It only took one word to destroy me, after millennia of living in peace and security, and the word was No.

I knew as I made my answer that it would not come without consequences. Had I known just how vast those would be, and how far they would ripple, I doubt I would have had the courage.

Humans say that ignorance is bliss, and perhaps that’s true, even for Djinn.

For a moment, it seemed that my act of outright defiance brought with it no reaction. Ashan, the Djinn facing me – one of the oldest of the Old Ones – was a swirl of brilliance without form, a being without the trap of flesh, just as I was.

I thought that perhaps, this time, my defiance might go unpunished, and then I felt a ripple in the aetheric currents surrounding me. The aetheric was the world in which I lived, a plane of light and energy, heat and fire. It had little in common with the lower planes, the ones tied to dirt and death. I lived in heaven, and a ripple in heaven was ominous indeed.

I watched as Ashan – brother, father, god of my existence, newly made Conduit from Mother Earth to the Djinn – took on form and substance. It required power to do such a thing here, in this place; I had not bothered with form in so many turnings of the world I didn’t think I could even remember the shapes, and even if I did, I had not the raw force necessary to manipulate things here.

Ashan’s aetheric form became ominously solid and dark, and I felt the ripples grow stronger, rocking the reality around us. The bands and currents of colors, pastel and perfect, took on sharp edges. Rainbows bled and wept.

“No?” He repeated my answer from a mouth that was almost human form, giving me the chance to change it. To save myself.

“I cannot. No.”

This time, the rainbows burned. Another ripple hit me in a wave, hot and thick with menace, and I felt a strange pulling sensation that quickly became ... pain, as much as one could feel pain without physical form. I was in danger; every instinct screamed it.

“Last chance,” Ashan said. “Cassiel, don’t test me. I can’t allow your rebellion. Not now. Do as you are ordered.”

What I was doing wasn’t rebellion, but he couldn’t see this so clearly, and I could not explain. I had never been known for my reasonable nature, and I never explained myself.

I stayed silent.

“Then you chose this. Remember that.”

I felt the tugging inside of me turn white-hot, searing in its intensity. I felt the exact moment when Ashan ripped away my connection to the aetheric, to him, to the mother of us all, the Earth.

Beyond that, the vast and unknowable God.

I felt the exact moment when I died as a Djinn, and fell, screaming. I crashed through all the planes of heaven, shattering each in turn, a bright white star burning as it fell. I took on form.

Solidity.

Pain.

I landed face down in the mud and dirt.

Destroyed.

###

"Cassiel."

The voice was a whisper, but it burned in my ears like acid. The slightest sound -- even my own name -- was agonizing. I had never been hurt before, and I was drowning in the sensations, the agony of it. The humiliating fury of helplessness, of being trapped in flesh. Of being mutilated and emptied and cut off.

The worst of it was that it was my own fault.

I rolled away from the sound of my name being called again, and from the gentle brushing touch of a hand. My fresh-born nerves screamed, outraged by every hint of pressure. I couldn't separate my thoughts from the overwhelming, crushing burden of senses I had never bothered to master before, because I had never bothered to be human.

"Cassiel, it's David. Can you hear me?"

David. Yes. David was Djinn, a Conduit like Ashan. He would understand. He could help. He could sense the echoing emptiness inside me where my power had once been: he could tell how badly damaged I was. He could make it stop.

"Help," I whispered, or tried to. I don't know if he understood me. The sounds that came from my mouth sounded less like words than the raw whimpering of a wounded animal. There was no elegance to my plea, no eloquence. I had no grace. I was trapped in a prison of heavy, uncooperative flesh, and everything hurt. I tried to get away from the pain, but no matter how I writhed, changing my skin, changing inside it, the burn was constant. The agony of being alone never went away.

His voice grew louder, more urgent. "Cassiel. Listen to me. You're shifting too fast. You have to choose a shape and hold on to it, do you understand? You're killing yourself. Stop shifting!"

I didn't understand. It was all flesh, and nothing felt right, nothing felt true. I kept blindly changing my form -- the shape of my face, the length of my legs and arms, my height, my weight. I abandoned human templates altogether for something smaller, something catlike, but that felt wrong, too, worse than wrong, and I clawed back into human flesh and fell on my side again, panting and exhausted. I blinked my eyes -- oh, so limited, these eyes, seeing such a narrow spectrum of light -- and saw that my exhausted body had settled into a female form, long-limbed, pale. The hair that straggled across my field of vision was very pale, as well -- white, with a touch of ice blue. It matched the devastating cold inside of me.

I was shivering. Frozen. I had never known what it was really like, nerves rasping on each other in such a way. It felt horrific and humiliating, being so exposed, so raw and badly formed.

Something warm fell across my naked body, and I rolled into it, groaning uncontrollably. I felt myself lifted up and embraced in David's arms, weak as a newborn child.

