Rachel shook her head. “That was terrible. I’m glad your hips don’t lie, ’cuz your comedy sucks.”
I shrugged. “Just go drill your hole.”
She tutted, getting up to head into the kitchen while Yulia watched the both of us as she gave the slow headshake of shame.
Chapter Six
I was back in the harem where I’d been born. Soft light from outdoor lamps filtered through the filigree on the windows. Inside, fragrant beeswax candles set in sconces against the wall smoked gently, giving off their familiar, delicious scent of jasmine and sandalwood. It was hot, of course—all of my fully human memories were glazed with the desert heat of which my jinni Fire was a pale imitation.
Walking on quiet feet, I approached the door to the harem. In my real memories, I would have been tiptoeing through a mass of sleeping bodies, all the women and children of my family strewn about on thin mattresses. But here all was quiet, the floors empty and the air void of the quiet snores and mumblings of so many people sleeping in one place.
There was just me and the massive set of double doors that represented my freedom.
I knew I had to get outside. Although I wasn’t sure what waited for me past those doors, I knew it was freedom. No more living in fear of my father or of the suitors I saw through the screens of our harem’s balcony. At fourteen I was a woman, the daughter of a wealthy, powerful man, and purported to be a beauty—making me nothing but a pawn to the men who surrounded me and the lineage they sought to keep in power.
Expecting that at any minute one of our harem eunuchs would make himself known, appearing out of the shadows as was their wont to turn me away from my goal, to my surprise I was allowed to approach the doors. No one stopped me.
Reaching them, I tried to grasp a handle, but my hand fell to my side a second after it was raised. What am I doing? I thought. What can I do on my own in the world? I have nothing… no one. Not even my name if I’m known to have run away. A night away from the harem and my virginity would be in question, stripping me of my single intrinsic value. Until it was sold out from under me by my father, of course.
You own yourself in this moment, I told myself. Take this chance… maybe you can finally be free, if you take this one chance…
Grasping at this frail straw of hope, I raised both hands to grab the huge handle of either door. But as my fingers wrapped around the bronze I realized it was hot. Fiery hot, burning hot—instantly my flesh fused to it, the skin melting to the door handles. I screamed in agony, the smell of my burning skin obscuring that of the candles.
I pulled, trying desperately to free my hands, but neither they nor the door moved. Until, ripping the skin from my palms, my fingers, the doors suddenly flew outward. Dropping to my knees in agony, I clutched my ruined hands to my belly, sobbing in terror as the smoke from the candles thickened, becoming a roiling mass of eerie black flames that drifted over the white marble floor. Before me, on the lintel of the doorway, the smoke solidified. A flame-eyed being stood above me, leering down.
“You’ll never be free, little Lyla,” Kouros said, his mouth opening on a pit of red fire even more terrifying than the dark flames of his body. “I never let go of my treasures. Never…”
A hand of black flames reached toward, then through me, passing through the center of my chest. I could feel his Fire in my heart, burning a thousand times hotter than the flames that had mutilated my hands. I smelled the acrid scent of my own heart cooking as I screamed, and screamed, and screamed…
“Lyla!” said a voice. “Lyla, wake up!”
Hands on my shoulders shook me and I reached for the black flames of my own jinni Fire, prepared to strike. But it didn’t answer me and my eyes opened in shock.
“Master,” I murmured, seeing Ozan’s silver eyes staring into mine. Of course my power hadn’t responded; I wasn’t allowed to hurt the Master.
“I hate that word,” he said, but his voice was distracted, his slightly crooked boxer’s features rumpled with concern. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine, just a bad dream.” Leaning back on my pillows I shut my eyes to gather my bearings. When I opened them again Ozan was still there, perched awkwardly on the edge of my bed, staring down at me.
Was now the time on Sprockets when I’d have to make him fuck a cantaloupe?
But instead of making a move, he ran his hands through his own sleep-mussed hair. “You scared the hell out of me,” he admitted. “You were screaming like someone was murdering you.”
