And then the music stopped.
The relief was intense. Bobby sat up straight, his ears ringing with reverberation, but the relative silence was a blessing. A joke came to mind. One Nicky used to tell. "I bang my head against the wall because it feels so good when I finally stop." Bobby thought it was a kooky thing to say, but maybe now he understood the punchline. Nicky was a kooky guy, but he'd give anything to see his friend's face right now.
The lights snapped on.
Bobby forced his eyes open.
A man stood across the room, a gloved hand on the light switch. The walls were poured concrete, old paint flaking away. They were definitely in a basement. The man came over and sat in a chair ten feet from Bobby. He smoked a plastic-tipped Black & Mild cigarillo—most likely one of Bobby's, taken from his own shirt pocket. He had short black hair, cut like he was ex-military or an MMA fighter, and was dressed in a tailored, navy-blue pinstriped suit and black wingtip shoes. He wore an expensive-looking watch and only one black sock. The other ankle was bare. Bile roiled in Bobby's guts; he knew the sock in his mouth had probably come off that foot. In the man's left hand was a smartphone—undoubtedly the source of the music destroying Bobby's ears—and resting on his knee was a handgun with a silencer screwed into the barrel.
Bobby imagined the handgun's butt was the reason for the pain at the back of his head. He recalled leaving home by the back door, crossing the alley on the way to his car, on the way to pick up his girl. After that it was lights out, and he woke up here. He searched his memory for where he may have met this man and what he'd done to wrong him, but only one thing came to mind. He didn't want to go there yet.
The man smiled, showing gleaming white teeth. Smoke plumed up and away from his nostrils and mouth, passing his brown eyes on its way toward the ceiling. He scratched at his jaw and turned his head, revealing a tattoo of a bird on a branch stretching from his left temple around the back of his skull. The ink was barely visible beneath his short hair, but the bird looked like a sparrow.
Oh, Jesus.
Bobby’s guts turned to water.
Oh, God.
The man said something.
Bobby shook his head, indicating he was unable to hear anything over the ringing in his ears.
The man nodded. He smoked his cigarillo down by half while they sat and watched each other. Blood dripped from Bobby's ears, collecting around the headphone cushions as he continued searching his memories for some image of the man, some identification that told him something other than the truth—that he was alone in a room with The Sparrow. In his heart he knew what question this man would eventually ask and what he would do to Bobby whether he gave a satisfying answer or not.
"Can you hear me now?" the man said.
Bobby was surprised to find that he could, just barely. He contemplated shaking his head again to buy more time, but something told him lying to this man was not the best way forward.
He nodded.
The man pulled the cigarillo from his lips and looked at it. "You can do much better than these, you know? It's cheap tobacco wrapped in paper. Not like a good cigar... but it has a certain charm, I'll admit. You don't always have to eat steak, I suppose." He winked at Bobby. "Sometimes hamburger does the trick."
"Please," Bobby said, his voice muffled by the sock.
The man flicked the Black & Mild across the room and placed his hand on the gun. "At Camp Nama they used boomboxes. At Cropper they had wall-mounted speakers, and at Romeo and Guantanamo they rolled sound systems into the prisoners' cells. Noise torture, they call it. Keep a prisoner awake indefinitely by playing music twenty-four hours a day. Sounds rough to some, but I wonder, why pull punches? Why not put headphones directly on the prisoner's ears? Seems like a quicker way to get what you want. What do you think, Bobby?"
"Please," Bobby repeated.
"You know what I want, don't you?"
Again, Bobby considered shaking his head, but the idea of the music coming back on—the searing pain—was too much to bear.
He nodded.
"Good," the man said. "Then we can get straight to the point." He stood and approached Bobby, removing the tape from his mouth and pulling out the sock. "Where's Layla?"