I fixed my gaze on his face. So different. He was not the bright, burning flame I had known from the aetheric; here, he was in the form of a human man. Still, there was a touch of the Djinn in the hot coppery color of his eyes, and in the gleam of his skin.

David had always loved abiding among mortals, while I’d avoided them, shunned the idea of taking flesh at all. We had never been friends, even so much as Djinn might be; allies from time to time, when the occasion suited. Never more. Ironic we should find ourselves at the same destination, by such different roads.

"Cassiel," he said again, and brushed hair back from my face as he braced my head against his chest. "What happened to you?" He sounded genuinely concerned, although I was none of his responsibility – but David had always had a touch of the human about him, because of his origins. False-born, a Djinn only in power and not in lineage, bred from humans and brought up to the Djinn only through the catastrophic deaths of thousands. They called themselves the New Djinn. Not like Ashan. Not like me. We were the True Djinn, born of the power of the Earth. These others were merely late-coming pretenders.

“Can you hear me? What happened?”

Even had I been in command of my new lips, lungs, and tongue, I couldn't confess what had brought me down to this terrible state, not without revealing more than even David should know.

I would not tell.

He must have seen that, because I felt his attention focus on me, warm and liquid, passing over and through me. It was ... soothing. Like his hand, which was stroking my hair, avoiding contact with my fragile, newborn skin.

His expression changed, eyes widening. I didn’t have enough experience with human faces to know what that meant. "You've been cut off. Cassiel, you’re dying. Why has Ashan done this to you?"

He was right: I was dying. I sensed my hunger, a dark core of desperation inside that was growing worse with each labored breath I took. Djinn don't need human food; we sustain ourselves from the aetheric ... but I could no longer reach it. The life of the Djinn, the very breath of it, was closed to me.

No wonder it all hurt so badly.

I felt David lifting me, felt the drag of gravity heavy on my flesh. What if he dropped me? I imagined the impact, the pain, and felt a horrible surge of terror. I huddled in his arms, helpless and furious with inadequacy.

Cassiel the great. Cassiel the terrible.

Cassiel the undone.

I forced my senses outward, away from my raw flesh, to focus on the world around me. I was in a human home of some type, with no memory of how I'd found it, or how David had found me. Everything seemed too bright, too sharp, too flat. I couldn't sense my surroundings as I should have been able to, as a Djinn would have know them; the bed on which he carefully laid me felt cool against my skin, and blissfully soft, but it was just nerves responding to pressure and temperature. Human senses, blunt and awkward.

As a Djinn, I should have been able to know this room at a glance -- know its history, know where and how everything in it had originated. I should have been able to unspool the history of each small thing back through time, if I wished. I should know it all down to its smallest particles, and be able to make and unmake it at will, with enough power and ability.

But instead I sensed it as a human might, in surfaces, interpreted in light and smell and touch and sound. And taste. There was a foul metallic coating in my mouth. Blood. I swallowed it, and felt a twinge of nausea. I could bleed. The thought made me feel even more fragile.

The bed sagged on one side as David seated himself next to me. "Cassiel," he said again. "Try to speak."

I licked my lips with a clumsy, thick tongue, and squeezed air from my lungs to mumble, "David." Just his name, but it was a triumph of a kind. And his smile was a reward.

"Good," he said. "Before we do anything else, let me give you some power. You're badly injured. I won't overload you -- just enough to stabilize you. All right?"

He took my hands in his -- gently, but still my nerves screamed in protest at the unfamiliar touch. I rattled inside, and realized that what I felt was anxiety, channeled through human instincts.

The fear mounted as I felt the warmth David granted cascade into me ... and pass right through me. I couldn't hold on to what he was trying to give. It was maddening, like watching life-giving water flow by in a tunnel, while dying of thirst.

David let go and sat back. Behind him, the sun was rising through an open window, a fierce ball of fire draped in oranges and reds and pinks, barely filtered by the thin white curtains. I turned my face away from its burning, unable to feel its energy the way I had as a Djinn. The rumpled sheets smelled of human musk. The table beyond the bed held some kind of mechanical device with hard-burning red characters, an abstract thing that only gradually made sense to me as a type of clock for marking hours. So slow, this way of understanding. So pitifully, painfully slow.

A closet on the far side of the room was open, revealing a dizzying rainbow of cloth and color. The room smelled sharply of perfumes, soaps, and sex.

"This is Joanne's room," David said. "She'll be back soon. Cassiel, can you try to tell me what happened?"

I shook my head, or tried -- that was the currently accepted negative gesture, or so I thought. Even though I had never taken flesh before, there were things the Djinn knew, things they absorbed. Human languages. Human habits. We could not avoid them, not even those who held ourselves strictly apart; the knowledge seeped through the aetheric, into our unwilling awareness.

That was the fault of the New Djinn, who had never shed their human beginnings, and gave us connection to these tiny, brief lives.

