Текст книги "Undone"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Another step deeper into the never-ending grief.

“I’m going to keep their papers, their pictures, that kind of stuff,” Luis said. “Anything I think Ibby might want of theirs.”

Would that include the small ceramic angels on the shelf above the television, the ones that Angela told me she had collected over the years? Or Manny’s books? Or the warm woven throw that trailed fringed edges over the arm of the couch, the one knitted by Angela’s mother?

So much. I realized then that Luis had stopped moving, and was staring down at a collection of objects on the battered coffee table in front of the couch.

A book, turned facedown—something Manny had been reading.

A glass with a dried residue in the bottom.

An open bag of animal cookies.

Remote controls scattered haphazardly across an uneven landscape of magazines and newspapers.

Luis collapsed on the couch and put his head in his hands, and his shoulders heaved silently. I felt the storm of emotion from him, dark and heavy.

Walk away, Cassiel. You are not mortal.

I sat down beside him and placed my hand on his back. He didn't speak, and neither did I; the silence stretched for a long time. When he finally raised his head, he took in a deep breath and sat back against the couch cushions. I took my hand away and folded it with its mate in my lap.

 “They’re gone,” he said. “I guess it took me a while to really get it, but they’re gone. They’re not coming back.”

I gathered up the cookies and the glass and took them into the kitchen. The cookies went in the trash, and I filled the glass with hot water. A flash of memory overtook me: Angela, standing here at this sink, washing up dishes from the first evening I’d been welcomed here, to this house.

They’re not coming back.

No, they weren’t, and the ache of that was like a constant gray storm inside me. A human might have succumbed to tears.

Walk away.

I yanked open the refrigerator door and began to empty the contents into trash bags. The physical sensations helped fuel a growing tide of what I realized was anger. Anger?Yes, I was angry at them for abandoning me. For leaving behind Luis and their child.

Angry at my own weakness.

“What are you doing?” Luis asked from the doorway.

“Cleaning,” I said flatly, and tossed half-empty bottles of sauces into the bin. The milk was already turning rancid in its carton. “We’re here to clean, yes?”

“Not now. Leave it,” he said. “I need to think about what I’m going to keep.”

“You won’t keep any of this,” I said, and kept pulling things from the shelves. Leftovers, wrapped in plastic, marked in Angela’s clear hand with the dates.

He charged forward, knocking a bottle of Tabasco sauce from my hand, which bounced from the counter onto the hard floor. As it hit, it shattered in a hot red spray. Vinegar stung sharply at my nose and eyes. “Stop!” he yelled. “Just stop,dammit! Stop touching things!”

I shoved him backward, and he rushed toward me again. He drove me back against the counter with bruising force, and his hands grabbed my shoulders. I took hold of his shirt, my fingers wrapping into a convulsive fist, and felt a wild, black desire to hurt him, hurt. . . .

“Stop,” he said, and there was so much despair in the single word that my anger shattered. My fist relaxed, and my hand rested flat against his chest. “Stop, Cassiel. Please stop.”

His whole body was pressed against mine, and the wildness in me mutated, twisted, became something else.

I wanted . . .

. . . I didn’t know what it was I wanted from him. The conflict in his own expression told me he felt the same, torn in so many directions his self-control was tattering like a flag in a hurricane.

His hands slid from my shoulders up my neck, to cup my face. I could feel every rapid pulse beat in his veins, every ridge and whorl of the lines in his fingertips.

Luis’s eyes were huge and very dark, like midnight lakes where the unwary drowned alone.

I knew, in that frozen instant, that the next thing we did would chart the course of our futures, together and apart. This is the moment of choice.

“Stop,” I said, and a warning flare, not quite a shock, passed from my splayed fingers into his chest.

He did, but he didn’t retreat, not for a long few heartbeats. When he did, it was fast and decisive, leaving me there without a word as he stalked to the kitchen door. His boots crunched shards of glass and left pale red Tabasco-colored prints in their wake.

