by Rachel Caine
"I'd be sorry about it," Ibby said very softly. "If I did what you did. I'd feel sick. I'd hate myself."
Snake Girl's face distorted with something like fury, and her warning rattled sharply again through the speakers. The writhing coils of her body slammed against the glass with such force that a crack appeared in its surface. Just a small one, but it was significant.
I let Isabel go. She ran to the far corner of the room, still facing the Snake Girl, as if she couldn't stand to turn her back to what she was seeing. I couldn't, either, but I let none of that show on my face, and I did not retreat. I refused to retreat from the murderer of a Djinn.
"You can't hurt anyone now," I said, not so much for the Snake Girl's benefit as for Isabel's. "You're frozen--no power to shift yourself to either side. And so you will live, and die, between things. Between worlds." Just as I will, I thought, but at least my predicament was not so dramatic. "Didn't the Wardens try to help you?"
Snake Girl laughed. "Oh, yes. They tranquilized me, and they had their best Earth Wardens try to fix me. I guess that Djinn was just a little too good. Too bad, really. If they'd restored me, I'd have destroyed all of them."
"Why?" I asked only because I wondered if maybe, just maybe, this peculiar creature could give me a glimpse inside the mind of Pearl, my enemy. I didn't particularly care about Snake Girl, just as she didn't particularly care about the victims she had destroyed. It was a fitting, Djinn-style punishment, what had been done to her. Better she should suffer.
"Why not?" Snake Girl asked, and laughed again. She looked very pretty in that moment, and very insane. "Because they'd stop me from doing what I wanted, of course. They say I used too much power. I say I didn't use nearly enough. But the truth is, they could have killed me and they didn't. So I kind of owe them for that, I guess."
She stopped talking and stayed there, swaying back and forth, then whipped around suddenly as a steel door opened in the back of the room, and a rabbit hopped through, hesitant and worried. It sat up to survey the situation, not quite sure what to make of Snake Girl.
She moved in a blur of scales and fangs, all prettiness vanished into a deadly fury, and I caught a glimpse of the nightmare of her face distended, jaw unhinged to take in her prey, just before the rabbit discovered its last, fatal mistake.
I turned my back on it and went to Isabel. I didn't hold out my hand to her; I knew she wouldn't take it. Her gaze was wide, and fixed past me to the glass, and what was happening behind it.
I crouched down to put myself even with her, and said, "Ibby. Look at me."
She didn't at first, but finally, with a great effort, she transferred her attention to me. I expected anger, but I didn't see any. What I saw, very clearly, was fear.
"You wanted me to see," she whispered. "You wanted me to see what happens if I do the wrong things. If I become like her."
I nodded slowly. "One possibility of it," I said. "People are not Djinn; Djinn are born to power, bred for it, shaped for it. People are ... fragile, even the best. And power is a heavy thing; it warps even the strongest. I know this is much for you to learn, but you have too much ability not to understand what you could risk."
We both looked at Snake Girl, who was swallowing the kicking feet of the unfortunate rabbit. She smiled at us with bloodied teeth.
I expected Isabel to flee, but she didn't. She walked around me, right up to the glass, and stared Snake Girl full in the face. Snake Girl, for her part, bent her body in a sinuous curve to put herself on a level with Ibby. "What?" she demanded. "You not get your five bucks' worth, bitch?"
Isabel gulped, but her voice was steady when she said, "I just wanted to know your name."
For the first time, I saw Snake Girl surprised. In that moment, she didn't look much older than Isabel. Then her face hardened, and she said, "Snake Girl. That's who I am now."
"Who were you then? Before?"
"Why you want to know?"
"I just do," Ibby said. "Please."
It might have been the first time Snake Girl had been asked for anything since sealing herself in this cage--or being sealed in, perhaps. She was silent a moment, except for the restless writhing of her coils and the dry scrape of scales, and then she said, "Esmeralda. My brother called me Es."
"I don't have a brother," Ibby said. "But my mami called me Ibby. Thank you, Es."
"For what?"