Despite the removal of the sock, Bobby found he could barely breathe. He'd known the question was coming, and although he needed out of this situation, the words refused to form. He could only see Layla, dancing around the pole at the Kitty Katt, beautiful as ever. The song in this memory was Gary Jules's version of “Mad World.” As she danced, and while the men beneath her tossed their dollars on the stage, Layla stole glances in Bobby's direction—her way of letting him know she was his, and that this display was just a way to make ends meet. They'd run off together someday, run off and build a life.
Bobby paused on the memory of her eyes. Crystal blue against her dark skin. You could spend days on them, and every time she blinked you'd miss them dearly. After she interviewed for the job, Nicky said, "Those eyes, man, goddamn. Pure smoke." Bobby had hardly heard him; he was off somewhere else, having closed his own eyes to the scent Layla had left behind.
"Yeah, I'd say she's hired," Nicky said, socking Bobby in the shoulder.
On her first day at the club, Layla came in with a CD mix of her dance songs. She offered it to Bobby by turning over her hand and revealing it like a magic trick. She'd written all the songs in Sharpie ink on the CD's white label. Their fingers touched when he took it, sending a tingle up his arm.
"Will these do?" she said. Her voice was nice. Not as smoky as her eyes, but still, nice. And the hint of Spanish accent made Bobby want to meet her parents. He looked at her chosen songs, a brilliant set of understated choices. If her dancing was anywhere close to the mood and tempo of this music, she'd be the queen of the club, never mind Bobby Dallas's heart.
Now Bobby felt the pressure of the silencer against his temple. "Do I need to repeat the question?"
"No."
"You want the music again?"
"No, please."
"Then I'll have my answer."
Bobby thought of Layla in this man's clutches, her eyes pleading, tears on her cheeks, a gun to her temple. It was a vision he couldn't abide. He knew she'd probably gone to the tunnels. She'd spoken of them a couple times, a place to hide out if things ever went bad. He never took her seriously. After all, what could go so horribly wrong?
The man applied more pressure to Bobby's head.
"I've had a good run," Bobby said.
"Come again?"
Bobby looked up into the man's eyes. "You can go to hell."
"Oh, Bobby," the man said. "I'm so disappointed." The sock went back in. The man leaned over and jammed a thumb between one of the headphone speakers and Bobby's head to create separation. Blood spilled down Bobby's cheek as the man whispered into Bobby's still-ringing ear, "Don't worry. Nicky will tell me."
The music returned, louder this time. Bobby shook his head wildly and screamed into the sock. “Raining Blood” was reaching a painful crescendo of guitar distortion and screaming lyrics.
The man backed up and stood before Bobby. He flicked his thumb against his smartphone screen as though scrolling through some options, then smiled at a choice and tapped it.
The heavy metal cut out as the man lifted the silenced handgun to Bobby's forehead and used the barrel to push Bobby back against the chair. He was still smiling. Still showing those goddamn brilliant white teeth.
The next song came on like drills boring into Bobby's brain, like icepicks in his ears, a hammer to the head.
The handgun fired silently in the basement.
Bobby Dallas died to the chorus of “Girls, Girls, Girls.”
UNGRANTED: Chapter 1
Jacob Duke sat on his stool, leaning over a pad of paper on his workbench. He was finishing the lines on a pencil drawing of the stonefly lure Frankie had given him. Flecks of white paint dotted his hands and fingers. In the aftermath of Motown's death and water burial, Jake finally t
ook the time to paint over Heritus Sweets on the back wall of Hear No Evil Tattoos. The wall was clean now, a blank canvas on which he could one day paint his own logo.
It was late afternoon, turning into evening. The sun rays squeezed between the skyscrapers and entered the shop through the plate glass facade. Jake's horizon was a thin red line in the distance.
Closing. Always closing.
A final bit of shading and the drawing was done. He picked up the paper and lure and walked them to the service counter. He put the lure inside the honey jar he now kept near the register and was about to slip the drawing into the display case when the front door opened. In walked a woman in her mid-fifties. She appeared to be of Mexican descent and carried a wood-handled purse looped over her forearm. She was Jake’s first walk-in client since he opened the shop.