I heard him go into another room. Doors opened and closed, wood banged. I followed his wet footprints and found him emptying out drawers from a dresser, tossing the contents onto the neatly made bed. He barely paused when I appeared behind him. “I’m going to need some bags in here,” he said. “Most of this has to go in the trash or to some charity.”

His voice was his own again—calm, controlled, with a dark undercurrent of anger traveling beneath the surface.

I silently fetched him bags, and helped him fill one bag with underthings and clothing too worn to donate, one with donations, one with items he thought Isabel would treasure. That one was the smallest. When he came across a sealed white garment bag in the corner of the closet, he took it down and laid it gently on the bed, unzipping it enough that I could see lace and white satin.

“Angela’s wedding dress,” he said. “For Ibby.”

I met his gaze. It went on a long time. “Which one of us do you really think they’re trying to kill?” I asked him. “You or me?” It had assuredly notbeen only Manny or Angela, or our enemies would have stopped trying.

The question didn’t confuse him. It had been on his own mind, from the lack of surprise in his expression. “I think the more important question is how long is it going to take them to get their power back together to try again.” Some of the grief receded in him, which was what I’d intended. “They aimed for you, alone, twice. You do realize that, don’t you?”

I nodded. “That might have only been because I am a danger linked with either you or your brother. One or both of you could have been the main target.”

“But why? What’s so special about me or about Manny? He’s a—” Luis took a deep, startled breath. “He wasa good man. He was good at his job, but you know—you know he wasn’t a superstar or anything. He was just a guy.”

“And you?”

Luis looked away. “I’m not that much, either. I know where I stand. Look, if I’d been any kind of a real threat, they’d have given me a Djinn before the revolt, and I’d be dead now, right?”

“Joanne Baldwin didn’t have a Djinn,” I said. “At least, not one assigned her by the Wardens. So I don’t believe you can make such a claim. Perhaps you don’t really know yourself at all.”

That got me a very slight smile, an echo of the old Luis. “Who does?”

Indeed.

I cannot speak for Luis, but I stayed alert at all times, ready for any sort of attack, whether magical or physical. I learned that alertness carries a price. By the time we were finished packing the items in the bedroom and marking them, it was late—dark outside.

“You throw out everything in the fridge?” Luis asked at last, sinking wearily down on the stripped mattress. I shrugged. “Guess it’s pizza, then.”

He called a number taped to the refrigerator’s door. He must have realized it was useless to ask me what I preferred in the area of pizza, because he ordered something called a combination, and pulled a couple of beers out of the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, toward the back, that I had left, in case he wanted them. He tossed one to me, and I caught it.

We twisted off the caps and drank in silence. I wondered if he was also waiting for the attack, and feeling the slight, indefinable strain of it.

The pizza came, borne in a sagging cardboard box by an unenthusiastic messenger. Luis paid for it, locked the door, and we sat down together on the couch to eat.

I took the first bite, and it was lucky that I did. My senses were sharper than a human’s, mostly because they had received relatively little use, and I tasted the poison immediately. I spat out the bite.

“Don’t like the mushrooms?” Luis asked, and was on the verge of putting his own slice into his mouth when I knocked it out of his hand. “Whoa! Okay, you reallydon’t like mushrooms.”

“Amanita virosa,”I said, pointing at the innocent-seeming chunks of mushroom. “Deadly within a day.” I moved to point at finely diced white cubes scattered among the chunks of sausage and wheels of pepperoni. “Aconite. Wolfsbane. Very fast acting, difficult to treat. There’s more.”

Luis had a stunned look on his face as he sank back on the couch, staring at the food. “Somebody poisoned the pizza?”

“The pizza was made correctly,” I said. “ Amanita virosais genetically very similar to Agaricus bisporus, the table mushroom. And I expect that the aconite was converted from garlic. It would be easier to do it from horseradish, of course, but someone spent time changing the toppings with great care.”

