Djinn and Tonic (22 page)

As I get to the more recent messages I see there’s at least one text from Hassan every day, some containing veiled threats and reminders as to what will happen to Leila’s family if she refuses to cooperate.

I hit the green phone icon, and see a phone call under the ‘recents’ tab:
Talia; incoming calls; 10:40am; 45 seconds.
Who is Talia? There’s no indication on the phone itself, and the phone call wasn’t long enough to have been a real conversation. But bad news could easily be delivered in forty-five seconds….

A knock on my window startles me into almost dropping the phone. I look up to see a tall, beautiful woman with thick black hair and dark eyes standing at the passenger window.
 

I turn the key enough to engage the battery so I can roll down the window. “Can I help you?”
 

“Are you Carson?” The woman’s voice is musical and accented. She seems familiar, somehow, her face jarring my memory.
 

“Yeah…do I know you?” I tilt my head and stare at her, trying to remember.
 

I’ve definitely seen her before; a memory flashes through my head: this same woman, but with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a skimpy cocktail waitress uniform…

“Yeah, you interviewed me about Miriam. I work at the MGM,” she says.
 

“Oh, yeah, that’s right.” I wrack my mind for her name. “You’re…Nadia, right?”

She smiles. “Nadira, actually, but close.” She gestures at the passenger seat. “Mind if we talk?”
 

I hesitate for a second, then hit the unlock button. Nadira gets in, picking up the flowers and nodding appreciatively at them.

“Why don’t we take a little drive, Detective,” Nadira suggests.

“All right,” I say with a shrug, then turn the ignition, and pull out of the parking lot. I take us in a wide circle of the city, unconsciously taking an old route I used to drive regularly back in my days as a beat cop.

“So, what do you want to talk about, Nadira?” I ask, glancing at her.

She doesn’t answer right away, idly crinkling the cellophane around the flowers as she considers her words. “Are these for Leila?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I answer, knowing I sound curt.
 

Chicago is four hours away at least, and my fear for Leila increases with every passing minute.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Do I need one?” That comes out a lot harsher than I’d meant it to.

Nadira smiles at the answer rather than getting annoyed or angry. “No, you don’t. That’s a good sign. So…are you guys together?”

“What? How the hell is that any of your business? Are you a friend of hers?” I’m getting irritated now. “Listen, Nadira, I don’t know if you noticed, but that was Leila’s apartment all those cops and firefighters were at. Something happened to her, so excuse me if I have neither the time nor the inclination for small talk at the moment. What do you want?”

Nadira doesn’t seem perturbed by my rude tone or words. “Bear with me. I won’t keep you long. I want to know about you and Leila. I have good reasons for asking. Trust me.”

I try to rein in my irritation. My detective instincts are telling me this isn’t a purely social call. She wants something specific, but for whatever reason she’s not willing to come right out and say what just yet. I glance at her again, assessing her. Now that I remember her, I realize there’s something else about her that feels familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s a feeling, a notion, something unidentifiable in my gut, something about Nadira that strikes a chord in me. Something that reminds me of Leila, although I doubt they’re related in any way.
 

Nadira eyes me quizzically. “You’re staring at me. Why?”

I return my attention to the road and shrug, trying to pass off my growing suspicion. “Nothing. Sorry. It’s just…there’s something about you…”

“If you’re trying to hit on me, I’m going to punch you.” She doesn’t sound as if she’s joking.

“No! That’s not—no. Sorry. There’s just something…familiar about you. I can’t…” I shake my head, afraid to say what I’m thinking. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

Nadira narrows her eyes and crosses her arms under her breasts, leaning back against the door. “Try me. You’d be surprised.”

“Fuck it,” I murmur under my breath and then address Nadira. “Like I said, this is probably gonna make you think I’m a nutcase, but…are you an ifrit?”

Nadira’s eyes widen and her fingers clench into fists. She’s tensed and ready to attack in the space of a single breath. I take my right hand off the steering wheel, rest it on the console on my right and sit up straight in the seat to allow myself more room to draw my gun if things get messy. But then if she’s an ifrit or whatever, I’m not sure what good a gun will do, or if I’d even have time to draw it.

“
What
did you say to me?” Her voice is a hiss, vibrating with threat.

“I asked if you were an ifrit…” I say again. Her nostrils flare at the word, and I suspect that word is the cause of her sudden aggression, though damned if I know why. “Or a djinni, maybe?”

