Soon I felt like I might live to see the sun come up again. I drew a deep breath and reveled in the absence of pain. “Thank you, Princess,” I said. “I owe you one. That makes, what, fifty now?”
“You owe me nothing.” She shuffled back and sat down on the floor. “However, I would like to know what has happened to you both.”
“Yeah. All of us do, I think.” I sat up slowly, at once wanting nothing more than to sleep for a month. “Maybe we should wait for Jazz, so we only have to talk about this once.”
“There is nothing to discuss.”
Ian’s voice sounded like a blender full of gravel. I twisted around to find him trying to stand. He wasn’t succeeding. He’d gotten one knee under him and a foot on the ground, but it didn’t look like he’d get much farther without some help. Like maybe a crane or a forklift.
Akila rushed over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “L’rohi, you must rest.”
“I intend to rest. In my bed.” He wobbled, rose half an inch, and pitched forward. At the last second he thrust an arm out and managed not to smash his face into the floor.
“Gahiji-an!” Akila crouched next to him. “You should not move …”
“Help me stand, love. Please.”
She frowned, but she wedged herself under his arm and got him on his feet. No doubt she understood it was pointless trying to talk him out of anything. It’d only taken me an hour or so to rub the wrong way against his stubborn streak when I first met him, and she’d known him for a few thousand years.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “And you as well, Donatti. Good night.”
“Hold up.” As much as I sympathized with his current state of exhaustion, I couldn’t quite let his comment go. “It sounded like you said we don’t have anything to talk about.”
“That is correct. There is nothing to discuss.”
“Really? Because I thought having a Morai save our lives might be cause for concern about the whole kill-first, ask-questions-later strategy. Plus there’s that bunch of Morai descendants to think about.”
Akila went whiter than rice. She said something in the djinn tongue, too fast and quiet for me to make out.
Ian stiffened and glared at me. “They will die. All of them.”
“You can’t do that.” I pushed off the floor and stood on legs that felt about as stable as cotton ropes. “This Calvin guy—”
“I do not care what he has pretended to have done!” No fire-and-brimstone preacher ever looked more fanatical than he did in that moment. “It matters only that he is Morai, and I have sworn to destroy them.”
“Well unswear it, then.” I managed not to flinch under his burning stare. “Maybe you really are losing it, Ian. Because if you honestly think he deserves to die, you’re crazy.”
He didn’t say anything. Just looked at me like I’d spit in his face. Finally, he shook free of Akila and stomped off. His dramatic exit would’ve been more effective if he hadn’t stumbled over his own feet twice on the way to the door.
“Akila,” I said when he’d gone. “Any idea what all this is about? Seriously, he’s not making any sense.”
She blinked. Tears welled in her eyes. “It is … not my place to tell you,” she whispered, then walked out after her husband.
“It’s gonna be somebody’s place to tell me, damn it,” I said to the empty living room. That somebody would have to be Ian. But I’d confront him tomorrow. Right now I was in desperate need of a shower, since magic didn’t cure dirty. I made my way upstairs and heard a voice drifting down the hall—Jazz, talking to Cyrus. Probably reading him back to sleep. I decided to use the bathroom attached to the master bedroom, in case Cy needed to pee again.
Five minutes into the shower, the bathroom door creaked apologetically. “You all right, babe?” Jazz called.
“Yeah. You know, I bet they never run out of hot water in heaven.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” I arched my back into the spray and practically groaned with pleasure. “Cy go back to sleep?”
“Out like a light.” A faint rustling sounded, and a cabinet opened. “Tory called earlier. He wanted Ian for something, and he got worried that you guys weren’t back yet.”
“Great.” Tory was Bahari, like Akila, and an occasional pain in the ass, though he did try to help. He was young for a djinn—only a couple of centuries—and acted like a human teenager most of the time. He lived with Lark, an ex-partner of mine who dealt in gadgets and high-end art, and had more money than God. Lark had paid to have Ian’s apartment built after we saved Tory’s life. The two of them were lovers. They made a damned odd couple, but they were happy.
