by Stark, Jenn
“Warrick!” I roared again, summoning the head of the demon enforcers, the elite fighting unit directed by the Hierophant. Demons themselves, the Syx had agreed to work for Michael the Archangel to atone for their sins, though they certainly had found themselves in other types of trouble during their six millennia of existence. Recently, with the new onslaught of demons overrunning Earth, their work had stepped up tenfold, and the archangel had given each of them a path to true and final redemption. None of that changed the fact that they were primarily a kick-ass demon-killing squad. One that was being decidedly slow at the moment. “Now would be good.”
Beside me, the air went tight and a second later, the body of an immense man appeared, tall and burly, with rough, weathered skin, dark hair, and golden eyes. He looked around and cursed in a language so ancient, even I couldn’t interpret it at first. Then it was his turn to shout out.
“Stefan,” he snapped. “Finn.”
Two more figures appeared at either end of the corridor, but I barely registered them as the creatures nearest me struck.
The first demon lurched forward and ripped my dress below the waist, shredding the material. If he hadn’t already been covered in thick black goop, I would’ve kissed him for giving me more freedom to move in my party gown. As it was, I simply sent him hurtling to one side with a fireball to the chest, right into Warrick’s waiting arms, where he happily dispatched the creature back beyond the veil.
And then the fight was on—brief, but strangely gratifying. Fortunately, the first two humans who’d stopped me in the hallway hadn’t been humans at all—not even Possessed—and Warrick was able to knock them to oblivion with two powerful roundhouse punches. Since humans couldn’t kill demons, even humans as powerful as me, I focused on being the least amount of nuisance I could be, serving as an occasional redirect with a well-placed kick or fireball. The demons went down with howls of fury and dismay, but they fought mindlessly, as if they were cannon fodder and not thinking, rational creatures. Granted, they were demons, but most had at least a semblance of coherence to them. Not these. Within a matter of a few minutes, only four figures remained standing. Myself and the demon enforcers.
Warrick, straightening and shaking the last bit of gore from his arms, grinned at me, though his eyes held a gleam of worry.
“They had to know they would fail,” he said.
I grimaced. “Something was off, yeah.”
He wiped a broad hand over his chin. “There has been a great disruption with the demons of the Middle East. Whispers of the djinn.”
“The what?” I asked. The way he spoke the word, images of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights sprang to mind, Aladdin and his magic lamp. All very picturesque, except with the Shadow Court supposedly setting up shop in Dubai, I wasn’t feeling too good about the idea. Besides, I knew that djinn weren’t really a thing, at least not a different thing. “I thought you guys were djinn.”
Warrick curled his lip. “Not hardly.”
“But—” I frowned, struggling to remember back to when I’d first met the Syx, and how. The Emperor of the Arcana Council had co-opted them as his own personal band of bad guys, and the results…weren’t pretty. “Several members of the Council called you that, I’m almost sure of it. You know, back…before.”
He snorted. “Back before, when we were temporarily trapped by the Emperor’s hand in a bolt-hole of his making, along with the children he’d stolen away from this world? Very convenient of the Hierophant to remain silent during all that. But whatever the Council believes we were—or are—has little to do with fact. We definitely aren’t djinn, and neither are these creatures. Djinn were not formed of sin and malice, but of the darkness between night and day.”
“Oh. Sure.” I sighed. “I suppose they’re also super powerful?”
“They can be. What’s more, the creatures we just dispatched stank of a compulsion spell I’m not familiar with. That, combined with murmurs of the ancient ones, doesn’t bode well. Demons throughout the Middle East and into Africa are stirring with a call to arms we can’t ignore. War is coming faster than we might want.”
I made a face, then sent more of the demon gore flying with an angry flick of my fingers, fire sizzling down the long, ropey lines. “What is it with all the war talk? The last time we had a war, we ended up with a whole bunch more of you guys than we could handle. I’m not really in the mood for another demon orgy.”