It took him a moment, but Luis followed my logic. “An Earth Warden did this. Poisoned it by genetically twisting certain ingredients.”

“Also by accelerating the decay rate in the meat.”

He visibly shuddered. “How the helldoes somebody think of that?”

“They knew we’d be looking for a direct attack. This was more subtle.” It would have worked, too, if I hadn’t been possessed of more acute senses than normal. The inside of my mouth tingled, but I knew I hadn’t absorbed more than a light dose. “Would you have known?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Probably not right away.” Luis looked very shaken. “What about the beer?”

“We’d have felt any attempt to change it while we were here, and I don’t taste anything wrong with it.” I smiled slightly. “No more than there usually is, with beer.”

He responded by picking up his bottle and glugging down several swallows, still staring at the pizza box. “Do you know who it was?” he asked me.

I contemplated the pizza box, touched the damp cardboard, even trailed my fingers over the offending poisonous mushrooms. “No,” I finally said. My senses were blunted and imprecise, frustrating. I should have known, should have been able to tell who had done this thing, but trapped as I was, heavy in flesh, the trail went cold.

“All right, that’s it,” he said. “If I can’t trust the food I put in my mouth, avoiding a fight ain’t going to work.”

I raised my eyebrows. “So?”

“So. We’re taking the fight to them.”

It wasn’t so simple as that. Without knowing who and where, we were moving blind—and with our usual sources of information, through the Wardens, cut off from us, we had little in the way of resources.

While Luis slept, wrapped in an old quilt on the couch, I sat on the floor with a small lit candle and silently called the name of a Djinn, in repetitions of three.

It took me well into the night, and more than one candle, but I finally had a response. The flame flickered, flared, and guttered out in a hiss of molten wax, and darkness fell around me like a heavy cloak.

I didn’t move.

When the candle sputtered back to life, a Djinn had appeared across from me.

“Quintus,” I said. “Thank you.”

He nodded slightly. His eyes glowed with banked fire, and I knew that inviting him here was a dangerous game. He had shown me no special enmity, and had, in fact, saved my life, but that didn’t mean he would do it again. Or that he wouldn’t have changed sides.

“I’m sorry about Molly,” I said. “I didn’t kill her.”

He didn’t blink, and his expression stayed remote and calm. “No,” he said. “I know that you didn’t. If you had, I’d have ripped you apart and fed you to pigs within the hour.”

The venom in him was chilling. So was the fact that he didn’t bother to manifest himself completely; his eyes were on a level with mine, but he dissolved into dark gray rolling mist below his waist.

“What do you want, Cassiel? I’m tired of your chanting.” Quintus smiled, but it wasn’t at all friendly. “Most human calls can’t reach us. Yours seems to be especially annoying.”

I was glad to know it. It might one day mean my death, if I annoyed them too badly. “Do you know what happened to Molly?”

His eyes narrowed, and it seemed to me that his face sharpened its lines, took on more definition along with more anger. “She was murdered. It was quick and vicious, and I was elsewhere. What more do you want?”

“I want to know how far you traced the killer.” I had absolutely no doubts that he’d done so. I’d raced after the car full of gunmen who’d shot down Manny, and if Quintus truly cared for the woman, he’d have done the same.

Seconds passed, thick and ominous. “It’s not that simple,” he finally said. “Even the Djinn can’t fight shadows.”

“How far did you trace the attack, Quintus?”

He looked past me, at Luis, who was snoring lightly on the couch. “I traced it to the end.”

“What does that—”

“Don’t ask me, Cassiel. I can’t tell you.” Not, I realized, that he wouldn’t.He couldn’t.“There is a geas on me.”

A geas was a special kind of restraint, one that only a Conduit could apply—or an Oracle, I supposed. It was beyond the power of a normal Djinn, even the mightiest of us.

