by Devin Hanson
“You were tired.” I kept the disappointment from my voice and gave her a smile instead.
“I made you a promise,” she shook her head.
I felt a stirring in my stomach, and a touch of the butterflies. “Do I get to collect interest?”
She bit her lip and looked up at me. She lifted an arm free of the covers to touch the side of my face with soft fingers. The blanket shifted and I remembered she was still naked. “Do you want…” Her voice trailed off as she followed where my eyes were going and a touch of color warmed her cheeks.
I cleared my throat. “Do I want what?”
“I was going to say breakfast.”
“Sorry, what?” She smacked my arm and I grinned at her. “I could eat.” I had just walked away from a perfectly good breakfast, but I liked the idea of eating with Ilyena better than eating alone.
Ilyena shooed me off the bed. “Go and make yourself useful while I get dressed.”
“What do you want?”
“Surprise me.” Ilyena rolled out of bed and walked into the bathroom.
I followed her with my eyes then sighed as she shut the door. What would a hinn want for breakfast? I flipped through the menu next to the phone and ordered up a variety of foods, leaning heavily toward meat. I was pretty sure the kitchen wouldn’t send us half-cooked sausage patties and bacon, but I figured Ilyena would like fully cooked meat better than a bagel or toast.
While I waited for Ilyena to come out of the bathroom, I found the suite’s safe and figured out how to set the combination, then locked away the skull and the journal. The food came, and I bagged up the remains of last night’s dinner and set out the containers of breakfast food. It seemed odd to me that even an expensive hotel like this one delivered its meals in Styrofoam containers like a fast food joint.
Ilyena finally came out of the bathroom. To my disappointment she was fully dressed and had taken the time to put her hair back in a French braid. My phone rang and I picked up, waving for Ilyena to help herself to the food.
“Hello, Ethan,” I greeted him, a little guiltily. I hadn’t let him know I was going to be out last night.
“Good morning, Alex. You’re all right?”
“Yeah, sorry, I should have called. I was caught out late and decided to just get a hotel.”
“Oh, you’re too rich to stay at my place now?”
I could hear the forced cheer in his voice and it pained me a little. I had to remind myself that I didn’t want to get involved with Ethan. Once the job with David was done, my life would return to normal and I’d go back to doing my odd jobs and avoiding the busy work life that Ethan seemed to enjoy.
“I didn’t say I was paying for the hotel.”
“Oh.” There was a pause, then Ethan cleared his throat. “Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re doing okay.” I heard a female voice ask a question in the background and Ethan said, “No, it’s just Alex.”
“Hey, is that Elaida?”
“She just stopped by to pick up her things,” Ethan said quickly.
“I’m not judging. Could you do something for me? Put her on, I have a question to ask her.”
“Alex…”
“Relax! It’s not bitchy, I swear.”
After a muffled, brief conversation, I heard Elaida’s voice, irritated and curt. “What do you want?”
“I have something that belongs to you,” I said. I heard her breath catch and I grinned, picturing her loss of composure.
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“You’re probably right. Know anyone who wants a carved skull, then?”
There was dead silence on the line and I heard Ethan ask a question. “No! It’s fine.” Elaida took a deep breath. “I’m listening. Name your price.”
My thoughts flashed to Raveth and I grimaced. “Let’s avoid greed. That’s what got you in trouble in the first place, right?”
There was another pause. “I seem to have underestimated you, Alexandra. I would very much like to meet.”
“The feeling is mutual. One moment please.” I muted my phone and waggled it at Ilyena. “I’ve got Elaida on the line. Where should we meet?”
“The Hollywood Forever Cemetery,” she said promptly, around a mouthful of sausage. “The mausoleum on the pond.”
I raised my eyebrows at her, shrugged, and took my phone off mute. “The Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Apparently, there’s a mausoleum in the middle of a pond. Meet me there at—” I threw a glance at Ilyena and she mouthed noon. “Noon.”
