All Your Wishes (3 page)

I let out a long, low whistle. The Sparrowhawk was the newest, flashiest thing in personal aviation. There was a long waiting list to get one. A four-seater jet, it had all the best spells for protection and fuel economy and all the creature comforts, plus leather interior and real wood trim. There was an on-board bathroom and a small interior compartment for luggage. The Sparrowhawk was a little bigger than the average corporate jet and had a top speed approaching five hundred miles per hour. I'd heard all about it because a rock band for which we'd done a protection detail had been lusting after one—but had decided it was just too pricey.

“Good to know he can pay the bill,” I said with a laugh.

“No kidding. Anyway, he called ahead. Says he's desperate. He sounded pretty panicked, swears it is imperative he see you
immediately
. His wife is a seer and she says you're his only hope. I told him we were closed for the week and he literally begged me to make an exception. Lives are at stake, apparently.”

Well, hell. That wasn't good.

“Did he give you any details?”

Her voice grew icy. “No.”

Not good. Dawna's my partner, not a lackey, and clients should be able to tell her anything they'd tell me.

“What does Dottie say?”

Dottie was our receptionist, an elderly woman with fluffy white hair and a penchant for brightly colored tracksuits. She was also a highly skilled and well-trained clairvoyant. My great-aunt Lopaka, queen of the sirens, said that Dottie was my “prophet.” Dottie took the responsibility very seriously and kept close tabs on what the future had in store for me.

“I wasn't able to reach her. Fred said she was on her way to the office, though.”

“Okay, I should be there in an hour.” I'd even packed a couple of changes of clothes that I'd intended to keep in the office in case of emergency, so I could change into something more client-appropriate than my current sweats and ratty Bayview tee.

“Good. See you then.”

I leaned back in my seat, stretching a little, to think things out.

Clients lie, and they hide things. They just do. Sometimes, like the night the vampire tried to turn me, it's a setup. More often, they just try to put themselves in the best possible light. I get that. But I need to know the down and dirty if I'm going to protect them. By the time I arrived at the office Dawna would have dug up everything there was to find on Mr. Patel. In the meantime, I pondered what little we knew.

He was an expert on the djinn. And he was in trouble.

I felt my stomach roil a little, the beef juice I'd been drinking for lunch sitting uneasily. I really, really hoped that our extremely urgent problem didn't have anything at all to do with the djinn. That would be so bad. Seriously. There are three types of djinn. All of them are dangerous, alien beings that are unimaginably powerful both magically and physically. They can, with a thought, alter reality in serious ways. The jinn are the most benign—mainly because they never willingly come to this dimension. They stay home and leave humans alone. Genies are bad. Exiled to the human world, they have to earn their way home by proving themselves worthy through doing good works: sort of a preternatural probation. The trick is, humans aren't supposed to know. If we find out, it doesn't count. So, nobody much runs into the genies either.

Then there are ifrits.

Ifrits are bad news: really, really bad news. Fortunately they are so rare that the last known encounter with an ifrit was centuries ago—well before the founding fathers brought forth this great nation.

So, maybe it wasn't a djinn problem. I mean, just because Patel wrote about them and was a world-renowned expert on them didn't mean that he couldn't have a much more ordinary problem.

I told myself this. Unfortunately, I didn't believe it. That little niggling voice in the back of my mind was pretty sure we'd be dealing with the djinn and that I should “just say no.”

I should listen to my instincts more often.

 

3

I
saw Rahim
Patel before he saw me. Weapons stowed and outfit changed, I was coming down the stairs from my office and spotted him standing in front of the reception desk.

First impression: he was pretty. He was not handsome, at least not to my mind. His features were too soft for that. Slender, he stood five foot six or so. His eyes were lovely, wide and dark, with just a hint of laugh lines at the corners. His lips were full, with a cupid's bow, very kissable, but not very manly. While he wasn't a big man, he held himself with poise and confidence. His suit was high quality, well tailored, and immaculate. The white shirt he wore stood in stark contrast to the dark caramel color of his skin, and against his black suit it was so bright that it practically glowed.

