I jumped off the truck, landed heavily—gravity and flesh were an uncomfortable combination—and felt a flash of pain like a knife through my right leg. No broken bones, only a pulled muscle. I forced myself to ignore it as I pushed through the crowd of babbling humans talking excitedly.
When I reached the spot where the first Djinn had been, he was no longer there. No longer in sight at all. I extended my senses cautiously, as limited as they were, but found nothing.
He had seen me coming, and retreated to where I couldn’t follow.
The other Djinn was more accommodating. She was in the form of a small human child, with long, silky blond hair and fair skin. Eyes so blue they seemed made of sky. She sat perched on a decorative stone block at the edge of the parking lot, swinging her feet and watching the building belch black smoke toward the sky.
“How are you enjoying your exile?” she asked me, as I crouched down next to her. Like me, she was Old Djinn, and a particular favorite of Ashan’s; unlike me, she enjoyed a certain freedom to act as she pleased, because of her age and power.
“I’m not,” I said shortly. “Venna, there was a Djinn inside the building, in the fire. Can you tell me who it was?”
“Certainly,” she said, and her lips curved into a faint, annoying smile. “I can.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
I held my temper with difficulty. “Then will you convey a message to him, and tell him that I need to ask him what happened?”
Venna continued to drum her patent-leather heels on the stone, and she never looked away from the building. “Ashan’s still very angry with you,” she said.
“Did he do this?”
“Do what?”
“Set this fire.”
That earned me a glance, a dismissive one. “Why would he?”
A fair question, but I couldn’t predict what Ashan might or might not do. “Did he order it done?”
“No.” That was surprising; I had not expected so definitive an answer, not from a Djinn as old and canny as Venna. “I’ll convey your message to the one who was here. Just this once, Cassiel, as a favor. Don’t ask me again, or I’ll hurt you.”
She said it with no particular heat, but I knew she meant every word. And she was more than capable. For all her little-girl prettiness, Venna was a vast, dangerous being, and if I displeased her . . .
I bent my head in silent acknowledgment.
Venna misted away. I realized that I had made a fatal human error—I hadn’t asked how long it would take. Time was measured differently among the Old Djinn, and so was humor; she might fulfill her promise, but take several human lifetimes doing it. That would be inconvenient.
Whatever her motives, Venna took pity on me. It was only a moment before another Djinn faded into view, perched on the same block she had occupied. This one was far taller, an adult male dressed in human-style trousers and a white shirt. Beneath the businesslike clothing, his skin was a rich copper, but still almost within human ranges; only a shade or two redder than Luis’s, I thought. His eyes, however, were nothing like human. Colors swirled and merged in them like living opals.
I doubted the people around us could even see him. There was a slight blur to his figure, and when I turned my head away, he disappeared from my peripheral vision altogether.
“You have questions,” he said. “I’m not surprised. I’m Quintus.” He held out his hand to me, human fashion, and I took it with great care. He felt like a penny left in the sun. “I didn’t set the fire, if that’s what you wanted to ask.”
“I didn’t think you had,” I said. “My name is—”
“We all know your name, Cassiel. We’ve all been warned.” His voice was deep as a bell but soft, as if I were a great distance away. “I’m sorry. I would like to help you, if I could.”
“You don’t even know me.”
That earned me an amused quirk of his eyebrows. “I’m not one of your Old Djinn. When I was alive as a man, I never required that I know people to help them,” he said. “That’s the difference between Old and New Djinn, in a nutshell, I suppose—you only help your own, and then only when the spirit moves you. Well, if you want to know about the fire, I can tell you this: it was a Warden who set it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course.” His smile turned dark and bitter. “I’m well acquainted with the Warden in question. I was once her slave.”
I let a few seconds of silence pass before I asked the obvious. “Who is it?”
“Why do you think I would tell you?” he asked, and confusion froze me for a long second, while his smile stretched. “I was once her slave; I didn’t say I don’t like her. The two, you know, are not mutually exclusive.”
They were to me. “You won’t give me her name.”
“No, because I know why she did what she did. It was an act of desperation, Cassiel. You should know all about those.” He paused, gaze fixed on the fire. “No one is injured, no one is dead. Let it go.”
“It was directed at me. Or my Conduit, which is the same thing. I can’t ignore it.”
“The matter’s closed. The Warden won’t be coming after either of you again. I swear that to you. I’ll see to it personally.”
I didn’t want to believe Quintus, but there was something so solid and open about him that I finally, grudgingly nodded. “Very well,” I said. “But if your Warden mistress breaks her word and comes for either Manny Rocha or me again, I’ll break her.I’ll go through you if I have to. Are we clear on this?”
He didn’t smile. “Perfectly clear,” he said. “I would do the same, in your position.” He offered his hand again, and we clasped firmly. “Call on me if you need help, Cassiel. I find the world isn’t as exciting now that I’m not in the thick of the fight.”
An odd way to see things. I only wanted out of it, and back to my peaceful existence well away from this world and all its grubby problems.
He nodded, I nodded in return, and Quintus misted away. I had, I thought, made an ally. How reliable of one remained to be seen, but it helped me feel a little less alone, on this day when so much seemed against me.
One of the passing firefighters stopped and frowned at me. “Ma’am? Do you need help?”
“No.” The kind of help I needed, I doubted I would get from him.
Manny, after his initial focus on making sure others were safe, was livid over the loss of his office and records. Our floor of the building was a total loss. I doubted one scrap of paper remained unburned.
“I kept telling you, bro, get all that crap archived. You ever listen to me? No.” Luis, in the fashion of brothers throughout history, was not being helpful. “When’s the last time you cleaned out those files, anyway?”
Manny sent me a don’t-you-dare-speak glare. “Few weeks ago,” he snapped. “And for your information, I didarchive some stuff. Last year. Or—yeah, maybe a couple of years ago.”
Luis just shook his head. Now that the crisis was past, he seemed to be finding this quite funny. “Look at it this way: You get to start fresh. Replace that crappy furniture that was left over from the Eisenhower administration.”
“I likedthat desk!”
“Nobody ever accused you of having taste, man.”
We were making our way, slowly, to Manny’s car. Luis had his own truck parked a little farther away. The fire trucks were still here, blocking off rows of cars, but ours seemed unimpeded. The police had taken our statements—or rather, taken Luis and Manny’s statements. I had said little, except to support their general protestations of ignorance about the cause.
I wasn’t at all sure the police officer had believed any of us. I wouldn’t have, in his place. We definitely seemed suspicious.
We were almost to the car when Manny groaned. “Oh, man, just what I need.”
“What?”
“The boss.”
He meant the Weather Warden, Scott, who’d been so unpleasant during our last encounter. Scott was striding toward our small group, and his hangdog face was mottled red with fury.