Undone

Chapter 5

I LEARNED A great deal at the meal that night, mainly from the silences and when they fell. Manny loved his brother, but there were secrets between them, things that not even Angela seemed to fully understand. I said little, preferring to observe.

The meal was tamales, Angela explained to me, and went into great detail of how to season the pork that was rolled into the cornmeal. I was grateful that she quickly pointed out that the corn husk skins should be removed before eating, as that had posed a worry for me. The food was a heady mixture of tastes and textures, and Ibby tipped hot sauce freely onto my plate, begging me to try it with the tamales and rice. I haughtily refused. That earned me laughter from the others at the table, but kind laughter. Bright, not dark.

“So,” Manny said, “Luis, you staying long?”

“Maybe.” He shoveled another bite of food into his mouth. He had not been shy about the hot sauce, and seemed unaffected by it. “Waiting on a transfer out of Florida. I’m kind of on detached service right now.”

Manny exchanged a look with his wife, and Angela frowned. “Where’s the transfer to?” she asked. “Ibby, stop playing with the rice. You’re getting it all over the table.”

Isabel glowered at her, but ate the forkful of rice she had been waving around. Luis took a sip of his beer.

“They tell me they’re short of Wardens in Colorado,” he said. “So probably there, but it’ll be closer than the coast.” He nudged Isabel, seated next to him. “You’d like that, right?”

“Right!” She chewed her food noisily and grinned at him.

“Luis—” Manny said, and then shrugged. “It’s your life, man. But if I were you, I wouldn’t come back here. Not to New Mexico. And not to any place Norteños has a chapter. They don’t forget, man. And they never forgive. You know that.”

“I know. I just don’t care,” Luis said. He focused his attention back on his plate. “So what have you guys been up to while I was gone? Ibby?”

Isabel launched into a bubbling, breathless story about everything from the history of her dolls to the horny toad she had found in the backyard. Angela caught my eye and smiled, and I felt . . . warmed. Part of the circle of safety, however much an illusion it might be.

I saved his life, I thought, watching Manny as he talked and laughed with his wife and daughter. He would not be here tonight if I hadn’t.

There was something curiously strong about that feeling. I didn’t know what to name it, or whether or not it would help or harm me—but I couldn’t ignore it. As a Djinn, I had never cared about an individual human, other than as a tool to be used and discarded. I had never given a moment’s thought to what they had been before or after; I had spent as little time as possible in contact with them, and forgotten them almost immediately. Now I wondered. I thought about all of those faces I had glimpsed through the ages of my life—young, old, male, female—and how I might have helped or harmed them.

It was unsettling.

I realized, with a prickle of alarm, that Luis Rocha was watching me over Isabel’s head. I wondered what was in my face, and how much it betrayed my feelings.

He said nothing, only nodded and turned his attention back to Angela, who was asking if he wanted more tamales. With his gaze off of me, I could look at him without feeling intrusive, and I found myself admiring the clean lines of his face, the way the light caught on his dark copper skin. The blue-black shine of his hair.

He was beautiful. Not as beautiful as a Djinn—no human could be—but there was something wild and fiercely lovely about him. I was reminded of eagle, soaring high as they hunted. He had something of the eagle in him.

When Angela began to gather the dishes, I rose to help her. It seemed to be expected, and it gave me a chance to follow her into the kitchen, away from the men and Isabel.

Angela accepted the dishes with a smile of thanks and began running hot water in the sink. “So, what do you think of him?” she asked. “Luis?”

“Interesting,” I said. I leaned against the counter, watching as she rinsed dishes in soapy water. “There is tension between him and his brother.”

Angela laughed softly. “Little bit, yeah.” She glanced at me, eyes veiled under her lashes. “You want to know why?”

I didn’t answer. I gathered up pots and pans from the stove and moved them to the area where Angela was rinsing and scrubbing.

“Luis got in trouble a few years ago,” Angela said. She pitched her voice low, hardly loud enough to reach my ears. “Gang trouble. He used to be a Norteño when he was young and stupid, until he found out he had the gift and the Wardens came calling. Saved his life, probably. But the gang didn’t want to let him go.” She shook her head, mouth set in a grim line. “Still don’t.”

