by Carina Cook
“What if Rebecca had the lamp all along?” She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction as she forged on, all the worries that had started accumulating in her brain while Darius was in the shower tumbling out of her mouth. “She knew it was at my place. Chad didn’t. So if he broke into my storage unit, why would he take that particular thing and nothing else? If he wanted revenge, he could have taken all kinds of stuff from upstairs and really ruined me. He could have taken that necklace that he let Lara borrow, and it would have gutted me. He didn’t need to risk coming downstairs and having me see him.”
“Rebecca wouldn’t hurt anyone,” he said harshly.
“I’m not saying she would! Maybe something happened, completely on accident, and she panicked. She took the lamp for safe-keeping and erased my memory of it. I’m not saying she’s a bad person. I mean, if anyone can understand good people making stupid decisions, it’s me.”
She snuck a glance up at him, and she didn’t like what she saw. His whole face was closed in. Angry. His hands tightened on her arms even further, and just before it became painful, he seemed to realize what he was doing and released her. Then he took a deliberate step back, as if he couldn’t stand to be close.
She rushed to try and defend her position, but what else could she say? But she tried anyway:
“I’m not trying to accuse her of being a bad person, Darius. Really, I’m not. But there’s a chance that she could have made some wishes, and Chad was present for one of them. He was really freaked out.”
“So that’s it?” he snapped. “One look at Chad and you get all bleeding heart and accuse the person I trust most in this world? If either of them was making wishes, it was Chad. He’s shallow enough for the djinn to get to him fast.”
“But maybe that’s the point! She thought she could resist it. And I bet she could better than most people. But you can’t tell me she wouldn’t wish for anything.”
“Like what? She’s got a great job. A best friend who thinks the world of her. She’s friendly and popular. It’s not like she’s going to go off the deep end and wish for boyfriends. She’s not that desperate.”
It didn’t seem like he meant the statement personally, but it sure felt like that to Audra. She’d been desperate with Chad, and the boyfriends before him. She could admit that now, and she was working through it. But that didn’t mean that the implication escaped her.
“So what you’re saying is that someone desperate like me would fall to a djinn quite easily?” she asked archly.
He blinked. “Wait. What?”
“That’s what you said. I was desperate. You said it yourself. Why else would I be with someone like Chad? I set the bar too low, and I paid the price. But I learned from it. And the reality is that I’m not perfect, and expecting me to be isn’t doing me any favors. And it isn’t doing Rebecca any either.”
Her heated words drove all the argument out of him. He stood there with wide eyes as she continued.
“You’re a loyal friend, and that’s great. But if she used the lamp, she’s in trouble. By refusing to even contemplate it, you’re putting her in even more danger. Because you won’t see it until it’s too late. Let’s say that the worst happens, and we find out that she had the lamp all along. She used a wish to wipe my memory, and it opened the door for the djinn. She tried and tried to keep it closed, but it’s been wearing at her. And then she makes another wish, only she’s not thinking straight, and she doesn’t word it well. Djinn are rules lawyers, Darius. They’ll twist your wishes.
“So let’s say that happens. She makes a wish, and the djinn twists it to serve its purposes, and you end up getting hurt. That’s the last thing she’s going to want, and it’s the only reason I brought this up. You think I like saying this stuff? Well, I don’t. But I’d rather have you mad at me than hurt, and I think Rebecca would say the same thing if she was here. How do you think she’s going to feel when she realizes that her mistake hurt you? I’ll tell you how she’ll feel. She’ll feel like crap. She’ll never stop beating herself up over it.”
“Okay, okay,” he said quietly. “You’ve made your point.”
“Have I? Because I can keep going if I need to.”
“You don’t. You’re right.”
As she’d talked, he’d shifted so his face was in shadow. She couldn’t read his expression, but his voice was earnest. He’d heard what she had to say, and she let out a breath that she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. That mini argument had been frightening, and it had hurt, but maybe now they were okay?
