“I’m sure,” I said.
Long pause.
Then: “Thanks for picking him up.”
“No problem,” he said, “as long as you deliver.”
I picked up the crime scene photos and pushed into the interview room, Johnson right behind me.
The little Afghani looked up at us. He had pulled his pakol off his head and was twisting the brown, wool cap in his hands. He looked small and scared and pathetic.
But he was really none of those things.
“What name are you using?” I asked.
“Abdul Kabuli,” he said.
I looked at Johnson. “The first thing you need to understand,” I told him, “Is that the murder of Zhang and the attempt on my life were committed by same perp—and they show a twisted and cruel sense of humor.”
“I do not know what you’re talking about,” said Mr. Kabuli. “Maybe I should to leave so you can finish your discussion?”
He looked hopefully at Johnson.
“The rest of it was in the crime scene photos, I said.
I laid down 18 different photos, all taken with high-speed, color film.
Of light bulbs.
“Zhang was killed after he went to change a burnt-out bulb. And the attempt on my life only happened after I flicked on my flashlight. So Detective Johnson, what creature has a nasty sense of humor and is obsessed with lights. Or to put it another way, is obsessed with lamps.”
“A djinn,” Johnson whispered, his light bulb finally going off.
“A djinn,” I agreed.
We both turned to look at Kabuli.
“Please to say, sir, I am not a djinn. I am humble farmer and I wish to contact my embassy.”
“The part I couldn’t understand,” I said, still talking to Johnson, “was who would benefit from the killings. Not the Chinese—they’ve lost their leader. Not we Russians—we would be forced to fight an all-out war with Chinese. Not Chicago PD, you’d have to referee a blood-bath. Not even poor, stupid FBI, because they are spending all their resources to deal with this problem, Percival told me himself. So who benefits?”
Johnson thought about it a moment. I let him work it out on his own. People always believe ideas more strongly when they think they thought of it themselves.
The djinn, a creature of great power from Arab lands, Mr. Kabuli, a man from the Islamic world.
A distracted FBI.
Johnson connected the dots. “Terrorism,” he breathed.
See? Smart.
“That’s right,” I said. “You just figured out the what. Now Mr. Kabuli is going to tell us the who.”
The djinn hiding in the little man’s body snorted. “Am I?” Gone was the broken English and the fawning attitude. “And what if I don’t? Are you going to waterboard me? Do you have a water elemental handy?”
I flashed him a tight smile. Because I was off the hook. If Zhang had been killed by a djinn acting on behalf of Islamic terrorists I could prove to the golden dragon that it had nothing to with me or missing heroin. And, yes, I’d violated Percival’s injunction to stay clear of the investigation. But he was going to have difficult time sending me to secret prison when I’d uncovered a major terrorist plot and handed it to the authorities.
For the first time since Dorbayeva set out to get rid of me, I was safe. I’d won!
And then I looked over at Dexter Johnson’s face.
Johnson was good at keeping emotions off his face, but for a moment there was flash of something there. Fear and anger, sure, but something else, infinitely more terrible.
Grief.
I wasn’t mind reader, but I was sure I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking of his city, his beloved Chicago, and all the people who would be killed or hurt in an attack.
Dexter Johnson had been my adversary ever since I came to this country.
But I could see there was something noble in this man.
So I drew a deep breath and sat down at the table across from the djinn. “You’re going to tell us, because you want to tell us.”
Kabuli chuckled. “If this is a new torture technique it’s not working. It’s actually rather amusing.”
“A djinn’s wishes always backfire on the wisher,” said Johnson.
Kabuli slapped the table, his face reddening. “Don’t tell me my business.”
“Look,” I said softly. “You don’t want to do this, otherwise you never would have let us catch you.”
He was staring at me now, those dark eyes fixed on me. He knew what I was saying was true, he just didn’t know he knew.
“Really?” he said dryly.
I nodded. “Why would you serve Islamists? You’re older than them. The magic of djinns was stirring among the dunes of Arabia centuries, millennia, before that religion was even born.” I shook my head. “You are old magic. And old magic is not meant to serve young magic.”
He looked at me for a long time.
And then he glanced up at Johnson.
And told him.
After that, things happened fast. The terrorist plot was foiled, the perpetrators caught, the people saved, and what do you know, Chicago PD even got some of the credit—though not nearly as much as the unicorn with a badge.
But that didn’t matter to Dexter Johnson, who, wonder of wonders, looked at me and said, “Thank you, Valeri. I will not forget this.”
I shrugged. “Is nothing. Violence is bad for business, that’s all.”
He snorted and turned to go. And as I watched his retreating back, I thought that he was wrong about a great many things, but within his own limited understanding of the world he is honest man.
Maybe he would say the same thing about me.
Introduction to “My Real Cousin Ruby”
And now we get to me. In the fantasy genre, I’m best known for my international bestselling Fey series which will gain a new book Real Soon Now. Maybe after I finish the multi-book arc for my Hugo-nominated cross-genre Retrieval Artist series which ate up half of 2013. In March, WMG Publishing released the long-awaited seventh novel in my Edgar-nominated Smokey Dalton series, which I publish under the name Kris Nelscott. I also write paranormal romance under the name Kristine Grayson.
