He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "I turn in reports, yeah. They want to make sure you're not--"
"Out of control."
"Exactly."
"Am I?"
It was Manny's turn not to answer. He held the silence, and the stare, and I could not read his impenetrable human eyes at all. So much lost in me. So much that could go wrong.
"Help me up," he said, and held out his square, muscular hand. I did, careful to keep it only to surface touching, although I could sense the power coursing through him even through so light a contact. "Get your coffee. Let's go to work."
Work was a new and interesting concept for me. I understood duty, of course, and using one's skills and powers for a purpose. But work was a completely different thing, because it seemed so . . . dreary.
Manny Rocha had an office. A small, cheap single room in a building full of such accommodations. The sign on the windowless door read, ROCHA ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES. He unlocked the office and stepped inside, gesturing for me to follow as he picked up a scattering of envelopes from the carpeted floor. "Sorry about the mess," he said. "Been meaning to pick up a little."
Whatever Manny's skills might entail, clearly organization was not one of them. Mountains of paper and folders towered on every flat surface, leaning against each other for drunken support. There was not a single spot, other than his chair behind the broad, rectangular desk, that held clear space.
"Yeah," he said, seeing my expression. "Maybe mess doesn't really cover it. I've been meaning to get around to it--it's just that--"
"You hate such tasks."
"Filing. You got it."
"How would you prefer it to be filed?"
He stopped in the act of picking up a handful of fallen papers and turned toward me. "What?"
"How would you prefer it to be filed?" I repeated, exercising patience I had not known was available to me until that moment.
"Listen, if you can file this shit, you can do it any way you want." He sounded both hopeful and doubtful, as if I might believe that the filing of papers was beneath me. What he did not seem to understand was that when everything humans did was beneath me, a mundane task such as filing made very little difference.
"Very well," I said. I could have done it in a dozen different ways--from subtle to dramatic--but I chose a Djinn-style flourish. The paperwork vanished from every surface with an audible pop of displaced air, even the sheafs held in Manny's hands, and I expanded my consciousness to analyze the fundamental structure of every folder, every file. Destroying and re-creating at will, even though it was a ridiculous expense of power. "Open the drawer."
The far wall of his office was a solid block of cabinets with sliding drawers. He hesitated, then opened one at random.
Inside, a neatly ranked system of folders, filed papers.
"I filed them by subject," I said. "I can change that, if you wish, of course."
"You're kidding," he said blankly. "Dios mio, you're not kidding. There's a folder here on boundary disputes. On acid levels in the water. On--what the hell is this?" He pulled a folder out and frowned at it. "Boundary adjustments in Colorado? That's not supposed to be here. Hell."
Manny closed the file drawer and sat down in his chair. Hard. He looked around at his office as if he'd never seen it before, placing his hands palm down on the empty desktop. "Holy shit," he said. "You--how did you do that?"
I shrugged. "Simple enough. It's only paper and ink, after all." Except that I had expended far too much power in doing it, though I decided I would not tell him that. I sat in the leather armchair across from him. "What else shall we do?"
He was staring, and suddenly he barked out a sound it took me a moment to identify as laughter. "You do windows too, Cassie?"
"Cassiel."
"Right, sorry."
I sensed I might be in danger of becoming too accommodating. "No. I do not do windows."
"Then we can go right to the Warden stuff, I guess." He cleared his throat and reached for the computer keyboard off to the side, sliding it in front of himself. The machine was angled toward him from a corner of the desk. "Can't believe I can actually see the damn screen without moving things around. Let me check e-mail."
"You have forty-seven messages," I said. "Six of them have to do with requests for support from other Wardens. Shall we focus first on those?"
"I never had a Djinn," Manny admitted. "This how it was before? Working with a Djinn?"
I had no idea, but the idea of being compared to one of my kind enslaved to a bottle turned my too-human stomach, and I knew my expression hardened. "I doubt it."
He knew dangerous ground when he stepped upon it. Manny nodded. "I guess you can read the e-mails?"
"Of course."
"Which one is most urgent?"