Finn chuckled as he gazed down the hall, staring at the river of black goop. “You’ll have a hell of a cleaning bill if this keeps up,” he agreed.
“Well, what we want and what is are rarely the same,” Warrick said. “You know where to find us.”
I nodded, and the three demons disappeared.
Picking my way around the remaining puddles of gore, I’d almost made it to the doorway of Justice Hall when the elevator opened at the far end of the corridor.
I whirled around, bracing myself—then froze.
“Sweet baby Jesus on a biscuit,” Nikki wailed. “Why do I always miss all the fun?”
7
Rather than sacrifice her platform boots, Nikki shed her footwear and picked her way along the corridor, mostly avoiding the worst stretches of black goop. Her blonde hair bounced in perfect ringlets over her shoulders, and she couldn’t stop grinning. Not even slogging her way through demon blood could dim her good mood.
“Was it fantastic? Did you love it? Was it everything that you expected?” she demanded, and I had to laugh.
“It was extraordinary, and you were extraordinary. It was impossible not to love it.”
“I think so, too.” She reached me as I paused in front of the door to Justice Hall. “They’re already talking about doing it again next year, and begged me to be a part of it. I told them I was flattered, natch, but I couldn’t commit. There was no end of VIP producers in the audience, though. And there’s no telling how high my profile soared.” She drew in a long, satisfied breath, then grinned at me. “Not that I plan on going anywhere, dollface. I leave you alone for twenty minutes, and you’re covered in demon goop.”
“I try.”
I reached for the door, but it swung open before I had a chance to touch the panel. A stern-faced Mrs. French peered at us with a decidedly impatient scowl.
“Well, come in, then, come in! You can’t expect a body to wait here all day for you. It was bad enough that I thought it prudent not to come out during the little hallway party you arranged, Justice Wilde, but I can’t ignore you both talking right outside the door.” She peered beyond us to the corridor. “I’ll thank the Council for cleaning that up right quick as well. Who do I need to call?”
I glanced back, flicking open my third eye. A shimmering, radiant energy was already crackling through the blood and gore left behind by the demons. Sometimes that gore lingered in a place, a testament to the battle fought. But it wouldn’t last long here or I’d be having words with the archangel, and he well knew it. Fortunately, Michael was nothing if not tidy.
“It’s handled,” I said. “Give it a half hour, maybe.”
“Good. Come on, then.” Mrs. French drew herself up to her full height, which was still considerably petite, her hair swept up into a bun on top of her head and her black buckled boots adding a half dozen inches to her frame. She needed every one of them.
What she lacked in size, though, she made up for in presence. Today’s outfit was in line with most of her Victorian-era garb, a button-down dress with a frowsy ruffle of lace at the collar and hem, and heavy skirts in a deep charcoal gray, the line of pewter buttons down her bodice gleaming as she ushered us inside. The dress had a modest bustle and skirts that swished when she walked, which, along with the clicking of her bootheels, made for a surprisingly relaxing cadence as she stepped briskly through the outer office. She gestured us to the couch and chairs set up with a light tea service.
Nikki looked at the setup with marked alarm. “You don’t actually expect me to drink tea, do you? It’s one o’clo
ck in the morning.”
“I can think of no better time to drink tea than in the middle of the night, after all the excitement and exertion you’ve experienced,” Mrs. French said tartly. Then her mouth slipped into a smile. “But you’ll find the tea set is just for show. There are cut crystal glasses and a flagon just behind the pot and bourbon by the table. I just wanted to have a bit of fun, is all. I’ll be right back.”
“You’re good people, French Tart, I don’t care what they say.” Nikki tossed her boots down on the couch and sat, reaching down for the bourbon.
