Jack and Djinn

by Amber Sweetapple

  “Thanks, Leila. I’ll see you around.”

  Leila smiled at him, waved a hand. “Sure thing, Carson. Hope you figure your case out.”

  Carson laughed, a bitter, sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, me too.”

  He had meant to go home, but he found himself back at the precinct, at his desk, staring at the folder and wishing he was still at The Old Shillelagh.

  He heard Leila’s words again, about not being able to accept the impossible answer. His gut told him Miriam had something to do with it, that she had caused Ben’s death somehow, and that it had been in self-defense. But how had she done it?

  Carson eventually went home and dreamed of impossible things that he only half-remembered upon waking.

  Chapter 20: Merging

  Nadira came home around 8.p.m., stinking of cigarettes and beer. She waved a hello to Jack and Miriam, heading straight back to the bathroom for a rinse-off. She re-emerged in men’s boxer shorts and a tank top, her hair tied up in a sloppy bun.

  “Listen, kids,” she said. “We have a problem. There was a detective sniffing around tonight. I didn’t tell him anything, but I think you should go in and talk to him. I don’t know…he’s…I got a sense about him. He’s part of this, somehow. He’s tied to you, and to me, in some way. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but just trust me. I get…not really visions so much as gut feelings. You need to go in and talk to him, and you need to tell him the truth. It sounds crazy, but I think he’ll believe you.”

  Miriam shook her head, “No way. He’d arrest me on the spot if I told him the truth.”

  “I know, that’s what my instincts tell me, too,” Nadira said. “But I’ve also learned that these feelings about particular people are never wrong. Carson is important to us, somehow.”

  “Us?” Miriam asked. What did ‘us’ mean?

  Nadira just shrugged. “Well, you need me to teach you how to use your powers, right? So…us. I like you. You’ve been through things most people can’t fathom. I know what that’s like, alright? I have my own issues. But…we need to stick together. Djinni aren’t really social creatures. We don’t often gather together in groups. Like, ever. There’s rarely more than one djinn in a particular city, or if there is more than one, they don’t know about each other. So for you and I to encounter each other like we did…there’s something to that, some purpose. I have a feeling that detective will have something to do with it.”

  “I still don’t know,” Miriam said. Authorities, hospitals, they all made her wary. She’d just gotten free of Ben, she wasn’t about to put herself into the hands of the police. Jack hadn’t said anything, and he was sitting on the edge of the couch, staring down at the carpet, still as a statue.

  “Jack?” Miriam said, touching his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  Jack shook himself, but when he met her eyes, he still had a strange, distant look in his eyes. “I think we should go,” he said. “I just…I had this image of us talking to that cop, a tall guy with blue eyes, right? Brown hair, blue eyes?”

  Nadira stared at Jack with suspicion. “You know him?”

  Jack shook his head, a frown on his face. “No, I just…I can see him. And I think we should talk to him.”

  “His grandfather has what he calls the Second Sight,” Miriam explained to Nadira. “He sees things. Jack has it too, and I guess he’s seeing something with it.”

  Jack shrugged uncomfortably. “Yeah. It’s weird, and I’m not sure I like it. It feels like a memory of something that hasn’t happened yet. But I feel like the cop will listen.”

  “I guess if both of you are having the same idea, or vision, or whatever, then I should do it,” Miriam said. “But I don’t like it.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Jack said, taking the detective’s business card from Nadira.

  * * *

  Jack and Miriam met with Detective Carson Hale at a Starbucks not far from the precinct and found the detective sitting with a mug of coffee, an open file folder in front of him and a frustrated expression on his face.

  “Detective Hale?” Miriam approached him, holding out her hand. The detective stood up, towering over Miriam, shook her hand gently.

  “Yes?” He sounded tired.

  “I’m Miriam al-Mansur. I wondered if you might have a few moments to talk?”

  The detective looked shocked. “Yes, yeah, uh, lemme just…uh, okay.” Carson sipped his coffee, and then started again. “So, Miriam. I have to admit I wasn’t sure you’d show up. When I got your call I couldn’t quite believe it.”

