Tales of the Djinn: The Double (24 page)

The thing was iron, and would have singed his fingers. Elyse readied it without a bobble in her spell. She truly had grown in confidence. An ifrit’s shriek was a frightening noise, and Samir was wailing one out nonstop. Cade was prepared to assist, but Elyse braced her feet. This was a wise precaution. Samir’s smoke practically exploded through the gallery piercings on its way into the brass vessel.

“Now,” Cade said as the last smoky trail whisked in.

Elyse slammed the stopper into the opening. “Gotcha,” she said and grinned.

The vessel clanged and vibrated as Samir ricocheted inside, trying to find an opening to get out. Elyse wrapped her arm more tightly around the vase, but Samir’s escape attempts were violent. Holding the vessel took physical and not magic strength.

“Shall I?” Cade offered.

“Please,” she said and handed the prize to him.

Samir took a minute to realize his struggle was futile. His shrieks cut off as he finally settled. Cade resisted the impulse to rub his ringing ears. He patted the vase instead.

“Hello, Samir,” he said.

Samir?
Elyse mouthed, her eyes gone wide. She hadn’t seen the ifrit through the binoculars. Cade nodded in acknowledgment.

“You’ve confused me with someone else,” the ifrit huffed, his angry upper-class voice distorted by the vase. “My name is Ramis, and I’m a free djinni citizen. I demand that you release me.”

Did he really think he could fool them? Cade considered the now still vessel. He supposed was possible Samir thought they were idiots.

“
I
can’t release you,” he answered reasonably. “As you might have noticed, a human trapped you. Only another human can let you out. To be honest, I’m not certain anyone but my friend could do it. Her skill with that particular incantation is impressive.”

Cade wanted their captive to abandon hope that his accomplice could free him. The claim might be true, actually. Mario’s djinni-infused tattoos had adulterated his human power. Given how few humans could work spells at this level, Elyse could well be Samir’s sole option.

“Fine,” the ifrit said after a brief silence. “Have your friend let me out.”

“She’ll want three wishes in return,” he warned. “You know how humans like to insist on that.” Cade winked at Elyse, whose eyebrows shot up quizzically. “Are you prepared to tell her everything you know about the plot to abduct our city’s djinn? Because I assure you, that would be her first request.”

Another silence stretched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Samir said.

“Well, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, that wish would cost you nothing to fulfill. If you do, however, you’d be compelled to spill your guts. Plus, she’d still have two wishes left. She could order you to become a worm. Doom you to being digested by birds for eternity. I know ifrits are tough, but I doubt you’d enjoy that.”

This time, Samir had no response at all.

“We could come to a more comfortable agreement,” Cade suggested. “You answer our questions voluntarily, and Elyse releases you into the custody of our court system. You’d face justice for your actions but not endless suffering.”

Once again, Cade waited for an answer that didn’t come.

“Oh, give the vase back to me,” Elyse snapped. “I don’t care if that pipsqueak suffers. I want answers.”

He gaped at her in surprise. She certainly seemed to mean the threat. She put out her arms and gestured for him to hand Samir to her. With Samir listening to everything they said, Cade was obliged to comply. He hoped Elyse understood how tricky wording wishes could be.

“Very well,” he said and passed the vase over.

She began the ritual rubbing motion around the Solomon seal.

“Wait!” Samir cried from inside. “Maybe I know something.”

Samir’s wheedling anxiety sounded more like the ifrit they’d known before. Elyse surprised Cade again by smiling. She
had
been bluffing.

“We want good answers,” she said sternly. “And we’re going to confirm them before I set you free.”

“Yes,” Samir agreed. “I’ll give you good answers.”

Cade gave Elyse the go-ahead to begin. She thought for a moment. “Okay, you work with a tattooed human. We want to know his name.”

Cade thought this a clever means of confirming if the ifrit would tell the truth.

“His name is Mario,” Samir said. “I met him in your cellar ten weeks ago. He’d just killed someone, and the extra death energy allowed me to squeeze through a hole in your locked portal.”

The
someone
Mario killed was Elyse’s husband. Elyse knew this, though the reminder couldn’t be pleasant.

She tightened her jaw. “What was the nature of your agreement?”

“He’d never been to our world. He needed a partner who knew his way around.”

