Tales of the Djinn: The Guardian (22 page)

Arcadius searched her determined face.
“You’re not afraid?”

“I’m terrified. I’m just so mad I don’t give
a shit. Anyway, maybe I
do
know something. Those three
certainly thought I did. —Just to be clear, that hippo wasn’t the
real door.”

Arcadius smiled. “It wasn’t, though hopefully
we’ve gained time while they work that out.”

“Shit,” Elyse swore suddenly. “I hear people
coming up the stairs.”

“Mario’s ‘boys,’” Arcadius guessed. “They
must be coming for the body.”

Elyse jumped up and grabbed his arm. He
noticed her hand was cold but steady. “We’ll go out the back, down
the fire escape. We can get into the basement from the courtyard.
We’ll steal the lamp back from them.”

Arcadius saw a few gaping holes in this
strategy but had no better plan to suggest.

“Okay,” he said. “Try to stay behind me.”

~

Elyse amazed herself. Despite the chaos in
her brain, she had the presence of mind to grab Arcadius’s shoes
out of the bathroom. No one should have to climb down a fire escape
in winter in bare feet. She descended first, forcing her knees not
to wobble by sheer will. She was strangely glad to be obliged to
do
and not think.

After what seemed like much too slow a
journey, she dropped into the cold still courtyard. Though his
elegant wool coat flapped around his legs, Arcadius landed
noticeably more nimbly.

She had her keys, so she let them into the
back hall. At this point, Arcadius went ahead of her. “Stay close,”
he said very quietly.

They had to go through his unit to reach the
unfinished section of the cellar. Elyse hadn’t been here since
padlocking the door to the mechanical room. This was the part of
the basement where David had been slain, an event she now suspected
involved the supernatural. Arcadius paused long enough to squeeze
her shoulder. She appreciated the attempt at comfort but wasn’t
sure how she felt about him right then. He wasn’t who he’d
pretended to be any more than Cara or her uncle or Mario. Whatever
his real agenda, he seemed to be on her side. She guessed she was
on his, since she was doing this with him.

Her instincts told her he wasn’t feigning his
protectiveness of her.

He used the light from his cellphone screen
to lead them through the maze of rooms. It didn’t escape her notice
that he knew where he was going. He must have searched the
brownstone’s cellar already.

When they reached the creepy janitor’s john,
he gestured for her to stop.

“Wait here. I want to see what they’re doing
and where they’ve put the lamp.” She opened her mouth but he shook
his head. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”

She was nervous enough that she let him
go.

He returned from reconnoitering in barely a
minute. “They’re in the center room with the nexus. The room where
your husband died.”

“The one with cement block walls?” She asked
this without flinching.

“Yes. Mario is still chanting. He’s trying to
make the fake door you gave him open a portal to the djinn
dimension. Your cousin has the lamp he trapped Joseph in. I know
she’s bigger than you but she isn’t armed. If I provide a
distraction, can you dash in and grab him?”

Elyse’s throat felt tight. “Does this
distraction involve you getting killed?”

Arcadius’s mouth slanted to one side.
“Hopefully not. I’m going to try something that should take them by
surprise. I’m not sure I can pull it off, but my former powers do
seem to be coming back online.”

That piqued Elyse’s curiosity. She trailed
him nearer to the room where the magical nexus was. They stopped
when they heard Mario’s voice. Elyse couldn’t tell if he was
chanting in English. His words were running together.

They’d come close enough to see a blue
luminescence within the room, too close to talk without alerting
their enemies. Arcadius handed her his cell and began taking off
his coat. She supposed the heavy garment would hamper him. Since
she held the glowing phone, she got an unobstructed view of his
emerging back.

She sucked in a breath of shock. Arcadius had
a tattoo. He was shirtless, and the thing wasn’t small. A raven
with wings outspread stretched the full width of his broad
shoulders. Was this part of what he meant by his powers coming back
online? She
couldn’t
have missed seeing the design earlier.
She’d circled him in the altogether that first night in her shower.
And she’d certainly had a sightline to the relevant area when he’d
gone down on her on the couch.

