Unseen

That held just enough truth to distract Shasa for another critical moment ... and then Janice extended her hand and tapped the Fire Warden on the shoulder. Just a light tap, but I felt the cold breath of power settle around the girl.

Shasa collapsed as her eyes rolled back in her skull. She looked fragile, suddenly, like a broken doll. Without her power supporting it, the defenses around us began to snap and shift under the pressure of the forces outside.

Pearl’s forces.

My lips peeled back from my teeth. I glanced over at Luis, who looked pale and shaking, but he’d stripped off his belt and was twisting it around his thigh, attempting to slow the loss of blood. Isabel had collapsed against his side, trembling and writhing in the grip of the seizures, and the sight of that fueled my rage to dangerous levels.

I turned to Janice. “Put Elijah down,” I said. “Now. Or I destroy you. You’re no match for me.”

“Oh, you’re right about that,” she replied, and gave me her sweet little grandmotherly smile. I almost preferred Zedala’s fanaticism, in that moment; Janice’s violence and cruelty were coldly calculated, and in a sense that made it all the more horrible. “But then again, I’ve got some advantages, don’t I? If you want the bleeding to stop, and Ibby to survive this latest attack ... you’ll stand aside. I can call off the attack. We can arrange a peaceful exchange—these children for your lives.”

“And yours.”

“Well”—she shrugged—“naturally someone has to go with them to take care of them. And I’m one of the best.” The smile turned hard around the edges. “Even Marion said so.”

Marion remained silent, but her expression could have shattered stone. I’d never seen a human look so implacably angry. That was the kind of rage that Wardens tried to avoid—the kind that drove them to extremes even a Dji

“I think Cassiel is wrong,” she finally said, very softly. “Flaying is too good for you, Janice. I’ll have to think of something ... better.”

Janice lost her smile altogether. “The New Mother is going to kill you all, in ways worse than you’d ever think of trying on me,” she said. I realized, with a grim, bleak amusement, that Pearl had given herself a title. How very like her. “Don’t be stupid. Let me have the kids. Let me walk away. I can guarantee you’ll live to lick your wounds.”

“She’s lying,” Marion said. “She doesn’t intend to let any of us out of here alive.”

“And I don’t intend to allow her to live, either,” I said. “Stalemate.”

Janice laughed. “Is it getting hotter in here, or is that just me?”

It was. The stone around us was cracking, friable under the unrelenting pressure of the fire. Smoke poured thinly through the cracks, adding to the oppressive heaviness of the air. I realized I was breathing more and more deeply. The fire outside was turning the air toxic, and without a Weather Warden to cleanse it, we had very little time left, even if the fire didn’t reach us first.

Janice was no match for me, not in strength; that was why she had Elijah, and the other children. Human shields. Any of us would hesitate to use full power with them in the way; it would be hideously easy for her, as an Earth Warden, to kill them before we could act.

“If I’d been able to keep Gillian, I could have solved this little problem,” Janice said. “You can blame that one on Ben. He lost his backbone.”

Ben. Weather Warden. I suddenly understood who it was who’d ambushed me with the mudslide on my way back to the school, before ... It was Ben; it had to be. Janice had recruited him, or he’d been placed, like her, in the heart of the school ... but he’d had a change of heart. Probably, I thought, because of the children. I’d seen him with them, and he’d seemed genuinely moved by their plight. I’d been an easy, justifiable enemy for him.

Not the children.

He’d been shot ensuring that Mike and Gillian were able to escape ... or Gillian, at least. In that end, there had been honor.

“You can’t want this,” I said. “I’ve seen you working with the children. You’re not cruel, Janice. You care for them. You can’t want them to be used, twisted, made into killers.”

“You think these children aren’t already killers?” Janice touched Elijah’s forehead, then Sanjay’s. Both boys stirred, looking dazed. She altered her tone again and projected a subtle variation of her normal warm reassurance—this one had an edge of fear, and pleading. “I need you, boys. You have to protect each other, and protect me, too.”

Sanjay looked up at her with absolute trust and devotion. “Miss? From what?”

“From them,” she said, and nodded at Luis, Marion, and me. “From our enemies.”

And like the good soldiers that Janice must have made them behind Marion’s back, Sanjay and Elijah climbed to their feet and faced us with identical expressions of determination.

Ready to fight, and die, for the cause.

“No,” Marion breathed. She sounded aghast, and deeply betrayed. I could understand that. ... She’d been just as seduced by Janice’s powers as anyone else. Janice had a rare gift of influence, one that had served Pearl far better than stronger, more overt talents. She’d manipulated absolutely everyone, to one extent or another. I was willing to bet that gathering the children at the school, logical though it might have seemed at the time, was also an idea that sprang from Janice’s suggestions.

While Marion had been focused on healing the children’s physical damage, Janice had been conducting a different kind of campaign ... one of steady, damning indoctrination, taking place right under the noses of the Wardens set to guard the children. Even Luis, warned that there was a traitor, had been blind to her.

As cynical and suspicious as I was, I would have chosen her last. There was something about her that simply defied reasonable doubts.

“Sanjay, Elijah,” Marion said, “don’t do this. We’re not your enemies. Your enemies are out there. They’re the ones trying to hurt us all.”

“No,” Janice responded. “She’s lying to you. Those people out there, they’re trying to get to us. To save us. We need to help them.”

“She’s right. They’re trying to save us,” Sanjay said. He sounded utterly certain of it. “You want to hurt us.”

“No, sweetheart, I don’t.” Marion’s anguish was palpable, but it was not reassuring; the boys drew a step closer to Janice, seeking the numbing, gentle warmth that she radiated. Only Ibby had broken with it, and only, I thought, because she’d seen Janice without that mask while she killed Ben. “Please don’t do this. You know we’re trying to help you. We’ve always tried to help.”

Her argument wasn’t going to win; I could see that. Sanjay and Elijah had both endured pain in the healing process, and they were too young and fragile to understand that the pain was necessary. Janice had chosen her willing avatars well, because even I, pragmatic as I was, wouldn’t strike against them unless forced to do so. They were a deadly combination—too small, and far too powerful.

Marion cast out a sudden strike of power, meant to send the boys to sleep, but Elijah batted it away with contemptuous ease. It was the wrong move, although if it had succeeded, we might have had a chance. As it was, whatever doubts the boys might have held were wiped away in the face of what they saw as an attack against them.

Elijah pushed power outward in a bone-crushing wave, directly at us. That, Marion and I blocked easily enough; it was our own specialty.

But he wasn’t our only problem.

“Down!” I yelled, and toppled Marion’s wheelchair to one side as Sanjay raised a hand. Flames exploded from the padding of her chair, but I pulled her safely out before she could be more than singed.