I had narrowed our pool of suspects considerably—and made it infinitely more dangerous. “We are going to Colorado,” I said. “We think the attacks are originating there.”

I was careful not to make it a question; a geas would force him to silence in response, or even to a lie. But a statement might pass.

It did. Quintus seemed to relax a fraction. “I hear it’s nice this time of year,” he said. “Cassiel, be careful. There are more things happening than you can see.”

I tried again. “We’re going to The Ranch.”

Quintus went silent, staring at me. I couldn’t sense anything from him, not even a flicker of struggle. The geas was a very strong one, and watchful.

He had, however, confirmed by his very silence what Warden Sands had said—our enemies were at The Ranch.

In Colorado.

Now we just had to find it. According to the maps I had studied, Colorado contained more than one hundred thousand square miles of land, and much of it was wilderness or ranches.

“Cassiel,” Quintus said. “I know you have to do this. If you don’t, you’ll be killed.” He was giving me information, as much as he could. Warning me. “They won’t stop coming for you.”

I looked toward Luis. “Not only me. And it may touch more than the two of us. It already has.” I returned my attention to Quintus quickly, warily, but he hadn’t moved. “Our enemies are near a river.”

Quintus nodded, but it was very slight. The glow in his eyes intensified, and I thought I saw a flicker go through him.

“Near the border,” I said. The flicker intensified. He didn’t nod this time. He couldn’t. I knew better than to try to push past that point; if it was a truly deep geas, he would attack to defend it.

I wouldn’t survive it.

“Don’t try to stop us,” I said. Quintus stirred, just a little.

“I’m not trying to stop you,” he said. “I’m trying to prepare you.”

“For what?”

Quintus’s presence was flickering like a dying flame. “For the war.”

“We’re running out of time,” I said. “Help us, Quintus. Try.Give me something!”

He did try. The flickering intensified, and the outlines of his form blurred and dissolved.

“To find the greatest, look for the least,” he blurted. He looked up sharply, toward the darkened ceiling, and screamed in rage and pain, a scream that dissolved into nothing. The candle flickered out again. I quickly relit it, but apart from a discolored burn on the carpet where Quintus had been floating, there was no trace that he’d ever existed.

He’d paid a price—that much was clear—even as little as he’d said. The war.But the war between Djinn and Wardens—that was over. Wasn’t it?

“It has to be,” I murmured.

But I was forced to admit that cut off as I was, orphaned from my own people, I could no longer be sure of anything.

To find the greatest, look for the least.

It was a clue, but I didn’t know what it meant. When I’d been a Djinn, I would have taken pleasure in such cryptic comments; I’d have relished the confusion it caused. But Quintus—Quintus had tried very hard to be very clear.

The geas had prevented it, and punished him.

Look for the least.The least what? The least . . .

The least population?

Colorado was a land of a few population centers, and much wilderness, but as I studied the maps and Manny’s computer, I thought I found the answer to the riddle.

HinsdaleCounty held only 790 people in more than 1,100 square miles, and had the fewest roads.

It was, I thought, not only a place to hide. . . . It was a fortress made for those who wanted to retreat from the world.

I blew out the candle and shook Luis awake. He flailed, trying to get loose from the cocoon he’d fashioned out of the quilt, all too aware that another attack could be coming at any second.

“I think I know where to go,” I told him. “Get ready. We have a long drive ahead.”

“Wait.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked very tired. “Tell me first.”

He heard me out, in the predawn silence, in the house his brother had once built a life inside. When I was done, Luis said, “No.”

“No?” I was surprised, to say the least. I’d thought he understood the urgency.

“We can’t drive to Colorado and be back in time for the funeral,” he said. “And I’m not letting Ibby down this time. And I’m not leaving her unprotected while we go off chasing ghosts.”

I hadn’t thought about that. Now that I had, the weight of it sat like glass in my stomach.

“You’re going to have to keep us both safe,” Luis said, “until we get Ibby some alternate protection.”