I didn’t feel like dealing with Tory just now. “I’ll call him tomorrow,” I said.
“He’ll probably freak out and come over by then,” Jazz said. “So, I know you’ve got to be exhausted. You want to give me the short version?”
I snorted. “Sure. A Morai saved our lives today, and Ian still wants to kill him.”
“Jesus.” She paused, a little too long. “What are you going to do?”
“Not a clue. I’ve only figured as far as if he really wants to, I can’t stop him. And I don’t think that’s good enough.”
More silence. At last she said, “Maybe you should sleep on it. You know, things will look better in the morning, and all that … stuff.”
“Maybe.” I let out a sigh that ended in a yawn, and almost drowned myself when the water ran into my mouth. “I’ll be out soon, okay?”
“Take your time.” The door closed with a soft click.
I stayed put until the edge of a chill crept into the flow, and then turned the water off reluctantly. Jazz was probably right. With a hundred thoughts yammering for my attention, I couldn’t concentrate on a single one of them. I’d been more tired than this a few times in my life—but not by much. I’d be out the second my head touched fabric. I toweled off, threw on a pair of boxers, and plodded into the bedroom.
Jazz sat cross-legged on the bed, wearing a pale green silk robe. She smiled at me, reached up, and slipped the material from her shoulders. Her bare shoulders. That matched the rest of her underneath.
I decided sleep could wait for a while.
Falling dreams were never my favorites. Especially when I was falling off the wedged head of a seven-story-tall snake into a pit full of rabid wolves.
My eyes snapped open just before I could experience a close encounter with a set of long, sharp teeth. The falling sensation clung to me for a few long seconds, until my heart remembered to beat and my lungs remembered to breathe. I blinked in the darkness and let reality supplant the dream—toes to wiggle, fingers to unclench from sheets. Jazz breathing softly beside me. The bedside clock informing me of the time—5:19 A.M.—and the dissolving curtain of sleep fog telling me I had no chance of returning to slumber right now. What a rip-off.
I folded the covers back and disengaged myself from the bed. Might as well get something to eat. I scrounged a T-shirt that didn’t reek from the laundry basket, pulled it on, and headed for the kitchen.
Where I found the back door ajar.
I skipped turning on the light and went invisible. My first thought was the half-breeds, that they’d somehow found us. Nothing in the kitchen seemed out of place—but then, if it was a bunch of Morai descendants, they wouldn’t be looking for the fine china. And I wouldn’t be able to see them either.
Movement through the window caught my attention. There was someone in the backyard. I crept toward the door and tried to peer through the crack. My vision was limited to a narrow sliver of grass, washed gray in the predawn, and a wedge of star-sprinkled sky just beginning to lighten. I toed the door and let it swing a little wider.
Ian sat on the picnic table. Drinking my beer. Three empty rings on the six-pack beside him. Two cans on the grass below his bare feet, and a third in his hand.
Not a good sign. Ian didn’t drink.
I walked out and let the door close softly behind me
. A slam would’ve woken Jazz. Ian either didn’t hear the click of the latch or didn’t care. I cleared my throat and said, “Enjoying yourself ?”
No reaction. He didn’t even flinch. After a few seconds, he took a long swig from the can and emptied it, then crumpled it with one hand and let it fall to the ground. His head turned in my direction with the approximate speed of erosion. “Do you often lurk about invisibly in your own yard?”
I dropped the vanishing act. “Only when some asshole steals my beer and leaves my back door open. And speaking of beer, it’s not exactly a breakfast beverage.” I moved to the table and helped myself to a can, thinking I might as well. I didn’t feel like I’d gotten to sleep yet anyway, and it was still basically dark. “Thanks for the scare, though. I did have too much blood in my adrenaline stream.”
“Did you.” He gave me a flat stare, then grabbed another beer. “Allow me to impart some advice, Donatti. If you have come to plead a case for your new friend, you are wasting your breath.”
