Master of None

by Sonya Bateman

  “Calling it something else doesn’t change what it is.”

  “Perhaps not. Still, it must be done.” He gripped my shoulder. “Promise me, thief. Promise me you will do what is necessary to save my realm and your family. Your world. Every human will suffer if the Morai are permitted to regain control.”

  Was anyone listening to this insanity? Lark faced the window as if his life depended on looking anywhere but at me. Jazz concentrated on the road. I glanced at Tory’s profile. In the gloom, it was hard to tell whether he’d heard our discussion, but I thought his eyes seemed too bright, his jaw too firm. “How am I supposed to get to it?” I said. “I can’t lift cars.”

  “You will find a way,” Ian whispered. “You must.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. When I couldn’t come up with another excuse, I snapped, “Fine. Damn you, I promise. But it’s not going to be necessary. This will work.”

  “Thank you. I do hope you are right.” Ian sank back into the seat and closed his eyes, as if asking me to kill him had taken more power than creating a dimensional portal.

  I kept my mouth shut and fought the urge to protest further. Ian was wrong. Killing him wouldn’t save my family, because he was part of it. Like it or not.

  After five minutes of unsuccessfully trying not to remind myself that I’d just promised to murder someone—and worse, someone I cared about—I decided to attempt distraction. I leaned between the front seats and touched Jazz on the arm. “So,” I said, “what’s it like over there?”

  She blinked. “Give me some context here, Donatti. Over where?”

  “The djinn realm.”

  “Oh.” She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  “That’s it? Just okay?” I scooted forward as far as I could without falling off my seat. “C’mon, Jazz, it’s not like you were visiting Boston or anything. It’s a magic realm. There must’ve been something interesting, right?”

  “Well, I—” She glanced in the mirror, and I realized with a start that she’d looked at Ian. Did she need his permission? Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “It’s beautiful. Like a dream. Ian . . . I won’t talk about it if you don’t want to hear it.”

  A sad smile arranged itself on his face. “No, lady. It is all right. I would not mind hearing of home.”

  Jazz nodded. “It’s hard to describe, but everything is alive. The furniture, the clothes they wear, even the walls. Everything moves like it’s breathing, and the air—you know how people say there’s music in the air? It’s real there, the music. You can just hear it, all the time, bells and voices and whispers. But it’s not singing. It’s the wind and the water. It’s life music.”

  I grinned. “You’re downright poetic, Jazz.”

  “Hey, you wanted to hear about it.” She smiled back. “They have this statue in the palace courtyard. It’s a tree. A Joshua tree, I think. It’s made out of flowing water, and the leaves are flames. It just hangs in the air and rotates. You can touch it and get wet, but it doesn’t lose its shape. Cy . . .” She drew a quick breath and laughed softly. “The first time we saw it, Cy splashed around in the trunk for half an hour. Then he asked if he could have a wet tree in his bedroom.”

  “The elemental fountain,” Tory said. “I’d almost forgotten. A tree of fire, rendered in water, suspended in air. At sunset . . .”

  “It catches the light and burns red.” Ian trailed fingers down the window glass. “It is supposed to represent unity, though the hypocrisy of the Council makes a mockery of its own symbol.”

  “Anyway,” Jazz said after an awkward pause, “they have this amazing hot drink. I don’t know what they put in it, but it tastes like silk sugar coffee with berries and nuts and cream, and it makes our fancy gourmet stuff seem like muddy water.

  “Asir’an de labaan,” Ian said. “The nectar of the gods.”

  “Yeah. That.” Jazz tightened her grip on the wheel for an instant. “I didn’t really see anything outside the palace, though. We were more or less under house arrest.”

  Ian sighed. “I am not surprised. Kemosiri would not wish the entire realm to know he had allowed humans into the palace.” He gestured in the air, a quick blur of motion that left soft, glowing fingers hanging before him. They faded so fast I was sure I’d imagined them. “It is a shame you were not able to visit the outlying realm—the misted mountains of the Bahari proper, the lush forests of the Lycheni clan, the glittering lakes of Amahnri. And the eastern lands, the painted desert. The country of my clan held such beauty before the wars. Fine colored sands and cascading rock, blooming lo’ani and the sweet barbed flesh of the kaktao. And music! Our nights were filled with it. We danced and sang beneath the spangled sky until dawn burned the dunes. We were . . .” He closed his eyes, and pain twisted his mouth in a grimace. “Free,” he whispered.

