Kiss of Angels

by C. E. Murphy

  "Human," Tahira said as if it was obvious, and Alban nodded.

  Margrit, still sitting on her hands, peered at Alban. "You know about witches?"

  "Very little. Only that they exist, that they command human magic, and that they are dangerous even to each other. What they can do, what they cannot do, I do not know. We…avoid them."

  "You, gargoyles, or you, Old Races?" Margrit looked at the earthen lamp and answered her own question: "Old Races. Alban, I didn't even know humans had magic."

  "You have legends of it," he said in mild surprise. "Why is it less likely that your legends of mortal magic are real than it is your legends of vampires or shapeshifters are real?"

  "Up until about a year ago," Margrit said dourly, "I didn't think vampires were real either. All right, we'll table that for now. How does it work, Tahira? Does a witch have to force you into the lamp?"

  The djinn shook her head. "Our legends believe it will capture us if we touch it at all. Please understand, Negotiator, that this lamp is as much a legend to us as it is to you. It is used to threaten children—and sometimes adults—into good behavior, but no one quite believes it exists. My grandmother's mothers back ten generations have passed it down from one to another, keeping it hidden always, and sharing its story with the eldest daughter alone. We believe it contains the whirlwind. That the first of our kind outraged a witch, and in exchange she captured him."

  "How long ago was that?"

  Tahira shrugged, a motion so soft it reminded Margrit of wind through leaves. "Too long for words. The oldest of my kind do not remember it happening."

  "Uh-huh. And how did your family come by it?"

  "The witch died, and my grandmother's mothers, who remembered the taking of the whirlwind, stole the lamp away."

  "And didn't free the whirlwind?"

  "We cannot. We cannot touch it."

  "And everybody knows you free the genie by rubbing the lamp. If nobody ever released the captive djinn, where did our stories come from? How do we know there's a djinn in the lamp for Aladdin to find?"

  "Perhaps there was another witch," Alban suggested. "They are known to hunt each other. Or perhaps more than one has been imprisoned over the years, and only the most recently or lately captured escapes."

  Margrit sighed, scowling at the lamp. "It doesn't matter. I can't help thinking of the story about letting the djinn out of the lamp, you know what I mean?" Both Tahira and Alban shook their heads in the negative. "Ah. In this story, after the first thousand years he decides he'll grant three wishes to the person who let him out. After two thousand years he thinks he'll serve the person who lets him out for all time. After three thousand years…"

  "He will make his savior king of all the world?" Tahira guessed.

  "No," Margrit said grimly. "After three thousand years, he decides he's going to spend the rest of eternity torturing the poor luckless bastard who lets him out."

  They all fell silent, studying the lamp, until Margrit stood up in a burst of energy and paced the room. "If it's the lamp that captures djinn, it's a hell of a bargaining tool. We could either make a straight trade: Tariq gets the lamp for leaving Tahira alone—"

  "Amar would want it," Tahira murmured, but Margrit waved it away.

  "Internal politics are their problem. But I think it's just as valuable if we keep it. Maybe more valuable. Leave Tahira in peace and we won't use the lamp to protect her. Or us."

  "Margrit," Alban said gently, "no one will believe you would use a device meant to jail someone, even to protect yourself."

  "Of course I would." Margrit deflated, sitting in another chair with her hands over her face. "Just not for very long. And it would only be a credible threat if we're certain the lamp works, anyway."

  Tahira stood. "You have a djinn upon whom to test it."

  #

  My heartbeat is so quick a hummingbird might have lighted in my chest. I was not afraid in coming to America, not like this: that was only the beginning, and this could easily be my end. There is no promise I will escape from the lamp, no guarantee that the Negotiator can free me. I do not wish to spend the rest of my days in a small black space, neither corporeal nor able to ride the wind.

  But I do not believe Margrit Knight will leave me in the lamp if she has any choice in the matter, and so afraid or not, I am willing to try. After all, I ask a great deal of her in return. I know she is not in a position to offer asylum; perhaps no one is. But she will try, and so will I.