“Yeah, well, I have bad dreams sometimes.” Which was not strictly true. In reality I had lots of bad dreams. And they’d been increasing in intensity and frequency—an effect, no doubt, of my being so close to the end of my curse. But I couldn’t share that last fact with my Master. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost eleven,” he said. “But I only just got up. I haven’t slept that well in weeks. I feel amazing.”
Those silver eyes peeked at me through thick lashes and I cursed his father for those Irish puppy-dog features. Not that I hadn’t had handsome Masters in my day, and having someone enslave you tended to overshadow the appeal of high cheekbones or a finely muscled neck.
A muscular, tattooed neck that, in Ozan’s case, I would have happily throttled if I had been allowed, to get back my freedom before this week was up.
“Well,” I said, pulling the blankets with me to protect my modesty as I sat up. Oz glanced away quickly when he saw my bared shoulders, obviously only then realizing I slept à la Eve. “We might as well get started. First of all, we should pick up your stuff so you can move in here. Where have you been staying?”
“A motel. But I planned to stay there.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, keeping my voice neutral but warm. Get him on side, I thought, reminding myself of today’s mission. “We have tons of room.”
“What about your roommate?”
Oh yeah, I remembered. I had told him she would try to kill him.
“Don’t worry about Yulia,” I said. “You’re welcome to stay in our guest room. Unless you’d prefer the motel?”
He narrowed his eyes, nobody’s fool. “Why would you want me to stay here?”
“Because we have the space and having you here will make working together easier. We can find Tamina faster,” I said, keeping my tone casual and friendly, my eyes round and innocent. Charlie would be proud.
Eventually, of course, Ozan agreed.
My face may only launch a few dozen ships, but my tongue can easily launch a few hundred. And that doesn’t even take into account what I can do with it when I’m not talking.
Ozan had managed to find the floppiest flophouse in Wilkinsburg, which was saying something.
“Dude, were you cruising for bedbugs, or do you just like your sheets extra semen-encrusted?” I asked him, peering over the dash of my El Camino skeptically.
He gave me an imperious glare. “I’m a research scientist,” he said. “I’m not exactly on a boutique hotel budget.”
I pushed open my door, shaking my head. “I get that money’s tight, but you would have been better off with a shopping cart and a piece of cardboard.”
We got out of the car and headed toward the rickety-looking staircase that led to his second-story room. The motel was of the cheapest sort, built with the offices at the very front and a long line of rooms extending back like a scabby tail. A tail full of prostitutes, drug deals, and gang murders that the hotel manager never had to see, thus allowing him to claim full irresponsibility.
We got to the top of the stairs. There was a maid leaning against the doorjamb of an empty room, smoking. Dirty gray linens lay twisted into a ball next to her feet, the water in the bucket next to the linens an even sludgier color.
She was human, aged anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-five, with the hard, lined face of someone who’d not had a lot of chances or choices during her lifetime. Her flat, red-rimmed eyes flicked to mine and I gave her a little nudge with my magic as I said,
“Why don’t you take your cigarette downstairs?”
The human nodded amicably and walked to the stairs, Oz watching our exchange with arced brows.
“Was that magic?” he asked, when the maid was gone.
I nodded. “Just a smidge.”
“Are we that easy to manipulate?”
“Most of you, yes.”
He shook his head, either at what I’d said or my abrupt tone. “You must not have a lot of respect for humans.”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t tell him it wasn’t precisely a lack of respect, since I’d once been human. My curse kept me from doing so. So I shrugged my shoulders, frustrated with the whole situation.
“She needed to be out of the way,” I said.
“Why, expecting danger?”
I shook my head. “No. We’re just picking up your stuff. But you never know.” His silver eyes stayed on mine, radiating skepticism. “Look, supernaturals and humans should be kept separate. Usually for the humans’ survival, or at least their virtue,” I said, thinking of the poor humans Diamond was always dragging into Purgatory. “It becomes habit, after a while. See a human, get him or her away, so nobody gets eaten. Or boffed.”