His appearance was perfect—which seemed a little odd to me in light of the fact that Dawna claimed he'd been in such a panic. I've found that people who are that upset don't take time to polish their appearance. Then again, he might have stopped at a hotel to change so he would make a good impression.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Patel.”

He turned to face me and extended his hand. “Ms. Graves, thank you so much for agreeing to see me. I know this isn't a convenient time for you, but the situation really is urgent.”

He looked me up and down as I approached. I could tell from his expression that I didn't quite look the way he'd expected. Oh, I was still five ten and leggy, but I hadn't had a lot of publicity since the debut of my new, very trendy, very short hairstyle. And my eyes were no longer gray; they were blue, thanks to a brush with the same heavy-duty magic that was killing Bruno's mother.

As we shook hands, I caught a glimpse of what looked like it might be a curse mark on his wrist, peeking out from beneath the cuff of his shirt. Interesting.

“Would you like something to drink?” I really hoped he wouldn't. The kitchen was at the far end of the building—next to what had once been the altar area. It hadn't occurred to me until just that moment how inconvenient that was going to be for Dottie, who had to use a walker to get around. Crap. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw she'd already taken measures. A small table had been set up in her corner, with a coffeemaker and bowls of sugar and packaged creamer.

“Thank you. Your receptionist offered me something, but I said no.”

I glanced at said receptionist, trying to get her nonverbal take on our client. Aside from the fact that she's a powerful clairvoyant, she's smart and observant. She doesn't miss a thing, and she is cheerfully capable of using her age and seeming disability to gently bully people into revealing more than they intended … and doing things they hadn't wanted to do.

In short, she's an absolute gem in the front office. I honestly don't know what we'd do without her. Dottie doesn't put in quite as many hours now that she's married to Fred, but she gets the work done. In exchange, she gets a salary that is just barely below the amount that would screw up her benefits—and the opportunity to spend time with her beloved Minnie the Mouser, though the cat was nowhere to be seen at that moment.

“Let's head up to my office.” I gestured to the staircase, letting him take the lead. I don't like having people behind me, particularly in an enclosed space. It makes me twitchy. Gwen, my long-term therapist, says I have trust issues. Talk about your understatement of the millennium.

“Dottie, will you please buzz Dawna and ask her to join us?”

“Of course.”

Walking into my office was like stepping into a rainbow filled with boxes. The sun wasn't yet shining directly through the stained glass, but it was bright enough outside that the colors shone like jewels just the same. Patel stopped and stared.

“Wow.” He smiled as he turned his attention to carefully removing Minnie from her seat on the visitor's chair facing the desk. He brushed the seat with his hand to clear away any stray cat hairs, then sat. Minnie, offended at finding herself on the floor, gave him a baleful, green-eyed glare.

“It is pretty impressive,” I agreed. “It almost makes up for the temperature difference.” Actually, it more than made up for it to me. I could get another fan or a room-cooling unit easily enough, and the play of light was beautiful and unique.

I moved a stack of boxes from atop the desk to the floor so that I could see my guest, then settled in. Dawna arrived and took the chair next to the client, shifting it close enough to my desk that she could set her iPad on it and take notes. “So, Mr. Patel, what is it you need from our firm?” she asked.

“I am about to undertake a very dangerous quest. My wife tells me that I need you,” he stared directly at me when he spoke, to make his point absolutely clear, “to ensure that I survive long enough to complete it.”

I blinked. I hadn't heard someone seriously refer to something as a “quest” in a while—if ever. But he meant it. His expression was terribly serious, and there was a hint of sadness in those beautiful brown eyes. “Your wife?”

“Abha is a level six clairvoyant. She was
most
insistent.”

Dawna and I traded a knowing glance. You ignore the advice of a seer at your own peril. That explained why Patel was here, in spite of his visible misgivings.