  Ian’s impassioned speech wove a spell of silence through the car. After a moment, Jazz shattered it with a throat-clearing cough. “What was all that about?”

  “Didn’t you hear him?” I said. “He was talking about forests and lakes and colored sand and music. Dancing, Ian? I never would’ve pegged you for a dancer.”

  Tory sent me an odd look. I frowned, glanced at Lark, and discovered him staring at me as if I’d just lost the last marble rolling around in my skull.

  “What?”

  Lark ignored me. “Is he right?” he asked Tory.

  Tory nodded.

  “I’ll be damned.” This from Jazz, who smirked and offered a disbelieving headshake.

  “What’s going on?” I caught Ian’s gaze, but he looked just as confused as I was.

  “I don’t think he knows.” Tory broke out in a grin. “Seems Ian temporarily forgot about the mixed company here. He was speaking djinn.”

  “He was?” I slumped back against the seat. It hadn’t sounded like djinn to me, but I hadn’t really been listening for words. I’d just let his speech wash over me and found an almost painful comfort in the rhythm of his descriptions and the emotion behind his recollections. I understood it so completely that I’d practically been there with him.

  The connection unnerved me. If I felt this way just hearing about everything he’d lost from his home, how could I possibly deal with being forced to kill him?

  Somehow, I’d have to make sure it didn’t come to that.

  CHAPTER 26

  I wasn’t sure how long we’d been driving, but we were within sight of a town called Shamrock when we heard the siren. And I thought shamrocks were supposed to be lucky.

  I guessed my bad karma negated even the luck of the Irish.

  Jazz swore under her breath. “Ian, are you sure you put three letters and four numbers on those plates?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “And Trevor couldn’t have found us with magic yet?”

  “Correct.”

  Jazz glanced in the rearview and tapped the brake. “Left taillight’s out. Shit!”

  Biggest understatement I’d heard all night. No word existed in English to describe how deep we were in. Even if this cop wasn’t Trevor’s dog, we were busted the second he ran the fake plates.

  Red and blue lights flashed across the interior of the car, painting stricken faces. The cry of the siren blasted through Tory’s open window. My brain shuffled through a dozen different scenarios. None of them ended fortunately for us.

  And none of them started with Jazz pulling over. Which she did.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. “Keep moving! You can outrun him.”

  “No, I can’t.” She pointed at the windshield.

  I leaned forward. We’d stopped just before a bright orange detour sign that pointed to a crooked dirt path with no right to call itself a road. A few hundred feet ahead, concrete barriers with yellow-and-black striped lines spanned the pavement. Black letters on white above them announced: ROAD CLOSED.

  “We’ve got to do something,” I said. “He checks us out, he’ll have us under the gun while he calls f
or backup.”

  “I know.” Jazz drummed fingers on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. “I’m thinking.”

  “What about confusing him?” I looked at Tory. “You know, that thing you did with the cops at Lark’s place. The whole these-aren’t-the-droids-you’re-looking-for trick.”

  Tory shook his head. “I’m tapped. Used everything I had for sealing spells.”

  “Ian?”

  “I have nothing.”

  Crud. “Lark, you still have that Beretta? Maybe you could shoot him.”

  “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

  “Yes!” I glanced out the rear window. The cop idled behind us. A million-watt side floodlight trained on the Caddy kept me from seeing anything beyond the cruiser’s hood. Any minute now, he’d come strolling up with his gun and his badge and his serious belief that people who drove around with burnt-out taillights were threats to the public. Why couldn’t cops chase real criminals?

  I conveniently ignored the fact that’s what most of us were.

  “Donatti,” Jazz said, “I have an idea.”

  “Call it.”

  She smiled. “Remember Virginia?”