  “No, I hadn’t planned on coming in, honestly, but…I was convinced.”

  “Well I’m glad you did,” Carson said. “I’ve got a few questions for you.”

  “I’m sure you do, detective,” Miriam said.

  He rummaged through the papers in the case file and clicked his pen several times. He opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again. “I’m honestly not sure where to start. I have so many questions, but…” he waved his hand, trailing off.

  Miriam scratched the tabletop with a fingernail, watching Carson closely. “I don’t know anything about police work,” Miriam began, “but I imagine you’ve had quite a time trying to figure out what happened to Ben–”

  That appeared to help Carson get his feet back under him. “Let’s start there, miss al-Mansur. Why don’t you tell me what happened to Ben.”

  Miriam took a deep breath. “And that’s the thing, detective. It’s a bit of difficult story, and I’m not sure you’ll believe me.”

  “At this point, I’m ready to believe just about anything. I can’t make heads or tails of the crime scene, and I’m not sure anyone that’s looked at it can either.” Miriam winced. The crime scene, he’d called it. Carson continued, “So please, just try telling me your version of events, and let me worry about what to believe or not.”

  Miriam searched Carson’s eyes, not sure what she was looking for. She should be scared stiff, about to tell a complete stranger the truth of what had happened to Ben. She wouldn’t believe it herself, if it hadn’t happened to her. Strangely, though, Miriam wasn’t afraid. She didn’t get a sense of threat from this detective. Curiosity, skepticism, exhaustion, those were all at war on Carson’s face, but she didn’t feel as if he wanted to arrest her, necessarily, or cause her trouble.

  She took another deep breath and prepared to tell her story yet again. She started with how she’d met Ben, and their difficult relationship, her fear of him, the constant and escalating abuse, and the odd occurrences that had started not too very long ago.

  Carson didn’t interrupt, only took a few notes here and there, listening intently. Jack was silent next to her, holding her hand under the table. Then Miriam came to the incident in the parking garage, and that was when she began to falter, and Jack picked up the tale.

  When Jack told of being shot, Carson asked his first question. “Wait, Ben shot you, Mr. Byrne? You were there?”

  “Yeah,” Jack answered. “I had a feeling that she was in trouble–”

  “What, you have superpowers too, now?” Carson asked. He winced, realizing how harsh that had sounded. “Sorry, I’m just having trouble with all of this.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Jack said. “It’s a crazy story and I don’t blame you for not believing it.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t believe it, just that I’m having a hard time accepting it.”

  “I get that,” Jack said. “So yeah, Ben shot me. How I found them doesn’t matter. I did, and I stopped him from hurting her, but he shot me in the process.”

  “You don’t look shot,” Carson said, skeptical.

  “That’s because Miriam healed me.” Jack shrugged his shoulders, inviting Carson to believe what he wanted.

  “Go on.” Carson didn’t give any of his thoughts.

  “So Miriam healed me. But Ben had shot her too, by accident I think. He meant to shoot me, but missed, and he hit her.”

  “She doesn’t look shot either.”

 
“That’s because someone else healed her,” Jack said, realizing how absurd it all sounded, out of the moment. “The identity of the person who healed her isn’t relevant. The point is, when Miriam realized I’d been shot, she–”

  “I defended him,” Miriam interrupted. “And I burned Ben. I killed him for what he’d done to Jack, and for everything he’d done to me. Ben had gone crazy. He was completely out of control. We’d both be dead now, if it weren’t for–”

  “If it weren’t for your superpowers. Yeah. I can see that.” Carson was openly skeptical now, arms crossed, leaning back in his chair, spinning his pen around a finger. “Look, just explain to me how you killed Ben, because that’s the part I don’t get. You said you burned him. But how? What did you use?”

  “It’s not superpowers,” Miriam said, letting an edge of frustration into her voice. “You said you were ready to believe anything. Are you? Really?”

  Carson sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned forward to look Miriam in the eye. “I don’t know. Just tell me what happened.”