I cocked my head and asked, “Gang?”

Angela spent a long moment marveling at my ignorance before she shrugged and said, “Like a tribe, only they’re not related by blood. They protect each other against other gangs, go to war together, that kind of thing. And they make money, usually selling drugs or stealing. But it’s a hard life. People die all the time, and they die real young.”

“Were you in a gang?” I asked her. That surprised her, and I got a wide-eyed shake of her head. “Yet you seem—sympathetic.”

She sighed. “Not so much sympathetic as understanding. I knew so many of them. Most of them are dead now, but there are always kids, young kids, waiting to step up. I worry, that’s all. I worry that no matter what we do, the gangs grow, because we don’t make a place for these young ones. We give them good reason to be angry.”

I didn’t understand. I hardly understood anything of human culture, but it seemed to me that gangs were no different than any other cultural grouping—humans banded together for defense and profit. They always had. Sometimes it was by family, sometimes by nation, sometimes by religion, but always they divided and combined themselves.

War was a fact of their lives.

I realized with a chill that the Djinn had done the same, fractured themselves into factions. Were we becoming like the humans? No better than?

Surely not.

“Is Luis in danger?” I asked Angela, handing her a collection of spoons and forks.

“We’re all in danger,” she said. “As long as Luis is in Norteños territory.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” I said.

Angela sent me a look I could not read. “Will you?”

We finished the dishes in silence.

The next day our small office saw a visit from the Warden local officials—two senior Wardens, one Fire and one Weather. Neither was as impressive in their power signature as Luis Rocha, but they seemed competent enough, and both wielded more ability than Manny.

They wanted a report of the attack we had experienced. Manny had written it in detail, but they ignored the paper and instead asked us to describe the incident, over and over, until I simply saw no reason to answer the questions and stopped responding.

“You’re certain you didn’t recognize the power signature of the person conducting this attack?” the woman asked. Greta, her name was, and her aura clearly identified her as a Fire Warden. Physically, she was a small woman with reddish, close-cropped hair and large blue eyes. Her skin was a cool, pale beige, marked here and there with spots that looked like burns. She hadn’t bothered to have them healed or the scars removed. “You saw nothing on the aetheric?”

“Nothing I could identify,” Manny said. “Like I said, it was odd. It really didn’t feel like a trained Warden, but there was a lot of power behind it.”

“But not a Djinn.” Greta’s gaze moved to me. “You’re sure.”

I shrugged. I’d stated it several times; there was no need to continue to speak. They were making me angry. They seemed to doubt not only Manny’s word, but my own. I could not truly imagine why they thought we would lie.

“Look, if you made a mistake, if you tried something and it got out of hand, you can admit it,” said the man—Scott, the Weather Warden. He was very tall, with bushy black hair and a hangdog, heavily lined face. His voice was sharp and nasal, and accented to match. “Better to do it now than after we find out for ourselves.”

Manny’s face took on a darker hue, and I felt a pulse of anger from him. “We’re not lying.”

Greta sent her fellow Warden a quick glance. “We don’t think you are,” she said. “I think what Scott is trying to say is that if there’s something you haven’t told us, now is the time to come clean about it. Okay?”

Manny nodded tightly. “I’ve told you everything.”

“And you, Cassiel?”

“I have told the truth, as well,” I said. “Don’t call me a liar again.” I was aware of the dangerous edge to my words, and I found I didn’t much care.

It was Scott’s turn to turn red with anger. “You’re here because we let you be here—don’t you forget it!” he barked. “I didn’t want you in our territory. If you give me cause, I’ll ship you back to Florida so fast you’ll get whiplash. I don’t like having a rogue Djinn in the mix, and if I had to bet, I’d bet that whatever went wrong here, it was your fault. Get me?”

“I could,” I said evenly. I let it ring in the silence.

Manny took in a breath, then let it slowly out. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Cassiel, let’s all just calm down. We didn’t do anything wrong. Somebody attacked us; we don’t know who it was or even if it was a Warden or a Djinn. But we’re on the lookout for anything like it. Okay?”

Scott’s gaze was locked on mine. I allowed a slow, cool smile across my lips, and saw him flinch from whatever he saw naked in my eyes. There were virtues to the Djinn having gone to war with the Wardens, however briefly. It had taught them to respect us.