“My Real Cousin Ruby” doesn’t fit into any of those series. In fact, this is one of those rare stories that came to me in a dream. Once you read the story, you’ll understand just how weird that is…
My Real Cousin Ruby
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
My cousin Ruby is forty-seven years old and obese. She’s been married a million times and has more children than I can count. She never went to college. She didn’t even go to trade school until she turned forty. Then she learned how to be a hairdresser.
I’m sure she’s a changeling child.
I’ve been sure of that since I was a little girl. Even before I had the words to confirm how I felt about Ruby, my actions confirmed it. I ditched her in the most creative ways. I told her we were playing hide and seek, then left her in the attic for an entire day. I locked her in my backyard playhouse and threw away the key.
I didn’t get punished too heavily—I’m only a year older, and when you’re five, that year doesn’t count for much. But because of that slight age difference, I was always supposed to “bring Ruby along,” a task no one but me seemed to realize was impossible.
No one but me and my Real Cousin Ruby.
My Real Cousin Ruby appears to me in dreams. She’s the same age as the person I’ve been told to call my cousin Ruby, but otherwise they’re nothing alike.
My Real Cousin Ruby is short and dark-haired and thin. She walks slightly hunched over, probably from all that reading she’s done, and her Birkenstocks slide across the ground, making a shush-shush sound wherever she goes.
She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, got into Harvard Law, hated it, graduated anyway, then immediately registered at the University of Wisconsin for a Masters in Physics. She’s on her third post-doc, this time in bioengineering. No c
hildren, of course—how could you study that much and bring up hordes?—and only one or two boyfriends.
She’s bitterly funny, but only my side of the family understands her jokes—my college educated parents who raised a Rhodes scholar (my brother), an award-winning physicist (my sister), a world-renown playwright (my other sister) and me. The disappointment. The housewife with two children, one grandchild on the way, and a bucketload of ambition that gets foisted off on the PTA.
We all dream about her—everyone on my side of the family. My siblings don’t talk about her much any more, but when we were kids, we compared notes.
We all dreamed of my Real Cousin Ruby winning what was then called the GE/Westinghouse science competition, kicking butt at a national Model United Nations competition, and creaming the opposition in the famed College Debates.
But I’m the only one who held her small sobbing frame (and woke up to find a large wet spot on the right shoulder of my favorite sweatshirt) when she lost her first boyfriend to the head cheerleader. I’m the only one who heard about her fears before she aced the L-SAT, the only one who held her hand while she waited to have an ill-advised abortion on her thirtieth birthday.
And so far, I’m the only one who knows about her upcoming wedding, even though she claims she’s sending the invitations next week.
Which is a problem. I can’t talk to anyone. First, I promised I wouldn’t say anything. Second, even if I did say something, no one would listen. My siblings all figure this is some sort of shared hallucination, so the less we discuss it, the better off we are.
Occasionally I can talk to Pam (the playwright) but only in the context of fiction and only when we’re discussing the power of dreams. Mostly, she doesn’t like to think about it any more than my very logical, very political brother does.
My scientist sister used to discuss the dreams with me, back when she was studying time travel theories.
Alternate dimensions, she’d said once.
Branching universes, she’d said later.
Severed possibilities, she’d said that last time, the time she said she no longer believed.
Severed possibilities. My brother liked that one, but I don’t. Because my Real Cousin Ruby isn’t a severed possibility.
She exists. She has a life—a real and solid life, even if it is in our dreams.
She has a better life than the woman posing as my cousin Ruby, the changeling child.
Although my physicist sister Debbie did correct me once: She can’t be a changeling, my sister said, because changelings get traded one for the other. If she were a true changeling child, then that means something can travel from our dreams into our world and back again, plucking children out of them and replacing those children with something else…something not quite right.
Like my supposed cousin, Ruby. Something not quite right.
Although my husband says that it’s snobby of me to think my so-called cousin Ruby isn’t quite right because she chose to climb down the economic ladder.
So I’m snobby.
And deceitful.
Because, in 21 years, I’ve never ever told my husband about my Real Cousin Ruby.
Nor can I talk to him about her fiancé.
Whom I hate.
You’d think a woman at the age of forty-seven would pick an appropriate man. You’d think after decades of consideration, after decades of adulthood and self-knowledge, someone as brilliant as my Real Cousin Ruby would find the kind of man who enhanced her.
But this guy—this guy detracts.
First of all, he’s homely. I know, I know, one shouldn’t judge on appearances, but I firmly believe that old adage that the face you have at fifty is the face you deserve.
His face is set in frown lines, with angry edges to his beady little eyes. His teeth are yellow from too much coffee and his hairline is receding.
His name is Lon. He runs a drive-through espresso stand that he built with his own hands, and which I’m sure he’ll close soon with those self-same hands, since he undercharges Starbucks by a dollar on every coffee drink, no matter what it does to his bottom line.
