All Your Wishes

by Cat Adams

  Actually, it was worse. Because I didn’t know the TSA somehow monitored telepathic communications in the airport.

  I’d barely gone another twenty feet when I was surrounded by TSA types. Smart man that he was, Bubba ducked into the nearest waiting area, taking a seat as if he were waiting for flight.

  “Ms. Graves, if you’ll come with us, please.” Lang said it nicely, she really did: probably because she was still a little embarrassed about her earlier antipathy. Even so, it wasn’t a request and we both knew it. Not with the entire group of officers surrounding me, staying close, but not too close.

  I’ve always envied people who get to ride on those little golf-carty things through busy airports. No, I don’t want a disability, but man, those things can move when the driver’s in a hurry. Today I got my chance. They drove me through the concourse, then, to my surprise, out onto the tarmac via a set of doors that had been hidden by illusion. Then we sped across the asphalt, dodging a couple of planes on the way, to a similar door in the main part of the terminal.

  Between the wards and the illusion spells on both sets of doors I was in quite a bit of discomfort—and that was before I was escorted to an interrogation room. The TSA, NSA, and whoever else had had a hand in planning the building had spared no expense in making sure any prisoner would remain secure. Crossing the threshold into the interview room made my knees wobble and brought tears to my eyes. I had to steady myself on the table and almost fell into the chair.

  The door shut firmly behind me, the lock sliding into place with an audible scrape of metal and a loud click.

  God, I hated this case. This was the third time in as many days that I was being held for questioning—a new record, even for me. Not to mention that I didn’t have the time for this, or the inclination.

  My new accommodation was an interior room with no windows, plain white walls, an acoustical tile ceiling, and industrial-grade, gray carpeting. A simple metal table was bolted to the floor, and the chair I was sitting on was one of those black molded plastic things with metal legs that aren’t really comfortable, but aren’t uncomfortable enough for anyone to bitch about. The chair was bolted down, too, just far enough from the table to make it uncomfortable for a seated person—assuming they weren’t in the NBA (or maybe on the Pioneer hockey team) to rest their arms or head on the table’s surface. The only decoration on the wall, if you could call it that, was a clock. Black hands relentlessly circled the white face as precious time ticked away.

  Even the air was empty, with that stale, canned quality that comes from having been recycled and purified until there’s no trace of any scent or life in it.

  In the course of the past few years, I’ve spent more time than I’d like to think about sitting in rooms not too different from this one, either waiting for, or enduring, an interrogation. It’s enough to make you think. And weirdly, a room like this can actually make you start to feel guilty, even when you haven’t done a damned thing wrong. Yes, that’s a psychological trick used in questioning suspects. But the authorities use it because it works.

  Right now I had no doubt in my mind that I looked guilty as hell. I was squirming in my seat, checking my watch and the damned clock repeatedly and wishing I hadn’t had that second screwdriver.

  Dammit, dammit, dammit. I do not have time for this right now. If they heard the warning to Dawna they have to have heard her comment about the ifrit and the deadline. If they run a check on me—

  If they ran a check on me they’d get so damned much information at this point it might take them a week to wade through it. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

  The one small plus I had going for me was that I wasn’t feeling vampity. But I really needed to get to a bathroom sooner rather than later—another thing an interrogator would use to their advantage.

  I checked my watch again. If I left this room right now, and got to a place where I could safely use my siren call, I could try to reach the ifrit that way. Maybe, if I talked fast enough, I could put a pin in what he had planned for humanity. Probably not. But, I had to try. I remembered watching the oil rig go up in flame, the people scurrying like ants, trying to escape a hideous death.

  Sure, it could have been an illusion, something the ifrit conjured up to scare me. But it had felt real. And I’d felt Hasan’s dark glee at causing pain and damage. That hadn’t been my imagination. I’m not that creative.

