Unseen

“Handover,” Luis repeated, in a voice that wasn’t anything like friendly. “What the hell do you mean, handover?”

Cardenas shrugged. “As in, you bring her, you hand her over, you drive away. That kind of handover. Didn’t think there was anything unclear about that.”

Luis made a move, and I grabbed his arm in a tight, sanity-inducing grip, hauling him to a stop. “No,” I said. “We’ve had enough trouble with the police.” I meant that he had, and he knew that; I saw the fury slowly bank itself down in him, and he took a deep breath and nodded to me to let go. I did, but I didn’t back off far.

“Maybe you don’t know,” Luis said, his tone gone carefully flat, “that my niece is only five years old.”

“Almost six,” Cardenas said. “And I understand how you feel, but this ain’t optional. She needs to go to Warden Bearheart. Nothing bad’s going to happen to her.”

“No.”

“You know what you’re saying?”

“No way is Ibby being handed off.”

“I ain’t arguing about it,” Cardenas said. “Just delivering the message, that’s all. You can do whatever you want about it. I’ve got plenty to do without being your own personal message service, so if you want to tell Bearheart no, you call her up yourself.”

Luis’s jaw was stubbornly set, but he wasn’t being reasonable; his reaction was emotional, and I intervened on his behalf. “And where would Warden Bearheart like us to go?” I asked. When Luis shot me a furious look, I said, “It doesn’t obligate us to anything to know the intended destination.”

He had to nod, unwillingly, at that. “All right,” he said. “And why do this now? Ibby’s under control. She’s doing just fine.”

She was not, in fact, fine, and he knew that, but I understood his intense desire to protect the child from more trauma and harm. The Wardens didn’t have a spotless reputation for caring for their own, and I knew that made him wary, and very reluctant. Still, I had heard no ill of Marion Bearheart, and nothing but good about her healing craft. If anyone could heal Ibby’s wounds, it would be someone like her.

“There’s a rendezvous point in Nevada,” said the police officer. “I was told to give you the map.” He reached into a breast pocket and took out a compactly folded piece of paper. It was simply a computer printout of a state map, with no directions or locations highlighted. He held it out to Luis, who didn’t make a move to take it. I passed my hand over the map, using a small amount of power even as Cardenas said, “That won’t work; I already tried it. It’s—” His voice died, because under my touch, an invisible route sparked to life in glowing blue. I quickly killed the glow before it could reveal much. The Wardens were being secretive with the purpose of all this, and highly security-conscious. This map had been keyed specifically to Luis and me. I folded the paper.

“Thank you,” I said very firmly. “Was there anything else?”

“Guess not,” Cardenas said, and turned to go. Luis stopped him at the door.

“Wait. Did she say anything about why she wanted Ibby? Does she think we’re not safe here?”

“No clue. Like I said, I’m just the messenger. You want answers, get Bearheart on the phone. If she’ll take your call, you’re higher up than me.”

Luis weighed the risks, and finally nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Cardenas the Warden disappeared, and Cardenas the policeman reasserted himself. “Sorry about your loss, by the way. I worked that drive-by of your brother and sister-in-law. Bad stuff. I heard the gang’s almost out of business these days. Local jefe had himself some kind of meltdown, decided to go straight and start doing charity work.” There was knowledge in that stare, and it worried me; Luis had taken steps on his own, and I’d seen him do it. In altering the gang leader’s mind, he had violated one of the principal ethical codes of Earth Wardens. Of course, luckily for him, the Wardens were pressed on all sides now with emerging threats, so disciplining their own probably didn’t rank highly at the moment.

“Sounds like a good outcome for a scumbag like that,” Luis said. “Better if he’d had his change of heart before he pulled a gun on my family.”

“Yeah.” Cardenas nodded. “Better if that had been the timing, for sure. How’s the little girl doing?”

“Nightmares,” I said. “But she seems to be adapting.”

“Kids do that. Got two myself.” He touched the shiny brim of his uniform cap. “If something like that happened to my family, I might want the same kind of change of heart for that guy, too. If I couldn’t put a bullet in him, I mean.”

He was, I realized, obliquely telling Luis that although he knew—or at least suspected—the illegal alterations Luis had performed on the gang leader, he wasn’t going to report it. I hadn’t realized how much of a danger that might have been until I felt the cold, close passage of it.

Luis had gone just a fraction of a shade more tense, and now he nodded and opened the door. Cardenas gave us both good-byes and walked down the path to the police cruiser waiting at the curb. We watched it drive away. I still had the piece of paper clutched in my hand.

“Let’s see it,” Luis said. I unfolded the map out on the nearest flat surface, and moved my palm over it to wake the glowing symbols again. Blue flowed down roads, over what appeared to be open spaces, ending in a deserted area marked by a simple sun symbol. On the map, there were borders, but no reference marks.

Luis whistled. “What do you think about that?”

I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t think anything.” Because I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Area 51?” When I didn’t react, his eyes widened. “Come on, seriously? You never heard of Area 51? Dreamland?” When I shook my head, he sighed. “Got to get you a pop culture makeover one of these days. Boiling it down, this means the spooks all of a sudden like us enough to throw open the borders to one of their most secure facilities. Wardens have never been welcomed there before; maybe they’re letting us in because they don’t like all this weird Church business a whole lot more. They’ve had some bad experiences dealing with those kinds of cults.”

His moment’s fascination with the map faded, and he walked away, clearly thinking.

“What?” I asked him. I couldn’t follow what logical—or illogical—leaps he was making, but I could sense the changes in his mood quickly enough, and it had darkened considerably.

“Area 51’s a hell of a secure spot,” he said. “But I really can’t see the government letting the Wardens set up shop in there. If they’re letting us in at all, they’ve got some kind of ulterior motive about it.”

“Like what?” I asked. He turned and looked at me for a long second, then shook his head.

“Could be Ibby,” he said. “Could be they want all these kids for themselves. Could be they want you, Cass.”

“Me,” I repeated, surprised. “Why?”

“Because the feds have never had an actual Dji

I had never thought of myself as vulnerable, and the idea surprised me far more than I’d expected. “I could fight them,” I said.

“Yeah, sure you could. But this is something you don’t understand about humanity, querida—you can kill one, or five, or ten, but they keep on coming. I guarantee you, in Area 51, if they want you, they’ve got you.”

Unsettling. “Then what do you want to do?” I asked.

He locked the door behind Cardenas. “I want to find out what the hell Marion thinks she’s doing, because I’m not taking Ibby—or you—blindly out into the field of fire. Not ever again.”

It took two hours to get a return call from Marion Bearheart. When it finally came, Ibby was eating cereal in the kitchen with us, and Luis gestured for me to finish pouring her orange juice and follow him into the other room. Ibby watched us go, too much awareness and calculation in her face, and I wondered just how much we could really keep from her. I leaned over to stroke her silky hair back from her face. “Just a moment,” I promised her. “You’ll drink your juice?”