Jinn and Juice

by Nicole Peeler

  “If he was one of the assholes who attacked us, then yes. They’re all dead. Including Diamond.”

  “Pity,” said Lorenzo, as one might mourn a spilled well cocktail.

  “Not really,” I said. “But you haven’t answered my question. Who was the emissary?”

  “I didn’t catch his name. Or her name. I can never tell with you people.”

  A chill went through me. “You people?”

  “Jinn,” he said. “You all look the same to me. Except for you, obviously, lovely Lyla. You’re all woman…”

  I hung up on Lorenzo when he started flirting, something extra hard to stomach from a man who’d just allowed a hit on me.

  “It was a jinni,” I said to Charlie, although I knew he knew already, from tasting our Fire on the bundle.

  He nodded. Oz and Rachel watched us, undoubtedly wondering what was going on but realizing it was big.

  “They’ve left me alone for centuries,” I said. “Why this again? Why now?”

  Charlie gave me a sad frown. “Because they just discovered you’re alive and living in Pittsburgh,” he said. “But they’re not going to get you. We’re not going to let them.”

  Oz’s arm around me tightened and Rachel came to sit on my other side, her arm going around me, too.

  Just then Yulia came in the dressing room, wearing oversize sunglasses and sipping from an equally oversize, whipped-cream-laden coffee drink. She paused when she saw the tarp-covered body on the floor.

  “Are we redecorating?” she asked.

  “The jinn are trying to kill Lyla again,” Rachel said.

  “I thought they’d gotten over that,” she said, pushing up her sunglasses to sit on top of her head. Then she shrugged, an “it is what it is” gesture that was pure Slav, even if she was a supernatural Slav. “Should I put the body with the others?”

  Charlie nodded. “I’ll help.”

  Together they carried Diamond out of the room. Oz turned to me, eyes wide. “Others?”

  “Never go into the basement,” I said.

  Then I let myself lean against him, Master or no, and shut my eyes against the world.

  Chapter Twenty

  I woke up the next day ready to take matters into my own hands. The jinn’s assassination attempt had been the last straw and I wanted some progress on the Tamina front, pronto, so I could deal with all the other bullshit as it came.

  Luckily, my friends all felt the same way.

  Oz eyed the flat ground in front of us warily. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “Should be,” I said. “The Exterminators are thorough. Besides, if they’d been around to breed this whole time we’d have been swallowed by a fodden back in the parking lot. They’re like rabbits.”

  “Rabbits that can take down a troll,” Bertha said sadly. I patted her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry. You don’t have to come, you know.”

  Bertha shook her head. “No, I want to. Whoever was using this crossing brought over the fodden. They killed my people. I want to know why.”

  One of Yulia’s wisps brushed gently against Bertha’s cheek and Yulia’s entire long frame stretched, glowing eerily. “We’ll find out who did this. And roast their bones.”

  Oz shuddered and Yulia grinned at him, showing off her needle-sharp fangs.

  “Yulia, Bertha, we’re after facts, not revenge. At least for now,” I amended, seeing Bertha’s face fall like I’d just taken away her favorite toy. “We have no idea who or what we’re up against. All we know is someone has mobilized these kids—”

  “Or kidnapped them,” Oz interrupted me, and I nodded.

  “Or kidnapped them, and is using them for an unknown purpose.”

  “And they’re definitely Sideways?” Yulia asked, gazing at the Bridge with a combination of anticipation and fear. Yulia loved a fight, and she knew she’d get one in the ruins of the abandoned magical city that awaited us.

  I nodded. “They have a human sorcerer who can use the Node to take them Sideways.”

  “How powerful is this sorcerer, exactly?” Bertha asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “We’re not sure,” I said. “That’s one of the things we have to ascertain. Now, are you ready?” Everyone replied in the affirmative, and I waved back to Charlie and Rachel, sitting in Rachel’s SUV.

  “Why aren’t they coming?” Oz asked as we started toward the Bridge. “You and Charlie seem to do everything together.”

  “ ’Cuz he’d be useless Sideways,” I said. “Rachel would be, too, but Charlie would be completely nonfunctioning. The visions would take over.”

