He flexed his wings and turned toward the suburban neighborhood outside. "Come visit me later and we'll see what the smoke says." The invitation was half request, half command.

"All right," she agreed. "But how will I find you?"

Joseph Crow c.o.c.ked his head over one winged shoulder. "Once you've made contact, you can find someone in the Flow easily enough. It's much like instinct," he said. "You know this as you know when it's time to make a new skin."

True, but I don't like being a slave to blind instinct.

Consuela stood next to the open window.

"Okay, well, thanks for coming by," she said, growing anxious. "It was nice meeting you."

"And you as well, Consuela Chavez."

Consuela stared at the talking crow. "Bones," she corrected.

He bobbed his head. "Bones."

He blinked into the lazy breeze and launched, letting himself fall before a few quick flaps swooped him higher. She watched him climb, but instead of fading into the distance, Joseph Crow slipped between a curtain of telephone wires and oak leaves, folded impossibly, and disappeared.

O-kay.

Consuela slid her window closed and drew the curtains for good measure.

WISH was fairly sure he could find him, being one of the few who could. Tender had tucked himself away in one of the many hospital rooms, his hand halfway through a fissure he'd drawn in the wall, peering through the Flow as if through backstage curtains.

"I met her," Wish said.

"Really? " Tender drawled, still glancing through the rift. "What's she like?"

It seemed like a simple question. Wish struggled to form his first impressions-words swam inside his open mouth like fish in a bowl.

"Um . . . Tough to say," he finally managed. Tender glanced at him in disgust. Wish started tapping. "Seriously. I've seen a lot of weird s.h.i.t, okay? But never anything like that before."

Tender snorted derisively. "Like a girl?"

Wish flipped him off. "Yeah, well, you haven't seen her."

Thumbing his long bangs from his eyes, Tender turned back to his peephole. He ran soft fingers over his belt buckle. "What is she? Beautiful? Terrible? Freaky?"

"All three," Wish confirmed.

"Powerful?" Tender asked.

"h.e.l.l, yeah."

"Game changer," Tender muttered as he withdrew his fingers. The Flow oozed closed. He sounded mildly interested for someone so dead. "Well, that means I'll have to step up the plan."

Wish stopped cold. "What plan?"

Tender lingered on the edge of the privacy curtain before the Flow parted, allowing his exit.

"Wish," he said contemptuously. "I've always had a plan."

chapter five.

"The word death is not p.r.o.nounced in New York, in Paris, in London, because it burns the lips. The Mexican, in contrast, is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most stead fast love."

-OCTAVIO PAZ.

CONSUELA sat on her bed and tried sewing a skin of flame.

She had melted two needles into sad, droopy things before she'd thrown the sheet of fire away in a zip of flash paper. Vwoop! She was trying too hard, thinking too much. Consuela wanted to figure this out, but the more she thought about it, or thought about not thinking about it, or telling herself to STOP thinking about it and just let it happen, the further away it got.

She'd done it before, so why was it so hard now? Consuela grabbed double handfuls of her thick black hair and pulled, if only to feel something happen the way that it should. She groaned.

Flopping across her bed, she stared up at the ceiling. What am I doing? It had taken a lot just to peek into the closet and see the two skins, shining and real, hanging patiently in a garment bag, defying her doubts. This was real. This was really, really real. Now she wanted to find out "how" if she couldn't yet grasp "why."

V made it sound so . . . accidental. A mistake. But she couldn't believe it.

Joseph Crow and Sissy wanted her to give in, but she couldn't go blindly-she had to know more.

She tried replaying the feel of the first skin-the feel of air-and thought about why she had mounted the bathtub like a pirate queen and sailed on an ocean of wind to stop some guy with a knife. How had I known about that? It was totally unreal. Maybe she couldn't make it happen again because she couldn't really believe it had happened at all.

She was overa.n.a.lyzing. Consuela knew that if she tried on a skin again, felt the rush of powerful freedom-thought, she'd understand; but the seduction was like a drug. It frightened and excited her, which made it all the more terrifying. She didn't-and did-like the spinning sense of wonder, the total loss of control. Could I have really slipped down the drain? Was this a hallucination or a dream?

She mistrusted what she felt in light of V's warnings, his fear, and his sincerity. Despite everything, she was convinced that he meant what he'd said: he wanted to save her. But from what? Or who?

Resting the box of matches against her belly, she shook it, listening to the matchsticks rattling around.

Don't play with matches . . .