  Screw it. Trouble with the law was bad—but it was nothing compared to the kind of pure evil the ifrit was capable of. Rising to my feet, I was just about to stride over to the door when it opened. The man who entered was short, five five or five six at the most, with sandy blond hair cut very short, and watery blue eyes. He wasn’t handsome, wasn’t ugly, wasn’t really much of anything at all—you’d never notice him in a crowd.

  Instead of a TSA uniform, he wore a low-end, off-the-rack navy blue suit that was too big at the waist. The sleeves of the pants and the arms of the jacket needed to be hemmed. His shirt was white, with narrow red and navy stripes, and his tie was the same color as his suit. I didn’t see any weapons on him, and didn’t feel the kind of spells that would conceal them either. He was wearing an anti-siren charm and there was a radio attached to his belt.

  The plain black-and-white plastic name tag read Ned Turner. It had no other identifying information or organization logo. Turner tossed the manila folder he was holding onto the table and pulled out a chair that had been hidden behind illusion until he touched it. Made me wonder who and what else might be hiding in plain sight.

  “Were you planning on going somewhere?” He waved me back to the chair intended for me but I didn’t move. He didn’t sit either, just with his hand on the chair back, willing me to cooperate.

  So not going to happen. “I need to find a bathroom. And I need to get out of here. I’m going to be late for a meeting.” I tried to keep the panic from my voice and failed.

  One look at the expression on his face told me that Turner had no intention of letting me go any time soon. “A meeting.” He gave a snort of laughter. “Yeah, you’ll be late all right.”

  “You can’t hold me forever without charging me, and I’ve done nothing wrong.” I crossed to the door and put my hand on the knob. “If you want to escort me to the john, feel free. But I am leaving this room.”

  “You don’t think attempted murder is wrong?”

  He’d said attempted. Bobby was alive. Thank God! I liked him. I would’ve felt horrible if he’d died in my place. I still felt guilty. Not that I’d show that to Turner—not a chance. I kept my voice neutral as I answered. “Not me. Didn’t do it. I was the intended victim. The perp was a blond woman, maybe five two. She was wearing a cheap blue suit, glasses, and had her hair in a bun when she left the plane. But she probably lost the jacket and glasses and let down her hair by the time she was more than a few steps into the concourse. You probably can track her using your surveillance software.”

  I tried to turn the knob. It was locked, and probably spelled. But the lock itself was just an ordinary bolt and I couldn’t feel the spells, so they probably weren’t too intense. I took a deep breath and concentrated, the way you do before you try to break boards for the first time in martial arts class.

  Behind me, Turner said, “You’re not going anywhere. And I’m not interested in some other woman. I’m talking about how you saved yourself by pushing an innocent man in front of you.”

  Gathering every bit of strength I had, I slammed into the door with everything I had. The lock didn’t give. The door did. I popped out into a narrow, anonymous hall with Turner at my heels.

  He hit me in a tackle like a linebacker, smashing me into the far wall with an impact that gave me whiplash and rattled my teeth. I rolled, threw him off, and struggled to my feet as three other agents boiled into the hallway.

  Time ran out.

  Hasan’s voice was everywhere, filling the air. Its power translated into actual pressure, pushing against every inch of exposed skin, and a hot wind that blew
even indoors. It wasn’t just in my mind, either—everyone could hear it.

  “You are not here. You are not dead, but I cannot see you. Where are you, Celia Graves?”

  Turner’s eyes widened until the whites showed all around the irises. He swallowed hard. The other agents froze, looking around in almost comical panic.

  I grasped the sujay at my neck. With a sharp yank, I pulled it off, then shoved it into my pocket.

  “I’m here,” I shouted. “I’m doing my best. I was on my way to you when somebody tried to kill me. I’m still trying to get to the temple.” The air was so filled with magic, it felt like it was burning my lungs. Hell, maybe it was. The exposed skin of the agents in the hall with me was reddening as if from a sun- or windburn.

  There was a nanosecond’s pause. Then, “DO BETTER.”