“Fine,” Greta said. She sounded subdued and a little nervous. “Let’s move along. I don’t want you out in the field for a couple of days, so stay here and do whatever you can remotely. Watch your backs. If you see anything odd, call for help immediately.”

“I hear your brother’s in town,” Scott said to Manny. “That right?”

“He’s staying with us for a few days, yeah.”

“I heard he applied for a transfer. I tried to get him, but they tell me we’re already fully staffed in this region. He’ll probably go to Colorado.” Scott’s muddy gaze narrowed. “Too bad. He’s got real skills. We could use him.”

“So could Colorado,” Greta said sharply. “Enough. Manny, Cassiel, thank you for your patience. We’ll leave you to it.”

“Oh,” Scott said, and snapped his fingers. “Did you get a report in the mail? Something that should have gone to the Colorado office, maybe?”

There was something odd about the way he broached the subject—too quick, with too ingratiating a smile. Before Manny could answer, I said, “I have filed the papers. I saw nothing like that.”

Manny cut a sharp glance at me, but he followed my lead and stayed quiet.

“Okay,” Scott said. He stared at me for a few seconds. “Well. If it arrives, just let me know.”

Greta rose. Scott seemed reluctant to leave, but he had little choice; she was clearly the senior in the team, and once her course was set, she did not seem the type to be balked. She shook Manny’s hand, then—after a slight hesitation—mine. I wondered what she had been told.

Perhaps she’d been told the truth. In that case, no wonder she had hesitated. I was careful to keep the brief contact impersonal, merely surface, and saw a flash of relief in her eyes.

I wasn’t so careful with Scott. He pulled free quickly, wiping his hand against his trousers. I had not made a friend.

I hadn’t intended to.

“Manny Rocha is a good Warden,” I said. “Don’t try to imply otherwise.”

I kept my stare on Scott until the door closed between us with a final, soft click.

“You shouldn’t antagonize him,” Manny said.

“You shouldn’t placate him.” I turned back to reach for the folders on the desk.

“What was all that about? Why’d you lie to him? We’ve got a folder of stuff for Colorado, right?”

“I don’t know,” I said softly. I transferred my gaze back to the closed door and frowned. “I don’t know.”

Manny yawned. “Screw it. We’ll look at it tomorrow. It’s probably nothing we need to worry about, anyway. I don’t know about you, but getting interrogated by the boss makes me tired.”

It made me tired, too, and I allowed him to draw me out of the office and deliver me home.

Djinn do not sleep, unless they take human form. Perhaps that’s one of the lures for us, that brief period of oblivion . . . and dreams. Dreams of things beyond our control.

I had never dreamed before, but that night, alone in darkness, I dreamed of Luis Rocha. In my dream he was both the same and different; more and less. A Djinn, not a Warden. His core was bright, burning power, and the tattoos licking his arms were real flames barely contained by their ink outlines. He was a beautiful, wild thing, and in the dream—in the dream—I was drawn to him, like water to the sky. His heat melted the ice within me. I knew nothing of bodies, but the dream was of flesh and need and fire, and when I woke I was trembling, aching, and echoing with the aftershocks of pleasure.

I had not dreamed of Manny. I had dreamed of his brother.

This seemed oddly significant to me.

I said nothing of the dream to Manny when he came to get me the next morning, to take me to the office. I felt uncomfortable in my skin, acutely aware of the flesh enclosing me. I had always considered it to be a tool, a shell, but the dream had given me new understanding. Human souls were partnered with bodies, and at times, it seemed, sensation drove reason.

I was not sure I liked it.

Seeing Luis waiting in the office hallway was a not unpleasant shock, a throwback to the dream that sent hot waves of sensation from the soles of my feet through the top of my head. I averted my eyes from him, eager to keep any hint of what was in my mind from him.

“Something wrong?” Manny asked me as he unlocked the door. I shook my head, pale hair lashing my face. “Yeah, obviously not. Poker face, Cassiel, look it up. . . . Hey, bro. What’s up? Isn’t this a little bit early for you?”

There was a brief pause, and I saw Luis shift his weight from a casual posture to something more—cautious. “You didn’t leave a message?”