  “Oh,” Oz said.

  “And Rachel wouldn’t be able to wear heels,” Yulia said, grinning wickedly, her smile slipping as her own booted foot squelched wetly. It was getting swampy.

  We walked the rest of the way to the Bridge in silence, concentrating on our footing. While the fodden were gone, the wet field around the Bridge was riddled with piles of salt and massive, dangerous holes, as if a community of mutant ground squirrels had made the field their home.

  When we finally got to the Bridge, Oz looked up. “Now what?” he asked. A good question, as the Parkway bridge loomed about three stories above our heads, with no visible means of getting up on top of it.

  “Here’s where it gets weird,” I said, calling my Fire. It responded with a whoosh, sensing Sideways so near. Closing my eyes, I let it kindle inside me till it was ready to blaze, then I unleashed it with an audible flare of power.

  “Whoa,” Oz said, stumbling back, stepping into a fodden hole and sitting down hard. But he didn’t bother to get up; he was too busy staring upward, slack-jawed with wonder. “Wow…”

  I nodded, feeling a rush of pleasure at his reaction. Which was silly, as I hadn’t really done anything, just touched on the magic that was already there. But it did look amazing.

  Overlying the world we saw—the human Frick Park with the noisy Parkway bridge above it—was a very different one. In this world a set of intricately carved wooden stairs curled around and around up to a massive stone Bridge, free of traffic, that led to a round gate through which no light penetrated.

  “Which one’s real?” Oz asked, looking around in amazement from where he sat.

  “Both,” I replied, letting my gaze shift between the two, trying to see what he saw, trying to remember what it was like to see magic for the first time.

  If I focused on our world, the human world, then the stairs and the substantial stone Bridge appeared like a foggy watercolor done on clear plastic laid over the oil painting of our real world. But if I shifted my gaze a bit, focusing instead on Sideways, then the paintings switched places like the ghostly writing of a palimpsest. The stone Bridge became substantial, a gauzy steel-and-concrete monstrosity overlying it like a shadow, ghost cars and phantom trucks hurtling down it like see-through missiles.

  “C’mon,” I said, holding out a hand for Oz. He took it and I pulled him to his feet. He never stopped gazing up in wonder and I felt a surge of affection for him that I quickly squashed.

  “This is incredible,” he murmured.

  “And full of good things to eat,” Yulia said, grinning evilly. “Let’s go.”

  We walked toward the set of stairs and I explained to Oz that he needed to see them first, backgrounding the world he knew for this new, magical world. It took him a bit, but he got it, mumbling something about Magic Eyes.

  “Now keep that version on the top,” I said, and started walking. I went in front of him, holding his hand for moral support, and he followed, if with trepidation. But when his foot fell on the first wooden step he laughed, a short bark of amazement.

  “They’re real!” Then he laughed again, reaching down to touch the wood. “This is amazing!”

  “It is pretty cool,” I said. But he couldn’t go into this thinking it was all fun and games. “But Sideways is also incredibly dangerous. And Pittsburgh Sideways even more so. It’s kinda like Mad Max in there, only less civilized. So sta
y on your toes.”

  Oz nodded, still staring at everything in awe, and I hoped he’d heard me.

  We went up, Bertha and Yulia first, then Oz, then me guarding our rears. As we climbed upward, the wood under our feet became more substantial, the world of humanity fading. By the time we got to the top of the Bridge—now entirely stone—the Parkway bridge was gone, an occasional half-felt whoosh of air raising the hair on our arms the only indication of the traffic tumbling past us on that side of Sideways.

  We walked toward the stone gate at the far end of the Bridge, shifting into a protective formation with Yulia and me walking next to Oz and Bertha behind us. I let my Fire flare and Yulia’s wisps framed her body like deadly whips of light. Bertha pulled her favorite weapon—a nail-studded club—from her own pocket of Sideways and we were ready for just about anything.

  “Wait, who the hell built this Bridge?” Oz asked, when we were almost to the opaque gate. “The Parkway can’t be that old, and you said the supernatural Sideways city was abandoned a long time ago.”

