Luis swallowed. “Why did Ashan exile you, Cassiel?”
I held his gaze. This moment had been coming all along. I had dreaded it and feared it, and now it was here.
“Ashan must have known that Pearl was rising,” I said. “He must have known that the only way to stop her was to remove her power.” Luis’s face was slowly bleaching white. “He ordered me to kill the human race, but he didn’t tell me why.”
Ashan never explained. He’d never had to before. I hadn’t guessed his thoughts, or my answer might have been different. I had thought it was Ashan’s pride and his arrogance. His hatred for the Wardens.
I said, very softly, “He was right.”
Luis shook his head. “No. We can fight this. We can find a way to fight this. We have to.”
Tears burned in my eyes—tears of anguish and shame and fear. “Ashan cast me into human flesh so that I could understand the risk. So that I would agree to do what must be done. And now I do. Now I know.”
Luis came off the chair at me so quickly I didn’t think to react. He shoved me back against the wall, trapped me there with his hands chaining my wrists against the hard surface. “No,” he said. He leaned his hot, sweating forehead against mine. “No, you can’t believe this. We can beat this, we can.We have to find them. Save Ibby. Stop this from happening.”
“How?”
“I don’t know! We have to try!”
He was begging me not just with words, but with the contact of our bodies, with the unspoken primal warmth that connected us. The power›d u"1e that coursed from his body into mine.
“Please,” he said. “Cassiel. There has to be another answer.”
I wanted to believe that. “My people are going to die,” I said. “You’re asking me to stand by and let it happen.”
“I’m asking you to find another way.”
I broke the grip he had on my wrists with a sharp twist of my arms, but I didn’t move away. “You can stop me,” I said. “All you have to do is kill me.”
That shocked him, drove him back a full step. “What?”
“I’m vulnerable to you. In human flesh, I’m vulnerable. Once I become Djinn again, once Ashan grants me power, you can’t stop me. You know that.” I wiped tears from my face. “If you want to stop me, kill me. If you don’t—”
He lunged forward, hands gripping the sides of my head, but if he meant to hurt me, his touch turned gentle at the last instant. “We’ll find a way,” he said. “Cassie, we’ll find a way.”
But as long as I lived, I was a danger not just to him, not just to Isabel, but to every human breathing. I had never thought it would come to this.
I had never imagined Pearl would have survived to bring this darkness back.
“Yes,” I said softly. “We’ll find a way.”
And if I had to do it, I would be Ashan’s assassin one last time. He had known that. . . . But what was worse, what frightened me even as a Djinn, was that I knew Ashan better than to think I was his onlyplan.
There were others that would engage at the proper time to fulfill his needs.
Humanity had more enemies than me.
Pearl had moved The Ranch, and she had destroyed everything she didn’t need . . . including her followers. She had taken the children but left behind dead adults, so many bodies strewn across the ground. There was no trace of the compound, the walls, the buildings. She had destroyed everything.
The casual power of it was stunning.
I stood on the dry, whispering grass as the Ma’at gathered up bodies, and knew that somewhere she was hiding herself. Gathering her forces. Building her fortress around her.
Waiting.
“I know you can hear me,” I said to the wind and the grass. “I know who you are, Pearl. And I won’t give up.”
I heard the laughter of a million mocking voices.
Will you kill the world to stop me, destroyer of the eternal? Will you commit the sin that cast me out, and destroy yourself, as well?
Luis had said, We’ll find another way.Luis was real to me now, flesh and bone, and I couldn’t simply destroy him. I had lost too much.
Cassiel,Pearl’s million voices of the dead whispered. You already have lost everything. You just don’t know it yet.
I swallowed. “I’m coming for you.”
Come ahead,she whispered. Come ahead, my sister, my murderer. I long for your touch.
I flinched when Luis’s hands landed on my shoulders. He pulled me back into his warmth. “There’s nothing here,” he said. “Is there?”
“She took the children with her.”
“Can you trace them?” Luis raised my chin to meet his eyes. “Cassiel. What do we do now?”
Die,Pearl’s voice whispered through the grass.
“We go on,” I said. “We find a way.”
Luis put his arm around me, and led me back to the jeep.
It was a long drive back to Albuquerque, and I had too much time to think.
Isabel.
The fate of six billion was at stake, but only two of them mattered to me in this moment: Luis and Isabel.
I will find a way.
TRACK LIST
As always, music is my muse. Here are the tracks that helped get me through Outcast Season: Undone.
"Life is Beautiful" Sixx:A.M.
"Three Wishes" The Pierces
"Mary Jane's Last Dance" Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
"Secret" The Pierces
"Give It Up" LCD Soundsystem
"Citizen Soldiers" 3 Doors Down
"Your Woman" White Tom
"Hey, Man Nice Shot" Filter
"Believe" The Bravery
"I Need to Know" Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
"Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" LCD Soundsystems
"Sloe Gin" Joe Bonamassa
"Tess Don't Tell" Ivy
"Mama" Genesis
"Don't Come Around Here No More" Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
"Box Full O' Honey" Duran Duran
"Last Man Standing" Duran Duran
"Hunting for Witches" Bloc Party
"Smalltown Boy" Bronski Beat
"How Does It Feel" Eskimo Joe
"The Good Ones" Finger Eleven
"Ride" The Vines
"In the Air Tonight" Phil Collins
"What If I Came Knocking" John Cougar Mellenkamp
"Ally" Truth in Fiction
"Electrotog" Le Charme
"Refugee" Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty
"On and On" Nikka Costa
"Everybody Got Their Something" Nikka Costa
"2Wicky" Hooverphonic
"Enjoy the Ride" (Feat. Judy Tzuke) Morcheeba
"Grace" Miss Kittin
"Saw Something" Dave Gahan
"Fever" Stereo MC's
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Caineis the author of more than twenty novels, including the Weather Warden series. She was born at WhiteSandsMissileRange, which people who know her say explains a lot. She has been an accountant, a professional musician, and an insurance investigator, and carries on a full-time secret identity in the corporate world. She and her husband, fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad, live in Texas with their iguanas, Popeye and Darwin; a mali uromastyxnamed (appropriately) O’Malley; and a leopard tortise named Shelley (for the poet, of course). Visit her Web site at www.rachelcaine.com.