Yashar nodded. “Yeah, but are you sure you don’t want a drink first? Scraps, pour this man a shot of your finest.”
Old Scraps shook his head, shrugging. “I don’t think he’s here to drink, Yashar.”
“Well, pour him one anyway. It’ll take the edge off.”
“Yashar, outside.”
Yashar stared into the murky brown of the whiskey in the glass in front of him, rolling it back and forth as if there was something floating in it. He refused to look up. “Don’t get all master-of-the-lamp with me, young man. That’s not how this arrangement works.”
“You’re drunk.”
“You’re perceptive.”
“I don’t think you want to have the conversation we’re about to have in front of everyone here.”
“No,” said Yashar. “If it’s a conversation we have to have, it’s best we have it outside. There just isn’t any whiskey out there.”
“Here. Take the bottle,” said Old Scraps, offering him half a sloshing bottle of fine brown spirits. “Now take it outside, you two.”
Yashar snatched the bottle away from Old Scraps then drunkenly rose to his feet. The djinn staggered across the floor, tripping over imaginary objects, struggling with gravity like a character in a Buster Keaton routine. Friends tried to look away, but sounds of overturned chairs and breaking glass were hard to ignore in the strained silence.
The room let out a collective sigh as the door closed behind them.
Yashar stumbled out into the alley where he uncorked the bottle, taking a long drink from it.
Colby followed closely behind. “When were you going to tell me?”
Yashar finished swallowing a gulp of whiskey and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Tell you what?”
“About the curse.”
“You knew I was cursed, what kind of question . . .” He trailed off. This was new. “Who told you?”
“Does it matter?” asked Colby.
“No. But somebody did tell you?”
“I should have heard it from you,” said Colby.
“How? What was I supposed to say?” asked Yashar. “Hey, kid, make a wish. No matter what, it’ll turn out shit in the end.”
“That’s not too far off the mark, actually.”
“It’s not like that,” said Yashar.
“It’s exactly like that,” said Colby.
“You’ve seen so much, yet you still understand so little.”
“I had a lousy teacher.”
Yashar angrily poked Colby in the chest. “You fucking take that back, you little shit.”
“I won’t. You betrayed me; you sold me out for your own well-being.”
“Yeah?” asked Yashar.
“Yeah,” said Colby, turning his back on Yashar.
Yashar took another drink from the bottle. “What do you know?”
“Quite a bit.”
“No,” said Yashar. “I mean about the curse. What do you know?”
“That your wishes are doomed to end badly.”
“Right. Did you hear that all my granted wishes end in death?”
Colby spun around, shocked and angry. “No.”
“That’s because they don’t. Not all of them.” Yashar swayed a bit, then slumped down on the curb, bottle in his lap. He drunkenly waved Colby over, patting the curb beside him.
“No, not this time.”
“Get the fuck over here. I’m drunk, I’m having trouble standing up, and this is something you need to hear.”
“I’m not sure that I do,” said Colby.
“If you didn’t need to hear it, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be off getting into a fight with a bunch of fairies over a kid who should have died years ago—”
“Whoa,” interrupted Colby. “Should have died?”
“Everyone dies, Colby. For some, it is merely what happens at the end of a life well lived. For others, it is their only purpose. Ewan was born to die. It was his destiny. You robbed him of that when you made your wish. And you’ve spent every day of your life working, in some small way, to push that destiny back a little further. To give him one more miserable day before his fate catches up with him.” Yashar patted the cement next to him once more. “Now, sit down and let me tell you a story.”
“No,” said Colby. “I think I’ll stand.”
“Let me ask you something. When you made your first wish, what did I do?”
“You granted it.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Did I try to talk you out of it first?”
“Well, you . . .” Colby paused for a moment, thinking back. “I, I think we talked about it.”
“No, that’s very dangerous, I said. I forbid it, I said. Those were my words, were they not?”
“I honestly don’t remember,” said Colby, now struggling to recall the moment exactly.
“Well, I do. I remember telling you no. I remember offering you other things. And I remember you calling me on a promise and making me grant you the very wish you’ve spent years bellyaching about.”
Colby looked down at Yashar, memories tugging at him. Yashar was telling the truth.
“Now, sit down and let me tell you a story.” Colby shrugged, nodding, and silently sat down beside Yashar. “Once upon a time there was a young djinn—reckless and greedy, his heart full of wanting. He amassed a great fortune, surrounded himself with beautiful women, and lived the life of a king without bearing the responsibility of one. But he was tricked and one day found himself without his wealth, without his women, and without the life of a king, so he decided to do one good thing for the one person who showed him kindness when he hadn’t a penny to offer.
“That’s how the world gets you, you know. It rewards you for your wickedness and punishes you for your selflessness. That djinn gave that man everything he wanted, which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t really a whole hell of a lot. But men can be barbarous when you take something they believe is theirs, and that young man met with a bad end.”
“I know this story,” said Colby. “And I know it’s yours.”
