I was even less likely to succeed, and I shook my head. “Yet it must be done.”

“Yeah, I know.” Luis was deeply troubled, not only by the risks of keeping her here, or moving her elsewhere, but by the emotional cost to the girl. “Cass, I can’t help thinking that maybe this is what Pearl wanted. To have us rescue Ibby and bring her out here, into the human world, where she can do maximum damage. She could use Ibby to keep all of us pinned down and working twice as hard as we should. She could set these kids off like time bombs.”

I had a difficult time deciding what Pearl’s motivations might have been, at any point; she had always been hard to anticipate even when I had not been her enemy, though that was aeons ago, in a very different world. She could be cruel for cruelty’s sake, or cruel to a purpose, and it was impossible for me to know which her abduction of Isabel had been. But she had a plan; I knew that.

And it ended with the destruction of the Djinn, which was an insane goal; it meant ultimately the death of the world itself. Pearl hated everything, and hated it enough to be willing to sweep it all away in her blind rage. Humans, Djinn, animals, plants, the rich life force of the planet itself. She might expire with the rest of it, but she would survive long enough to look on a barren, dying ball of rock, and the death of all that lived. Dying last was her definition of winning.

There was a simple enough way to stop her, if I had the courage to choose it; it would mean the destruction of Isabel, of Luis, of all humans with whom I shared this strange, fragile life—a kind of firebreak, cutting Pearl off from the source of her power. But one species sacrificed for the sake of the planet ... one species out of so, so many. It had been done before.

In dooming me to mortal flesh for refusing his orders, though, Ashan had inadvertently convinced me that killing humanity was the last thing I wanted to do. I was determined to find another way, any way, to defeat my former sister.

But I still didn’t see what that way could be.

“Cass?” Luis’s hand closed over mine, drawing me back from the cold reaches of speculation to a warm, surprisingly sweet present. I felt an instant spark to him, an opening of my attention that surprised me, and I felt myself smile. “We’re going to figure it out. Don’t go there.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Where?”

“To that closed-in, dark place where you always go. Sooner or later, if you go there, you won’t come back to me, and I can’t stand that. I really can’t.”

I knew what he meant, and laid my other hand over his in a silent promise.

I would always come back.

For him.

The solution presented itself to me in an odd way. Ibby herself suggested it the next day, when she grew bored with the things that used to interest her, before her abduction. First she wanted movies, then books, then stories told to her. Toys failed to entice. By noon, she had driven Luis mad with her demands, and I had watched, bemused, as he ran out of ways to try to deal with her patiently.

“That’s enough,” he said, when she shoved the latest game—some sort of puzzle—off the table onto the kitchen floor in a petulant tantrum. “Enough, Isabel. Stop acting like you’re two.”

“Stop pretending like you care,” she shot back. She folded her chubby arms, tucked her chin down, and glared at him, and at me, as I watched from a safe distance. “It’s boring. This is all boring. You’re treating me like a little kid.”

“Then what would you like to do?” I asked her.

“Go somewhere.”

“Where?”

She sighed dramatically. “Anywhere!”

I exchanged a glance with Luis, but only a brief one. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I didn’t really need to know. The glance was only to warn him not to interfere. “Would you like to ride on the back of my motorcycle?”

He frowned at me, and silently mouthed, What are you doing? I shook my head slightly in response, and he subsided.

Ibby, regardless of her trust (or lack of it) for me, brightened immediately at the prospect of doing something implicitly dangerous. “Yes!” She wriggled down from her chair and dashed away.

“What the hell, Cass?” Luis asked, as soon as she was out of earshot. “You’re not going to take her—”

“No,” I said, knowing what he was asking. “Not directly. I’m taking her to see an object lesson.”

“Where?”

“You won’t like it,” I said. “It’s best I don’t tell you about it. Not yet.”

“You want me to come with?”

“No,” I said, as gently as I could. “This needs to be just the two of us. I’m sorry.”

That was asking for a great deal of trust, and I saw it warring inside of him, but he finally bent his head stiffly and said, “Okay.” He wanted to say more, but at last he let it go. “Girl talk. I get it.”

Ibby came back. I couldn’t see that she’d done anything at all to prepare for the trip. “You have to change clothes,” I told her. She was wearing a pale pink flowered dress, one more suited to a party than a motorcycle ride.

“Why?”

“Because you’ll be on a motorcycle. A dress is not suitable for a motorcycle.”

“Why?” Ibby’s dark eyes were wide, and the set of her mouth was dangerously stubborn.

“Because your dress can blow up.”

“So?”

“It’s not appropriate to—” I struggled for an explanation, and glared at Luis as he started to laugh. “Just put on pants, Ibby.” Impossible as it seemed, I found myself being concerned about the child’s appropriate attire.

How the Djinn would have laughed.

Isabel stomped off to change clothes, frowning, and Luis chuckled and leaned over to kiss me lightly on the forehead. “Very good,” he said. “Outstanding. You’re getting the hang of this parent thing.” I felt myself frowning, which made him laugh and kiss me again, this time on the mouth. That felt warm and wet and delicious, and I wished that I hadn’t committed myself quite so quickly to taking Isabel out. Surely we could find something to occupy such a young child for an hour ... or possibly two.

I found myself winding my fingers in his hair, deepening the kiss. The strands felt like warm silk against my skin, and I had a flash of sense-memory that told me how good it would feel brushing against my skin ... elsewhere.

Luis pulled free with an appreciative gasp. “Later,” he promised, and put his finger across my damp lips. “Wish I didn’t have to say that.”

“I wish you didn’t, either,” I said. If I’d still had my powers as a Djinn, I would have stopped time, created space, made a secret hideaway for the two of us. There we could have done as we both wished, for as long as we wished.

Djinn were indulgent, easily seduced creatures. I missed being a Djinn.

A racket of noise from down the hall made us step apart even farther, and Luis shook his head. “A gang of bikers on meth on a Saturday night couldn’t make as much noise as she does just putting on a pair of pants,” he said. He raised his voice. “Isabel, you’d better not be doing what I think you’re doing!”

I looked at him, mystified. “What do you think she’s doing?”

“No idea,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. That’s something her mother taught me—kids always assume you know what they’re doing, even if you don’t.”

The mysteries of humankind.

Isabel appeared a few moments later, neatly dressed in a pair of small blue jeans and a pink knit top. Her cheeks matched the color of her shirt, and I wondered exactly what it was she had been doing that she felt the need to blush. “Something broke,” she said. “But it wasn’t my fault.”

Luis went off to see what it was, and I got down my leather jacket and Isabel’s small, cheerfully stained cloth one, embroidered with smiley-face flowers. Ibby treasured that jacket, and I knew it would be a sad day when she outgrew it; her mother had sewed the flowers with delicate, loving precision, and as long as Ibby wore it, she would feel a connection to Angela.