by Tanya Huff
“Use the third wish to fix it yourself,” Vicki snapped. It wasn’t that she was unsympathetic… She thought of Mike lying in a hospital bed. Actually, she was entirely unsympathetic.
“No. I’m using the third wish to…” Amy pressed her lips tightly together into a thin, pale line.
After a moment, when Vicki was sure she wasn’t going to be told about the potential third wish, she sighed. “You’ve got tentacles. I’m not sure what you think I can do. I’m a private investigator and there’s nothing about that to investigate.” She allowed her voice to pick up an edge. “You’ve also acquired a potentially deadly don’t touch me zone and that’s reason enough to take you down.” For those two boys. For Mike.
“Take me down?”
“You’re a danger the police can’t handle. Dealing with that’s my job.”
“You’re supposed to help me!”
“How?”
Amy opened her mouth. Closed it. The sides of her windbreaker billowed.
“You’ve got the means to help yourself, Ms. Shaw.”
“I don’t…”
“Use the third wish.” If Vicki’s eyes silvered and her voice dropped past command into coercion, she figured an Amy Shaw without tentacles would thank her.
Amy’s shoulders slumped. She dropped back onto the chair and picked up the lamp. “Do it now?” she asked, in a voice that suggested she’d finally realized this was something she’d done to herself.
“Yes.” Given time to think things over, Vicki doubted she’d go through with it.
“Here?”
“Yes. Here and now.”
“I didn’t intend to hurt anyone.”
“I admit that’s a nice change.” Most of the people Vicki dealt with fully intended to cause as much damage as possible.
Lamp cradled against her body with her left hand, Amy began rubbing it with her right. From the way the windbreaker rippled, it seemed the tentacles had joined in.
Vicki hadn’t expected I Dream of Genie – in her experience reality seldom made an accurate crossover to pop culture—but neither had she expected a trickle of flame to become a column of fire that lapped against the ceiling and threw no heat. If the genie spoke, she couldn’t hear it, but she could sense an ancient, barely restrained malevolence, and her reaction was instinctive. Her eyes silvered, her lips drew back from her teeth, and she snarled.
It had been paying attention to Amy, much the way a child with a magnifying glass pays attention to an ant, but now it turned to her.
Vicki snarled again.
“Nightwalker?” Beyond the flames, Amy’s voice trembled on the edge of panic. “Undead and undying. Death in the darkness. What are you talk… Blood? She wha… Oh.” And it dove off the edge. “Vampire! She’s a vampire!”
“Amy!” It seemed Amy’s accepting attitude toward genies didn’t extend to others in the metaphysical community. “Amy! I won’t hurt you!”
Amy ignored her, the power in a name not enough to break the power of the genie over the one who held its lamp. “Of course I know what vampires are! No, I don’t want to die! I don’t… Do you promise? You won’t let her kill me? I know. I can say that. I can. I wish…”
“Amy!” Vicki charged forward, hit the two-metre mark, and slammed against the far wall in under the loft. She bounced up onto her feet, her bones too dense to break, but bruises already rising.
“I wish for the genie kept captive in this lamp to be free!”
The flame roared.
Vicki leapt onto her desk and flung herself up into the loft she used as shelter from the day, slamming the steel door behind her. She could smell paint blistering. Wood scorching.
Smoke.
Pork.
The inside of the door grew hot under the pads of her fingers.
She’d had the loft built to withstand fire. If the building went up, she wouldn’t be comfortable, but she’d survive. Although explanations, she acknowledged silently, would be a bitch.
The fire alarms in the studio should have gone off, setting off the building’s alarms. They hadn’t.
At nine minutes, the inside of the door felt cooler.
At ten, Vicki opened it.
