I sank down to the grass, still coughing, and spat out black, vile-tasting mucus. I don’t know how much time passed—a minute, maybe two—before a paramedic knelt next to me and held up an oxygen mask. I sucked gratefully on the cool, sweet breath of life, feeling my head clear and my lungs ease. He handed me a packet of premoistened towelettes and gave me a thumbs-up motion, with eyebrows raised. I nodded. He moved on.

I scrubbed the damp fabric over my grimy face, and realized that my hands were trembling. I could have used Earth power, drawn from Luis, to clean myself off and start to heal the damage done to my lungs, but I chose not to do so; Luis, at the moment, needed his strength, and I was not seriously injured. My vanity could be satisfied with mere human cleaning methods for now.

A well-dressed man with a badge hung on a cord around his neck took a knee beside me. He wasn’t looking at me so much as at the burning building, and his expression was remote and focused. His credentials said his name was Guilder, and he was wearing a crisp black suit, white shirt, and businesslike blue tie.

“You’re Cassiel,” he said. “The Djinn.” He didn’t say it the way a Warden who’d grown up with the idea of supernatural genies locked in bottles would have; he pronounced the word carefully, awkwardly, like an entry in a foreign dictionary. “I’m Guilder. FBI.”

I nodded. I had expected the agents to descend on us quickly; I was simply surprised that he wasn’t one of many. I removed the mask (a little regretfully) and said, “You want to know how it happened.” My voice hardly sounded like my own; my vocal cords were strained, and had the husky growl of a longtime smoker. “We warned you.”

“I’ve been briefed already about your warnings,” he said, still watching the blaze as the firefighters began to train their hoses on it. “You really think a child caused all this?”

“Not just any child,” I said. “A child who can control fire and bend it to his will. We warned you not to keep any of them here. You’re not equipped to handle them.”

The children had been rescued—or abducted, depending on which side you might be on—from camps across the United States run by the Church of the New World, a fringe organization that had recently twisted itself in dangerous new directions: either one that abducted children with blossoming Warden powers over Earth, Fire, and Weather, or subverted the parents to believe that the Church was the only possible way to protect their young ones. Part of the Church’s teaching was that the Warden organization, the official gathering of those gifted with these powers, intended harm to the children. I was the first to admit that the Wardens were not perfect, but I knew they meant the best, especially for the talented innocent.

The Church, on the other hand, taught that the Wardens were ruthless, cruel mutilators who would rip the talent away from the children, leaving them psychic cripples at best, or dead at worst. That could happen, of course, if a child manifested a talent that was dangerous to everyone else, and had to be stopped. It was rare, but possible. The Wardens didn’t always err on the side of mercy.

The Church preached it as an everyday occurrence, as a plan. And many people had believed, and given the Church children to train—or the Church had, in some cases, abducted those it thought were the most valuable, the most vital, to its cause.

Such as Isabel.

Those children—the few we had managed to free from the Church compounds across the country—were dangerously gifted, trained too early, burdened with power that they were not equipped, either emotionally or physically, to handle.

I had warned the FBI not to keep the children here, in their offices. At the minimum, Wardens should have been kept on duty to ensure that the children didn’t panic and use their abilities irresponsibly.

As one of them clearly had.

Guilder didn’t argue the point. “We thought we knew the risks,” he said. “We underestimated the situation.”

In earlier months I would no doubt have informed him just how badly they’d miscalculated, but I had learned, at great cost, when to let a subject go, for politeness’ sake. Tact was not something for which I had a natural gift. “How many casualties have you sustained?” I asked.

“Zero, since you got Agent Littleton out.” There was a slight warming in his tone, and he glanced at me, finally. “Thanks for that.”

I nodded and coughed a little more, but the pressure in my lungs had eased. I was beginning to feel a monumental wave of exhaustion building, and knew I’d have to rest soon, but in the meantime there was a pleasant feeling of warmth and relaxation. Even my burns stung only lightly.

Impossible, in my state, to miss the surge of feeling that had come from the FBI agent—a complicated mix of gratitude, worry, and ... love. Not for me, of course, and it was rare that I could feel emotions from anyone save Luis, but it appeared that Agent Guilder had at least a latent Earth-based ability, something too mild to be called a true power.

The love was not for me. It was for the agent I had saved. Agent Littleton.

I met his gaze and said, “Is there not a regulation against agents becoming ... close?” So many euphemisms, in human speech. But the imprecision helped, I’d found; I didn’t know his relationship with the other agent, but I sensed its depth. And secrecy.

He hadn’t expected that question at all, and I caught the surprise and discomfort in his expression, despite the reserve that he had surely learned as a law enforcement professional. He just as quickly smoothed it away. “No code against being happy a coworker survived,” he said. “I’m pretty sure there isn’t. I read the rule books.”

That made me smile, as he no doubt intended. “I’m sure you’re correct,” I said. “The children are not harmed?”

He shook his head. “The rest of the kids are all okay. The only one unaccounted for is the boy who kicked off the fire, and he took off once he got the whole thing revved up to Mach Three; this was basically a big, fiery distraction to cover his escape. Your niece and another boy protected the other kids and as many of the agents as they could.”

“She’s not my niece,” I said. It was an automatic response, but I almost immediately regretted saying it. I cleared my throat and tried again. “She is the niece of my partner, Luis Rocha. Her name is Isabel.”

“Hmm. She calls you Aunt Cassie.”

“I know.” I looked away from him toward the fire. “She was recently orphaned. It’s been—difficult for her.”

“From what I’ve heard, it’s been difficult for all of these kids,” Guilder said, and finally rose to a standing position, still looking down at me. “We’re going to need a statement about what happened inside. Not tonight, though. Tomorrow. We’ll call you and Mr. Rocha in for that.”

“You’ll have offices again so soon?” I asked. He smiled. It was a deep, charming sort of smile, a professional weapon he wielded with surgical accuracy.

“That’s why God made laptops,” he said. “And cell phones. Not to mention credit cards.”

He nodded and walked away toward the ambulance, where he bent over the agent I’d pulled from the fire. She looked very small on the gurney, and he was quite tall, bending over her. I was certain he did not intend to reveal what his body language so clearly communicated.

It was probably a good thing for him that Agent Littleton was unconscious. If she returned his affection, it would be awkward for them both; if not, it would be heartbreaking.

My attention drifted from Agent Guilder to Luis Rocha, who was sitting on the curb beside Isabel, with his arm around the child. He looked tired and smoke-stained and singed around the edges, but the smile on his face was genuine and very lovely. The smile was for Ibby, but as he looked at me, the smile ... stayed. If anything, it grew warmer.