by Gene Gant
“Well, hurry up. My arm’s getting tired.”
“I’ve seen you lift your refrigerator with one hand. You telling me you can’t hold up a ten-pound sprite?” I snorted.
Inky gave me a sneer. On him, even sneers are pretty. “Just do it.”
I walked up to the sprite and carefully removed the sword from his hand. “Well, Jellicoe, since you tried to amputate my foot, I suppose you owe me a little something. My name’s Ahmad.”
Jellicoe giggled and gave me a most agreeable smile. “Nice to meet you, Ahmad. What can I do for you?”
“I’m a new friend of Draven’s, and I would really like to know where his dad is hanging out. Wait, let me rephrase that. I want to know where he’s keeping Draven’s mother.”
Jellicoe giggled again, the sound quickly growing into a full-throated laugh. It appeared he was highly amused except for the sudden glaze of terror in his eyes. “No. No, I won’t tell you where Malwar is keeping the sow.”
Good thing Draven was under Inky’s spell. Most guys don’t take kindly to hearing their mothers called a pig. It was clear that Jellicoe was very afraid of Draven’s father. I figured it was time to give the sprite reason to be afraid of me.
Jellicoe’s body appeared to be made of wood. I put my hand just below his dangling feet, palm up. With a thought, I sent the tiniest bit of power into my hand, and that power manifested in red flames dancing over the surface of my palm. “Here’s how this will go, Mr. Twigs,” I said, putting a threatening growl in my voice. “Either you tell us where to find Draven’s mother and father, or I turn you into a campfire.”
Trembling with fear, Jellicoe snatched his feet up. To keep them away from the flames, he looped his arms under his folded knees, his body bent into the shape of a pretzel. “No!” he replied, followed by a burst of giggles. “I won’t tell. Whatever you do to me won’t be half as bad as what Malwar will do to me if I give him up.”
Inky sighed impatiently. “Great job there, Ahmad. Let me try.” He turned the sprite so they were eye to eye again and smiled. “Jellicoe, you’re not afraid of Malwar. Tell us where he’s keeping Draven’s mom.”
Jellicoe’s grin spread into a rictus. “No!”
Inky and I exchanged stunned looks. “Wow,” I said, finally remembering to kill the flames in my hand. “Malwar’s got be one hell of a monster. He has Jellicoe so afraid even your hypnotic power can’t break through that fear.”
“Maybe you can just track my dad, Gray,” Draven said, his voice a bit slurred, his eyes still on Inky. “Maybe you can pick up a trail through Jellicoe’s fear.”
Inky shrugged. “It’s worth a try.” He turned his gaze back to the sprite. “Just stay relaxed, Jellicoe. This won’t hurt at all.”
Inky closed his eyes, the better to attune himself to whatever feelings the sprite had been doused in recently. He opened his eyes two seconds later. “It’s not working. There’s no emotional residue from Malwar here,” he explained to Draven and me. “But I am getting something, a lot of anger, involving a girl named Mina. She was pissed at Jellicoe and Malwar. If we go to her, maybe she can tell us where to find Draven’s dad.”
I looked up at the sky. Change was in the air, approaching rapidly from the northwest and causing a massive shift in the direction of the wind. “Is she close by?”
“Yeah. She’s in Chicago, actually.”
“There’s a storm coming in, a bad one,” I said. “We should get under cover until it passes. I’ll take us back to your place, Inky. Once the storm’s over, we can pay a visit to Mina.”
Inky gave Jellicoe a little shake. “What about this guy?”
With a slashing motion of my hand, I split reality open beside Jellicoe with a bolt of white lightning. The sprite shot through the rift and into his little underground hideout, where he landed facedown in an unceremonious splat against the earthen floor. His little sword lodged itself in the wall over his head. Contact with the earth freed him from Inky’s spell, which meant he instantly got mad about the way we’d treated him. To ensure he didn’t harass us before we left, I gestured and sealed the door of his chamber with a bit of will.
Thunder rolled in the distance. I reached out and pulled Draven close. Then I looked at Inky. “Let’s get outta here.”