That memory drew heat into her cheeks.
Arcadius glanced at her, probably in response to her quiet
gasp.

She pointed to his back and made flapping
motions with her fingers.

Maybe he guessed what else she’d been
thinking, because his grin smoldered.

He turned away to compose himself. His breath
went in and out, and the musculature of his back relaxed. A thin
seam of light appeared around the outline of the tattoo, like a
distant galaxy peeping through his skin. Before the rays were
bright enough to attract attention, the seam disappeared.

So did Arcadius.

A large black bird, every bit as real as she
was, stared up at her from the cement floor. From beak to tail, it
was bigger than most house cats. Its feathered head tilted to the
side as if it were studying her.

Holy crap
, she thought, her lips
moving with the words.

The raven lifted its wings, its head
swiveling toward the room from which the chanting came. With a
little hop to get it started, it flew like a shot through the
opening.

Elyse gaped after it like a dunderhead.

Cara and Mario began to shriek. The raven
must be attacking them. Its wings were flapping, and it cawed a
battle cry. In the middle of the mayhem, Mario’s gun went off.

“Shit,” she hissed, springing into action.
This was the part where she was supposed to take advantage of
Arcadius’s distraction.

She ran into the cement block enclosure,
remembering to crouch low at the last moment. She didn’t have time
to dwell on the last time she’d seen this room, with David’s torn
up body. Arcadius’s raven swooped from Cara to Mario, flying at and
pecking them. He didn’t seem to be hurting them, but they certainly
were freaked out. She caught sight of the source of the blue
luminescence: a beach-ball-sized floating orb she assumed was the
energy point.

Not important
, she told herself. She
looked around for the Aladdin’s lamp. Cara didn’t have it anymore.
She must have dropped it when Arcadius dive-bombed her. Elyse
spotted it lying on its side near the wall. She darted in and
seized it.

“Stop her!” Mario shouted.

Cara was in no state to accomplish that.
Mario tried to shoot Elyse, but the bullet just struck sparks off
the wall and floor. Elyse ran out with her prize, hoping Joseph
wasn’t being bounced around inside the container. She heard Cara
scream a second before the radiance from the nexus went out.

The cellar wasn’t pitch black but it was
close. Elyse had Arcadius’s phone and could see where she was
going. Of course, this meant the others knew where she was as well.
Desperate to slow them down, she shoved whatever obstacles she
could find in her wake. They wouldn’t bother Arcadius. He could fly
over them.

She pelted through the room with the fake
Christmas trees. Strong wings beat the air behind her. Figuring
Arcadius was faster than she was, she didn’t wait for him. She
spied the hot water heater up ahead, plus a crack of light where
they’d left the door to the basement unit ajar. Arcadius sailed
past her, knocking it farther open with his bird shoulder.

She ran inside after him, cursing as she
tried to re-secure the padlock. This would have been easier if
she’d set down the lamp, but she didn’t want to let go of it. She
shot the hasp home just as a burst of light flashed in the hall
behind her.

Fortunately, the light was Arcadius changing
form.

“Good,” he panted.

Something heavy, presumably Mario, slammed
into the now locked door.

Arcadius grabbed her elbow, pulling her
toward the living room. They skidded to a halt at the sound of
glass shattering.

Mario’s boys were breaking the street door
window. Mario must have called them away from body disposal. The
alarm didn’t go off. It wasn’t set—not that alerting the police
would help them in the short term.

“This way,” Arcadius said, yanking her after
him into the bedroom.

For a second, all she could do was goggle at
the luxurious furnishings. This absolutely wasn’t how David had
decorated it.

Rather than try to block the door with the
mammoth wardrobe—which would have been her choice of
barricade—Arcadius tore a beautiful Middle Eastern tapestry of a
boat off the wall.

“In here,” he said.

He beckoned her toward a silver hula-hoop
mysteriously inset into the paint. The area within it was strange
and shadowy. Elyse’s nerves chose then to balk.

“Hurry,” he urged. He swung one leg into what
should have been solid wall.

The street door burst open, raised male
voices quickly closing in on them. Arcadius stretched his arm to
her. There was nothing else to do. Elyse swallowed her fear,
gripped his hand, and followed him.

