“She’ll be just fine here,” Brennan said. “I just can’t give you any absolutes, of course, but we’ve got other young Wardens here as well. They’re being very helpful. I suppose you know about Portland…?”
“Of course,” I said.
“They came here to help defend Seattle after what happened there. Just arrived a few hours ago, but already they’ve been tremendously helpful. I’m sure your girl will do very well with them.”
I felt a sudden surge of alarm, and looked over at my partner. He had put down his coffee cup and pressed both palms flat against the conference room table. “Warden kids,” he said. “How many?”
“Four,” Brennan replied. “Pretty damn gifted, too. They came with their guardian.”
I held out no hope that it was Marion Bearheart, or another truly qualified Warden, but I forced a smile. “I see,” I said. “That’s very fortunate. Perhaps we could meet them so Isabel could get to know them…?”
Brennan shrugged. “Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do than to make you two feel comfortable.” His sarcasm was thick enough to score steel. “Come on, I’ll introduce you. Maybe you can all huddle up and sing ‘Kumbaya.’”
“I’ll go,” I said to Luis and Isabel. “You stay here.”
He understood, and nodded. “You be careful.”
Brennan gave us an odd, impatient look, but shrugged and led the way out into the hallway to the bank of elevators. It was evident no one had been concerned with cleaning for a few days; the steel surfaces were smudged with fingerprints and—in one case—spattered with what looked like dried blood.
“Were these Warden offices?” I asked. They were generic enough to have housed anything from consultants to bankers, with neutral reproduction paintings and sturdy mock-antique desks. The receptionist’s desk opposite the elevators was manned by a burly tattooed man with a shaved head who picked up the ringing phone and ordered whoever was on the line to hold before stabbing a thick finger at another flashing button. He didn’t look like the clerical type.
“No, they were my cousin’s,” Brennan said. “Well, not his, but he ran the office for his company.”
“And they don’t mind you taking them over?”
“Their headquarters were in Portland,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to mind much anymore, at least for a while. My cousin sent everybody home and handed over the place. It was easier than commandeering a motel, and it’s got better infrastructure, for as long as the phones and computers last.”
He was right—they wouldn’t work forever; as more of the world fell apart, those delicate systems would be among the first to shatter, isolating people more, giving rise to ever-increasing panic and paranoia. Humans clung to the illusion of normality, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, but communication was what fed the illusion; starved of that, they would begin to band together in protective small groups, and those affiliations would create discord, even where none existed.
Society didn’t take long to break down, once the trappings of it were taken away. For now, it was merely smudges on the surface of an elevator, but once the electricity failed, once there were no more news announcers to urge calm and give some kind of perspective, however skewed, it would rapidly grow worse. We were days from anarchy, and Brennan knew that. I could see it in the tight lines around his mouth and eyes. He seemed sardonic and uninvolved, but that wasn’t true.
We were all involved now.
The elevator dinged its pleasant, civilized chime, and the doors slid open, revealing a windowless, airless box framed in wood. It was as small as a coffin, and I hesitated, then took a step back. “Are there stairs?” I asked him.
“Problem, Warden?”
“Yes. I don’t wish to leave my survival suspended on a mechanical cable and a whim,” I said. “Stairs?”
He shrugged and led the way off to the side, where an EXIT sign glowed red. “They’re fire doors,” he said. “It’ll be locked in the stairwell, no reentry. You’re an Earth warden, so I don’t expect you’ll need any key card to finesse the locks around here. Just bang on the door if you get stuck.”
The stairwell was clear and cold, and we walked down five floors before Brennan used his key card on a swipe pad at another door and clicked it open. “After you,” he said, and held it for me. “Down the hall and on the left. We put them in the smaller conference room.”
I opened the door he indicated, and found a room half the size of the one above us where Isabel and Luis waited. In it, two small forms lay still in sleeping bags in the corners, and three people sat at the table, talking. They immediately fell silent when we entered.
Two of those at the table were children, no older than nine years old—a boy and a girl, neither of whom registered strongly with me at the moment. No, I focused on the woman sitting in the middle.
The guardian.
She rose and bowed to me, graceful and unhurried. She was of Japanese descent, lovely and fragile, with the calm precision of one who’d been trained from birth to be beautiful, and she was, oh yes, she was. I didn’t know her, but it didn’t matter what the history of the flesh might be, because flesh was all it was.
The power that resonated out of her was utterly inhuman, and utterly unmistakable to someone who’d fought her to the death once before.
“Hello, sister,” I said. Next to me, Brennan gave me a sharp look.
“My dear Cassiel,” she said, and inclined her head as she folded her hands together.
The flesh didn’t matter.
What was inside her, glowing and feverish with power and madness, was my sister. My enemy.
Pearl.
Chapter 6
THE SILENCE HELD BETWEEN US, deep and thick as polar ice, and neither of us moved. Brennan finally cleared his throat and entered the room; he was no fool, in that he took up a point out of the line of fire, and equidistant from us both. “So you two know each other.”
“After a fashion,” Pearl said. “Many years ago. But we have been… out of touch. Isn’t that right?”
I didn’t answer her. I was considering options, and none of them were good; Luis was getting stronger again as he rested, but it would take time for him to be up to full strength and, even then, taking on Pearl meant taking on her four child-followers. She wouldn’t be here, in flesh, unless they were her best possible bodyguards, which meant they would be hideously strong and—no doubt—impossible to persuade of her real motivations. True believers were always the most dangerous, and children were more dangerous than most.
I finally said, “Yes, we’ve been out of touch. I confess, I preferred it that way, Pearl.”
“Shinju,” she said, and pressed a delicate hand to her chest. “My name is Shinju now.”
“Still Pearl, just translated into a different language,” I said. “Don’t play games.”
“I’m not. We have common foes, my sister. I’m here to help, with my children.”
“They’re not yours,” I shot back. “They have families, and they were taken from them.”
“These? No. These children came willingly. Their parents wanted them safe and protected, trained and nurtured. And I have done this, as you have with Isabel.” Her eyes were dark, and so was what dwelled in them. “This is Pamela. At the age of four, she was able to start fires with her mind, but she didn’t understand what she was doing; there were accidents, tragedies. Her family gave her up so that she might learn how to protect herself and those around her.” The girl looked up from the plate of unnaturally golden macaroni and cheese in front of her, and gave me a look that was eerily identical to Pearl’s; there was no real feeling in it, only assessment.
Pearl put her hand on the other girl’s shoulder now, and she straightened in evident pride. “Edie was medicated to stop her from tantrums,” she said. “But she didn’t need medication; she needed only reassurance and training in her craft. Weather, you see. Like Mr. Brennan. She can create a drop of water or a storm with equal ease. I’m sure you appreciate how valuable that skill can be to us now, in these dangerous times.”