''You tell me
what to do.''
Silverton reached in his backpack and pulled out two pairs of thick, black rubberized gloves. He
handed me one and donned the other pair, then took out a long, wicked-looking knife.
''You going to be okay?'' he asked me. I must have looked pale. I nodded, poured on the power
to the light drifting overhead, and swooped it closer to give Silverton as much visibility as
possible. ''Quick and dirty. We're not doing an appendectomy here. This is an autopsy.''
I had no idea what a Djinn looked like beneath the skin. Human, I supposed-full of organs and
blood and nerves and all the things that sustained us.
I was wrong about that. Maybe this Djinn had only assumed a human shape, or maybe the black