Read Online Undone by Rachel Caine - Free Book Online Page B

hardly mattered. If I’d killed him, he leaves behind others. The interconnectedness of human life had never truly made itself real to me until I had sat at the table, eating food prepared by his wife, watching his daughter laugh and smile.
    Manny didn’t speak again. I crouched down across from him, eye level, and stared deep into his eyes.
    â€œI can’t promise,” I said. “I will do my best, but I may not always be able to control this. You must be prepared to defend against me.”
    His gaze didn’t waver. “That’s not real comforting.”
    â€œIt wasn’t meant to be.” I smiled slightly, but I didn’t imagine that was comforting, either. “I assume the Wardens are keeping track of what I do.”
    He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “I turn in reports, yeah. They want to make sure you’re not—”
    â€œOut of control.”
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œAm I?”
    It was Manny’s turn not to answer. He held the silence, and the stare, and I could not read his impenetrable human eyes at all. So much lost in me. So much that could go wrong.
    â€œHelp me up,” he said, and held out his square, muscular hand. I did, careful to keep it only to surface touching, although I could sense the power coursing through him even through so light a contact. “Get your coffee. Let’s go to work.”
    Â 
    Work was a new and interesting concept for me. I understood duty, of course, and using one’s skills and powers for a purpose. But work was a completely different thing, because it seemed so . . . dreary .
    Manny Rocha had an office. A small, cheap single room in a building full of such accommodations. The sign on the windowless door read, ROCHA ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES. He unlocked the office and stepped inside, gesturing for me to follow as he picked up a scattering of envelopes from the carpeted floor. “Sorry about the mess,” he said. “Been meaning to pick up a little.”
    Whatever Manny’s skills might entail, clearly organization was not one of them. Mountains of paper and folders towered on every flat surface, leaning against each other for drunken support. There was not a single spot, other than his chair behind the broad, rectangular desk, that held clear space.
    â€œYeah,” he said, seeing my expression. “Maybe mess doesn’t really cover it. I’ve been meaning to get around to it—it’s just that—”
    â€œYou hate such tasks.”
    â€œFiling. You got it.”
    â€œHow would you prefer it to be filed?”
    He stopped in the act of picking up a handful of fallen papers and turned toward me. “What?”
    â€œHow would you prefer it to be filed?” I repeated, exercising patience I had not known was available to me until that moment.
    â€œListen, if you can file this shit, you can do it any way you want.” He sounded both hopeful and doubtful, as if I might believe that the filing of papers was beneath me. What he did not seem to understand was that when everything humans did was beneath me, a mundane task such as filing made very little difference.
    â€œVery well,” I said. I could have done it in a dozen different ways—from subtle to dramatic—but I chose a Djinn-style flourish. The paperwork vanished from every surface with an audible pop of displaced air, even the sheafs held in Manny’s hands, and I expanded my consciousness to analyze the fundamental structure of every folder, every file. Destroying and re-creating at will, even though it was a ridiculous expense of power. “Open the drawer.”
    The far wall of his office was a solid block of cabinets with sliding drawers. He hesitated, then opened one at random.
    Inside, a neatly ranked system of folders, filed papers.
    â€œI filed them by subject,” I said. “I can change that, if you wish, of course.”
    â€œYou’re kidding,” he