The quickening awakened at her presence.
"Can I help you?" Jake said. He found himself squinting as he watched her lips, unsure he wanted to read what she would say. He hadn't granted any wishes since Frankie Jenkins, and had planned on letting his horizon close in while he rested and recovered. His throat was still sore from the intubation.
The woman approached the counter. She had sad eyes, eyes that once seemed beautiful and wide and innocent but were now pained. "I'd like a tattoo."
"You're in the right place," Jake said. "What do you have in mind?"
The woman pointed at the drawing of the stonefly. "That."
Jake tilted his head curiously. "I don't mean to offend, but most people don't even know what that is."
"It's a stonefly."
Jake nodded, impressed. "Are you sure it's what you want?"
"I am."
"How big?"
She made a small circle with one hand.
"Where?"
"On my left ankle."
Jake pursed his lips. He’d been about to tell her it would cost a couple hundred bucks, but something told him the tattoo's price wouldn't be an issue here. "Let me get set up."
Jake readied his workstation with paper towels and ink, then made a stencil of the stonefly drawing and cut it to size. Once he was all set, he asked the woman to come over. He shaved the thin body hair from her lower leg, applied the stencil, and had her take a look in the mirror.
"Like it?"
"It's perfect."
She returned to the chair.
"I'm deaf," Jake said.
She nodded.
"You already knew that?"
"I was told."
Jake wanted to ask who had told her, but he let it be. This woman's presence was already proving to be a strange trip, so maybe it was best to just move forward. "If you need me to stop, just wave your hand or touch my shoulder."
"Okay."
The tattoo took an hour to complete. The woman didn't stop him once, and hardly moved a muscle as the varying needles penetrated her skin. Once it was done, she got up and viewed the tattoo in the mirror, turning her ankle back and forth, her pained eyes now on the verge of tears.
Jake wrapped her tattoo and told her how to care for it. As they walked toward the service counter, he considered waving the charge for the work. Profiting from Frankie's art felt wrong. Furthermore, this woman, and this situation, just seemed... well, he couldn't put a finger on it.
The woman reached into her purse, pulled out a wad of cash, and stuffed it into Jake's hands. It was well over a thousand dollars, judging by a glance at several one-hundred-dollar bills and folded fifties.
"No," Jake said. "This is too much."
"It's all the savings I have."
"I don't want all you have, I-"
"He said you would help me."
"I don't understand. Who said?"
She started sobbing. "The police turned me away. No private investigators will take my case. It's my husband. He's dying."
"I'm sorry to hear that, but-"
"He just wants to be with Layla again. Our daughter. He wants us to be a family."
"Who told you to come to me?"
"A man. He was standing outside my apartment building last night. I thought he was going to rob me, but no. He was there to help me."
"What did he look like?"
"He had dark skin and a mustache. Average height, I guess. He knew everything. Knew about Hector, my husband. Knew about Layla and how long she's been missing. He said you would help."
"Did he give you his name?"
"Vincent."
Kali. Dammit.
"He gave me directions to this shop. He said to come see The Stonefly and make a wish."
"The Stonefly?"
"You are The Stonefly, yes?"
The woman awaited his answer, tears streaming, lips quivering, her life savings in Jake's hand. The quickening was like an animal trapped inside him, pacing back and forth behind the walls of its cage. His goddamn father, sending him the helpless and the hopeless, as promised. What was this, some kind of test?
"You are The Stonefly, yes?" the woman repeated. "You will help me?"
Jake sighed. "What is your wish?"
"Vincent said the semantics are important."
"They most certainly are."
The woman chose her words carefully. "I wish Hector, Layla, and I were together again."
Jake breathed slowly, trying to still his racing heart. As with every wish to which he was bound, he was put in mind of the old grandfather clock in his mother's foyer. His broken ears recalled the clock's turning gears, the shifting and clicking of hidden instruments, and the interminable silence before, finally, the toll.
It was 8:47 p.m.
