by Cat Adams
Given my sensitivity to sunlight, that was not good. Very not good.
I wound up with second- and third-degree burns over most of my body. Recovery was excruciatingly painful. I’d had to call so heavily on my vampire healing to survive that the attack had put me back to square one in my fight to retain my humanity. It took me long months of hard work to get back to the point where I was today—where I could usually manage some baby food and other purees and didn’t have to watch the clock like a hawk to be sure I ate every four hours to avoid blood lust.
I’d used those same months to work with my therapist on my brand-new, breathtaking fear of burns. With minimal success.
Frosty letters began forming across the tabletop. “He will see you dead.”
Everybody gasped at once. Pandemonium broke out when everyone tried talking at once. When it became apparent that no one was going to stop and listen to the others, I raised my hand and they shut up, waiting for me to say something.
Okay, this was bad. No doubt about it. Connor Finn would see me dead. Ghosts can’t lie; ergo, it was truth. But Abby hadn’t said when—and that was a very important detail. It could be today, but it could also be when I was ninety-eight and in a nursing home. Granted, given the life I lead, the latter didn’t seem likely. But, hey, I cling to hope where I can find it. And, since dwelling on my possible demise was counterproductive—and likely to distract me from the task at hand, thus leading to my possible demise—I pushed my fears aside and started issuing orders. Yeah, my voice was a little higher pitched than usual and might have been threaded with a little panic. My team ignored that entirely.
“Dawna, get online and get me all you can find on what happened at the Needle.” I closed my eyes, taking a deep, calming breath. The government had clamped down hard on the situation rather than risk widespread panic, so information would be hard as hell to find. I knew more than most, since I’d been there, but there was much that I didn’t know, like the names and abilities of the two dark mages who had escaped.
“Kevin, do you have any contacts who can look into what Jack Finn has been up to?”
“I’m on it.”
I didn’t like to leave Warren and Gordon hanging on the line, so I asked if they wanted me to call them back or if they’d rather hold. Warren stuck his head into camera range, right next to Gordon’s. An older, more distinguished version of Kevin’s, his handsome face was stern and serious. “We aren’t going anywhere. We want to help.”
“Thanks.”
Warren gave a curt nod in acknowledgment.
There were three men who might have info I could use, but none of my team could reach out to them. I needed to be the one to call or they probably wouldn’t talk. The hour would be damned inconvenient for all three of them. Still, life or death and all that happy crap.
Pulling my cell from my pocket, I dialed Dom Rizzoli first.
Dom used to work for the FBI, in the Los Angeles branch. We’d met in the course of a couple of cases that were particularly hairy, helped each other out, and become friends. Later, Dom sort of became my liaison with the bureau. He’d been promoted and moved, with his family, to Washington DC.
If anybody could get the sealed files on the Needle unsealed for me, it would be Dom Rizzoli. If I called now, in the middle of the night on the East Coast, I’d probably wake him up. He’d be grumpy. Then again, he’d probably be even more grumpy if I didn’t ask for help and something bad happened.
Sometimes you can’t win. I called his cell.
I got his voicemail. When I heard the beep I left a message. “Dom, it’s me, Celia. I have a situation that involves the ghost of Connor Finn and I need information. It’s important. Call me back … please.”
Normally at this point I’d call Matty DeLuca and see what he could get me from his contacts with the Church. The militant arm of the Catholic Church is very well informed on anything that involves the demonic, and there had definitely been demons at the battle at the Needle. But Matty was, like Bruno, at his mother’s deathbed. It didn’t seem right to call, particularly in the middle of the night. Maybe I’d call tomorrow. More likely, when Bruno checked in I’d ask him to pass a message to his brother. Of course, then I’d have to give Bruno all the details, and he wouldn’t be happy.
Well, neither were any of us. Bruno might as well join the club.
The third person I needed to speak to personally was Isaac Levy, my tailor, my friend, and a mage at the tippy top of the hierarchy of the local magical community. He’s also pretty old, and I hated the idea of calling him this late, since he and his wife, Gilda, were sure to be in bed. On the other hand, he already knew something was brewing since Tim had spoken to him while I was out of it.