I gave it a second's thought. "The new instability Warden Garrity identified in Arizona is classified as a strike/slip fault."
"Garrity, Garrity--" Manny clicked keys and pulled up the e-mail in question. He read it through, nodded, and said, "Yeah, that's a place to start. Okay. Here's what we do--we mark it on the aetheric; we tag it so it's clearly visible. If there's a stress buildup, we bleed that off through surrounding rock in smaller tremors. Otherwise, the spring keeps on coiling, and we get a big shake when it releases. Usually that's no big deal, but it can cause a lot of damage if we don't head it off."
I nodded, familiar with the concepts. It was different as a Djinn, but still similar enough. "How do I assist you?"
He took his gaze from the screen to glance at me for a second. "Don't know. Just follow me and see if you've got any ideas."
I was anchored to human flesh. "I--need to touch you. To rise into the aetheric."
"No biting," he said, and held out his hand. I reached across the desk to take it. It was his left hand, and the metallic gold of his wedding ring felt an odd contrast to the skin and bones. "Ready?"
"Ready," I said. I didn't know if I was, but surely rising into the aetheric was as natural to me as breathing was to a human.
It wasn't. Not anymore. It felt wrong, the way I had to fight free of the heavy, dragging anchor of my body. Only Manny's sure touch kept me from falling back. Even after we had risen, and the spectrums shifted to show us auras and the mysteries of perceptions, I felt the continuing pull to return.
I had not known it was such hard work.
Manny couldn't speak in the aetheric, but he didn't need to. I was pulled along like a child's doll as he arrowed up into the higher plane, leveled out, and looked down on the Earth. It was a dizzying view, all opalescent colors, sparks, whispers. In the aetheric Manny looked startling--younger than in his physical form, slimmer, and almost completely covered with the shifting ghosts of tattoos. I didn't know what they symbolized, but clearly they were important to him.
His aura was a pale blue, tinged and sparked with yellow and gold. Not as powerful as others I had seen, but powerful enough for the work he was doing.
He pointed, and I nodded, bracing myself for the fall. When it came, it was shockingly fast. The ground rushed toward us, and the snap of energy whipped us to a hovering stop above a landscape alive with a twisting line of fire. Not real fire, but energy, stored deep beneath the planet's skin. Building toward explosion.
Had I still been Djinn, I would have simply admired the violence of it, the beauty of the incredible forces at work. But Djinn weren't at risk from such things, and so had nothing to fear. We did not build. We rarely died.
Humans were not so fortunate. For the first time, I found myself wondering about the fates of those milling thousands in their homes, towns, and cities, oblivious to the explosive danger under their feet.
I found myself caring.
I wasn't sure whether I found that intriguing or annoying.
Bleeding off the energy through surrounding rock was a delicate, slow process, but gradually the fault's energy faded from a throbbing, urgent red to a pale gold, stable and calm. It would present a constant thr
eat, but with regular maintenance from the Earth Wardens, it would only threaten, not destroy.
When Manny released his grip on me, it was like a giant steel spring snapped tight, and I spun out of control away from him, hurtling through the aetheric, through the oil-slick layers of color. The descent was sickening. Terrifying. If I had been able to scream, I would have; how was it humans traveled this way, dragged down by their anchoring bodies?
I slammed back into flesh with a spasmodic jerk that nearly toppled the armchair. Across from me, Manny Rocha barely flinched as he settled into the human world again.
He opened his eyes to look at me, and there was a glow in his eyes that took me by surprise. Power, yes, and something else.
Rapture.
It faded quickly, as if he didn't want me to see it in him. "You okay?" he asked. I shook my head. My mouth was dry, my stomach empty and growling. Worse than that, though, I felt . . . exhausted. Drained again. I felt a soul-deep stab of frustration. I can't live this way, off of the scraps of others. I am Djinn!
Ashan had made me a beggar, and in that moment, I hated him for it so bitterly that I felt tears in my eyes. Now I would weep like a human, too. How much more humiliation could I bear?
