INVISIBLE DUTY (INVISIBLE RECRUITS)

by Buckham, Mary

  Some deadly agent I was.

  “You got a plan?” she asked, her voice still slurry with sleep.

  I cast her a sideways glance. Jaylene and Mandy had been buddies since day one so I wasn’t sure how much I trusted her being here.

  “You reporting back to your friend?” I asked with enough snarl to earn a palms up gesture from her.

  “You’re going to need help to keep your ass out of the sling you jumped into. You don’t want me here, just say the word and I’ll back off.”

  I didn’t respond immediately because I was taken off guard. Family covering my backside I was used too, but not near-strangers, even if we were part of the same team. A team that also included Mandy, so I wasn’t being wary out of being persnickety. Before I could say anything Kelly came walking across the room, wearing the butt-ugly burqa too while not hiding her yawn. If anyone noticed the way she moved, loose and owning the space around her like most American women comfortable in their skin did, they’d know in a heartbeat she wasn’t from Rwanda.

  “You don’t think this place has any green tea do you?” Kelly said, looking around.

  I doubted this dive would rate even a one-star and I’d have bet there was not even hot water available, much less tea.

  Jaylene groaned as I shook my head. Kelly just shrugged and slid into the rickety chair next to Jaylene.

  “So what do we do first?” Kelly asked, as if we were planning a picnic or church social instead of tracking down a djinn. But I appreciated the fact that two of my had teammates offered help. My daddy didn’t raise stupid. I knew I needed help as the clock ticked past.

  I pointed toward the map and the circle I’d drawn there. “This is where we were yesterday,” I said, though it was hardly necessary, until I leaned forward and traced the faint line of a larger circle I’d sketched in around the smaller one. “And this is what I’m guessing should be the most likely area inhabited by the djinn.”

  “Guessing?” Jaylene arched her brows. “How precise is this guess? Probability wise.”

  “It’s not rocket science.” Yeah, I sounded defensive, which I was. But that was better than sounding unsure, which is what I was, as I rubbed the back of my neck. “I based my calculations on the amount of territory the average man could walk within a three day time period.”

  “Why that calculation?” Kelly asked, examining the map as if it hid more clues.

  “Djinn aren’t great walkers?” Jaylene snorted.

  “No, I’m thinking about human patterns more than djinn patterns.” That had both their attention so I continued. “Up to the Industrial Revolution in Europe most people were born, lived, married, and died within the same ten mile radius.”

  “Which correlates to about the distance a person could walk in three days,” Kelly said, the awe in her voice helping massage my ego a smidge. “But that also includes Kigali. With over a million people here that’s still a lot of territory to search.”

  Ego deflate. “Yeah, it is, but only the central and western areas.” I tried a rah-rah team smile feeling wobbly around the corners. “Besides djinn have a few telltale preferences when they go to ground.”

  “Such as?” Jaylene asked.

  “They can live anywhere but prefer deserts, ruins, and places like graveyards, garbage dumps, bathrooms, or camel pastures.”

  Jaylene sniffed. “Seriously? You want us to check out every bathroom in Kigali?”

  I hoped it wouldn’t come down to that. Dig deeper Noziak. If I were a djinn, where would I hide out?

  There was one detail my dad had shared years ago that might help. “The stories indicate they love to sit in places between the shade and the sunlight, choosing to move around the most when dark first falls, or as dawn gives way to first light.”

  Kelly squinted through the woven dusty blinds of the hotel. “It’s almost dawn now.”

  I thumped a finger down on the map. “Which is why I think we should check here or here first.”

  Jaylene leaned closer. ”I’m assuming those crosses mean a cemetery.”

  Duh. But I bit my tongue, maybe not everyone was as comfortable walking among the dead as I was.

  “Yup.” I was grabbing my backpack off the floor as I stood. “With your help we can cover two of the largest within Kigali and the map circle I’ve drawn.”