I hesitated, my gaze sweeping the room, unease bubbling up again. The office looked much the way it usually did, with its conversational arrangement of chairs and couch in addition to Mrs. French’s reception desk. But the two doorways at each end of the back wall were both standing open, which was unusual. One door led to my office and its innumerable canisters, each containing messages I needed to respond to, complaints issued by Connecteds about other psychics behaving badly. That door generally remained open unless we had guests in the outer office, since my inner sanctum remained in a near-constant state of disarray.
But the library door rarely stood open, even when it was just me and Mrs. French in the office. As the repository of all the unresolved cases lobbied by Connecteds since the office of Justice was formed, it arguably should be a relatively small room.
It wasn’t. Rows upon rows of shelves, all lined with cases, boxes, books, and scrolls, filled the many chambers of the Justice Hall library, a building that seemed to go on to infinity. I’d never actually seen a back wall to the place, though I was sure there was one. Somewhere.
When I first ascended to the position of Justice, I’d pledged to start sorting through all those unresolved cases, at least a few at a time, but the events of recent months had made that nearly impossible. The library still served a purpose, providing background research as needed, but I couldn’t deny experiencing a sinking feeling as I glanced its way. So many calls for Justice had gone unanswered over the centuries. How well was I using the power of my position? Not very well, I feared.
Mrs. French hurried back into the room a moment later, her arms overflowing with canisters, and I grimaced. At least it wasn’t for lack of trying to keep on top of the workload. I could only do so much.
“Told you it’s been busy,” Nikki said, toasting the stack of canisters with her glass of bourbon. “Mrs. French here has been taking a new approach to sorting them, though. Which is why you’re going to see the process from start to finish.”
“I can explain my process myself, thank you very much.” Mrs. French sniffed. She squared her shoulders as if preparing to do battle and turned to me.
I pursed my lips. “You came up with a new organizational strategy? Why?”
“It wasn’t even so much my idea,” she confessed, a faint blush scoring her cheeks. “It was the boys’. They’d been taking down one of the old shelves that’d inexplicably caved under the weight of its contents. In the midst of transferring the old cases to a more stable home, they discovered something quite curious. There are several shelves that have recently broken.”
“Several?” I frowned. “Why? How?”
“As to why, I consulted with the Magician, and he contends that it has much to do with your advancing abilities and responsibilities as Justice. As you have taken on a greater sense of direction regarding the duties of your office, the contents of Justice Hall have shifted. Almost like it’s trying to catch your attention.”
“Okay,” I allowed, rolling that idea around in my head. It wasn’t unreasonable. It was a room filled with requests from unhappy psychics. Some of those psychics were undoubtedly stronger than others and could be willing to throw their weight around to get noticed. “So what cases are making a fuss? Are there any similarities?”
I eyed the canisters she was stacking on the table. I picked up nothing unique or interesting about them, only the vague sense of power that attended anything imbued with Connected energy. I flicked open my third eye and saw a slight change, a leap in energy, but only slight.
“You’re looking at these canisters with some level of concern,” Mrs. French said. “And rightly so. It’s not that the problems contained within don’t merit our consideration. They most assuredly do. But I’ve brought them out to set the baseline. Because then we’ve got canisters like these.”
She pulled a new canister out from the folds of her gown, and all three of my eyes blinked. This one not only glowed, it pulsed with an erratic, frantic rhythm, a schizophrenic rat-a-tat-tat so bright, I almost imagined it making a sound. “What is that, Morse code?”
Beside me, Nikki snorted. “That was my first thought, too. We tested it out. But no go. The thing just has a serious case of the shakes.”
I looked back with some trepidation at the open door to Justice Hall’s library. “And there are more in there like that? How many more?”
“At last count, there were a good three dozen cases, canisters, and scrolls that generated their own unique activity, some more violently than others.”
I finally caught up to her words. In addition to Mrs. French, the library was staffed by a team of misplaced youths who’d been subject to a Connected experiment conducted in the mid-1800s. As a result, up until quite recently, they hadn’t aged—our very own staff of lost boys. I thought of their bright, eager faces, their mischievous smiles and laughing eyes, and my stomach tightened. “You said they shook so hard that they knocked down their shelves? Was anybody hurt?”