I DON’T look a day over fifteen. People see me on the street and think I’m a kid. By human standards, I’m old as dirt. I’ve made 1,457 trips around the sun. As demons go, that makes me barely more than a babe. There are djinn who are thirty, forty, and fifty thousand years old, and even they are considered whippersnappers by the true elders of our kind. So on a demonic scale, I really am just a kid, and I tend to behave like one.
I like hanging out with other kids. Not human ones, though. They tend to outgrow me in a startlingly short time. A mere five years and a human buddy goes from playing video games and flicking boogers at me to working a job and paying rent. For that same reason, human guys don’t make good boyfriends, either. Yes, I’ve had a couple of human gay teens fall for me, but in just ten years’ time, those former seventeen-year-olds looked twice my (relative) age. Most societies aren’t very tolerant of adults who engage in romantic liaisons with kids, so the relationships became strained. Even more problematic, those guys started to suspect there was something frighteningly weird about my nonaging. Who needs that kind of drama when you’re cursed to be a slave? Certainly not me.
So when it comes to friends these days, I stick to the supernatural kind. Last night, I hung out with a couple of vampire pals, Jack and Kellie. They’re a mixed couple. Jack’s a traditional bloodsucker, while Kellie is what’s known as a reverse vampire. She absorbs human misery—bad thoughts, starvation, mental abuse, physical abuse, that kind of stuff—the way plants soak up sunlight. The stuff gives her all the powers of a vampire, but it builds up in her to the point that it becomes toxic. When that happens, she starts to lose such vampire perks as superhuman strength and speed, and if the misery keeps building up in her, she’ll die. The only way she can get rid of the misery she absorbs is by biting humans and injecting the venomous crap back where it came from. Jack can kill by draining too much blood from a victim, and Kellie can kill by filling a victim with too much pain.
I know, they sound like monsters—and they are—but they’re also a lot of fun. Last night, we literally danced the night away at a party Miley Cyrus threw on the roof of a luxury apartment building in Manhattan. I went from that to shopping, and then my run-in with Draven started in downtown Wisteria. By the time Draven, Inky, and I returned to Inky’s Gold Coast condo that afternoon, I was running a bit low on get-up-and-go.
Lightheaded from the lack of sleep, I staggered when we appeared in the den, and Draven and I almost toppled over. The sofa looked so inviting, I moaned. But I couldn’t let myself fall asleep because that would leave Draven alone with Inky and unprotected. On my mother’s soul, wherever she was, I would not even close my eyes now.
Inky looked at me, smiled, and said, “Dude, you look beat.”
I woke up three hours later, lying with my feet propped up on the sofa and my head and torso resting on the thickly carpeted floor. Startled, I pushed myself up on my elbows, yelping “What?” as I did so. And then, when it came to me what had happened, I rolled my eyes, shook my head at myself, and mumbled, “Well, fuck me.”
Inky had put me in that deep slumber. Normally I can resist his hypnotic pushes, but my will was weakened from having gone almost twenty-four hours without sleep. On top of that, I was disoriented after warping from that orchard in Kankakee County, and my body—stubbornly independent of my wishes—was desperately craving deep slumber. That had made me a literal pushover for Inky.
A second after mentally kicking my own ass, I remembered Draven and panic hit me. I scrambled to my feet. There was no one else in the den, and there was no sound in the condo. Except, that is, for the thunder booming. The den was almost as dark as if night had fallen, flashing into momentary day-brightness from the frequent bursts of lightn
ing that arced through the sky. Rain, driven by powerful winds, pelted the windows, which were thankfully closed.
Using my MagicVision, I scanned the condo. Inky’s maid, a slim, middle-aged woman in a black uniform and padded black shoes, was napping in a chair in the kitchen. The rest of the rooms were unoccupied. But off the master bedroom there was a huge screened deck that overlooked the lake. Draven and Inky were sitting in a two-seater yellow pine rocker on that deck, hip to hip and looking quite cozy. Inky’s arm was around Draven’s shoulders. They were talking and watching the storm vent its fury. Concerned for Draven’s safety, and because I’m just plain nosy, I employed my patented MagicAudio to listen in on their conversation.
