But nothing pointed to a reason anyone might wish him dead. There were no references of enemies, conflicts, nothing.

Manny did not make enemies.

Luis, on the other hand, did. He had exceptional successes, but his path was littered with conflict. I began to see a pattern to it, although it was not obvious; Djinn, after all, were students of patterns.

Those Luis had clashed with, both inside and outside of the Wardens, had been dishonest in some way. Like his brother, Luis cared fiercely about such things; unlike Manny, he often took on—and defeated—those who did not. Surprisingly, this had not harmed him as much as I would have expected. His records showed that every investigation of his conduct had been decided in his favor.

Unlike Manny’s. No one was likely to be Manny’s enemy; he was clearly his own.

I made a note of which Wardens particularly Luis had differed with over the years. There were only two names that appeared more than twice, and both were Fire Wardens: Landry Dent and Molly Magruder.

Molly Magruder was the only female on the list, and the Djinn at the office blaze had clearly referred to the arsonist as her.

She was not in New Mexico, but in the adjoining state of Texas, in a town called El Paso. It had an airport.

I decided to go to her.

It was only as I was going through the degrading and tedious process of security checks that I realized that I had not spoken to Manny about this, or asked for his permission to go. I am not a slave, I told myself. I can come and go as I please.

At my own risk, perhaps. If this came to a fight, I was as ready as possible; Manny had given me an infusion of Earth power before I’d left his house for the evening, and I had used almost none of it.

But I had the very strong feeling that Manny would also not be pleased with me for taking this initiative, and also, that he would be right in some way.

I didn’t allow that to stop me.

The flight was short, thankfully, and uneventful; I could feel the energy coursing through the air and clouds, an ocean of power invisible to the humans seated with me in the aircraft. I found myself pressing my hand to the window, straining to touch what I knew I couldn’t, and wondering when—if ever—these longings would subside.

El Paso was a desert town, surrounded by ancient, low mountains and capped with an overturned bright bowl of a sky—a blue even clearer than that of Albuquerque. The air was dry and crisp, the city older than I had expected, and more noisy, dirty, and crowded. It sprawled out through the desert in a jumble, even crawling the sides of the mountains.

It came as a surprise to realize that I did not know the simple mechanics of finding an address. I would have asked Manny, of course, but Manny was hundreds of miles away now, and a phone call might not be well received.

At a desk labeled INFORMATION I consulted a man who provided me with a map and explained how to summon a car for hire outside that would take me to the address I wished.

It was all pleasingly simple. Perhaps human life was not as complex as I’d been led to believe. . . . But this was a fantasy, and one that ended as I struggled to understand the terms fare and tip, and why one was not included in the other.

I had not made a friend when I dismissed the cab, and the problem of how I would return to the airport was still to be solved, but I stood in front of the address of Warden Molly Magruder. The street was called Dungarvin, and the house was a simple affair, only a little larger than the one Manny Rocha called home. It was well kept, with neatly trimmed trees and an edge of dry grass surrounding a desert-appropriate cactus garden near the front door.

It looked exactly as normal as the houses around it.

I walked to the door and knocked.

The woman who opened the door was about Manny’s age, tall and heavy in her flesh. She had long blond hair twisted in a sloppy knot at the back of her head, and sharp blue eyes that took me in without much comprehension at first.

Awareness dawned quickly. I slapped a palm against the wooden facing of the door as she tried to slam it in my face.

“Molly Magruder,” I said, “I’ve come to ask you why you tried to kill Luis Rocha.”

She stepped back and stared at me as I crossed the threshold and quietly closed and locked the door. I leaned against the wood, arms folded.

“You’re Djinn,” she said.

“Perceptive,” I replied, “but wrong. I am not Djinn. I am human.”

She blinked. “Human.”

“I am now.”

“Well, it must just suck to be you.”

I could not have agreed with her more. Molly backed away from me, bumped into a chair behind her, and stopped. I looked around the room. It was clean, spare, and showed nothing of the person who lived in its walls. Molly’s furniture was square and serviceable. The artwork she had chosen to display was bland and uninspired. I found myself contrasting it with the vivid joy of Manny’s household, or even the feminine strength of Joanne Baldwin’s rooms.

Molly Magruder did not really exist here at all.

“Did Luis send you?” she asked.

“No. He doesn’t know I’ve come.”

“Then how—”

It was a confession, of a sort. “Quintus,” I said. “Although he did not give me your name. But he was your Djinn, was he not?” I moved a tan pillow from one end of the couch and sat, crossing my legs with a whispering creak of leather. “Why do you hate Luis Rocha so bitterly?”

Molly stared at me for a long moment, and then—to my surprise—collapsed in the chair behind her and began to weep in wrenching, frantic sobs, like a desperate child. I had no idea what to do or say to such flagrant emotion, so I simply watched her, unmoving. After long moments, she got control of herself and glared at me through red-rimmed eyes.

“You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know anything.”

“Educate me,” I said, and folded my hands.

Molly Magruder, it seemed, had been as much of a pawn in this as a Djinn slave had once been to her. She owed favors to another Warden, and that Warden had wanted two things from her: the destruction of the records filed in Manny’s Albuquerque office, and—if possible—the death of Manny and Luis Rocha. Because she was safely removed from the area and had a history with Luis, she had been a logical choice for this task.

“You are willing to kill for a favor,” I said. She sent me another glare, but despite the aggressive anger she tried to project, her hands were trembling, even clasped together.

“I didn’t want to,” she snapped. “It’s political, okay? These things happen in the Wardens. People want other people out of the way sometimes. You wouldn’t understand.”

I understood all too well. Human ambition was a toxic thing, tainting everyone it touched. “Who?”

“I’m not telling you that.”

She would, but I understood it would take time to convince her. “Explain to me why, then. Why someone would wish them dead.”

She hadn’t expected me to move away from the question so easily, and, caught off balance, she answered. “There was something in the records he didn’t want found, I know that much.”

“And the death of the Rocha brothers?”

“Personal,” she said. “None of your business. None of mine, either.”

“You don’t care for Luis much, correct?” I got a bitter smile in response, and no other answer. “I met your Djinn. Quintus. It’s a pity you aren’t worthy of his trust. He seemed to care for you a great deal.”

That wiped away her smile. “Leave Quintus out of this.”

“I would like to leave you both out of it,” I said.

“All you need do is give me the name of the Warden who forced you to do this thing.” The Warden had likely not forced her, but it seemed a politic way to describe things. She seemed to respond, regardless of the truth of the description.