“So you’re taking care of them?” he asked.
“I’m trying to. And before you get all uppity about personal choice and not manipulating people, keep in mind they have no idea what they’re dealing with. They can’t make responsible choices when they don’t even know we exist. And that something trying to eat them is probably in the cards if they make the wrong decision.”
Oz’s brows knitted together, making him look pensive. And adorable. I reminded myself I was an idiot.
“I have so many questions,” my Master said, digging in his pocket for his key. He unlocked the door and it opened onto a room that was as grim as I’d expected.
“Ask away,” I said, checking out the room.
He walked toward a black duffel bag set on a cheap bureau upon which sat a TV that hadn’t been state-of-the-art since the mid-eighties. He opened the bag, then paused, his brow furrowed in thought. “First of all, what’s up with Pittsburgh? You mentioned a few things last night, when you were, um, resetting the wards.” He spoke carefully, as if pronouncing words in a different language. I also cursed his obviously excellent memory. “Something about Pittsburgh’s magic, you said… also the fact that I couldn’t sense normally here, and neither could the jinni in Boston…” Ozan cocked his head. “So what is it with Pittsburgh, exactly? I just thought it was Steelers. And French fries on salads.”
“While French fries on salads is pretty magical, that’s not what makes Pittsburgh special,” I said, as I took a prim seat on the edge of the bed. One that I reconsidered after seeing the brownish stain on the comforter, next to my right hand. I moved to lean up against the open doorway. “Do you know our geography at all?”
“Lots of hills?” he said, as he started gathering the few bits of clothes and other odds and ends—mostly books—strewn around the room.
“Yes. But in this case it’s more the rivers that are important. There’re three above ground and one underground. Rivers, running water, usually indicate magical ley lines—conduits for power,” I explained to Ozan’s rapidly elevating eyebrows. “When you get a bunch of ley lines converging like that it’s a sacred confluence—or what we call a Node. Nodes have a lot of power, and Pittsburgh’s Node is crazy powerful.”
“So Pittsburgh is extra magical?” Ozan looked skeptical. I couldn’t blame him. While I loved my adopted home, magical was not Pittsburgh’s most obvious descriptor.
“It used to be the most powerful Node on the planet. But then the humans and their steel industry came. Cold iron corrupts magic, so we’re sitting on a lot of really polluted power; power so polluted that pureblood magical creatures can’t access it. It’s basically poisonous.”
“Oh,” said Ozan, clearly not actually understanding anything.
I waited patiently while he shoved the little pile of stuff he’d made into the duffel, frowning in concentration as he stood to put the bag on the bed.
My own lips curved in an answering smile. He had a very open face, and right now he was obviously thinking. “Ask whatever you like,” I prompted.
“I don’t understand how you live here, if you say all magical creatures can’t live here. And then there’s your friends…”
I shook my head. “I never said all magical creatures can’t live here. I said all pureblood magical creatures can’t live here.”
What I said obviously hadn’t clarified anything. “Huh?”
I nearly made a snarky comment about Tamina’s tribe not having taught him anything useful, then I remembered I should be grateful for their negligence. I could tell him what he needed to know… and nothing more.
“Basically,” I said cheerfully, “there are two categories of supernaturals. I mean, there are tons of species, but we break ourselves down into two categories: purebloods and Immunda. Purebloods are purely magical beings, things like jinn or the sidhe Lords, that use what we call the Deep Magic. That’s the magic that runs deep in the ley lines and the Nodes. Because they can use the Deep Magic, purebloods are extremely powerful beings.”
“And… Immunda?” Again, Oz carefully and precisely articulated the new word.