ELYSE seriously considered changing her name
to Alice. She seemed to have stepped through that character’s
looking glass and not just a wall. As soon as she was inside . . .
wherever they were, Arcadius grabbed the silver hoop in both hands,
using brute strength to rip it from the plaster. Her view of the
room they’d exited disappeared, leaving their current location
dim.

“There,” Arcadius said, resting the hoop
against a shadowy chair. “I’ve only removed the ring from this
side, but its absence will make it harder for the others to follow
us.”

“Follow us where?” Elyse’s breathing came
shallowly. She clutched the lamp, relieved that she still had it.
“What is this place?”

“Hold on. I’ll get the light.”

He found a switch and flipped it. Though the
fixture above them held normal looking bulbs, no bulb she knew
provided the sort of illumination that flooded through the room.
The light was as fresh and clear as sunshine, revealing—without a
doubt—that the ceiling wasn’t flat anymore. It also wasn’t low.
Blue-and-white porcelain tiles lined a lovely four-section
vault.

“Holy cow,” was all she could say. If the
space they’d left was luxurious, this put it in the shade. Their
surroundings were an
Arabian Nights
illustration come to
life: silks and rugs and pillows, all in the most delectable shades
and patterns. The tapestry Arcadius had torn from the other wall
still hung here. Its colors were even richer, the boat and waves
more lifelike.

“Sindbad,” Arcadius said, pointing to the
tall young man who stood proudly at its prow.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “This isn’t
part of my basement.”

“It’s a mirror space—a magical 3D copy
machine that automatically enhances what it replicates. See,
there’s the bed your husband supplied for the apartment. Joseph
added some belongings from our home to dress it up. He shrank them,
like your dad had someone do—or possibly did himself—to your blue
hippo. That’s why the statuette gave off an enchanted vibe.”

Too many questions whirled in her brain to
ask them all. “Who made this place?”

“Joseph. He’s a skilled magician. We should
get him out, by the way. I doubt he’s happy stuck in that
lamp.”

Elyse held the vessel out to him. Arcadius
shook his head and smiled. “I’m afraid you have to do it. A human
trapped him. Therefore, a human must set him free. It’s
inconvenient but that’s the way these matters work.”

“Don’t tell me I have to rub it!”

Arcadius grinned. “In a circle. Three times
around the seal that marks the lid.”

Elyse’s jaw had dropped. “Will he owe me
three wishes?”

“You’d be within your rights to claim them,
but between friends it’s considered rude. Also, wishes can be
tricky. Sometimes it’s best to leave them be.”

He wasn’t kidding. Or he didn’t look like he
was.

“Rub clockwise,” he specified, “and say, ‘If
you are one who honors the Holy Name, I free you from
captivity.’”

She did as he instructed. The brass hummed
each time she ran her hand around, like a pager set to vibrate.
After the third rub, Joseph smoked out so quickly she dropped the
thing. Returning to his solid man shape seemed more challenging.
Feeling like maybe she shouldn’t watch, in case he had performance
anxiety, Elyse turned her back on the churning cloud.

A real gold table, set beautifully for
serving Moroccan tea, occupied her stunned attention.

“Thank you,” Joseph’s normal voice said after
an interval. “I was getting a headache from the smell of that olive
oil.”

Elyse faced him. Arcadius’s friend looked
tired but otherwise okay. He’d smoothed his dark hair already. His
beautifully tailored suit, the same type he always wore, was only a
bit crumpled.

“You’re dressed,” she burst out.

Joseph smiled. “Everything near our skin
transforms when our bodies do.”

She rubbed her jaw, oddly self-conscious now
that she knew what he was. It was like meeting someone from a new
culture for the first time. She didn’t want to put her foot in it.
“You made this place,” she said.

“I performed the ritual. Mirror spaces take
on a spirit of their own once they’re seeded. I’m glad enough of it
was complete to shelter us.”

“How big is it?”

“Just the basement for now. Given sufficient
time and power, there’s no limit to the size a mirror space can
grow.”

“You mean you could copy the whole
brownstone? And the street? What about the people? Would the mirror
space clone them?”