Rachel Caine - Unknown

I KNEW LITTLEabout Rashid. My kind looked on our younger, upstart cousins with little respect, and we’d rarely taken the time to know or acknowledge them individually.

Except, of course, for Jonathan.

Even now, thinking of him, I felt a knot in my chest. Jonathan had come on us like a black storm of power, unlooked-for. He had lived as a mortal man, and he had been the first of all those we now called Wardens; his bond to the Earth was something even those of us who remembered formless voids could not explain, or imagine. His death had woken her to fury and grief, and she had preserved Jonathan’s soul by creating a new form around him. A new kind of life.

She had made him a Djinn, by gathering in the dying life force of thousands near him. Not only him—another had been created that day. Jonathan’s friend David, who had died with him. The first of many, after them.

But it was Jonathan who had been given the heart of the Mother, and it was Jonathan who, regardless of his human origins, had wielded more power over the Djinn— all the Djinn, old and new—than any other, before or since.

We had never accepted him, but all of us, however unwillingly, had obeyed him. For thousands of years, the True Djinn had bent our necks to one we should have, by rights, despised; and some had, though quietly. But there was also respect in even the most militant of us. And yes, love. Jonathan had shone with a kind of purity that I could never understand, nor hope to imitate.

I had even grieved for him when he was lost to us. But there will not be another Jonathan, another New Djinn who can charm and bully us into becoming one people. The True Djinn will always stand apart. We are too arrogant to do anything else.

And that was the gulf that lay between me and Rashid, and always would.

We walked out of Ashworth’s office into the chiming dimness of the casino, none of us speaking. Rashid was on one side of me, Luis on the other. People avoided our path, though whether consciously or unconsciously, I don’t know. I caught sight of us striding together on a security monitor; Luis looked utterly focused, tall, and dangerous; Rashid had moderated the alien nature of his coloring just enough to keep himself from drawing stares, although in this strange place that probably wasn’t necessary.

My pale, severe face, white hair, and pale leathers seemed to glow like a ghost between the two of them.

We looked . . . like nothing any sane human would want to challenge. Heads turned to follow us as we moved through the crowds, and I felt eyes assessing me, measuring, coveting.

It was oddly interesting.

Outside, the hot wind dried a faint trace of sweat from my face, and Rashid’s skin darkened, just a touch, to better absorb the sun’s harsh rays. Luis slipped on a pair of sunglasses. We stood in the shadow of the false pyramid, not far from the false Sphinx, and faced each other without speaking.

Then Rashid said, “Take me to where you left the boy.”

Luis nodded and led the way to where we had parked the van. He slid open the back and gestured for Rashid to get in, but the Djinn simply stood there, frowning, head cocked.

“You came in this?”

“Yeah, obviously, not up to your standards, I get that. Just get in.” Rashid curled his lip and stepped into the van, dropping into the seat with obvious distaste. Luis looked at me and rolled his eyes. “I thought you were bad. I see it runs in the Djinn family.”

I said—and Rashid said, from within the van—“We are not family!”

Luis burst out with a short bark of laughter. “Sounds to me like you are.” Before sliding the door shut, though, he fixed Rashid with a long look, and leaned in to say,

“You touch Cassiel again, you hurt her again, and you and me, we’re going to have a disagreement, Rashid. It’ll end in a world of hurt. You understand?”

Rashid turned his eyes straight forward, not even so much as acknowledging the threat. Luis slammed the door, sighed, and said, “Try to get along, okay? This is tough enough without bar brawls with our supposed allies.”

Like Rashid, I didn’t bother to acknowledge his words, although they were undeniably wise.

I heard Luis say, grumpily, as he rounded the front to climb into the driver’s side, “Freaking Djinn.”

I smiled. Just a little.

Luis drove us to the approximate location where we’d stopped, and I led the two of them through the sand and scrub out into the wilderness. Luis kept up a steady whisper of curses under his breath as he trudged. He hated the desert, I believe. Certainly he was not in favor of its heat, although Rashid and I both gloried in it; Djinn were creatures of fire, and even as muted and diminished as I was, I could still feel the tingle of ecstasy along my nerves.

Luis sweated.

We arrived at the hillside where I’d buried the boy, with its view of ocher and red gullies and a burning blue sky, and Rashid crouched down, drew thin, clever fingers through the dirt, and looked up at me in surprise. There was something that shone in his eyes, momentarily, like respect. Then it was gone.

“How?” he asked. Luis looked at me, frowning.

“How what?”

“She knows.”

I did. he was asking about how I had touched the spirit of the Earth here, in this place.

I shrugged. “She came,” I said. “You can’t summon her. You know that.”

Rashid did, in fact, know. He watched me for another moment, then nodded and raked fingers through the dirt again. “You didn’t kill the boy,” he said. “I stand corrected.”

“I told you we didn’t,” Luis snapped. “Can you hurry up and track where he came from? Some of us need shade around here.”

For answer, Rashid plunged his hand down into the dirt, all the way to his elbow, and then drew it back out with a sharp twist. He shook the dust from it and nodded, eyes gone bright, but somehow distant. “The trail is clear,” he said. “But fading. I will leave you and follow it. It will be faster.”

“Rashid,” I said. “Don’t go too close.”

He made an impatient gesture. “I’m not afraid of your phantom enemy.”

“Neither was Gallan,” I interrupted. “Who is gone. Rashid. I don’t like you. But neither do I wish to see you destroyed. I am warning you: Don’t go too close. ”

He heard the urgency of what I said, and finally, unwillingly, nodded. Still, I didn’t feel he had truly understood. I stepped forward, touched his hand, and said, while looking directly into his glowing eyes, “She was once one of us. A Djinn. She will kill you if she can.”

He shook his head, rejecting the idea—mostly, of course, because it came from me. I controlled a flash of anger and continued. “I would ask another task of you.”

That made his eyes widen. He cocked his head, a trace of a frown between his brows. “What?”

“Find the boy’s people,” I said. “His family. Those who lost him. I would wish—I would wish to return him, if we can.”

He stared at me, no expression on his face for a long moment, and then gave a sharp, dry nod.

And then simply . . . faded. Gone. I saw a shimmer on the aetheric as he sped away.

Luis sighed. “So, I’m taking bets. Did we just do something really smart, or really, dramatically stupid?”

“I see nothing to say it can’t be both,” I said. “There is, after all, an endless supply of stupidity.”

We silently gave our respects to the dead child whom we were, once again, abandoning, and returned to the van for the long drive back to Albuquerque.

Before we got there, we ran into a roadblock of flashing lights.

Standing in front of the angled police cars was FBI agent Ben Turner, part-time Fire Warden, looking very grim indeed, and very much as if he had not slept since we’d last seen him. When Luis slowed to a halt and rolled down his window, Turner leaned in, took a quick, comprehensive look around the van, and said, “You both need to come with me. Right now.”