“I’m sorry,” he continued. “Of course you’re right. Someone with good intentions could take the lamp for all the right reasons and have it turn out poorly. I think…we talked about that. Rebecca and I. Maybe this whole thing is my fault after all, because I’m pretty sure I’m the one who brought up the idea of good people making wishes. I didn’t know.”
“That’s not your fault.” Audra stepped closer to him, tentatively, waiting to see if he’d retreat again. He didn’t. “But I want to make sure that we’re prepared before we approach her.”
“How?”
“Come up with some idea of what she’d wish for. Then, we’re prepared to face it. Or to talk her out of it.”
“But I don’t know what…”
The answer hit him like a ton of bricks to the face. It knocked him off balance for a moment.
“Of course…” he murmured. “Why didn’t I see it before?”
“What is it, Darius?” Audra asked, tension making the hairs on her arms prickle.
“The spider. I’d assumed that it crawled out of the desert, like those things do from time to time.”
“Well, yeah. Me too.”
“But that’s not it at all.” Darius rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “See, Rebecca’s mom Felicia was a werespider. I thought of her in passing when I was fighting the thing, but of course it couldn’t be her, because Felicia is dead. She died protecting her family when Rebecca was young. Bec saw the whole thing. Still has nightmares about it too.”
“And that’s one of the most selfless wishes she could make. To bring her mom back,” Audra said in a whisper.
“Only it went wrong. Mom was sick and disoriented and not quite herself. She attacked one of the people Rebecca cares about most,” said Darius miserably. “Me. And now she’s probably blaming herself. Audra, what do I do if she’s done something stupid?”
“We try and help her,” said Audra. “I’ll be right there with you the entire time. We can fix this, Darius. I’m sure we can.”
He swallowed hard, and she could see how much he struggled to hold in his emotions. She wished, as hard as she could, that she was wrong. That Chad had stolen the lamp, and Rebecca had only had it for a few hours. How ironic, to wish things were different when wishes had gotten them into this mess in the first place.
“Let’s go find Rebecca,” she suggested, offering her hand.
After a moment of hesitation, he took it, and they walked out into the backyard together.
CHAPTER 18
Audra was right about Rebecca, and Darius knew it. Maybe he’d lashed out at first, but even then, deep down he’d known she was on to something. Although he hadn’t allowed himself to really consider the possibility, something about the situation had been nagging at him this whole time. Instead of taking a nice close look at it, he’d squashed it all down and avoided the situation entirely. Now look where it had gotten them.
If he’d been willing to admit that maybe Rebecca had made a mistake from the very beginning of this whole thing, maybe she wouldn’t be in this mess. But he was so determined to see the best in people, and now she might pay for that. He felt like he was learning to be better at being honest with people—he felt like he was honestly able to see Audra as she was, the bad parts as well as the good ones. And really, he was good at evaluating his employees too. He held no illusions about people who weren’t working out, but he also didn’t know them the way he knew Rebecca
. If he was going to be willfully blind to someone’s faults, it was more than a little ironic that the person in question turned out to be the one he knew the best.
Of course Rebecca had taken the lamp. In it, she’d seen the chance to get the one thing she wanted most—her mother. As soon as he thought about that, one final realization came crashing down on him.
Rebecca had gone through all of this trouble to bring her mother—Felicia—back. And Darius had killed her.
He didn’t feel guilty about putting Felicia to rest. She had been obviously sick, confused and violent. If he hadn’t put her out of her misery, she might have killed innocent people. He could only imagine what it would be like if she’d managed to shift into human form only to find herself stuck in a sick, decaying body, faced with the corpses of innocents she’d killed. That was no gift. Rebecca wouldn’t have wanted it to turn out that way, and although he’d never really known Felicia as anything but the mother of one of his friends, he felt like she wouldn’t have wanted it either.