  Yulia shrugged, her wisps echoing the gesture with a graceful motion. “It built itself.”

  Oz looked at her like she was crazy, so I stepped in.

  “You don’t build things Sideways, the way you do in the human world,” I said. “Sideways builds itself. Magic-based stuff isn’t like carbon-based stuff. It’s a lot more… alive.”

  “As in sentient?” Oz asked, reaching out to touch the stone of the Bridge wall keeping us from falling off.

  “Sort of,” I said. “Not the way we understand sentience, but there’s a kind of consciousness. It can be directed by the very powerful, which is how sidhe Lords and powerful jinn were able to create our cities. But it also creates what it thinks people will use. It likes to be manipulated… using magic creates more magic.”

  “So magical beings are really like helpful parasites, and Sideways evolves to attract magicians, like flowers evolve to attract bees?” Oz asked, ever the scientist.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I guess that would be one way to see it.”

  Once again his face took on that wide-eyed look of wonder, as if learning new things was the most pleasurable thing he could think of.

  And once again I smiled at seeing that face, an echo of that pleasure sounding off in my own supposedly cynical bones.

  Damn him.

  I squished my face down into a frown and forced myself to look away, concentrating on the gates we were fast approaching.

  “Be careful when we pass through,” I said. “There’s usually something nasty right on the other side of the gate, hoping to get across by accident, like those fodden did. Let us take care of whatever it is and try not to get yourself killed.”

  “Or do,” Yulia said, smiling her toothy smile at my Master, who blanched.

  “Yulia,” I warned as we halted in front of the gate. If I shifted my gaze to the human side, I could see we were standing on a sidewalk in front of nothing, about two-thirds of the way across the concrete Parkway bridge. But Sideways, this was the Bridge’s ending, and we stood at the lintel between the human world and the supernatural city magic had built around the Node marked on this side by Pittsburgh’s three rivers.

  “Everyone ready?” I asked.

  In response Yulia cracked a wisp, Bertha flexed her powerful shoulders, and my Fire flared its own brief warm-up. Oz shrugged, knowing he was completely outside his own experience, a gesture of humility that I appreciated.

  “On three,” I said, pulling power and creating a sort of shield around us with my Fire.

  “One,” I said, and we shuffled right up to the gate. “Two…” We tensed, staring forward.

  “And three,” I said, and we all took a big step toward the black surface of the gate, our feet passing through it as Oz grabbed my hand and I squeezed an assurance. Then we shifted our weight forward, our faces plunging toward the black, and then we were through, our eyes blinking in the low light of the Sideways city as I built my Fire up fast around us and Yulia’s wisps flared out, ready for an attack…

  … that never came.

  Instead we stood like Charlie’s Angels around Ozan, prepared for, apparently, absolutely nothing but looking fierce.

  “What the hell?” Yulia said, straightening.

  “Hmmm,” was Bertha’s considered response, her eyes scanning around us.

  “Wow,” said Oz, and I knew that if I looked over he’d be smiling that contented puppy smile and I’d have to like him a little bit, so I didn’t look.

  That said—because the few times I’d crossed Sideways to this city I’d been immediately and viciously attacked, and had to fight for my life—I, too, was happy to look around.

  And was not disappointed. When one wasn’t pulling one’s leg out of a fodden’s gaping, many-toothed maw, the Sideways city built parallel to Pittsburgh was stunning. Frick Park wasn’t a park, but a small square around which soaring, rounded buildings flowed. The architecture wasn’t architecture—it was what magic did, left to its own devices, which made the buildings as quirky and fluid as you might imagine. And it stretched for miles, a beautiful skeleton of a once-great magical civilization.

  One long abandoned, as became very apparent to the eye after that initial rush of awed wonder.

  The stone was softly glowing, but the glow was dulled by an oily sheen—the visual evidence of all that steel’s poison. And while the stone wasn’t crumbling as might happen to abandoned buildings in the mortal world, it was obviously uncared for.

  “It’s like it’s… dying,” Oz said, after his initial stunned moments of silence.