David looked at me soberly for a moment, then put his hand flat against my forehead. A kind of benediction, very light and gentle.

"You're in pain," he said. "I'm sorry that I can't help you, but you're not one of my people. You're Ashan's. I can’t touch you, and I can’t undo what he’s done."
Ashan. Ah yes, I was Ashan's. I was one of the Old Djinn, the First Djinn, who came before any human walked the Earth. I was a spirit of fire and air, and Ashan had cast me down to this heavy, crippling flesh.

I struggled to hold to that knowledge. Already, the aetheric seemed so far away. So unattainable.

"I'll speak with him," David said, and tried to rise. I forced my muscles to my will, and grabbed his wrist. It was a weak hold, hardly even strong enough to restrain a human child, much less a Djinn, but David understood the gesture. He paused, and I felt his pulse of alarm before I matched it to the frown of his expression. "You don't want me to go to Ashan? You're sure?"

"I'm sure," I whispered. I had just doubled my output of human words. It felt ridiculously cheering. "He won't listen."

I was tired from the effort of saying it, and closed my eyes, but the blackness within terrified me, and I opened them again. David was still frowning at me. He began to ask a question, then stopped himself, shook his head, and smoothed my hair again.

"Rest," he said. "I'll try to find a way to help."

I struggled with a pitiful feeling of gratitude, and the ghost of an old, imperious wave of contempt. Contempt for him, for caring for me at all. Contempt for my own appalling weakness.

"Rest," David repeated, and despite everything, I found myself burrowing beneath the warm covers, into the smell of another human's skin, and darkness slipped over my eyes. I didn't want to let go. I fought.

But it won.

###

I woke up to a woman's voice, dry and lightly amused. "Okay, David, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonably explanation for why there's a naked girl in my bed. No, really, I'm sure. And you have about -- oh -- five seconds to come up with it."

I blinked, turned clumsily in my cocoon of sheets and blankets, and saw the woman standing over me, arms folded. She was tall, slender, with long dark hair and eyes like sapphires. Skin like fine porcelain, lightly dusted with gold.

Even as unfamiliar as I was with the subtleties of human facial expressions, she didn't look happy.

I heard David stir on the other side of the room, where he'd taken a seat in a wing chair. He put aside a book he was holding and stood up to come to the woman and put his arms around her. "Her name is Cassiel. Djinn. She's only here until I can help her get her strength back," he said. "Something happened to her. I can't tell what it was, but I'm trying to find out."

"One of yours?"

"Actually, no. One of Ashan's."

"Ashan's? Oh, that’s great. Perfect." With a shock, I realized that the woman must be Joanne Baldwin. I knew who she was, of course. All of the Djinn knew of the Weather Warden, and her love affair with one of the two leaders of the Djinn world. She was both one of the more warily respected of the billions of humans crawling the face of the planet ... and one of the most hated, in many quarters, including Ashan’s. "And why isn't she in his bed, then, instead of mine?"

"Good question," David said. "I don't know. She isn't saying much. She can’t."

Joanne wasn't angry, I realized, despite her words. She was looking at me with what I thought was vague kindness. "Cassiel," she said. "David -- you're sure she's really a Djinn? I mean --"

That frightened me. How could she not be certain of that? Had I fallen so low that I could be mistaken for a human?

"Old Djinn," I managed to say. "Ashan's."

Her next question came right to me. "I’ve never met you before, have I?"

"No." Because I had never worn flesh before. Never craved it.

She nodded slowly, and a slight frown grooved itself between her eyebrows. "David says you’re hurt." Her blue eyes unfocused, and her black pupils expanded. She was looking into the aetheric, I knew, and seeing my damaged soul. "My God. You really are hurt. Can you draw power at all?"

I managed to shake my head in the negative. Joanne turned to David. "What the hell is that bastard doing, dumping her out here on us? Is he trying to kill her, or just interfere with what we’re doing? We need to get out there, dammit! We’re supposed to be bait for the Sentinels, not – General Hospital for Wayward Djinn."

They exchanged a look, a long one, that contained information I could not understand. David touched her gently, a stroke of fingers along the skin of her arm.

"I don't know what he intends, but if we can't figure out a way to get her access to the aetheric, this will kill her, no question about it," David said. "She's very weak. She could barely settle into this form. No chance she can shift again, at this point. She's living on whatever she has in reserve right now, and what I try to give her just bleeds away. I think because she's Ashan's creature, I can't really touch her. Not even to save her."

Joanne pulled up a chair and sat, elbows on her knees. She was wearing a close-fitting red top and rough blue woven pants, and there was a glitter of gold on her left hand with a fire-red ruby in its center. "Want me to try?" she asked, cutting her eyes toward David. He crossed his arms, frowning deeply. "C'mon, it's worth a shot. You already tried. Ashan's clearly left the clue phone off the hook. Let me have a go. Better than just letting her up and die on us, right?"

