could no longer be trusted to put the interests of the human race first. Seems we'd been corrupted not by our own greed or weakness, but by contact with the Djinn.
Most of the manifesto was about the Djinn, and the crazy paranoia gave me the creeps. Sure, the Djinn could be capricious, even cruel; they certainly didn't forgive those who trespassed against them, and turning the other cheek had never been a high priority for them. Added to that, they had millennia of pent-up anger against the Wardens.
But even so, the Sentinels' position wasn't that Djinn ought to be treated with care and caution - it was that none of them deserved to live. That every single Djinn in existence had to be hunted down and destroyed for the human race to survive.
That they had to be punished for their crimes before they were allowed to die.
I felt sick, and I'd barely skimmed the thing. David hadn't been able to, saturated as it was with antimatter radiation that rendered it effectively invisible to him, but he could read my expression and mood like flashing neon. He stood up and said, "Enough. Jo, enough."
I nodded and put the manifesto back into the container. Heather sealed it and took back her protective equipment. "They intended that to be found," I said. "So they really didn't intend the bomb to go off, did they?"
Lewis and Heather once again exchanged that look.
I was starting to really hate that look. "These weren't in the box with the antimatter," Lewis said. "They were in your mailbox, where they'd be found later. But they're still saturated with radiation, enough to sicken anybody who touched them."
No question, this was serious. If they'd succeeded with the bomb in the package, I'd be dead or badly injured, and David . . . David would be, too. Putting tainted, taunting letters in my mailbox was worse yet. It reminded me of the cruelest of terrorists, who detonated one explosion and waited for rescue workers to arrive before detonating another. My friends would have been the ones to suffer.
I tried to lighten my own mood. "Special Delivery Guy delivers the mail, too," I said. "Give him credit, at least he's a full-service assassin. Maybe we can get him to throw in a pizza and hot wings next time." All my attempt at humor did was give everybody the opportunity to stare at me with faintly worried looks, as if they were afraid that I was going to scream, faint, or grow a second head.
At length, Heather said, "We're following up on anyone who goes into the hospitals for treatment of radiation sickness or burns, but I have the feeling that a well-trained Earth Warden could have handled these letters without lasting damage, if he was careful. Or she, of course. And we have to proceed on the idea that whatever the Sentinels are, they're well organized and well protected."
Lewis nodded, acknowledging the point. He wasn't watching Heather, though; he was scanning the faces around the table. I didn't know what he was looking for, but he stopped and focused on Kevin. "You've got something to say," he told the kid. It wasn't a question.
Kevin, who'd been staring at the table, looked up, and his face flushed red along the line of his jaw, bringing a few pimples into sharp relief. His eyes were almost hidden by the messy fall of his hair, but I had no problem reading his body language. Busted.
"Yeah," he said reluctantly. "So, I got this message about a week ago."
"About?" Lewis's voice was calm and even, but I wasn't fooled. Neither was Kevin, who looked down again at his clenched hands.
"About joining the Sentinels," he said. "They told me they could use my talents."
There was a long, ringing silence. I instinctively put out a hand to touch David's, telling him without words to hold his temper.
"What did you say?"
Kevin cleared his throat. "I told them I'd think about it. I figured maybe keeping the bait out there would help."
"Good thinking," I said. "Thanks, Kev."
He shot me a frown. "Didn't do it for you."
"I know. But as it seems that they're after me, I still appreciate it. Did they say they'd be getting back to you? Give you any way to approach them?"
"Yeah. They gave me a phone number."
Lewis let out a slow, quiet breath. "Let me have the number."
"No." "No."
"What?"
"No. It's my lead. I get to follow it."
"This isn't a goddamn game!" I'd never seen Lewis lose his