“Whoa. Slow down, killer.” I’d already decided a threatening approach wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t overpower him, physically or magically, and he knew it. “First, I didn’t know you were out here. I was just hungry. And second—don’t be an idiot. He’s not my friend.”
Ian arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“Come on. You can’t seriously believe that.”
“Why not? I am mad, after all.”
“Damn it, Ian.” I stepped up on the bench, sat next to him, and cracked the beer open. “Look. I’m sorry I said you were crazy—but you gotta admit, from where I’m sitting this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Understand?”
“You understand nothing.”
“Maybe I would, if you’d explain it to me.” I took a drink, and my stomach informed me that I should’ve eaten first. “Something’s going on here. Akila said it wasn’t her place to tell me. Does that mean it’s yours?”
Ian uttered a particularly nasty djinn swear. Something about my maternal relatives sucking off the devil. “I told you, I have sworn to destroy the Morai. Not some of them. All of them.”
“And you can’t make any exceptions—like maybe for the innocent ones who didn’t destroy your clan?”
“There are no innocent Morai.” His voice roughened, and he turned away. “There cannot be. I must destroy them.”
“Why? I mean, it’s not like you’re going to spontaneously combust if you don’t kill the handful of them who actually don’t want you dead.”
He looked at me then. I expected fury or disgust, maybe a sarcastic comment—but his expression was shattered. “It is exactly like that,” he said.
“What?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he started on the fresh beer and drank until I was sure he couldn’t breathe anymore. He finally lowered the can and stared out across the yard toward the red-stained horizon. “I have told you of my father, and the ham’tari.”
“Yeah. Sort of.” Akila’s father, Kemosiri, apparently laid some kind of curse on Ian’s father to swear his clan’s allegiance. I was a little hazy on the details—mostly because Ian hadn’t offered many. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Have patience, thief. This is no simple matter.” He paused, drew a breath, and continued in halting tones. “The ham’tari is a powerful curse. Few djinn are able to cast it, and none can dissolve it. Once laid, its conditions must be met—in this case, the complete annihilation of the Morai. Every last one.” Ian closed his eyes. “Not even death can break the enchantment. The curse is passed on to the bearer’s nearest blood relative.”
A shiver raced through me with a vengeance. “I take it that’s you.”
“Yes.” He refused to look at me.
“Okay. That … sucks.” No wonder he’d been drinking. I was going to need a lot more beer, myself. “What happens if you leave this guy alone? Obviously you haven’t destroyed them all yet, but you’re still alive, so I guess it doesn’t kill you. What does the curse actually do?”
“I cannot return to my realm until the task is completed. And …” He stared at his feet like he’d stuffed crib notes between his toes. “If I cease to pursue them to the best of my abilities, I experience a great deal of misfortune.”
“So if you stop chasing these guys, you’ll have bad luck.”
He nodded. “Painful, debilitating bad luck. Such as being impaled by shards of glass.” His shoulders slumped. “Khalyn saved our lives, but I cannot spare him in return. Things will only become worse.”
I glanced up, half expecting to see a meteor flaming its way toward Ian—and me, by proximity. I fought the urge to inch away from him. Hanging around someone with painful, debilitating bad luck would be hazardous to my health. I’d had plenty of personal experience in that area.
Something clicked in my head and refused to unclick. “Ian,” I said slowly. “Does this curse affect me too?”
His expression said he’d hoped I wouldn’t ask that question. His hand convulsed around the half-empty beer hard enough to dent the sides. “I am afraid it may.”
“It may? Does that mean in the future, or is it a work-in-progress kind of thing?”
“Perhaps both.” He practically coughed the words out, like they were bones caught in his throat. “I cannot be certain, since I knew nothing of your life before we met.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
My gut did a couple of barrel rolls. I flashed back to what Jazz had said earlier about my bad luck returning. Everything made sense, in an I’m-totally-fucked kind of way. My relentless misfortune had only stopped when I started helping Ian hunt down the Morai—and when I decided it was the wrong thing to do, Lady Luck walked up and bitch-slapped me again. With a moose. “Crud,” I said. “I think I can be certain.”