“Leave what message?”

“To meet you here at the office.”

Manny turned the knob and opened the door. “Like I’d want to see your ugly face first thing in the morning. No, man, I—”

I felt it first, a fraction of a second before either of the Wardens. I shoved Manny into his brother, to one side of the door, and spun in the opposite direction.

Fire exploded out of the open office in a white-hot jet, rolling like lava to boil against the opposite wall, which immediately blistered, cooked, and began to burn. On the other side of the wall of flame, I saw Manny and Luis scrambling backward. Safe, for the moment.

I was not. By turning the other direction I had saved my flesh, but now I was trapped in an alcove at the end of the hallway, a shallow box with no way out. The air rippled with heat, and smoke began pouring from the flaming walls and ceiling—black and thick in my mouth and nose. My eyes stung and watered, and I found myself pressed back against the farthest wall, gasping in shallow, choking breaths.

I needed to get control of it, but the fire—fire terrified me in ways I had never imagined. It was an instinct erupting from the roots of my body, an atavistic need to retreat from the flames.

I am Djinn. I am born of fire. It can’t hurt me.

But it could now, and my flesh knew that all too well. I struggled to control my reactions. I had power; all I needed to do was apply it.

But the power was rooted in Earth, and fire responded little to my feeble attempts.

A shape emerged from the flames—human-formed but made of fire, and that cooled into the dull red of molten metal.

A Djinn.

It looked at me for a long moment, then reached out to me. When I hesitated, it cocked its head to one side, plainly impatient.

I reached out, and my fragile human hand grasped his.

There was no sense of burning.

He pulled me into the fire, and I was surrounded by the flames, enveloped and caressed by them. It was like being a Djinn again, for a brief and euphoric second.

Then I felt a shove and I stumbled on, into air that felt ice-cold after the heat of the blaze. The air was thick with toxic smoke. I reached out and felt the solid surface of a wall. I followed it, coughing and choking, until I ran into a warm body and human hands gripped my shoulders.

“I’ve got her!” I recognized the voice, even smoke roughened. Luis Rocha. “Cassiel. Come on!”

A shadow charged toward us—Manny. He took my other arm and together the brothers towed me out of the smoke, to clearer air.

The office building was a chaos of people running, yelling, talking on cell phones. People carried computers, purses, files. One man had an equipment dolly with a file cabinet, though how he imagined he would get it down the stairs was a mystery.

“Fire Wardens are responding,” Manny said, and coughed. His mouth and nose were black with soot, and his eyes were bloodshot. I imagined I looked no better. Luis bent over, hacking and choking, and spat out black.

“There they go,” Luis said, and sank down against a wall to a crouch as we felt the power of the Wardens sweep past us in a cool wave. The smoke lessened, and I heard the roar of the fire subside to a dull mutter. “Fuck. What the hell was that? Who the fuck did you piss off, Manny?”

“Me? Somebody told you to be here, remember? Maybe they’re not after me!”

They glared at each other, red-eyed and belligerent. I had never seen the blood relationship between them so clearly.

I cleared my throat and tasted ash. “You’re angry because you’re afraid,” I said. “So you should be. Someone wanted to kill us, or at least cared nothing of killing all of us so long as they achieved their goal. Someone capable of igniting fire on a massive scale, which means a Warden—”

“Or a Djinn,” Luis finished for me, and both brothers stared in my direction. “No use asking if you’ve made any enemies lately.”

I hadn’t told them that there had been a Djinn onsite . . . who’d pulled me out of the fire. It didn’t seem the prudent time to do it now. I held my silence. I had recognized the Djinn himself as a New Djinn, one of David’s followers, but I didn’t know him well, and I didn’t think that the New Djinn had any reason to pursue me at the cost of human lives.

Ashan, on the other hand . . . Ashan was one to hold a grudge for generations, and human damage was nothing to him.

The crush at the stairs eased, and firefighters in yellow slickers urgently beckoned us to proceed down and out of the building, as the sirens howled their alarm.

Luis had enemies. So did I. So did Manny.

There was no way to be sure who had been the intended target of the attack, except one: ask the one individual I knew had witnessed it.