Ibby shrugged. "Just thanks." In an act of courage so vivid that I could not quite believe I was seeing it, Ibby put her small hand flat against the glass. "I hope you feel better someday, Es."
Snake Girl--Esmeralda--stared at her with odd, troubled eyes for a long moment, then slowly reached out and put her hand against Ibby's, with four inches of glass and steel wire between them.
"Adios, Ibby," she said. "Don't trust the Djinn. She's a cold one, like me."
"I don't trust anybody," Ibby said. "Not really."
Esmeralda nodded, and Ibby did as well, and then she walked back to me. I rose to my full height, and Isabel held out her hand to me. I took it.
"I'm ready," she said.
"To leave?"
"To go to the school." She looked at me very seriously. "Isn't that what you wanted?"
Chapter 4
DARWIN THE IGUANA was indeed waiting when we came out from the back of the room, which brightened Isabel's darkened spirits a great deal. Mabel watched us with a frown. After consultation with Isabel, we decided that an iguana was too large, but that a bearded dragon was an acceptable substitute.
Ibby wasn't interested in snakes as companions.
I called Luis, who answered on the first ring, sounding worried. "Could you bring the truck?" I asked. "We have things to carry."
"Everybody all right?"
"Everything's fine," I said. "I bought Isabel a pet."
There was an interestingly long silence, and finally he said, "Is it poisonous?"
"Not that I am aware of."
"That's ... surprising, somehow, from you. All right. You can explain it all to me later."
I gave him the address, and Isabel and I spent the hour until he arrived quite happily encountering wildlife, in the gentle glow of Mabel's benign residual Earth powers. Esmeralda was, I thought, in the best possible place; Mabel was protective of all her charges, including a girl who might be tempted all too easily to dangerous aggression. If Mabel was uncomfortable with the exhibition aspect of Esmeralda's situation, it was clear that Es reveled in it; she enjoyed seeing the discomfort and horror on people's faces.
Although I believed that perhaps Esmeralda had gotten a bit more for her five-dollar charge than she'd bargained for, with Isabel.
Mabel gave us all of the care instructions and a supply of food for the bearded dragon, whose name Isabel immediately decided was Spike. Spike was tame enough to ride home sitting on Isabel's lap in the sun, dozing happily with his head resting on her palm.
Luis, however, kept casting it, and me, nervous looks. "This wasn't just a shopping trip," he said. Ibby had also succumbed to the warmth of the sun, and was asleep with her head tipped against my arm. She showed no sign of hearing.
"I had to show her something," I said. "I had to convince her. It seemed the only way."
"Scared straight?"
I considered the phrase. "Perhaps," I said. "And perhaps I just introduced her to a future ally, in which case we will have much more to think about later on. But for now I think Ibby will go to the school without a fight."
"Good," he said. "I just got another call from Bearheart, and she's not kidding about the deadline. How you want to do this? I'm not too keen on putting her in an airplane, and Marion says it's too late to meet at the rendezvous at Area 51."
"Driving is better," I agreed. "Besides, I doubt they would allow Spike on the plane."
The school that Warden Bearheart had established was in Normandie, Wyoming. That was as close to effectively the middle of nowhere as it seemed possible to be in modern-day terms. The drive was long and tiring, not th
e least because I could not possibly take my attention off the world around us for long; our enemies were still shadows in the night, but they stalked us, and there would be only split seconds between life and death for all of us if our vigilance failed.
Despite all that, I found that there was little I loved more than being on the Victory, with the road disappearing beneath the wheels. Wind battered me, sun broiled me, we were visited by torrential rains that drove us to shelter for almost a full day, and yet something inside of me found this vagabond life fiercely beautiful. The snow came next, falling in steady white curtains and veiling everything in thick drifts.
I suspect Luis and Isabel, in the truck, found the long trip merely very tiring.
When we finally arrived in Wyoming, I thought it a beautiful place, stark and lovely as only the most deadly things can be. Thick with snow, it seemed especially ancient, and implied that humanity was a recent, not very welcome visitor. I liked its character. It suited me well.