“My mom and I never went anywhere,” Draven was saying. “My friends and their parents took trips out of town just about every summer. They went to the beach in Florida and California, or to places like the Grand Canyon, or to visit relatives. Mom and I never did that stuff. She always told me we didn’t have any other family, and that we couldn’t afford to travel.” Draven’s face suddenly took on an inward, surprised look. “This is the first time I’ve been out of Wisteria in my whole life.”
“Well,” Inky said, giving Draven’s shoulder a teasing little stroke with one finger, “I’m sure glad your first trip out of town was to visit me.”
Even looking through the walls from three rooms away, I could see the blush that darkened the back of Draven’s neck.
Draven cleared his throat. “I never really thought much about it, Mom and me never going anywhere,” he went on. “But looking back on it now, everything makes sense. Mom was trying to hide us from my dad. Being in Wisteria kept us safe for a long time. And living there wasn’t such a bad thing. Not at first, when I had friends. Then I started changing, and my friends got scared of me, and nobody would hang out with me anymore.”
“Let me guess. That started around the time you turned twelve, and your Grendelkin features started to show.”
“Yeah.”
I could imagine how hard that was on Draven, being dumped by all his friends. But I could also understand things from his friends’ perspective. Who wouldn’t get freaked out when a seemingly normal guy suddenly starts roaring like a wild animal and punching holes in brick walls every time he gets mad?
“That’s too bad, your friends bailing on you like that,” Inky said, his voice soft with sympathy. “But I’m not afraid of you, man. I’ll be your friend.”
“You will?”
“Sure. You know, there’s a whole wide world outside of Wisteria, Illinois. After we get your mom back and put your dad in check, I’d really like to show you some of that world. There are all kinds of things you can do right here in Chicago.”
“Like what?”
“Like the rock festival that’s gonna be held in Grant Park next month. And all the fun stuff at Navy Pier. I can take you on a helicopter tour. When it warms up some more, we can Jet Ski on the lake.” Casually, Inky wrapped his hand firmly around Draven’s shoulder and pulled him closer. He leaned down, putting his lips next to Draven’s ear. “And,” he whispered gently, “we can do this.” He pressed his lips softly against Draven’s cheek. Then he took Draven gently by the chin, turned Draven’s face to his, and kissed the kid sweetly on the lips. It was a light, fleeting touch, and it sent a visible shudder from Draven’s neck down to his feet.
I didn’t have to gesture or make any other conscious effort to invoke my djinn magic. The rage that flashed through me flared out of my eyes in a blast of malice. It struck Inky’s big flat-panel television, and the screen shattered in a crackling explosion of glass, fire, and smoke.
Inky, Draven and the maid all came running to the den.
I put on an innocent face. “You know, Inky, you really should unplug your electronics when there’s a thunderstorm.”
From the way Inky looked at me, if he’d had djinn magic, I would have exploded like his television.
Six
TO THE maid, Inky said politely, “Luann, would you please clean up this broken glass.”
To Draven, Inky said affectionately, “Hey, man, there’s more of that rocky road ice cream in the fridge. Go help yourself.”
To me, Inky snarled, “Come here.” And then, while Luann went for the broom and Draven went for the ice cream, Inky grabbed me by the hair and hauled me out of the den and down the hall to the master bedroom.
For the record, getting yanked around by the hair twice in the same day by guys with superhuman strength gives you a big headache.
Once we were in the bedroom, Inky let me go and shut the door. “What the hell, man?” he raged. “You blew up my television!”
“Yeah, that was the crime of the century. Put me on death row.” In an effort to soothe my wounded dignity, I smoothed my ruffled ponytail back in place. Technically, it’s a djinn’s lock, but everybody who sees me calls it a ponytail, so I go with the flow. “In the meantime, here you are getting ready to make an afternoon snack out of a naive kid.”
Inky’s mouth dropped open. He was clearly appalled. “What?”
