Rachel Caine: Unknown

Luis and I walked to the distant parking lot where we had left his large pickup truck—black, with dramatic bursts of colorful flames on both sides. He’d recently had it washed and polished, and it shone like ebony in the sun. I thought longingly of my motorcycle, which I’d reluctantly left behind; I preferred the simplicity and freedom of that transportation, not the enclosed space of the narrow metal box. But the windows did roll down, and although the day had grown cool, it was not yet cold.

It would be soon, though.

Before we reached the car, two people stepped into our path—a tall, wide man and a shorter, darker one. They held out black leather cases with gold-washed badges of identification.

Police.

I glanced at Luis as we both came to a stop, and he knew what I was asking: comply, or fight and run? I was unimpressed by human authority figures, except that I understood they could complicate my ability to operate in the already complex maze of human existence. Prison would be inconvenient.

Luis held out one hand to me, a clear wait gesture. I held myself ready to follow his cues.

“Detectives,” he said, and nodded to the two men.

“How can we help you?”

“You can get your ass up against the truck,” the shorter one said. “Hands on the hood. Feet apart. You two, Pink.”

He was referring, I assumed, to the fading shade of pink that still clung to my pale hair. I had not yet decided whether or not to scrub the last of it away, or renew it into a hot blaze of magenta. The contempt in the way he addressed me made me want to turn his hair into a burning pink bonfire.

Perhaps literally.

I smiled, instead, and as Luis moved to obey the orders, I did as well, placing my hands on the cool, slick finish and spreading my feet to a distance of about a shoulder’s width. When the shorter detective stepped up behind me, I said, very quietly, “I don’t enjoy being touched.”

“She’s not kidding,” Luis said. “You really don’t want to test her on that.”

“Got to pat you down for weapons,” the detective said. “And if you resist, I’ll Taser your fine albino ass and haul you to the county jail. Is that clear?”

“Oh man,” Luis sighed. “Just roll with it, okay?”

I supposed he meant that for me. I wasn’t quite certain what he wanted me to do, but I gathered, from the way he caught and held my eyes, that he wanted me to do nothing.

So, with a great deal of distaste, I allowed the stranger to put his hands on me, moving up my sides, across my back, down my legs and back up between them. Calm, I told myself. Remain calm. That was a great deal harder than I’d expected, but by continuing to stare hard into Luis’s wide, dark eyes, I found a certain measure of balance.

The detective stepped back. “She’s clean. Okay, your turn, Rocha.”

Luis smiled, very much as if he was used to this sort of treatment. “No problem. I know you enjoy this kind of thing.”

That drove whatever good humor there had been in the stranger completely away, and he slammed Luis forward with the bar of his forearm against Luis’s back, crushing him against the hood of the pickup truck.

I leaned back, taking my weight off the balls of my feet, and said, “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Shut up, punk,” the older, broader man said. “Hands on the hood. Hands on the hood! ”

“Why?” I didn’t comply. As much as I hated being touched and treated with contempt, my fury was well and truly ignited now not for myself, but for Luis. The shorter man was slapping his hand down Luis’s sides and legs with more violence than he’d shown me. “What have we done?”

“You think I need a reason to roust a Norteño asshole?” he shot back. “Think again.”

“I’m not Norteño,” Luis gritted out, face still smashed against the truck. “Haven’t been for years. Better get a new playbook, detective.”

“If you’re not Norteño, then why did the gang shoot up your brother and sister-in-law? Just for the fun of it?”

“I left. They didn’t like it. I just got back in town. You can check it out.”

The older man nodded to the younger, who let Luis go and stepped back. Luis got himself upright again and stepped back from the truck turning to face the two men. “What’s this about?” he asked.

“You.” The older man pointed at me. “Name.”

“Leslie Raine,” I said. It was as good as any, and I had Warden-produced identification to prove it was mine.

“Where you from?”

“Here.”

“Yeah, you look like a fucking native.” He dismissed me and turned back to Luis. “What are you doing hanging around the Federal Building?”

“I’m not hanging around,” Luis said. “We just came from seeing the FBI. Special Agent Turner. He’ll verify that.”

The two men exchanged a fast, unreadable look. “How’s an asshole like you rate time with a fed?”

“It’s not your business,” I said, with all the cold hauteur an eternity of being immortal had taught me.

That got me a longer appraisal from both men. “So what are you, some kind of a fed? Rocha’s some kind of informant?”

I smiled, slowly. “Do you really want to talk about this here? In the open?”

On the street, people were slowing down in cars to stare at us; in a storefront opposite, someone stood still, taking a photograph with his cell phone. I sent a pulse of power over the distance between us, squeezing metal and glass, and the phone gave a sad little electronic pop and died. The man frowned at his dead device and shook it impotently, as if he could shake life back into it. Then, seeing my expression, he quickly moved on.

I don’t like it when people stare.

Whether the two policemen believed me or not, they opted for caution. The older one nodded, and the younger one walked to an anonymous gray sedan nearby and opened the back door. “Inside,” he said.

“Are we under arrest?”

“Why? You got something we ought to arrest you for?”

I shrugged and got into the car. Luis took the opposite side, and the two doors thumped closed as the policemen moved to the front. Immediately, I began to feel constricted. This car was not as fragrant as most, but it was still deeply unpleasant, redolent of plastic, hot metal, unwashed flesh, and old food. I studied the interior door. There were no release handles; however, I comforted myself that this would hardly slow either of us down, should we choose to leave. Earth Wardens are not easily caged; Djinn, no matter how humiliated and cast out, even less so. But there are disadvantages to having such powers; for one thing, one cannot always find a useful way to apply them.

As now.

The policemen entered the car. It was warm inside, though not oppressively so; still, I felt stifled, and panic rose inside me. I closed my eyes tightly and concentrated on breathing, pushing air in and out of my fragile lungs, trying not to imagine what it might be like to be robbed of air, of breath.

“Hey, what’s wrong with your friend?” the smaller detective asked. I didn’t open my eyes. “You ain’t gonna puke, are you? If you do, you’re cleaning it up.”

“She doesn’t like cars,” Luis said. “Especially ones that stink like last night’s drunk tank. Now that we’re away from prying ears, what the hell do you want?”

The larger detective turned around, arm over the back of the seat, and said, “You’re an Earth Warden, right?”

I opened my eyes for that. Luis didn’t react in the slightest, not even by a change in his heart rate or respiration. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“I do environmental work. Big business these days, you know? Thinking green and all that.”