Nadira doesn’t answer immediately. She uncrosses her arms and leans forward, eyes fixed on mine, and I’m mesmerized, unable to look away from her. The car is stopped at a red light, which turns green, causing cars to honk angrily before pulling around me. I can’t look away, can’t form a coherent thought, and I can’t unwrap my fingers from the steering wheel. I’m frozen in her mental grip, and I feel a strange, terrifying pressure on my brain, in my mind. But “pressure” is not the right word. It’s a
presence
, a cool liquid slipping between the spaces in my brain, stirring past the synapses and into the deepest part of my being. I’m being examined, weighed, probed; I know it’s Nadira inside me, and the power of her presence is overwhelming, alien and awful and terrifying in its intensity.
 

After what feels like a lifetime, she pulls away, and I see that her eyes are no longer whites-and-iris like mine—like a human’s—but are instead roiling liquid blue, oceans contained within the ovals of her eye sockets. I tear my gaze away, knowing I’m only able to do so because she allowed it. I rev the engine, stomping the accelerator and peel away through the red light, turning the intersection into a snarl of near-misses, blaring horns, and infuriated curses. I then pull into an empty parking lot, flashing my badge at the attendant, who waves me through, backing away.

I skid to a stop and turn to face Nadira. “What the
fuck
was that?”

“I apologize, Carson. I don’t usually use such invasive methods, but there isn’t time.”

“But you could waste ten minutes asking stupid questions about my fucking flowers?”

Nadira shrugs. “I couldn’t just come out and ask what I needed to know, especially if Leila hadn’t told you the truth. I needed to know how much you know. Now I do. Like I said, I’m sorry. I know it was unpleasant.”

I press my fingers to my temple and rub in circles, forcing my anger and embarrassment and confusion away. “So what do you need to know?”

“What are we going to do about Leila?” Nadira asks. “She’s left for Chicago, and she’s going to be forced to marry Hassan if we don’t stop it. I know Hassan, and I can’t let that happen, for many reasons, most of them personal. And you love her, so you can’t let it happen either.”

“‘We’?” I ask. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”
 

Nadira laughs at that. “You don’t think you can take Hassan by yourself, do you? I’m sorry to laugh, but that’s just…funny. He’s so far out of your league it’s comical. I don’t mean to insult you, Detective, I swear. You just…you have no clue what you’re getting yourself into. None at all.” Nadira pulls a cell phone out of her back pocket and taps at it while she speaks. “It’s nothing against you, I swear. It’s just…Hassan is an heir to a very wealthy and very powerful clan, and he’s also one of the most powerful ifrits to come out of the al-Jabiri clan in several centuries. I know him personally, unfortunately, and I know what he’s capable of from experience. You’ll need my help if you’re gonna get Leila back.”

“Why do you care who Leila marries? She’s never even mentioned you.”

“She wouldn’t have. She’s only met me once.” Nadira puts the phone away and leans forward. “We don’t have the time for me to explain everything to you right this very second, Carson. Either you trust me, or you don’t. Your choice. But I guarantee you, if you try to rescue Leila on your own, you’ll be dead before you know what hit you. You really don’t understand what you’ve gotten yourself into with her.”

I lean my head against the cool glass of the window, thinking. My gut tells me to trust her despite the mental invasion. I also have a feeling she’s right about Hassan, about not really knowing what I’ve gotten myself into. These people, these djinn and ifrits, they all have powers I can’t even fathom, much less defend myself against. The destruction of The Old Shillelagh and Leila’s apartment both hint at monstrous power and a capacity for destruction that chills me to the bone.
 

“You never answered my first question,” I say, by way of putting off the decision.

“Your first question?”

“Yeah. Ifrit or djinni? Although gauging by your reaction, I’d say djinni.”

“You’d be correct,” Nadira answers. “Listen. Let’s not waste time talking, because right now, we have to get to Chicago. Like,
now
.”

I nod. “Do you need to do anything before we leave?”
 

Nadira shakes her head. “Just drive.”
 

*
 
*
 
*

The drive is long and uncomfortable. Nadira won’t explain anything that pertains to her, or how she knows what’s going on, or what her involvement is, nothing. All she’ll say is that it’s critically important the alliance between the Najafi and al-Jabiri clans not happen.