I slipped away from Manny and Luis in the confusion downstairs, climbed up on the bed of a flatbed truck in the parking lot, and surveyed the scene. It seemed chaos, but there was purpose at its core—the firefighters seemed to know their business, as did the police and ambulance attendants helping those who needed it.

The Djinn were plain to me, even in human disguise. There were two in the crowd, but neither was the Djinn who’d pulled me from the fire. Still, they would carry a message.

I jumped off the truck, landed heavily—gravity and flesh were an uncomfortable combination—and felt a flash of pain like a knife through my right leg. No broken bones, only a pulled muscle. I forced myself to ignore it as I pushed through the crowd of babbling humans talking excitedly.

When I reached the spot where the first Djinn had been, he was no longer there. No longer in sight at all. I extended my senses cautiously, as limited as they were, but found nothing.

He had seen me coming, and retreated to where I couldn’t follow.

The other Djinn was more accommodating. She was in the form of a small human child, with long, silky blond hair and fair skin. Eyes so blue they seemed made of sky. She sat perched on a decorative stone block at the edge of the parking lot, swinging her feet and watching the building belch black smoke toward the sky.

“How are you enjoying your exile?” she asked me, as I crouched down next to her. Like me, she was Old Djinn, and a particular favorite of Ashan’s; unlike me, she enjoyed a certain freedom to act as she pleased, because of her age and power.

“I’m not,” I said shortly. “Venna, there was a Djinn inside the building, in the fire. Can you tell me who it was?”

“Certainly,” she said, and her lips curved into a faint, annoying smile. “I can.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

I held my temper with difficulty. “Then will you convey a message to him, and tell him that I need to ask him what happened?”

Venna continued to drum her patent-leather heels on the stone, and she never looked away from the building. “Ashan’s still very angry with you,” she said.

“Did he do this?”

“Do what?”

“Set this fire.”

That earned me a glance, a dismissive one. “Why would he?”

A fair question, but I couldn’t predict what Ashan might or might not do. “Did he order it done?”

“No.” That was surprising; I had not expected so definitive an answer, not from a Djinn as old and canny as Venna. “I’ll convey your message to the one who was here. Just this once, Cassiel, as a favor. Don’t ask me again, or I’ll hurt you.”

She said it with no particular heat, but I knew she meant every word. And she was more than capable. For all her little-girl prettiness, Venna was a vast, dangerous being, and if I displeased her . . .

I bent my head in silent acknowledgment.

Venna misted away. I realized that I had made a fatal human error—I hadn’t asked how long it would take. Time was measured differently among the Old Djinn, and so was humor; she might fulfill her promise, but take several human lifetimes doing it. That would be inconvenient.

Whatever her motives, Venna took pity on me. It was only a moment before another Djinn faded into view, perched on the same block she had occupied. This one was far taller, an adult male dressed in human-style trousers and a white shirt. Beneath the businesslike clothing, his skin was a rich copper, but still almost within human ranges; only a shade or two redder than Luis’s, I thought. His eyes, however, were nothing like human. Colors swirled and merged in them like living opals.

I doubted the people around us could even see him. There was a slight blur to his figure, and when I turned my head away, he disappeared from my peripheral vision altogether.

“You have questions,” he said. “I’m not surprised. I’m Quintus.” He held out his hand to me, human fashion, and I took it with great care. He felt like a penny left in the sun. “I didn’t set the fire, if that’s what you wanted to ask.”

“I didn’t think you had,” I said. “My name is—”

“We all know your name, Cassiel. We’ve all been warned.” His voice was deep as a bell but soft, as if I were a great distance away. “I’m sorry. I would like to help you, if I could.”

“You don’t even know me.”

That earned me an amused quirk of his eyebrows. “I’m not one of your Old Djinn. When I was alive as a man, I never required that I know people to help them,” he said. “That’s the difference between Old and New Djinn, in a nutshell, I suppose—you only help your own, and then only when the spirit moves you. Well, if you want to know about the fire, I can tell you this: it was a Warden who set it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course.” His smile turned dark and bitter. “I’m well acquainted with the Warden in question. I was once her slave.”

I let a few seconds of silence pass before I asked the obvious. “Who is it?”

“Why do you think I would tell you?” he asked, and confusion froze me for a long second, while his smile stretched. “I was once her slave; I didn’t say I don’t like her. The two, you know, are not mutually exclusive.”

