Jack and Djinn

by Amber Sweetapple

  Ben continued: “Once I got my head around the fact that I really did see you turn to flame, it was easier to think about how you made that other stuff happen. What if you don’t grant wishes, like I just ask you for what I want, but maybe somehow you make what I want deep down come true? Like, the magic just works on its own. So, then I kept thinking. When did those things happen? While we’re having sex. Something about sex makes the magic happen, which is really fuckin’ cool, you know? So now here we are. Of course, you’ve got to do this the hard way, which is just like you. We could’ve done this all nice and comfortable up in the hotel room. You could’ve just…let go of all that other shit and realized that you belong with me.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” came a voice from behind them, just a few feet away. Jack. “Get off her, Ben.” Miriam tried to scream a warning: the pistol was hidden by Ben’s body and Jack didn’t see it. He didn’t see Ben smile slowly, as if he’d hoped Jack would show up. He didn’t see Ben shift his weight, turn his head slightly to get Jack into his line of vision.

  Jack may not have seen what Miriam saw, but he wasn’t stupid. He lunged with sudden speed, throwing himself at Ben. Miriam seemed to watch in slow motion as Ben twisted, absorbed Jack’s hurtling weight. Ben toppled away from Miriam to roll across the ground. Jack disentangled himself from Ben and scrambled to his feet, planted a kick into Ben’s face and another. Ben rolled away and Jack followed him, fists first.

  A pair explosions filled the parking garage, missing as Jack threw himself to the side. Jack stood up and charged yet again; Ben fired twice more. This time, Jack gasped in surprise and flopped to the ground. Miriam heard someone screaming, knew it was her. Jack lay on his back, twin blossoms of blood spreading on his chest, froth bubbling at his lips as he struggled for breath.

  Chapter 17: Now

  The crime scene had been cleaned up and the garage re-opened, so the location itself offered no new clues up to Carson. He stood there anyway, looking at it again, with Miriam and the case as a whole in mind.

  He pictured Ben bringing Miriam to the casino, perhaps as an attempt to woo her back. This was his turf, his territory. He knew people here. A buddy of Ben’s from the Corps was a dealer at a blackjack table, Carson had discovered. The buddy hadn’t been forthcoming, protecting his friend. The connection itself was enough: Ben would be comfortable here. His friend might be able to pull some strings, get people to ignore anything unusual. Like a terrified girl running through the casino. There was a waitress whom Carson had interviewed before coming down here, a waitress who had left work by the time the body was discovered and reported, and thus had been unavailable for questioning then.

  Nadira Nasri, a cocktail waitress on the casino floor had seen Miriam, she said. Miriam had actually knocked into her and spilled an entire tray of drinks. She’d seen Ben too, Nadira said, or rather she’d seen a tall, angry-looking guy following Miriam. That was all she knew, Nadira had claimed.

  That had made sense. Maybe things had gotten…tense. If Miriam had tried to leave and Ben had chased her, they’d end up in the casino, almost by default. Carson had prowled the Casino, trying to think like a fleeing, terrified girl. The casino was huge and sprawling, the exits distant and not clearly marked. It was designed to keep you in: the confusion and chaos was intentional, no windows, no clocks, no evidence of passing time, no clear exits. It was clever and almost diabolical, really. And if you were a scared girl, you’d have no way to know where to go. Then he’d seen the bay of employees-only doors in the distance, and that had seemed an obvious choice. Doors meant out; doors meant away. So he went through the doors, flashing his badge to employees protesting his presence. White hallways like an illusion stretching out in a further maze, silent after the chaos…Carson found himself disoriented, so Miriam’s state was easily understandable. One random turn after another and suddenly he was in the parking garage. If she had gone left instead of right, maybe there would have been a different outcome. One direction would have led her to a break room, or a cleaning supply room, whereas she’d ended up cornered in the garage, where something truly unusual had taken place, a sequence of events that were still a mystery to Carson. He had a clear picture of how things had led to the parking garage, of who Ben was, and Miriam. He’d looked at the security tapes again, and there was a clear image of Miriam pushing through the crowd, obviously terrified, chased by Ben. The cameras had caught them in the casino and the back hallways, and entering the parking garage, but that was it. No footage of Ben’s death. So how had Ben died? What had caused the fire? Had Miriam done it?