“Why?” I ask for the tenth time. “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t expect you to get it. It’s a lot of socio-political clan business and, unless you were raised in the culture, it wouldn’t make any sense to you even if I were to try to explain it.”

I hiss in frustration: she’s so circuitous, answering questions with more vague non-answers that only serve to spawn more questions. “But if I’m going to be involved with her, shouldn’t I try to understand all this?”

Nadira looks at me with something like respect. “You can try, but then she should be the one to explain her own familial position to you, not me.” She waves a hand. “Plus, I’m a djinni, she’s an ifrit.”

“That’s something else I don’t get. Are djinn and ifrits enemies? What’s the difference between you? Leila explained it to me a little, but I’m still having trouble sorting it all out.”

Nadira thinks for a moment before answering. “Think
Romeo and Juliet
. It’s like the Capulets and Montagues: they were social enemies, but they were of the same race, hailing from the same country, living in the same city. Yet for whatever reason, they hated each other, but they didn’t really fight violently, until things got totally out of hand. The tension was there, and if they weren’t careful, it could turn bad.
 

“It’s sorta like that with us. It’s a loose analogy, but I think you get it. We’re not enemies in the sense that we kill each other all the time, although there have been periods of history where that has happened. Right now, it’s just tension, ratcheting up with every incident, especially those incidents caused by the ifrits being careless and needlessly violent against humans. Things are escalating, and quickly. If Leila marries Hassan and their two clans are allied like that, it would give the ifrits a huge advantage in the brewing war. Not really the ifrits as a whole so much as Hassan specifically, though. And believe me when I say
no one
wants Hassan to wield that kind of power. Not me, not my friends within the djinn clans, and not even the rest of the ifrits, for the most part.
 

“But the ifrits won’t take action unless Hassan goes totally crazy and starts killing humans on a mass scale or something, which he’s totally capable of—yet another reason why we can’t let Leila marry him. My people—the djinn, and specifically my particular…subset within the djinn—are willing to wage war—a private,
quiet
war—against the ifrits, especially if it keeps humans off our scent. The world isn’t ready to know about us. They may never be. A messy, public war, however, is the
worst
possible way for your kind to find out about mine, and that’s what we’re trying to prevent.” She pauses briefly, then continues. “So, in one sense, I’m here as a representative of my people, who have a vested interest in preventing this marriage. But I’m also here on a personal level. I’ve met Leila, and I know Hassan, so I can say with authority that
no one
deserves to be married to that vile creature. It’s in everyone’s best interests if we can stop this, and if we can do it quietly, so much the better.”
 

I try to process all that, but it’s hard. “Where do I fit in?”

“I’m honestly not sure. I doubt Ibrahim Najafi would approve of his daughter dating a human, much less allowing a marriage between you. You have to remember that marriage among our kind is an archaic thing. It’s a business arrangement, a social and political alliance. Love almost never enters into the equation.” Nadira’s face darkens, and I wonder if she’s experienced this personally. “See, our clans are a lot like individual kingdoms back in the Middle Ages: The heir is basically a king, and the clans have shifting alliances and treaties, sometime a skirmish here and there over some issue or plot of land or control over supply lines, with marriages to seal clans together and all sorts of intrigue going on behind the scenes.”

This sinks in. “So then Leila is a princess?”

Nadira nods and glances at me. “Basically, yeah, although women aren’t allowed to lead a clan, so she can’t inherit the patriarchy even if something happened to Ibrahim. Leila is an only child, which means no male heir to the partiarchy. That’s why this marriage is so important to Ibrahim: without a male heir, if something happened to Ibrahim, control of the clan would be up for grabs, creating a power vacuum, which could spark a rather nasty and violent internal conflict within the ifrit clans. So the pressure for Leila to marry Hassan isn’t just coming from her parents, but from
all
of the clans. Ibrahim is
old
, Carson. You haven’t met him yet, but you’ll understand when and if you do. He doesn’t look it, and doesn’t act it, but he’s ancient, even for an ifrit. Ibrahim is almost a thousand years old. I’m not shitting you. He was born during the Almoravid dynasty in the late eleventh century. So needless to say, the other clans are just waiting for him to die, as the Najafi clan wields a huge amount of power and influence over the workings of the clans, not to mention the fact that Ibrahim is filthy fucking rich. He’s had a millennium to amass wealth, and he’s damn good at it.”