“Aw, cut the act, man. Don’t play innocent with me. We both know what you are. And the minute you saw Draven, you started doing what you do. It’s your nature, yeah, I get that. And everybody’s got to eat. But you should at least have the decency to stick to people who’ve got some living under their belts. That kid out there doesn’t know the first thing about romance. He’s barely lived at all. I’ll bet he’s never even had a real kiss.”
Inky looked highly offended. “I just kissed him.”
“I said a real kiss, not a cobra bite.”
I think I saw actual gusts of steam shoot out of Inky’s ears. “Cobra?”
“Yeah. Cobra!” The moment I said that, I focused my djinn magic into an invisible shield between Inky and me. Inky had a habit of responding with his fists when insulted. Imagine my surprise when a deeply wounded look mixed in with the anger on his face, and his eyes suddenly glistened.
“Damn,” he said quietly. “You can be so mean.” He turned away, wiping roughly at his eyes with his fingers.
The average person would peg Inky as being no more than sixteen. He’s been sixteen for 146 years now. Still, for one of his kind, he is very much a kid, and although he employs a full-time maid, owns two expensive cars, a cabin cruiser, and a sailboat in addition to his luxury condo, and (like me) lives independently of adult supervision, most times he behaves exactly like a kid. Which means sometimes, if he’s hurt deeply enough, he’ll cry.
He walked away from me, pushed open the french doors, and went onto the screened deck. Nothing kills my righteous anger faster than the knowledge that I’ve cruelly wounded someone’s feelings. Stung now with regret, I went out on the deck after Inky.
The windows were closed all around the deck, and rain lashed against them in hissing sheets, driven by the maniacal winds. Lightning continued to rip across the sky, and thunder made the floor vibrate slightly beneath my feet. Inky stood at the front of the deck, arms folded across his chest, looking out over Lake Shore Drive, which was heavy with traffic despite the storm. Beyond Lake Shore Drive, the waters of Lake Michigan churned furiously. I stopped beside him, contrite but too stubborn to apologize. For a few moments, we just stood there.
And then, quietly, Inky said, “I do have feelings, you know.”
“Yes, I know that,” I admitted.
“Then you should know I don’t see everybody I meet as my next meal. I didn’t see you that way when I met you. Sometimes, believe it or not, I actually like some of the people I meet. And for some reason—I don’t know why—I happen to like Draven.”
“What? Wait.” Mentally, I backed up and replayed that last statement of Inky’s. Something about it still didn’t compute. “What’s this about you liking Draven? You mean you like him as a friend?”
“No,” Inky replied, staring out the window into the storm. “When I met you, I liked you and thought we could be friends. It’s different with Draven
. I’m… attracted to him.”
For a moment, I was speechless. In the three years I’d known Inky, I’d seen a dozen or so people fall under the spell of the guy’s impossibly good looks and his hypnotic powers, willingly submitting themselves to be his supper. I’d never seen anything, not even the littlest hint, that showed Inky cared one bit about any of those people. I actually thought his kind were incapable of being attracted to anyone. They use beauty and personality the way wolves use fangs and claws, or the way spiders use webs and venom. It didn’t seem possible or practical for beings like that to fall prey to another person’s attractiveness.
“I’ve spent the last few hours alone with him,” Inky said, plunging on in the wake of my silence. “We sat in the kitchen and ate sundaes. We sat out here and watched the storm. We talked. And the more time I spend with him, the more I like him. He’s a great guy, Ahmad. He’s tough and strong, and he’s got a wild temper. There’s definitely a beast in him. But under all that, he’s lonely and scared. He has a kind heart, and he wouldn’t hurt anyone unless he’s mistreated. He doesn’t have a home anymore. It makes me want to protect him, you know? It makes me want to keep him close. After just a few hours, I want to take care of him.”
I looked at Inky so hard he seemed to feel it. He shivered and turned to me. “Inky,” I said, “does that seem like a smart thing for you to do?”
“I don’t know, Ahmad. When I think about it, it all seems crazy. But what I feel, feels right.”
“What about Draven?”
Inky looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“He’s only fourteen. Aren’t you too old for him?”