“I’ll be there. Whatever you want for it, I—”
“No payments,” I cut her off. “Just a discussion. Do you understand?”
“I… yes. Thank you, Alexandra.”
“See you in a bit.” I hung up the phone. “You knew?”
“It was necessary that you spend the night away from Ethan’s house.”
“Man.” I rubbed my forehead and collapsed onto the sofa next to Ilyena. “This would be a lot easier if you would just tell me what would happen beforehand.”
Ilyena shook her head. “It is not divination, what I do. If you knew your path, it would change. I cannot divulge it, merely guide you upon it.”
I nibbled on a slice of bacon. You’d think for a hotel charging fifty dollars for a breakfast they could afford to provide real bacon, pan fried like God intended, and not this cheap microwaved shit that tasted like oil-soaked cardboard.
“So, guide me. Why a pond?”
“For your safety. You said yourself that Elaida is a powerful houri. Being surrounded by water will neutralize her ability. Djinn and water do not mix well.”
That was a piece of information I hadn’t been aware of. “And yours too,” I pointed out.
She made a face. “I will not be there. In every path I saw with you and Elaida together, I was nowhere to be seen.” She shrugged. “I will watch from a safe distance. If you succeed in gaining Elaida’s trust, I will return to David.”
“We’ll need a signal.” I was trying to be pragmatic, but I abruptly knew that my brief and tumultuous relationship with Ilyena was coming to a close. “I’ll… um. Transfer my phone from one pocket to the other.”
She nodded. “That will work. Once you succeed, you won’t see me again. I’m sorry, Alex.”
“Does it have to be like this?” I was trying for teasing, but it came out petulant. “Why is Elaida so important?”
“That is your task,” Ilyena said patiently. “She is important because David has decided she is.”
“And us? Is that important?”
“Alex…” She bowed her head, shaking it slowly. “I looked, but I saw no more paths with us.”
“And you’re certain that meeting with Elaida will get her to trust me?” I was snatching after straws, and I knew it, but I couldn’t let Ilyena go. Not yet.
“Almost certain,” she said reluctantly. “There are some paths that do not result in an alliance with Elaida.”
“So, you don’t know for sure?”
Ilyena scowled at me. “It doesn’t work that way.”
I folded my arms. “Then how does it work?” I demanded.
She got up from the couch abruptly and paced halfway to the bedroom before spinning back to face me. Her eyes were red and wet with suppressed tears. Her hands were clenched into trembling fists at her sides. “You think I want it this way?!” Her voice broke halfway through and her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I don’t have a choice, Alex. I don’t have the freedom to choose my own path like you do. Even if I… I tried, Alex. I looked, but I saw no way.”
I looked down at the floor, unable to stand the anguish in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Ilyena,” I muttered.
“I saw nothing for you, Alex. Yesterday I knew your path with certainty, but today I don’t even know if you’ll make it to your meeting with Elaida.”
That wasn’t reassuring. “Raveth?”
She shook her head and dashed the pooling tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I don’t know! It is
like when I first met you in Caradoc’s rooms. Just emptiness.”
“David said that was because there were too many paths for you to see.” I stood and made my way over to Ilyena and touched her gently on the shoulder. I wasn’t sure how to comfort her. The trouble she was having went far beyond my experience. “Maybe that’s all it is. A, uh, nexus of potential decisions. You knew enough to see the meeting at the cemetery,” I added, trying to cheer her up.
Ilyena’s shoulders sagged. “I didn’t see the cemetery. It is simply a place I have used before when dealing with dangerous djinn.”
Well, shit. “Should we go at all, then?”
She nodded firmly. “You must.” She stood up straight with an effort and offered me a watery smile. “I have seen you in action, Alex. You will be fine. I have confidence in that much. But if things… go bad in the cemetery, jump into the water. It isn’t deep, maybe waist-deep at most, and it will neutralize Elaida’s spells.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.