The quickening grew like fire in Jake's chest. His muscles tightened and adrenaline pumped. Born half-djinn, Jake was obligated to grant any wish he heard—or, in his case, read from someone's lips—but he had no special powers to aid him. If he were a superhero—as his djinni father clearly led this woman to believe—he would be Aquaman, only always out of the water. The quickening would grow over the next six days, pushing him harder to grant this woman's wish. If he failed, at the end of the sixth day she would die.
They didn’t talk about that part in the storybooks. No one ever asked, what if the wish isn't granted?
Heart attacks, strokes, car accidents, stray bullets, unexplained suicides.
Unanswered wishes.
"Your daughter," Jake said to the woman. "You said she's missing?"
"Layla. Yes."
"How long?"
The woman closed her eyes and shook her head. "Too long. Five years."
"It's no wonder the police weren't interested."
The woman nodded.
"And you have no idea where she went?"
"Hector may know. He was the last to speak with her."
"Where is Hector?"
"Heart and Home. It's a hospice center on John R."
"Is she missing, or did she run away?"
"Will you help me or not?"
"The last time your husband and daughter spoke, what did they talk about?"
"I don't know. He never told me."
Jake's old friend Motown would have sighed with exasperation in this woman's face. He would have said, "Jesus Christ, lady! You should have beaten it out of him." But Early "Motown" Jenkins was built for such knee-jerk reactions; it was how he lived every day, right up until the moment Jake ended his life, saving Motown's son, Frankie, from the sudden and irreversible fate of an ungranted wish. Instead, Jake and Frankie poured Motown's cremated body into the middle branch of the Tobacco River in Wixom.
That was less than a week ago.
Now here Jake was again, staring down a snipe hunt of a wish. He checked the tattoo on his left forearm, a poem he'd permanently inked himself, tracing the handwriting of the djinni who had written it there:
Six days to grant a wish,
Or hopeful life expires.
Six days to make amends,
Only through true desires.
No friend, nor foe, nor kin,
Nor man who lives in sin
,
Shall know that for the djinn,
Horizon closes in.
Jake looked up at the woman. She was clutching a silver cross hanging from her neck. It had been hidden beneath her shirt until now.
"What's your name?" Jake said.
"Marta Flores."
"Marta, let's go see Hector."
UNGRANTED: Chapter 2
The Heart and Home Hospice Center seemed like a decent place to die. From the outside, the building appeared old and small. Inside, the decor was minimal but of good quality, and everything was well-appointed. Paintings and steel and clean plastic things. According to the details on the bulletin board, there were twenty patient rooms and a visitors' lounge the staff had labeled Day Room.
Those last two words sent a chill across Jake's skin. It was the same name given to the common room at the Dover Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Home sweet home for Jake; Dover was where he'd spent the lion's share of his youth. The day room at Heart and Home may have been for visitors, but the one at Dover was for the patients who spent their time gazing at the walls, playing games, or repeating their crazy phrases. It was where Motown sat near a window, day in and day out, hanging his arm out between the bars and hoping for a bee to come along and sting him, as he was deathly allergic and wanted nothing more than to die.
Jake and Marta were admitted by a nurse at Heart and Home's registration counter. She said very little, recognizing Marta Flores and probably assuming Jake was her son. He followed Marta down the hospice center's main hallway, the overhead lights gleaming on the freshly mopped floor. It was past typical visiting hours and all the bedroom doors were closed. Each held a clipboard noting the patient’s current condition—dementia, terminal cancer, Lesch-Nyhan syndrome.
They came to Hector's door and Marta opened it quietly. The room smelled good, Jake was happy to note. He'd expected something off-putting, like piss or blood, but everything seemed disinfected. The TV was on, but no telling if the volume was up. Hector Flores lay in a hospital bed attached to vital stats monitors Jake couldn't hear beeping, a breathing tube under his nose. The man had apparently dozed off while watching a rerun of 2 Broke Girls.
The Stonefly Series, Book 1 Page 27
