He buried his face in her long hair, settled her more comfortably in his arms, and then turned toward me. Isabel looked, as well, a pale flash of face, a blinding smile.
“Cassie!” she said. I walked toward them, and she held out her arms. I took her, not sure if it was a natural thing to do. Her weight felt awkward in my arms, nard but after a moment, it began to feel right as my body found its gravitational center again. She smelled of sweet things—flowers, from the shampoo that had cleaned her hair; syrup, from the pancakes she had been eating. It made her mouth sticky where she kissed me on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“I’m glad to be back also,” I said. I didn’t correct her about my name, not this time. I studied her at close distance. “How do you feel, Isabel?”
She didn’t answer, but her eyes did—they swam with sadness and a child’s sudden tears.
“Grandma Sylvia’s been making me pancakes,” she said. “You want pancakes?”
“Little late for pancakes, kiddo,” Luis said, and reclaimed the child from my arms to toss her over his shoulder and head for the door. “Sylvia?” He knocked on the door, and a shadow moved inside. A graying older woman opened the screen and smiled at him—a trembling sort of welcome, and there was a terrible distance in her eyes. She looked like Angela, and she had to stand on tiptoe to kiss Luis’s cheek. Her gaze went past him, to me, and her eyes widened.
“That’s Cassie,” Ibby said proudly, and pointed at me. “Grandma Sylvia, that’s Cassie! She’s my friend. I told you about her.”
“Cassiel,” I said, to be sure there was no mistake. “I prefer to be called Cassiel.”
Sylvia hesitated, then stepped aside to let me enter. She made sure to give me plenty of space to pass, as if she didn’t want to take the risk of brushing against me.
Did I look as forbidding as all that? Or only different?
The front room was a small, dusty parlor filled with old furniture and black-and-white photographs. One had been set out alone on the lace-draped table—Angela, only a few years older than Isabel, wearing a white dress and carrying flowers. There were fresh white roses in a vase on the table next to the photograph, and an ornate religious symbol—a crucifix.
“My daughter,” Sylvia said, and nodded at the table. “Angela.”
“I know. I knew her,” I said.
“Did you.” She studied me, and there was a deep mistrust in her expression. “I never saw you around before. I’d remember.”
I wondered how much she knew about the Wardens, about what Manny and Luis did. I wondered if she knew about the Djinn, and if so, if she knew about the dangers we represented.
Whatever the case, she clearly wasn’t prepared to trust me.
“She was Manny’s business partner, Sylvia,” Luis said. He let Isabel slide down to her feet. She clung to his leg for a few seconds, then ran off into the kitchen. It seemed impossible that something so small could have such heavy footsteps. “Cassiel’s a friend.”
Sylvia nodded, but it didn’t seem to me to be any sort of agreement.
He gave up, as well. “How’s Ibby doing?”
“She slept through the night,” Sylvia said. “But I don’t know. She’s manic like this, and then she cries for hours and calls for you, or her mother and father. Or for her.” She sent me a look that I could only interpret as a glare. I couldn’t think of a reason I should apologize, so I didn’t.
Luis cleared his throat. “Sylvia, I made the funeral arrangements. The mass will be on Thursday at eleven. The viewing starts at six tonight.” His voice took on a rough edge, and he stopped just for a second to smooth it again. “Do you think Ibby should go?”
“Not to the viewing, no,” Sylvia said. “She’s too young. Someone should stay here with her.” She didn’t look at me as she said it, but Luis did, raising his eyebrows.
I raised mine in return.
“Would you?” he asked. “Watch her for a couple of hours?”
“Of course.”
Sylvia’s back stiffened into a hard line. “Luis, may I speak to you in private?”
He rolled his eyes and followed her into another room. She shut the door, closing me out.
I wandered into the kitchen, where Isabel was dragging her fork through the remaining syrup on her plate. She looked up at me as she licked the fork clean. “Can you make pancakes?” she asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never made them.”
“It’s easy. I’ll show you.”
“You already ate pancakes,” I reminded her. “I don’t think you should eat more. Do you?”
Her shoulders fell into dejected curves. “You’re no fun.”
As a former Djinn, I felt a bit of satisfaction at that, but it faded quickly. The child was in pain, though she was trying to hide it from me.
“I’m sorry we were gone,” I told her. She didn’t raise her head. “I know you missed your uncle.”
“You, too.”
“I know.”
“Grandma Sylvia doesn’t like you,” Ibby said. “She doesn’t like you because you’re a gringa and she thinks you’re going to steal me away.”
“Steal you? Why would I steal you?”
“Because I’m not safe with Tío Luis. She says he’s why it happened.” It being the tragedy that had shattered her life.
The girl’s logic was unassailable. “So she thinks I would try to take you away. Why?”
Ibby shrugged. “You’re white. The police will like you better. So they’ll give me to you. That’s what Grandma Sylvia says. She says I’d be better off here, with her.”
I had no idea what that had to do with the issue, but I considered carefully before I said, “I wouldn’t steal you away, Isabel. You do know that, don’t you? I know you love your uncle and your grandmother. I wouldn’t take you away.”
“Promise?” Ibby looked up, and there were tears shimmering in her eyes.
“I promise.”
“Cross your heart.”
I looked involuntarily at the crucifix hung on the wall near the door. Cross your heart seemed a violent thing to do.
“No, silly, like this.” Isabel slid out of her chair, clattered around the table, and guided my hand to touch four compass points around where my mortal heart beat. “There. Now you promised.”
She climbed up in my lap, and I stroked her hair slowly as she relaxed against me. She was almost asleep when she said, “Cassie?” It was a slow, dreamy whisper, and I touched my finger to her lips. “I’m scared sometimes.”
“So am I. Sometimes,” I whispered, very softly. “I won’t let anything harm you.”
“Cross your heart?”
I did.
When Luis and Sylvia returned, Luis clearly was running short on patience, and Sylvia’s expression was as hard as flint. A smile would have struck sparks on her.
“Luis agrees that we’ll get my sister Veronica to come and sit with Isabel tonight,” Sylvia announced. “You’ll want to see Manny and Angela.”
She was instructing me, it seemed. I gave her a long, level Djinn stare, and she paled a bit.
“Thank you for your consideration,” I said. Isabel had fallen asleep in my arms, a limp, hot weight, and I adjusted her position so that her head rested against my neck. “I will put her to bed.”
“I’ll come with you,” Luis immediately volunteered. Sylvia’s lips pursed, but she said nothing as she cleared the syrup-smeared plate, fork, and empty glass from the table.
Isabel didn’t wake as I put her down on her child-sized bed—I wondered if it had once been Angela’s, as the furnishings seemed faded and used—and Luis showed me how to tuck her in. He kissed the child’s forehead gently, and I followed suit. Her skin was as soft as silk under my lips, and I felt a wave of emotion that surprised me.
Tenderness.
“Sylvia doesn’t like me because I am a gringa,” I said to Luis as I straightened, “and because she’s afraid I will take Isabel from you.”
He seemed surprised by this. I didn’t tell him Isabel had been the insightful one and not me. “Yeah, well, with my record the court might not be so thrilled, and it’s not like the Wardens are around right now to be character witnesses. Sylvia’s saying she wants to be her legal guardian, but that means Ibby has to live here, not come with me when I go off to a new assignment.”