Unseen by Rachel Caine Page A

didn’t particularly care about the victims she had destroyed. It was a fitting, Djinn-style punishment, what had been done to her. Better she should suffer.
    “Why not?” Snake Girl asked, and laughed again. She looked very pretty in that moment, and very insane. “Because they’d stop me from doing what I wanted, of course. They say I used too much power. I say I didn’t use nearly enough. But the truth is, they could have killed me and they didn’t. So I kind of owe them for that, I guess.”
    She stopped talking and stayed there, swaying back and forth, then whipped around suddenly as a steel door opened in the back of the room, and a rabbit hopped through, hesitant and worried. It sat up to survey the situation, not quite sure what to make of Snake Girl.
    She moved in a blur of scales and fangs, all prettiness vanished into a deadly fury, and I caught a glimpse of the nightmare of her face distended, jaw unhinged to take in her prey, just before the rabbit discovered its last, fatal mistake.
    I turned my back on it and went to Isabel. I didn’t hold out my hand to her; I knew she wouldn’t take it. Her gaze was wide, and fixed past me to the glass, and what was happening behind it.
    I crouched down to put myself even with her, and said, “Ibby. Look at me.”
    She didn’t at first, but finally, with a great effort, she transferred her attention to me. I expected anger, but I didn’t see any. What I saw, very clearly, was fear.
    “You wanted me to see,” she whispered. “You wanted me to see what happens if I do the wrong things. If I become like her.”
    I nodded slowly. “One possibility of it,” I said. “People are not Djinn; Djinn are born to power, bred for it, shaped for it. People are ... fragile, even the best. And power is a heavy thing; it warps even the strongest. I know this is much for you to learn, but you have too much ability not to understand what you could risk.”
    We both looked at Snake Girl, who was swallowing the kicking feet of the unfortunate rabbit. She smiled at us with bloodied teeth.
    I expected Isabel to flee, but she didn’t. She walked around me, right up to the glass, and stared Snake Girl full in the face. Snake Girl, for her part, bent her body in a sinuous curve to put herself on a level with Ibby. “What?” she demanded. “You not get your five bucks’ worth, bitch?”
    Isabel gulped, but her voice was steady when she said, “I just wanted to know your name.”
    For the first time, I saw Snake Girl surprised. In that moment, she didn’t look much older than Isabel. Then her face hardened, and she said, “Snake Girl. That’s who I am now.”
    “Who were you then? Before?”
    “Why you want to know?”
    “I just do,” Ibby said. “Please.”
    It might have been the first time Snake Girl had been asked for anything since sealing herself in this cage—or being sealed in, perhaps. She was silent a moment, except for the restless writhing of her coils and the dry scrape of scales, and then she said, “Esmeralda. My brother called me Es.”
    “I don’t have a brother,” Ibby said. “But my mami called me Ibby. Thank you, Es.”
    “For what?”
    Ibby shrugged. “Just thanks.” In an act of courage so vivid that I could not quite believe I was seeing it, Ibby put her small hand flat against the glass. “I hope you feel better someday, Es.”
    Snake Girl—Esmeralda—stared at her with odd, troubled eyes for a long moment, then slowly reached out and put her hand against Ibby’s, with four inches of glass and steel wire between them.
    “ Adios , Ibby,” she said. “Don’t trust the Djinn. She’s a cold one, like me.”
    “I don’t trust anybody,” Ibby said. “Not really.”
    Esmeralda nodded, and Ibby did as well, and then she walked back to me. I rose to my full height, and Isabel held out her hand to me. I took it.
    “I’m ready,” she said.
    “To leave?”
    “To go to the school.” She looked at me very seriously. “Isn’t that