Outside of Cheyenne, Luis received a phone call; I saw him drop back and flash his lights, which was the signal to pull over to the side of the road. That wasn't difficult, despite the banked snow; we saw very little in the way of traffic on this road. I braced the motorcycle on its kickstand and walked back toward Luis's truck, watching the shadows around us for any hint of hostile action. Nothing more menacing than a rabbit was nearby--not that I would underestimate the rabbit.
Luis rolled down the truck's window as I approached; he covered the speaker of the phone and said, "FBI." I nodded, because that spoke volumes in the three simple letters. The FBI had been working with the Wardens to try to take down several of Pearl's compounds across the country, but we'd heard little in the past few days about any success--or failure. Luis mostly listened, but from time to time he would look to me, or Ibby (who was again sleeping, with Spike's plastic case on her lap to get full benefit of the heater), and I was not feeling overly confident based on what I saw in his eyes. He finally said, "Yeah, sorry about that, but we're traveling. Nowhere near Albuquerque right now. Won't be back for at least a few more days." He paused to listen, and smiled grimly. "Well, you can try to trace us if you want, but you're tracking Earth Wardens. Whatever that GPS chip shows you, we ain't there, man. And I'm not telling you where we're going. I'll call you when we're headed back. Best I can do. Okay. I'll hit you back."
He shut down the call and tossed the phone on the dashboard of the truck.
"Let me guess," I said. "The FBI agents would like us to inform them of our every movement."
"Preferably they'd like us to not move at all. But, yeah, failing that, they want us on a leash. Very sad for them. Maybe we should send them a gift basket." He drummed his fingernails on the steering wheel, looking out at the road ahead. "Thing is, they wanted us back bad for something in particular."
"What?"
"Don't know, and I don't like it. They're pretty damn cagey about details on the phone. They want a face-to-face briefing--now, they say, but since that ain't gonna happen, as soon as we get back."
What he didn't say was this was bound to not be a good thing; the FBI turned to us only when problems became far too bad for their agents to handle alone. It meant the situation was already messy, and would probably only get worse the longer we delayed.
"We could split up," I said. "I could go to the FBI. You could go on to the school."
He shook his head even before I'd finished. "Not a chance. We stay together."
I smiled a little, and held my hair back from my face as the icy wind thrashed it around in a pink-tinted storm. "Jealous?" I asked.
"As hell. You bet. I'm not letting any filthy feds get their hands all over your ... assets." He grinned outright. "And we don't break up the team. Clara?"
"Clara," I said. "We go on, then."
"All night if we have to, but according to the GPS, we don't have more than a couple more hours to go," Luis said. "You good for that?"
"Always." I turned to walk back to the motorcycle. Luis leaned out the window and gave me a sharp whistle. I looked over my shoulder.
"We should have dinner later," he called. "Something hot. And in my room, while she's asleep."
"Maybe," I said, although that wasn't what I felt rushing through my body at that moment. No, that was definitely a yes.
I put my helmet back on and kicked the engine to life and got us back on the road.
Warden Bearheart's patrols picked us up almost a hundred miles outside of the location of the school; I first became aware of them as a disturbance in the aetheric, and when I checked I saw a vivid glow on that plane of existence that could only be a first-class Warden at the height of his powers. Male, most certainly, and by the signature of those powers, he was gifted with Weather. There were two others with him, in the traditional Warden triad of Earth and Fire, though neither could match him for strength.
They challenged us outright, on the road, by slamming a wall of air and snow into our faces and forcing us to slow down, then stop. Luis could drive through the gale-force winds, but not easily; on a motorcycle, I was much more vulnerable. If I'd sensed it as a threat, I would have fought, and fought hard, but we had both expected the Wardens to have perimeter security.
Just not quite so far out from their actual location. I approved of the security initiative.
I parked the bike and dismounted, walking over to Luis as he climbed down from the truck. Ibby was awake, and climbing curiously around the cab of the vehicle to look at the view. She rolled down the window and said, "Tio Luis, be careful!" I noticed she left me out of her warning.
Luis turned his head, shoulder-length hair streaming like a black flag in the freezing wind, and said, "Stay inside the truck, Ib. I mean it." He'd put on a thick parka, and now jerked the fur-lined hood up over his head.