Isaac answered on the first ring, sounding less sleepy than I would’ve expected.
“Hi. Sorry to bother you so late, but…” I explained what was going on as succinctly as possible. By the time I was finished, any chance he’d had of falling asleep was long gone.
“I am glad you called. You need to be very careful, Celia. These are very deadly people, and they hold a grudge against you.” Isaac sighed. “That Finn is involved in this, as a ghost, does not surprise me. He was a very willful and powerful man. He would not give up life easily. Do we know what his purpose for clinging to this plane is?”
“Abby says he will see me dead.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line: a long, ominous silence.
I broke it. “Do you know the identities of the other two mages in the working at the Needle?”
“Yes. Isabella recognized their magical signatures. Meredith Stanton was one. She was Harold’s mistress and a nurse at the Needle. She’s a very powerful witch and seriously deficient in ethics.”
“She’d have to be, to be part of that crew.”
“Indeed.” He continued, “Bob Davis was the fourth.”
Bob Davis had been the warden at the ultra high–security prison. He’d escaped in the confusion of the battle. He was way up at the top of the FBI’s most-wanted list, had his picture in the post office and everything, but no trace of him had been found, as far as I knew.
He probably had nearly as big a hate-on for me as Connor Finn did, so if Finn’s ghost was involved in this, the odds were good Davis was too. But why? What did they hope to gain? Like a lot of villains, I could see Davis not giving a rat’s ass about collateral damage—but why risk setting loose a creature that would be nearly impossible to control? It didn’t make sense. I said as much to Isaac.
“Power,” he answered. “If they’d gained control of the node at the Needle and loosed whatever it was they were going to, they’d have had unlimited power with no constraints, ethical or otherwise. It is the same here.”
“But why would they need that much power?”
“For some, it is an addiction.”
I could get that, but it didn’t feel like the right reason to me. Apparently Isaac agreed, because he said, “But I think there is more than that to this. Let me see what I can find.”
“Thanks, Isaac. Call Dawna with your results, please. I’m liable to be unreachable, dealing with the client.”
“Be careful, Celia. Be very careful.”
“I plan to.”
I disconnected and turned to the video screen.
“Okay, Gordon, Warren, what have you got for me?”
“Hasan’s jar is in a pattern of flame and ash because of the primary disaster he was known to have caused,” Gordon said.
“Which was?” Kevin shifted to stand beside me and slipped me a note. I glanced at it: Jack isn’t involved. He’s in a coma. Slipped on ice and fell down stairs. Abby?
Could a ghost of Abby’s power have coated steps with ice? Easily. Would she have, to kill the man who’d been part of her being tortured to death? Hell yeah.
Gordon’s voice derailed that less-than-happy train of thought. “The eruption at Vesuvius.”
“You just had to ask, didn’t you,” Tim complained.
; Bubba started humming under his breath. Kevin glared at him, but the other man was unrepentant. It took me a minute to recognize the tune—I’d heard it on an oldies station: Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move.” Cute.
“So Hasan causes natural disasters?” Dawna asked.
“That seems to be his specialty,” Gordon responded. “I can e-mail you a list.”
“Please do. Any known weaknesses?” I asked.
“Not really,” Warren answered. “It’s true that the djinn are arrogant, but with good reason. There’s not much regular humans can do to counter them. There’s been a Guardian in every generation with special powers to deal with them since a couple of centuries BC, but not a lot is written about them or their abilities. The djinn generally stay away from both the angelic and the demonic, so we haven’t found a lot that indicates either of those forces would be of help.”
Not that I’d want to deal with the demonic, or even the angelic, if I didn’t have to. But the rest wasn’t helpful either.
Tim spoke up. “One of the prehistoric African creation myths has a pair of djinn fighting it out. They wound up killing each other, creating the great desert. But who knows whether that’s true.”
