Had that made me less, in the end?
I forced my brain—my very human brain, subject to all these treacherous tides of emotion and pain—to focus. Luis was not a cruel man. I had done nothing to anger him so much; yes, I’d left him, I’d done it without warning, but the reaction was all out of proportion.
I’d left him with Brianna. The little Warden girl, the one that Pearl had so thoroughly corrupted. Another eager little killer, twisted away from her true life and purpose.
Brianna. But Brianna was a Fire Warden, not an Earth Warden; she was capable of incinerating half the hospital, but what I heard in Luis’s voice was a very different kind of attack.
One that had insidiously gotten inside of him.
An Earth Warden had created the seed for the golem and called it into being. Set it on my trail.
I had an enemy who had not yet revealed himself. One who was close enough to touch—and twist—Luis. One subtle enough to do it without Luis even noticing.
Turner? But Turner was a Fire Warden. Only a Fire Warden? No, it couldn’t be Turner. I had looked at him on the aetheric. I had seen his true self. There had been no deception there. Only exhaustion.
Unless he was very good. Good enough to fool my admittedly human-limited senses on the aetheric.
With Pearl’s help . . .
He’d reached for the case of the list, when it had fallen to the floor. That might have just been reaction.
It might have been a plan. Pearl had sent him to get the list away from me. I’d stopped him. After seeing the lengths I’d been prepared to go to, he hadn’t dared make another move, not then.
Luis was still talking, but I was no longer listening. Whether this was real anger, or false, I couldn’t know, but I no longer felt that I had left him in safety.
I no longer knew where I could find safety at all.
I climbed from rock to rock, jumped and landed hard on the walkway on the other side of the protective barrier, and ran for the distant headlights moving along a nearby street.
I needed a ride, and I wasn’t going to be particular about how I obtained one.
Chapter 8
I CONSIDERED STEALING ANOTHER VEHICLE, but they were all occupied by drivers; I was planning how to force one to stop so that I could remove the driver—without hurting him or her—when, to my surprise, a white sedan glided quietly to a stop at the curb next to me. The tinted window rolled down.
“Hey, is your name Cassiel?”
I looked in, frowning. The driver was no one I knew. “Get in,” the man said. The locks clicked open, and he leaned over the seat to shove the door open. “I said get in. Your friends sent me to pick you up.”
He was a younger man, probably near Luis’s age, although there was something in his eyes that seemed much older. Hard experience, perhaps. The car was clean, neat, and smelled of smoke and narcotics. The man nodded to me as I slipped into the passenger seat and buckled my safety belt, then slammed the door. The window rolled up, sealing me in with the narcotic- flavored smoke. He pulled out into traffic, heading vaguely north.
I watched his profile steadily. “Aren’t you going to ask me where I need to go?” I asked him.
“Nope,” he said. “Because you’re going where I tell you.” He pulled out a knife as long as his forearm from a sheath underneath the driver’s seat, and held it casually on his leg. “You just sit there and be quiet, all right? Don’t give me no trouble.”
“Who sent you?”
“You always ask this many questions when you see a knife? Shut the hell up and hand it over.”
“It,” I repeated.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
The stranger was asking me to hand over the scroll. For a heart-stopping second I remembered the ruined cell phone, dripping water, before Rashid had deigned to repair it. Was the scroll equally damaged? I ignored the man with the knife, although he said something else, probably a threat to emphasize why I had to obey him. I reached into my jacket and pulled out the hard cylinder of the scroll. It looked seamless. No water dripped from it. I traced a finger along the edge, and the casing split, retracted, and the paper beneath was crisp and dry. I let out a relieved, slow breath.
“I said,” the man driving said, “hand it over. I will cut you, bitch. Your choice.”
He was jumpy. Unpredictable. His knuckles were white around the knife.
I sealed the scroll, put it back in my jacket with a feeling of cold relief, and sat back against the drug-scented upholstery as he accelerated the car, no doubt to convince me I couldn’t safely dive from it.
He lifted the knife threateningly.
I grabbed his hand, twisted, and slammed the blade down into his own right leg.
“Who sent you?” I asked. “Who told you where to find me? Who told you my name? Who knows I have the scroll? Is it Ben Turner?”
He screamed, face going stark white, and hit the brakes with his left foot, sliding the car to a noisy, jittering stop in the middle of an intersection. Overhead, the swaying traffic signal clicked from green to yellow to red. He whimpered and let go of the knife, staring at it stupidly.
I reached over and pulled it out in one fast, efficient pull. Blood immediately flooded out to soak his jeans. It was deep, but he had missed the larger arteries. Not through any planning on my part.
“You bitch,” he said. “You bitch, you stabbed me!” “Technically, I did not. You stabbed yourself.” I stared at him without any feeling of empathy at all. Perhaps I was still more Djinn than Rashid thought. “Now, answer my questions. Who sent you?”
“Fuck you.”
Luis would have been appalled, but Luis wasn’t here. I responded to the man’s rudeness by putting a slender bronze fingertip on his wound, and pressing down into it. He whined in the back of his throat and struck out at me, but it was weak, and I easily fended him off as I pushed my finger deeper into the gash.
“Now,” I said, in exactly the same tone. “There’s another inch before I hit bone. Tell me who sent you.”
“Turner!” he screamed. His face had gone the color of spoiled milk. “Ben Turner, okay? I owed him!”
I sat back, wiped the blood from my metal hand onto the upholstery of his car, and considered what he had just said. “He sent you to follow me.”
“Yeah.” His breath was coming short now. “I was supposed to jack you and get the scroll. Wasn’t supposed to be any big deal.”
“And how is it now?” Facetious question. I waved it aside. “And how do you know Agent Turner?”
“He busted up a meth lab couple of months ago around here. Told me I’d have to do him a favor to stay out of prison.” The man gave a dry, wicked chuckle. “Some favor.”
“He didn’t warn you about me?”
The man shrugged, both hands now clamped protectively over his bleeding leg. He avoided looking directly at me.
“Ah,” I said, light dawning. “You didn’t listen. He did warn you, but you thought you could handle me in your own way.” I smiled slowly. “How has that worked out for you?”
He was beyond mouthing insults now. I considered leaving him by the side of the road, then reached across him, opened his door, unbuckled his seat belt, and said, “Come around the car to the passenger side.”
He stared at me, blue eyes wide and oddly childlike under the baffled rage. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to the hospital to have a talk with Special Agent Turner,” I said. “And I might as well take you with me. It seems the least I can do.”
I was holding the knife. It seemed that put me in charge. He stared at me for a second, then said, “Don’t take my car. I need my car. I got a job and a family and shit.”