“But you don’t know the story after, about how that young man’s last wish cursed me to always bring ruin upon all those whose wishes I granted. I wish that all your wishes would end granting all the happiness you’ve brought unto me, he said. What the story leaves out is the hours he spent begging for his young wife’s life as the soldiers ravaged her. How he swore revenge he would never get. How they dragged them behind their horses before finally having mercy enough to kill them.”
“Well, I do now.”
“Do you?” asked Yashar. “Do you know about the years I spent wandering in the desert, living out my last days as the last of the living souls who knew me passed on, to leave me starving? How I tried with all my might to make it through the last fortnight without granting a single wish to save my own life? Do you have any idea what it feels like to starve yourself half to death on principle alone? What happens to your mind and your sense of morality when all you can think about is survival and what you would give, what you would do, to keep going?
“I tried. I really intended to go through with it, but it’s like holding your breath underwater and trying to drown. At some point your instincts override your own sense of self and you fight and claw your way to the surface without even thinking about it. Even if deep in your heart you don’t want to, there you are, swimming and pounding and thrashing as hard and fast as you can for a single breath of air. And then it’s done. You’ve failed. And you have to start over.
“I’ve gotten to that point a dozen times since then, always sure that this was going to be the time it would happen—the time I would finally see death through. But come sunrise of the fourteenth day, I always fail and claw my way to the surface any way I can. Your humanity i
sn’t lost when you do something heinous for your own gain or enjoyment. On the contrary, that’s distinctly human; that is your humanity. No, you lose your humanity when you can’t think of anything but doing that thing, because you need to do it to survive. That’s when you turn over your soul. I’ve granted terrible wishes, brought horrible misfortunes upon good people who had nothing to do with my curse, only to save my own life. So I did the only thing I could do.”
“You tried to minimize the damage,” said Colby, finally understanding.
Yashar put a finger on the tip of his nose, tapping it to signify Colby’s insight. “Kids. I chose only to grant wishes to kids.”
“Why? If you know it will end badly, why pick on kids?”
“Because they don’t ask for anything awful. At least, they never think it’s awful. With children, it’s always innocent. Martha O’Malley wanted her parents to be rich, never having to work another day of their lives. She was killed by a stray crane swinging from a nearby construction site; they made millions in the settlement. Billy Williamson just wanted a puppy. A German shepherd. And when that puppy ran out into the street, a car broke Billy’s back. That dog was as loyal and loving as any kid could ever want. He thanked me time and again for that dog, saying it got him through it all. He didn’t know, never wondered what his life would have been like without that dog.
“Jill Matthews just wanted her parents to get back together again. She wanted things back the way they were. What Mommy never told her was how hard Daddy beat her. But she came back, because I made her. And things went back to normal. It lasted three weeks before Daddy cracked Mommy’s skull open and she was gone for good. Jill never forgave me and ended up finding a man just like her father.
“I remember all of them. Every wish gone wrong. Everything I’ve ever done to stay alive. I’ve forgotten so much of this world; so many memories have become hazy and weak. The good times? They’re some of the first to go. But the wishes, I never forget the wishes. Each one of them is burned irrevocably into the back of my mind.”
“It’s a fate you’ve earned,” said Colby.
“The hell you say.”
“You’re a vampire. You prey upon the young because they don’t know any better. You dress up in the silks and the gold and you put on a hell of a show. But you’re a vampire, siphoning off the dreams of children and leaving them empty, dreamless husks.”
Yashar’s eyes glassed over with tears. He bitterly gritted his teeth, trying to contain himself. “I’m done with it,” he said. “All of it. I’m gonna do it this time.”
“No you won’t,” said Colby. “You’re not strong enough.”
Yashar rose to his feet and waved a belligerent finger. “I am strong enough! I’ll do it!”
“Yeah, and when’s that gonna happen?” called Colby, still sitting on the curb.
Yashar narrowed his eyes, speaking coldly. “Once the fairies are done with you. Fourteen days after today, I suppose.”
Colby shot to his feet. “You son of a—”
“Don’t you get pissed at me. This is your mess, not mine. I tried to drag you away from that boy. I tried to keep the truth from you. I tried to talk you out of intervening. This is your sin, Colby Stevens—your mess. You damned yourself the night you stuck your nose in their business, and now your precious little house of cards is collapsing, and you have the stones to come to me about what I’ve done? Sounds more like you haven’t come to grips with what you’ve done.”
“You’re just as guilty as I am. We’re both condemned men.”
“No,” said Yashar. “The difference between you and me is that while we’re both condemned, I am intimately familiar with my sins. You, on the other hand, don’t think you’ve sinned at all. But I’ll see what I can do to follow you soon after you’re gone.”
Colby shook his head, stormed off, frustrated, waving his arms wildly. The two had no more to say to each other.
Yashar took a long, gulping swig of the whiskey, killing all but the last few shots of the bottle. He looked down at the remainder solemnly. “Whiskey,” he said. “You’re my only friend.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” called a voice from behind him.
