Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift (18 page)

The only way to save myself was to find Zhang’s killer and hope his motives were unrelated to the mystery of the stolen heroin.

Such were my thoughts when I was kidnapped for the second time in 45 minutes.

This time I ended up in a black SUV sitting on the bench seat in the back next to Special Agent Percival. Right then it occurred to me that a unicorn would also have had the power to pierce the veil of death—and turn a zombie against its master.

Percival casually examined his fingernails. “For someone who claims to be innocent of any involvement with the Zhang murder, you certainly spend a lot of time talking to the Black Dragon Triad.”

Here is where I was going to pay for all those stupid horse jokes.

I snorted. “Apparently you can lead FBI agent to smart but you can’t make him think.”

Okay, obviously I just couldn’t help myself.

“You think you are funny?” said Special Agent Unicorn, his voice flat. “As of this moment, you are barred from talking to my agents, barred from contact with Detective Johnson, barred from all discussions with Black Dragon Triad.”

“You can’t do that,” I snapped.

“Oh? Fail to comply and I’ll get a material witness warrant and stick you in jail. Think I can’t do it? We have places to put you that make Gitmo look like a vacation spot. How would you like to go to a detention center on Jupiter’s largest moon?”

“You have a detention center on Ganymede?” I asked, shocked.

“No,” he said, “on Gabriel.”

I blinked, shook my head. “Ganymede is Jupiter’s largest moon.”

“In
this
dimension, he growled.

I didn’t display emotion, but inside I was quaking. When FBI decides to send you to alternate Jovian moon, is problem.

So if I obeyed Chinese dragon and investigated Zhang’s murder, Percival would throw me into a lightless hole. If I instead obeyed Percival and didn’t investigate Zhang’s murder, golden dragon would kill me.

It was my worst nightmare. I was caught between oversized lizard and a unicorn with a badge.

Percival was still talking. “—and don’t think I won’t know,” he said, “because I will have every agent in the Chicago Office watching you. We’ll be so tight on your ass, Kozlov, that if you take a crap, my people will feel the splash.”

I looked at him for a second and then I just burst out laughing. Because suddenly I understood everything.

***

An hour later I was back in the precinct interrogation rooms, though this time I was on the happy side of the one-way glass.

“Are you sure about this, man?” said Johnson. “‘Cause I’m not even ‘sposed to
talk
to you.”

I studied the man sitting in the interrogation room. It was the Afghan middleman who was transshipping H to the Chinese. Except, I suddenly thought all of that was wrong.

“I’m sure,” I said.

Long pause.

Then: “Thanks for picking him up.”

“No problem,” he said, “as long as you deliver.”

I picked up the crime scene photos and pushed into the interview room, Johnson right behind me.

The little Afghani looked up at us. He had pulled his
pakol
off his head and was twisting the brown, wool cap in his hands. He looked small and scared and pathetic.

But he was really none of those things.

“What name are you using?” I asked.

“Abdul Kabuli,” he said.

I looked at Johnson. “The first thing you need to understand,” I told him, “Is that the murder of Zhang and the attempt on my life were committed by same perp—and they show a twisted and cruel sense of humor.”

“I do not know what you’re talking about,” said Mr. Kabuli. “Maybe I should to leave so you can finish your discussion?”

He looked hopefully at Johnson.

“The rest of it was in the crime scene photos, I said.

I laid down 18 different photos, all taken with high-speed, color film.

Of light bulbs.

“Zhang was killed after he went to change a burnt-out bulb. And the attempt on my life only happened after I flicked on my flashlight. So Detective Johnson, what creature has a nasty sense of humor and is obsessed with lights. Or to put it another way, is obsessed with
lamps
.”

“
A djinn
,” Johnson whispered,
his
light bulb finally going off.

“A djinn,” I agreed.

We both turned to look at Kabuli.

“Please to say, sir, I am not a djinn. I am humble farmer and I wish to contact my embassy.”

“The part I couldn’t understand,” I said, still talking to Johnson, “was who would benefit from the killings. Not the Chinese—they’ve lost their leader. Not we Russians—we would be forced to fight an all-out war with Chinese. Not Chicago PD, you’d have to referee a blood-bath. Not even poor, stupid FBI, because they are spending all their resources to deal with this problem, Percival told me himself.
So who benefits?
”

Johnson thought about it a moment. I let him work it out on his own. People always believe ideas more strongly when they think they thought of it themselves.

The djinn, a creature of great power from Arab lands, Mr. Kabuli, a man from the Islamic world.

A distracted FBI.

Johnson connected the dots. “Terrorism,” he breathed.

See? Smart.

“That’s right,” I said. “You just figured out the what. Now Mr. Kabuli is going to tell us the who.”

The djinn hiding in the little man’s body snorted. “Am I?” Gone was the broken English and the fawning attitude. “And what if I don’t? Are you going to waterboard me? Do you have a water elemental handy?”

I flashed him a tight smile. Because I was off the hook. If Zhang had been killed by a djinn acting on behalf of Islamic terrorists I could
prove
to the golden dragon that it had nothing to with me or missing heroin. And, yes, I’d violated Percival’s injunction to stay clear of the investigation. But he was going to have difficult time sending me to secret prison when I’d uncovered a major terrorist plot and handed it to the authorities.

For the first time since Dorbayeva set out to get rid of me, I was safe.
I’d won!