He gave her one sharp nod, but said, "If anything happens, I'm cutting the connection. Careful. Cassiel's strong, and she's not herself."

I wanted to be offended by such presumption from a mere New Djinn -- even one such as David -- but I couldn't deny the truth. I was not myself. I no longer even knew, truly, what portion of myself I'd lost, or what remained.

I felt that I was losing more of myself with every beat of my all-too-human heart.

Joanne took a deep breath, reached out, and folded her long, carefully manicured fingers around my strange, pale ones.

And power snapped a connection tight between us, like lightning leaping to ground, and I felt my whole body convulse with the impact. Such power, rolling like red-hot lava through veins and nerves, feeding and filling the dark hollows of my bones. I almost wept in relief, so strong was it, so great was my need, and I greedily pulled power from her vast, rich store, bathing in it, glorying in it ...

... Until a sharp, heavy, black force slammed between us, and the flow of energy disappeared.

David stood between us, and he pushed me back down, one hand solidly on my chest. He held me on the bed as I struggled, panting, but his attention was on Joanne Baldwin. She was standing against the far wall, and the chair in which she'd been sitting was lying overturned on the floor. As I watched, she slid slowly down the wall and hid her face in shaking hands.

"Jo?" David sounded alarmed and angry. "Are you all right?"

She waved vaguely without looking up. "Okay," she said. "Give me a minute. Not fun."

He pulled in a breath and turned his focus back to me. "Be still," he snapped, and I stopped struggling, suddenly aware how desperate I seemed, how primeval – and of the anger in his eyes. I stilled myself, except for fast, panting breaths, and nodded to let him know I had control of myself again. He reluctantly let me go. I sat up, but slowly, making no sudden moves to trigger his defenses.

"I'm sorry," I said, forming the words more easily now. "I did not mean to hurt her."

"Well, that makes it all better," Joanne said, and groaned. "And also, by the way, ow. Crap, that hurt." Her blue eyes were bloodshot and vague, as if she'd taken a blow to the head. "Right. Maybe I'm not cut out for being Florence Nightingale to the Djinn."

I felt better. Steadier, if nowhere near normal. At least my human form seemed to be working properly -- that was a start. I pushed the covers back and swung my legs off the bed, but it took a long, agonizing moment before I could drag myself upright and find my balance.

David didn't help me. In fact, both he and Joanne kept a wary, watchful distance.

"She's stuck in that form?" Joanne said.

“As far as I can tell.” He was looking at me with a kind of clinical interest, and I put one foot carefully in front of the other, taking my first trembling steps as a human, until I arrived at the mirror on the closet door.

Tall, this body. Thin. For a female form, it was narrow, barely rounded at the breast and hip. Long arms and legs, all of my skin very pale. My hair was a white puffball around my head, frail and ethereal, and my eyes ...

... My eyes were the cool green of arctic ice. No shine of Djinn to them, despite the color. I had no power to spare for that sort of display.

"Too bad, really," Joanne said as she levered herself back to her feet, staggering only a little. "Because I'm pretty sure the albino look will limit your fashion choices. And it does make you stand out. Then again, there's always spray tanning."

This was the form I'd chosen, out of instinct. It must have had some truth to it. I shrugged, watching the play of muscles beneath the flawless white skin.

David cocked his head, watching me as I inspected my new body.

Joanne noticed. "Uh, honey? Unless you're planning to start stuffing dollars in her nonexistent G-string, a robe might be nice."

He smiled, and retrieved a garment from the back of her closet door. It was a long, pale pink fall of silken cloth, and it settled cold against my skin but began to warm almost immediately. My first clothing. The color reminded me of disjointed things: primroses in the spring, cherry blossoms fluttering in the wind, sunrise. And it reminded me most strongly of the shifting, ethereal colors of a Djinn's aura on the aetheric, so pale as to be transparent.

I smoothed the fabric, belted it, and looked up at the two of them. David had moved to Joanne's side, both of them staring at me with identical expressions that were not quite welcoming, not quite mistrustful. Cautious. "Thank you," I said. "I am better now."

I had not, in a thousand years, said a word of gratitude to a New Djinn, let alone to a human. Humans were lesser beings, and I felt nothing for them but contempt, when I bothered to feel anything for them at all.

So it cost me to speak the words, and I still felt a core of anger that I had been brought so low. I knew she heard the resonance of it. The arrogance. But is it arrogance if one is truly superior?

"Don't thank me yet. You're feeling better, but that's not going to last," Joanne said. "The power you pulled from me is going to dry up on you, and it'll go faster the more you try to use your powers. Best I can tell, you can't access the aetheric at all yourself; you can only do it when touching a human. A Warden." Her eyes grew narrow and very dark. "Which makes you a kind of Ifrit. One who preys on humans instead of other Djinn. I can’t even tell you how much that doesn’t make me happy."
Ifrit. It was the dark dream of all Djinn, that existence -- too damaged to be healed, yet existing nevertheless. Endlessly consuming the power and vital essences of other Djinn to survive. I wasn't an Ifrit, not quite, but she was right ... it was a close thing. And Wardens were vulnerable to me.