  She finds her voice as I try to reassure myself: "That's a bad idea, Tahira—"

  Beneath her objection, Alban Korund laughs. Margrit looks wry, her passion briefly annulled, and she explains, "Alban is always telling me my ideas are bad. A lot of people tell me that. They're usually right," she admits, "but the trouble is—"

  "That there is rarely a better solution to be had?" I ask, and Margrit's shoulders slump in admission and defeat. I have won my opportunity to test the lamp as quickly and simply as that, and am not certain I am glad of it.

  "I could just rub the lamp and see what comes out," Margrit offers, but if my idea is a bad one, we can all agree, unspoken, that hers is worse.

  "Do not leave me long, Negotiator. My people are of the air and sun, and I do not like the thought of being kept in the dark." Before my courage can fail, before Margrit speaks again, I put one hand on the lamp's belly, and my body is torn apart.

  Pain is not the right word. It is too shocking, too quick, to be pain. It is as if transforming to air has been enhanced, made faster and larger and more dangerous. My thoughts fly apart, words darting separately from one another until I am left clawing at them, trying to hold a sense of self together. This is human magic, I think, and that is the end of me. I am nothing, dissipated and incorporeal forever, my sense of self drifting apart, away, fading.

  And then I come together again in the darkness.

  #

  Djinn didn't erupt the air when they melted into their insubstantial form. Selkies did a little, a slither and slip of air and space as mass changed from one shape to another; gargoyles did more substantially, a clap of air rushing in or out as they became distinctly larger or smaller. Dragons knocked Margrit off her feet when they shifted, the unleashing of mass so vast it created concussive force. But djinn, airborne and ethereal, did nothing but fade when they took to the air.

  Tahira exploded.

  Not bloodily, not messily, but her very self flew apart so visibly Margrit could see the colors of her clothes spray into the air. They expanded, spreading further, then whipped together in a fine thread and were sucked into the lamp with a violence that left it rocking. For an instant, Margrit and Alban were both still, shock holding them more strongly than alarm. Then Margrit swore and lurched forward, seizing the earthware lamp and scrubbing its belly furiously. Dirt and dust flaked off, leaving a streak of polished clay bright and clean amid the muck. Margrit whispered, "Come on, come on come on," then, in a fit of desperation-born absurdity, blurted, "I wish Tahira would come out of this lamp!"

  The reverse explosion was as dramatic as Tahira's disappearance had been. Color rushed out, stretching as if to spatter the walls, then slammed together again, leaving Tahira staring blankly at a spot beyond any Margrit could see. She was pale, all the sun-browned color leeched from her skin, and her shocking green eyes were huge in a haunted face. Margrit seized her hands and hissed at their chill, then squeezed hard, trying to bring Tahira's distant focus back to her. "Tahira? Tahira, come on, wake up. You're out of there, you're safe now. Tahira?"

  The djinn's gaze drifted to Margrit, and she came to life with a body-jarring twitch. Her color returned and her hands warmed in Margrit's grip. A blush mounted her cheeks, dusky skin flushed hot. "No. Oh no."

  "What? What is it? Whathappened in there?"

  "The whirlwind, Margrit Knight. Legend speaks the truth. The whirlwind is contained within the lamp."

  Nervous excitement thudded in Margrit's chest. "The first of your kind? The first djinn is
in there?"

  "No. Oh no. And yes, perhaps, but no. The first of our tribes, that is what lies within. The whirlwind is not one djinn, Negotiator. It is thousands, and they are mad."

  KISS OF ANGELS

  Part I

  There were a lot of daughters, now. Six at least, assuming Margrit Knight hadn't already gone and gotten herself with child. There was the one, the stumpy gargoyle's daughter, that nobody was even supposed to know about, but then, Grace knew a lot of things she shouldn't. And the other gargoyle's daughter—but she was dead, which was just as well, because she'd been mad and dangerous both.