  “Oh. That.” I reached automatically for my seatbelt. Hell, yes, I remembered Virginia. “If anyone’s not buckled in, you better get that way. And find something to hold on to.”

  Shuffles and clicks sounded in rapid progression. I skimmed the belt over my waist and went for the buckle end, only to find it missing. Not good. I shoved a hand into the crack between the seats. Dust and grit but no buckle. Definitely not good.

  I sighed and eased the belt out to full length. “Sorry about this, Ian,” I said.

  The question on his lips died when I threaded my loose belt through his secure one and tied the stiff canvas as tight as I could. I wedged my feet under the front seats, gripped the edges of the seat beneath me, and waited.

  A shadow passed through the flood of white light behind us. The cop getting out. Jazz waited until a figure appeared beside her window and tapped on the glass.

  Then she wrenched the wheel to the right, slammed the gearshift into drive, and sped off.

  I watched the cop. He tried to dive out of the way, but the rear bumper caught him on the hip and sent him sprawling. With Jazz rocketing down the dirt road, he disappeared fast. The last I saw was him gaining his feet, headed for his cruiser at a crooked sprint. Determined son of a bitch. A minute later, the wail of his siren filled the world again.

  Jazz screamed around a corner, kicking dust clouds over the red wash of the taillights. She straightened and gathered speed. The car rattled across uneven surfaces like the downhill stretch of a roller coaster. If the road stayed unpaved much longer, it’d shake my teeth right out of my mouth.

  Pulsating lights behind us gained slowly. The cop had a few skills of his own—and probably better shocks.

  Another detour sign flashed past. I hoped that meant blacktop. Ahead, a stop sign loomed.

  Jazz gave no indication of slowing, much less stopping.

  Ten feet from the sign, she executed a textbook bootlegger turn, with a hard twist of the wheel and a generous application of emergency brake. The rear end of the car jackknifed left with a rubber scream, mashing me against Ian and Lark against me. Full stop lasted half a breath before she peeled off down a marginally less jarring street. The force of the acceleration pushed us back against the seat in an awkward tangle.

  I made a mental note never to play Twister with these guys.

  We’d gotten onto a country route, one of those seemingly endless single-lane roads with no streetlights, few turnoffs, and plenty of curves and dips. I suspected Jazz had never been here before, but she navigated the twists and turns at top speed as if she’d driven it daily for years. Little by little, the siren diminished, and the whirlies fell back.

  My short-lived relief ended when we topped a rise and smashed over a bone-jarring pothole. Almost immediately, the car dipped left and rattled hard with the double whump of a flat tire.

  Jazz gripped the wheel. The Caddy’s speed fell to a fast wobble. “Got any bright ideas?” she said through her teeth.

  Ian nudged me in the ribs. “You must repair the tire, thief.”

  “How? I can’t see it.”

  “You need not see it! Do you not know what a tire looks like?”

  “Jesus. This is crazy.” No sense protesting that I couldn’t do it, since our other choice was to get busted. I closed my eyes and pictured a tire that wasn’t flat humming along the pavement. Concentration didn’t come easy, and the mechanical earthquake that used to be a Caddy didn’t help. For a long time, nothing happened. The siren provided fierce competition for the metal thunder of the wheel. An acrid stench, like burning plastic, invaded the interior as shredded rubber let the rim scrape asphalt.

  I need to fix the tire. I need to stay out of jail. I need to make sure Jazz doesn’t turn us all into a crunchy pile of flesh and metal when she loses control of this thing.

  Finally, pain gathered in my chest and sliced through my limbs. An audible pop sounded outside, like a suction cup unsticking from tile. The ride smoothed instantly.

  Jazz let out a war whoop and tromped down on the gas. “Fuckin’ beautiful! Donatti, you keep pulling off saves like that, and I might consider partnering with you again.”

  “Yeah. Piece of . . . something easy.” I gasped. Everything ached, from my toenails to the tips of my hair. I wasn’t saving anything anytime soon. I leaned back and hoped we’d be spared from needing any more miracles.

