Choices.

I hated them.

I felt a burst of power from the bathroom, and reacted without thinking to what could have been an attack upon Isabel; I banged the door open and charged in, and caused Ibby to yelp and back up fast against the wall. She was wearing the nightgown, and her hair was dry and crackling with energy. Too much energy. There wasn’t a trace of water drops in the tub or on the floor, but there was a faint smell of singed fabric in the air.

I stopped, but not before Ibby had formed a ball of white-hot fire in the palm of her hand. She was staring at me with huge, terrified eyes, and I knew she was seeing something that Pearl had shown her—me, killing her uncle. It was a lie, but it was so hard for her to forget the images, and I had just triggered a flashback with my overreaction and violence.

I held up both hands to her, palms out. “Peace, Isabel,” I said, in my most soothing voice. “I am sorry I frightened you. I was only worried for you. I thought something bad had happened.”

She didn’t quench the flame immediately; she kept watching me, wary and unhappy, until Luis appeared behind me in the doorway. “Ibby,” he said. “Stop.”

She closed her fist, and the flames died, leaving a brilliant aura I could still see when I blinked. “I didn’t do anything,” she blurted, and her pouting lips quivered, as if she might burst into wails at any moment. “She scared me! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“You used power,” I said. “You promised you wouldn’t, except in self-defense and with our guidance.”

Now the pout was more pronounced, and her small features took on a stubborn, set look. “I was wet. I just wanted to get dry.”

“Ibby, you can’t do that,” Luis said, and eased around me to put himself between the two of us. “You promised me, sweetheart. You promised you wouldn’t use power just because it was easy.”

“But I was wet. You dry yourself off. I’ve seen it.”

“That’s true, but we’re older. There are a lot of things you can do when you’re older that you shouldn’t be doing now.”

“Like what?”

“Like drinking beer. Or kissing. Or using power just because it’s there. It’s dangerous, Ibby. It can hurt you, and maybe hurt other people, too.” For a man who had never expected to have these sorts of conversations with a child, he was doing well, I thought.

Ibby, however, still had her doubts. “But you wanted me to save those people in the fire. You said I should.”

“And you were very brave,” I said, when I saw the indecision on Luis’s face. “But that was when we were with you, to help and make sure you didn’t get hurt. You shouldn’t do things on your own.”

“You think I’m bad,” Ibby said, and her face became a hostile mask. “Like the Lady said. The Wardens think we’re all bad. They want to punish us and take away what makes us special. And now you want to do it, too, to me. You want to take it all away.”

“No,” Luis said. “We want to make you safe. That’s all. You have to trust me, Ibby. You do, don’t you?”

He sounded so sincere, so warm, that I couldn’t imagine how anyone could have distrusted him even for an instant. Ibby wavered, and finally nodded. “I trust you.” She still wasn’t forgiving me, I noticed. “You’re not going to make me go to that school place, are you?”

“No, I’m not going to make you go,” he said. “We’re not going to let them take you away, either. So don’t be afraid, okay?”

“Okay.” She fidgeted for a moment, then walked to Luis and hugged him. “Can I go watch a movie now?”

“One, and then bed,” he said. “How about that movie with the fish? You like that one.”

She brightened immediately, and nodded. She even turned a sweetly dimpled smile on me, and I smiled in turn, feeling a little of my unease abate. She moved away down the hall, excited by the prospect of fun, her fright forgotten.

But she’d not forgotten the rest of it. I knew that. She didn’t trust me.

And the truth was she was right not to.

EMOTIONS ASIDE, there was really no question of whether Ibby would go to the Wardens’ retreat, or hospital, or school—whatever they wished to call it. At her tender age, with the kind of trauma and training (if one could call it that) that had been visited upon her, I did not believe that she could be counted on to learn right from wrong when it came to her powers, even with our guidance. In the worst case, Luis and I would be hard-pressed to contain her without damage, should it come to that, and keeping her in a situation in which others would be put at risk was a very bad idea. Isabel’s gift was explosive ... literally. She had a second gift of Earth powers that would be much slower to develop, but I’d seen that element misused just as badly as fire, in the wrong hands. But fire—fire was disastrously easy for her, and it was one of the most visible, terrifying gifts. Humans—and I now counted myself among them—had a distinctively sharp fear of burning. I knew she would eventually learn to use that to get her way. What child her age wouldn’t, in the end?

So no matter what Luis had said, or what he (or I) had promised, Isabel would have to be taken to a place of safety and seclusion until her powers could be curbed and properly directed. Betraying her like that would damage the fragile trust she had in me, particularly, but I couldn’t help it.

Even Djinn understood that standing responsible for children meant not always being liked. Luis couldn’t make that decision.

I could.

After Isabel was asleep, I poured Luis a glass of water (he had not been drinking enough) and, when he reached for another beer, closed the refrigerator door not quite on his hand.

“She has to go,” I said. “You know she has to go, no matter what she thinks. No matter how hard it will be. You’d never forgive yourself if she injured herself, or others, because we tried to protect her too much.”

He took the water glass, turned it in his fingers, and stared into it without acknowledging what I’d said. Finally, he drank it in one long, choking gulp and handed the empty back. I refilled it for him.

“I promised her,” he said. “You think I’m going to break my word?”

“No. I am going to break my word. You’ll bear no guilt.”

Luis looked up, frowning. “It’s not about my conscience, Cass.”

“I think it is, and I understand why. But you know that Marion’s arguments are sound. Ibby needs more help than we can give her alone, and better training and protection. If she’s around children with similar experiences, it could be helpful to her.”

“She doesn’t want to go!”

“She’s six years old. Of course she doesn’t want to go. But one of us must make the choice to do what’s necessary.”

“And that’s you,” Luis said. “Always you.” He handed the water back again, and walked away, head down. “All right. You’re right—I know you are. What now?”

“We’ll have to be careful in how we go about it,” I said. “You know that she will fight us, and it can turn very dangerous. This house could easily be destroyed.”

“Hell, we could destroy the whole neighborhood if this goes bad,” he said, and sighed. “I’ve been thinking about it, too. I talked to Marion. She’s not bending—we bring Ibby within the week, or she sends an extraction team, and things get real damn messy. But even if we agree to take Ibby ourselves, things could still get messy.”

In solidarity with him, and in compensation for his lost beer, I drank the rest of the water. I had several sips before I said, “Can’t you catch her sleeping, and deepen her rest to a coma so she doesn’t wake?” It was an Earth Warden skill, but it was tricky, and required constant monitoring to ensure that a false coma didn’t become a true one.

“I could,” he said, and frowned unhappily. “No, I should be able to, but honestly, I think she’s on guard against stuff like that now. Pearl’s training was thorough. I’m afraid she’ll wake up, either as I’m doing it or when we’re traveling, and all hell will break loose. I can’t keep somebody down who’s fighting it without serious risk. She doesn’t really trust you, and we can’t afford to make her feel the same way about me. If she starts distrusting me, I don’t see how we can be sure she won’t be able to block us.” He drank some of his water, not very eagerly. “You think you can get to her quickly enough to take her down without problems?”