I don’t know what the look on my face was like, but if it was anything like the frustration that raced through my body, it was no wonder he seemed wary. “Humans,” I snapped. I felt energy crackle within me, and for a moment, being balked, I felt truly Djinn once again.

But I knew he was right, as well.

Chapter 10

THE DAMAGE TOLuis’s truck was relatively minor, all things considered—cosmetic damage to his meticulously maintained paint job, broken windows, dents. His body shop was run by a man who I thought, at first glance, was a Djinn, but I finally, uneasily, decided was human. His eyes were a very light amber, his skin a darker hue than Luis’s, and he had a very unsettling smile.

“Elvis?” Luis responded, when I asked about the man. “He’s okay. Hell of a wizard with cars, but not in the actual wizardsense or anything.”

Strange. Despite Luis’s assurances, I still didn’t trust the man. I waited next to my motorcycle while Luis settled his bills with the mysterious Elvis, and his truck was driven around from behind the square, rusting building. It looked as flamboyant as ever, with new glass glinting in the windows and a fresh paint job gleaming. Elvis had, it appeared, added some glitter to the yellow center of the flames licking down the sides of the truck.

Luis seemed pleased.

We drove from the repair shop, Luis leading and me following on the Victory, through winding streets and older neighborhoods until he pulled to a stop in the driveway of a plain, square house, finished to a shade of pale pink I liked very much. As Luis got out of the truck and I parked the Victory, the front door banged open, and a small rocket shot out toward us.

Isabel.

She leapt like a cat from the ground into Luis’s arms, and he staggered back against the truck. His reaction was exaggerated, but I was fairly certain that the staggering was not. Isabel had momentum on her side.

He buried his face in her long hair, settled her more comfortably in his arms, and then turned toward me. Isabel looked, as well, a pale flash of face, a blinding smile.

“Cassie!” she said. I walked toward them, and she held out her arms. I took her, not sure if it was a natural thing to do. Her weight felt awkward in my arms, nard but after a moment, it began to feel right as my body found its gravitational center again. She smelled of sweet things—flowers, from the shampoo that had cleaned her hair; syrup, from the pancakes she had been eating. It made her mouth sticky where she kissed me on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“I’m glad to be back also,” I said. I didn’t correct her about my name, not this time. I studied her at close distance. “How do you feel, Isabel?”

She didn’t answer, but her eyes did—they swam with sadness and a child’s sudden tears.

“Grandma Sylvia’s been making me pancakes,” she said. “You want pancakes?”

“Little late for pancakes, kiddo,” Luis said, and reclaimed the child from my arms to toss her over his shoulder and head for the door. “Sylvia?” He knocked on the door, and a shadow moved inside. A graying older woman opened the screen and smiled at him—a trembling sort of welcome, and there was a terrible distance in her eyes. She looked like Angela, and she had to stand on tiptoe to kiss Luis’s cheek. Her gaze went past him, to me, and her eyes widened.

“That’s Cassie,” Ibby said proudly, and pointed at me. “Grandma Sylvia, that’s Cassie! She’s my friend. I told you about her.”

“Cassiel,” I said, to be sure there was no mistake. “I prefer to be called Cassiel.”

Sylvia hesitated, then stepped aside to let me enter. She made sure to give me plenty of space to pass, as if she didn’t want to take the risk of brushing against me.

Did I look as forbidding as all that? Or only different?

The front room was a small, dusty parlor filled with old furniture and black-and-white photographs. One had been set out alone on the lace-draped table—Angela, only a few years older than Isabel, wearing a white dress and carrying flowers. There were fresh white roses in a vase on the table next to the photograph, and an ornate religious symbol—a crucifix.

“My daughter,” Sylvia said, and nodded at the table. “Angela.”

“I know. I knew her,” I said.

“Did you.” She studied me, and there was a deep mistrust in her expression. “I never saw you around before. I’d remember.”