  And again the question: where the hell was Miriam?

  Back at his desk, Carson stared at the casings, trying to piece the rest together. The body had been burned, which meant it was likely that someone else had been shot. But there were no burn marks, no scorch marks, not even where the body had fallen, which suggested that the fire wasn’t natural. If Miriam was able to…what? Manipulate fire, somehow? That would explain the mysterious nature of the burned body. Maybe she had torched him, somehow, in self-defense. Maybe she had been shot in the process and run, or been found? But then, none of the hospitals had reported any gunshot victims that fit Miriam’s description.

  He had a pretty good idea of the people involved, and the sequence of events, but it still left him stuck in the same place he’d been at the start: a charred skeleton, a missing girl who may or may not have been responsible for the burned body, a missing girl who may or may not be alive.

  At his desk, Carson sat staring at the file. He needed to solve this case. He needed to know if Miriam had killed Ben, and how.

  He hoped Miriam was still alive to tell him.

  Chapter 18: Then

  At first Jack saw nothing but the inside of his eyelids. Then colors swirled in his head as if he’d stared too long at the sun, shadows and shades of yellow and blue coalescing into something that seemed to make sense, seemed to be Miriam, possibly. Jack tried to focus on it, and the vision slipped; perhaps he was trying to hard. He slowed his breathing and pushed his worry away, held a memory of Miriam’s face in his mind. Now the colors came back and this time they congealed without pause into her face, rushing and fusing into not a mere memory but a kind of physical presence. Jack could smell her, could hear the hum of tires, could sense the black aura of Ben’s presence although Jack couldn’t see him. Miriam was pressed against a car window, asleep or unconscious. Jack did his best to ignore his need to touch her, his need to check her pulse and cradle her in his arms; instead, he focused his attention beyond her to the world passing by out the window. Sharp spires of a church passed by, and Jack thought he recognized those steeples, but couldn’t be sure; then the view was obscured by rising freeway sides and Jack saw signs for Gratiot Road, I-375 keep right, Jefferson road, Woodward, Michigan, Third Street…Jack felt disoriented as the landmarks jumped from one to other, too quick. He wasn’t seeing in actual real-time he realized. Or if he was, his vision was faltering. Then, a landmark he recognized, drawing closer: the tall, neon-lit face of the MGM Grand Hotel. Jack’s eyes popped open, and the rope of magic stretched out from his chest across the city, and Jack realized he needed to simply follow it, and it would lead him to Miriam.

  He found the door, relieved to find it unlocked, against all probability. He descended the stairs two at a time and emerged in the darkened corridor of a top-floor office building. Did elevators work when the rest of the building was dark? He pressed the button and heard the hum. Apparently they did. This one, at least. The elevator ride was endless, but eventually he exited the building through an emergency exit, ignoring the jangling alarm. He was on Beaubien, a street sign told him.

  Jack wanted to sprint, but forced himself to a pace he could maintain, following the magic around corners and down straightaways, not paying attention to his actual location or other signs, or cars, or people. The city was quiet this late at night, but not deserted; he drew honks and curses as he crossed in front of passing cars against the lig
hts. He was nearly hit more than once, felt bumpers knock against his knees, tires squealing. He was panting, sweating, his legs burning, but his worry pulled him ever onward, following the glowing skein of magic. Worry turned to panic, panic into unreasoning fear. Visions were colliding in his head, Ben with a gun, following Miriam through white hallways, Miriam crashing into people in what might have been the casino, Miriam tumbling to the ground with Ben on top of her; Ben cutting her dress away and pawing at her, Miriam thrashing against Ben’s weight.

  Jack felt a body bounce off him and hands clutch at his sleeve: he was entering the casino somehow, though he had no memory of approaching it. The golden particles led him through the casino, past drunk gamblers and wavering smokers, through white hallways, the visions in his head cycling with maddened, disorienting speed. He was in a parking garage now, following the magic downward and around; Ben was in front of him, sitting astride Miriam, who was lying on the cold cement floor clad in only her bra and panties.