“If you’re here to apologize,” said Yashar, “I don’t accept.”
“Oh, we’re not here to apologize,” said another voice. “We’re here to grant you your final wish.” Yashar, now in something of a stupor, slowly turned around to look behind him. His mind was fuzzy, his reactions sluggish. Two redcaps leered at him, fondling an all-too-familiar bottle. While it had no name of its own, Yashar knew it by its inscription and the names of the djinn it had held in the past. He knew the name of every djinn that had died in that bottle. And it was only fitting now that he was going to join them.
“Well, that figures,” he said. “What took you so long?”
“Traffic,” joked one of the redcaps.
“Not you, asshole,” said Yashar. “I was talking to the bottle.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THE PROMISE OF TOMORROW
Ewan sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, pike by his side, grease pencil firmly in hand. Furiously, he scribbled over a torn-out sheet of artists’ paper—a picture of a little girl. Of Mallaidh. He scribbled and scrawled, trying to scrape away the memory, but it held fast, lingering painfully, just out of reach—an itch he couldn’t scratch. The page was a stain of black grease, small patches of white paper peering out beneath it. As he finished, he crumpled the sheet, threw it behind him into a growing pile already three dozen deep, cast out his arm, and tore another from the wall.
Ewan’s eyes were growing cold, the pupils swelling, overtaking the color of each iris. His stubble sprouted into whiskers, his skin flush with color, his cheeks rosy above patches of thickening bristle.
A dull throb beat in the back of his skull. He felt feverish, but dry; restless, but fatigued. His mouth felt like it was full of sand, no amount of water slaking his thirst or chasing the leather from his tongue. Something strange paced back and forth in his gut—an ill-tempered beast clawing from inside his rib cage, raking the bars with its talons, pounding to be let loose. Harder and harder, it raked and pounded, begging Ewan to lash out, to strike the nearest thing—to break the world one piece at a time, to slit a throat, any throat, and quench his thirst on the spatter.
There came a knock at the door.
“What’s the safe word?” he grumbled loudly, relieved by the distraction.
There was no answer.
“Safe word! What is it?” he called out again, rising to his feet.
“I don’t know it,” said a quiet voice from behind the door. He recognized it immediately. It was Nora.
He approached the door, his face inches from it. “We don’t have anything to say to each other.”
“You know that’s not true,” she said.
“Fine. I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“You’re lying. I’ll bet you can’t stop thinking of things you can’t wait to tell me. Or call me. Or whatever.”
Ewan unlatched the door, flinging it open. Mallaidh stood meekly behind it, disguised as Nora. She appeared small, frail, and delicate, swallowed whole by the darkness surrounding her outside. She looked up at him, her eyes welling with tears, lip quivering at the very sight of him. His heart burst. He’d known that this would be tough, but had no idea that his insides would turn to jelly just seeing her. The pacing beast in his belly stayed its wrath, held back a few moments longer.
He swallowed hard. “Don’t you dare look like her,” he said. “That’s not you. That person doesn’t exist.”
Mallaidh shook off the disguise like a duck would water—everything Nora falling away, replaced by lithe, tender features draped in long blond hair. She nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know which one of us you wanted to see.”
“Neither,” he said d
rily. The throbbing in his head had stopped, but the bitterness remained.
A swollen tear formed in the corner of her eye before plummeting down her cheek. This time his heart broke completely. He took her up in his arms, wrapping them completely around her, her head nestled squarely against his chest, her arms grappled as tightly around his waist as they could. Any semblance of composure she had hoped to maintain eroded, setting free a torrent of choked sobs. “I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why did you lie to me?” he asked.
She looked up at him, trembling. “I’ve never lied to you. Never.”
“Yes, you did.”
“When did I ever tell you that I wasn’t a fairy? When did I tell you that we’ve never met before? When did I tell you some bullshit story about a past that wasn’t mine? Everything I told you was true; that you didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle yet speaks only to the fact that these were truths you weren’t ready to know. I told you I was the little girl in your pictures. I told you that I would cross time and space to find you. I did cross time and space. And I did find you. And I have loved you, always. And I always will. So when, Ewan, when did I lie to you?”
“When you told me your name was Nora.”
“What?”
“You never lied about anything except who you were.”
“It’s not really a lie if you want it to be true,” she said. “And I’ve never wanted anything to be truer in my life.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nora isn’t just what you wanted me to be; she’s what I wanted to be. I want nothing more in my life than to be the girl of your dreams.”
“You didn’t even know me.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked, freeing a single hand from his grip and wiping a smear of tears from her cheek. “I’ve known you all your life. What time I didn’t know you, I spent trying to find you, trying to know you again.” Mallaidh looked around the apartment, for the first time noticing what a shambles it was. Pictures torn off walls, chairs knocked over, upturned ashtrays spilling filthy gray grit in swaths across dingy carpet. The place was a mess.
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