She looked up at him, then at us, wide-eyed. ''Oh yes,'' she said. ''It had a delivery system and a
trigger. If you'd opened the package, it would have gone off and spread the contents.''
''And the contents are . . . ?'' David asked, in that cool, controlled voice so at odds with the look
in his eyes.
''Antimatter,'' Heather said. ''Antimatter colliding with any kind of matter will produce a
violently energetic reaction. The by-products are-''
''There was a trigger?'' I asked. ''What kind of trigger?''
Her gaze slid away from mine, toward Lewis, and then back, as if she'd been seeking approval.
''It looked as if it was adapted from a more traditional bomb-making approach. Timer and a
small charge designed to crack the shell holding in the antimatter, spilling it out into the world.''
''Not a skill you pick up at your local community college,'' Paul grunted.
''Unfortunately, it's not exactly rare, either. And with the Internet so helpfully offering tutorials
for this kind of thing, it will be hard to track.''
''The paper?'' Lewis got us back on track. ''The wrapping, the card?''
Heather brightened immediately. ''That's a possibility, '' she said. ''If the Djinn can help us, we
may be able to trace the card's history back and find out who came in contact with it.''
But that experiment failed. I could have told them it would. When they brought in the card-in a
heavily shielded container, since it was saturated with radiation-and presented it to Rahel, she
just shook her head. ''Nothing,'' she said. ''I see nothing at all.''
It was the same with David, and I could see his frustration and growing alarm. He'd dismissed
all this at first, but there were too many of us now, and we were too credible. The Djinn had to
believe us-but believing us meant accepting half a dozen impossible things. Heather,
disheartened, reclaimed the thing and began to have it carted back to the lab for more tests.
I stopped her. ''Can I see it?'' I asked. She looked surprised. ''Well, it was addressed to me. It
stands to reason that I might see something others don't.''
I doubted she bought that theory, but I really did want to see it. It had been meant for me. So had
the bomb-for me and David. I supposed the first explosion would have killed me, and the
antimatter would have done the job for David. . . .
Heather handed me a pair of protective gloves, draped a heavy shielding vest around my chest,
and put a protective hood on me before she allowed me to reach into the container and pull out
the card. It was, as Lewis had told me, a greeting card-a fairly nice one, actually, with a graphic
of a wedding cake, a bride, a groom. Inside, cursive preprinted script read, Congratulations to
the happy couple!
But when I saw what was underneath, I felt cold, clammy, and sick. It said, in plain block letters
pressed deep into the paper, Sleep with the enemy, pay the price.
Beneath it was sketched a symbol, kind of a torch. The kind that peasants carry to attack the
monster-dwelling castle.
I cleared my throat and turned the card over. ''Was there anything else?'' My voice was muffled
by the helmet, but clear enough. I distinctly saw Heather shoot another of those looks toward
Lewis. ''Well?''
''Give it to her,'' Lewis said. He sounded grim and calm. ''No point in hiding anything.''
Heather brought out another container. This one had several sheets of paper that had been folded
in half-probably to fit inside the card or its envelope.
Plain white paper, no watermarking. Cheap quality. On it was printed in very small type a-I
hesitated to call it a letter, because there was no hint of communication to it. A manifesto,
maybe.
The Sentinels were declaring war on the Wardens, and they'd felt compelled to give us all their
reasons. It was quite a list, starting with a detailed analysis of why the Wardens could no longer
be trusted to put the interests of the human race first. Seems we'd been corrupted not by our own
greed or weakness, but by contact with the Djinn.
Most of the manifesto was about the Djinn, and the crazy paranoia gave me the creeps. Sure, the
Djinn could be capricious, even cruel; they certainly didn't forgive those who trespassed against
them, and turning the other cheek had never been a high priority for them. Added to that, they
had millennia of pent-up anger against the Wardens.
But even so, the Sentinels' position wasn't that Djinn ought to be treated with care and caution-
it was that none of them deserved to live. That every single Djinn in existence had to be hunted
down and destroyed for the human race to survive.
That they had to be punished for their crimes before they were allowed to die.
I felt sick, and I'd barely skimmed the thing. David hadn't been able to, saturated as it was with
antimatter radiation that rendered it effectively invisible to him, but he could read my expression
and mood like flashing neon. He stood up and said, ''Enough. Jo, enough.''
I nodded and put the manifesto back into the container. Heather sealed it and took back her
protective equipment. ''They intended that to be found,'' I said. ''So they really didn't intend the
bomb to go off, did they?''
Lewis and Heather once again exchanged that look.
I was starting to really hate that look. ''These weren't in the box with the antimatter,'' Lewis
said. ''They were in your mailbox, where they'd be found later. But they're still saturated with
radiation, enough to sicken anybody who touched them.''
No question, this was serious. If they'd succeeded with the bomb in the package, I'd be dead or
badly injured, and David . . . David would be, too. Putting tainted, taunting letters in my mailbox
was worse yet. It reminded me of the cruelest of terrorists, who detonated one explosion and
waited for rescue workers to arrive before detonating another. My friends would have been the
ones to suffer.
I tried to lighten my own mood. ''Special Delivery Guy delivers the mail, too,'' I said. ''Give
him credit, at least he's a full-service assassin. Maybe we can get him to throw in a pizza and hot
wings next time.'' All my attempt at humor did was give everybody the opportunity to stare at
me with faintly worried looks, as if they were afraid that I was going to scream, faint, or grow a
second head.
At length, Heather said, ''We're following up on anyone who goes into the hospitals for
treatment of radiation sickness or burns, but I have the feeling that a well-trained Earth Warden
could have handled these letters without lasting damage, if he was careful. Or she, of course.
And we have to proceed on the idea that whatever the Sentinels are, they're well organized and
well protected.''
Lewis nodded, acknowledging the point. He wasn't watching Heather, though; he was scanning
the faces around the table. I didn't know what he was looking for, but he stopped and focused on
Kevin. ''You've got something to say,'' he told the kid. It wasn't a question.
Kevin, who'd been staring at the table, looked up, and his face flushed red along the line of his
jaw, bringing a few pimples into sharp relief. His eyes were almost hidden by the messy fall of
his hair, but I had no problem reading his body language. Busted.
''Yeah,'' he said reluctantly. ''So, I got this message about a week ago.''
''About?'' Lewis's voice was calm and even, but I wasn't fooled. Neither was Kevin, who
looked down again at his clenched hands.
''About joining the Sentinels,'' he said. ''They told me they could use my talents.''