Rachel Caine: Undone

“Good question,” David said. “I don’t know. She isn’t saying much. She can’t.”

Joanne wasn’t angry, I realized, despite her words. She was looking at me with what I thought was vague kindness. “Cassiel,” she said. “David—you’re sure she’s really a Djinn? I mean—”

That frightened me. How could she not be certain of that? Had I fallen so low that I could be mistaken for a human ?

“Old Djinn,” I managed to say. “Ashan’s.”

Her next question came right to me. “I’ve never met you before, have I?”

“No.” Because I had never worn flesh before. Never craved it.

She nodded slowly, and a slight frown grooved itself between her eyebrows. “David says you’re hurt.” Her blue eyes unfocused, and her black pupils expanded. She was looking into the aetheric, I knew, and seeing my damaged soul. “My God. You really are hurt. Can you draw power at all?”

I managed to shake my head in the negative. Joanne turned to David. “What the hell is that bastard doing, dumping her out here on us? Is he trying to kill her, or just interfere with what we’re doing? We need to get out there, dammit! We’re supposed to be bait for the Sentinels, not—GeneralHospital for Wayward Djinn.”

They exchanged a look, a long one, that contained information I could not understand. David touched her gently, a stroke of fingers along the skin of her arm.

“I don’t know what he intends, but if we can’t figure out a way to get her access to the aetheric, this will kill her, no question about it,” David said. “She’s very weak. She could barely settle into this form. No chance she can shift again, at this point. She’s living on whatever she has in reserve right now, and what I try to give her just bleeds away. I think because she’s Ashan’s creature, I can’t really touch her. Not even to save her.”

Joanne pulled up a chair and sat, elbows on her knees. She was wearing a close-fitting red top and rough blue woven pants, and there was a glitter of gold on her left hand with a fire-red ruby in its center. “Want me to try?” she asked, cutting her eyes toward David. He crossed his arms, frowning deeply. “C’mon, it’s worth a shot. You already tried. Ashan’s clearly left the clue phone off the hook. Let me have a go. Better than just letting her up and die on us, right?”

He gave her one sharp nod, but said, “If anything happens, I’m cutting the connection. Careful. Cassiel’s strong, and she’s not herself.”

I wanted to be offended by such presumption from a mere New Djinn—even one such as David—but I couldn’t deny the truth. I was not myself. I no longer even knew, truly, what portion of myself I’d lost, or what remained.

I felt that I was losing more of myself with every beat of my all-too-human heart.

Joanne took a deep breath, reached out, and folded her long, carefully manicured fingers around my strange pale ones.

And power snapped a connection tight between us, like lightning leaping to ground, and I felt my whole body convulse with the impact. Such power , rolling like red-hot lava through veins and nerves, feeding and filling the dark hollows of my bones. I almost wept in relief, so strong was it, so great was my need, and I greedily pulled power from her vast, rich store, bathing in it, glorying in it. . . . . . . Until a sharp, heavy, black force slammed between us, and the flow of energy disappeared.

David stood between us, and he pushed me back down, one hand solidly on my chest. He held me on the bed as I struggled, panting, but his attention was on Joanne Baldwin. She was standing against the far wall, and the chair in which she’d been sitting was lying overturned on the floor. As I watched, she slid slowly down the wall and hid her face in shaking hands.

“Jo?” David sounded alarmed and angry. “Are you all right?”

She waved vaguely without looking up. “Okay,” she said. “Give me a minute. Not fun.”

He pulled in a breath and turned his focus back to me. “Be still,” he snapped, and I stopped struggling, suddenly aware how desperate I seemed—how primeval—and of the anger in his eyes. I stilled myself, except for fast, panting breaths, and nodded to let him know I had control of myself again. He reluctantly let me go. I sat up, but slowly, making no sudden moves to trigger his defenses.

“I’m sorry,” I said, forming the words more easily now. “I did not mean to hurt her.”

“Well, that makes it all better,” Joanne said, and groaned. “And also, by the way, ow. Crap, that hurt.” Her blue eyes were bloodshot and vague, as if she’d taken a blow to the head. “Right. Maybe I’m not cut out for being Florence Nightingale to the Djinn.”

I felt better. Steadier, if nowhere near normal. At least my human form seemed to be working properly—that was a start. I pushed the covers back and swung my legs off the bed, but it took a long, agonizing moment before I could drag myself upright and find my balance.

David didn’t help me. In fact, both he and Joanne kept a wary, watchful distance.

“She’s stuck in that form?” Joanne said.

“As far as I can tell.” He was looking at me with a kind of clinical interest, and I put one foot carefully in front of the other, taking my first trembling steps as a human, until I arrived at the mirror on the closet door.

Tall, this body. Thin. For a female form, it was narrow, barely rounded at the breast and hip. Long arms and legs, all of my skin very pale. My hair was a white puffball around my head, frail and ethereal, and my eyes . . . . . . My eyes were the cool green of arctic ice. No shine of Djinn to them, despite the color. I had no power to spare for that sort of display.

“Too bad, really,” Joanne said as she levered herself back to her feet, staggering only a little. “Because I’m pretty sure the albino look will limit your fashion choices. And it does make you stand out. Then again, there’s always spray tanning.”

This was the form I’d chosen, out of instinct. It must have had some truth to it. I shrugged, watching the play of muscles beneath the flawless white skin.

David cocked his head, watching me as I inspected my new body.

Joanne noticed. “Uh, honey? Unless you’re planning to start stuffing dollars in her nonexistent G-string, a robe might be nice.”

He smiled, and retrieved a garment from the back of her closet door. It was a long, pale pink fall of silken cloth, and it settled cold against my skin but began to warm almost immediately. My first clothing. The color reminded me of disjointed things: primroses in the spring, cherry blossoms fluttering in the wind, sunrise. And it reminded me most strongly of the shifting, ethereal colors of a Djinn’s aura on the aetheric, so pale as to be transparent.

I smoothed the fabric, belted it, and looked up at the two of them. David had moved to Joanne’s side, both of them staring at me with identical expressions that were not quite welcoming, not quite mistrustful. Cautious. “Thank you,” I said. “I am better now.”

I had not, in a thousand years, said a word of gratitude to a New Djinn, let alone to a human. Humans were lesser beings, and I felt nothing for them but contempt, when I bothered to feel anything for them at all.

So it cost me to speak the words, and I still felt a core of anger that I had been brought so low. I knew she heard the resonance of it. The arrogance. But is it arrogance if one is truly superior?

“Don’t thank me yet. You’re feeling better, but that’s not going to last,” Joanne said. “The power you pulled from me is going to dry up on you, and it’ll go faster the more you try to use your powers. Best I can tell, you can’t access the aetheric at all yourself; you can only do it when touching a human. A Warden.” Her eyes grew narrow and very dark. “Which makes you a kind of Ifrit. One who preys on humans instead of other Djinn. I can’t even tell you how much that doesn’t make me happy.”