Ian finished his beer with a grimace. “This is horrible stuff.”
“Yeah, but it does the trick.” I drank some of mine. It was warm now, and starting to go flat. “Ian … I don’t think I can kill an innocent man. Er, djinn. I can barely kill the guilty ones.”
“Then I will.”
I shuddered at the unforgiving cold in his voice. Sometimes I managed to forget what he really was—prince of an extinct warrior clan, general of its obliterated armies, and out for revenge as much as to end this curse. But he reminded me from time to time when he did things like rip a man’s throat out with his teeth. “There has to be another way,” I said. “What about Akila? Maybe she can do something, or she knows someone who can.”
“Do you not think she has tried?” A brief sizzle of anger animated him, but he slumped back down fast. “There is nothing to be done. I must see this through.”
A new thought hit me like a weighted fist. “What if you can’t?” I had to force my mouth to form the words. “Jesus, Ian, what happens if you die before the Morai are destroyed?”
He looked at me with sunken eyes, and his voice emerged hoarse and hollow. “The full measure of the curse will pass to you.”
I felt like I’d swallowed hot charcoal. If full measure meant I’d attract the kind of misfortune Ian had experienced, I wouldn’t last an hour if he died. Painful and debilitating to a djinn was deadly to humans—like my parents, whoever they’d been. This curse had probably killed them. And if it took me out after Ian, Cyrus would inherit the damned thing.
I downed another mouthful of flat beer, trying to convince myself it was the taste that burned my eyes.
Chapter 9
Ian left for his apartment, pleading exhaustion. Not that I didn’t buy it. I did, however, envy his ability to get back to sleep. There was no way I’d see the other side of consciousness for a while—unless someone brained me with a blunt object in the near future. Which was unfortunately a good possibility considering my change of luck.
I gathered the empties and the last full can, and headed back inside. An ordinary silence waited for me. Nothing ominous in the hum of the refrigerator or the
soft slap of my feet on the linoleum. I opened the pantry to toss the cans in the trash, and the upper shelf didn’t throw a bracket and dump canned goods on my head. No rabid raccoons hid in the shadows. I didn’t even get a splinter or stub my toe.
Glowering at nothing in particular, I shut the pantry. This was stupid. I couldn’t let a little bad luck—okay, a lot of bad luck, if the past was any indication—throw me off my game. I had bigger worries. Like a pack of murderous half-Morai who shouldn’t exist, and being an accessory-by-omission to the impending murder of a monk. Imagining what might happen was pointless. Especially since reality was likely to outdo anything I could come up with in my head.
Though my appetite had fled some time around the revelation that I was cursed, I decided I should eat something anyway. I started a pot of coffee and contemplated breakfast in terms of available resources. Plenty of food, plenty of clean dishes, but a shortage of culinary skills limited my options to cereal or scrambled eggs. Since eggs would involve pans and spatulas and other hi-tech gadgets I didn’t feel prepared to deal with on the bare side of dawn, I poured myself some cornflakes and settled at the table to wait on becoming caffeinated.
A few mouthfuls into my feast, Jazz entered the kitchen looking like a bear dragged from hibernation in February. She’d thrown on sweats and a frayed T-shirt, and her cap of dark hair lay pillow matted against her head. Her mismatched eyes peered at me with the suspicion of a cop reading a phony license. “You’re not sleeping,” she said.
“Neither are you.” I smiled and flourished my spoon. “Want some breakfast? I make a mean bowl of cereal.”
“Ugh. Coffee done yet?”
“Should be close.” I pushed back from the table, went to the counters and fished two mugs from a cabinet. The pot was almost full. While the machine wheezed and hissed out the last dregs of water, I got the half-and-half out of the fridge. We were polar opposites when it came to coffee. She took a drizzle of lightener and just enough sugar to coat a wet spoon, or she’d drink it black in a pinch. I liked a little coffee with my sugar and cream. I fixed the cups and brought them back to the table. Jazz, who’d taken a seat, watched me with that same wary expression.
Master and Apprentice Page 8
