Tales of the Djinn: The Guardian (21 page)

Uncle Vince didn’t seem to want to remove her
gag. He waved for Cara to handle it. She leaned closer than she
needed to untie the scarf, which Elyse childishly hoped her spit
had ruined.

“Just cooperate,” Cara said in Elyse’s ear.
“I can keep you safe if you don’t resist.”

Elyse wasn’t sure what her cousin meant by
cooperation
or
safety
. For the moment, she didn’t
care. She worked her jaw, swallowed, and turned her head to her
uncle. She had no idea in her mind of accomplishing anything. She
simply had to ask.

“Uncle Vince,” she said. “Did you arrange for
my father to fall into that volcano?”

He was leaning back against the fireplace,
thick and solid in his expensive suit. His shoes were inside
Mario’s sound-cancelling twine circle, so presumably he’d heard. He
didn’t speak. He crossed his arms and glared.

This was answer enough for her.

“You did,” she said. “God.” Her voice broke
and she swallowed again. “Uncle Vince, he was your
brother
.
How could you do that to him?”

Suddenly he was so angry his eyes practically
spit fire. “Leo kept me from what was mine. He and my father. Their
precious djinn were more important to them than me. They acted like
a goldmine shouldn’t make a profit! My whole life, they treated me
like dirt they were too good to step on.”

Elyse knew that wasn’t true, not in her
father’s case. Leo sometimes treated Vince cautiously but never
with meanness. She shut her open mouth. There was no point in
saying this.

“Dad.” Cara went to his side to pet his arm
soothingly. “We don’t need to get into this. Elyse understands you
had your reasons.” She shot Elyse a pointed glance, one whose
meaning she didn’t comprehend. “She’s going to help us make things
the way they ought to be.”

Elyse didn’t see how she’d manage that. She
didn’t have the secret to opening her dad’s door. She wasn’t much
of a liar either, which Cara really should have known.

~

Arcadius and Joseph shelved their plan to
escape the lamp as soon it became clear their captors had Elyse.
Judging by the briefness of the trip and the steps Mario had
climbed, they’d been taken to her apartment. They could hear but
not see what was going on outside.

Listening to Elyse ask her uncle if he’d
killed her father caused Arcadius’s heart to clench.

“Her speech is slurred,” Joseph said, his
head cocked toward the nozzle hole. The lamp being set down on a
flat surface made it easier to stay crouched by it. “I wonder if
she was drugged.”

Arcadius’s fingers curled into fists. “I need
to assess the situation. See who’s where and what weapons are in
play.”

“Could you smoke out invisibly?”

At home, he could have. The more refined
version of his non-solid form was no more noticeable than vapor
above a cup of tea. “You don’t think
you
can?” he asked
Joseph. Normally the servant was better at these things.

“I doubt I can change at all. Being forced to
shift seems to have interfered with my abilities. But if you want
me to try . . .”

“No.” Arcadius saw he’d grown too accustomed
to Joseph taking the lead in magical matters. “We may need your
powers later. I don’t want you straining them again now.”

They fell silent, focused on what was
happening in the room outside.

“You do it then,” Vince Solomon was saying.
“Make her tell us what we want to know.”

“I don’t know anything,” Elyse said. “I
didn’t know there was a nexus in my basement until today.”

“Elyse.” Her cousin’s tone was gentle and
disappointed. “Don’t lie to us. None of us wants to be forced to
hurt you.”

“I could live with it,” Mario said.

“Shush,” Cara scolded. “She’ll tell us. I
know she will. Think, Elyse. What did your father use to open the
portal? It could be anything. Maybe an item he carried with him all
the time. Or a gift he sent home that he told you to take extra
good care of.”

“He never said things like that,” Elyse
responded. “I was the only one upset if I broke something.”

“Tell us!” her uncle burst out in a roar.

“
Dad
.”

“She has to answer,” Joseph said in an
undertone as Cara calmed her father. “They won’t believe she
doesn’t know.”

Arcadius jerked. Someone had just been
slapped. Though no one cried out, the obvious victim was Elyse.

“Tell us, bitch,” Mario said. “We’ve wasted
enough time tiptoeing around you.”

“Mario!” Cara cried.