  Those words were followed by a roar of sound like nothing I’d ever heard before. Like a jet engine up close, but much worse and much louder. The walls of the terminal began to vibrate, then shudder, before peeling away with a scream of protesting metal. The air pressure changed and my ears popped. Thirty seconds, maybe less: that’s how long it took Hasan to tear apart the entire building, leaving me looking out through twisted, exposed metal at the swirling vortex of a tornado that took up much of the horizon.

  The tornado had to be more than a mile wide. It tossed jumbo jets like children’s toys; ragged bits of metal, cars, semis, and anything else in its path were pulled up to circle in the green-tinted black clouds. The mass was backlit by flickering lightning and the crackling, popping flickers of man-made lightning that were the last gasps of destroyed electrical junctions.

  Most disturbing of all, I could see Hasan’s face in the clouds, beautiful and implacable in his rage.

  23

  The city of Denver and its suburbs were about to have a really bad day and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. My head was pounding like a drum. The noise, the rapid change in air pressure, and tension combined gave me an instant headache that brought tears to my eyes.

  “What the hell was that?” Turner gasped. When I returned my attention to the hallway, I saw that he was the only one still standing. The other three were lying on the floor and none of them were moving. Shit.

  “That was a pissed-off ifrit. He’d given me a deadline to meet with him and I missed it.” I started taking stock. A huge section of the airport was completely flattened and most of the walls around me had been reduced to twisted metal spikes. But I stood in a six-foot-wide circle of perfection. Walls, floor, doorways—everything was intact.

  Also intact was someone’s cell phone. I could hear it ringing, somewhere in the rubble to my left. Could hear it over the wind, and the creaking and settling of the building, and shouts as people began looking for the injured.

  There hadn’t been a lot of warning before the tornado hit. I doubted that the authorities had been able to get more than a few people to the shelter of the tunnels. I guessed a lot of people were hurt. Or dead. Damn Hasan anyway.

  The phone rang again. Usually, a call went to voice mail after four rings. It rang a third time, and then a fourth, and then the sound stopped.

  “That was your meeting?” Turner asked.

  “Yup. Now shush.” I concentrated, picturing Dom Rizzoli’s face in my mind. I didn’t know if he could help me, but he was the highest-level law-enforcement type I knew. Maybe he knew somebody high enough up to get me some backup and serious transport. Maybe. I hoped.

  What the hell is going on, Graves? his mental voice thundered.

  I winced. The headache I’d had earlier was suddenly back with a vengeance.

  Stop yelling. Please. My head is killing me.

  I could actually hear him take a deep breath and start counting. He got to about eighty before he was calm enough to be civil.

  Look, just tell me what’s going on. Please. I know you had a case involving the ghost of Connor Finn and what happened at the Needle. But what I just heard was no ghost or sorcerer, not even a demon.

  I told you I was dealing with an ifrit. I’m sure I did. Though now it occurred to me that maybe I hadn’t. I couldn’t really remember. It had been a rough couple of days.

  No. You didn’t. That’s not the sort of thing I’d forget. His mental voice was not quite a snarl.

  Oops.

  Sorry, I apologized. The ifrit’s name is Hasan. Bad guys used Finn’s ghost to let him loose. I got hired to protect the guy trying to put him back in the jar. Things went south …

  No kidding? With you involved? I’m shocked.

  It was my turn to growl at him mentally. Anyway, Hasan gave me an ultimatum: get to a specific location by a specific time or he’d start killing people.

  Is this why I have a message from your business partner?

  Seriously, didn’t anyone bother taking Dawna’s calls?

  Yes, probably. I was on my way when some bad guys made a run at me on the plane and injured a civilian instead. I tried to do the right thing by the victim and wound up stuck here, and the deadline came and went without me.

  So what we heard was an angry ifrit?

  You heard him? I was shocked. Dom had said he’d heard the ifrit before, too, but I hadn’t really taken that in. I’d assumed that Hasan’s voice had only appeared locally.

