Unknown

“I know it’s not normal,” Halley said, “but this kid’s kind of special. She showed up half starved, dehydrated, with a nasty case of infection; no family, no missing kid bulletin out on her. She’s about five years old.”

Hope flared hot in Luis’s eyes, and I know it must have registered in my expression as well. “No name?”

“She’s too sick to talk.”

Halley was, I believed, deliberately vague as to details. He was allowing Luis’s desperation to fill in information.

I thought I understood why. “This girl,” I said. “She is not Isabel Rocha. You wish us to think she could be, to bring Luis face-to-face with her. You believe he could not refuse once he saw her, even if she isn’t his niece.”

Halley and his partner stared at me. I didn’t blink.

“Yeah,” Halley finally said. “That’s true. Look, the kid’s in bad shape. They’ve tried all the treatments, even the IV antibiotics. She’s dying. I figure you’re about the only shot she’s got left, unless Saint Joseph works a miracle.” He paused, studying Luis. “You a religious man?”

“I been to mass a time or two.” He was, in fact, much more religious than that; I’d heard him praying, from time to time, that we would find Isabel. Or avenge her. “Why?”

Halley shrugged. “Always wondered is all. You Wardens, you’re practically gods, what with all the slinging lightning bolts and healing the sick. Bea ain’t religious. So I just wondered.”

“We’re not any kind of gods, big G or small,” Luis said. “Ain’t even angels, man. We’re just people. Smart Wardens know that better than anybody. You play God, people die.”

Halley looked like he wanted to keep on talking, but I broke in to say, “If the girl is as sick as you say, we shouldn’t waste time.”

Both policemen looked startled, although they covered it quickly. “So you’ll go?” Halley asked, and started the car’s engine.

“Of course he’ll go,” I said, without so much as a glance at Luis. The bond between us was strong enough that I had no doubts of it; I wouldn’t have doubted it in any case, because it was exactly the sort of thing Luis would do, whether or not it was wise. “You should have just asked.”

Halley rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Shoulda thought of that.”

The girl was in the hospital. I had never visited one before, although of course I knew the theory; there had been no need, when Ma

I did not like the hospital.

The child was so small. Smaller than Isabel, and nothing at all like her in coloring: blond, rosy pink skin, a delicate rosebud mouth. I could not see the color of her eyes; she was deeply unconscious.

Parts of her body were deeply discolored and bruised. The infection Detective Halley had mentioned, but not a violent attack. This child was thin, ill-looked-after, but her fight was against a much more ruthless enemy.

The room stank of death. I paused at the door, swallowing convulsively, and Halley came to a stop with me.

“Sad,” he said. “Right?”

I didn’t answer. I watched Luis. He entered the sterile room in slow, deliberate steps, as if he was afraid he might frighten the child, who surely could not have known he was there. He was, by contrast to her tiny body, a large man, well muscled, heavily tattooed, and it struck me as I watched that a human chancing on this scene would have assumed Luis to be a criminal, intent on harming the child.

Until they saw his face, his eyes, the heartbreakingly gentle way he laid the back of his hand on the girl’s forehead and settled his weight on the bed beside her. He had large hands, but his fingers stroked gently through her hair, as if she might feel the comfort he offered.

“Cass,” he said. “I need you.”

He looked up into my eyes, and I felt it like a physical shock—a demand, but a kind one, with good intention behind it.

And more. More than that. A complicated mixture of need and desire, dread and worry. For a disorienting moment, I saw myself through his eyes: tall, pale, expressionless, and apparently free of all co

Apparently.

I was abruptly conscious of my body, all the complex and fascinating parts of it; I felt the chilled air of the room moving over my skin, and felt gooseflesh gather. My heart pounded harder, altering its rhythm. My mouth felt dry, and without conscious decision, I stepped forward, first one foot, then another, until I was standing across the child’s bed from Luis Rocha.

He held out his right hand, keeping his left in gentle contact with the girl’s forehead. My fingers closed over his, and the raw tactile pleasure of it took my breath away. I felt a tingle of power pulse through the link between us, and then through him. I touched the wellspring of power hidden deep in the Earth herself—slow, silent, strong power. The feel of it coursing through my nerves, through Luis’s, was enough to send my memories sparking to other times, other places, other lives. I had never been human, but I had been Dji

I let out a shaky sigh, almost a moan, and began to refine the power, shape it, form it into a golden flood that Luis used his human expertise to direct into the child’s fragile body. This was a thing some Dji

I found that pleasing.

Luis worked with great concentration, and it took a very long time—hours, in fact. The policemen left, returned, and left again. Doctors and nurses came and went, but no one bothered us; I wondered why, until I realized that there must have been some common consent that this last effort would be tolerated. There was no harm in it.

The mottled stains beneath her skin gradually began to fade. Luis stopped for a few moments then, gasping for breath, and I poured him a glass of water from the carafe standing next to the bed. He drank it in two convulsive gulps, and I realized that his shirt was dark with sweat, and his hair was dripping with it. His muscles trembled with the strain.

I put a pale, dry hand on his moist arm, over the flame-shaped tattoo, and said, “It’s enough.”

“No,” Luis said, and held out his glass for another pour from the carafe. “It’s still in her blood. Tough little buggers, but I’m getting them. I’ve got her major organs cleaned, but if I don’t kill it in her bloodstream, she’ll re-infect.” He paused to drink again—three gulps, this time. “You got enough to keep going?”

Did I? The question surprised me, and I quickly turned my appraisal back on myself. I was unused, still, to human limits, but he was right; my body was trembling, robbed of energy, and I was burningly thirsty.

I took the glass from him, refilled it, and downed it in two convulsive swallows. “I’m fine,” I said.

He took the carafe, shook it, and then shrugged and upended it to drink the last few mouthfuls, depositing it back on the table, empty. “Then let’s do it.”

I held on to his arm. “Luis.” I didn’t need to say more, and he didn’t need to do more than shake his head to reject my concern. “Very well,” I said.

My fingers felt burned when they left his skin; he was warm, so warm it felt wrong to me. Effort and power, consuming him from within.

He would not stop. I understood that very well.

It took the rest of the afternoon, and the sun was slipping below the horizon when Luis finally sighed, removed his hand from the girl’s forehead, and tried to get up. Tried, and failed. I grabbed his arm as he began to slide off the bed; I couldn’t hold him, but I broke his momentum from a fall to a controlled slide to a sitting position on the floor. Someone had refilled the water pitcher, and I grabbed it and moved around the bed toward him. My legs trembled violently, and I had to stop and brace myself against the wall for a moment as dark spots swam and drifted in my eyes. I then summoned up all the energy left in me to drop down next to Luis’s side.