  Jack’s vision swam red with rage, the rope of magic dissipated in the gale force of his protective anger. He heard himself speak, but the words were lost in the thundering of his pulse. He was airborne, flying at Ben, colliding with him. Ben’s weight collided with Jack’s, and they were rolling across the concrete floor, Jack’s knees convulsing into Ben as they rolled, his fists pummeling in close-quarters rabbit-punches. Jack stumbled to his feet, Ben still struggling to right himself, and Jack kicked out viciously, and then again, feeling a thrill of satisfaction at the blood on Ben’s face. Then Ben was upright and pointing a silver handgun. Jack threw himself to the side, an instinctual move that occurred without thought or volition. The gun went off, a distant concussion in Jack’s ears.

  Another roll of thunder filled the small space, and Jack felt snake fangs bite his chest, two quick punctures in his lungs, and he was suddenly weak, suddenly falling and unable to make himself move. He looked over at Miriam, saw with horror that the first shots hadn’t missed.

  They’d hit Miriam.

  She was oblivious, screaming in rage, not pain. The tips of her hair flickered into flame first. Jack saw it happen in stop-motion sequence: first the tips of her hair floating around her waist turning yellow-orange and flicking like snake tails, then her eyes went from glowing brown to gouts of fire, then her fingers turned molten and the glow of molten stone spread up her body like flame eating paper.

  Just before the maw of darkness swallowed him, Jack saw her woman’s form vanish into a pillar. But in the instant of that transition, Jack saw two holes, side by side in her stomach, leaking trails of lava instead of blood.

  Then he knew no more.

  * * *

  Miriam flashed from cold terror into full-flame in a heartbeat, moved toward Ben, unaware that her feet weren’t touching the ground, unaware that she had relinquished even the slightest vestige of human form to become a pillar of raging blue-white fire pulsing and shifting and reaching out for Ben.

  He backed away, stumbling over his feet and falling to the ground, scrambling away as she approached. She saw nothing but Ben, aware vaguely of Jack behind her, dying. She was reaching for Ben, seeking to grasp him with hating hands, but she had no form, no physical body. She reached for him, and she swallowed him, the column that was Miriam splitting apart like jaws and clashing with a splash of fire and a juddering echo around Ben.

  She heard him scream, then. He was wailing, his voice a horrified shriek, childish in its helplessness.

  Then he was silent.

  She was a woman again suddenly, mere weak flesh and blood and Ben was a pile of charred skeleton bones on the floor behind her, forgotten.

  Jack was dying. His breath was coming in gasps, whistling past the holes in his chest, his eyes slack and rolled up in his head. She shook him, heard herself weeping, screaming, pleading. She kissed him, remembering the movies and the power of true love’s kiss, but he stayed cold and limp and lifeless. There a brief thud of a heartbeat under her hand, but it was faint, and slow.

  Her stomach hurt, aching with sorrow.

  She reached for the heat inside, felt it in her mental grasp, and she pulled on it, forced it into heat, needing it for him, not for herself, but for Jack. She let the rage at Ben come back, though he was dead, needing the anger to blow life into the magic. Rage fueled the magic, it seemed; rage, and desire.

  She felt no desire in that moment, only desperation and pain. She needed Jack.

  She couldn’t live without him, now that he was dying. Ben had killed him, so Miriam morphed that into hate, into anger. The anger built, turned warm and then hot, and then burst into full and furious life in her hands.

  She refused to let Jack go. He couldn’t die. Her whole form wanted to turn alight, but she forced the magic to her will, forced it into her hands. She plunged her white-glowing hands into Jack’s chest, through the skin and bone, through the blood, and the cells and the mitochondria and electrons, into the smallest spaces of his body. She spread herself out, then, dove willingly into the magic flooding from herself into him, became the magic itself, seeking out what was split and torn by the lead bullets and knitting the breaks back together, molecule by molecule, bridging the gaps with bits of herself, with fragments of magic, spanning with her own essence places where flesh had been not merely torn apart but dissolved and removed. She sought to erase all evidence of pain, all memory of hurt from him; she found the bullet holes and spread across them, sucked at them with all the force of magic she had, devoured them, absorbed them, took the pain into herself, took the wounds into herself.

