Rachel Caine - Unseen

To my friends A.J. and Wendy, who found each other.

Be happy.

To my friends Claire and Gareth, who held on to each

other for as long as possible. Be at peace.

To Jason L. Dawson, who just held on, despite the odds.

Be strong.

Also, to the astonishing Jackie Kessler.

You go, girl. Go far.

The Stone Coyotes (thanks, Barbara!)

Joe Bonamassa

Lexi Waller

As always ... Cat, without whom ... well, you know

MY NAME IS CASSIEL,and I was once a Djinn—a being as old as the Earth herself, rooted in her power. I cared little for the small, scurrying human creatures who busied themselves with their tiny lives.

Things have changed. Now I am a small, scurrying human creature. In form, at any rate. Thanks to a disagreement with Ashan, the leader of the True Djinn, I can sustain my life only through the charity of the Wardens—humans who control aspects of the powers that surround us, such as wind and fire. The Warden I’m partnered with, Luis Rocha, commands the powers of the living Earth.

I find myself caring too much about Luis, and his niece Isabel, and others who never would have mattered before. The leader of the Old Djinn tells me that I must destroy humanity to save the Djinn, and all other life on Earth. I do not believe that. I cannot.

I have become too ... human.

Before, that would have seemed like a curse.

Now I believe it may be a blessing.

FIRE IS A LIVING,malevolent thing. It eats, it breathes, it moves with fluid grace and eerie, destructive beauty.

I could still appreciate the astonishing power of it, even as my hair crisped at the ends and the heat seared across my fragile human skin. Flames poured like liquid down the walls of the office, rippling and twisting out onto the floor, devouring the furniture. Everything seemed trapped in its own frozen moment of destruction, as if the fire had become amber. I couldn’t focus my stinging eyes for more than a few seconds; everything seemed too bright, too hot, and in the next instant smoke billowed black and choking around me.

I fell to my knees and crawled, breathing oven-hot toxic fumes until my searching hand fell on something soft. Skin—a woman’s hand. It wasn’t moving. I grabbed hold and pulled her back toward me; her black suit had caught fire, and I batted the blaze out as coughing fits threatened to rip my lungs from my body.

The woman I had found was unconscious but still breathing shallowly. Smoke had made her face a grimy mask.

“Cass! Get your ass out now !” A raw, ragged shout pierced the roar of the fire, and I looked around to see a sheet of fire racing across the floor toward me. A sudden chemical blast of white foam snuffed it out. It was a temporary measure, but it gave me precious seconds to find the strength to move.

Luis Rocha, still holding the sputtering, empty extinguisher, stumbled into view out of the thick smoke. My Warden partner looked as if he’d been through a fierce battle—clothes torn and burned, skin singed. He’d lost part of his shoulder-length black hair to the flames. “Cass, come on—we’re losing it! Gotta go!”

I poured raw Earth power—thick, golden power that flowed like honey—over the woman I’d found, into her, and saw her breathing and heartbeat steady. I stood up and grabbed her around the waist. She was a small thing, and I was tall; even so, the weight of her draped over my shoulder caused me to stagger. The fire roared its defiance and ignited a chair only a few feet away; it burned fast, upholstery charring into black lace and revealing bones of springs and wood.

I stopped, momentarily overcome. Nothing looked good right now, and I couldn’t find the exit. You will die here , something told me. It sounded like the cold, dispassionate voice of Ashan, the leader of the Old Djinn—my brother, in a very real way; my king, in every way that mattered. Why do you do these things for them?

For humans, he meant. I was not born into flesh; being here in the mortal world was my choice, just as I’d chosen to run into this burning building alongside Luis.

I had my reasons for doing both of those foolish, potentially fatal things.

At least the part of me that was stubbornly Djinn, immortally powerful, saw it as foolishness. There were times—and this was one—when the human part was tempted to agree with it.

A blessedly cool draft of air fanned my face, and I gulped it in as I staggered blindly into an area of the building not yet fully involved. A glass door had shattered at the end of the hall, and the strong breeze flowing past me was drawn by the sucking pressure of the fire behind me. We had, at best, only moments before it would lash out with explosive force in a fireball, scorching everything it touched along the way.

Ahead of me Luis was shouting something as he headed for the doorway. I couldn’t answer. My lungs were choked with smoke and soot, and all I could do was cough, stagger, and brace myself against a black-smudged, too-warm wall. My eyes were watering and stinging, and I wanted to sit down against this wall, drowning in the cool, blowing air—but I knew that if I did, I’d be dead, and the woman I was trying to save along with me.

I felt a sudden wavering pause in the air flooding past me, and my skin prickled in instinctual alarm. It felt like the silence before a lightning strike, but I felt no weather-working in play. No, this was physics—physics of a different kind.

And then the fire exploded through the door behind me, crawling and leaping along the hallway’s ceiling and walls in thick, fiery tendrils. Hungry, and grabbing for its food.

“Cassiel!” Luis shouted, and plunged back toward me. Too late, of course; he couldn’t outrun that fire, any more than I could. I felt it with a kind of fatalistic calm: I was, indeed, going to die here, now, in this moment.

I was going to die a failure, trapped in human flesh, unable to prevent the disaster that was coming, or my own foolish end.

And it might have been so, except that a child walked calmly out of the hellish burning heart of that fire, through the doorway, and extended her hands toward me. She was a small, lovely girl with long, silky black hair and the caramel-colored skin of her uncle Luis. When I had first met Isabel, she’d been a laughing, happy child.

Now she was far too grown-up for her very young age—almost six. Her eyes had a depth and sadness that spoke of trauma, and as she extended her chubby little hands toward me she closed them into fists, and the fire that was racing toward me ... died.

It was as if there was some barrier over the doorway she had stepped through. The fire boiled and roared there, but couldn’t pass to reach the cooler air beyond. Even the breeze had ceased.

There was not a mark on Isabel. Not a singed hair, nor a single smudge of ash. Her pale blue T-shirt had a cheerful rainbow on it, vibrant as ever, and even her white sneakers were clean.

She said, very soberly, “We should go now, Cassie.” Isabel was the only person in the world I permitted to call me that. It was a reminder of happier days, and a happier Ibby. I continued to cough as she walked past me toward her uncle Luis. He shook his head and met my eyes briefly, and I read in his gaze how disturbed and worried he was by seeing her this way. There was nothing to be said, though. He took Ibby in his arms and carried her toward the broken glass door.

I followed, with my own unconscious burden.