“It’s true.” Rahim’s voice came from the covered walkway that connected the main building to the guest rooms. He appeared a moment later, seeming to materialize out of the shadows themselves. He looked better. In fact, if he hadn’t still been wearing his flame-scorched shirt, I wouldn’t have known that anything untoward had happened to him. That was definitely weird. I have vampire healing in my favor, which was why I was nearly entirely recovered after a few hours. Rahim didn’t. He should still be down and out, not up and around and looking fresh as a daisy. I mean, Chris is good, but nobody’s that good.
Dawna gave me a look that told me she’d noticed the same thing and was possibly even more suspicious than I was.
“Anything else we should know?” Dawna asked. Her tone was a little bit sharper than usual and I realized that she still didn’t want me taking this case, regardless of what Dottie saw. I couldn’t blame her. In fact, I would have heartily agreed—if I didn’t trust Dottie so much. But I did.
Since Rahim had been very specific about not wanting us to do research, I more than half expected him to complain about our obvious information-gathering. Surprisingly, he didn’t. Maybe the events in the circle had spooked him. Or, possibly, he was the type to pick his battles and had figured out this was one he wasn’t going to win.
“I need to use magic to call the ifrit back to its jar. I am considering using another spell that will link my essence to Hasan’s on the ethereal plane. I cannot do this if I am under magical attack. I need…” he paused, searching for the right word, “reinforcements.”
Tim opened his mouth, but Rahim silenced him with a gesture. “I appreciate that you are willing to help, but the mages helping me must be of the line of the Guardians if the spells are to work. I called my grandfather in Florida a few minutes ago, before joining you. He has agreed to assist me and to obtain the—uh—some of the things we will need to do a more elaborate working. With his help I should be able to locate and perhaps trap Hasan. We fly out to meet with him. He is expecting us.”
“Your enemies will expect you to go there,” Dawna commented.
Rahim’s tone was decidedly chilly. “Perhaps, but it is necessary. So we are going.”
No “perhaps” about it, as far as I was concerned. If I were a bad guy and the only people capable of containing my monster were the Guardians, I’d have them all under close surveillance—video, audio, you name it.
It never pays to underestimate the enemy, so I always assume they’re at least as bright and prepared as I am. Having gone up against Connor Finn and his buddies before, I knew they were very ruthless and very good at being bad. In fact, I’d never run into anyone better. I thought about saying so, but I knew that telling the client wouldn’t do any good … and I knew that one more word and Dawna would insist we refuse the job.
“Any chance we could meet at a neutral location, some place the bad guys wouldn’t expect?” I suggested. “That would give us a real advantage.” I smiled, trying to take the sting from the words.
“We are going to Florida,” Rahim answered, his tone one of absolute finality.
Apparently the djinn don’t have a monopoly on arrogance.
7
It always takes longer to get ready for a trip than you think it will. Rahim wanted to leave as soon as possible, but that just wasn’t practical. His grandfather would provide most of what we needed, but there were a few specialty items Rahim needed to pick up, and that would have to wait until morning, when the stores would reopen. PharMart was open twenty-four hours, but they didn’t carry the really exotic stuff Rahim wanted.
I probably could’ve imposed on Isaac, but I didn’t want to, and I wanted the extra time for my team’s investigations. I also definitely wanted to consult Dottie again and in person. Clairvoyants don’t have one-hundred-percent accuracy, but Dottie was damned good. Her visions had saved my bacon more than once. So, with ill grace, Rahim and Bubba went to the private airstrip where the Sparrowhawk was parked. Rahim’s plan was to change clothes and do as much pre-flight stuff as he could while I packed and took care of some last minute things here.
We agreed to meet at the airstrip at ten o’clock. Take off would be at ten thirty.
Time flies, whether or not you’re having fun. By the time I’d gone over everything one last time with Gordon and Warren, looked at the results of my staff’s research, and packed a bag, it was seven thirty.