Did Rebecca know that he was the one who’d delivered the killing blow? He was willing to bet that she did. He was fairly sure that she hadn’t returned to watch the fight, because he would have smelled her. Although with the reek of Felicia’s decaying flesh, maybe not. Rebecca could have arrived just in time to see him kill her mother. But if that was the case, she would have seen the terrible state that Felicia was in. She would have realized that this whole djinn thing wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. Because he wasn’t willing to believe that she’d try to use the lamp to hurt anyone. Let alone him. If people were hurt, it would be despite Rebecca’s best efforts to rein in the djinn.
The fact that she’d fled suggested to him that she hadn’t seen what had happened. But he was willing to bet that the djinn would have told her an edited version of the story. Based on what Audra said, it would twist the narrative to fit its own agenda. It wanted Rebecca angry and off kilter. If Darius had to guess, he figured that Rebecca had wished to bring her mother back. After she left the restaurant, probably, because she was worried that she might lose the lamp. Maybe she’d had it close by, and she was worried that Darius or Audra might pick up on it. But she hadn’t been specific enough to wish for her mother to be healthy and sane, and so the djinn had set up the situation so that Rebecca would be heartbroken from losing Felicia yet again. She’d be more vulnerable that way. Then it had told her that her mother was dead. Again. It would have failed to tell her that it hadn’t brought Felicia back in a state that was sustainable.
So Rebecca was out here somewhere, heartsick and probably angry and confused. Her mother had died yet again, and maybe she knew Darius was responsible or maybe not. Either way, she was just where the djinn wanted her. Upset. Irrational. Ready to make another wish.
Perhaps that’s exactly what she’d come out here to Mr. M’Bala’s house to do. But he didn’t know what the wish would be.
He had to find her quickly, before she could do something she’d regret later. He couldn’t hold it against her for wanting her mother back. But he didn’t want her to pay for that mistake the rest of her life, either.
He glanced back at Audra as he stepped out into the backyard. She was right on his heels. Partly out of a willingness to help, and partly because she could barely see. It was dark enough in the backyard that Darius’s eyes couldn’t quite make out details, but he’d designed the entire place, so his mind easily filled them in. The path veered in toward the building and then back out again in gentle, undulating waves. That dark spot over there was the still-in-progress gazebo. That yawning hole a short distance away was the swimming pool in progress, where they’d found the lamp.
For some reason, Darius had expected to find Rebecca there, sitting in the hole where the pool would go with the lamp next to her, waiting for him to arrive. But of course that was silly. Still, he stepped toward the pit and looked down just in case. It was too dark to see, but his nose told him that no one was there, although he did smell the vague stink of a raccoon who’d been nosing around the site at night, looking for scraps.
She’d been here, though, and recently. He could smell her body wash, and beneath it the distinct scent of her copper curls. Someone else might use whatever Bath and Body Works concoction she’d picked this week, but no one would be able to duplicate the smell of her hair. It was like a fingerprint to a shifter, so distinct that they could pick you out anywhere. Only this time, it smelled…off.
Rebecca’s natural scent was clean and uncomplicated, just like her. It smelled like fun days off and nights on the town, only without people spilling beer on your shirt or vomiting on your feet. He still felt bad about doing that to Audra, but that wasn’t relevant now. Back to Rebecca’s scent he went, trying to figure out what had changed. It had acquired a faintly spicy undertone, like exotic drinks served at an Indian café. And it smelled old somehow, like he imagined the inside of grandma’s house might smell if it was closed up for a hundred years or so. He didn’t remember his grandparents, so he didn’t have direct experience, but that’s what it made him think of.
It worried him. He hadn’t smelled many things like that in the past, but one of them stood out in his mind. He’d been helping Derek on a case where a malicious ghost had been possessing people and making them commit murders before jumping on to the next vessel. It was the ultimate in serial killers; the human police had had no idea what they were dealing with—they’d thought maybe it was some kind of kill cult where each member committed a few crimes. So Derek had teamed up with some ghost hunters, and he and Darius had hunted down the ghost so the hunters could exorcise it.
