“Open the store and go to the bathroom.”
Isabel rolled her eyes. “She’s a snake, Tío; she doesn’t use a toilet. She’s out there in the rain. She’s pretty angry about it, too.”
“Just go do your business and get back here,” Luis said. “Lock it back up when you’re done, okay?”
She didn’t answer. I had to smile at the thought that Luis had felt a need to lock a store during what would be, most likely, a time of chaos; Earth Wardens did tend to be more responsible with their powers than others. Most Fire Wardens would have melted the lock in their quest to get relief, and I didn’t like to think what a Weather Warden might have done.
Isabel vanished inside the store.
“How about you?” Luis asked me. “Need to go?” When I shook my head, he said, “Okay, then watch the pump. I’m hitting the head.”
He moved in that direction. I concentrated on the boring task of watching the numbers spin meaninglessly on the pump; Luis had—probably uselessly—given his credit card for the payment, but economies across the world would stumble today, shatter tomorrow. Soon, it wouldn’t be how many imaginary dollars, or pounds, or yen, were in an imaginary account.… It would be about survival, and survival required tools. Things to barter, things to use. I began making a list of what would be good to acquire.
The pump stopped with a thud and click, and I replaced the nozzle where it was meant to go… and then realized how alone I was. Esmeralda was still missing, somewhere out in the rain; Luis and Isabel were in the store itself. It was just me, and the constant, punishing rain.
But there was someone watching me.
I stayed very still, facing out toward the downpour-obscured road. I saw nothing, but I sensed… something. A presence. The damp hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I felt the need to back up, but I stood my ground.
There was a sigh of wind, and the curtain of rain parted in a clear, square corridor. Water sluiced off the invisible top and down the sides. It was a precise, dangerously controlled use of power, and at the other end of the opening stood a child. Small, delicate; girl or boy, I couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter greatly at that age.
“Sister,” the child said, and that voice echoed out, too large and powerful for that frail form. “I need to speak with you.”
I didn’t know the child herself, but she was only a vessel. The power that loomed larger around her was familiar, and dangerous indeed. Pearl had come to see me—not in the flesh, but occupying it, piloting it from afar.
The open, rain-free corridor was an invitation, an obvious one that lured me toward the child. It was stupid of me to consider going toward the danger, but I was in a blackly strange place, and danger was all around me now.
So I went.
The sound of the rain drumming against the child’s shield was punishingly loud, until I stopped a few feet away. Then, the roar cut off cleanly, leaving a silence so charged with tension that I could feel the hair on my arms stir and shiver.
The child had dark eyes, short-cropped silky hair, and a secretive little smile too old for her years. I thought of Ibby, of the destruction of her childhood, and forced the anger away. “Sister,” I said. “Too weak to form your own flesh now?”
“Too careful,” she said, in that lazily amused tone. “What a judgmental thing you’ve become, Cassiel. Humanity has corrupted you quite to the core. Did you like your taste of the Mother’s love? She’d have killed you, you know. Supped on your blood and gnawed the power from your broken bones. She’s a cannibal. And all your human friends will be food for her feast.”
“Hers or yours,” I said, and shrugged. “Death is death, Pearl. You offer nothing better.”
“I offer a stay of execution. A partnership to keep humanity alive. You need me, sister. You know that you do.”
“For what? You’re only seeking to save your own existence. If the Mother destroys the human race, you go with it; you’ve hidden yourself very well, I have to admit, and you did what all the Djinn thought impossible—you hid yourself away and drew power from humans, growing in power as they did. I’d applaud, but I doubt you can successfully root yourself so well in the power of the cockroaches who survive after them, although that would certainly be apt.”
The child’s eyes sparked with a sudden red glow, and power crackled around me in blue-white zaps along the edges of the corridor. “Softly,” she said. “I may not love you so much as all that, Cassiel.”
We fought like humans, I realized then… like siblings. Bitter and acrimonious, too sensitive to each other’s moods and vulnerabilities. The most violent hatreds came from families.
I took a step back and forced myself to stay silent. The glow faded slowly, and the crackling power hissed and fell silent, although a burnt-ozone smell filled the space around me.
“I came in peace,” Pearl said. “I came to save you.”
“We don’t need you,” I told her. I said it firmly, but without anger, and I even gave her a small nod of respect. “If you wish to fight, do so. But the Wardens fight alone, as they always have.”
“You speak for them.”
“They’d say the same.”
The child’s smile was, this time, truly unsettling. “You think so? Really? We’ll see, my sister. But the truth is, I don’t need you. You are an annoyance with which I no longer wish to contend. I gave you a chance. Now I hope you enjoy the consequences. Good-bye, my sister. Say hello to our mother.”
I had a second’s warning this time, purely because Pearl couldn’t help but gloat; it was just enough time to drop to one knee on the muddy ground and punch power down into the water-drenched soil. I had no dominion over the water, but the soil responded to me, sluggish but powerful. It rose up in a thick, slippery wave under the child’s feet, throwing her—him?—off balance with a high, surprised cry. The attack that was blasting toward me missed, but only just; I felt the incredible heat of it blister my skin and sizzle my hair, and completed my forward motion to fall flat on the mud. My shirt was blazing, and I rolled over to kill the flames. As I did so, I kept moving the ground under the child’s feet, and riding the thick, shifting sludge kept the Fire Warden from launching another effective assault.
The rain shield overhead collapsed, and ice-cold water hit my burned skin in a punishing, breathtaking slap. I felt power shifting on the aetheric, and desperately kept pushing the earth around, trying to buy time. This child’s power was enormous, and extremely well controlled; if I gave a second’s pause, she would respond with a blistering assault that would burn the skin right off my body and leave me dying in the mud, or worse. I was fortunate that the child was strong in fire; earth was a good defense against that, if I could stay ahead of her and anticipate her moves.
It was hard to do, but while rocking her off balance yet again, I simultaneously pulled the mud up in a counterwave that buried me but left a tiny hole through which I could catch a breath. I sucked in a deep one, and rolled even as I sank deeper into the muck, reaching, reaching.…
I felt the mud suddenly harden around me, and the heat against my back was sudden and stunning, as if I’d been shoved beneath a giant broiler. She was trying to bake me, if not burn me. I sank deeper to avoid it, then twisted up, hands outstretched.
My fingers closed on the stick-thin legs of the child, and I sent a massive burst of power up through her nerves to force an overload and shutdown.
The child toppled over in a sudden, helpless heap.
I clawed up from the mud and flopped next to her, gasping and letting the rain pound me as it sluiced the grit from my face and eyes. Then I checked the child for signs of life. She was breathing, but unmoving. Her heart was speeding too fast, trying to fight me as I held her in that state. I put my palm flat on her forehead, closed my eyes, and eased her into a deeper state of calm and then, finally, unconsciousness.