Her office was empty. She took a quick look under the loft. Completely empty. Except for puddles of melted metal and glass and a pile of ash and bone residue by the door that looked like it had been tipped out of a cremation urn. Crematoriums burned between 760 and 983 degrees Celsius. Wood and fabric burned at a significantly lower temperature than flesh, which explained why her furniture appeared to have been vaporized. The walls, ceiling, and floor looked scorched, but she saw no structural damage. The fire alarm and the brass lamp were the only untouched items in the room. Although the bathroom door had been closed throughout, so it was possible the plumbing had survived.
“Genie redecorating. I suspect I won’t be collecting on my insurance,” she muttered, dropping down from the loft. Her phone and keys were in her pocket, but everything else had been lost with her purse. “I’m half inclined to hunt you down for that alone, you inconsiderate shit.” Squatting beside Amy’s remains, she poked at the lamp. “Okay, protecting the fire alarm was you being funny, I get that. And you definitely had a few anger issues when the leash came off. But, if the lamp is your prison, why not take it with you rather than risk someone using it again?”
It was obviously still magical or it would have been destroyed like everything else.
She poked it a second time. It slid about six centimetres across the floor. Smart money said genies couldn’t handle their own lamps. “At the risk of stating the obvious, Ms. Shaw, it looks like you solved your problem.”
*
She watched Mike sleep. Listened to him breathe. The person who’d put him in hospital had been dealt with, and four and a half hours remained until dawn. Vicki stood in the shadows and pretended it was these most recent injuries that had aged him.
He’d be sixty in a couple of years.
She’d always be thirty-four.
*
“…say there is no way all 2,500 ounces of gold could have been removed from the 14,000 windows of the Royal Bank Plaza.”
Vicki stopped drying her hair and started paying more attention to the television.
“Except that all 2,500 ounces are gone from both the south and the north tower,” Ian Hanomansing of CBC news pointed out.
A muscle jumped in the jaw of the middle-aged white man with the two-hundred-dollar hair cut and the three-thousand-dollar suit. “Until our investigations are complete, we’re assuming it’s a trick of the light.”
“Because otherwise it would have to be…” Hanomansing raised a brow. “…magic?”
The muscle jumped again. “And we all know, there’s no such thing.”
“Damn, genie,” Vicki snickered, “pretty ballsy way of restoring your finances.” Given that bankers weren’t known for thinking outside the box, the odds were extremely low they’d ask her to track the perpetrator down, so she gave herself permission to enjoy the spectacle. Sure, at almost 1,500 dollars an ounce it was a sizable theft, but, as evil-doing went, it didn’t even register on the measure she used these days. No harm, no foul.
“As the gold was a micro coating to reduce heat, how could its removal have weakened the glass?”
“As I said, we’re not certain the gold has been removed.”
“The police say that the piece that killed Kai Johnston had been stripped of gold.”
“That may have happened after it fell.”
Harm.
And foul.
With her laptop slagged and her phone in the charger, she wrapped the towel around her waist and settled in front of Mike’s computer.
The Royal Bank could deny all it wanted, but the gold was missing and Kai Johnston, a fifty-three-year-old Hawaiian-Canadian, was dead. The triangular piece of gold-free glass that had killed him at 2:34 in the afternoon had fallen from a shattered section covering fifteen square metres of floors thirty
-one and thirty-two on the east side of the South Building. Two other people had been injured, but given the amount of glass that had fallen and the number of pedestrians often around the plaza, it was a miracle no one else had died.
The gold had been gone when the sun came up. The weakened glass had taken eight hours to fall. If it had fallen at either the beginning or the end of the work day, or when the sidewalks were crowded during lunch…
The removal of a micro layer of gold shouldn’t have weakened the glass.
Something had.
That was the problem with magic, all bets were off.
An internet search on genies was not particularly helpful.
“Supernatural creatures from Islamic and pre-Islamic Arabian mythology. Come from another world beyond the known world. Well, that depends on whose known world you’re referencing, doesn’t it?” Her known world was larger than it had been. “Can take different forms. Have free will, can be good or evil.” Vicki considered Amy’s remains, scooped into a plastic bag and currently sitting on the corner of Mike’s desk. “What do you think?” she asked, poking the bag. “Good genie having a bad day or psycho nutbag? What’s that? Yeah, I’m going with psycho nutbag too. It’s not all Disney out there, Ms. Shaw.”