Manny's hands closed on my shoulders. I drew in a startled breath, and my pale fingers circled his wrists. I had intended it to be defense, to throw off his touch, but the sense of his skin on mine stilled my panic.
"I need--" I couldn't speak. I'd taken so much this morning, and yet it was already spent. I felt on the verge of collapse, horribly exposed.
Manny understood. "Promise you won't take more than I give?"
I nodded.
It was trust, simple and raw, and I did not deserve it.
It took a wrenching, painful effort, but I took what was offered, and nothing more.
Perhaps I could learn to deserve it.
Chapter 4
WE HAD WORKED only a half day at reducing the stress in the fault, but Manny decreed that I needed rest.
"I'm fine," I told him sharply, as he gathered up his keys on the way to the door.
"Yeah, you're fine now," he said, "but you're going to need some sleep. Trust me on this, Cassiel. Wardens go through this when we first start out. It's natural to have to build up your endurance."
Not for a Djinn, I thought but did not say. None of this was natural for a Djinn, after all.
Manny had locked the office door behind us and we were on our way to the elevators when a stranger stepped out to block our path. Clearly one of my kind, to my eyes; he was wreathed in golden smoke, barely in his skin, and his eyes were the color of clear emeralds.
Not a stranger, after all. Gallan. He didn't so much as glance at Manny; his stare stayed on me. I came to a halt and reflexively put a hand out for Manny to stay behind me.
"What do you want?" I asked. Gallan--tall in this form, long-legged, with long, dark hair worn loose--seemed to find me amusing in my fragile human form. He leaned against the wall, with his arms folded, still blocking our path.
"I came to see if it was true." His eyebrows slowly lifted. "Apparently, it is. How did you anger him so, Cassiel?"
There was only one him, for us. Gallan was, at times, a friend and ally, but first and foremost, he was a Djinn. An Old Djinn, one of Ashan's, and I could no longer trust him. "It's not your business." I meant it as a warning. He couldn't have taken it any other way, but something about it amused him.
"Have you seen any others? Since--" His gesture was graceful, vague, and yet all inclusive. Since this happened. The event being, of course, too embarrassing and humiliating to mention directly.
"No," I said sharply. I had, but there was no reason to tell him. "Leave, Gallan. I don't want company."
"You never do." He smiled slowly. "Until you do. Tell me that it is completely done between us, and I won't trouble you again."
I felt my pale cheeks heating--a human response. Pulse beating faster. I didn't know if it was fright or something else. Something just as primitive.
"Leave."
"Tell me again." His eyes took on a brilliant gleam, sharp enough to cut.
"Leave."
"Again." He took a step toward me, and I felt the heat of him, the smoke, the fire. "Once more and it's done, Cassiel. Once more and you'll never see me again."
The word locked in my throat. Threes are powerful to us, compelling. I could dismiss him, and he would go.
I could not say it.
Another step brought him even closer to me, close enough to raise a hand that trailed light at the edges of my vision. He stroked my cheek, and I shuddered.
Gallan leaned closer, so close he eclipsed the world, and those eyes were as hungry as gravity.
"Do what he wants," he whispered, barely a breath in my ear, "and come home, Cassiel. Come home."
He melted away into mist. I caught my breath on a cry--rage, loss; I wasn't certain what emotion tore a hole through me, except that it was violent and painful.
Manny put a hand on my elbow. "Who the hell was that?"
I barked out a sound that was not quite a laugh. "A friend." I got a look of utter disbelief in return. "A very old friend."
The human world seemed so limited and lifeless, after the glitter in Gallan's eyes. I felt sick and faint and lost. It must have shown, because Manny's grip tightened on my arm.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's get you home."
Days passed, and Manny was right: I did build up endurance over time. Soon the clumsy process of entering and exiting the aetheric felt natural to me, and I learned to ration my own resources until I could stay with Manny until he, not I, tired.
"I couldn't do this before," he admitted to me one afternoon, after a long day of working with a team of Fire Wardens to help contain a major conflagration across the border in Arizona. "Work all day like this, I mean. You help a lot. You're learning fast."