  “So Kelly and I take one and you the other?”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “If we asked Mandy to help you’d have back-up.” That was Kelly, always the one who wanted everyone to play nice.

  “If Mandy wanted to be here she’d be here,” I said on my moral high horse.

  “And I am,” came a voice behind me.

  Damn. Problem with horses was you could just as easy fall off them.

  I turned around slowly. Not wanting any assistance from the woman who was looking for a way to oust me from the team. In fact I was pretty sure that’d be a really stupid move.

  “And I’d trust your help why?” I didn’t beat around the bush as I faced my nemesis who looked as wary as I felt.

  “Because I’m part of the team.”

  “The team you want me to leave,” I pointed out with enough saccharine in my tone to send someone into diabetic shock. “Why should I trust that you won’t screw me over?”

  She looked me in the eye. “I don’t fight dirty. Do you?”

  Jaylene jumped to her feet, acting as a barrier to my step forward and clenching of my hands. “No one calls a Noziak crooked.”

  “Says you,” Mandy replied with a razor-sharp smile. Oh yeah, chiquita was looking for a brusin’.

  Jaylene rolled her eyes and grabbed Mandy’s arm, talking to me as she tugged Mandy toward the front door. “We’ll take the closest cemetery. You and Kel the other.”

  She was almost at the door as she called over her shoulder. “What if we find the you-know-what?”

  I unclenched my fists, offered a slow smile, and shrugged. “Hope for the best.”

  The statement was only half-facetious. I might know what a djinn was and some of the lore around them, but I had no idea how to stop them.

  I guess this was what would be called on-the-job training.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The cemetery Kelly and I staked out was a bust as soon as the sun cleared the horizon and started beating down on us. I sensed more than a few spirits hanging around, a benefit of my shamanic abilities, but not a djinn in sight.

  “What now?” Kelly asked the question upper-most in my own mind.

  I crinked the stiffness in my neck away before looking around and answering, “Now we try plan B.”

  “Which is?”

  “Don’t have a clue.” The dust of donkeys and diesel buses choked the winding roadways near the cemetery entrance as the roads started filling up with more and more people. Lush red-pink flowers emitted a sweet scent in the air. But my mind wasn’t on the life of Kigali. “I was so sure the graves would be a perfect hiding spot.”

  Kelly waited a beat before saying, “But what if he’s not hiding?”

  I glanced sideways toward her. Former kindergarten teachers must think more laterally than I’d given them credit for. “Good point. So where would a Tuareg hang out?”

  “A criminal Tuareg,” Kelly added.

  “Sometimes you’re scary,” I said, wanting to high five her, which wasn’t a smart move in public. Instead I started heading toward the east, unfurling my map as I walked. There could be a hundred locations for criminal activity in Kigali. It wasn’t like there would be a neon sign flashing—trouble this direction. On the other hand I often felt like I had such an arrow pointed straight at me. Being sent to prison could do that to a person. Yeah, I’d killed a man. Well, technically a Were attacking my brother who had been in the middle of shifting to his wolf self. A vulnerable position and one that could have given me the defense of justifiable homicide, if humans knew about preternaturals.

  They didn’t. But that was water under the bridge. Right now I
needed to focus on finding me a slime bucket of a djinn.

  Kelly double-timed it to keep up with me. “Where to now?”

  “Where’s the most likely place to find a Tuareg tribesman away from his home area?”

  “With other Tuaregs,” Kelly smiled.

  Give the woman a gold star. “And what’s this place remind you of?” I asked, waving my hand to indicate the city.

  She glanced around. “You mean Kigali?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. Africa.”

  I smiled, pushing back the alasho headscarf. Not enough to reveal my face or hair. I had to admit it made a heck of a disguise, sort of like being a masked bandit, which is what had given me an idea. “Think harder. Look around.”

  Kelly slowed as she did what I’d asked, then a smile spread over her face. “Okay. It’s like that scene in the first Star Wars movie with Harrison Ford.”