“Stop shielding her,” Mario said. “She’s in
your way. You’re a queen. You deserve to have everything you
want.”

“He’s been spelled,” Joseph said, his
practiced ears instantly picking up on it.

Cara must have found the book. Clearly, she
didn’t realize charming a man to love her didn’t necessarily mean
she could control him. The situation seemed destined to spiral into
disaster soon. Fueled by a sense of urgency, Arcadius began to slip
his form.

“Give Elyse something to give them,” Joseph
advised hastily. “A genuine artifact preferably. Tattoos will know
the difference between an object that’s magical and one that’s
not.”

Arcadius nodded before letting go of his
solidness. He needed to find a likely fake quickly.

~

Elyse’s cheek still stung from Mario’s slap.
Her eyes had teared up, but she’d clamped her mouth against crying
out. What was the point if no one helpful heard?

“I’m taking you seriously,” she assured him,
staring straight into Mario’s hard black eyes. “I simply don’t have
the answer you’re looking for.”

His brows lowered with suspicion, the
movement causing the markings on his face to shift more than they
should have. Maybe fear was making her see things. For a second,
his tattoo seemed alive.

He lifted a finger to point at her. “You’d
better find the answer.”

“My father gave me lots of presents. Why
don’t you try them all?”

“Because every trial costs time and energy,
and we still might not find what we need. Think, little girl. Your
life depends on it.”

Elyse was surprised he’d explained. She
looked away, partly because his tattooed face unnerved her but also
so she’d seem like she was doing what he’d said. Her attention
settled on the Aladdin’s lamp. It sat on a low drum table, maybe
six feet away. Though Cara had pulled the shades, the day was
brightening behind them. Light glinted on the pattern engraved in
the tarnished brass.

Her mind flashed to Mario patting it.

Oh, hell. When he said the djinn were “locked
up tight,” he meant Arcadius and Joseph were in there. He’d forced
them in magically.

Her heart thudded harder, the reality of all
this craziness sinking in. Then she noticed something else. An
ephemeral ribbon of vapor was issuing from the antique spout. Were
the djinn escaping? Was it possible they could help? Not wanting
anyone else to see, she blurted the first idea that came to
her.

“Maybe the door thing is in my dad’s safe
deposit box. I have the key to that.”

Mario looked intrigued, but Uncle Vince shot
down the suggestion. “Leo wouldn’t have locked the door away.
Whatever the object is, he’d have kept it where he could get at it
easily.”

“What about the storage rooms in the
basement? There’s tons of stuff down there.”

“We’ve gone through those,” Mario said. The
faintest smile touched his mouth, as if he’d recalled something
that amused him.

Elyse’s skin went cold. Had he gone through
them before or after David’s death?

The possibility stalled her brain. “I . . .
don’t know . . . what else to suggest,” she stammered.

The hippo
, the softest possible voice
murmured in her ear.

It was Arcadius’s voice, sort of.

“The hippo,” she repeated, because she
assumed she was supposed to. All her kidnappers stared at her.
“It’s a blue faience statuette. Egyptian. My dad gave it to me to
replace one he sent home that was too big. You remember, Cara. It
took up half my bedroom.”

“I remember,” her cousin said slowly.

Tell them your father said it was
magic
, Arcadius directed.

“Dad told me it was magic. At the time, I
thought he wanted to make me feel better for having to give up the
other one. It was exactly like the original, only small.”

This brought a gleam into Mario’s eye. “Where
is it?”

“Um,” Elyse said, momentarily stumped.

Top shelf
, Arcadius said.
Over the
fireplace
.

Elyse looked where he’d said. To her relief,
she spotted a bit of blue. “There. At the very top.”

The built-in shelves ran up to the high
ceiling. Though he was tall, Mario needed to climb onto a chair to
reach the statuette. He turned the hippo between his hands after he
stepped down.

“Well?” Uncle Vince demanded.

“I can’t tell if it’s the door,” Mario said,
“but it’s definitely been charmed.”

Cara’s father thrust his hand out
imperiously. “Give it here.”

Mario stared at him. “I’m the one who knows
the spell.”

“You’re not the only one who knows it. Or
have you forgotten who gave you the books you’ve been
studying?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything, including the
‘favors’ you had me do because you’re too proud to get your hands
dirty. You think it doesn’t matter how many people a man like me
kills.”