Searching how to defeat genies pulled up a list of gaming forums too specific to be helpful.
“Once again, people are your best resource.”
Vicki had only been changed for nineteen years and, not surprisingly, most of the resources she’d nurtured during her years on the police force were seldom helpful in her weird new world. But Henry Fitzroy, the vampire who’d changed her, had been around for over four hundred years—the tomb of the bastard son of Henry VIII at Richmond empty for all that time. He’d gathered an impressive Scooby Gang over the years, some of whom she’d inherited when he left Toronto. If Dr. Sagara didn’t have the information Vicki needed, she’d know where to find it.
*
“So, Dr. Sargara says you need information about the jinn.” Dr. Hariri stared up at her, eyes narrowed. “For work. What exactly do you do?”
Vicki handed him her card. “I’m a private investigator.”
“Vicki Nelson. Otherworldly crimes a specialty? You believe a jinn has committed a crime?”
She shrugged. “Client confidentiality, Dr. Hariri. I don’t judge.” She could get the information and leave him unaware they’d ever spoken, but she’d rather add a new member to her HR team.
“I see.” He tapped his upper lip with a finger then shrugged in turn. “What exactly do you need to know?”
She pulled the lamp out of an old backpack and set it on Dr. Hariri’s desk. “How to get one back into this.”
“That’s not…” As his fingers touched the handle he froze and leaned forward, expression shifting from dismissive to awe. “Where did you get this?”
“My client found it at a charity yard sale.”
“The inscription isn’t Arabic. It’s Aramaic. The lamp itself looks Assyrian, so that would put it post Babylonian conquest sometime between 605 to 612 BC, which, if I’m right—and I may not be of course, we’d have to do testing—this could be among the oldest Aramaic inscriptions ever found. Do you have any idea how incredible this is?”
She thought of her empty office. Of Amy in her plastic bag. Of a triangular piece of glass. “Incredible is one word for it. Can you translate the inscription?”
“Probably, but not off the top of my head. You’d need to leave it with me.” Attention locked on the lamp, he slid it across his desk. “Something like this will take time. I’ll have to consult…”
“Dr. Hariri.”
He met her gaze. Wet his lips. His breath slipped in and out, fast and shallow.
“Get it translated as soon as possible.” Without breaking eye contact, she tapped the card on his desk as she stood. “Call me the moment you have a result.”
*
A new club out in Parkdale meant new business opportunities, so Vicki headed west for a bite to eat. Club drugs were mostly Ecstasy, Meth, and LSD, but she found an entrepreneur also selling Rohypnol and led him into the dark corner between the back of a public parking lot and the rear wall of the club.
Nostrils flared, she leaned in closer to the pulse in his throat as he pulled a leather card case out of his pocket. Few dealers used. He smelled clean.
He barely bothered to fake a smile. “So, just the candy or can I interest you in something else?”
Her smile was completely sincere.
The smell of fresh urine overwhelmed the stale residue at the base of the wall.
She left him propped against the fender of a Buick—Mike was right, Buick was funnier than Toyota—missing his drugs, his cash, and any desire to continue in the same business. He’d probably shake the compulsion in a day or two, but he’d see her in his nightmares for a while, and that might be enough.
In turn, she’d have to deal with the addicting taste of his terror. Make sure it was entirely out of her system before she fed like this again. Giving into that darkness led to loss of self and torches and stakes and she wouldn’t do that to Mike.
When he di…
When she los…
Later, she’d have to fight stay on the side of the light.
*
“You okay?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” When Mike’s brows rose, she smiled the most human smile she had left, the one she saved for him. “Don’t worry, I ate emergency rations.”
“Dave says Amy Shaw hasn’t been home.”
“Smooth segue.” He understood he couldn’t supply all her needs, but he didn’t want to hear the details. Which was fortunate, as she had no intention of telling him. “Do you remember anything yet?”
