Unseen

“And I want the same things,” I murmured, but I wasn’t sure she could hear me. “Marion, be careful.”

“Always. I’ve survived this long. I’ll survive a few more years, I promise you.” She held up her hand, palm out, in farewell. When I faced forward again, I saw a neat hole had been made in the fence for my motorcycle, an archway not unlike the entrance to an old church. Well, this was a holy place, in a sense. A place of refuge.

I hoped it remained that way until I was able to return.

The opening sealed behind me with a white-hot snap of power, and by the time I looked back, there was a veil over the entire school. No lights showed, nothing except blank, featureless woods covered in thick mounds of snow. Unless I took the trouble to mark its location on the aetheric, I’d never find it again. That eased some of my anxiety, but not all. Not nearly all.

Once I was on the road, which was mostly still navigable, though a challenge to even my driving skills, I triggered the cell phone embedded in my helmet, and called my FBI contact in Albuquerque, Ben Turner. “I’m heading back,” I told him.

“Jesus Christ, Cassiel, do you know what time it is?”

“Before dawn.”

“It’s three fucking o’clock in the morning. I don’t get up at this hour. I don’t even make love with my wife at this hour. What is so important?”

“I’m heading toward you,” I repeated patiently. “I should be there tomorrow morning. Where do you want me to go?”

That triggered an ominous silence, followed by, “You want to know where you should go tomorrow? At three in the morning?”

“I like to be prepared,” I said. I also enjoyed making Agent Turner’s life a living hell; he had done me a bad turn or two, fairly recently, and I still owed him all the petty a

But I also meant what I’d said. I did like to be prepared.

“Luis got a phone call a few days ago,” I said. “Someone in the FBI would very much like it if we came back to be debriefed. Do you know why? Was it you?”

“No,” he said. “And at this hour, I mostly don’t care, either.”

“Find out,” I said. “I need to know what’s happening.”

He swore at me and hung up the phone. I smiled a little, in the secret shadows of the morning, and thought that the score might have righted itself just a tiny bit—but he had much, much more unpleasantness due to him. Lucky for him, Dji

My smile faded as I tried to imagine what had proven dire enough for the FBI to demand our presence in the first place.

I had expected to be distracted by leaving Isabel and Luis behind. What I had not expected was how much it would continue to fester inside me, like an unhealed wound. I told myself that I didn’t need them; my reliance on Luis had been, in the begi

And yet, it hurt to leave that odd, precious relationship behind me. It hurt so much that two hours into my drive, as the sun rose in a glory of gold and red above the trees, I couldn’t bear it any longer. The world had not changed. I had.

I pulled to the side of the narrow, still-shadowed road, yanked off my helmet, and threw myself into a run. I needed to feel my muscles working, my body screaming, but even then, it wasn’t enough. I stopped, breathless, and sank to my knees.

The scream welled up in primal fury out of the very core of me, and I howled my anguish out to the world. It tore the tranquil quiet to shreds, echoing from stone and sky, and still it wasn’t enough.

I sat on the ground with my forehead pressed to my knees, shoulders shaking, as my grief poured out of me in agonizing waves. I wanted Luis’s arms around me. I wanted the warmth of Isabel’s smile. I wanted to feel part of them, instead of so ... cold. So alone.

But I was alone. I had always been alone, in a very real way; alone even among the Dji

And now I was alone here, in this world, with nothing to bind me to it but necessity.

So cold, necessity.

Eventually, even that faded, but the anguish wasn’t any less; I was simply too tired, too numb to give it voice. I had to keep moving, I knew that, but it still took a real effort of will to roll up to my feet, dust myself off, and walk back to where I’d left the motorcycle leaning by the roadside. On the seat was the helmet, and black fury twisted inside me as I contemplated putting it back on. I was no human to need that frail protection. I dropped the helmet and kicked it, hard; it skidded away into the trees.

I mounted the Victory and was about to bring it to life when a voice said, “I never thought you had the capacity to cry, Cassiel. Much less the impulse.” It came from behind me, and I twisted around to see a Dji

His eyes glowed a vivid, warm violet, casting their own light in the shadows.

His name was Rashid, and he had been useful to me before. I would not go so far as to classify him as an ally, because I could predict the actions of an ally with reasonable certainty; Rashid was fascinated with me, but it was a magpie’s fascination with a shiny object. He might aid me, and he might peck at me simply for the amusement value. Still, he had definitely helped me before, which was why I didn’t reach out and snap the branch he was sitting on with a bad-tempered burst of Earth powers for surprising me. He’d seen me cry. That was reason enough to dislike him, for all his naked glory.

And it was ... quite glorious.

“Has clothing gone so far out of style?” I asked him. “I’ve not been paying attention to fashion.”

He smirked. “I heard you’d begun to ... appreciate the male figure,” he said. “I hoped you might appreciate mine.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Anything else?”

He rolled sideways, falling from the branch, twisting, and landing lithely on bare, perfectly formed feet. He still wasn’t bothering to cover himself, and I had to admit, the manhood on display as he walked toward me was ... impressive. Though only in a technical sense, of course.

“Well,” he said, “I thought you might like to know that Pearl’s taken a new group of children. Her followers struck in Denver, and they’re moving their captives in a van toward a nexus of power.”

All my theoretical appreciation of his form evaporated as I fixed my attention completely on his face. There was no human sense of outrage there, only a distant and odd amusement. “Where?”

“Where are they now? Or where are they going?”

“Going,” I said, and started the engine.

“Oh, you won’t get there in time,” he said. “They’re driving fast, and they’ll arrive at their destination in less than six hours. It would take you, oh, twenty to reach them, even if you pushed your machine and yourself to the limit. Once they’re in the nexus, Pearl can transport them anywhere she wishes. You’ll never find them again.”

I bit back a growl of frustration. “Then why tell me?”

He gri

“And how do you propose to be of help, you useless naked fool?”

“Temper, Cassiel,” he chided me, and kept his grin. “I can slow them down, of course. I could even try to free the children. For a price.”