Unbroken

“Sorry,” she said. “Proprietor’s gotta eat, too. I won’t bother you folks, and don’t be afraid to ask for anything if you need it.”

Luis scooted out a chair next to him. “Join us,” he said. “I’m Luis. This is Cass.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. She was beaming as she picked up her glass and plate and sat down at our table. “You folks just passing through?” She laughed a little. “Stupid question. This ain’t a time when people are settling down.”

“Yeah, we’re on our way somewhere,” Luis said. “I guess this is your place?”

“Well, it is now,” she said. “The man who owned it—he just ran away, left the place wide open. He told me I could have it if I wanted, so I figured I’d just keep it open for anybody who needed some food. Probably can’t get much more in the way of supplies, but I’ll use up what we got. No need for it to go to waste. I’m Betty, by the way.”

“You from around here, Betty?”

She took a bite of her hamburger and shook her head as she chewed and swallowed. “Nope. I was what you might call on my own. Lost my house a couple of years back, been traveling hard ever since. I ended up here when our bus broke down, and then the driver couldn’t get it fixed, so he went off to find help and never came back. Been here for about four days now, I guess. Seems like longer. Figured I might as well make the best of it.”

“Well,” Luis said, “you make one hell of a good burger. Glad you decided to fire up the grill for us.”

“Ain’t no big thing. I always wanted to open a restaurant someday,” she said, and munched a French fry contemplatively before she asked, “You two trying to fix things?”

“Fix them, how exactly?” I asked.

“Don’t know, but you two seem… different. You’re not running from something. You’re running to it. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody quite like the two of you before.”

“Well,” Luis said, “Cass is extremely pale. It is kind of weird, even for a gringa.”

Betty choked on her drink—iced tea, from the look of it. “Not what I meant,” she said. “I seen them people on the TV, the ones who can do things. Magic and such. Strikes me you could be like that. I mean, I’m a good Christian woman. I’ve always thought magic came from, you know, the devil, but—but maybe it don’t, after all.”

“If it helps, think of it as miracles,” Luis said. “That’s what I do. My cousin’s a priest, one of my aunts is a nun, and my mom still drags me to mass every chance she gets. If I thought this power came out of a bad place, I wouldn’t dare be using it.”

It puzzled me, this apparently quite serious discussion of the obvious, but then I thought of Pearl. She was what this woman feared—evil masquerading as good for as long as might be convenient.

“I had a good feeling about you two right off,” Betty said. “Might be a little wild-looking, but you’ve got good hearts. That’s important.”

The very unlikely Betty had something in her, too. Power, of a kind, though nothing that I recalled meeting before. It was a core of something I could only call a fierce, persistent hope. The kind that drove her, despite the hardships she’d endured, to make food for strangers and strive to provide a measure of comfort.

She was, I realized, human. Deeply, helplessly human, with all the faults and foibles, shining courage and power of that heritage. Unlike the Djinn, she had little control over what was to come; she likely didn’t even expect to survive it. What she did, she did in the face of panic, terror, pain, and death.

She was beautiful. I caught my breath, staring at her, because it was as if my Djinn eyes had opened again, seen all the depth of her past and complex, intricate, unpredictable future. I had spent so much time with Wardens, who were at least somewhat like the Djinn; I thought I’d known humanity in its purest form.

But this woman—this one, hopeful woman—this was humanity, distilled and purified, and it humbled me.

I ate in silence while Luis and Betty chattered on—discussing pasts, comparing relatives, talking of nothing in particular, and certainly not the lives being lost, the cities burning, the horrific cost of what was to come. It might be called denial by some, but in that moment I thought it was the very strength that made humanity so successful… the ability to transcend reality, to create reality around them, even for a moment.

It was a gift the Djinn did not have, and until that moment, I had never imagined it to be so powerful.

“So,” Betty said, when we had finished and there was nothing left on our plates but a few scraps and scrapes. “How do you folks feel about dessert? I’ve got some pies I made up fresh this morning, apple and chocolate. Even got some fresh whipped cream.”

“Apple,” Luis said, just as I said, “Chocolate.” She looked from one of us to the other, and laughed.

“I’ll have one of each,” she said. “Might as well. Can’t let it go to waste.”

She stood up to go back to the kitchen, and stacked our empty plates; when Luis tried to help, she smacked the back of his hand in mock anger. I watched her go, and couldn’t help but smile.

“I like that,” Luis said. He was staring right at me. “Your smile. You’re different when you do that.”

“Am I?”

“Usually when you smile, it’s to make a point, but that was just”—he shrugged—“human, I guess. And sweet. You’re not often sweet, and it’s nice.”

I felt oddly uncomfortable with that, and shrugged, no longer smiling. “Perhaps it’s in anticipation of the pie,” I said.

“C’mon, you’ve gotta admit. Nice lady, overcoming the odds, making pies… Who doesn’t love that?”

“Perhaps she killed the former proprietor and stuck his dismembered body in his own freezer,” I shot back. “Not so heartwarming a story, then.”

He threw a wadded-up napkin at me, and I was starting to smile again, perhaps with a wicked edge, when I heard plates crash, and Betty screamed.

I don’t remember coming out of the chair, only the feel of the swinging door beneath my hand as I stiff-armed it open.

There was a Djinn in the kitchen. Tall, slender, human, and male in form; he had a long fall of blond hair and eyes that glowed an unearthly, livid white.

I didn’t know him, and it didn’t matter who he was, or had been; what he was now was rage and fury and pain given flesh.

And he was killing Betty.

His hand was locked around her throat. The broken fragments of the plates she had dropped were still bouncing and spinning across the floor, and time seemed to slow as I lunged forward.…

And the Djinn released Betty, spun away, and caught me instead.

She fell down, coughing and choking, but still breathing. He had never intended to kill her, I realized; she’d merely been a bell for him to ring to draw me to him. And that, I found, was all right. It was a choice I’d have gladly made.

Odd, how much I had changed.

Behind me, Luis shouted something that I failed to understand, but it didn’t matter; the floor beneath the Djinn suddenly rose upward in a geyser of tile, broken concrete, dirt, shattered pipes, and slammed him into the ceiling. He lost his grip on me, and I tumbled back down the instant mound of debris to crash breathlessly into the steel casing of the ovens.

Luis headed toward me, but I pointed urgently at Betty. He changed course, grabbed her, and towed her backward, pushing her out the swinging door.

“Wait!” she yelled. “What are you doing?”

“Getting my damn pie,” he said. “Stay down.”

The Djinn hadn’t been thrown off guard for long; he broke free of the pile of debris around him, but instantly met the flat side of a large skillet that Luis grabbed off the stove—still red-hot underneath, I realized. After he’d batted the Djinn across the face with it, Luis dropped the metal with a hiss of pain; the Djinn howled, evidently feeling the damage to its flesh as much as a human would have, but neither the crushed bones nor the badly burned skin bought us more than a few seconds.

Time enough for me to yank a natural gas connection loose from the wall. “Fire!” I shouted to Luis, who snapped his fingers.