“Not damned thing. Doc says I might never get the memories back.” His grip on her hand tightened. “You looking into that fatality downtown with the windows and the missing gold?”
“Yes.”
“Is it connected to what happened to me?”
In the old days, Vicki had been a terrible liar. That had changed when her humanity became a lie. She thought about lying to him now, but there were too many external factors she couldn’t control to get away with it. “Yes, it is.”
“You dealing with it?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Good.” He shifted carefully, favouring his left side. “Unless I start pissing blood, they’re sending me home tomorrow.”
No. Stay here. Where you’re safe.
One corner of his mouth curled up. “I told them I had someone who could watch me at night.”
“I thought you didn’t like it when I did that?”
He waggled his eyebrows lecherously. “I like it fine when you’re watching up close and personal.”
I don’t want to watch you die.
She blinked the thought away before he could read it off her face and bent to kiss him goodbye.
“You don’t taste like drug dealer,” he murmured against her mouth.
“I brushed my teeth.”
She dropped Amy’s remains into the medical incinerator on her way out of the building.
*
“Well, if it isn’t Victory Nelson. You never text, you never call. Was it something I said?” At seventy-seven, Mama Sweet’s arms weren’t as strong as they’d once been, but her mind was as sharp. She held Vicki out at arm’s length and frowned. “And this isn’t a social call is it? Even though you promised me three months ago that you’d stop by for drinks.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Mama Sweet didn’t accept excuses, so Vicki didn’t make any. “I’m looking for someone, I thought you might be able to help me find him.”
“Might be able to?” The older woman snorted and sat back down at the table, waving the three heavily muscled young men away. “Go play Pokemon or whatever it is you kids do these days. I’m safer with Victory than I am with the three of you.”
“Pokemon?” Vicki asked when they were alone.
; “Pissing off the young is one of the greatest pleasures I have left.” She folded her hands, the knuckles swollen and painful looking. “What do you want?”
“Person I’m looking for needs to convert a lot of gold.” The genie had been locked away for a while, and gold wasn’t a viable currency anymore.
“Two downtown towers of it?” When Vicki said nothing, Mama Sweet rolled her eyes. “Fine, don’t tell me. And in return?”
Vicki slid a piece of paper across the table. No one came to see Mama Sweet empty handed. She’d started out in Toronto’s Jamaican gangs in the sixties, objected to the lack of opportunities for women, and when she got out of prison—the objection had involved the application of a baseball bat—she’d worked her ass off to become the best fixer in the city. Back when she’d been on the force, Vicki had arrested her twice. She’d gotten off both times and insisted Vicki stay in touch. Which had been weird enough, Vicki had. Over the years, Vicki’d watched Mama Sweet age, and if Mama Sweet had, in turn, noticed Vicki wasn’t aging, she hadn’t said anything. Yet.
Mama Sweet frowned at the description on the paper. “Who’s this then?”
“That’s the man who dumped the body of one of your people in the Don last week.”
“And you didn’t take it to the police because?”
“Because the police wouldn’t consider my witness credible.” Because the police didn’t believe a troll lived under the Bloor Viaduct.
“But you do.”
It wasn’t a question, so Vicki didn’t answer it.
Paper refolded and slid into the pocket of the man’s dress shirt she wore, Mama Sweet nodded toward the door. “Wait on the porch. I’ll make a few quick calls.”
*
Vicki perched on the porch rail and watched traffic go up Ossington. And down Ossington. And listened to a passing gaggle of teenagers argue in two languages. One of them might have been Farsi, she had no idea what the other was. The topic seemed obvious, given the way they were waving their phones around.
She turned when the door opened.
One of the muscular young men handed her a piece of paper and said, “Mama says, a not very big guy beat the shit out of Two Ton until he gave up KayTrenholm who gave up Eddie Ease. She also says, come by next Tuesday evening.” He frowned. “Mama says come by, not Kay. Bring pie.”