I did. “How do we do that?”
“I’m working on it. You’re going to have to sit down with a couple of representatives from the Wardens, eventually, but I heard yesterday that some odd things turned up at Scott’s apartment, and the Wardens are looking at that differently.”
“And Molly Magruder?”
Luis shrugged. “That one’s a little tougher. I don’t know yet, but they said they’ve got some other leads on that, too. Anyway. I should find you a hotel; you dig in and wait for a while.”
“I could disguise myself,” I said.
“Yeah, you’ve done a great job so far. Pink hair?”
“No one looks at my face.” I thought I’d done a good job. It stung me that he disagreed. “I don’t like to hide away.”
“Nobody likes it, but it’s the smart thing to do,” he said. He pulled the truck off the road into the parking lot of a small, cleanly kept motel coated in pink adobe. “I’ll get your bike out of the back, but promise me you won’t go anywhere.”
I looked at him, said nothing, and got out of the truck. Luis shook his head and went around to the bed of the truck to wrestle the Victory down the ramp, while I entered the motel office to use my credit card to buy a room. It was a new experience for me, but not unpleasant; the clerk was efficient and impersonal, and the process short. By the time I came out again, Luis had the motorcycle parked in an empty spot next to the truck, and I had a chance fess to survey the damage.
The Victory had come through remarkably un-scarred. The same couldn’t be said for Luis’s truck, which was pitted, dented, and scraped where the paint hadn’t chipped or at least been dulled by the abrasive scrub of sand. The passenger’s window was gone, only jagged fragments remaining. The front windshield was a web of cracks and pits.
Luis was staring at it with folded arms and a miserable expression.
“Man,” he said, “knowing you is expensive.”
I wanted to say something appropriate, something that would mean I valued his company. Something to recognize the moments in the truck when the two of us had been—different.
Luis continued to look at the truck, and for a moment I caught the sadness in him, the loss, and I knew he was thinking of his brother. The brother he would have to see again soon, in the funeral home.
The brother I had failed.
“I want to see Isabel,” I said. That made him turn toward me, frowning. “I understand it’s a risk. But you said she was asking for me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, she was. But I don’t want to put any more of my family in the firing line right now. Do you?”
I shook my head slowly, haunted again by the image of Isabel crouched against the fence as bullets passed overhead to strike her parents. No. I could not risk her. Luis was a target, but so was I, and I could not guarantee the child’s safety.
“May I call?” I asked.
Luis took out his cell phone, dialed a number, and turned away to speak in Spanish. After a moment he handed the phone to me.
“Cassie?” Isabel’s voice was bright and hopeful, and I felt warmth grow inside me in response.
“Cassiel,” I automatically corrected her, but my heart was not in it. “I’m here, Ibby.”
“Where are you?”
“Close,” I said. “I’m watching over you.” I had a sickening memory of saying the same thing to Angela. Empty promises.
“I thought you left us. I thought you went away.” Her brightness dissolved into tears. “Mama and Papa can’t come home anymore. Can you?”
“Yes,” I said softly. “Yes, I can. But, Ibby, you must be patient. I’ll see you soon, I promise.”
“Okay.” She was a brave child, and she mastered her tears into wet snuffles. “I love you, Cassie.”
Human words. Human emotion. It felt too large for my chest, this feeling, too heavy with meaning. “Be well,” I whispered. “I will watch over you, Isabel.” I meant it.
I hung up the phone and handed it back to Luis, whose dark eyes were full of understanding. “She’ll break your heart,” he said. “I know.”
Our fingers brushed, and then I walked away to my small, silent room.
I slept very little, tormented by the memories of Manny and Angela lying dead, by the haunting sounds of Isabel’s tears, by the touch of Luis’s hands as he healed my injuries. These things were anchors, weighing me down. As a Djinn, I had been weightless, and without ties or cares, and that seemed far away now. Unreachable. All around me, the sounds of the human world roared on, and I found no peace within or without.
Morning found me awake and exhausted. In the light of the bathroom mirror, I was sallow, haggard, and the whites of my eyes were as pink as my hair. I shed my clothing slowly, dropping it piece by piece to the clean tile floor. As human bodies went, mine seemed overly tall, overly thin, barely softened by the rounded breasts and hips. My skin was of a fine, almost featureless texture, and it glowed pale under the harsh lights.
I am Djinn, I told my reflection. My reflection strongly disagreed.
The shower’s beating hot water restored me somewhat, and I wearily contemplated the problem of my dirty clothing. I would need to buy new garments eventually. These—even the leathers—had suffered during the night’s adventures. I had more, at the apartment the Wardens had provided. . . . But I knew, even without Luis loudly reminding me, that I should not return there. Home. It was not, though, and never would be. I had only one home, and it was far away, unreachable.
A careful pulse of power restored my clothes to a wearable state, removing grime, stains, smells, scrapes, and tears. I donned all the required pieces, including the leather, and used the motel’s drying device to return my hair to its usual flyaway puffball state.
And I waited, as Luis had instructed. The hours dragged by. I read the holy books provided in the drawers next to the bed, and was both pleased and annoyed—pleased that humans held their history in such high regard, and annoyed by translational inaccuracies.
Television proved to be something I was grateful I could turn off.
When the telephone rang, finally, I grabbed at it with eager relief. “Yes?”
There was a pause, a long one. “Cassiel?” Luis’s voice, and yet not his voice at all. I sat up slowly, hardly aware I had done so. There was something tired and awful in his voice. I looked at the clock beside the bed.
It was one in the afternoon. “Luis,” I said. “You have been to the funeral home.” That combination of words continued to strike me oddly.
“Yeah,” he said. His voice sounded slow and deep, as if every word seemed an effort. “About you. The Wardens have bigger problems than you right now, and the Djinn do, too. I’ve been trying to get anybody, up to Lewis, and it looks like we’re on our own.”
“I am no longer hunted?”
“Not by the Wardens. There are barely enough of us left in place to hold things together, much less go running around trying fight crime.”
“And the police?”
“I pulled a favor from the lead detective on the case—I knew him, from the old days. You’re off the hook. There’s no body, so they’re listing Sands as a missing person.” He paused. When his voice returned, it sounded very quiet and very vulnerable. “I picked out coffins. The funeral mass will be in a couple of days.”
“Funeral mass,” I repeated. “In the church?”
“Yes, in the church, where else would you have one?” he snapped, and I heard the harsh rattle of breath on the phone’s speaker. “Sorry. I’m just—me and Manny, we stuck together for a lot of years. Our mother died when we were kids, and Pop went a few years back. It’s just us, Angela’s family, and a bunch of cousins I barely know in Texas. I’m just feeling alone.”
“Can I leave the motel?” I asked. I was aware that I should say—something. But I had no notion of what comfort sounded like, among humans, and I did not think he would welcome it, not from me.