He was simply . . . gone. As if—and this struck me deep, and badly—as if he had walked away, into the aetheric. Wardens could not. Djinn could . . . but Sands was no Djinn. And there were only a few of my kind capable of carrying humans unharmed through the aetheric. Fewer still who would be at the beck and call of humans.
I stayed where I was for a long moment, staring out at the impossible, and then I walked slowly across the broken glass to the shattered door. I heard the sirens below on the street, likely responding to my explosive entry into this apartment.
Once again, I felt the net drawing tight around me, and I didn’t know how to stop it. This was human business, Warden business, and a Djinn had no place in it.
My phone rang. This time, as I took the stairs down to street level, I answered it.
“Hey,” a male voice said. “It’s Lewis Orwell. And you’re in one hell of a lot of trouble.”
“I know,” I said.
“You kill anybody, Cassiel?”
“No.” Not technically. “Possibly the four in the car who shot Manny. Do they count?”
He sighed. “That’s a question we don’t have time to get into. You kill any Wardens?”
“No.”
“Because I’ve been told you did.” He paused [d.”
“No,” I said. “I was there. I saw it.”
Someone was coming up the stairs. I froze on the landing where I was, pressed my shoulders to the concrete, and willed myself invisible. This was an Earth Warden trick, using only a fraction of my power, and it worked beautifully; the police officers jogged past me, heading up. I waited until they had turned two flights before continuing on my way.
“I need your help,” I said.
“Can’t. We’ve got big-time problems of our own right now. All the Wardens I can grab are coming with me, out of the country. Most of the Djinn are coming, too. The best I can do for you is to tell you where to find some resources.”
“Resources?”
“Money. Identification.” I heard the sound of the ocean, strong and rhythmic, through the speaker of the phone. “I need to go. You won’t be able to reach me again until I get back, so be careful. Are you ready for the information?”
“Yes,” I said. “Ready.”
Unexpectedly, what he gave me was not addresses, but coordinates—numbers. I memorized them and repeated them back, and then, just as quickly, Lewis was gone, the phone call ended.
When I tried to call back, the number didn’t respond.
The Wardens were facing dangers that had nothing to do with me. Even the Djinn were involved. I had the strong feeling that my survival now rested solely with me, and if I wished to find any kind of justice for Manny Rocha, any kind of justice for his wife and his daughter, then I would need to save myself first.
Alone.
I descended the remaining flights of stairs and slipped out a service entrance. My appearance was no longer simply exotic, but dangerously obvious. I would need things.
Luckily, the human world was full of them.
I dyed my hair in the restroom of a gas station. The harsh chemical smell clung to me even after I had wiped away the excess and dried my hair as best I could using the bathroom’s blower mechanism. It no longer looked like a white puffball, at least. Instead, it looked like a pink puffball, lighter at the ends. I resembled, I realized, one of the unhealthy-looking pink snacking cakes in the convenience store’s shop.
With the last of my cash, I bought changes of clothes and makeup. I deliberately chose unusual styles, in garishly colored layers, and made up my face in dramatic neon strokes. I looked young and outrageous, and I noticed that following this transformation most humans avoided eye contact with me.
I was no longer immediately recognizable as the pale albino woman in white who had been spotted at the scene of so many deaths, and that was all I wanted.
Lewis’s coordinates led me to the heart of Albuquerque, in OldTown, to a shaded spot next to the blocky tan-and [blot s-brown structure of the NationalAtomicMuseum. It was just a bare patch of earth, and a large flat rock. Humans had scrawled obscure messages on its surface, but time was bleaching them into history, and I wondered for a moment how he expected me to find anything in so empty a place.
One of the obscure messages caught my eye, because it was the glyph of the Wardens—an odd place for it to be lurking, most surely. I traced it with a fingertip, and then lifted the rock.
Beneath it was damp earth, but it formed a slight hollow—as if something had been buried beneath. I dug with my fingers and brushed cool metal—a cylinder, a type of container with a screw-on lid. It was welded shut, in a way that any competent Earth Warden would have been able to unseal but that would resist simple human tampering; I burned my fingertips opening it, but the reward was a folded piece of note-paper and three plastic bags.
The note, although unsigned, was clearly from Lewis Orwell, and it said,
If you’re holding this, you’re an Earth Warden in trouble, and I decided you were worth helping. The bags contain cash, two new credit cards with high limits, and a set of clean ID documents for you to alter. One thing: If you use any of this without my authorization, I’ll kill you. Call first. You know the number.
I presumed that since Lewis had sent me here, there was little need for another phone call. I opened each bag in turn. Cash—several thousand dollars in old bills. Two credit cards, as he’d promised, in the neutral-gender name of Leslie Raine. The identification—a Texas driver’s license, birth certificate, and passport—were in the same name. The photograph was of an extremely generic human, androgynous. I concentrated on each of them in turn, adjusting the pigments within the photographs until the image more closely resembled me, including my newly pink hair.
I wrote my name and the date on the back of the note and put it back in the cylinder, sealed it, and buried it beneath the rock again.
Leslie Raine.
It seemed as much my name as any other.
I left Albuquerque on a newly purchased motorcycle. The motor vehicle permit that had come with my new identity, I was told, would not allow me to operate the machine legally until I took the tests necessary, but despite my new disguise I didn’t feel comfortable placing myself on police property to achieve that goal. I simply asked to see an example of a motorcycle license, which would allow me to make the necessary alterations to the license I had.
I solemnly lied to the vendor that I would go straight to the appropriate authority to obtain the proper documents. He was less inclined to question me once the credit card purchase went through, and I added a black helmet, white leather jacket, gloves, and chaps. I donned those in the changing room, picked up the helmet, mounted the motorcycle, and taught myself the mechanics of it in a few moments.
“You sure you can handle that?” the salesman asked me as I went over the controls. “That’s a lot of motorcycle, lady.”
Indeed, it was. The motorcycle was a sleekly designed Victory Vision in gray and steel, and it had cost the Wardens quite a bit of money. Still, I felt it was better than buying a car; I was doubtful that I’d want to be trapped in a steel box for hours on end, but this seemed freeing. Powerful.
I started the engine and savored the shivering purr of power. I pressed the throttle and listened to the finely tuned roar, and for the first time in my human life, it felt entirely natural to smile.
“It’s perfect,” I said. I put on the helmet, raised the kickstand, and put the machine into gear.
The salesman waved good-bye to me in my rearview mirror. I concentrated on operating the motorcycle. It was a complex dance of balance, intuition, and control, and I felt a rush of excitement I had not felt since falling into flesh. This—this was freedom. I was alone, I had escaped my enemies, and for the moment, at least, I could simply exist.