He brings a six-pack to every gathering, whether appropriate or not, and if no one else drinks it, he finishes it alone.
My Real Cousin Ruby wants me to approve.
First she said I’d like him better after I spent time with him. Then I spent time with him, and liked him worse.
So she gave me the old tried and true line—the one every teenager uses on her parents about that rebel boyfriend: Don’t you understand? He makes me happy.
Yes, I said. And then, because I have more courage in my nighttime world than I do in my daytime one, I added, That happiness’ll continue, so long as the sex remains good.
She didn’t show up in a single dream for nearly two weeks. When she finally did, she waved a diamond at me (this from the woman who thought diamonds an abomination just the year before) and said in a strangely calm voice, I’m marrying him. You can be my maid of honor or you can stay far away from both of us.
I chose maid of honor—after I explained to the poor woman that I was a matron; I hadn’t been a maid in nearly thirty years.
The following morning, in that groggy sometime between opening my eyes and my first cup of coffee, I realized that my Real Cousin Ruby was naïve. Two boyfriends (that I knew of) in twenty years, a traumatic abortion, and an assault by a graduate assistant had put her off the male side of humanity for quite a while.
Which left her vulnerable to the likes of Lon.
It also struck me that my Real Cousin Ruby and my so-called cousin Ruby actually had something in common.
Bad taste in men. Only my so-called cousin Ruby has outgrown her bad taste. The latest guy—maybe the last guy—adopted her myriad children and urged her to open her own beauty shop and has quietly supported every single thing she’s done for the past ten years. His name is Delmar, and he’s actually kind.
Yep, he’s a keeper. And that morning, I actually found myself wondering if she’s kept him because she knows his value, or if she’s kept him because the bouncing ball landed on red and she doesn’t have the energy to bet again.
Then I found myself wondering if everyone has a dream self and a real self, if everyone has a different identity in the realm of dreams.
Which then brought me back to the question my siblings and I used to ask about my so-called cousin Ruby. Is she real or is the dream Ruby the real one? Back then, we had decided that the dream Ruby was real because we liked her better. She was much more a member of our family than the fat and sloppy bottle blond who lived in our world.
Revisiting that question is the thing that got me in trouble.
Revisiting that question opened a door a child would never have even seen.
Revisiting that question led to the inevitable:
If something happened to the Ruby in our world, what happened to the Ruby of our dreams?
***
I became, in a word, obsessed.
First I tried to solve the conundrum myself.
I retired to the upstairs office that my husband had designed for me in a fit of guilt. We have a five-bedroom home, but only two children. They have their rooms, we have our master suite, we have an office, and then we have a junk room.
As the office became his, my husband felt guiltier and guiltier. He believes in equality, does this wonderful man I married, so he cleaned out the junk room, found me a desk, put up some shelves, and presented it to me as a fait accompli.
I didn’t bother to tell him that I felt the whole house was my personal domain, a domain that he and the kids visited from time to time. Instead I graciously accepted the office and never used it.
Until that day.
The office overlooks the back yard, which I have designed for maximum pleasure—perennials that bloom from May to September, mixed with hedges and lots of comfortable outdoor seating arrangements. The office and the garden face east (east of the sun, my husband used to say, quoting the t
itle of one of the kids’ favorite fairy tales. And west of the moon, I’d say, finishing the phrase. We are steeped in fairy tales here).
I opened that window, sat in the window seat, and thumbed through all the books on dream analysis that have found their way into my house. (Many of them are signed with birthday or Christmas wishes from one of my siblings. Go figure.)
I found representational imagery. I found puns. I found directed dreaming. But I didn’t find anything about the dream world crossing into our world or vice versa.
So I left the volumes on the floor beside the window seat, and went to my computer. There I found a lot about dreams crossing into the real world—if I wanted to see analysis of the Freddy Krueger movies or Clive Barker’s fiction.
I found very little actual research on the dream world itself. Everyone who examined dreams started from the premise that dreams were random images of events, real and imagined, that played in a sleeping person’s consciousness. The purpose of those images, real and imagined, are the subject of debate. Are they coherent stories? Random memories? An attempt to clear out the flotsam and jetsam of a day’s accumulated thoughts?
It seemed that most people believed their dreams were figments, whether of the imagination or of the subconscious mind. No one else seemed to have an entire life going on in their dreams.
No one except my siblings, that is.
And while I liked to believe we were unique, I couldn’t. Not entirely. Because that either meant a genetic predisposition toward insanity or a shared hallucination like my siblings believed or the beginnings of some form of true schizophrenia.
Since we were mostly too old to fall into schizophrenia (and we didn’t take drugs, which often sent previously stable [a word we could argue] adults into schizophrenic behavior), then we were either insane or having that shared hallucination.
Or we actually experienced another world, one we could only access in dreams.
I spent days in that office. Days of reading, days of researching, days of staring into the garden, hoping to find an answer.
Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift Page 13