  Bloody Janx and Daisani had four between them: the half-breed girls Kate and Ursula, who had at least gone away after their fathers wrecked a good chunk of Manhattan, and then these two. Jana, the first full-blood child born to the dragons in Grace's long life and more, yet barely a century out of the shell. She took everything seriously, an emerald-eyed child whose black hair held red highlights that reminded Grace of her father, and whose slight human form carried the weight of a dragon with it. Jana, and then her sister Emma, who was half a vampire and half a witch. That one flitted about, sweetly interested, hardly tethered to the world: even her hair floated, black strands idling along with her as if they been exploring and then drawn away before they were quite finished. Her guileless blue gaze made it easy to imagine she didn't realize when she poked her pretty nose where it didn't belong, but Grace didn't believe that for a minute. If they'd had the decency to go away like Kate and Ursula had, then Grace could have put them out of her mind and forgotten about them. Kept herself and her world beneath the city streets safe and quiet a while longer, no itch to search out the impossible or answer questions that had been left lying for centuries now. At least the mother had left, that cold-blooded Russian creature who was all a witch and had been Baba Yaga's daughter besides. She claimed she was no longer that at all, but neither did she take a name to define herself as anything else, and there had never been a witch's daughter whom Grace had known who didn't owe something to her mother.

  "Witches," Grace spat aloud, if softly. At her side, the police detective cast her a questioning glance. Grace, casting a sidling glance back, thought if she were to be honest, it might not only be the damned witches who awakened the itch to answer unexamined questions. But then, honest wasn't a word Grace used to describe herself, and if history books did, she no longer knew if they might be liars.

  The stolen light beneath the city did Tony Pulcella no favors. He was meant for sunshine, where his olive skin glowed and his brown eyes lit half to gold. He could have been cast from the opposite mold used for Grace herself; she was moonlight pale and had been long before she took to the tunnels beneath New York to live. But he came down into the tunnels to visit more often than Grace went above. She had her excuses; Grace always did. The runaways and street kids she helped shelter and keep warm needed her presence to maintain order, or a homework group needed a tutor, or there was trouble in the tunnels that only the likes of Grace O'Malley could chase off. Tony found the time to come to her, delaying going home from work, or coming in early to spend an hour or two beneath the streets. Some nights he went from his shift at the precinct to the tunnels and back again; she didn't remember, quite, when he'd begun leaving a clean suit in the cool brickwork chamber she called her own. It had been years—decades—since a man had tried so hard, for her.

  It had been decades—centuries, even—since she'd allowed one to.

  And that thought lay too close to the itch to answer impossible questions for Grace's comfort, so she leaned in to kiss the detective before remembering that the daughters were still there. She muttered, "Witches," again, against his mouth this time, and less bitterly.

  "What about us?" Emma's sweet voice drifted across the chamber: round concrete walls had bounced Grace's curse to her, though if the young witch heard the distaste in Grace's word, her tone said she'd taken no offense.

  "Witches get Grace's back up," Grace replied. Emma chuckled, but a spark lit in Tony's gaze. She'd touched too hard on her own mysteries there, and though he was patient for someone who solved puzzles for a living, he wouldn't wait on it forever. That he already knew more than most made no never mind; a mystery wasn't solved unless all the pieces fell into place. And she had no fear that her secrets would drive him away: Tony Pulcella had been glad to learn of the Old Races' secret existence alongside his own world. Margrit Knight had underestimated him. Grace didn't want to do that her own self, but the habit of silence was hard to break.

  But break it she must, and soon, or lose the man, and she'd lost enough loves in her long life already.

  "Which witch was it that cursed you?" Emma asked, oblivious to—or, Grace thought with a sharp look at the ethereal girl, privy to—Grace's most secret thoughts. Emma looked up from her task—repairing jeans, a dull chore she appeared to enjoy—with such a gormless gaze that Grace snorted disbelief. A smile touched Emma's lips and she returned to her mending, but her attention, sharper now, remained on Grace.

  "Fúamnach. Her name was Fúamnach, and she was said to be a daughter of the Tuatha."

  "The people beneath the hills," Emma murmured to her mending. "Perhaps she was the only Tuathan to ever truly exist. You know how witches are made, after all."

