Rachel Caine - Unseen

“It is, a little,” I said, and held out my hand. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” When she hesitated, I said, “And they have ice cream inside.”

She brightened immediately and took my hand. In that moment, I felt a surge of something dark and sticky boiling up from my stomach—guilt, and the sick certainty that I was doing the right thing, no matter how unpleasant it would be for either of us.

Luis would be furious when he found out.

There were only a few other vehicles in the parking lot. One was a rusted van with a giant, crude painting of a woman with a cobra’s head, and red letters that screamed SEE THE SNAKE WOMAN! ONLY AT MABEL’S EXOTIC PETS!

Ibby was looking more and more apprehensive. I’d left my helmet with the bike, but she had chosen to keep hers on, and her hand was clammy and sweaty as it gripped mine tightly.

I pushed open the door to the shop. It gave out a rusty sound not unlike a shriek, and Ibby flinched and pulled back. I looked down at her, and she looked up at me, and then she finally nodded and gave me a trembling smile.

That smile almost broke my resolve, but I looked away and walked inside Mabel’s Exotic Pets, bringing the girl in with me.

Inside, the place was no chamber of horrors—it was surprisingly clean and cool, with dim lighting that somehow managed to seem soothing instead of sinister. Ringing the four walls were rows of tanks, lit with bluertinted fluorescent bulbs and the reddish glow of heat lamps. Within each tank was a tiny ecosystem, painstakingly preserved ... a desert for the bearded dragons of Australia, who sat happily in their sand under the heat, watching us pass with curiously cocked heads. In the next tank a Chinese water dragon luxuriated in a jungle of leaves and raindrops, and Ibby stopped to examine the lizard’s bright jewel-green color. At another tank she shrieked in horrified delight as a large blue gecko licked its own eye; it didn’t seem in the least impressed with her, choosing to chase after a cricket in its tank.

I heard a dry rustle of beads, and a warm woman’s voice said, “Can I help you folks?”

Ibby, engrossed in the discovery of a truly huge iguana stretched out, uncaged, across a branch at the back of the shop, didn’t even register the question. The sign next to the iguana read, YES, YOU CAN PET ME AS LONG AS YOU’RE NICE . She tentatively reached out and ran her fingers over the iguana’s giant, jowl-heavy head, and it lazily opened a golden eye and then closed it again. She patted it, and the iguana held up its head for more. I heard the silvery glitter of Ibby’s laughter, and it hurt me—it felt in that moment as if I was on the verge of destroying all the innocence left in her.

I looked at the women who’d spoken to us. She had come out of the back of the shop—middle-aged, dried out by age and the sun, with gray streaks through her shoulder-length dark hair. There was a bearded dragon riding on her shoulder, looking at me with perky interest.

I held out my hand, and the dragon leapt without hesitation from her to me, where it sat in my palm and stared up at me. It was lighter than I had expected, and very warm. Its skin was soft and dry, and it cocked its head quizzically, as if asking a question I could not hear.

“Hello, little brother,” I told him, and touched my finger lightly to his head. He settled down comfortably in my palm, and I handed him back to Mabel. She took him back with raised eyebrows.

“You’re different,” she said. “Djinn, right? I used to have a Djinn, back in the day. He was a big fella, scary as hell. Used to really have to watch my step around him. Part of why I got out of the business when I did.”

“The business” being, of course, the Warden business. Mabel was a former Warden—Earth, of course—who had elected to have her powers blunted and leave the service. I had no doubt she still retained a strong influence over the living creatures in her shop; they were uniformly healthy and happy, from the snakes to the lizards to the arthropods like tarantulas and scorpions, who were surprisingly complacent.

“My name is Cassiel,” I said. “I came to introduce young Isabel there to your friend.”

Mabel’s face, which had been open and friendly, shut down completely. I felt the entire mood of the shop shift, and the iguana moved on his perch under Isabel’s hand, lifting himself up on strong, muscular legs. His large, mottled dewlap came down from concealment, making him look even larger, and he bobbed his head up and down in rapid, aggressive movements. Ibby took a step back in surprise, but the iguana was looking at me, not her.

“Costs five dollars each to see the Snake Girl,” Mabel said. Her words were monotone, stripped of any kind of emotion. She held out her hand. I opened my wallet and placed a ten in her palm, and she met my eyes. Hers were black, bitter, and hard. “She ain’t my friend,” Mabel said. “And I only do this because she wants me to. If it was my choice—”

But it wasn’t, clearly, because she shook her head and stalked over to the swaying beaded curtain in the doorway. She held it open, face averted.

“Ibby,” I said, and held out my hand. “We have someone to meet.”

“Can’t I stay here?” she asked. Her voice sounded faint. “I like the iguana. He’s nice.”

“His name’s Darwin,” Mabel said. “He’s very nice. Maybe the kid ought to stay here.”

“She needs to see,” I said.

Mabel looked up, startled, and I could see the calculations moving through her mind until she finally nodded. “All right,” she said. “All right, then. Come on, little one, your friend’s already paid for you. Darwin will wait for you, I promise.”

Isabel frowned, looked back at the iguana with real misgivings, but he laid his head back down on the branch with every indication that he was agreeing with Mabel’s statement.

I took Ibby’s hand, and together we went to meet the Snake Girl.

The first indication of something unusual was that there were bars at the end of the hallway—a gate, one with a lock. Mabel walked ahead of us, keys jingling in her hand. She unlocked the gate and slid it aside with a scrape of metal. The air was warm, and smelled feral.

“Right,” she said. “Rules. Snake Girl is on the other side of the glass. Don’t touch the glass. Don’t get her upset; it takes days to calm her down. Don’t try to talk to her, either. You only look and you go. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t intend to follow any of those rules, but Mabel didn’t need to be advised of that fact.

“Straight down on the left,” Mabel said. She slid the gate in place behind us and locked it. “I’ll wait here until you’re done.”

Despite the warm, musk-scented air, I felt a chill move through my body. I felt it in Isabel, too.

Was I doing the right thing?

It was too late to change my mind. It’s for the best , I told myself.

And I hoped that I was right.

Isabel and I walked down the narrow brick hallway, which ended in an arched doorway that opened into a larger room. Half of the room was closed off by a giant glass barrier—heavy glass, at least four inches thick, with steel reinforcing wire inside. At the back of the room was another door, one with no handle on the inside. There was a slot at the bottom wide enough to admit trays for food.

Inside the room, sitting on a battered sofa that had once been antique gold in color, was a young woman of about twenty. She was stunningly beautiful—an exotic Aztec cast to her perfectly proportioned face, and skin like rich, glowing copper. Her eyes were black, and so was her hair, flowing in ebony waves down her back.

She looked annoyed. She was lying slumped on the sofa, clicking a remote control at a big flat-screen television across the room. She finally gave it up and tossed the remote to a nearby coffee table, which held stacks of well-thumbed magazines and soft drink cans. She seemed partial to Dr Pepper.