Unknown

Rashid nodded, and without a flicker of his oddly amused smile, lowered himself with Dji

Then he looked up at me, eyebrows raised.

“Unless you’d prefer to try martyrdom,” he said. “Entirely your choice, of course.”

I dropped to my knees, turning my glare instead to Agent Turner.

Who had tried to kill me.

I slowly laced my fingers together behind my head—one set flesh, one set metal—and watched as he nodded to his FBI team of agents, who swarmed forward to shove both Rashid and me forward and snap cold steel around our wrists before hauling us both to our feet again.

There was something odd about the handcuffs, and I tested them with a frown.

As I reached for power, a sharp, painful shock went out from the cuffs. “New thing,” Agent Turner told me, reading the surprise in my face with eerie accuracy. “We’ve been developing a few tricks the last few years. Some of us weren’t convinced the Wardens were a great thing for this country, what with all the egos and the corruption and unpredictability. We developed some countermeasures. That’s one. You try to use your powers, and you get shocked. The bigger the draw, the bigger the shock in reaction. So don’t try it. Trust me.”

“We,” I repeated. “So your loyalty is not with the Wardens.”

He shrugged. “Double agent,” he said. “I’m spying on the FBI for the Wardens. On the Wardens for the FBI. But only one of those is for real, and that’s the FBI side. As far as I’m concerned, if every Warden on Earth disappeared tomorrow, we’d be a hell of a lot better off. Speaking of that—” He reached out, flipped back the leather of my jacket, and found the scroll.

No!

I tried to fight him, but bound as I was, there was nothing I could do. I subsided, panting, as he pulled the case from my pocket. He smiled, and searched for the catch to open it.

There wasn’t one. It had sealed itself into a perfect hard shell, like hardened ivory. After a moment of fruitless poking at the thing, Turner put it in an inside pocket of his own jacket. “Something for the techs,” he said. “They’ll figure out how to crack into it. Once we have the list, we can start to manage this effectively.”

“To stop the abductions?”

“For a start,” he said. “More than that, we can start managing the Wardens, instead of letting them have an unlimited supply of governmental support and cash.”

His problems with the Wardens were, frankly, not my concern. Let Lewis Orwell and Joa

“Him? Oh, Gle

“Would you care if I had?”

Turner smiled thinly. “Oddly enough? Yes. I’d like to keep the funeral costs down on this operation if I can. And he was acting on my orders. That means I’m ethically responsible for him.”

I shrugged, which wasn’t particularly easy with my hands bound so closely behind me. “He shouldn’t have tried to threaten me with a knife. Or underestimated me. And your ethics are hardly what I would consider to be spotless.” I hardened my gaze and focused in on his face. “Where is Luis?”

“Not here,” Turner said. “So don’t go nuclear on me. It wasn’t my idea to take him anyway.” I didn’t blink. “He’s safe.”

“No,” I said. “He’s not.” I had not heard from him since Rashid and I had been taken prisoner, and although the co

Turner frowned and said, “No, that’s impossible. I know—” He stopped himself, but it was too late; he’d already admitted to me that he knew far too much. I felt a primal growl building in the back of my throat, and I knew that my eyes were growing brighter, creating their own light stronger even than the brilliant halogen spotlights being directed on me. “He’s safe. That’s all you need to know. The Wardens aren’t in charge of this anymore. This is a government matter, and we’re taking control.”

I barked out a laugh of pure disbelief. “Really.”

A hand fell on Turner’s shoulder, and another man stepped up, eclipsing him immediately. Not for size; Turner was broader, taller, more physically imposing. This man, however—he was unquestionably in charge. He was small in stature, expensively dressed under his government-issue bulletproof vest and Windbreaker. It was hard to tell his age; anywhere between thirty and fifty, I guessed, but there was no trace of gray in the dark, neatly trimmed hair. Expressive dark eyes that somehow conveyed his regret and command without a word being said. He wore a wedding ring, a pale gold band on his left hand, and a silver ring with a red stone on his right. Like all the agents, he had a communications device curling around his ear.

Unlike most, he had no gun in evidence.

“Ms. Raine,” he said. “Or should I call you Cassiel?”

I stared at him without blinking, and didn’t answer.

“My name is Adrian Sanders. I’m the special agent in charge of this operation, in cooperation with Home-land Security, the ATF, and several other government agencies. So I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, not the least of which is that I have to worry about magic instead of just good old- fashioned people wanting to blow things up.” He sounded faintly disgusted with the idea. “Luis Rocha is in custody at an undisclosed location. He tried to interfere when we took some people in for questioning.”

“Children,” I said. “You took children in for questioning.”

Agent Sanders cocked an eyebrow. “Ms. Raine, the way I understand it, our whole problem here is children. So absolutely, I need to question anyone who can help us get to the bottom of things. Including people below voting age.”

He seemed so reasonable, but there had been nothing at all reasonable about the pain Luis had been feeling. “I will see Luis Rocha,” I said. “Now.”

“No,” Sanders said in reply, flatly. “You won’t. Now sit your ass down on the ground, legs crossed, and don’t get up until we tell you. I’ve got bigger problems than you.”

I really doubted that.

Sanders turned away, pulling Turner with him; the two men conferred, backs to me, and Turner set off at a run through the trees with an escort of three others.

“Are you still standing up?” Sanders asked, without looking over his shoulder at me. “Because one way or another, you’re going to be on the ground in about ten seconds.”

Impossible to manage all the impulses to violence that erupted inside me; he was angering both my human and my Dji

“I’d do as he says,” Rashid murmured, and when I looked over, the Dji

The agents around me were aiming their guns, and Rashid was correct; none of them looked in the least like they would hesitate to fire if they felt it necessary.

I sat down next to Rashid, concentrating on regulating my breathing and the impulse to try to use my powers. The handcuffs were delivering stronger and stronger jolts, sensing the energy rising inside me, and my hands and forearms felt burned and tender from the repeated stabs of pain. I stayed perfectly still, eyes closed. Beside me Rashid was as immobile as the mountains.