It was surprisingly touching, receiving even such a casual compliment. I nodded carefully, wiping my forehead free of a light beading of sweat. We were outside at the fire, not in the office, and we stood at the boundary of the area in a section deemed safe. I had not seen the Fire Wardens, but that was because (Manny assured me) they were in the thick of the blaze, fighting it from within. That seemed a grim risk to take, but this time, at least, they were successful. The flames were dying.
No doubt the human firefighters around us were a part of that, as well--they were filthy, exhausted, hunched empty-eyed on camp chairs as they drank cold water or ate what the volunteers had brought for them. Brave, all of them. None of them had to be here, and I was only now beginning to realize why they were here. Some of them because it was a job, most certainly, but some because it was a calling. A thing of honor.
I could not help but honor them in turn.
Manny checked the fire again--we had raised fire-breaks of earth and green vegetation, which a faraway Weather Warden had saturated with steady downpours--and said, "I think we're done here. Looks like they're mopping it up now. Come on, I have a stop to make."
Another one? I had been hoping for home, a bath, and bed, but I kept silent as we walked to Manny's battered pickup truck. It wore a new layer of ash and smudged smoke over the old dirt; he shrugged and, with a slight pulse of will, cleared the windshield, leaving the rest of the dirt intact. "Looks strange to have a clean vehicle out here," he told me, when I sent him a questioning look. "You get noticed. Better to blend in."
I was getting used to the stink of the internal combustion engine, but it still seemed wrong after the cleaner organic compounds in the smoke of the forest. I rolled down the window and took in slow, shallow breaths. After a moment, I realized that I was covered with a faint layer of soot, and the need for a bath climbed higher on my priorities. Just a little, I thought. Just enough to make myself clean.
It was a selfish use of my hoarded power, but I couldn't stand being dirty. I used a light brushing of it to sweep off the soot, just as Manny had cleaned his windshield.
Manny glanced my way. "You okay?"
My power levels were still adequate, if not strong; I wouldn't need to draw again for some time. "I'm fine," I assured him. "Where are we going?"
"You'll love it," he said, and grinned in a way that convinced me this was one of his attempts at a joke.
"The fire," I said. "I thought there would be more attention put to it by the Wardens."
Manny sent me a cautious glance. "Yeah, usually there would be. There's something going on, on the East Coast. Most of the stronger Wardens are out there, or heading there. So we're on skeleton crew, working with whatever we can." His smile reemerged. "That's why we have to make this stop."
We drove fifteen miles on a rutted dirt road and turned into an equally rutted dirt driveway, crossing a metal grating with bone-jarring thumps. When Manny braked in a cloud of dust, I looked around for landmarks.
There were none, except for a small house and a large storage building--a barn?--still distant. No sign of anyone nearby.
Manny got out of the truck and walked away. I frowned, debating, and then followed without being summoned.
"Where are we going?" I demanded again, more sharply. Manny pointed. "Where?"
"Right there," he said, and I heard that tone again, as if this was providing him some subtle amusement. And he kept walking toward the area he'd indicated.
Which was, in fact, a cattle pen. Inside of it, the huge beasts milled, bumped against each other, made low sounds of either contentment or distress.
As I walked nearer, I began to perceive the smell.
I stopped. "No."
"Part of the job, Cassiel," Manny said without pausing. He vaulted up on the metal bars and over the railing, landing with a thump inside the pen, his boots barely avoiding a thick clump of cattle waste.
The beasts took little notice of his arrival. I held my breath, hovering at the barely acceptable limits of the rich, earthy stench, as Manny touched each creature. He was marking them, I realized, each with a touch that showed in the aetheric. "What are you doing?" I choked, and put my hands over my nose and mouth as the smell threatened to overwhelm my defenses.
"Checking them out," he called back. "We've had some outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease around here, and even one case of mad cow we were able to cure. But we have to stay on top of it. One scare like what happened in Britain, and the beef industry is in real trouble. Used to be another Earth Warden around here who specialized in this stuff, but he's gone."