I wondered how much she knew about the Wardens, about what Manny and Luis did. I wondered if she knew about the Djinn, and if so, if she knew about the dangers we represented.

Whatever the case, she clearly wasn’t prepared to trust me.

“She was Manny’s business partner, Sylvia,” Luis said. He let Isabel slide down to her feet. She clung to his leg for a few seconds, then ran off into the kitchen. It seemed impossible that something so small could have such heavy footsteps. “Cassiel’s a friend.”

Sylvia nodded, but it didn’t seem to me to be any sort of agreement.

He gave up, as well. “How’s Ibby doing?”

“She slept through the night,” Sylvia said. “But I don’t know. She’s manic like this, and then she cries for hours and calls for you, or her mother and father. Or for her.” She sent me a look that I could only interpret as a glare. I couldn’t think of a reason I should apologize, so I didn’t.

Luis cleared his throat. “Sylvia, I made the funeral arrangements. The mass will be on Thursday at eleven. The viewing starts at six tonight.” His voice took on a rough edge, and he stopped just for a second to smooth it again. “Do you think Ibby should go?”

“Not to the viewing, no,” Sylvia said. “She’s too young. Someone should stay here with her.” She didn’t look at me as she said it, but Luis did, raising his eyebrows.

I raised mine in return.

“Would you?” he asked. “Watch her for a couple of hours?”

“Of course.”

Sylvia’s back stiffened into a hard line. “Luis, may I speak to you in private?”

He rolled his eyes and followed her into another room. She shut the door, closing me out.

I wandered into the kitchen, where Isabel was dragging her fork through the remaining syrup on her plate. She looked up at me as she licked the fork clean. “Can you make pancakes?” she asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never made them.”

“It’s easy. I’ll show you.”

“You already ate pancakes,” I reminded her. “I don’t think you should eat more. Do you?”

Her shoulders fell into dejected curves. “You’re no fun.”

As a former Djinn, I felt a bit of satisfaction at that, but it faded quickly. The child was in pain, though she was trying to hide it from me.

“I’m sorry we were gone,” I told her. She didn’t raise her head. “I know you missed your uncle.”

“You, too.”

“I know.”

“Grandma Sylvia doesn’t like you,” Ibby said. “She doesn’t like you because you’re a gringaand she thinks you’re going to steal me away.”

“Steal you? Why would I steal you?”

“Because I’m not safe with TíoLuis. She says he’s why it happened.” Itbeing the tragedy that had shattered her life.

The girl’s logic was unassailable. “So she thinks I would try to take you away. Why?”

Ibby shrugged. “You’re white. The police will like you better. So they’ll give me to you. That’s what Grandma Sylvia says. She says I’d be better off here, with her.”

I had no idea what that had to do with the issue, but I considered carefully before I said, “I wouldn’t steal you away, Isabel. You do know that, don’t you? I know you love your uncle and your grandmother. I wouldn’t take you away.”

“Promise?” Ibby looked up, and there were tears shimmering in her eyes.

“I promise.”

“Cross your heart.”

I looked involuntarily at the crucifix hung on the wall near the door. Cross your heartseemed a violent thing to do.

“No, silly, like this.” Isabel slid out of her chair, clattered around the table, and guided my hand to touch four compass points around where my mortal heart beat. “There. Now you promised.”

She climbed up in my lap, and I stroked her hair slowly as she relaxed against me. She was almost asleep when she said, “Cassie?” It was a slow, dreamy whisper, and I touched my finger to her lips. “I’m scared sometimes.”

“So am I. Sometimes,” I whispered, very softly. “I won’t let anything harm you.”

“Cross your heart?”

I did.

When Luis and Sylvia returned, Luis clearly was running short on patience, and Sylvia’s expression was as hard as flint. A smile would have struck sparks on her.

