Unseen

“And then the curanderas got a Dji

There was silence after she’d finished, except for the dry rustle of her coils.

And then, unexpectedly, Ibby spoke. “Aren’t you sorry?” she asked. “For what you did?”

“Sorry?” Snake Girl tossed her hair back over her shoulders and gave the other girl a look of smoldering arrogance. “Why should I be sorry? I didn’t ask for all this power in the first place. What, did you? You get yours at the Internet store, idiota?”

“I’d be sorry about it,” Ibby said very softly. “If I did what you did. I’d feel sick. I’d hate myself.”

Snake Girl’s face distorted with something like fury, and her warning rattled sharply again through the speakers. The writhing coils of her body slammed against the glass with such force that a crack appeared in its surface. Just a small one, but it was significant.

I let Isabel go. She ran to the far corner of the room, still facing the Snake Girl, as if she couldn’t stand to turn her back to what she was seeing. I couldn’t, either, but I let none of that show on my face, and I did not retreat. I refused to retreat from the murderer of a Dji

“You can’t hurt anyone now,” I said, not so much for the Snake Girl’s benefit as for Isabel’s. “You’re frozen—no power to shift yourself to either side. And so you will live, and die, between things. Between worlds.” Just as I will, I thought, but at least my predicament was not so dramatic. “Didn’t the Wardens try to help you?”

Snake Girl laughed. “Oh, yes. They tranquilized me, and they had their best Earth Wardens try to fix me. I guess that Dji

“Why?” I asked only because I wondered if maybe, just maybe, this peculiar creature could give me a glimpse inside the mind of Pearl, my enemy. I didn’t particularly care about Snake Girl, just as she didn’t particularly care about the victims she had destroyed. It was a fitting, Dji

“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 Dji

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 Dji

“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 what you wanted?”

Chapter 4

DARWIN THE IGUANA was indeed waiting when we came out from the back of the room, which brightened Isabel’s darkened spirits a great deal. Mabel watched us with a frown. After consultation with Isabel, we decided that an iguana was too large, but that a bearded dragon was an acceptable substitute.

Ibby wasn’t interested in snakes as companions.

I called Luis, who answered on the first ring, sounding worried. “Could you bring the truck?” I asked. “We have things to carry.”

“Everybody all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “I bought Isabel a pet.”

There was an interestingly long silence, and finally he said, “Is it poisonous?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“That’s ... surprising, somehow, from you. All right. You can explain it all to me later.”

I gave him the address, and Isabel and I spent the hour until he arrived quite happily encountering wildlife, in the gentle glow of Mabel’s benign residual Earth powers. Esmeralda was, I thought, in the best possible place; Mabel was protective of all her charges, including a girl who might be tempted all too easily to dangerous aggression. If Mabel was uncomfortable with the exhibition aspect of Esmeralda’s situation, it was clear that Es reveled in it; she enjoyed seeing the discomfort and horror on people’s faces.

Although I believed that perhaps Esmeralda had gotten a bit more for her five-dollar charge than she’d bargained for, with Isabel.