“For now?” Luis asked.
“Let’s just say there was some management reorganization. Internal politics, nothing you need to worry about. Coffee?” He didn’t wait for a reply, simply pressed a button inset in the top of the desk. “You’ve got some explaining to do, I think.”
He assumed a very clear posture that said he was awaiting our report. Luis took a moment before saying,
“I’m not sure I should do my explaining to you. With respect, sir.”
Ashworth’s thin lips stretched, but I didn’t think it could be properly named a smile. “With respect,” he said, “I think that if you’re standing in my hotel, surrounded by my people, and there’s a Djinn standing in the corner ready to enforce my wishes, I really think you should reconsider.”
I whirled.
In the darkest corner of the room stood a Djinn—not one of those I felt the most fellowship with, but a New Djinn, one who had been born from human origins. An artificial creation, I had always thought. A pretender.
This one was tall, slender, and the bluish color of smoke even in human flesh. He bowed his head slightly as I met his gaze. His eyes were a bright, liquid violet, and his hair was dusty gold. Beautiful, in a shocking way, although not in a way I had ever seen before.
He was—for a New Djinn—powerful.
“Cassiel,” he said, and his voice was magic distilled—soft, warm, deep, comforting. “I’ve long wanted to meet you—though, I admit, I never wished to face you on the battlefield. You may take that as a sign of respect.”
He was gracious in pretending that I was still something a Djinn could truly fear. I nodded unwillingly in return. “Your name?” I could have read it from the air around him, once. Not now.
“Rashid,” he said.
I turned back to Ashworth and said, “He belongs to you?” It was a deliberate provocation, and I heard a soft laugh from Rashid—amused, almost mocking, but far from offended. Ashworth smiled again, this time more genuinely.
“No one belongs to anyone,” he said. “Tenet of our society. Anyone who joins the Ma’at joins as a volunteer, and they can leave when and if they desire.”
“How democratic,” I said. I didn’t put any special weight on the words, which made them, by default, a touch sarcastic. “I had heard you made use of Djinn when necessary. I see it’s true.”
“We make use of anyone willing to work. Including you, should the spirit move you, of course.”
I shook my head slightly and focused back on Luis. My conversation had given him time to decide what to do, and I could see by the set of his back and shoulders that he was bracing himself for some kind of impact.
“The boy we were trying to save is dead,” Luis said. “We did our best, but whoever sent him drained him in the last attack. We couldn’t help him.”
Ashworth’s thick brows slowly climbed, though his face remained set and still. “Really. I’d heard you were a skilled Earth Warden.”
“I am.” He glanced at me. “So is she.”
“Then I think you’d best explain to me why a child attacked you in the first place, and why you couldn’t simply stop him without death entering into it.”
Luis did his best, but Ashworth gave no indication, throughout the explanation, as to whether or not he believed a word of it. When Luis came to the point where we’d left the boy’s body behind, I heard a soft hiss from Rashid, behind me. I resisted the urge to turn.
“It was not my first choice,” I said. “But it was necessary. She intended for us to be caught with the body. She hoped we wouldn’t notice his passing until it was too late.”
“She,” Rashid repeated. “Name this enemy.” I didn’t. He gave another soft sound of disgust. “There is no great villain in this, Ashworth. Only the twisted desperation of one who was once a queen among our kind. Don’t believe her. The humiliation of being cast down into skin has turned her.”
“I’ll believe what I like, Rashid. Thank you for your input.” I’d never heard a human rebuke a Djinn in quite that way, firm and authoritative—not a human who didn’t arrogantly assume that owning a Djinn protected them from retribution. The aggression raised fierce, cold instincts in me, even though it was not directed toward me. I wondered what it did to Rashid. “I was at the Ranch,” Ashworth continued. “I understand what you two think you saw.”
“We don’t think,” Luis said. “We know. She exists. We may not be able to find her yet, but we will. And we’re going to get my niece back, safe and sound.”
Ashworth didn’t comment on that. He said, instead, “Not many Wardens left these days. Some are off chasing ghosts, some lying low, the rest just trying to hold things together. A good portion of them died fighting the Djinn in the rebellion. Some say there’s still a war going on, one of attrition. Fewer Wardens, stretched thinner. Enemies picking them off, one by one.”
“Some say it could benefit the Ma’at,” Luis pointed out.
Ashworth’s face twisted in a tired grimace. “People talk nonsense most of the time. I have no interest in making the Ma’at any kind of replacement for the Wardens. You should know that, better than most. The world needs Wardens; if she didn’t, they wouldn’t be here. They’re part of the natural order, same as the Djinn. Same as regular human beings, animals, plants, insects, protozoa. Ma’at, boy. Everything in balance. Now. Why are you here? You could’ve turned around and gone straight back home, nothing to stop you.”
“Guess just wanting to visit Vegas isn’t a good excuse.”
Luis’s attempt at humor—never more than half-hearted—fell into a cold silence. Ashworth didn’t reply. He shifted his gaze to me. “You really do think this creature’s real.”
“Yes,” I said. “She’s real. She’s a threat to the Djinn. A genuine threat. And until we can locate her again, we are fighting shadows. She can target us. We can’t target her in turn.”
Rashid made that sound again. I turned to face him, and he folded his arms across his chest. “Yes?” he asked.
“You have something to tell me?”
“Not really,” I said. “I presume when you’re screaming your last, the way Gallan screamed, you will take my words more seriously.”
I left that deliberately ambiguous. He would know of my friend Gallan’s death—the death of a Djinn never went unremarked, and Gallan had been no minor power. What Rashid did not know, from the sudden burst of brightness in his eyes, was whether or not I had been the cause of it.
I knew well enough what he suspected.
“I take you seriously now,” Rashid said. “Believe it.”
“Enough,” Ashworth snapped. “The both of you. You’ll not be settling any grudges in my office; I just redecorated. Luis, what the hell do you want from me? I can’t offer you any real help. And I don’t have any real information.”
“Then there’s one other thing you can do. You can lend me a Djinn,” Luis said.
There was a sudden, startling quiet among the four of us; Ashworth’s gaze leapt to Rashid, and mine moved to focus on Luis as I struggled to process what he had just said.
He had a Djinn. He had me. I felt a sudden, baffling surge of rage and confusion, and I wondered if it was . . . jealousy? Surely not. Surely I had not sunk so low.
Rashid’s voice came from behind me. Very close behind, so close that I felt the whisper of air on the back of my neck. “You must not be performing to his expectations,” he said. “How very sad for you.”
I turned, slammed the palm of my hand into the flat of his chest. It should have sent him flying across the room, splintered paneling, crumbled concrete in his wake.
Instead, Rashid simply stood there, smiling at me with a terrible bright light in his violet eyes. Then he took hold of my wrist, and snapped my arm.
I cried out as the bones broke, twisted, and ripped into muscle. Pain tore through me in a livid white wave, loosening my knees, and darkness flickered over my eyes.
“Rashid!” Ashworth shouted, and surged to his feet behind the desk. Luis, however, was faster. His armchair tipped over, and before it hit the carpet with a dull thud he was next to me. He pointed a finger at Rashid, and for a second I saw—or thought I saw—black flames lick up and down his arms. I blinked. It was an effect of the pain, surely.