“Luis agrees that we’ll get my sister Veronica to come and sit with Isabel tonight,” Sylvia announced. “You’ll want to see Manny and Angela.”

She was instructing me, it seemed. I gave her a long, level Djinn stare, and she paled a bit.

“Thank you for your consideration,” I said. Isabel had fallen asleep in my arms, a limp, hot weight, and I adjusted her position so that her head rested against my neck. “I will put her to bed.”

“I’ll come with you,” Luis immediately volunteered. Sylvia’s lips pursed, but she said nothing as she cleared the syrup-smeared plate, fork, and empty glass from the table.

Isabel didn’t wake as I put her down on her child-sized bed—I wondered if it had once been Angela’s, as the furnishings seemed faded and used—and Luis showed me how to tuck her in. He kissed the child’s forehead gently, and I followed suit. Her skin was as soft as silk under my lips, and I felt a wave of emotion that surprised me.

Tenderness.

“Sylvia doesn’t like me because I am a gringa,” I said to Luis as I straightened, “and because she’s afraid I will take Isabel from you.”

He seemed surprised by this. I didn’t tell him Isabel had been the insightful one and not me. “Yeah, well, with my record the court might not be so thrilled, and it’s not like the Wardens are around right now to be character witnesses. Sylvia’s saying she wants to be her legal guardian, but that means Ibby has to live here, not come with me when I go off to a new assignment.”

“Sylvia wishes to keep her.” Luis, I recalled, had been afraid of that. It seemed he was right.

“Not going to happen.” Luis brushed the girl’s hair back from her face, and I saw the shadow of his brother in him, gentle and devoted. “Sylvia’s okay, but she doesn’t love the kid like I do. Ibby needs love.”

“And Sylvia can’t protect her,” I said. “You can.”

He straightened, looking at me directly, and I looked back. For a moment, neither of us moved or spoke, and then Luis pointed vaguely down the hall. “I should get ready. For the viewing. Listen, if you don’t want to go—”

“I’ll go,” I said. “But we should find someone to watch over Isabel, at least from a distance. Are there any Wardens at all available?”

“Yeah, I can do that. Probably will have to be one of those other guys, the Ma’at. There are three or four of them still in town.” He made an after youmotion, and we closed Isabel’s door behind us.

The Muñoz Funeral Home was a long structure, with muted lights and deep carpets and quiet music. We were met at the door by an older man, balding, with small round spectacles perched on his nose. He wore a black suit, like the one Luis had on, and he seemed professionally sad. His doleful expression never changed as he shook Sylvia’s hand, then Luis’s, then mine.

I had, at Luis’s prompting, changed my clothes from pale to dark—a pair of black slacks, a shimmering black shirt, and a fitted jacket. It seemed a fruitless use of power, but I was cautiously pleased with the results of my transformation. I still couldn’t willingly alter the structure of my own form, but clothing seemed easier than it had been.

Perhaps—just perhaps—I was learning to use my powers more effectively. My appearance seemed to raise no alarms with the funeral director, at any rate, and I followed Sylvia and Luis down a long hallway, past open and closed doorways. The air smelled strongly of flowers and burning candles.

The funeral director opened a set of doors and preceded us into the room. It was smaller than I had expected, unpleasantly so, and I found myself slowing as I approached the threshold.

Six rows of plain black folding chairs, a cluster of padded armchairs near the back, a table, a book, a pen. Flowers.

The long, sleek forms of open coffins.

I stopped.

Luis and Sylvia kept walking, right to the front, and Luis stayed near Angela’s mother as she sobbed, leaning over the casket in which I knew her daughter must lie.

I could not go forward. There is no need,the Djinn part of me said. Their essences are gone from the shells. This is human ritual. You have no part of it.

The human part of me didn’t want to grieve again, and I knew that it would, once I took that last step.

I turned away, walking quickly. Other tragedies were unfolding here, families shattered, bonds broken, promises unkept. I am not human. I have no part of this. No part.