  I nodded at his apt description. “Yeah. That is what it’s like…”

  For the stone was faded and wearing thin in spots, with an air of defeat to it. It also held an air of menace, as if it contained some horrible cancer waiting to consume everything, including us.

  “It’s going feral,” said Bertha, “with no one to feed it and cultivate it.”

  At her words I shivered, feeling as if all that white stone were watching us, wondering which of our little group to eat first.

  “Let’s move,” Yulia said, her chilly voice even colder than usual. Clearly she felt the same.

  Yulia led the way, toward the end of the little square that contained our gate. A statue to a long-gone sidhe Lady stood as if warning us, gazing down with somber eyes. I touched my fingers to my forehead in a supernatural gesture of respect as we passed, and the others did too, Ozan mimicking us with the trained accuracy of a student of culture.

  We walked for about ten minutes through wide, long-abandoned streets, past beautiful empty buildings, before Yulia said what we were all thinking.

  “Nothing is here. That’s not right.”

  Oz looked at me. “Why not? I thought this place was abandoned.”

  “The original inhabitants are gone, yes. But other things have moved in, and we’re not seeing any of them.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Monsters,” I said. “Things like fodden. Things that are hungry. Things that normally would have been at our throats from the second we came Sideways.”

  “Oh,” Oz said. “And you’re wondering where they went.”

  “Exactly. Not that I don’t mind being left alone, but this isn’t normal.”

  Bertha, who’d been suspiciously quiet since we crossed, finally spoke, her voice barely a whisper.

  “You spoke too soon,” she muttered. “We’re being followed.”

  I tried not to react, but my eyes darted sideways. “Since when?”

  “Since we got here. I wasn’t sure at first. They’re keeping their distance. But they’re there.”

  A troll’s ears were keen as a chef’s blades, and I knew better than to question Bertha’s call. So I told Yulia we were being followed, and we shifted around, keeping Oz central but putting Bertha in front and us at the back.

  When the attack came, we were ready.

  “They’re coming,” Bertha
hissed, just as the first being rushed us.

  The fight was short and relatively bloodless. Oz kept us from killing anyone with a shout of “They’re just kids!” after which we changed tactics. Yulia’s wisps went from bladelike to more like tentacles of light, and I used my Fire to catch, not to burn. Bertha put her club back into her pocket of Sideways, and Oz snagged two of the little buggers by their collars. When we were done we were left with eight whole struggling children, ranging from early to late teens and all some sort of Immunda.

  We’d also all collected a fair number of cuts and bruises. The kids were young, but they weren’t weaklings, and we might not have been so lucky if Bertha hadn’t heard them coming.

  “So what do we have here?” Yulia asked, pacing around the little cordon of Fire I’d made to pen the teens in.

  There were two half-vamps, eyeing us hungrily. The rest were relatively innocuous races, except for the oldest boy, a disreputable-looking satyr with overdeveloped, bloodstained horns sprouting from his forehead. Sitting next to him was a girl with lush blonde ringlets, staring down at her feet.

  Very familiar blonde ringlets.

  “Hey,” I said to her. “You. Look at me.”

  She refused and the satyr clamped a hand on her upper arm. “Don’t do it, Marissa,” he said.

  Yulia, also looking suspicious, was sending a wisp creeping toward “Marissa” when the girl looked up, her gaze flicking between our eyes, her head giving an almost imperceptible shake. Yulia and I spoke at exactly the same time, in equally disbelieving tones.

  “Loretta?”

  The kids sitting around Loretta all turned to stare. One hissed. She rolled her eyes. “Nice work, morons,” she said in adult tones. Then she balled up her fist and punched one of the half-vamps, who tried to bite her, and Yulia quickly lifted her out with a flick of her wisps, setting the Exterminator down in front of us while I flared up the Fire penning in the others, so they’d settle down.

  We stared at Loretta in shock. Whatever was going on here, Loretta wasn’t dressed as Loretta. The normally chic Exterminator was wearing dirty, camouflage-print leggings so cheap they were nearly see-through. She’d paired them with a very un-Loretta-like T-shirt featuring a current teenybopper band.