Mrs. French laughed. “Oh no. If anything, the boys found it the height of hilarity to determine which of them could recognize a case about to go so they could wrangle the beast to the ground. Some of the cases continued to shake, mind you. Quite energetically, even after we had them all corralled. But the majority of them actually seemed to become somewhat mollified once they were joined with their fellows. As if they had been waiting all this time to be sorted, and now they could rest.”
“Except for the fact that they hadn’t been gyrating up to this point, that would make for a really neat explanation,” Nikki put in. “Regardless, what we found going through both the cold cases from Justice Hall plus these new requests is a surprising through line. They all deal with demon attacks.”
My brows went up. “Demons? Have you notified the Council? Does the Hierophant know?”
“Not yet,” Mrs. French said primly. “I didn’t feel that we had sufficient information to get the Council involved, and I certainly didn’t want them looking around when you weren’t here to keep an eye on them. I don’t trust any of that lot, not at all.”
She said this last with a huff, and I bit my lip, casting a surreptitious glance at her. Mrs. French had been serving the office of Justice for more than a hundred and fifty years, with her first charge, Abigail Strand, having ascended to the position in quite challenging circumstances. To make matters worse, Abigail didn’t survive the position long. As in, she didn’t survive at all. The young woman had proven an easy target for agents of the Shadow Court, and the other members of the Council—including Armaeus—hadn’t understood the danger she was in until it was too late. Mrs. French had a long and justified distrust of the Council.
“Fair enough,” I allowed. “So you’ve identified that they’re all related to demon attacks. Anything else?”
“Not just demons,” she said proudly. “Specifically, djinn.”
“Oh, really.” I straightened. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that term in the last half hour. I’m not exactly up on my djinn history. Apparently, I should be.”
“I believe you should, indeed,” Mrs. French said, lifting her chin like a schoolmarm, complete with a shake of her skirts. “You’ll be happy to know, then, that I’ve done my research. The djinn are demons, no question, but they are specific to Arabian and later Islamic mythology. They can take many forms, including human. You don’t hear about them much in the Western world. They also have a slightly different approach
to their beliefs. They accept the existence of God, and they are not innately evil or good. Many believe they are simply unmoored spirits, but that’s too narrow a definition. There’s some suggestion that they were grandfathered into Islamic beliefs, as opposed to being a direct creation of Islam, but basically the term ‘djinn’ serves as an umbrella designation for any supernatural creature that is generally held responsible for misfortune, possession, or disease. There are some djinn that are good, but the majority are meant to cause humanity chaos and distress.”
I thought about the curtain of smoke that had blown up over the parapet at the amphitheater of Pompeii, and the bird bats that had followed. Then there’d been the demon Rockettes that had tried to keep me from the stage, also curtained in smoke. But none of those creatures had seemed cool enough to be djinn. I remembered the sentience I’d felt, the formless watcher… Could that have been a djinn? “Are they invisible?”
“Oh my, no.” Mrs. French shook her head. “Though, to be fair, they almost always work in mist and smoke. It’s where the whole mythology of Aladdin’s lamp came from. Genie, djinn. Same thing.”
Nikki turned to me, her eyes wide over her glass. “You fought straight-up genies? Were they large and blue and funnier than they had any reason to be?”
I shook my head. “No, and if they were there, they didn’t talk much. I got the sense of something in the smoke, but then I got a little bit distracted by the fact their…uh…mascots or whatever were chomping on me as I tried to reach Eshe.” I winced at the memory. “Not a good experience.”
“Mascots? I’ll have to check on that, but it’s entirely possible they employ subservient creatures,” Mrs. French said. “Another attribute of the djinn is that they are considered to be guardians. The guardians of what, it’s uncertain.”