  She was getting warmer. I looked up to orient myself. Kigali was built on a series of hills. With the wealthier tending to hold the high ground, which meant we headed toward where desperation drove life, the valleys. In particular a place called the Caplaki.

  “I give up,” Kelly said at last as I gazed up and down the Ave de l'Armée.

  “The wild, wild west,” I murmured, glancing from map to nearest road signs. “And you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “No rules and anything goes. Which works in our favor.”

  I thought I heard her groan as I chewed my lip.

  “It was supposed to be here.” I double-checked once more that I was next to the Milles Collines, when I mumbled, “Just a sec.”

  A few quick words to a man standing outside the posh--by Kaligi standards--hotel and I waved Kelly after me. “Come on.”

  Bless her, she didn’t ask for details or drag her feet until we reached the newer Caplaki Market.

  “Where are we?” Kelly asked, her eyes saucer wide as she edged closer to me. The sounds of vendors shouting and buyers haggling made a solid din, but nothing more than a good country rodeo boasted.

  Sellers were lined up in fixed stalls, hawking everything from fresh produce to carvings and masks smuggled across the DR Congo border not that far away.

  “We’re shopping?” Kelly asked when she found her tongue.

  “Nope.” Walking briskly between stalls, I looked for a telltale Tuareg indigo blue turban and weathered tan caftan. My revised plan was a long shot, but standing around and doing nothing was too. I grabbed Kelly’s arm so I could lean in and talk to her without anyone else hearing me. No telling what ears, and eyes, were active at the Market. Besides it looked more natural for two women on our own to stick close together. “Djinn are said to be particularly fond of marketplaces and Muslims—which most Tuaregs are—have been warned many times not to be the first to enter the market or the last to leave it.”

  Kelly stopped in her tracks. “Are you Muslim?” she asked, looking at me as if I had spoken Swahili.

  “No. Why’d you think that?”

  “How do you know Muslim superstitions?”

  Okay, it wasn’t a direct response, but she didn’t seem inclined to budge until I admitted, “My father. He has traveled to a lot of places and has some great stories.”

  “About the you-know-what?”

  “Them and other things.” I glanced over my shoulder, not trusting the rough-looking men glancing in our direction. “Let’s see if we can find any blue men and we’ll talk tales later. Okay?”

  She nodded, but didn’t get moving until she asked, “Are you going to tell Jaylene and Mandy where we are?”

  Technically I should and we both knew it. This was still an Invisible Recruit op and running half-cocked into a bad situation could get both of us killed. Besides, among my father’s stories were old adages such as keep your friends close and your enemies closer. “Go ahead and notify them,” I said, scanning the crowds. My preternatural ring was heating up, but no telling what kind of non-human was lurking around us.

  It took another fifteen or twenty minutes to spot our first lead; a taller man than our quarry, but definitely wearing the deep blue robes of a desert dweller. “Ten o’clock,” I whispered to Kelly.

  “Is he—“

  I shook my head, silencing her question before others could hear it. Talking about djinns in public in this part of the world was a big no-no. “But we’re going to follow him.”

  We were on to Plan C. Find a Tuareg and hope he led us to more of his countrymen. One in particular.

  Besides, he was heating my ring to the point my skin felt on fire.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was mid-afternoon with the African sunlight painting stripes across canvas tarp tenting, and shadows digging deep grooves between stalls of baskets before Jaylene and Mandy caught up with us. Kelly and I had been stationary beside a crude barbershop for long enough to make me antsy. The tall man, if he was a man, had led us on a merry trek up and down stalls, stopping now and then to do a little backslapping, and haggling here and there. The kind of negotiating that involved quick glances around and sleight of hand, with something passing palm to palm.

  Now he was loitering in front of what might be a dentist if I read the hand-painted sign correctly. To his left was a large opening with a woman hawking chickens, on the other side a smaller space that looked abandoned.

  We’d obviously scored in finding someone involved in what clearly looked like shady dealings. But we weren’t any closer to the Tuareg I’d tangled with yesterday. A point Mandy was quick to address when she slid up next to Kelly.