They were to me. “You won’t give me her name.”

“No, because I know why she did what she did. It was an act of desperation, Cassiel. You should know all about those.” He paused, gaze fixed on the fire. “No one is injured, no one is dead. Let it go.”

“It was directed at me. Or my Conduit, which is the same thing. I can’t ignore it.”

“The matter’s closed. The Warden won’t be coming after either of you again. I swear that to you. I’ll see to it personally.”

I didn’t want to believe Quintus, but there was something so solid and open about him that I finally, grudgingly nodded. “Very well,” I said. “But if your Warden mistress breaks her word and comes for either Manny Rocha or me again, I’ll break her. I’ll go through you if I have to. Are we clear on this?”

He didn’t smile. “Perfectly clear,” he said. “I would do the same, in your position.” He offered his hand again, and we clasped firmly. “Call on me if you need help, Cassiel. I find the world isn’t as exciting now that I’m not in the thick of the fight.”

An odd way to see things. I only wanted out of it, and back to my peaceful existence well away from this world and all its grubby problems.

He nodded, I nodded in return, and Quintus misted away. I had, I thought, made an ally. How reliable of one remained to be seen, but it helped me feel a little less alone, on this day when so much seemed against me.

One of the passing firefighters stopped and frowned at me. “Ma’am? Do you need help?”

“No.” The kind of help I needed, I doubted I would get from him.

Manny, after his initial focus on making sure others were safe, was livid over the loss of his office and records. Our floor of the building was a total loss. I doubted one scrap of paper remained unburned.

“I kept telling you, bro, get all that crap archived. You ever listen to me? No.” Luis, in the fashion of brothers throughout history, was not being helpful. “When’s the last time you cleaned out those files, anyway?”

Manny sent me a don’t-you-dare-speak glare. “Few weeks ago,” he snapped. “And for your information, I did archive some stuff. Last year. Or—yeah, maybe a couple of years ago.”

Luis just shook his head. Now that the crisis was past, he seemed to be finding this quite funny. “Look at it this way: You get to start fresh. Replace that crappy furniture that was left over from the Eisenhower administration.”

“I liked that desk!”

“Nobody ever accused you of having taste, man.”

We were making our way, slowly, to Manny’s car. Luis had his own truck parked a little farther away. The fire trucks were still here, blocking off rows of cars, but ours seemed unimpeded. The police had taken our statements—or rather, taken Luis and Manny’s statements. I had said little, except to support their general protestations of ignorance about the cause.

I wasn’t at all sure the police officer had believed any of us. I wouldn’t have, in his place. We definitely seemed suspicious.

We were almost to the car when Manny groaned. “Oh, man, just what I need.”

“What?”

“The boss.”

He meant the Weather Warden, Scott, who’d been so unpleasant during our last encounter. Scott was striding toward our small group, and his hangdog face was mottled red with fury.

I stepped out in front of Manny, taking the focus of his angry eyes, and Scott halted his advance.

“Are you threatening me?” he barked. I didn’t respond or move, except for the wind lashing my soft white hair around my face. Somehow I knew that my very stillness would be more intimidating than an answer. “Manny! Call her off!”

“I don’t own her,” Manny said. “She’s a person. Talk to her like one.”

Scott clearly didn’t want to stoop so low, but he nodded stiffly. “Please step aside, Cassiel.”

I held my place for long enough to make him uneasy, then moved back, beside Manny.

Once again, I had acted to protect humans. It’s self-interest, I told myself. Nothing but that.

Some part of me still wondered.

“What the hell happened here?” Scott asked.

Manny was nervous; I could feel it coming from him in waves. He managed to keep his face expressionless.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It looks to me like either a Djinn or Warden attack, but we’ll need a Fire Warden to get to the bottom of it. Could have been plain old human arson or some kind of electrical problem, even. Hard to tell.”

Whatever Scott thought about that, he let it go. “Greta’s out of town, handling a fire around Santa Fe. She’ll be back in the morning. She’ll do the investigation.” He paused for a few seconds, then jerked his head to the side. “Talk to you alone for a minute?”

