Rachel Caine - Undone

That would, I thought, be interesting.

I cocked an eyebrow. “I won’t screw it up if you won’t,” I said. “Are you sure you want to work with me?”

His grin surprised me. It changed him completely, made him real and full of secrets. “I like a challenge,” he said. “That’s why they picked me. That, and my work’s really pretty boring. You might liven things up a little. Also, I think I was probably the only one insane enough to say yes.”

I had never had the impulse to laugh. Smile, yes, but laughter was a new thing, and when it bubbled from me, uncontrolled, I was unsettled. So many odd things about living in this flesh.

But somehow, I felt it might not be as bad as I’d feared.

I’D NEVER EXPECTEDthat Manny Rocha didn’t live close by. Human distances baffled me, but when he showed me a map of the country— country , another thing to learn; I was a citizen of the United States now, according to the paperwork that Lewis had provided me—I discovered that it was far removed from Florida. As Lewis had warned me, he wanted me well away from Joanne, David, himself, and whatever crisis loomed for them—less, I suspected, from any concern for me than a desire not to trip over me in the heat of battle.

Manny pointed to an almost square state near the center of the map. “That’s New Mexico,” he it „said. “It’s another state. We’re in Florida right now, here.” He tapped the squiggle of irregular lines on the map. “Going here.” His fingers moved a long, long way between the two. “Now, usually I’d fly, but I don’t want you freaking out. Last thing I want to do is deal with you and Homeland Security at the same time.”

Freaking out , I realized, meant “losing control.” I frowned at him. “I will not freak out. ”

“Yeah, great. I still think I’d rather drive,” he said.

I looked again at the map. “How many minutes is this drive?” I was still struggling with the concepts of artificial time, but from the look on Manny’s face, I had not struggled hard enough. “Hours?”

“Days,” he said. “That’s a couple of days, lady.”

Days. Trapped in a clanking, stinking metal monster. No. “Is there no other way?”

“Like I said, we could fly, but—”

Flying. I was most comfortable in the air. “Fine.”

“You have to understand, there are rules—”

Everything had rules in the human world. Annoying. “I will not freak out.”

As Manny had supposed, I was wrong about that.

So many rules. I had no baggage, except for a leather bag to carry the identification the Wardens had given me, and a handful of currency that Manny, muttering under his breath, had withdrawn from a machine he’d called an ATM. I had watched the process carefully, then checked the plastic cards that the Wardens provided. I had one with my image imprinted on it that read at the top DRIVER’S LICENSE, which meant I could operate a motor vehicle. Not that I would ever wish to. I had a gold, shimmering card with the image of an ancient goddess on its surface.

“Credit card,” Manny explained, when I held it up. We were standing in line at the airport. “For buying things. But don’t buy things.”

“Then why did I receive one?”

“Because my bosses are crazy?”

I held up the next card.

“Yeah, that’s an ATM card. Somewhere in there, you should have information about your PIN number. That’s like a code you put into the machine. If you have the right code and the right card, you get money. Money comes to you from the Wardens. It’s compensation for the work you do for them.” Did my ears deceive me, or did Manny Rocha seem to resent that? “But you have to pay attention. You can’t pull out more money than you have in the account.”

That seemed straightforward enough. I put the ATM card, credit card, and driver’s license back into my purse, and pulled out a small dark blue booklet with pale blue pages. The inside front cover once again held my image. I stared at it for some time, but the image did not move.

“Passport,” Manny said before I asked. “You need that. Keep it out, along with your tickets.”

All around me, people were waiting. Some stood patiently, some fidgeted, some seethed. Traveling seemed to be a tremendous effort. I began to see why Manny might prefer to drive, despite the horrible, suffocating, noisy box on wheels. The journey would at least be under his control.

I watched the security process with great interest, but despite my study, when it came time for me to copy the actions of those who had gone before me, I found it clumsy and humiliating. I placed my bag in the plastic bin, which rumbled away through the machine— X-ray machine , according to Manny—and slipped off my shoes at the impatient motion from the guard and added those to another bin.

But when I walked through the portal, alarms sounded. I froze, frowning, as two large men in matching clothes came toward me.

“Back up,” one ordered. “Got any metal on you?”

Metal. I looked down at my clothing. I had a belt, yes, with a metal buckle. I removed it.

Alarms again. I felt an unfamiliar pressure in my chest. Anxiety? It was infuriating. These rules were infuriating. I had held power since before the ancestors of these humans had learned to scratch pictographs in rocks, and they were making me feel . . . afraid.

I gritted my teeth and removed my jacket when they ordered it. In my shirtsleeves, with bare feet, I walked through the portal, and no alarms sounded.

The relief was even more humiliating than the anxiety.

Manny Rocha breezed through without a pause, and stopped next to me to pull on his shoes and pick up the bags and detritus from his pockets. “Just remember. Flying was your choice.” He paused a second, then said without looking directly at me, “I thought you’d lose your temper.”

I almost had. “I did not.”

“Yeah. Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

I had been powerful once. Powerful enough to reduce this building to smoking ash. Instead of comforting me, that thought made me feel heavy in my skin, and helpless. Again.

I put on my shoes, belt, and jacket; grabbed my single bag; and followed Manny as he set out down the long, broad, busy hallway.

There were Djinn in the airport.

I don’t know why that came as a surprise to me; it shouldn’t have, but I had not thought there were so many of us walking the earth, much less lingering in this transient place. I waited for Manny to point them out to me, but he seemed oblivious, and when we took our seats in the area designated for our flight, I decided to open the subject.

“Djinn?” he repeated, frowning, and looked around sharply. “Where?”

Ah. So it was true; even the Wardens could not identify a Djinn in human form, if the Djinn wished to remain concealed. That meant that the humans around me, even those who had some bit of Warden ability, saw nothing when they looked at me but a tall, awkward, pale woman with untidy white hair.

No. I was nothing but a tall, awkward, pale woman with untidy white hair. No longer a Djinn. I had to remember that.

I shifted uncomfortably in the hard seat, and tried not to breathe too deeply. Public spaces were filthy with odors, soaked with emotions. It put me on edge.

I pointed to the first Djinn I saw. “There.” He was a plain young man in a red T-shirt and jeans, carrying a backpack, but I caught the flare of his aura. When he turned my direction, I saw a flash of opal in his eyes.

Then he disappeared into the crowd.

Manny was looking at me oddly. “Who?”

There was no point in trying. He wouldn’t recognize a Djinn, not the way I would. I shook my head and shifted again restlessly. I wanted to move, to walk. To feel less caged.