Unknown

“Why?”

“Because time will be short, and I want to be at least driving in the right direction!”

He accepted that with a placid nod. “Toward Rose Canyon. As you suspected.”

I was already headed that way, generally. I felt a tight knot in my chest loosen enough to allow me to take a steady breath.

“What is your offer?” Rashid asked. I glanced at him again in the rearview, but there was nothing to be read in his expression. His eyes were once again closed, his body relaxed. He could have sat for a thousand years in that position, or that was the strong impression he gave.

“Future favors,” I said. “When I regain my position—” He shook his head. “A stupid bargain. You are very likely to die in flesh, Cassiel. And even if you succeed in returning as a Dji

He was right, by the letter of Dji

A poor bargain for him, indeed. It put him completely at my mercy.

“Then what, as a human, can I offer you that would be of any value?” I snapped. “I’m flesh and bone and blood. I’m nothing.”

Rashid’s eyes opened, and in the same instant, he disappeared from my view. Gone.

No.

I had a fatal second of horror, thinking I had succeeded in destroying the deal with my flash of temper—and then he was back, sitting in the passenger seat next to me, back twisted toward the door to face me. Still cross-legged. I considered ordering him to put on a safety belt, but truly, there was no point.

“Nothing,” he repeated. “Is that what you think? That becoming mortal makes you nothing? Then what does that make me? The shadow of nothing? The ghost of nothings past?” I’d sparked a fire in his eyes, orange and red and banked with control. “No wonder the Old Dji

I blinked. I’d been a little prepared for an explosion of fury, not for this precise, reasoned anger. Nor its implications.

“You still don’t understand,” Rashid continued. “You’re in human form, but you are not human. Perhaps you’re getting there; I see signs, here and there. But were you a true human, you would know that what you could offer me is precious. Risk, and chance, and the highest of stakes. A Dji

“You want my life?”

“No,” he said, and abruptly his eyes faded to a black so deep it seemed like the heart of night. “I want to feel your life. My price is this: Promise to bind yourself to me as a lover. Through this, I will feel mortal things again. Mortal emotions. Mortal joys.”

Rashid was lonely. It was that simple.

Insane, but simple.

What he was asking was startling, but not unprecedented. There had been human/Dji

“You can choose any human,” I said. “Any one of them would do. There are many who’d leap at the chance to be your lover, you know.”

“They’re not like you,” he said, and that made my breath stop in my lungs. It was a simple admission, but a significant one. As if he sensed this, he turned toward me and said, “It’s not human love, Cassiel. It’s admiration. You burn. I’m cold. Nothing more.”

It was a fair price.

And still, I found myself saying, simply, “No.” Nothing else. Nothing more. Just a plain, unemotional denial.

Rashid’s eyes stayed black. “I told you, I’m not asking for your love,” he said. “I wouldn’t even want it.”

“And I can’t give it. In whatever form.” I swallowed hard. “Choose something else.”

He was silent. There was a subtle shift in his body; it still looked calm and meditative, but I sensed a readiness to move, to act, a restless hunger at odds with his outer stillness. “You’re certain. If it’s merely a matter of your scruples, I can play the villain. Force you to compliance.”

“No,” I said flatly. “No bargain.”

“Not even for the life of the one you do love?” Rashid knew. He understood why I had refused. Hence, the cold darkness in his eyes. Dji

“If it was nothing more, why would you want it?” I shot back, and saw his face change. His eyes flickered just a little, with hot blue. “Name another price, Rashid. Anything else except the scroll, or being your lover.”

He shrugged. “Your firstborn.”

Surely he was joking. That was an ancient human folktale. Dji

“My firstborn,” I repeated. “You ca

“I am,” he said. “Your firstborn child. You will give him to me. Swear this.”

“No.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Twice you refused me. Once more, and I will go.”

“Then change what you want!”

“No,” he said. “Firstborn. Or I go.”

It was a foolish bargain for us both. First, I had no interest in becoming a mother in the primal human way, although I had great fondness for little Ibby. Second, I could not imagine a circumstance under which Rashid would find it desirable to collect on his bargain for a child, no matter what he claimed.

I passed a sign that glowed green and white in the headlights, and a

It was a huge, empty area. Without Rashid’s help, I would be too late to find Luis. And too weak to save him.

The fact was that Rashid was the only Dji

This was my last chance. My very last. And for whatever unfathomable reason, Rashid seemed fixed on his demand.

“Yes,” I said. “My firstborn child, offered in exchange for your guidance to Luis Rocha and your aid in this fight to rescue the Wardens and humans. Are we agreed?”

“We are agreed,” Rashid said, and a silvery glow slid across his skin, and pooled in his eyes for a moment before he blinked it away. “Go left.”

There was a turnoff ahead. I took it, moving from a smooth paved road to one that was still paved, but less smooth—cracked, humped in places, poorly patched. It immediately reminded me of the stillness and isolation of the area of Colorado that Pearl had chosen for her fortress before—something faintly alive about this place, as if the Mother’s spirit dwelt a little closer to the world here than in other spots. Maybe it was simply the lack of human presence, the wildness of it.

We drove on, the big ambulance bouncing and creaking as I steered it through narrow, winding turns and across a bridge over an unseen creek. There was little to be seen in detail; the moonlight gave vague outlines of shapes, but the subtlety of that was overridden by the glare of the headlights as we drove. I considered switching them off, and as I reached down for them, they went off without my physical assistance.