Ilyena pulled away from me and scrubbed her cheeks dry with her sleeve. “Maybe this is all for the best,” she said sadly. “But there’s nothing we can change about things now. We had better get going or we’ll be late.”
I parked in the strip mall to the north of the cemetery and we headed to the front gate on foot. Traffic had been perversely light and we had nearly an hour before noon. I couldn’t help but feel like we had missed an opportunity. An hour wasn’t nearly enough time to do everything I wanted to, and with, Ilyena, but it would have been more than enough to finally get the release she’d been teasing me with.
Still, I felt pretty good as I turned and walked into the quiet seclusion of the cemetery. I had slept well, and the energy I had drained from the hotel guests still burned within me. I didn’t think I had enough to throw down with a marid again, but it still made my steps light.
I approached the cemetery ground with caution and stepped over onto the property gingerly, ready to pull back at the first hint of pain. I didn’t feel anything. If the cemetery had ever been consecrated ground, the protection had long since worn off.
Rather than walking along the roads that quartered the cemetery, we cut straight across. If it wasn’t for the headstones, grave markers, marble mausoleums, and statues, it could have passed for a park. Peacocks strutted through the shade, dragging their tail feathers over the graves.
Ilyena wasn’t in a talkative mood. She had left her biking jacket and helmet at my scooter. I chose to take that as an unspoken promise that she would be riding with me afterward if things didn’t go well. In her oversized flannel, yoga pants and fleece-lined boots, she looked like she belonged in a coffee shop rather than heading toward a potentially violent meeting.
We steered wide around a funeral procession and approached the pool from the south. If my mood had been any different, I would have derived great enjoyment from seeing the variety of grave markers. Some were tasteful, but the vast majority were stunningly jarring. It just went to show that money couldn’t buy taste.
There was a cathedral to the south of the pond, and I gave it a wide berth. I didn’t know if the lawn outside had been consecrated, but I didn’t feel like bursting into flames in front of the party of mourners filing out to the card tables for refreshments.
“What kind of drinks do you serve at a funeral?” I asked Ilyena, hoping to crack a joke and lighten the oppressive gloom that had settled over us.
She just looked at me without humor. “Vodka.”
“Right.” I sighed. “You’re Russian.”
We paused at the edge of the pond and Ilyena turned her head away. “I’ll be in the trees over there. Remember the signal?”
I took my phone out of my jacket pocket and showed it to her. “I haven’t forgotten.”
Abruptly, Ilyena turned to me and pressed her hot lips against mine. Before I could react or reciprocate she was gone, hurrying away across the grass with her arms hugging her chest.
Damn it.
I stared after her before giving myself a shake and circling around the pond the other direction. There was a bridge that led to the island in the middle, and I took it, feeling exposed. The mausoleum on the island was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in the cemetery. It had a copper door all covered in verdigris, with no handle, just a knocker, which was a little creepy. Above the door, a saying in Latin was carved.
There was still fifteen minutes before Elaida was supposed to show. I took a seat on the mausoleum steps where there was a bit of shade and tried to shake the feeling that I was being watched. I made a point of not turning my head to the east where Ilyena was supposed to be hiding, but I did try and pick her out among the gravestones. If she was there, I couldn’t see her.
I sighed and leaned back against the marble. It was a nice, cool October day, but still too hot for a motorcycle jacket. I left it on, though, reluctant to be without even the dubious protection the jacket gave me.
Was Elaida going to show? Would she come in force? I had forgotten to include a proviso that she come alone. What if she showed up with Marcel, the marid, and decided to just beat the location of the skull from me? Ilyena would be powerless to stop them. Considering the condition they had left Ilyena in the last time they had met, I didn’t want her to even try.
Motion at the far end of the bridge caught my eye and I jerked my head around. Elaida had arrived. Frederick and Marcel were with her, but they stayed on land while Elaida crossed the bridge alone. That was better than all three coming across, but maybe they were worried I was going to double-cross them.