“And what did
you
need?” Cade asked.

“The same. Someone who understood the lay of the human land. You could call it a cross border alliance.”

“To traffick abducted djinn from your world to mine.”

“Among other things,” Samir said. “And they weren’t abducted. Every one of those young people came willingly.”

Cade could see Elyse wanted to argue that they’d been tricked into coming with false promises. Cade touched her arm to stop her. Disputing semantics with Samir wouldn’t make him more forthcoming.

“Where are the young people now?” Cade asked.

“Safe,” Samir said.

“Safe
where
?” Elyse pressed. Samir was silent. Elyse moved her hand to the jar’s Solomon seal. “Do I need to force you to give me a straight answer?”

“You’re welcome to try,” Samir said pleasantly.

His sudden self-assurance took Cade aback. What did Samir know that they didn’t? Alarms went off in his head. Cade reached for his scimitar.

He didn’t have time to stop the threat Samir sensed was near. A man shaped of empty air and snarled thorny branches materialized in the door between the portal room and the gallery. The thing was a nightmare from a tale. Two red eyes glowed within its tangled head.

Mario,
Cade thought. Or rather Mario’s demon-infused tattoo. He had a nanosecond to wonder where it had come from, along with why Joseph’s magical barriers hadn’t kept it from intruding. Joseph had given Cade the necessary
open sesame
to enter. The enchanted shields hadn’t been broken. Plus, Cade had reactivated them afterward.

Samir was considerably happier than Cade to greet the new arrival.

“Over here!” he cried. “Free me from this container!”

Cade swung his sword at the creature, but the thorn man was as quick as if he were smoke. One branch arm snapped out to twice its original length, snatching the brass container from Elyse’s arms with surprising dexterity. Elyse cursed as the creature’s other arm uncoiled and lashed at him. Cade ignored the tears it made in his chest to take another swing. This time, he managed to lop off its thorny hand. Hoping to disable the whole thing, he swung again and missed.

The thorn being had flashed back to the portal room.

“
Stay
,” Cade ordered Elyse, peripherally aware that the tattoo demon had scratched her arm and face bloody. “You’re safer here.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised that she bolted right after him. They reached the other room together, in time to see the thorn demon smash full speed into its master. Mario staggered, then spread his bulging arms in welcome as the black ink raced over his skin again. His right hand, whose thorn counterpart Cade had severed, was the only part that stayed bare. When the admittedly fascinating process finished, the strapping sorcerer held Samir’s vase. He immediately began trying to tug out the stopper.

He wasn’t successful. More than Elyse’s hand had affixed it there. Her magic had soldered a bond between the iron plug and the vessel’s neck. Interestingly, Mario hissed as if the iron stung his fingers. Joseph’s theory was correct. Mario was becoming part ifrit.

If that was true, Cade had nothing to lose by attacking him.

“Halt!” Mario ordered before he could.

The former fake handyman was showing his true colors. The one-word enchantment stopped Cade as handily as an elaborate spell. His feet stuck in place like they’d been cemented to the smooth stone floor. The rest of his body kept going. He had to shoot his hands in front of him to keep from face planting.

Elyse let out a startled cry as he fell. Her alarm was natural but counterproductive.

“You can outspell him,” Cade told her, wishing he had a way to convey this knowledge to her with just his voice. “You have more power than him.”

“Shut up!” Mario commanded, effectively clamping his mouth shut.

Elyse gaped helplessly at Cade, the white of fear showing around her widened eyes.

You can,
Cade willed her to understand.
You’re more human than he is now.

Elyse jerked—almost as if she’d heard. Then to his amazement and everlasting pride, she began chanting the spell she’d just used successfully on Samir. She was attempting to put Mario in the very jar he was holding. It was a bold idea. Mario was only partly djinni, but it seemed like it might work. At the least, fighting her influence split his attention. He growled with annoyance as his hand slipped on the stopper he was still struggling with. He couldn’t do everything at once. Cade felt his feet start to unstick from the floor.

A moment later, he noticed something else. The edges of Mario’s tattoos were fogging, as if Elyse’s chant were turning them to smoke.

“Enough,” Mario snapped. He went still and closed his eyes.

Cade knew letting the sorcerer concentrate wasn’t a good idea.

“No,” he roared even as a streak of motion whipped through the air toward Elyse.