  Tony blurted, "I don't!" with the air of a man knowing he's overplayed his hand but desperate not to let the moment of revelation slip past. Jana, who, though in human form, was lazing beside a heating pipe that protruded from the wall, let go a laugh. "And of all of us, you should, as you're the only one who could."

  "Detective Pulcella doesn't carry any secrets dark enough to bring a witch to life," Emma said in a pleasantly disagreeable tone. "Not even if it lay bursting from the earth, all but alive already."

  "The very definition of a good man." Jana settled again, though she'd truly barely moved at all, as Grace watched Tony's expression twitch between pleased and chagrined.

  "A man needn't have dark secrets to be a man, Tony. We don't all need to carry darkness inside us."

  "I know, I know. It's the patriarchy, isn't it. Convincing us that men have to have dark sides to be really manly." A thread of rue wound its way through the detective's words, but Grace's smile grew.

  "That it is. A witch is born from human secrets, mo chroí. Secrets whispered into the earth until they take on life of their own, for there's power in secrets. There's blood and hate and anger and lust in secrets, and there's love and laughter and joy. More hate, though, or at least that's what births most witches."

  Tony shot Emma a startled look. The girl laughed aloud. "Not I. I was born the usual way, as was my mother, who was the daughter of a man her mother later ate. But my grandmother." Emma nodded. "She was born of the earth, and secrets, and no living mortal will ever slay her."

  "Baba Yaga," Jana said from where she lounged. "Mother says she has grimoires full of secrets about the Old Races, but she won't let me fly to Russia to steal them."

  Grace saw it, the protest that flew to Tony's lips and went no farther: Baba Yaga? that protest said. The Russian fairy tale? The witch from folklore? She saw, too, what he thought then: that he had—albeit unknowing—tracked a dragonlord's criminal activities for years, that his ex-girlfriend was in love with a gargoyle, that he sat amongst fairy tale creatures even now, and that he had known, accepted, that Grace herself had long since been cursed by a witch. She saw all of that in his indrawn breath and the silence he kept with it. His next breath, though, he spoke with, and said, "I guess if there are witches it's not surprising we know the names of one or two. But I didn't know the one you said," he said to Grace. "Fooam… nack?"

  "Fúamnach." Grace emphasized the noch at the end and Tony repeated it under his breath. "The Tuatha dé Danann were the fairy folk of Ireland, long ago. Human-sized, not the twee things like Tinkerbell. They were said to live beneath the hills—"

  "—and witches are born from the earth," Tony finished, almost triumphant. "Was she the only one?"
/>
  Grace shrugged one shoulder. "The Tuatha were before even my time, love. Ask Daisani, or Janx."

  Tony, dryly, said, "I'd rather not," and laughter rippled around the chamber.

  Then it was Emma, the witch's daughter—of course—who asked the question no one, not Tony, not the massive gargoyle Alban Korund, not even endlessly curious Margrit Knight, had been bold enough to ask: "What happened?"

  A smile pulled at the corner of Grace's mouth. "I got involved with a girl."

  #

  She wasn't meant to be at sea at all. Had never been meant to be: the price of being a girl, even if she was the only child of the O'Malley and his wife. She remembered still the day she had asked her father if she might go to Spain with him. Remembered his booming laugh and his mocking answer that she could not, because her long red hair would be caught in the ship's ropes.

  Remembered, too, his face as she had drawn her belt knife and sawed her braid off as she stood there in front of him, and how the plaits sprang free into rivulets like blood upon the earth when she threw the severed hair at his feet.

  They called her mhaol after that, cropped-hair or baldie, but the O'Malley let her sail with him to Spain, and she returned to Ireland's western shores with a good command of Latin, and the skill to write it. She was nine then, and the next seven years she spent at her father's side, learning the art of leadership and the skills to sail a ship. She was years married and the mother of three when her father died, and not a soul, not even her father's son by another woman, disputed her claim to being the O'Malley, head of her clan. Nor did anyone dare decry the O'Malley when she took to the seas to protect their westward-facing lands, as every O'Malley had done before her.