She nodded and rolled up the window, small face gone very serious. She clutched Spike's plastic container to her chest in anxiety.
I looked ahead of us to see three Wardens emerging from thin air. One of them, probably the Earth Warden, had a respectable cloaking technique. They stood motionless in a group, seeming very competent indeed; the man in the middle was the young Weather Warden, and he seemed hardly old enough to shave. The other two were women, one only a little older than he was, the other a grandmotherly gray-haired elder who wielded Earth.
"Yo!" Luis shouted into the wind. "Can we turn down the fan a little? I'm getting frozen stiff here!"
The wind slacked and then faded to a cold, thin breeze. The fact the Warden didn't kill the breeze completely told me something about him--despite his power, he had relatively little training. Although he wasn't in her class, someone like the strongest of the Wardens--say, Joanne Baldwin--would have been able to pull gale-force winds from stillness and stop them on a breath; he still required some starting point, and made it easier by continuing the flow of air molecules, albeit in a minor way. It was a weakness, though not one many would recognize.
I didn't need to tell Luis about this. I knew he would see it as well, should we require it.
"Thanks," Luis said, smiling. He held up his hand, palm out, and the other Wardens did the same. On each, the stylized sun symbol of their organization glowed, visible only in Oversight. I didn't bother to identify myself. They wouldn't mistake me for anyone else. "Friends?"
"We hoped you'd be coming," the grandmotherly woman said, stepping forward. She had a sweet, crinkled face and a cloud of soft white hair, and she radiated a soothing presence that made it difficult to keep my customary wariness in place. I knew it was a manifestation of her power, but even so, it was a powerful, subtle force. "Nice to meet you. I'm Janice Worthing. This here's my friend Ben, and that's Shasa." Shasa was the younger woman, who was darker-skinned and sharper-featured. She radiated mistrust in equal proportion to Janice Worthing's peace. "Stop glaring, Shasa--they've been invited."
"Not by me," Shasa muttered. She seemed to save her special dislike for me. I returned the favor by fixing her with a steady sta
re, of the sort that made the most powerful of Djinn flinch.
She didn't. In fact, she intensified her glare.
Warden Worthing evidently decided not to push for better relations between us; she stepped forward, still smiling and communicating that soothing, warm reassurance, and shook hands with Luis. Coincidentally, that brought her closer to the truck, and Isabel, who was still staring through the window. "Well, hello, sweetheart," Janice said, and gave Ibby a smile that warmed even me. "You're a pretty one! You must be Isabel. I'm Janice."
Ibby put Spike's container down, opened the truck door, and jumped down, staring up at Janice with blank concentration for a moment. She finally said, "You can't make me like you, you know. I'm stronger than that."
Janice blinked. "I never had any intention of making you do anything, Isabel."
"Oh. You don't know you're doing it?"
"Doing what?"
"You make people feel safe, even when it's not true." Isabel studied her curiously. "I guess that's a good thing, though. There were lots of times I wanted to feel safe when I really wasn't. It would have been nicer."
Janice bent down and gravely offered her hand. "I hope you always feel safe with me."
Ibby looked to her uncle for permission, then reached out and took the woman's hand with great formality. I saw a visible relaxation in her--something that surprised me because I had not really understood until that moment that deep down, Ibby had never let go of her fear, her worry, her wariness. I had not been able to give her that sense of safety, and it hurt me in an unexpected way.
It hurt even more when Janice opened her arms, and Isabel hugged her. The old Ibby, the one I had first met, was a hugging sort of child, willing to give her love unreservedly; this one, the one we had taken out of Pearl's hands, was much more guarded. The burning sensation inside me was, I realized, jealousy. I had wanted to bring that trust out in her, but I had wanted her to feel safe with me.
Janice's bright blue eyes met mine over the top of Ibby's dark head, and I saw understanding in them, and pity.
Irritated even more, I turned away to slap dirt from my leathers. I wanted no pity, no understanding. I didn't even understand what I did want. It made me irritable.