  Several minutes passed, with nothing but the hum of tires and the fading siren as Jazz put distance behind us. I almost wished I could’ve seen the cop’s reaction when a fugitive vehicle with a crippling flat managed to pop back up and speed away. Hadn’t even had the chance to find out whether he was a sheriff or a trooper. Or whether he was on Trevor’s dime.

  When I could feel my fingers again, I straightened and looked through the windshield. A landscape steeped in country dark spread in front of us. It had to be around two in the morning. Few lights shone in the sparse houses dotting field-sized yards. Every place seemed to have a garage or a barn that was bigger than the actual house. “You find a good place to lose him yet?” I asked.

  Jazz shook her head. “Too much open territory out here. See that hill?”

  “Yeah.” It was hard to miss. A mile or so of flat road ahead, then a sharp uphill slope that climbed halfway to the moon.

  “If there’s a turnoff on the down side, I should be able to grab it before he clears the rise.”

  “Great.” I hoped the down side wasn’t as steep as this cliff. With Jazz’s brand of turning, we’d end up in a roll that no seatbelt could protect us from, and I doubted that djinn magic could heal the dead.

  When we hit the base of the hill and started up, a pale glow appeared at the top. It swelled fast to white light. Seconds later, red and blue pulses joined the show. Hello, backup.

  Tory breathed out hard. “I think we’re in trouble.”

  “Shut it.” Jazz clenched her jaw and drove faster. A new cruiser sailed over the hill, with another on its tail.

  She didn’t slow down.

  I grabbed handfuls of seat. “Jazz, what the hell—”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Is killing us what you’re doing?”

  “Come on, Donatti. Haven’t you ever played chicken?”

  “Not with cops!”

  “They’ll move.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Trust me. They’ll move.”

  Horns blared and bleated. Sirens whickered and whined. A thousand feet lay between us and imminent death. The cruisers looked as if they were slowing, but I couldn’t tell—might have been Jazz gaining more speed. I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t look away from the oncoming half-ton of cop car. “Jazz,” I said with a crackle in my voice, “they’re not moving.”

  She ignored me. Six hundred feet. Four hundred.
A final barrage of blasting horns assaulted the night, and both cruisers jerked left. Jazz flicked the wheel a hair to the right. The Caddy responded with a lurch that put us on two tires for a terrifying millisecond before we dropped back to level and shot over the hill.

  Somewhere behind us, squealing brakes and a dull thud suggested that one or more cruisers had just dropped out of the race.

  Halfway down the other side, a blue road sign pointed to County Route 38A. Jazz made a neat swing turn and rocketed down a lane that was less residential, unless trees counted as denizens of the land. When we didn’t encounter helicopters or Army tanks, I finally remembered to breathe.

  “I was wrong,” Lark said. “He’s not crazy. You are.”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?” Grinning, I leaned toward the front and said, “You never did that in Virginia.”

  Jazz shrugged. “I never did that anywhere.”

  “So you didn’t know they’d move?”

  “Not really.”

  I had to laugh, as much from relief as anything. I might have been unlucky, but being around Jazz made up for it.

  NEARLY AN HOUR PASSED WITH NO MAJOR DISASTERS. Jazz stuck to the back roads until she estimated the fuel tank would reach critically empty unless we rediscovered civilization soon. She hooked up with the county route, and endless trees gave way to the occasional house. Road signs promised gas stations, shopping centers, and other convenient delights a few miles ahead.

  That was when the Caddy decided to surrender.

  The engine sputtered and belched a cloud of black smoke. A rattling purr drew itself out, slowing its pulse in time with the decreasing speed of the car. Jazz uttered a string of expletives that would’ve gotten her kicked out of a biker bar. She eased over to the side of the road and cut the engine. “Anybody got a flashlight? I’ll take a look, but it doesn’t sound good.”

  While Lark patted his jacket pockets, Tory pointed to the bottom of the windshield. “I don’t think it’s supposed to do that,” he said.

  I followed his gesture. Thin orange flames licked from the defroster vent and sent heat ripples through the darkness pressed against the glass.