“
Mario
,” Cara exclaimed.

“Every man has his talents,” Vince sneered
unrepentantly.

Mario pulled a pistol from another of his
pockets. Elyse had no idea what kind, just that it was big and
black.

“Thanks for reminding me,” he said. He
clucked his tongue when Vince’s hand started to move to his jacket.
“I wouldn’t if I were you. You’re not quick enough to quick-draw
me.”

“Stop it!” Cara protested, putting the
sound-cancelling twine to the test.

Mario barely glanced at her. “Come on, Cara.
How many times have you called this old man a pain in the ass? We
don’t need him. You’ve got twice the brains he does.” He laughed
and cocked the hammer. “Actually, so do I.”

“He’s my
dad
.” Cara’s face was a study
in panic, Vince’s one of arrogant disbelief.

Fuck
, Elyse thought, sensing what was
coming before it did.

“He’s not
my
dad,” Mario said and
calmly pulled the trigger.

The bang was loud, though she supposed no one
outside the circle heard. A neat red hole appeared in the center of
Vince’s brow. His body jerked and fell over. The bullet’s exit was
messier. The shelves he’d stood in front of were sprayed with
gore.

“Holy crap,” Cara breathed, chalk white with
shock. She crouched down to check for a pulse. “Holy crap, Mario,
he’s dead.”

For a couple seconds, Mario looked abashed by
her reaction. Then he rolled his big shoulders and recovered.
“We’re better off without him. All he did was piss people off, and
that’s not good business. Pull yourself together. Let’s see if this
little hippo is the real deal.”

Cara’s fear-round eyes glistened with unshed
tears. She stood shakily, swiping her hands down her nice
trousers.

“Thatta girl,” Mario praised. “I’ll call my
boys to come clean this up. Grab that lamp while you’re at it. You
never know when we’ll need three wishes.”

Elyse couldn’t tell if he was joking. Her
breath caught unpleasantly in her throat when he looked at her. The
glitter in his eyes was considerably different from Cara’s. Elyse
didn’t think it was a trick of the light that his tattoos seemed to
have taken on their own mocking expression.

It was like they were sentient.

“You’d better not be wrong,” he said. “You
don’t want to find out what happens if I have to question you
again.”

Elyse was too terrified to utter a single
sound.

Like her father before her, Cara avoided
Elyse’s gaze as she trailed her new lover out.

~

Arcadius rematerialized as soon as Cara and
Mario trooped out. He looked around for something to release Elyse.
When he lifted the pillow on the couch, the harness was there but
not the knife he kept in it.

Well, fuck
, he thought, mystified.

“Letter opener in that drawer,” Elyse said,
nodding toward where she meant. “It should be sharp enough.”

He found the item and started sawing through
the tape that bound her. “We have to get out of here. What happened
to your neighbor?”

“She was Cara’s informant,” Elyse huffed. “So
of course she’s perfectly fine.” Her gaze fell on her uncle’s
corpse, which was crumpled on the floor and not fine at all.
“Jesus, what was wrong with that Mario guy? Cara’s book of love
poems didn’t affect me that weirdly.”

Arcadius finished freeing her second wrist
and started on an ankle. “I think the spell must have interacted
badly with his possessed tattoos.”

“His
what?
”

“They’re animated by a djinni’s spirit,
probably an ifrit. The spirit protects him from attacks, but it
seems to have bonded with his own consciousness. Djinn are more
susceptible to magic than humans. The love spell influenced Mario
more intensely because of that.”

“Jeesh.” Elyse rubbed her unbound wrists.

Arcadius cut through the last stretch of
tape. Since he was kneeling, he gripped her calves to focus her. “I
have to go after them. Joseph is still in that lamp. He wasn’t able
to change and get out like me. Is there somewhere safe I can leave
you?”

“Leave me?” The extent to which she was
startled surprised him. “No way. I’m helping you rescue him.”

“Elyse.”

“You’re not talking me out of it. I don’t
know who did what exactly, but because of Cara and Mario’s
scheming, my dad is dead. And David. And you and I could have been.
I’m too involved to be left somewhere.”