She screamed and scrabbled at her throat. The thorn hand from Mario’s tattoo was strangling her. Cade hadn’t rendered it inactive when he cut it off.

“I co-c—”
command,
she tried to say. The demon hand wouldn’t let her. Rivulets of blood trickled down her neck where its thorns pierced her.

Cade struggled harder but only succeeded in making his hip joints feel like they were going to dislocate. No quitter, Elyse was fighting the thorn hand with everything she had. She fell onto her hip on a crumpled sheet that lay on the floor near her. Possibly she’d done it on purpose. She immediately grabbed a wad of cloth, using it to drag at the thorns without cutting up her hands. She seemed to be holding off the thing somewhat, though she wasn’t able to try a spell.

Wait,
Cade thought.
That sheet she’s using was covering Joseph’s statue. Where the hell is his double?

It wasn’t jumping out to save them—but maybe someone could.

Arcadius
, Cade thought, reaching along the link between him and his spirit twin.
By all that’s holy, get here now.

~

The moment he heard the call, Arcadius flashed into his smoke form. He changed so quickly he made himself dizzy. Ignoring his discomfort, he zoomed to the commemorative arch and through the openings in the gallery overlook. Joseph’s
open sesame
got him through the barrier. He followed the noise of fighting to the portal room.

He gauged the situation in one swift glance: Cade stuck to the floor, the rogue magician radiating spell-power like an almost visible lightning bolt. The mortal danger Elyse confronted caused his heart to contract with uncustomary terror. He didn’t let the emotion paralyze him. He smoked straight to her and materialized, immediately straddling her body and adding his strength to prying the animated bramble-hand from her throat. For one inappropriate second, the position felt sexual. What would it be like to take her for himself, not to further any cause but because he wanted to?

He didn’t have time for inane questions. The ifrit spirit that infused the tattoo might not be particularly smart, but it was vicious. Stubborn too. Even with both himself and Elyse tugging it away, blood trickled from the spots it clutched. Arcadius grunted at the force required to keep the thorns from puncturing her deeper.

His double would have to wait for help. Arcadius wasn’t free to turn and check on him. It didn’t matter. The other him would endorse his priorities. Elyse’s magical advantage was the only trick they had up their sleeve, on top of which Cade was in love with her.

Arcadius bit out a curse, but not because of that. The thorns had gnawed through the cloth Elyse was using to muffle them. They were slicing up his fingers—hers too, he imagined. He refused to be distracted by the fear in her eyes. With one last determined wrench, he gained her sufficient breathing room to speak. He didn’t waste the opening.

“Repeat after me,” he said in his sternest you-can-and-will-do-what-I-say voice. “By the power of the Light, I banish this Dark to hell.”

She had to gasp to do it. “
By the power . . . of the Light, I . . . banish this Dark to hell.”

The spell was old and simple, its efficacy springing from the countless times djinn had used it successfully. Luckily, Arcadius’s authority steadied Elyse enough for the charm to work. The bramble-hand disappeared in a black puff of smoke.

Freed, Elyse struggled to sit up with her bleeding hand pressed over her bleeding throat. She swayed with weakness and shock.

Arcadius took an instant to ascertain that none of her wounds were fatal. Then he whipped around to attack the sorcerer who’d inflicted them.

“
Stop
right there
,” the man commanded.

Suddenly, Arcadius strove against an opposing force as strong as a hurricane. A wall would have given more, though he called on every ounce of his considerable djinn muscle. A trickle of fear ran through him. He wanted to deny it, but superior skill might not be enough to defeat this man’s raw power. With the sole exception of the enchantress who’d cursed their city, Mario was stronger than any magician Arcadius had come up against.

He glanced sideways at Cade. Sweat drenched his spirit twin, who struggled just as ineffectually. Unsure what else to do, Arcadius turned his gaze to the magician, getting his first clear look at the mostly human male. He’d caught a glimpse of him when Elyse chased him around the corner from the bathhouse. Mario had been slighter then, the magical disguise he’d assumed nowhere near as imposing as his brawny six-and-a-half foot frame. Tattoos and shaved head aside, Arcadius supposed he wasn’t bad looking. He looked rough and ready, like a promising soldier candidate. Clearly, he was also intelligent.