I hadn’t intended to be an assassin, but sometimes one must do the unpleasant to prevent the unthinkable. Having more children twisted, destroyed, and dying was unthinkable.

This was merely unpleasant pest control.

The white dot indicating my location moved steadily over the map, as miles disappeared beneath my tires; despite the piled snow, the sky was clear. The Vision glided like a shark between the shadows as the sun climbed into the sky, and when the trees parted the silver gleamed knife-bright. My hair rippled in the icy wind, and I felt the air hissing over my exposed skin. I extended my Earth sense into the trees, feeling the slow, constant strength there, the bright sparks of life moving on their own journeys large and small. For the first time in a long time I felt like a Djinn again—free.

And that carried its own guilt, and sadness.

After almost an hour, my white mark was rapidly encroaching on the red dot, and I slowed to begin examining the road and forest more carefully. There, off to the east, I located the large ripple on the aetheric that indicated a human Warden’s presence. A Weather Warden, from the feel of it. A man, of middle age. His aetheric signature was muddy to me, constrained as I was in flesh; had I been truly Djinn, I could have read his past, known the truth of what Rashid had told me written in the whispers that followed him through time. Some acts left ghosts. The one Rashid had described to me would have left screaming, bloody trails.

It troubled me that I couldn’t read those signs, not now, not as human as I was.

I pulled the bike over and killed the engine; in the silence, the sounds of the world around me took on weight and depth. Birdsong, sweet and constant. The wet thump of melting snow falling from branches. The whispering rustle of trees, constantly in motion as they struggled for power, for position, for light and life. The smaller noises of rodents and mammals making their little lives.

And from a distance, the entirely inappropriate music of the Beach Boys came echoing through the trees.

I left the bike and walked on, dodging trees, maneuvering through thick brush that choked the areas between. Leaf litter coated the ground where the snow had melted, thick and spongy and filling the air with a thick, piney scent of decomposition. I sensed a snake making its sluggish, cool way through the leaves toward the sun, and changed course to avoid it.

Then, quite suddenly, I was in a clearing that was bathed in golden morning sunlight, and there was a dark green canvas tent angling among the surrounding trees. The grass in the clearing was artificially thick and green, and the man had scraped a round bare circle for a fire pit and lined it with stones. There was nothing in the pit now but ash and embers, burned down overnight.

The tent flap was unzipped and open, and a man sat cross-legged on a striped blanket in front, in the sun. He was dressed in a thick flannel shirt of red and blue checks, a sleeveless down vest, and a pair of much-worn and seldom-washed blue jeans, with battered hiking boots. His salt-and-pepper hair had scarce acquaintance with a barber, and he wore a three-day growth of beard, some of which glinted silver in the sun.

He was drinking a cup of something that steamed hot wisps into the cool air, and as I emerged from the trees he stopped in mid-gulp, staring at me.

He was, for a human, reasonably attractive, though worn by time—lines around his eyes, and at the corners of his mouth. He spent much time in the open, I thought, because his skin was leathery and well tanned. I could smell him from where I stood, a rich mixture of sweat, leather, and unwashed clothing.

He put down the coffee—I could smell it, too, now—and said, “Hello, there. You lost?” He turned down the machine next to him, which had finished playing the Beach Boys and moved on to another musical group I couldn’t identify. He couldn’t have missed my exotic look—the pale, pink-tinted ragged hair, the white cast of my skin, the vivid, not-quite-human green of my eyes. His face went hard and a little pale, and he put his hands down on his knees, affecting an unconcerned sort of body language. “So to what do I owe a visit from the Djinn?”

I didn’t have to speak with him; my commission from Rashid didn’t require me to know him at all, this man who’d committed such crimes against my brothers and sisters. But I inclined my head and said, “My name is Cassiel.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, which was a patent lie. “Rick Harley. Weather. If you’re looking for a Djinn, I’m not working with any right at the moment.”

“I’m not looking for Djinn. I’m looking for you,” I said, without any particular emphasis or menace. His eyes were blue, faded a bit from their sapphire sparkle of youth. He drank too much alcohol, and it showed in the tremor of his hands and the state of his body. “Did you participate in any gambling involving the Djinn?”

He looked ghostly now, and grim. There were pale patches around his mouth and eyes, and a muscle jumped unsteadily in his jaw as he said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about. If that’s all—”

“I am speaking about the death of a Djinn,” I said. “And you know what I’m talking about, very well. It disturbs your sleep. It makes you drink too much, and cut yourself off from your family and friends to hide out here in the wilderness. You are guilty, and it eats at you.”

He said nothing to that. He stared at me as if I were the angel of death, come on this fine, sunny morning to reap his soul ... as I was. He seemed unusually composed, and resigned.

“Rick,” I said, “I’ve been sent to kill you. This isn’t my choice, although it’s justice; your death serves a greater purpose, and will save innocent lives. Your death is the price I have to pay to ensure the safety of those innocents.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, and there was a grim, wry twist to his mouth at the end. “Do you think it makes me feel any fucking better? You think I’ll be happy to put my neck on the chopping block because all of a sudden I’m dying for a good cause?”

“You might be,” I said. “Your death isn’t in vain. Your death is honorable, the way a Warden’s should be. Your death redeems your life, and the mistakes you’ve made.”

“Fuck you,” he said, and stood up in an unsteady scramble. He was already drunk, I realized, even so early in the morning. His ears were flushed bright red, but his eyes were steady and focused, and frightened. “I knew one of you would come for me. I knew it would happen someday. Well, fuck you. I know I can’t win, but I’m not giving up. Maybe you can kill me, maybe you can’t, but I’m damn sure going to give you one hell of a ...”

He didn’t have a chance to finish. His head exploded in a cloud of red mist, and it took me a shocked second to realize that someone had shot him, from a distance. Someone had put a high-caliber bullet through his head, blowing it apart like a ripe melon. Warm spray spattered my face and dotted my white leathers, and a second later I heard the rolling crack of the rifle shot.

I didn’t think, only reacted, throwing myself down and to the side, rolling even as Rick Harley’s body toppled dead to the ground. Another shot snapped into the dirt where I had been, and a third followed but missed by inches. I made it to the cover of the tent’s bulk and paused, breathing hard as the facts began to hurtle through my brain at light speed.

One, I had been sent here by Rashid to kill a man.

Two, I wasn’t the only one.

Three, and most important, I had never been expected to carry through on my task.

This was a trap, set not for Harley but for me.

Rashid was no longer my ally. He was my adversary, and he’d sold me out to my enemies.

That was confirmed as a very human voice called from the trees, near where the rifle shot had originated, “Come out, Cassiel. We’ll let you live if you surrender peacefully.”