Wardens, I realized with a startled flash, were food.

It required some kind of statement. Some promise. "I will not prey on you," I said, and somehow it sounded, to my ears, as if I found the whole concept distasteful. "You need not fear me."

"Oh, I don't," Joanne said, and crossed her arms. "If I feared you, believe me, this would be a very different conversation. But I'm not letting you wander off to grab a snack off any Warden who crosses your path, either. What you did to me would have killed most of them."

I felt my whole body stiffen, and power tingled in my fingertips. I wondered if my eyes had taken on that metallic shine, like David's. "How will you stop me?" I asked, very softly. "I will not be caged. Nor bottled, Warden. My kind has seen quite enough of that.”

I had never in my life been a slave to the humans. Unlike many of my fellows, who had been tricked or suborned into service by the Wardens over many thousands of years, I had never been captured, never made their property. I had no love of mortals, and no fear of them, either. And I would not ever be owned.

We stood there, the three of us, in a peculiar triangle, in such a human-seeming, normal home. David, fierce and powerful, but with little hold over me because I was a different kind of Djinn altogether. Joanne, just as fierce, but fragile and mortal, therefore of no more consequence to me than any of her kind.

But ... what was I?

I didn't know. I was neither human, nor was I Djinn, and it terrified me. I said, very quietly, "Where can I go? If not here, where?"

Even to my ears, it sounded strangely empty and weak. Joanne exchanged a long look with David, some silent communication in their own language I couldn't share.

"She's got a point," he said.

Joanne sighed. "You can stay," she said. "For a couple of days, no more. But one wrong move, Cassiel, and you're going to wish we'd let you dry up and fade away."
###

The rest of the day passed. I learned more of my human body, and the more I learned, the less I liked. Its machinery was too fragile and required too much maintenance. Food. Breathing. Finally, sleeping. The humiliating process of waste elimination was enough to make me wish fondly for oblivion.

Joanne, distantly compassionate through this, assured me that I would soon adjust. And I did, out of necessity. By the next day, I even began to enjoy some of the tastes of the food and drink she offered me, and learn which were better avoided. Coffee was strongly flavored and good. Garlic was not, until she showed me that it was best used to season other things and not eaten in large pieces. (I tried seasoning my food with coffee, but the results were disappointing.)

Ice cream was a revelation. For the first time in human form, I experienced a warm rush of something that I identified as real pleasure. It must have shown plainly in my expression, because Joanne, seated across from me at the kitchen table, smiled and pointed a spoon at the round container, still frosted and smoking lightly in the warmth of the room.

"Ben & Jerry’s," she said. "I figured if anything could teach you to smile, it'd be New York Super Fudge Chunk."
Had I smiled? Surely not. I gazed at her, feeling my brows pull together in what I'd learned was a forbidding expression, and took another spoonful of the frozen chocolate dessert.

"It's not bad," I said, trying my best to sound indifferent. I spoiled it by closing my eyes to savor the creamy goodness as the ice cream melted in my mouth.

“This is a good sign,” Joanne said. “If you didn’t like chocolate, I might have to write you off as a lost cause.”

I opened my eyes to gaze at her. “Would you?”

She licked the spoon. “For real?”

“Would you consider me a lost cause? Do you?” It was an important question, and I felt I deserved the answer.

Joanne’s clear blue eyes studied me unblinkingly as she cleaned the spoon. “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry, but I do. If you hang on to being a Djinn, you’re never going to make it as a human. I’ve been there. I know what it feels like, being so close to God and then ending up back here. At least I wasn’t born to it, though. You were. So you’d better make your peace and move on, or sooner or later, it’ll kill you.”

“Or you will,” I said.

She tilted her head slightly to the side. It might have been an acknowledgment. It might have simply been an attempt to get to the last bit of chocolate on the spoon.

“We need to get you out of here,” she said finally, and I sensed the subject was closed. “There are things going on here in the mortal world. David and me, we’re – “ She looked for a moment completely blank. “Okay, I have no idea how to explain to you what’s going on around here, except that people are out to get us.”

I took a spoonful of ice cream. “Is that not usual?” I had heard it from Ashan many times.

“Well, yeah, kinda. But this time – “ She shook her head, eyes gone distant and a little dark. “This time David’s in real danger. Tell me, do you know anything about antimatter?”

I didn’t know the word. I frowned at her. “The anti of matter? Is that not – nothing?”

“You’d think,” she said. “But no. It’s the opposite of matter. It destroys it.”

“Such a thing cannot exist here.” Not in any level of the aetheric that I knew.