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a device approximately the size of a cell phone. I recognized it immediately. It was the latest piece of technology to take the market by storm. Ridiculously expensive, it combined magic and electronics and was the darling of law enforcement agencies, criminal defense firms, and more. It used a spell disk to create a holographic recorder and projector and could produce accurate, three-dimensional scenes that seemed so real you could practically touch them. The little machine even incorporated smell. The movie industry was desperately scrambling to find a way to incorporate the technology into the theater experience, although, honestly, I wasn't sure having slasher flicks seem that real was a particularly great idea. And really, who'd want to live through the explosions in action movies? I've been in real explosions: there's nothing fun about it.

Still, I'd bought one when Isaac Levy first got them in stock. I wasn't sure what use I would make of it, but I'd splurged on one just the same. I mean, seriously, it's a tech toy. How could I resist?

“May I?”

“Sure, go for it,” I answered.

He set the device on my desk, pressed the button, and “poof,” just like that, I was on the holodeck of the old science-fiction show I'd watched as a kid. Well, not really. But I might as well have been. My office disappeared and while I knew Dawna and Rahim Patel were there, I couldn't actually see them unless I concentrated really hard. Instead, I was sitting in a well-lit room full of shelf after shelf of … djinn jars.

Shit, shit, shit!
I cursed inwardly.
I knew it. I just knew it.

Stationed at regular intervals on the shelves, the ancient jars were absolutely gorgeous. They varied in size, each one a completely unique and beautiful cloisonné creation, tiny jewels set with shining gold or silver wire to form unmistakable patterns on each individual jar. A large jewel sealed each vessel—precious rubies, diamonds, and sapphires, at least the size of my fist, being used as stoppers to keep über-powerful creatures trapped inside. The jewels were sealed in place with black wax delicately inscribed in runes, and while I knew I was looking at a projection, I would swear I could feel the power of their magic pounding at me hard enough to give me a blinding headache.

The air in the room had that stale, canned quality that you get when a place is biosealed and the air is filtered and recycled repeatedly. The ambient light was gentle, but bright enough to see clearly, and, since I couldn't see any source, I assumed it was magically generated.

I looked carefully around the room, my stomach knotting in dread as I counted more and more jars. Then I saw what had brought Patel to my door.

One jar was not where it was supposed to be. Two feet tall, patterned in smoky gray, dull red, and bright orange with brass, it lay on its side on the white tile floor, its seal broken, the stopper gem missing. I shuddered at the realization of just how big a problem that might be.

“His name is Hasan.” Rahim Patel pronounced the name in a tone fraught with … well, it sounds melodramatic, but “doom” was the word that sprang to mind.

I didn't answer or react, mainly because the name meant absolutely nothing to me.

“Hasan is one of the most ancient and powerful of the beings which my family guards. There are tales—” he stopped speaking and I heard him swallow hard before he resumed. “It is my duty to protect the world from the creatures contained in those urns. I have failed. Because the urn itself is still secure, there is … hope. I may be able to recapture him—to fix this. But I must live long enough to do so. If I die, my replacement will be my ten-year-old son. He is a good boy, but he has not learned all that he needs to serve as Guardian even of the jars contained in the vault. My family will help him, but he has nowhere near the knowledge and skill required to contain this disaster. I must recapture Hasan before the unthinkable happens.”

“Why do you think you can recapture him?” Dawna's tone was businesslike. If the thought of dealing with the djinn spooked her, you certainly couldn't tell.

“I have the jar. They tried to steal it, but they were unable to get past the perimeter. They tried to destroy it—there is evidence of that farther along in the video. They were unable to do so. The worst they were able to manage was to free him. They took the jewel, which means that they have a bond with him, but they will not be able to control him. Not,” he added quickly, “that anyone has ever truly controlled a djinn. A djinn must grant the human's wishes, but they always twist the granting to do the most possible harm to the person manipulating them—and that is the best of them, a genie. An ifrit of Hasan's power…” Again, he stopped talking. I stared through the projection and saw Patel shudder.