He was stating the blindingly obvious. I began to swim, heading for the rocky coastline where lights glowed. I was still clumsy, still aching, but I was utterly determined not to allow Rashid the satisfaction of saving me.
After a beat, Rashid followed me, matching me stroke for stroke. The effort warmed my body, cleared my mind, and by the time I crawled up on the stones, battered by waves, I felt I might survive. That conviction quickly faded, though, as my wet clothing clung tightly, leeching the warmth from my skin, and I realized that I had no vehicle. No way to continue to Rose Canyon, where the map had shown me Alex—where I might, might find the other children, including Ibby. Where I might prevent more attacks, more deaths. More suffering.
If only I were not so desperately tired.
Rashid climbed up onto the rocks, sinuous as a panther, and looked down at me. So very Djinn. So very beautiful, perfect, arrogant. So curious, in the cock of his head as he watched me.
Then he crouched down and put a hand on my shoulder.
Warmth sheeted over me in a flood, sinking into every tissue, coursing through my nerves and bloodstream. Waking a sleepy satiation in me, and an almost overwhelming sense of exhaustion. I wanted, badly, to lay my head down on the cold rocks and sleep.
I fought it, somehow; simply Djinn stubbornness, my last inheritance from an endless lifetime of never surrendering to weakness. I pulled away from Rashid and stumbled to my feet. My clothes were dry, thanks to his efforts.
I realized, with an appalling sense of horror, that I was going to have to genuinely thank him. For saving me. That was very nearly worse than losing to the golem.
Rashid smiled, and whether he meant to or not, he robbed me of the necessity by saying, “The next time you call me a coward, I’ll rip your spine out and beat you with it. Just so we are clear on the matter.”
I glowered at him. “Go away.”
“And you don’t need my help.”
“No.”
“Liar.” His eyes were luminous and gleeful. “Where’s your human pet? The Warden?”
“Where he’s needed. Why do you care?”
“I deeply do not. I was merely curious. You seem . . . attached to him.” The distaste in his voice made me bristle, again. “It seemed strange to see you here, alone.”
“I am not attached,” I snapped. “I am . . .” I smiled, sharp edged. “Merely curious.”
That wiped the smugness from his face, and Rashid stepped away from me. His expression smoothed out into a blank mask, but his eyes continued to burn. “I have not seen a golem walk the Earth in a few thousand years,” he said. “Interesting that your enemies have such . . . long memories, don’t you think?”
Memories, and powers, I thought, but didn’t say. Creation of a golem was nothing that a mere child could come up with, certainly not alone; the Warden children sent against me so far had been powerful, but it was unfocused brute force, not precision. Not the kind of delicate and focused control necessary to create something like a golem. That was a manifestation of Earth powers, but so very specific, so very exacting in its nature that few had ever been able to learn the trick of it. A mere handful of humans, throughout history.
And all of those, so far as I knew, were long dead and gone. There was no one alive today, not even Lewis Orwell, who had the ability to do this sort of thing unaided.
“It’s Pearl,” I said. “She knows these things. Forgotten talents, forgotten uses, collected for tens of thousands of years. The Wardens of today use powers rooted in science, in their understanding of the world around them. The Wardens of yesterday had no science; their powers had sources in legend, folklore, religion. It is a different thing altogether.” The golem was a little of all three. There were others, too. Things that had not been seen on the Earth for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Giants and monsters. Things the Wardens would be ill-equipped to battle on their own, if Pearl brought them out as weapons. “She’s teaching them. These children. Guiding them.”
Rashid said nothing to that, but I could see he looked troubled. Like my Djinn friend and sometime lover Gallan, he would not believe me when I warned him of danger. He would have to see it, experience it for himself.
Like Gallan, that would be a fatal error. And I could not stop him from making it.
“You’ve done enough,” I told him, more softly, and stood up. “I will call—” My voice died as I pulled the cell phone from my pocket, flipped it open, and saw a dead screen. Water dripped from the casing in a steady stream.
I hate water.
Rashid sighed, reached over, and flicked the phone with a single finger. The flow of water stopped, the phone gave a smug musical chime, and the screen began to glow as it restarted itself.
“I will call Luis,” I said, as if I hadn’t paused at all, “and we will handle this among the Wardens. Go away, Rashid.”
“Say pretty please,” he purred. There was a maniacal gleam in his eyes, a Djinn emotion I recognized—remembered—all too well.
I simply glared back, unspeaking, until he shrugged, bared pointed teeth, and misted away, leaving me alone on the rocks.
“Hello?” Luis’s voice on the phone, small and distant. “Cass? Where the fuck are you?” He sounded anxious. Almost frightened.
“I’m all right,” I said, and pulled in a deep breath. The sound of his voice filled some small, dark space inside me that I hadn’t realized had gone empty. Need. That was a human thing, need. It seemed every moment I lived, I discovered more human feelings inside me.
Curious, how like Djinn feelings they were.
“That was really not my question,” Luis snapped. “Where?”
“At the shore,” I said. “I need you here.”
“And I need you here. Dios, woman, you don’t go racing off by yourself like that, not when we have kids here in trouble! What were you thinking?” I recognized the tension in his voice; it had a deadly significance to me, because it was the same tense, furious tone he had used after his brother and sister-in-law had been shot. After I had elected to chase the killers, instead of working to save their lives. “We are Wardens. We save lives first! Why is that so damn hard for you to understand?”
“It isn’t,” I protested. A curl of damp wind blew my hair away from my face, and I looked up at the moon and sighed. “My presence was not a help to you with Brianna. I thought I would do something useful. Such as find Isabel.”
He let out a scorching, fluid string of Spanish curses that was as evocative for its fury as its precision. I waited, holding the phone away from my ear, until I heard him pause. “Finished?” I asked him coldly. “Because I will not be talked to in this manner.”
“God, sometimes you’re exactly like my second-grade teacher!” He almost laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I hated that bitch.”
He sounded . . . different. I frowned. “Luis,” I said slowly. “You know not to talk to me this way.”
“Why do I care what you want? You’re a leech! You’re only hanging around me so you can suck on me anytime you need a fix. You don’t care that you just about knocked me down, pulling that much power out of me. You didn’t care about Manny and Angela, you don’t care about Ibby, about me—” He sounded . . . drunk. Verging on insane. He was raving, I understood that, but it still hurt. Badly. Was this what he thought of me, in the dark, secret recesses of his heart? That I was a mere parasite, pretending to be a part of his world?
It gave rise to a startling, cold question: Was I? I had deliberately held myself apart. Deliberately thought of myself as different, better, more.