The ghost vessels had smelled like that. On the surface, they’d smelled like regular people, with their own distinct scents beneath the scrim of body lotions and soaps. But there had also been an older smell, and an ozone stink that the ghost emitted when it was riding along in someone else’s body. They’d managed to track down the ghost, even as it hopped from body to body, by tracking that scent.
This reminded him of that day-long ghost hunt of years ago, only instead of age and ozone, this smell was old and rotten. It was the same putrid scent that the spider had emitted, only not quite as intense now. Maybe because it hadn’t been sprayed directly up his nose. But it meant one thing. Audra had been right after all. Rebecca had taken the lamp, and Chad had been an innocent bystander, unless you counted the cheating on his girlfriend thing, in which case he was a complete douche.
“Darius?” asked Audra quietly. “Do you need light?”
“Not yet,” he said, matching his volume to hers. “Why, do you have a flashlight?”
“No, but I can summon balls of fire and juggle them. But I can’t hand them over; they’ll burn you.”
He nodded, although he wasn’t entirely sure if she could see him. He could barely make her out himself, and not for the first time, he wished he could turn into one of those animals with spectacular night vision. His was just elevated enough that he could appreciate how handy it would be.
She definitely couldn’t see him, because she said, “Well?”
“She was here recently,” he said. “But she smells weird. I’m not going to call out and alert her to our presence if she doesn’t already know we’re here. Let me take a quick circle around the backyard and see if I can’t figure out which way she went. I’d take you along, but I can go faster without you.”
“What if something happens to you? Are you sure I shouldn’t call up some fire just in case?”
“No, because that’ll destroy our night vision. But if you hear me fighting, go ahead and let loose. I’ll expect it, and whoever I’m fighting won’t.”
She nodded. “Okay. But I’m going to move off to the side a little. Stand in a pool of light so nothing sneaks up on me.”
Now he was worried. “I didn’t think of that. Maybe you should come with me after all.”
“Are you kidding?” Her voice sounded amused even if he couldn’t see her face. “I’ll monitor th
e air. If anything’s coming at me, even if it’s the stealthiest shifter alive, I’ll feel it before they get too close.”
“Oh. Yeah, that’s a good idea. Okay.”
He felt silly, but there was no time to indulge in that feeling. He needed to shift, to enhance his senses so that he’d be better able to track Rebecca down. At least this time it was dark. He hadn’t had time to feel embarrassed in the parking lot, but stripping down in front of the woman you were interested in before you’d had a chance to do much more than kiss was a bit too awkward for his taste. Not that he was embarrassed of his body, which was quite serviceable and strong, but he wasn’t exactly in the habit of stripping either.
He took a moment to set his clothes down carefully, since throwing them around willy nilly in the past had led to him returning home more than once sans his socks, and one particularly embarrassing time, without his pants. He was fairly sure that someone had taken his khakis that time, but he’d never been able to find out who.
Then he shifted. There was always a split second moment of disorientation after a shift, when his brain became accustomed to having a lot more limbs—or significantly fewer. His balance was different in his scorpion form, too. Longer, and with much more forward momentum. His exoskeleton was lighter than he’d expected before his first change, and he was deceptively fast. Those things would all be good if the djinn had gotten the upper hand and tried to get rid of him, but he was hoping that wasn’t the case. More to the point, they would make it easier for him to find Rebecca and hopefully avoid any nasty confrontations.
He would do what needed doing, regardless of how much it hurt. But he hoped with every fiber of his being that Rebecca was fine, and sitting out in the desert contemplating her next wish rather than making it.
But the smell…that worried him. If the spider had smelled rotten, and now he was smelling it again? Either she’d tried summoning her mother again—which would be a road to sadness—or that was the smell of the djinn. And if its magic was in the air now, did that mean it was free?