“Well, it can, so long as it’s contained in something else. But yeah, I get your point.” Joanne waved that away with her spoon. “The thing is, we’re in the middle of something, and it’s very big. The Djinn – they’re not being a lot of help. Not even David’s folks. I was hoping you could tell me something.”

“I know nothing,” I said. That was all too true. “You think this antimatter could harm David?” Such a thing seemed impossible. It took another Djinn, or something equivalent in power, to inflict pain on him.

“I think it could destroy him,” Joanne said soberly. “And I don’t know how to stop it. Yet.”

I felt a surge of energy like a close strike of lightning, and came instantly to my feet, spinning to face the doorway. Joanne didn't. She continued to sit, calmly digging her spoon into the ice cream and taking another bite.

But I sensed that under the calm, she was tense and watchful.

"Visitors usually knock," she said. "Cassiel? This a friend of yours? Because if he is, we’re really going to have to talk about boundaries."

The Djinn who stood in the doorway was, in fact, familiar to me, although I wasn't sure that the human terms of friend and foe really applied. Bordan was ... less well-disposed to me than many. He'd taken on human form, that of a young man with jet-black hair and eyes as dark as oil, but with a blue sheen that gave him an eerie, unsettling stare. He'd chosen skin of a rich, satin gold, and clothed himself in black. So very different from the Djinn I knew, and yet ... the same. A physical manifestation of all that he was. I could not possibly have mistaken him.

Even though we had rarely been allied, seeing the cold contempt in his human-form eyes was a shock.

He gave me only that single, searing glance, and then he angled toward Joanne, pointedly excluding me.

"Where is David?" Bordan asked. It was clear he wanted nothing to do with Joanne, either -- but she was preferable to dealing with me.

I could tell from her smile she read the subtext just as well. "He's out," she said. "Want a cup of coffee while you wait? Some ice cream? Mmmm, Ben & Jerry’s? C’mon. Even Djinn have to love a little frozen dessert now and then."

He didn't dignify that with an answer. He simply stood, silent and motionless, staring at her. No human could outstare a Djinn, but Joanne tried. It was an impressive effort. I supposed the fact that she'd actually been one, at least for a short period, had given her a certain immunity.

"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, boo hoo, 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 a 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.

###

The next day, I left Joanne's house for the first time, as what passed for human. She had found clothes for me -- clothes to her own taste, not necessarily mine, although she had acceded gracefully to my request for the color to be light rose instead of the icy blue she originally chose. I had had enough of cold.

The trousers were long, slim, and white, fitting well enough around the contours of my body. She had found me ankle-high boots of a soft white leather, and a white silk shirt under a pale pink jacket, tailored close. My hair remained unusual, but I decided that I liked its fine, drifting, puffball wildness. It suited me. It’s like a bag of feathers, Joanne had said, and given up trying to tame it into anything like a human style. At least it’s not going to get messed up in the wind.

Still. "I feel like a fool," I said, as she opened the door of her car.

"Well, you shouldn't," she said. "You do look exotic, but kind of fabulous at it. Besides, you're riding in a sweet vintage Mustang. Enjoy the experience."

I had no idea what that should mean. I understood the automobile was a vehicle for transportation, but the other subtleties escaped me. I folded myself awkwardly into the machine's passenger’s seat, fumbling with the safety belts she told me must be worn.

Joanne activated the machine, which rumbled unpleasantly, and the reek of burning metal made me feel trapped and claustrophobic. The windows rolled down, thankfully. I close my eyes as she drove and let the wind play over my skin and in my hair. It had a seductive pleasure to it, this sense of touch. Capable of so many different tones and colors.

"Doing okay?" she asked. I opened my eyes and nodded. The car was moving fast, too fast for me to focus on anything in particular, unless it was at a fair distance. Driving looked complicated. I felt an unexpected stab of nervousness; there was so much I had never done and wasn't sure I could learn. Humans seemed to overcome barriers as easily as breathing. I wasn't sure I had the instinct.

Joanne made no further comment. It wasn't a long drive, wherever she was taking me. We followed the coastline for a while, and the sight of the rolling, sparkling sea made me long to stop this rattling human contraption and take a seat on the sand, watching the surf roll. The Mother is there, I thought. In the water. In the ground. In the air. I had avoided thinking of how cut off I'd become from the pulse of the Earth, but the sight of that vast, moving ocean brought back the sense of isolation. I could walk her surface, but never know her, not in the way I had once. I was no longer her child; I was far, far less.

I was both glad and disappointed when the road turned away from the sea, and I lost sight of it among cars, streets, and the concrete canyons of the human-built city.

Joanne pulled the car to a covered area in front of a large, towering structure, and stepped out without turning off the engine. A uniformed man handed her a slip of paper, got into the driver's seat, and looked at me in surprise. I stared back.

"Hey." That was Joanne, opening my passenger’s side door. "That’s the valet. We're getting out here."