She took one out: the artificial, crimson tip bulged off the end, a chemical mix slightly dripping over the edges of compound wood. The match looked like something that wanted to burn. That was what it was there for: to turn into incandescent ash and be eaten slowly from end to end.

Is that what I'm here for? To burn until gone? That's what was stopping her, really. She didn't want to burn out. She didn't want her life to ever, ever end, especially not knowing what she was here for, and why. The very thought made her throat tight. Consuela envied those who really believed, like her grandma Celina; people who knew for certain that they would live forever in G.o.d's grace. She squirmed, vaguely ashamed and uncomfortable that she still wasn't sure. Even now. Knowing all of this. At seventeen, she didn't know what she believed.

But Consuela knew that she wouldn't burn in a skin of flame, any more than she'd drown when she was in and of the water. While she was in the Flow, her life didn't end. It had meaning and purpose and was full of secret powers. This new, bigger life was just beginning.

Consuela slipped off her body's skin, allowing her eyes to shift out of focus as she became Bones. With delicate fingers, she held the match against the strip of grit and sc.r.a.ped it roughly, watching the firelight hiss and catch.

She stared at the tiny flame. It was hypnotic.

This is fire-the ancient, elemental force that kept humans alive. It can destroy every living thing it touches: a simple matchstick, taken for granted in the age of electric lamps. Consuela turned the match sideways, watching the light eat. This is the power that beat back the night.

Entranced, she pushed a fingertip under the blue heart of the flame. A wild djinni unfurled. Fire snaked up her arm. Racing toward her chest, it sank in its teeth and engulfed her.

Consuela erupted.

She was a corona of fire, a coat of flame, burning. She felt no warmth, just a soft, rippling sensation, like gills on a fish, opening and closing and gasping for breath. She was full of little fluttery breaths. Myriads of tiny white-yellow-orange-blue tongues lapped and flickered. She inhaled, exhaled, tasted, ate. As with the water skin, her room remained untouched; the bed unsinged, the carpet unscathed. In the closet mirror, she saw her eyes as disks of amber gla.s.s. Through them, she could see heat. Everything in her room was cold, but the candlewicks along the bath shimmered, whispers of wanting-light called to light, two flames becoming one-as simple as two magnets kissing with a click.

And that's when she felt it, an opening like a change purse.

The world snapped open.

The world snapped shut.

Consuela lifted herself up on particles of dust and swallowed them as they expired.

Someone, somewhere, was burning alive.

THE high-rise was a death trap. Its hollow-eye windows burned bright with hate; its gaping door mouth screamed high, fire-engine whines. The crowd watched as sparks escaped, buoyed by the heat; a nimbus of molten gold against the smoke-filled night.

Consuela was a tiny flag of flame, a kerchief settling unnoticed on the roof.

The moment she touched down, she was absorbed. Consuela was everywhere in the fire-racing, running, reeling, devouring. If she'd had a heartbeat, it would have pounded in her ears, but the noise was a vacuum of heat. Nothing escaped, not even sound.

Consuela felt around her body as if trying to locate where it hurt. She felt how deep the fire had eaten away the supports, how it licked the edges of insulation and drywall, and where the best meals of foam cushions and thick curtains could be found. She kicked from the windows and roared behind doors. She tasted where things had died-mice and insects, two cats and one bird, asphyxiated in its cage and smoldering into a coal-black thing. But no people. Not yet. She felt the antlike scurry of rescuers within her and tried to see what they searched for behind their anonymous plastic masks.

She slid along the airways, tripping inside the orange-white light. She'd become an elemental thing of rippling heat, honed to the barest of clues like air and noise. Consuela listened for the tiny whisper of oxygen-life-giving breath for both fire and man.

She found him on the floor of 21B.

There was a man coughing shallowly into the carpet. His wide lips panted dry-spittle breaths. Eyes closed, his face shone with beaded sweat. She felt fear, acceptance, and fresh panic rolling off him in waves.

Consuela saw that he had nowhere to go. The room was blocked by fire through the hall and over the ceiling, dancing maliciously beneath the billowing, black smoke. He was running out of air, slowly cooking in the ambient heat.

He was about to give up.

Consuela stepped sideways out of the wall and onto the floor, reaching for him, but she didn't touch him. As part of the house fire, she'd brought its flames with her-a trail of her footprints burned merrily on the floor.

"Hold on," Consuela whispered urgently under the crackle-popping, hoping he'd hear her. "Hang on."

