Undone (16 page)

“Oh,
mija
,” he whispered, and the anger melted from him. “Oh, no.”

He got to his feet, moving like a man twice his age, and picked the girl up in his arms. I put a hand on her back—partly to comfort, and partly to sense her physical condition.

She was unharmed, though Luis's hands left streaks of her father's blood on her clothes.

“Take her inside,” I said. “Call the police.”

He walked up the front steps to the door. Isabel's eyes were open but seeing nothing. She was sucking her thumb.

Luis turned her face away from her parents and me, and sent me a glare that would have quailed even Ashan. “You should have stayed, you Djinn bitch,” he told me. “If you'd stayed, they'd be alive.”

I knew, as I knelt next to the dead body of the man who had been my Conduit, and my first real friend, that Luis was right.

I should have stayed.

Chapter 7

STRANGE, HOW ONE
person's tragedy so quickly becomes someone else's job. The ambulance attendants first, though their efforts were small; they knew well that neither Angela nor Manny would ever rise again. They left the bodies there, in the front yard, for the police. As they walked away, they were talking about stopping for a meal.

As if life went on.

I wanted to destroy them, snuff them out like candles, but I knew that Manny and Angela would not want it so. I didn't have the power to do it, either.

I stood, still and quiet, waiting.
I won't leave you,
I told them.
Not again.

The police arrived moments later—a marked cruiser, with flashing lights and sirens. One of the officers immediately made a straight line for me; the other began moving back crowds of neighbors and passersby who had gathered to gawk.

“Ma'am?”

I focused away from Manny's bloody, empty face to the smooth expression of the policeman opposite me.

“What's your name?”

“Cassiel,” I said. He wrote something down and waited, as if I should have more to say. Ah yes. Last names. Humans had last names, denoting family lineage. “Rose. Cassiel Rose.” So read the identification card in my pocket. When he asked, I produced it, and he wrote down more information before handing it back.

“Can you tell me what happened here?”

I did, as best I could. The black sedan approaching, the gunfire. Chasing the car. I stopped short of admitting that I'd caused the crash.

He let several beats of silence go by when I was finished. “You . . . chased them.”

“Yes.”

“You chased a car full of gang-bangers who'd just shot up a house.”

“Yes.” I didn't know why he was asking. I didn't think I had been unclear.

“You catch up with them?” he asked.

“The car crashed,” I said absently. “I called the ambulance.”

“Lady—” He shook his head. “What the hell were you thinking? They could have killed you, too.”

Certainly. I wondered why he thought I did not know that, but I remained silent.

“You know these two?”

“Yes,” I said softly. “Manny and Angela Rocha. They live here with their daughter, Isabel.”

“Isabel,” he repeated, scribbling in his notebook. “Where's the daughter?”

“Inside with her uncle Luis. She's five.”

He paused, glancing up at me, and made another note. “She was here when it happened?”

“Yes.”

“And the uncle?”

“Yes.”

“Either one of them injured?”

“No.”

“Did you see any of the people shooting?”

I shook my head. “I was on the other side of the street,” I said. “Getting out of the van.”

He tapped a pencil on his notebook. “How are you connected with all this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, lady. You don't exactly fit in around here.”

I supposed that I didn't. It wouldn't have taken a great detective to determine such a thing. “I'm a colleague of Manny Rocha's,” I said. “I work with him.”

That seemed acceptable. “Where?”

“Rocha Environmental Services.”

“And you do—what, exactly?”

I gave him a flat, emotionless stare. “Analysis.”

Whether he believed that or not, it didn't seem he was inclined to press. He took down my telephone number and address, and went inside the house to speak with Luis.

Again, I was alone with the dead.

Death, for Djinn, is dissolution—being unmade. Undone, as I'd been undone by Ashan. But this . . . the flesh remained, a constant reminder of what was lost. Manny's eyes were open, the pupils huge and dark, and I wanted awareness to return to his body. I wanted him to look at me once more. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry for my choices.

He is not lost,
something told me.
Nothing is lost.

But my connection to him was gone, and even if Manny's soul had passed on, it had traveled to a place I could not reach and might never reach. There was a hole here, in this world, where he had been.

I was alone. Strange that it should hurt so much.

Next came a rumpled, tired-looking detective, who asked the same questions again. I gave the same answers. He also spoke with Luis, who remained in the house, and then a coroner's van arrived.

I thought it odd that it took almost an hour before Manny and Angela were at last declared dead. I remembered older days, older ways—a priest might have tapped them on the forehead with a small hammer, to claim them for the gods then, but no one would have questioned that they were dead. But in these days, these times, pictures were taken to document their ends, and then they were lifted and sealed into black plastic sheaths.

Taken away.

I watched as their bodies were removed, and felt another pang of loss. Death happened in stages among humans, and with each step another tie severed. How many remained?

You don't have to feel it at all,
something in me said.
You could leave. Go back to the Wardens and tell them you want a new posting. You need never see Luis Rocha or Isabel again.

It was so tempting to walk away, to leave this behind in the human world where it belonged. To start over. I could choose to walk away. It would be easy.

It would be a Djinn thing to do.

Instead, I sat down on the front porch step and waited.

In time, the police cars left, the onlookers dispersed. The phone inside began to ring, and I heard the muted sound of Luis's voice, explaining to callers what had happened. Friends, family, perhaps the Wardens had called, as well.

Isabel cried. She wailed. It was the sound of a child realizing that her world had broken around her. I was not human. I could not give her false promises, and the thought still lingered in me,
I could leave.
Just walk away from all this pain, this senseless, stupid waste.

As night began to fall, the front screen door slammed, and with a creak of wood, Luis settled down next to me on the steps. He smelled of soap and shampoo, freshly laundered clothing. No trace of Manny's death still remained on him.