  “I’m a djinn, detective. And I can turn into…I don’t know what to call it…a fire elemental, I guess. I look like me, but fire. That’s how I killed Ben.” Miriam could tell Carson wasn’t convinced. She had to show him. She needed him to understand, for some reason she couldn’t as yet fathom. He wanted to believe, something told her, but he couldn’t. He needed proof.

  Miriam closed her eyes, fell into herself and grasped at the woven column of magic and fire within her, holding it in her invisible hands. She visualized herself opening her eyes to show not the brown irises of a human, but the fiery orbs of a djinn. Miriam cracked her eyelids open, slowly, and saw the world through a distorted filter, saw whorls of magic skirling around her body, streaming from her to Jack and back in a constant flux. She had succeeded, she could tell.

  Carson was frozen in his chair, the pen dropped from his fingers, fear and wonder in his eyes. Miriam touched the table with a finger, letting the tiniest trickle of flame escape from within her core to travel up the length of her body and down her arm to crawl from out of her fingertip along the table, a dancing candleflame figure waltzing in graceful, flickering steps toward Carson. The flame jumped and gyrated, living a brief life of its own before leaping from the table onto Carson’s hand where it stood stock still as if staring at Carson, who was transfixed, his hand trembling, his mouth agape, his eyes wide.

  “What…? What is this?” Carson’s voice was an amazed whisper.

  Miriam felt triumphant, overjoyed at having made her powers follow her commands. “I told you, Carson. I’m a djinn. That’s just the smallest example of my powers that I could show you. Ben had tormented me for three years, beat me physically, abused me emotionally, cheated on me, kidnapped me, chased me through a casino, cornered me in a parking garage and tried to rape me, then shot the man I loved in the chest, and me in the stomach. I got…angry.”

  Carson shook his head as the miniature flame figure twisted on his palm, fluttered, gasped, and died. “I…I can see how that might not have gone well for Mr. Omar,” Carson said.

  “Well, detective,” Miriam said, “that’s the truth.”

  Carson was silent for a long time, staring at his hand where the dancing candle flame had been. Miriam was starting to wonder if he’d heard her, but eventually he said in a whisper, “Against my better judgment, I think I believe you, Miriam. I’m not sure anyone else would believe me if I told them, however, and that’s the problem I’m facing now. What do I do with you? According to your own story, you’re guilty of manslaughter, however justified it may have been. You might be able to classify it as self-defense, but…there’s just no evidence for anything. Neither you nor Jack show any signs of having been shot, and at the same time, there’s no evidence tying you to Ben’s death. I just don’t know what to do about any of this.”

  Miriam met Carson’s eyes, pleading with him. “Just let us go. Like you said, there’s nothing connecting anything. Can’t you just…let us go?”

  Carson didn’t answer. He picked up his pen and doodled, thinking. He drew the flame that had been on his hand. “Thank you for meeting me, Miriam. I know it couldn’t have been easy. And thank you for showing me…for showing me the truth.” He stuck out his hand, and Jack and Miriam shook it in turn.

  “You have my card, yes? If you ever need anything, just call me,” Carson said. He gathered his things and left, not looking back.

  Jack and Miriam stared at each other for a moment, stunned, then returned to Nadira’s apartment. Nadira didn’t seem surprised that Carson had let them go.

  “I told you,” she said, “he’s going to be coming back into our lives, I think. And soon.”

  Jack had that faraway look in his eyes that Miriam knew meant Second Sight. “This is the beginning of something,” Jack said, his voice deep and echoing with preternatural energy. “There are more coming, to complete the circle.”

  “What circle?” Miriam asked. “More what?”

  Jack shook himself, “I don’t know. It’s…hazy. I can see us, the three of us and Carson, and more, but they’re just…shadows. I don’t know what it means.”

  “Prophecies, and visions are like that,” Nadira said, shrugging. “They create more questions than they do answers, and often, you don’t know if they’ve come true or not until afterward. That’s my experience at least.”

  “Your experience?” Miriam asked.

