Undone Read Free Page B

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.
    â€œToo 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?
    â€œDon’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.”
    â€œOh, 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,