Unknown

“I thought you were the bullfighter, chica.”

I smiled slowly. “Sometimes you’re the bullfighter,” I said. “And sometimes, you’re the bull.”

I slept a little during the drive, waking as Turner slowed the car and braked it in front of a house on a suburban street—a house like many others. Like Lu-is’s own, in fact, if a little older. There were many cars parked around it—police vehicles and big, industrial vans bristling with ungainly ante

“Back door,” he said. “Follow me. And don’t look over at the crowd. Cameras are filming everything, you’d be breaking news.”

I kept my back to the crowd as strobes flashed, camera lights woke to a bright glare, and questions began to be shouted in our wake. We walked quickly and quietly around the corner of the house, leaving the reporters and onlookers behind, and followed a small brick path through a neat, small yard to a screen door as the sudden burst of noisy interest faded out in disappointment.

Beyond it, all of the lights were on behind the house, no doubt to discourage the curious or determined. There was a girl’s bicycle lying on its side on the porch, and a pair of roller skates, elbow and knee pads, a pink helmet.

A baseball mitt and bat. A soccer ball. Gloria was an active child. Turner didn’t so much as glance at them, but I supposed he’d seen it before. Been here before.

Inside, the police paused as Turner came in, turning expectantly toward him. There were three present, two of them in plain suits, one in uniform. I didn’t recognize any of them, but they evidently recognized me, and Luis, with closed expressions and guarded nods.

The two people sitting on the couch, apart but somehow unmistakably together, looked . . . empty. Haunted and hollowed out by fear and stress. The woman had a glimmer of power around her, only a ghost on the aetheric; she had once tried to be a Warden, I remembered Turner had said. She’d lost whatever power she’d once had, or at least lost the will to use it. She was a thin, middle-aged woman of African descent, with delicate, high cheekbones and skin the color of dark roasted coffee. Beautiful, but drawn and made frail by fear.

The man was taller, a bit lighter in coloring, and his eyes were a striking pale green. He looked at us mutely. Miserably. With, still, a gleam of hope in his expression.

There was an array of photographs on the coffee table in front of them, removed from frames that had been carelessly stacked beneath on the carpet. In each was the image of their child, Gloria—laughing, fearless, strong. A life, laid out in a neatly spaced row.

I remembered the terror and pain in the girl I’d touched, locked in that trunk, and felt another lingering stab of outrage and anger. This was Gloria—the confidence, the strength, the possibility. That other should never have been visited on her, not at this age. Not at any age.

A flare of sudden awareness illuminated the woman’s dimmed eyes—she’d read something in Turner’s body language, or his expression. She came to her feet, suddenly tense, and her husband rose with her more slowly, more carefully, as if he might break if he moved too fast.

“She’s alive,” Mrs. Jensen said. It wasn’t a guess. I watched life spill into her, like water pouring from a broken dam, and she no longer looked frail. No longer tired. I could now see where Gloria inherited her strength and vivacity. “She’s alive!”

She clapped her hands and threw herself into her husband’s arms. He continued to stare over her head at Agent Turner, eyes still full of hope and fear, until Turner smiled and said, “She’s okay, we’ve got her. She’s on her way to the emergency room in La Jolla. We can have you on a plane in half an hour. You’ll see her very soon, I promise you.”

The man shuddered and shut his eyes, burying his face in his wife’s hair, and the two of them clung together and cried, sinking back down to the couch, weeping in utter relief. There was a feeling in the room as the tension shattered—it reminded me of the clean, crisp air after a storm’s passage. A moment of peace.

All things changed, but the moments were what mattered. I had never understood that as a Dji

I was happy for these strangers. Just . . . happy.

“I want to introduce you to someone,” Turner continued. “This is Luis Rocha, he’s a—civilian consultant working with us. And his partner—” He hesitated.

“Leslie,” I supplied. “Leslie Raine.”

“Yes, of course.” He looked briefly embarrassed by the lapse, though he shouldn’t have been; I was impressed that he had not automatically called me Cassiel.

“They were—instrumental in getting Gloria away safely from the man who took her.”

Instrumental. What an odd thing to be, an instrument. But then, I supposed that he was right in labeling me so. I had been used . . . by Ashan, by the Wardens, by Turner himself. In this case, though, perhaps it had been a higher purpose at work.

Still. I did not like being used, not even by God.

Luis glanced down at my left hand, burnished and gleaming; I slid it into the pocket of my jacket before the Jensens could notice and comment on its oddity. Mrs. Jensen sniffled, wiped at her eyes, and forced a smile on her lips as she extended her hand toward me. I shook it gravely, then her husband’s. Luis did as well. There was something so vulnerable in their gratitude, so overwhelming, that it was difficult for me to meet their tear-brimmed eyes. I didn’t feel worthy of their respect, suddenly. I remembered suggesting that we use their child as bait, and felt suddenly filthy with the memory.

“Did you get him?” Mr. Jensen asked. “The man who took my little girl?”

The police were prepared for the question, I realized; I had not been, and I looked at Luis, who looked in turn at Turner. Turner’s expression didn’t change. “We’re ru

“You let me have him,” Mr. Jensen said. “You let me have him and you won’t have to worry about any of that bullshit. There won’t be enough of that bastard to bury, I promise you that.”

I knew how he felt. I felt the same, and I wondered, in a strangely disco

I rather hoped that was the case. It would amuse Rashid, and save Mr. Jensen from any . . . regrets.

“Let’s focus on Gloria right now,” Turner said, which seemed to distract the parents from their vengeance, at least for now. “Get some things together, and get some of Gloria’s as well. That will help her feel more at home in the hospital—clothes, toys, that kind of thing. They’re probably going to want to keep her overnight for observation.”

They both nodded, eager to have something, anything to do. I felt almost regretful as I said, “Before you go, I need to ask you a question.”

The Jensens stopped, still holding on to each other, and both of their gazes fixed on me.

“Have either of you ever been to a place called the Ranch?”

I wasn’t so much expecting a straightforward answer to the question as hoping to see, in the aetheric, an indication of surprise. And I got it, from the husband. A faint, but unmistakable, ripple of surprise.

“What kind of ranch?” Mrs. Jensen asked, frowning. “I’ve got some cousins who own a farm in Indiana—”

I oriented on Mr. Jensen, with his pale green eyes which widened as I captured his gaze. “I think you know what I mean, sir.”