Dottie arrived then, and while the hot pink outfit she wore was cheery, her expression was grim. Giving me a nod in greeting, she moved slowly but steadily through the building until she reached the conference-room table. One of Dottie’s scrying tools is a holy water–filled crystal bowl with a silver rim. Another is a wadjeti, an ancient Egyptian set of scarabs.
Today she used table salt and playing cards.
Sitting next to me at the center seat of the conference-room table, she poured the salt in a steady, even flow until she’d made a perfect circle about the size of a garbage-can lid. Peeling the plastic from a brand-new pack of playing cards, she shuffled them a few times and began setting out a pyramid pattern, starting at the top.
The first card represented me. The queen of hearts.
Next row, two cards. The ace and queen of spades. I didn’t know what that meant until she spoke, her voice gone hollow the way it sometimes does when her power is riding her.
“The ace of spades is death or the dead. The queen is his tool. They stand between you and your goal, guarding the way against you.”
She dealt the third level. Three cards: the jack of diamonds, the joker, and the king of hearts.
“The client thinks he is in control but the joker has the power. They threaten all that you hold dearest.”
Fourth and last row: queen of clubs, ace of diamonds, jack of clubs, king of spades.
“Your enemies know you. For every move there is a counter; for every ally an opponent. They are your match in most ways. Ultimately you can prevail, but only if you embrace your hidden strengths.”
Dottie shook herself, shedding the remnants of her vision like a dog shakes off water. Her expression wasn’t panicked, but she definitely wasn’t happy.
“Dottie, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She didn’t look fine. She looked exhausted and truly old. Usually she had a buoyancy that belied the walker and the calendar. Not now. Her skin was sagging, her expression deeply worried. “You need to go. But it is very, very dangerous.”
* * *
I was lucky. Traffic was lighter than usual, and I made it to the airstrip on time. Rahim’s jet was everything it had been advertised to be, and probably well worth the astronomical asking price, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not. I am better about flying than I used to be, thanks to therapy, but I still don’t enjoy th
e experience. Still, I couldn’t fault Rahim for thoroughness. He performed his preflight check as impeccably and with the same attention to detail he’d given to his magic.
Once he’d given the jet a complete external inspection, we climbed on and he made his way to the cockpit. I went to the back and stowed my gear in the small luggage compartment across from the bathroom. Since it was a four-hour flight, I’d brought along reading material—research on the djinn. I set it onto the seat next to me and strapped myself into one of the four passenger seats that were arranged in pairs facing each other.
Either Rahim was a quick shopper, or he had talked someone into opening early. At ten o’clock, we were actually in the air. We would arrive at Midland, Texas, between two and three o’clock local time to refuel and get a late lunch, then fly from Midland to Treasure Island. And, since we were filing our flight plan like good little citizens, it would be spectacularly easy for our opponents to know precisely where we would be, and when.
Not that that bothered me or anything.
Sitting strapped into an admittedly luxurious leather seat in the passenger compartment of the jet, I tried to reassure and distract myself during takeoff by checking my weapons.
Since we were on a private jet, I didn’t have to worry about what to pack—what I could legally take through airport security. I could go whole hog, and I had. My favorite gun, a Colt, was strapped in my shoulder holster; a Derringer backup piece was holstered on my ankle, my favorite knives were mounted in their wrist sheaths, and I’d filled my pockets with as many spell disks and balls as could comfortably fit. My jacket was stocked as well, with a stake, two One-Shot brand water pistols filled with holy water, and a garrote. I also had brought sunscreen, a hat, a little recorder similar to the one Rahim had used, my passport, and a couple of changes of clothes. I couldn’t pin down Rahim as to how long we were likely to be gone, or what our destinations after Treasure Island might be, so I’d overpacked in hopes of having what I would need. Like the Scouts, I believe in being prepared.
We spent four uneventful hours in the air before landing in Midland. It was time for me to eat again and Rahim was hungry, so I slathered myself with sunscreen, slapped on my hat, and we walked the block and a half to the nearest fast-food roast beef restaurant.