“Immunda are… everything else, really. Including creatures like sirens, vampires, gaki, succubi… anything that gathers its magic parasitically off humans; those are all Immunda. Also things with mixed human-and-magical blood, including shapeshifters. Those kinda creatures can skim off the surface of the Node and ley lines, but they can’t use the Deep Magic. It’s like they’re permanently stuck using the kiddy pool and so the purebloods don’t consider them equals. Which they’re not—a pureblood could blow them away in seconds.”
His frown deepened as he went into the room’s little bathroom, returning after a minute with a small toiletry case.
“I had no idea it was all this complicated,” he said, shoving it into the bag and zipping everything up.
I scanned the room, looking for anything he might have forgotten. “It’s not, really. Think of it this way: there are only two types of magical creatures, when it comes right down to it: those who can use the Deep Magic and those who can’t. Those who can use the Deep Magic cannot live in Pittsburgh. They need the Deep Magic to survive, like they need air or water, and the Deep Magic here is poisoned. So Pittsburgh’s sort of a haven for the Immunda.
“We sometimes call it the City of Misfit Toys. The big guns don’t come here, because the magic here is deadly to them. So Pittsburgh houses a lot of magical beings who like living without the risk of becoming the bitch of something a lot stronger.”
Oz was standing, holding his duffel bag’s handle in one big hand. He was giving me an odd look.
“So what are you?”
“What?” I asked, sounding sharp even to my own ears.
“You said only purebloods can access the Deep Magic. But you used it to reset the wards last night. And you said jinn are purebloods, not Immunda. So how do you live here?”
I hemmed and hawed at him, mentally cursing my babbling jinni in fifteen languages. You’re out of practice, I told myself. And he’s a lot smarter than you’re giving him credit for.
Luckily, my curse wouldn’t let me clarify what was going on, so I could only babble inanities as I shook my head. He was beginning to look distinctly suspicious when I was saved by the bell. Or a Call, as the case may be.
The burst of magic rang through my head like a shot and I felt my eyes cross.
“Lyla, what’s wrong?” Oz asked, as I fell heavily against the door.
I took a deep breath, then another, letting the Call’s message clarify itself.
“There’s a problem,” I said, utterly grateful for the distraction even though I normally hated being Called. “We’ve got to go.”
I nipped out the door, darting to the stairs and freedom from Oz’s questions. He kept up with me,
taking just a second to drop the keys off with the meth-head smoking outside the manager’s office. I was already in the driver’s seat, pulling on my seat belt, as he jumped in. I’d put her into drive before he’d finished shutting his door.
“I’m taking it this is an emergency?” he said, hastily buckling his seat belt.
“It is. But you’re in luck. You’re going to get to see exactly how this new world fits into your old, live and in the flesh, rather than my having to describe it to you.”
“Um, okay,” he said. “This sounds… instructional.”
“Oh, it will be,” I said, grimly.
My Master gave me a long side-eye. “Good. I think.”
“I’m delighted you approve, Master.”
Oz frowned at that word. I smiled. He really was too easy.
Chapter Seven
What the hell is that?” Oz asked, peering out the window as I drove my El Camino up onto the sidewalk bordering Frick Park, right near Regent’s Square.
This wasn’t the time to think about traffic tickets.
“That is something that’s not supposed to be here,” I said. “C’mon.”
Frick was Pittsburgh’s answer to New York’s Central Park. And, as in Central Park, there were parts that were wild and overgrown and parts that were absolutely not. The part that sat in Regent’s Square, a little neighborhood near Wilkinsburg, was one of the absolutely-not-wild parts. It consisted of a few baseball diamonds, a playground, a nice running track… all the nice family stuff you didn’t want attacked by a slobbering insect monster.
And it was currently under attack by a slobbering insect monster. In the middle of the park, some ways ahead, something many-limbed and hulking tossed around playground equipment like paper dolls.
Unfortunately, it was also a pretty October day, with just the slightest chill in the air. The kind of end-of-summer day humans wanted to savor out in the open, before it got too cold to do so.
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