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too. And been attacked by a burning zombie.

I wished I could say that it was an exceptional day.

"What happened?" a hoarse voice asked at my ear. I screamed, took my foot off the gas, and then jammed it back on as my forebrain caught up with my instincts. "Sorry. Scare you?"

Emily. She was sitting up, looking weary and smoke-blackened and red-eyed, barely better than something from a horror movie herself. Clinging to the seat for support.

"No," I lied. "Are you okay?"

"Fuck no, you've got to be kidding," she said, and let herself drop back against the seats. "Is it out? The fire?"

I checked the rearview mirror. The whole sky was red and black, a churning fury of destruction.

"Not quite," I said bleakly. "It's only a couple of miles from Drumondville. We have to--"

"No," I said flatly. "It's enough, Emily. We can't do any more."

She lunged upright, grabbed the back of my seat, and thrust her face next to mine. I got an up-close look at her red-rimmed eyes, furious and brimming with moisture.

"There are people out there! People who are going to die! We're Wardens! You can't just leave!"

I knew that. I felt it inside me, the same desperate yearning to make everything right, set the crooked straight, save every life and fix every broken thing in the world.

I turned my stare back to the bumpy road, blinked twice, and said, "Sometimes you have to let it burn, Emily."

She stared at me in disbelieving, weary silence for a few seconds. "You coldhearted unbelievable bitch," she said. I didn't answer. I kept driving. She was too weak to try to take the wheel from me--hell, she was too weak to be sitting up for long, and she proved it by letting go and slithering back down to a supine position on the backseat. When I looked in the rearview, she turned her face aside, but there was no mistaking the startlingly pale tracks of tears on her dirty face.

"They were right about you," she said. "You should have been neutered when we had a chance. You don't deserve to be a Warden."

I felt her words like a blunt, cold knife shoved right under my heart. If she'd been trying to rip my guts out and decorate the truck with them, she couldn't possibly have done a finer job. Since the night I'd fought for my life against Bad Bob Biringanine, the surly but beloved old codger of the Wardens, I'd been persona non grata in a big way. The black sheep of the family. Blamed for everything, and praised for nothing.

But I was a Warden, dammit. I loved the sky, the sea, the living air around me in cell-deep ways that only another Warden could ever understand. I wanted to help people so much that the impulse ached inside me. I was a Warden, and the Wardens loved the world. But it was strictly a one-way love affair, and we forgot that, the closer we got to our duties.

"Bitch," Emily mumbled distantly. She was sliding into unconsciousness again, or sleep. Too tired to be angry. I turned on the radio, glided it over to a station that had some decent music, and kept it on for the rest of the bumpy escape from the forest to cover up the quiet, uneven sounds as I gulped back tears.

The SUV growled to the top of the ridgeline, and I had a spectacular view of the inferno of the valley behind us, and what lay ahead.

"Oh ho," I whispered, and the tears finally broke free.

David had warned me. Bad things. There were dead people lying in the road.

The only ones standing were the Djinn--four of them. They were crouched among the dead, studying bodies with varying degrees of disinterest. I jammed on the brakes, remembered what David had said as the Djinn began to turn toward our Jeep.

Don't stop, whatever you see.

I didn't recognize any of these--two males, two females, at least in appearance. Two of them looked very young, almost childlike. One of the male Djinn had a burly, weightlifter-type look. The remaining female Djinn could have sat for a portrait of a Pre-Raphaelite angel, minus the wings... unbelievably, radiantly beautiful.

She was the coldest one of all.

All this went through my mind in a second, and then I hit the gas. The Jeep raced forward. I felt the engine sputter and realized, with a chill, that the Djinn were capable of stopping it dead. David had done it to me, once upon a