Free Unseen by Rachel Caine

spun lazy circles in the distance, and I felt the slow pulse of this world around me—animals foraging, hunting, sleeping, mating; plants living their obscure and hidden lives of sun and shade, pollen and seeds. It was a world in which all things consumed, and were in turn consumed.
    All things except the Djinn.
    It was the best day I had ever spent with Isabel, a delirious whirl of riding the roads, eating at roadside diners, shopping at odd little dusty stores. We were both filthy from the road’s dirt by the time we got to where I had planned to take her all along—Mabel’s Exotic Pets, a nearly deserted place in a very empty area outside of Albuquerque, where the mountains were only a smudge on the horizon. It was a single building coated with thick, faded white stucco, with small barred windows and a creaking sign that rattled in the wind. COME SEE THE REPTILE GIRL! the sign blared in red, dripping letters.
    I released the binding on Isabel and let her climb down; she looked very small and uncertain as she stood there in her handmade jacket and Disney Princess helmet. Even her sneakers sparkled with glitter. “Why are we going here?” she asked. “It looks scary.”
    “It is, a little,” I said, and held out my hand. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” When she hesitated, I said, “And they have ice cream inside.”
    She brightened immediately and took my hand. In that moment, I felt a surge of something dark and sticky boiling up from my stomach—guilt, and the sick certainty that I was doing the right thing, no matter how unpleasant it would be for either of us.
    Luis would be furious when he found out.
    There were only a few other vehicles in the parking lot. One was a rusted van with a giant, crude painting of a woman with a cobra’s head, and red letters that screamed SEE THE SNAKE WOMAN! ONLY AT MABEL’S EXOTIC PETS!
    Ibby was looking more and more apprehensive. I’d left my helmet with the bike, but she had chosen to keep hers on, and her hand was clammy and sweaty as it gripped mine tightly.
    I pushed open the door to the shop. It gave out a rusty sound not unlike a shriek, and Ibby flinched and pulled back. I looked down at her, and she looked up at me, and then she finally nodded and gave me a trembling smile.
    That smile almost broke my resolve, but I looked away and walked inside Mabel’s Exotic Pets, bringing the girl in with me.
    Inside, the place was no chamber of horrors—it was surprisingly clean and cool, with dim lighting that somehow managed to seem soothing instead of sinister. Ringing the four walls were rows of tanks, lit with bluertinted fluorescent bulbs and the reddish glow of heat lamps. Within each tank was a tiny ecosystem, painstakingly preserved ... a desert for the bearded dragons of Australia, who sat happily in their sand under the heat, watching us pass with curiously cocked heads. In the next tank a Chinese water dragon luxuriated in a jungle of leaves and raindrops, and Ibby stopped to examine the lizard’s bright jewel-green color. At another tank she shrieked in horrified delight as a large blue gecko licked its own eye; it didn’t seem in the least impressed with her, choosing to chase after a cricket in its tank.
    I heard a dry rustle of beads, and a warm woman’s voice said, “Can I help you folks?”
    Ibby, engrossed in the discovery of a truly huge iguana stretched out, uncaged, across a branch at the back of the shop, didn’t even register the question. The sign next to the iguana read, YES, YOU CAN PET ME AS LONG AS YOU’RE NICE . She tentatively reached out and ran her fingers over the iguana’s giant, jowl-heavy head, and it lazily opened a golden eye and then closed it again. She patted it, and the iguana held up its head for more. I heard the silvery glitter of Ibby’s laughter, and it hurt me—it felt in that moment as if I was on the verge of destroying all the innocence left in her.
    I looked at the women who’d spoken to us. She had