She leaped into the flames again, merging with the blaze, racing to find the nearest person in bulky yellow-striped rubber. A firefighter vaulted the stairs. Consuela couldn't hope that he would hear her through the fire-storm and his layers of protective gear, but she had to get him to follow her. She glanced back down the dragon-throat hallway, groping for an answer . . .

A blast of heat funneled past, punching a hole and flattening the flames.

Inspired, Consuela ran-swam-flew through the fire, racing along the walls and ceiling as fast she could go, sucking a path clear. The wind tunnel whipped the flames aside, creating a clear pa.s.sage through the char.

The firefighter needed no prompting and ran heavily down the hall. Consuela let the fire spring back to life as she braced herself along a door frame, digging herself deep into the molding like a stream of fiery termites. She kept the doorway clear, although it was rimmed like the gates of h.e.l.l.

The firefighter ran inside, pulled the limp man up under the arms, hefted him once, and dragged him quickly out of the room. Consuela swept their way clear-an escort to the outside, where she perched against the brickwork, snapping from a broken window like a plume. She watched as the enc.u.mbered fireman made his way into the herd of ambulances and flashing blue-and-red lights.

She was a thing of the flame. The human beings were safely gone.

She'd done it!

I'm never giving this up.

TENDER approached the door at the end of the hall uncertainly. The s.p.a.ce above the door frame was a thick smear of blood, wet and foreboding, smelling of salt. Stepping a foot over the threshold, he half expected to be pushed back by some invisible force, but he could enter easily enough. He pa.s.sed under the doorposts into a quiet room of baby powder and plush toys.

Yehudah traced the last line of warding along the edge of the crib. He'd cut the skin between his first two fingers and drawn them like a fountain pen down each rail and every bracket so that the lines shone with a soft dark fire. He did not look up as Tender stepped over to peer into the blankets.

"You can't touch him," the Yad said calmly.

Tender ignored him, checking with detached, professional interest to confirm that there was no break in the ward. "How many bars are in the seal?" he asked.

The Yad nodded approvingly, a scholar's vice. "Thirty-six. Twice eighteen. Double chai." He translated the Hebrew: "Double life."

Tender liked numbers. They brought order. He respected them.

He touched himself in the spongy place behind his belt buckle, fingering the black mora.s.s in his bowels. It shifted perceptibly with the growl of a hungry animal. He nodded.

"You do good work," Tender said.

"Thank you," the Yad said, wiping his hand on a rag. He tucked it into his pocket behind the long strands of his knotted tzitzit.

Tender crossed his arms. "Do you ever fear you do too well?" he said.

"I do not fear you, if that's what you mean."

Tender sniffed, scowling. There was no point trying to ruffle a religious man, even a guy barely into his teens. d.a.m.ned Orthodox. No wiggle room at all.

He slid his hand against his belt loops and waved the walls to dim, marching straight through them on his way back into the Flow. If the Yad watched him go, Tender didn't mind. Let him wonder if he'd won this round. There was more than one way to get at what he wanted. Sometimes, it took subtlety.

In the end, Tender would win. He knew the stakes. He knew it better than any of them.

Tender pa.s.sed the parents' doorway and let himself smile as he reentered the Flow.

The Yad couldn't protect them all.

CONSUELA had intended to go home. Instead, she'd reappeared at Sissy's door. She shook the last vestiges of foreign fire from her hands. Bright little ashes rolled up and died. Is she even home? What time is it? Maybe she's already asleep? She paused before knocking, flickering indecision.

"Come in," Sissy's voice beckoned. Consuela turned the doork.n.o.b and went in.

Consuela walked carefully, oddly incongruous for a figure of flame. Sissy smiled from her chair. She had both eyes, but one of her ears was still missing and, strangely, one leg. Consuela frowned. What good could one leg do anyone?

As if reading her mind, Sissy glanced down and laughed.

"Some folks just need a good kick in the pants," she said. Consuela, surprised, laughed, too. She noticed that Sissy typed much faster with both hands attached. "What can I do for you, Bones?"

Consuela wasn't sure if Sissy could see her shrug. "I guess I wanted to ask you something . . ." She hadn't realized until just that moment why she'd come. It was as if her feet knew what her head hadn't bothered to tell her yet.

"Sure, fire away!" Sissy said, grinning, but her face changed as she watched Consuela struggle. The Watcher looked like she wanted to hug her, clearly understanding how impossible it was. Instead, she sat and waited.