Free Undone by Rachel Caine

said blankly. “ Dios mio , you’re not kidding. There’s a folder here on boundary disputes. On acid levels in the water. On—what the hell is this?” He pulled a folder out and frowned at it. “Boundary adjustments in Colorado ? That’s not supposed to be here. Hell.”
    Manny closed the file drawer and sat down in his chair. Hard. He looked around at his office as if he’d never seen it before, placing his hands palm down on the empty desktop. “Holy shit,” he said. “You—how did you do that?”
    I shrugged. “Simple enough. It’s only paper and ink, after all.” Except that I had expended far too much power in doing it, though I decided I would not tell him that. I sat in the leather armchair across from him. “What else shall we do?”
    He was staring, and suddenly he barked out a sound it took me a moment to identify as laughter. “You do windows too, Cassie?”
    â€œCassiel.”
    â€œRight, sorry.”
    I sensed I might be in danger of becoming too accommodating. “No. I do not do windows.”
    â€œThen we can go right to the Warden stuff, I guess.” He cleared his throat and reached for the computer keyboard off to the side, sliding it in front of himself. The machine was angled toward him from a corner of the desk. “Can’t believe I can actually see the damn screen without moving things around. Let me check e-mail.”
    â€œYou have forty-seven messages,” I said. “Six of them have to do with requests for support from other Wardens. Shall we focus first on those?”
    â€œI never had a Djinn,” Manny admitted. “This how it was before? Working with a Djinn?”
    I had no idea, but the idea of being compared to one of my kind enslaved to a bottle turned my too-human stomach, and I knew my expression hardened. “I doubt it.”
    He knew dangerous ground when he stepped upon it. Manny nodded. “I guess you can read the e-mails?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œWhich one is most urgent?”
    I gave it a second’s thought. “The new instability Warden Garrity identified in Arizona is classified as a strike/slip fault.”
    â€œGarrity, Garrity—” Manny clicked keys and pulled up the e-mail in question. He read it through, nodded, and said, “Yeah, that’s a place to start. Okay. Here’s what we do—we mark it on the aetheric; we tag it so it’s clearly visible. If there’s a stress buildup, we bleed that off through surrounding rock in smaller tremors. Otherwise, the spring keeps on coiling, and we get a big shake when it releases. Usually that’s no big deal, but it can cause a lot of damage if we don’t head it off.”
    I nodded, familiar with the concepts. It was different as a Djinn, but still similar enough. “How do I assist you?”
    He took his gaze from the screen to glance at me for a second. “Don’t know. Just follow me and see if you’ve got any ideas.”
    I was anchored to human flesh. “I—need to touch you. To rise into the aetheric.”
    â€œNo biting,” he said, and held out his hand. I reached across the desk to take it. It was his left hand, and the metallic gold of his wedding ring felt an odd contrast to the skin and bones. “Ready?”
    â€œReady,” I said. I didn’t know if I was, but surely rising into the aetheric was as natural to me as breathing was to a human.
    It wasn’t. Not anymore. It felt wrong, the way I had to fight free of the heavy, dragging anchor of my body. Only Manny’s sure touch kept me from falling back. Even after we had risen, and the spectrums shifted to show us auras and the mysteries of perceptions, I felt the continuing pull to return.
    I had not known it was such hard work.
    Manny couldn’t speak in the aetheric, but he didn’t need to. I was pulled along like a child’s doll as he arrowed up