I felt a fool again, and more of one when I realized how many people -- strangers -- seemed drawn to stare at me once I was out of the vehicle. Many people, men and women alike. I was doing nothing to merit their attention, but still they stared. Most looked quickly away when I glared at them.

Joanne led me inside of the building, and artificially cool, dry air closed around my skin, making me suddenly grateful for the jacket. How did humans cope with such drastic changes? It seemed insane. Why would they not simply accept the temperature as it came?

We went through a narrow hallway, which opened into a huge soaring open room that lifted toward heaven. I stopped and stared. I knew humans built on a vast scale, but knowing and seeing seemed to be quite different things.

Concentric, gently flowing levels rose, stacked one atop the other, and it took me a moment to realize that each of the squares of metal evenly spaced on each level were, in fact, doors. Doors to rooms. So many separations between humans. It was a bit baffling how it all fit together.

There was a large central column in the center of the atrium, which housed banks of glass-faced rooms. No, not rooms: elevators, devices to move people between floors. Joanne led me into one, pressed a button, and leaned against the wood paneling to give me an interested look. My feet sank deep into richly woven carpets, and around us, music played, as soft as the whisper of the aetheric.

"You're handling it well," she said. "Being out in public for the first time."

Was I? I felt awkward, anxious, and freakish. I decided to stare out into the atrium as the elevator surged upward, carrying us into the air, far up. I pressed close to the glass, fascinated, and was disappointed when we slowed and stopped near the top of the building. The perspective change reminded me of looking down, as a Djinn. Of flying. Of the aetheric.

"Coming?" Joanne asked me as she exited the elevator. I wasn't sure I wanted to, but I followed. We walked around the sinuous curve of the level, open to the atrium below, and Joanne paused next to one of the metal doors to knock. Apart from the number engraved on it, the door was identical to every other.

It swung open, and I faced another human, one also known to me, at least by appearance. His name was Lewis, and he was also a Warden. A favorite of Jonathan's, as I remembered. I had never met him, but I had seen him before, on the aetheric.

I looked him over anew with human eyes. We were almost of a height, but that was where our resemblance ended. His hair was a dark chestnut brown, shot through with strands of red and gold. His skin was tanned dark, and his eyes were rich brown, very deep and secret. The current fashion among human men, I thought, was to shave their facial hair; he had clearly not bothered for at least a day or more.

His clothes were plain -- a dark shirt, denim pants, blocky, hard-leather boots.

And there was no mistaking the sense of power that clung to him like smoke and shadows.

"Come in," Lewis said, and stood aside to let me enter. I did, followed by Joanne, and found that the room was small but well-appointed, much like Joanne's home. A bed took up most of the space. A couch near the window held two other occupants. One was David, looking more purely human than ever.

I did not know the other person. He was male, of a darker, more coppery skin than Lewis, and he had black, smooth, close-cropped hair. He had shaved, I noticed. He wore a loose shirt and dark trousers, nothing remarkable.

"Right," Lewis said. "Cassiel, have a seat. You know who I am?"

He pointed to a chair at the desk. Joanne settled herself on the couch next to David, and Lewis took a seat on the edge of the bed, facing me.

I slowly lowered myself into the chair. "Lewis," I said. "Leader of the Wardens."

He and Joanne exchanged a quick glance. "For now," he said. "You never know how long those kind of things will last in times like these. You're Cassiel. Until recently, you were a Djinn."

I nodded.

"And now you need the help of the Wardens to draw the energy you need to stay alive."

Nothing to do but nod again, no matter how much I resented it. I had the feeling that Lewis's dark eyes did not miss my reluctance.

Instead of asking me another question, he looked at David. "What's her story?" he asked.

David took his time composing his answer, but he didn't look at me for permission, or apology. "Cassiel has always been on Ashan's side," he said. "A True Djinn, very old. Not exactly an ally to mankind in the past. I can't tell you much about her. Among the Djinn she’s known as being stern, unforgiving, and arrogant, but Ashan cutting her off from the other Djinn seems to have mellowed her. A little."

Mellowed? I glowered at him. Of all he had said, that was the most offensive.

"Will she keep her promises?" Lewis asked.

"Don't ask him," I said. "Ask me. They would be my promises."

They all looked at me. David gave me a trace of a smile. "She's right," he said. "But if you don't mind me saying it, Cassiel's never been one to lie. She wouldn't deceive you. It would be -- " His eyebrows quirked; such a human gesture. " -- undignified."

I couldn't disagree with it. I fixed Lewis with a long, challenging look, and got a half-bitter smile from him in response. "You don't exactly come begging, do you?" he said. "Hungry?"

For a moment, I thought he meant hungry for food, but then I knew what he was offering. I didn't look at Joanne or David. I held his stare. "Very," I said evenly.

"Want a taste?"

Lewis held out his hand to me. I stood up, looking down at him, trying to read his expression. It was a test, I knew that. But what kind of test, I couldn't tell.