I got up as Elaida stepped onto the island and we stood, looking at each other in silence, for several long seconds.
“That was you, at the sound stage,” she said. Her voice was dull and carried none of the knifing sarcasm from earlier meetings. She wore big sunglasses that almost hid the bruising around her eyes.
“Sorry about your face,” I said. “I was working for David Caradoc and was acting to protect him.”
“Was?” she asked sharply, and some life came back to her gaze.
I shrugged, trying to think of how to play it. I hadn’t intended to imply that my employment with David had ended, but Elaida had latched onto that. “We didn’t see eye-to-eye.”
Elaida nodded, relief on her face. “The skull—”
“Is safe.” I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I also have the journal.”
“Journal?” she asked puzzled, then her eyes widened. “The Nazarian Papers! You found them!”
I crossed my arms and frowned at Elaida. “I know what the skull is used for. It is possible we could come to an arrangement for you to have it, but I need to know why.”
“Do you know what Caradoc is?” she asked.
“The skull, Elaida,” I repeated harshly. I didn’t want her to change the subject.
“It’s a vessel. A… temnita, a gaol. It is used for containing incorporeal beings.”
“Ghosts?”
She waved a hand dismissively. “It could be wasted on such, I suppose. But it also works on beings of light and fire that do not have a body.”
“Demons. And…” I thought of the lessons I had learned from my father about the djinn, “the jaan?” The jaan were elemental creatures, beings of ash and fire that largely avoided civilization. Mostly they stayed out in the deep deserts of the Middle East and Africa and waged their quiet war against the vampires.
“And ghouls,” she nodded. “When they are between bodies, that is.”
“So why do you need a ghost prison?”
“Yes, that is the word I was looking for. Prison. Caradoc has a guardian who will be impossible to bypass without the skull.”
I thought back to what David had said in our first meeting. He had mentioned a guard for his back room. Was David employing a demon to protect his belongings? “Why, though? Why go through the effort to steal from Caradoc? Surely there are easier targets in Los Angeles.”
Her lip curled. “I
t is not money I’m after, Alexandra.”
“Yeah? You a humanitarian now?” I took a deep breath and turned away, trying to curb my anger. I was trying to get on her good side, I reminded myself. “You want the skull? Convince me you should have it.”
“You would just give it to me?”
I coughed a laugh and looked back at her. “I’m guessing you had a run-in with Raveth or his men. I’m trying to avoid a repeat performance. If I think you should have it, I’ll give it to you without being greedy.”
“Speaking of which, I am impressed you were able to get the skull from him. He was… formidable. Frederick is only now out of the hospital after his encounter.”
If Frederick was only human, I was surprised he was alive at all. “Flattery won’t get you anywhere. What does Caradoc have that makes all this worth it?”
“What do you know of vampires?” I sighed and Elaida held up her hands. “I’m trying to explain.”
“I know they aren’t in America, thank God. Other than that, not much. I haven’t had reason to study them.” That was ominous. I wanted nothing to do with vampires. Everything I had heard about them made me glad they weren’t on this continent.
“Yes. Precisely. The clan of Cain have agreed to stay away from the Americas.”
“Why, though?”
She nodded, acknowledging that I had asked the right question. “It was part of a pact made in the fifteen-hundreds. The vampires would stay away from the newly discovered lands to the west, in exchange for a yearly offering. The three countries with stakes in the new land each put up part of the offering.”
“England, France and Spain.”
“Precisely. The offerings were initially carried by the respective crowns, but the burden has since transferred to private holdings.”
“I can’t imagine England trying to explain to its taxpayers why millions of dollars every year are being sent to vampires.”
“You understand the situation. Adjusted for current inflation, England’s share comes out to somewhere around sixty million dollars a year. Caradoc holds the burden of England’s debt.”