  Then, she could do no more. She fell to the cold concrete, chilled in her very bones, hurting in every pore. She forced her eyes open, sought Jack and found him, sitting up and healed. There was no mark on him, no blood on his shirt, no blood pooled on the ground beneath him.

  He saw her, clutched his chest as if remembering the wounds, found nothing, looked back to Miriam.

  He scrambled over to her, knelt beside her, tears dripping from his nose. “Oh god, Miriam, what did you do?”

  She struggled to speak, to answer him. “I…took it. From you.” She knew she was hurt; thought was difficult. Had she been shot too? Maybe. Jack was alive. That was what mattered. His hands were in her hair, caressing her cheek.

  “No, no.” He wasn’t arguing, he was denying. “Please, God, no.” This was a prayer, not an epithet, not a casual profanity, but a plea. “Holy Mary, mother of Jesus, please. Et nomini Patri, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti.” He wasn’t making any sense, just sputtering prayers, whatever he could think of, remembered from boyhood catechism and mass, things he hadn’t attended in years.

  He stripped his shirt off, wrapped it around her torso, pressed it against her aching chest and stomach. Why did she hurt so bad? She couldn’t remember. There was only Jack, picking her up and stumbling into a run with her, spinning in circles, looking for an exit. Miriam didn’t feel any of this, had sensation only for Jack. She felt cold, and faint. She pushed those away so she could focus on Jack, on his features so etched with desperation and looking down at her, eyes welling with love, or was it fear? She didn’t know. He was looking at her, holding her.

  That was all that mattered.

  “Stay with me, Miri,” she heard him whisper. Miri. Only Ben had called her that, and she’d hated it from him. But when Jack said it, it was different. She felt the shortening of her name to be a kind of verbal caress.

  She thought of his words: stay with me. Where would she go? She was in his arms, and that’s where she belonged. Then the fear in his eyes and the worry in the lines around his mouth poked into her awareness, and she realized he thought something was wrong with her. She tore her eyes away from Jack and looked down at herself. She saw Jack’s shirt wrapped around her midsection, red and sopping with blood, pooling between his arms and her flesh where his arms pressed against her. She saw the blood welling from little holes in her body…where had those come from? She tried to count them, though the dizziness made it
hard. One, there was another next to it…so two…and then two more above those, in her chest, oddly seeming to be exactly where the holes in Jack’s chest had been. She heard a whistling noise, and she wished it would go away.

  She heard a female voice, a familiar voice nearby. Miriam tried to focus her eyes on the figure above her, saw a halo of black hair, piercing black eyes pinned on her, eyes brimming with worry. It was the woman from the casino, the waitress. Miriam heard her tell Jack to put her on the ground, a sharp order that Jack obeyed. Warm hands pulled the shirt away, spread palms over bullet holes. Miriam felt a humming vibration emanate from the woman’s hands, her eyes erupting into a silver-blue glow, the color of a moonlit-ocean. The warmth spread, and Miriam looked down at the hands, saw a luminous pool the same silver-blue of her eyes spread from her hands to sink into Miriam’s flesh, seeking out the wounds and filling them, flooding Miriam with heat that cooled into blessed relief from pain. The bullet wounds remained, but the flow of blood was stanched and Miriam felt less faint.

  “We have to get her to my place,” the woman said. “That will save her for now, but it’s only temporary. Follow me.” Jack picked her up again, and though the pain was less, it was still there blazing through her in dizzying waves. He followed the dark haired woman to her car, still pleading with Miriam to stay with him, and she wanted to reassure him, tell him it would be okay, she was fine. But she didn’t really feel fine, and she was cold, so cold. There was a waft of blessed warmth as something was thrown over her, pressed against her front where the little bleeding holes were, pressed too hard, really, but the warmth was nice. They were moving, swaying this way and that, Jack above her bracing one hand against a leather seat headrest, the other pressing a coat or a sweatshirt against her chest and stomach; he was looking down at her, tears on his face carving lines down his cheeks, and he brushed the tears away with a hand, but his hand was all red, as if he’d been painting. Where had he gotten so much red paint? It was all over him, smeared against his chest and heaving stomach. Some faint logical voice told her it was blood, not paint, and she wondered if he was okay. She had healed him, she knew she had. So where was the blood coming from?