  Both she and Jaylene were wearing the same head-to-toe burqas that

  Kelly and I wore, with only eyes visible. While the clothes seemed like a great disguise early that morning they were heating up to the point I was ready to strip mine off, middle of a public market or not.

  “Time’s passing,” Mandy murmured, not looking at me though I knew good and well we were both uber aware of one another.

  “If I needed a clock, I’d have asked for one,” I shot back, but was really too hot to focus on bickering with my teammate for long. Especially since a grizzled older man, who looked like he’d lived a hard and dangerous life, had approached the Tuareg. He leaned in to say something, then both ducked into the shadows of the empty stall. And disappeared.

  Crap.

  “What now?” Jaylene asked, her tone echoing my feelings exactly. It didn’t take an experienced agent to know that following a suspect into a dark interior with no idea what was on the other side was not a good idea.

  Maybe they were just escaping the heat? And if I believed that I’m sure there was a bridge in Florida for sale with my name all over it.

  “You sure this Tuareg was involved with the djinn?” Mandy prodded. At least she kept her voice down to a whisper.

  “No.” I kept my focus forward.

  “Can’t you do some witchy hocus-pocus to help here?” Jaylene asked.

  As if. Magic always came at a price and it wasn’t like I could pull a spell out of the ether. Far as I knew, there were no djinn seeking spells out there. Only idiots called darkness and danger toward them. And since I had no herbs, salt or personal items of the djinn, there was no way I could cast a traditional seekers spell.

  Just as I was going to explain the ABCs of magic casting in short-and-to-the-point terms to my comrades, I heard a dog growling.

  Not just any kind of growl, but one of those low in the back of the throat sounds.

  Across from where the four of us stood, a scrawny dog that looked like a cousin to a hyena was snarling in the direction of the empty stall.

  “That thing rabid?” Mandy asked, stepping back though the canine wasn’t facing us, or doing anything except uttering a deep, raspy sound that made the hairs along my arms stand up.

  “Shoo!” Kelly waved toward it. “Go away.”

  “No.” I grabbed her arm to make sure she didn’t scare the mutt. “Dogs and donkeys are able to see djinn.
”

  “You’re making this crap up as we go.” Mandy sounded a lot like the dog as she fisted hands on her hips.

  I didn’t care what she thought. Magic could come in a lot of ways and sometimes pure, dumb luck was the best kind.

  “Where’re you going?” Jaylene demanded as I stepped closer to the dog who had kept his back to us, growling at the darkness.

  “Inside the stall.”

  “Not alone you’re not,” Jaylene snapped back, eyeing the dog and me as if we’d both gone crazy. “I’m not so sure you know the meaning of out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

  Oh, I knew the meaning. I was beginning to think it was my own motto.

  I looked at her and Kelly as I nodded toward the opening. “The dog’s giving us the best lead we’ve had all day.”

  “And if that mutt is right, we may be facing Bad Dude on his home turf.”

  Jaylene had a point, a good one. It was Kelly who helped break the stalemate. “I could check him out, my own way, if you get what I mean? At least see what’s inside the stall.”

  Now why hadn’t I thought of that? Probably because it’d put her at risk and also leave her vulnerable for double the time she went invisible.

  But I might be able to get away with a little sniffing around. Not on the physical realm but the spirit one.

  It was risky. To travel to the spirit realm, I would leave my physical body an empty shell, vulnerable to attack.

  I glanced at Jaylene and weighed my odds against the sun already easing toward the horizon. Time was running out and I hadn’t even found the djinn, much less stopped him.

  “Can I trust you?” I asked Jaylene, who gave me a very pointed raised brow answer in return.

  “Tell me what you need.”

  I pointed toward the V where two stalls met, creating a deep shadow and a hint of privacy. “I’m going to leave my body there.” I said, glad my voice didn’t sound as my nerves. If my dad knew what I was planning, he’d skin me alive.