  Nadira shook her head, her eyes staring into middle distance. “Oh, nothing. Just…the past. Prophecies are a pain in the ass. Don’t worry about it.” Nadira wouldn’t say anything else, and Miriam didn’t push it.

  * * *

  Later that night, after they’d had dinner, Nadira sat down with Miriam, and asked her if she knew how to shift. “Shift what?” Miriam asked.

  “Guess that means no,” Nadira said. “I can tell just by looking at you that you’ve managed to bind your element to your magic. Right?”

  Miriam nodded. “Yeah. How can you tell?” She looked at her hands and touched her face, but it all seemed normal.

  “You look more balanced. Your energy, your…aura, I guess you could call it, it’s more focused. Before, you were all out of balance and disturbed. Anyway. Now that you’ve done that, you should be able to do some basic manipulations. That’s what we call it when we use our powers: manipulation.”

  “We?” Miriam asked.

  “Yeah, other djinni. We’re taught parent to child, and that’s what I’ve always heard it called. For now, just focus on learning to control yourself. Try to do this.” Nadira held up her palm and focused on it. Her dark eyes turned the blue of the ocean, glowing as if lit by the sun, wavering like liquid. A pool of water formed in her hand. It was flat at first, cupped in the dip of her palm, but then it grew, stretched up and lengthened, twisted into a helix, looped and bent, spun and bounced, animated as if given life.

  “That’s kind of like what I did to convince Carson,” Miriam said, amazed to see someone else do what she’d thought only she was capable of. Miriam held out her palm, pulled on the magic within her and summoned the trickle of flame to dance on her palm, mimicking what Nadira had done, only with a fragment of fire.

  “That’s the most basic manipulation I could think of,” Nadira said, “so if you can do that one easily, then you’re well on the way. Let’s try something hard, just to test your limits.”

  Nadira steadied her breathing into long, even breaths, like meditation, and her eyes once again assumed the liquid, shifting light. Her lower torso seemed to waver and distort and then become less solid somehow, as if melting from ice into water; within moments, Nadira was only an upper torso that faded into a column of storming ocean-water. She hovered in place for a moment and then the jet of liquid that was her body from the waist down coiled to spring her forward in a serpentine motion. Miriam was hypnotized, incredulous. She didn’t think there was any way she’d be able to duplicate that; but even as the thought crossed her min
d, Miriam realized she did know how. She’d watched the way the magic shifted around Nadira, braiding with the elemental power to obey the djinn’s will.

  Miriam did as Nadira had, focused her mind on breathing while delving down within herself and grasping the fire-magic. A quick visualized command and Miriam felt her legs buzzing and humming and growing hot, and then suddenly she was floating several feet off the floor, supported by a gout of roaring flame. Jack was laughing in amazement and clapping; his approval filled Miriam with pride, even more than the accomplishment itself.

  “Good, very good,” Nadira said, returning her lower half to human legs. “One thing you have to remember is that you’re not omnipotent. You can be hurt and killed in your elemental form, it just takes a lot more to do it. We’re particularly susceptible to magic, so if you find yourself around other djinni you’d best be on your guard.

  “One other thing—the more of your magic you’ve used, the harder it will be to retain your human form, so don’t go around using magic for everything. The key to staying under the radar and fitting in is to act human as much as possible, and never use your powers around normals if you can possibly help it, because there can be side-effects if you’re not in complete control of your magic.”

  “That’s what’s weird,” Miriam said. “When all this first started, the magic made Ben’s desire’s real.”

  Nadira bit her lip, thinking. “Well, I don’t know the specifics of how your magic works because everyone is different, but…I think that was your magic needing to get out. It had been building up your whole life, and it reached max capacity, you know? It needed to be used, so it reached out for the first thing it found, namely, the desire of the person you were with. By desire, I mean things inside, unspoken. That’s how the old legends got started you know. Our magic has a tendency to work not so much on what is spoken but on what’s inside.” Nadira stood up and took Jack and Miriam’s hands in her own. “Listen, I’m glad things worked out for you, and I’m glad I could help you. But I want my apartment back.”