“Right,” she finally said. “So, you’re here to take your little lost sheep back where she belongs?”
He looked revolted. “Cassiel? We do not want her back. Do as you wish with her.”
I had never been an enemy of Bordan, but at that moment, I felt rage slowly building. “I will not be given,” I said. “I am not property.”
Bordan didn’t even accord me the respect of having heard my words. “She is no longer one of us. No longer Djinn.”
“She’s dying,” Joanne said. “Did you know that?”
“It’s her choice.” Bordan’s eyes flickered for a moment into the blue of a gas flame. “She knows how to gain Ashan’s favor. If she does the thing he asks of her, she will be welcome among us again.”
“Oh yeah?” Joanne licked her spoon contemplatively. “What thing would that be?”
Bordan only smiled.
Joanne must have read my expression quite well enough to see my desperate need to avoid this subject. “Cassiel? I’m not going to ask what it is. Just if you want to do it.”
“No,” I said. My throat felt tight and dry. “No, I do not want to do it.”
“Settles that.” She turned her attention back to the other Djinn. “So I guess our message to Ashan would be to kiss our pretty human asses, the end. See yourself out, then, unless you change your mind about the ice cream.”
Bordan looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or kill her. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You don’t know Cassiel at all. She is not some stray cat that will befriend you if you feed her.”
“Well, true, she’s more like a tiger. But I already trust her one hell of a lot more than I ever will Ashan. Because I do know him, bucko.”
“This is a senseless waste of time,” Bordan said. The fire had faded out of his eyes, and he looked a little taken aback. Clearly, he hadn’t been among humans much, either—or if he had, he hadn’t been prepared for the experience of Joanne Baldwin. I confess, neither was I. “She will die if she doesn’t agree to his wishes. She has no choice.”
“Bullshit,” Joanne said with an indecent amount of cheer. “She’s not dying. Not on my watch, she won’t. Point of information you can scurry back to Ashan and whisper in his ear: Cassiel can draw power from Wardens, just like any other Djinn. And that makes your blackmail about as effective as a roadblock in the middle of a parking lot, doesn’t it? So blow.”
“What?” Bordan looked completely confused now.
Her tone chilled. “Get out of my house,” she said. “Now. And tell Ashan any future visitors should make appointments with my social secretary. Oh, wait—don’t have one. So tell him to just start holding his breath until I get back to him.”
Bordan’s skin took on a hard glitter, like the ice on the tub of ice cream, and his eyes had an obsidian glitter sharp enough to cut. “You mock me.”
“Well, you may not have a sense of humor, but don’t let anybody tell you you’re not perceptive.” He didn’t seem to know how to take that response. Joanne rolled her eyes. “Go away, or you’re going to find out just how much power I really do have. You’re annoying me. You really don’t want to do that. I’ve been annoyed all to hell and gone the past few weeks already.”
I looked at her, still speechless. She was different to my eyes in that moment—strong, confident, and utterly sure of herself. Not a Djinn, who would never have been so direct. But for a human . . . formidable. Even without access to the aetheric, I felt power stir in the room, and knew it was rising up around her, framing her like a fan of hot, swirling light.
Bordan might have been her superior in raw power, but only if he was allowed to strike. And I could see, from the way he bowed his head, he was far from free to do so. “As you wish,” he said. “Keep the traitor. But if you do, know the risk you take. We may not be as forgiving in the future.”
“We’ll see,” Joanne said. “Must be one hell of a dirty job, if you’re that intent on making her do it.”
I could have told her, but it was a thing I strove to suppress. A shame I couldn’t bear to let surface, except in brief, painful surges.
Bordan couldn’t answer because he wouldn’t know. It was not a thing that Ashan would ever allow to be common knowledge, not to the other Djinn. That was one advantage I had; my spectacular ejection from the Djinn would cause doubt and rumors. And Ashan could not afford that. He might be powerful, but he had never been loved.
“If this is your decision,” Bordan said, “you may live with it. And, in time, regret it.”
Without another look in my direction, Bordan vanished, and took my last lingering hope with him. I would not be accepted back among the Old Djinn. I could never be one of David’s New Djinn; Ashan had ensured that by blocking my path to the aetheric levels of the world.
I could never be truly human, either.
In the lingering silence after, Joanne said, “I don’t know about you, but I think this situation just upgraded from ice cream to alcohol.”
I had never tasted wine before, and the strong smell of it nauseated me. I wet my lips with it and put it aside, revolted. Everything seemed wrong suddenly. My skin felt tight around my body, my borrowed clothes rough and abrasive as sandpaper. The light was too harsh, the room cluttered and full of sharp edges. I reached blindly for a chair and dropped into it, covering my eyes. I was shaking, and there was a pressure building inside of me, as if I might somehow inexplicably burst.
Instead, I felt wetness bleed from my eyes and flow down my cheeks. I wiped at it in confusion and saw tears on my pale hands.
“No,” I said. “No, I am not human. I do not cry like some helpless . . . animal!”
But I continued to sob, undone before the burning power of my own despair, and it made me angrier than ever. When Joanne tried to speak to me, I hit out at her, shoving her back.
She dealt me a sharp, stinging blow across the face. I cried out from the surge of pain, clapped my hand to my burning cheek, and stared at her in astonishment. My nose was running. I felt miserable, and miserably human.
“Stop acting like an ass,” she said. “You’re alive. You’re not lost, and you’re not dying. Ashan won’t take you back—well, boohoo. I’ve met the guy, and frankly I consider that a bonus. If you want to survive, you’re, going to need us. You need the Wardens. Stop being an idiot.”
Was I being an idiot? I felt like one, but only because I lacked the power to hit back. I glared at her, willing her to feel my anger. She did not seem impressed, but then, I’d heard the stories. . . . She had faced down Ashan and won. She had defeated Demons.
My feeble anger did not precisely terrify her.
“I don’t need your Wardens,” I said flatly. “I don’t need humans. I will never need them.”
“Guess what, Cupcake. You not only need Wardens—you might as well get used to the concept of needing humans, too, because you are one,” Joanne said. “For all intents and purposes. So I think you’d better reconsider.” She reached out, grabbed a box of pop-up tissues, and lobbed it neatly into my lap. I slowly pulled sheets from it and wiped clumsily at my streaming eyes, my dripping nose.
Joanne rolled her eyes. “Here,” she said, and grabbed a fresh tissue. She clamped it over my nose. “Blow.”
“What?”
“Blow out through your nose. C’mon, you’re a bad-ass Djinn—you can manage to blow your nose like a two-year-old.”
I blew, feeling humiliated and filthy and desperately angry about it. Then I got another tissue and blew my nose again, by myself, and felt some of the stinging in my eyes subside.
Joanne looked at me in silence for a few seconds. I looked back, utterly unable to find anything to say.
“Ice cream’s melting,” she said. “Bring the wine.”
I suspected later that she deliberately failed to warn me about the effects of the alcohol.