I slowly reached out and took his hand in mine, as if we were merely shaking hands in the human fashion. A complicated set of emotions sped through me ... fear, most strangely. Hunger. Longing. An almost irresistible urge to take, and take, and take ...

I allowed myself to merely touch on his power, drawing a thin thread of it into myself. It flowed through my veins like gold, and despite everything, I could not resist a slow, trembling sigh.

And then I let go, stepped away from him, and settled back in my chair.

Lewis lowered his hand back to rest on his knee. There had been no change in his expression at all, but suddenly I knew what he was thinking and feeling. The power I'd taken from him granted me that kind of access, an intimacy that was startling because it was so different from what I'd experienced with Joanne. It was as if for a moment I was Lewis, and I could see all his past ... his longing for Joanne, never to be truly sated. His solitary life. His discomfort with the responsibility he now held. His deep, abiding wish to simply be.

"You should have been a Djinn," I said, surprising myself, and Lewis blinked.

"Probably," he said. "But here we are. So, you obviously have control of what it is you do. I know you could have grabbed for all the power you could hold, but you didn't. Why?"

Because it was a test. That was true, but also not true. "I am not a beast," I said. "I can control my needs, just as you can."

I didn't look toward Joanne, but I saw a spark go through him, a tiny tremble that meant he'd understood precisely what I meant. "How can I be sure of that?" he asked, a little more sharply. He didn't like a stranger knowing his secrets.

"You have my promise," I said. "I will never take more than I need, and I will never deliberately injure or weaken a Warden in the process, unless they are attempting to do harm to me." I had with Joanne, but I'd been new and afraid. I understood better now.

“And you’ll ask permission first,” Lewis said.

“Yes. I will ask, unless it is an emergency.”

"You realize this is a promise," Lewis said. "You sure you can keep it?"

"It's no more than the promises humans make with each other to live in peace together."

"People break those all the time," Joanne murmured.

I knew that far better than she did. "No doubt they do, when they are threatened. I make the same promise, with the same understanding. If I am not threatened, I will live in peace with you. But I won’t die quietly." I didn't try to explain or insist. I just waited. They would trust me or not; there was nothing I could do to convince them. Lewis glanced at David, then Joanne. I didn't see them make any obvious signals, but he must have gained some understanding, and I realized with a jealous rush that they were communicating on a level I would never again attain.

They were speaking in the aetheric.

I focused on the silent fourth in the room, who had so far not participated at all. He was watching me, but like Lewis, he guarded his expression well.

Lewis said, "All right," and got up from the bed. I rose, too, automatically taking a step back, as if there was any place to run if he decided to send me away from the Wardens. "You're on a trial basis, and I want you far away from here – we’ve got way too much to deal with at the moment. I'm assigning you to partner with a Warden. You'll help him do his job, and in return, he'll give you regular access to the aetheric."

The man who'd been sitting unintroduced on the couch rose now. Lewis nodded toward him. "This is Manny Rocha," he said. "Manny will be your partner, at least for the first couple of months. If you make it through that, we'll see. If at any time Manny finds you hard to get along with, or if you don't do the job or keep your word, you're cut off, and we don’t help you anymore. Deal?"

I didn't know this Warden, this Manny Rocha. He seemed bland and unexceptional to me -- shorter than Lewis or David, slender, of no special significance. No Djinn that I knew had ever spoken his name, either in praise or damnation.

"No," I said, and saw a flash of surprise go across every face in the room. "Not so simple as that. The Wardens do not serve for the joy of service. You are paid, are you not?"

Lewis worked it out first, and laughed out loud.

"What the hell?" Joanne asked blankly.

"She wants a job," Lewis said. "Which proves, more than anything else, she's really becoming human. Okay, done, at standard entry-level rates. We'll work out housing and all that crap later. Agreed?"

I had no idea if it was fair, but I did not think Lewis would cheat me. He'd know how important fair dealing was to Djinn. I nodded and held out my hand to Manny Rocha. He hesitated. I thought I understood why.

"I won't take power from you unless you agree," I said. "And I will always ask, unless there is an emergency." After sipping from the wellspring of Lewis's power, I had no need of Manny Rocha at all. He looked just a little relieved, and gave me a brisk, competent sort of handshake. Just the touch of flesh, nothing more.

"Nice to meet you," he said, the first word he'd spoken. He had a neutral voice, with a hint of an accent – calm and soothing. "Don't screw this up. If you do, it won't be just the two of us that suffer. It's all the people we could have helped."

I looked at him for a long moment, frowning. He meant what he'd said. An altruistic Warden? I supposed there must have been a few, but I was shocked that Lewis had been able to turn one up so quickly.

Of course, the worst of them had been weeded out over the past few years, thanks to the Djinn uprising and other factors. Lewis himself had begun to cleanse the ranks of corruption and graft. So perhaps Manny was, as he appeared to be, an honest man.

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.



... continued in UNDONE!

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