Manny joined him—again, not eagerly—and the two of them walked a few feet away. In the chaos of the parking lot, that was enough to shield them from human senses, and my own were so blunted that I could only pick out a few words here and there. It was sufficient to tell me that Scott was determined to paint this attack as some kind of shortcoming of Manny’s.

“Hey,” Luis said, and his hand touched my arm lightly.

“What?” I frowned at him.

“You look like you want to rip Scott’s colon out through his nose. Thought I should mention it, in case you didn’t want it to be quite that obvious.”

It took a moment for his meaning to sink in. I had not been guarding myself as well as I’d thought, and that was cause for concern. How did humans manage all these complicated feelings, so easily betrayed by their faces and bodies? I’d thought I was learning, but obviously, I had far to go.

Luis was watching his brother and Scott with a cool light in his eyes. “That guy’s a bureaucratic asshole,” he said, “but the biggest danger Manny has from him is a busted performance review. Considering how few Wardens there are walking around these days, that’s not exactly a mortal danger.” His gaze shifted to me, and once again, I had an unwelcome flash of that vivid, unsettling dream, of the way his dream-skin had felt against mine. “Unless you know something I don’t.”

“Know something,” I repeated.

“About the fire?”

“I know it was caused by a Warden,” I said, “but I don’t know the Warden’s name. I’ve been assured that it won’t happen again.”

Whatever Luis had been expecting, it had not been that. “What? How do you know that?”

I shrugged. “Djinn.”

He opened and closed his mouth, plainly searching for words and finding nothing. It was a satisfying display, which I watched with interest. He finally managed to gather his thoughts. “Listen, I don’t care what the Djinn told you—and since when do they talk to you? I thought they threw you out—”

“They did.”

He shook that off. “Whatever the Djinn said, somebody wanted both me and Manny standing in front of that door when it opened, and that means they were out to kill us. Call me crazy, but I think that they may not stop at just the one try!”

Quintus had seemed very sure about his former master, but it was possible that he was not in possession of all the facts . . . or that he had lied to me. Djinn did not usually lie to each other, but I was no longer one of them, no longer connected. . . .

I did not like the sick feeling in my stomach that came with these thoughts. If he lied to me, I couldn’t tell. That was worse than unsettling. That was devastating.

“I don’t know,” I said, and my voice sounded soft and fragile. “I don’t know if I can find out, Luis.”

“You want to save Manny, don’t you? He’s your meal ticket. Seems like it might be a good idea to keep on asking around.” Luis’s full lips quirked into something that resembled a smile, but somehow was not. “Even if you don’t care if I get barbecued.”

“I do,” I said, and then wished I had not spoken at all, because his eyes widened and he looked at me. Saw me as something other than his brother’s annoying, impaired partner.

I felt something inside me respond, a stirring I had not known, except in the dream. It was primal and dark and deep, and it felt . . . good.

I looked away, studying the ground, willing the feeling to subside. I felt warm, and too much in my skin.

“Good to know,” Luis said, his voice carefully neutral. “Looks like my brother’s done getting his ass chewed. Vamanos.”

Luis opened the passenger’s-side door of Manny’s car for me, and offered me a hand. I looked at it in confusion, then put my fingers in his palm, very lightly. He guided me into the car, and before he let go, Luis’s thumb moved very lightly across my knuckles. It was an impersonal touch, or it should have been, but it traveled through me like a wave of light.

“See you later,” he said, and shut the car door.

When I finally did raise my head, he was walking away, hands in his pockets. Another uncontrollable wave of heat flamed through me, and subsided to a banked glow deep inside.

I have no need of this, I told myself. I need no complications. All I want to do is survive.

My body, it seemed, thought differently of the matter.

I was so intent on watching Luis that I flinched when Manny opened his driver’s-side door, thumped into the seat, and slammed the door with so much violence the car rocked. I looked at him, and his expression was still blank. His hands were rigid as they gripped the steering wheel, and his knuckles turned white from pressure.

“Bastard,” he finally said, and turned the key to start the engine. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Are you all right?” I asked.

The glance he threw me was bitter, black, and wild. “Sure. I’m just perfect. Why the hell wouldn’t I be?”

I did not ask again, and we sat in silence as he drove too fast, too recklessly, all the way to his home.