Undone (12 page)

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.”