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retrieved a preloaded syringe, came back, and unceremoniously delivered a jab to David’s biceps. David flinched, lips parting in shock, and said, incredulously, “ Ow! ” He sounded horribly betrayed by the pain. I wondered how long it had been since he’d really been subject to a human nervous system—one he couldn’t control, anyway. “What was that?”
    “Wait for it,” Lewis said, as he disposed of the hypo in a medical waste container. “Should be about—now.”
    David suddenly relaxed—not quite enough to collapse, but I saw the tension just bleed out of him. His eyes widened and went a little unfocused. “Oh,” he said. “Well, that’s better.”
    “Welcome to modern medicine.”
    “It’s nice,” David said, and raised his eyebrows. “It’s really nice.” He slid off the bed, landed on his bare feet, and padded over to claim the chair Lewis had been using. Before he sat, he bent over and kissed me, long and sweet and slow, and I savored every bit of it.
    Lewis cleared his throat.
    “Oh, bite me, big man,” I said, too full of relief to care. “You’re okay, honey?” David’s skin felt warm against my hand—human warm, not the banked fire of a Djinn. He gave me a small, reassuring smile. “Really?”
    “I’ll be fine,” he said, and sat down. “As long as you are.” He turned his head toward Lewis, and his body language altered itself, just a little. Although I couldn’t get the subtleties, it seemed to me that he was making an effort to be friendly, but he wanted Lewis to be anywhere but here. “Lewis. What do you know?”
    “About what happened to the Djinn? Nothing. We came out of the black corner, they screamed, they disappeared.”
    David’s eyes went briefly blank, and I knew that, like me, he was struggling not to relive that awful sound. There was something about it that just wouldn’t die; it was like an endless recorded loop, playing in the back of my mind. The best you could do was keep the sound turned low. “No,” he said. “That’s not what happened. Jo understands.”
    I did? I didn’t. I shook my head.
    “You saw it before,” he said. “At the coast. You saw it take me.”
    I had no idea what he meant, and I was about to say so. . . . And then it came to me, like a physical slap. I sat up, staring at him. “No.”
    “Yes,” he said. “Exactly that.”
    “But—the Wardens would know.”
    “Not if she didn’t wish them to.”
    “Excuse me,” Lewis said, a little too loudly. “Somebody want to clue me in?”
    David was the one to say it, which was good, because I wasn’t sure I had it in me. “It’s the Mother,” he said. “It was her scream, echoing through the Djinn. She’s been hurt, and she’s angry. She gathered the Djinn to her. They’re in her power now.”
    I watched Lewis’s face go very quickly pale. He put out a hand to steady himself. “You’re saying—”
    “I’m saying that the Earth is awake,” David said. “At least, I believe she is coming awake. The Djinn serve her, and when she calls, they must come.”
    This was, beyond any doubt, the worst thing that could happen. The Earth slept. We liked it that way. Even in sleep she was difficult, but once that vast, slow consciousness was roused . . . we had no idea what she would do, except that it almost certainly would end in extinction for a great many species, and the end of human civilization, at the very least. The Earth could not be reasoned with, or even directly communicated with. Not even the Djinn could do that. The only ones that had a chance, even a whisper of a chance, were the three Djinn Oracles.
    Thinking of the Oracles made me think about my daughter, Imara, and I felt a leap of terrible fear. Had she screamed, like the others? Had she lost herself, too?
    “No,” David said, and his fingers tightened on mine. “She’s all right, Imara is all right. We’d know—” His voice trailed off, and I saw a flash of panic in his eyes. We wouldn’t know. We