He did not speak for a while. We watched the sun go down in a bright blaze of colors.

“Isabel wants to see you,” he said. “You coming in?”

I turned and looked at him. He did not meet my gaze.

“For the kid,” Luis said. “Not for me. I don't care what the hell you do.”

I stood up and walked into the house. It smelled like—home. The still-lingering aroma of Angela's last meal on the air. Clean, warm, welcoming. In the kitchen, plates and glasses still remained in the sink, waiting to be washed; I drew hot water and added soap, and scrubbed them sparkling before I went to the child's bedroom.

Luis had tucked her securely in her bed, but she was not asleep. Her thumb was still in her mouth, and her eyes were dark and very wide.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and very carefully stroked her silken dark hair. “Ibby,” I said. “I am here.”

She didn't speak, but she curled against me. Tears leaked silently from her eyes. I picked her up in my arms, heavy and warm and human, and rocked her until she began to cry in earnest. Chubby arms around my neck, holding tight.

I buried my face in the clean cotton of her night-gown. It was for her comfort, not my own. Djinn did not grieve. Djinn
walked away.

It took hours, but she fell asleep still in my arms. I tucked her back in her bed and went out into the living room, where Luis sat in the dark.

I crouched down next to his chair, putting our eyes at a level, though he did not look at me.

“I would not ask,” I said, “except that Manny is gone. I need—” My tongue didn't want to finish the request. Luis's dark eyes shifted, and the look sent shivers through me.

“You need power,” he said. “Yeah?”

I nodded. I held out my thin white hand, and his own large, strong one closed over it in a crushing grip.

“Fine,” he said. “Here. Take it.”

Power rushed across the link, burning and angry, and I gulped down all I could before finally yanking my hand free of his. He continued to glare at me, and the stolen fire inside me gave me an insight I didn't want.

“You blame me,” I said.

“Of course I blame you.”

“Yet the men in the car were shooting at you, not at me.” I said it calmly, without accusation, but Luis flinched as though struck. “Isn't that true?”

He didn't answer. He looked through me, to some event in his past that I couldn't read. As a Djinn, I could have known; as a human, I would not have even seen the shape of it. This frustrating middle ground made my head ache with possibilities.

“Maybe,” he said at last. “The police say it was a car full of Norteños, so maybe they were aiming for me. Why? Does that make you feel better about leaving Manny and Angela alone to die while you played the big, bad Djinn hero?”

It was my turn to flinch, inwardly at least. “Even had I been there, even had I used every ounce of power inside me and destroyed myself in the process, I could not have saved Angela. She was dead the moment the bullet entered her brain. It's not likely I could have repaired the damage to Manny's heart, either.”

He knew that. He was an Earth Warden; his analysis would have shown him the same thing, but he could not, would not, accept it.

The night stretched on in silence, and finally Luis said, “Get out. I don't want you in their house.”

I rose to my feet, but didn't move to the door. “Isabel—”

“She's my niece. I'll take care of her.” His bloodshot eyes fixed on mine. “Go away. Get your free lunch somewhere else. You don't belong here.”

No one—human or Djinn—had
ever
spoken to me so, in such words, in such tones. It should have been a death sentence for him, with as much power as tingled in my veins.

Instead, I walked away. I left the house, closing the door quietly behind me, and as I stood out in the dark, I realized that I had no car and no way to get to my home.

I pointed myself in the right direction, and began to walk.

 

I did not go home. I walked to the building, but there was nothing inside it to draw me. Instead, I walked all night, thinking. The world passed in a blur of lights, noise, distant laughter. None of it mattered. I couldn't leave the prison of my own body, and inside that cage I waited, trapped, for
something
.

In the morning, my cell phone began to ring. Messages from the Wardens organization. Manny had likely been right; they were assuming that I'd had a hand in the death of the Warden in El Paso.

It occurred to me that I did have something I could do. Something to channel this dark need inside of me.

Something to lash out at this world that had hurt me.

Manny's superior officer in the Wardens, Scott Sands, lived in an expensive high-rise building in downtown Albuquerque, one that commanded a view of the pine-covered mountains. Once again, I walked; the feeling of movement was important to me, and I was in no great hurry. Not now.

The apartment building had electronic security, which was a simple thing to confound. I took the steps at a run. When there were no more steps, I opened the door to the top level—a quiet, carpeted hall with solid, expensive doors.

I could have knocked, perhaps.

Instead, I blew open the door to 1514, and then I shattered the the plate glass windows that composed the entire back wall of the apartment. Cold mountain wind shrieked in, sending Scott Sands lurching to his feet in surprise. He was still in his bathrobe and slippers. I was happy to see that he lived alone—I would not have hesitated had he put his family in the line of fire, but neither would I have relished it.

But alone—ah, that was a different thing, and I could take my time about it.

He cowered before me, and then, of course, he remembered he was a Warden, and he counterattacked.

Electricity arced from every power outlet in the apartment, formed a pink-tinged bolt in the palm of his hand, and arrowed toward me.

I dodged it easily. It struck the walls of his apartment and splashed in a burning spray across his carpet, crisping it into stinking slag.

“Is that your best effort?” I asked, and began walking toward him. “I was expecting more from a hardened killer, Scott. Perhaps you should try again.”

He scrambled away from me, pale legs flashing beneath his fluffy black bathrobe. The wind pushed at him, sending papers flying in a white storm around us.

He used the wind, whipping the papers into a cutting vortex between us. I had no command of the wind, but because the power I'd taken was Earth power, I had command of the paper, and I sent it hurtling inward to cover him in a choking, smothering cloud. It rammed against his mouth, nose, and eyes, triggering panic.