And then I looked over at Dexter Johnson’s face.

Johnson was good at keeping emotions off his face, but for a moment there was flash of something there. Fear and anger, sure, but something else, infinitely more terrible.

Grief
.

I wasn’t mind reader, but I was sure I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking of his city, his beloved Chicago, and all the people who would be killed or hurt in an attack.

Dexter Johnson had been my adversary ever since I came to this country.

But I could see there was something noble in this man.

So I drew a deep breath and sat down at the table across from the djinn. “You’re going to tell us, because you
want
to tell us.”

Kabuli chuckled. “If this is a new torture technique it’s not working. It’s actually rather amusing.”

“A djinn’s wishes always backfire on the wisher,” said Johnson.

Kabuli slapped the table, his face reddening. “Don’t tell me my business.”

“Look,” I said softly. “You don’t want to do this, otherwise you never would have let us catch you.”

He was staring at me now, those dark eyes fixed on me. He knew what I was saying was true, he just didn’t
know
he knew.

“Really?” he said dryly.

I nodded. “Why would you serve Islamists? You’re older than them. The magic of djinns was stirring among the dunes of Arabia centuries,
millennia
, before that religion was even born.” I shook my head. “You are old magic. And old magic is not meant to serve young magic.”

He looked at me for a long time.

And then he glanced up at Johnson.

And told him.

After that, things happened fast. The terrorist plot was foiled, the perpetrators caught, the people saved, and what do you know, Chicago PD even got some of the credit—though not nearly as much as the unicorn with a badge.

But that didn’t matter to Dexter Johnson, who, wonder of wonders, looked at me and said, “Thank you, Valeri. I will not forget this.”

I shrugged. “Is nothing. Violence is bad for business, that’s all.”

He snorted and turned to go. And as I watched his retreating back, I thought that he was wrong about a great many things, but within his own limited understanding of the world he is honest man.

Maybe he would say the same thing about me.

Introduction to “
My Real Cousin Ruby”

And now we get to me. In the fantasy genre, I’m best known for my international bestselling Fey series which will gain a new book Real Soon Now. Maybe after I finish the multi-book arc for my Hugo-nominated cross-genre Retrieval Artist series which ate up half of 2013. In March, WMG Publishing released the long-awaited seventh novel in my Edgar-nominated Smokey Dalton series, which I publish under the name Kris Nelscott. I also write paranormal romance under the name Kristine Grayson.

“My Real Cousin Ruby” doesn’t fit into any of those series. In fact, this is one of those rare stories that came to me in a dream. Once you read the story, you’ll understand just how weird that is…

My Real Cousin Ruby

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

My cousin Ruby is forty-seven years old and obese. She’s been married a million times and has more children than I can count. She never went to college. She didn’t even go to trade school until she turned forty. Then she learned how to be a hairdresser.

I’m sure she’s a changeling child.

I’ve been sure of that since I was a little girl. Even before I had the words to confirm how I felt about Ruby, my actions confirmed it. I ditched her in the most creative ways. I told her we were playing hide and seek, then left her in the attic for an entire day. I locked her in my backyard playhouse and threw away the key.

I didn’t get punished too heavily—I’m only a year older, and when you’re five, that year doesn’t count for much. But because of that slight age difference, I was always supposed to “bring Ruby along,” a task no one but me seemed to realize was impossible.

No one but me and my Real Cousin Ruby.

My Real Cousin Ruby appears to me in dreams. She’s the same age as the person I’ve been told to call my cousin Ruby, but otherwise they’re nothing alike.

My Real Cousin Ruby is short and dark-haired and thin. She walks slightly hunched over, probably from all that reading she’s done, and her Birkenstocks slide across the ground, making a shush-shush sound wherever she goes.

She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, got into Harvard Law, hated it, graduated anyway, then immediately registered at the University of Wisconsin for a Masters in Physics. She’s on her third post-doc, this time in bioengineering. No children, of course—how could you study that much and bring up hordes?—and only one or two boyfriends.

She’s bitterly funny, but only my side of the family understands her jokes—my college educated parents who raised a Rhodes scholar (my brother), an award-winning physicist (my sister), a world-renown playwright (my other sister) and me. The disappointment. The housewife with two children, one grandchild on the way, and a bucketload of ambition that gets foisted off on the PTA.

We all dream about her—everyone on my side of the family. My siblings don’t talk about her much any more, but when we were kids, we compared notes.

We all dreamed of my Real Cousin Ruby winning what was then called the GE/Westinghouse science competition, kicking butt at a national Model United Nations competition, and creaming the opposition in the famed College Debates.

But I’m the only one who held her small sobbing frame (and woke up to find a large wet spot on the right shoulder of my favorite sweatshirt) when she lost her first boyfriend to the head cheerleader. I’m the only one who heard about her fears before she aced the L-SAT, the only one who held her hand while she waited to have an ill-advised abortion on her thirtieth birthday.

And so far, I’m the only one who knows about her upcoming wedding, even though she claims she’s sending the invitations next week.

Which is a problem. I can’t talk to anyone. First, I promised I wouldn’t say anything. Second, even if I did say something, no one would listen. My siblings all figure this is some sort of shared hallucination, so the less we discuss it, the better off we are.

Occasionally I can talk to Pam (the playwright) but only in the context of fiction and only when we’re discussing the power of dreams. Mostly, she doesn’t like to think about it any more than my very logical, very political brother does.