  Celia, everybody on the freaking planet heard him. He gave a huge mental sigh. It’s not just Denver. An earthquake hit California, there was a tsunami in Thailand, at least two volcanoes have erupted, and several off-shore drilling rigs were hit by explosions. And there’s more. There were simultaneous disasters all over the planet.

  Oh … dear … God.

  So tell me. What do you need to fix this? I suspect I can get authorization to give you whatever you need.

  I gave him a list.

  * * *

  It’s good to have friends in high places. The military scrambled helicopters from Buckley Air Force Base—to get help to the folks at DIA and to ferry me down to the caves pronto. My sad little carry-on had been lost in the rubble. My weapons were God knows where—that part of the airport had been completely flattened. There was no telling how high the death toll was going to be. I didn’t dare think about it.

  While waiting for the cavalry, Turner and I checked on the other agents. One was dead. The other two had been knocked out, but it didn’t look like they were seriously injured. They were groaning and starting to come to when I heard the roar of engines and thwup thwup of helicopters coming in fast.

  I took a moment to mentally check on the people I cared most about in the world.

  Bubba was stuck in the airport bar—pinned under some rubble with a badly broken leg. He was in a lot of pain, but he was alive, so I counted my blessings. Gran was fine. El Jefe and Emma were unharmed but stranded. They’d watched the Landingham family home get swallowed by a crevasse created by one of the California earthquakes—a crevasse that made a perfect circle six inches outside the jeweled casting circle they were standing in. Dawna was on her way to the hospital after a car wreck. She’d been heading back to the protective circle Tim had put up. She had been badly injured but was expected to pull through. The rest of my staff—and Minnie the Mouser—were fine.

  When my thoughts brushed Bruno’s, I found him in the kind of complete concentration he gets when he’s working a particularly dangerous and tricky bit of magic. I knew better than to interrupt him. Besides, he had to be alive to be working said magic.

  That was as far as I got before the choppers landed.

  The noise was tremendous as three big machines landed gently on a relatively clear section of tarmac some hundred yards or so away. The wind from their rotors sent up clouds of dust and sent little bits of debris swirling, but it wasn’t too bad. I stared in awe as a group of military specialists dressed in tan desert camo emerged from the first chopper, carrying enough armament to take over a small developing nation. They ran toward me in a wedge formation, each bowed slightly at the waist, expressions intent. It was i
mpressive as hell and more than a little scary. I wasn’t the only one the spectacle affected, either. I heard Ned Turner swallow and he stammered a little as he spoke into his radio.

  “Um, we have … military personnel here.”

  The radio crackled. Then a voice said, “They’re here for the princess. Cut her loose, Turner.”

  “But…”

  “Now, Turner. We have more important things to do, like saving lives.”

  “Right.”

  While they were talking, more troops were arriving, more choppers landing in the fields of long grass beyond the runways and beginning to offload emergency gear. I saw teams of medics streaming across the landscape and breathed a sigh of relief when a couple targeted the injured TSA agents in my hallway.

  By the time Ned finished stammering into the walkie-talkie, seven members of the military were waiting at parade rest in a perfectly straight line six feet in front of me. The eighth man stepped forward and held out a hand. I took it and shook hands.

  “Ma’am. We’ve been sent to assist you with the mission. I am Command Specialist Cox, a level-seven mage specializing in defensive magic.” Cox was a big man, standing about six two and broad boned, with a square jaw, penetrating brown eyes, and dark hair in the classic military cut. He filled out his uniform completely and thoroughly, without an ounce of fat to be seen, and he moved with the kind of confidence that comes from knowing what your body is capable of.

  Cox began introducing the rest of the group, speaking so quickly that I was glad they all had their names sewn onto their uniforms. There were four other men and three women of various apparent ethnicities, and other than Cox, they all looked younger than me. Cox set a pack gently on the ground by my feet.

  “Weapons, clothing, and protective gear,” he informed me. At his nod another soldier set a four-pack of nutrition shakes next to the backpack.

  “Which of you is the best shot?” I asked.

  “Rifle or handgun?” Cox replied.