Rachel Caine - Unseen

“No,” I said, knowing what he was asking. “Not directly. I’m taking her to see an object lesson.”

“Where?”

“You won’t like it,” I said. “It’s best I don’t tell you about it. Not yet.”

“You want me to come with?”

“No,” I said, as gently as I could. “This needs to be just the two of us. I’m sorry.”

That was asking for a great deal of trust, and I saw it warring inside of him, but he finally bent his head stiffly and said, “Okay.” He wanted to say more, but at last he let it go. “Girl talk. I get it.”

Ibby came back. I couldn’t see that she’d done anything at all to prepare for the trip. “You have to change clothes,” I told her. She was wearing a pale pink flowered dress, one more suited to a party than a motorcycle ride.

“Why?”

“Because you’ll be on a motorcycle. A dress is not suitable for a motorcycle.”

“Why?” Ibby’s dark eyes were wide, and the set of her mouth was dangerously stubborn.

“Because your dress can blow up.”

“So?”

“It’s not appropriate to—” I struggled for an explanation, and glared at Luis as he started to laugh. “Just put on pants, Ibby.” Impossible as it seemed, I found myself being concerned about the child’s appropriate attire.

How the Djinn would have laughed.

Isabel stomped off to change clothes, frowning, and Luis chuckled and leaned over to kiss me lightly on the forehead. “Very good,” he said. “Outstanding. You’re getting the hang of this parent thing.” I felt myself frowning, which made him laugh and kiss me again, this time on the mouth. That felt warm and wet and delicious, and I wished that I hadn’t committed myself quite so quickly to taking Isabel out. Surely we could find something to occupy such a young child for an hour ... or possibly two.

I found myself winding my fingers in his hair, deepening the kiss. The strands felt like warm silk against my skin, and I had a flash of sense-memory that told me how good it would feel brushing against my skin ... elsewhere.

Luis pulled free with an appreciative gasp. “Later,” he promised, and put his finger across my damp lips. “Wish I didn’t have to say that.”

“I wish you didn’t, either,” I said. If I’d still had my powers as a Djinn, I would have stopped time, created space, made a secret hideaway for the two of us. There we could have done as we both wished, for as long as we wished.

Djinn were indulgent, easily seduced creatures. I missed being a Djinn.

A racket of noise from down the hall made us step apart even farther, and Luis shook his head. “A gang of bikers on meth on a Saturday night couldn’t make as much noise as she does just putting on a pair of pants,” he said. He raised his voice. “Isabel, you’d better not be doing what I think you’re doing!”

I looked at him, mystified. “What do you think she’s doing?”

“No idea,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. That’s something her mother taught me—kids always assume you know what they’re doing, even if you don’t.”

The mysteries of humankind.

Isabel appeared a few moments later, neatly dressed in a pair of small blue jeans and a pink knit top. Her cheeks matched the color of her shirt, and I wondered exactly what it was she had been doing that she felt the need to blush. “Something broke,” she said. “But it wasn’t my fault.”

Luis went off to see what it was, and I got down my leather jacket and Isabel’s small, cheerfully stained cloth one, embroidered with smiley-face flowers. Ibby treasured that jacket, and I knew it would be a sad day when she outgrew it; her mother had sewed the flowers with delicate, loving precision, and as long as Ibby wore it, she would feel a connection to Angela.

I had, not long ago, bought a child’s helmet. I had never felt so glad to have made that impulsive purchase. I was prepared to risk my own skull readily enough, but not Ibby’s.

We waved to Luis from the driveway, and I boosted Ibby up on the seat behind me as I straddled the motorcycle and ignited the engine, which caught with a growl and a throb of power. Ibby wrapped her arms around me and squealed in delight. Her helmet, decorated with glittering Disney characters, glowed a shocking shade of hot pink in the sunlight.

Luis was holding two halves of a broken vase, which he juggled in order to wave back. He almost bobbled half of it when I reached out with our shared Earth power and tapped his eardrum, formed vibrations of sound. Stay here , I told him. I have to convince her to do this of her own accord. Pack her things, and ours. Be ready.

He nodded, face shutting down to blankness. That didn’t stop me from feeling his uneasiness, and alarm. Cass—what the hell are you doing?

Trust me , I said in reply, and got a stiff, grudging nod. I had earned that trust, I knew, but this was Isabel, and Luis would not forgive me if I did something that caused her to be hurt.

Then again, I would never forgive myself, either.

I eased the bike out onto the street, and gradually picked up speed, still keeping it well under the posted limits. Isabel wiggled with excitement behind me. “Are you holding on?” I asked her.

“Yes!” she shouted back, and tightened her grip on me to prove it.

“Are you sure you’re holding on?”

“Yes!”

“All right, then.”

We had come to an intersection, and I stopped for the light to change. When it went to green, I pushed the throttle hard over, and the Victory roared out a challenge and shot into the open road. Isabel couldn’t fall off, because I had taken the precaution of using a fair amount of Earth powers to bind her hands tight together around me. Even should we crash—an extremely unlikely event—she would be thrown clear with me, and I would protect her from any injury.

I was taking her somewhere. This was not a joyride, although I could tell that for Isabel it certainly was, as she squealed in delight and turned her face into the wind. For me, it was cold-blooded manipulation. I thought again about the Djinn categories of how we saw others—friends, allies, adversaries, and enemies. I moved from friend to ally with Isabel, and I had been all the way to enemy. At the moment, I fell squarely between ally and adversary, I thought.

I wondered how she would feel about it afterward.

The road was indeed lovely, cool winter desert un-spooling on both sides of us once we reached the freeway, a gleaming black line cutting through the ochre wilderness. Overhead, the sky was cloudless and merciless, the way it often seemed in this part of the world. Vultures spun lazy circles in the distance, and I felt the slow pulse of this world around me—animals foraging, hunting, sleeping, mating; plants living their obscure and hidden lives of sun and shade, pollen and seeds. It was a world in which all things consumed, and were in turn consumed.

All things except the Djinn.

It was the best day I had ever spent with Isabel, a delirious whirl of riding the roads, eating at roadside diners, shopping at odd little dusty stores. We were both filthy from the road’s dirt by the time we got to where I had planned to take her all along—Mabel’s Exotic Pets, a nearly deserted place in a very empty area outside of Albuquerque, where the mountains were only a smudge on the horizon. It was a single building coated with thick, faded white stucco, with small barred windows and a creaking sign that rattled in the wind. COME SEE THE REPTILE GIRL! the sign blared in red, dripping letters.

I released the binding on Isabel and let her climb down; she looked very small and uncertain as she stood there in her handmade jacket and Disney Princess helmet. Even her sneakers sparkled with glitter. “Why are we going here?” she asked. “It looks scary.”