IF WISHES WERE

by Tanya Huff

Vicki had always hated the smell of hospitals—the smell of cleansers so overpowering that the trained police officer part of her wondered what they were hiding, while the antisocial, easily annoyed part wondered why they couldn’t use scent-free products. Nor was she fond of fluorescent lighting, the horrible pale green paint they clearly bought in bulk, and the staff cutbacks that meant nurses were working their asses off to cover the basics and, as a result, were barely maintaining a white-knuckled grip on civility.

Bottom line: she hated hospitals for the same reason everyone else did. If she was in a hospital, it meant one of two things. She’d been hurt. Or someone she loved had been hurt.

She didn’t get hurt anymore. Not in ways modern medicine would understand. Not since she’d had to choose between changing and death. Not since she’d lost everything in her old life but Mike.

She listened to his heartbeat and told herself he’d be fine.

“It’s creepy when you hang around and watch me sleep. ”

“Tough. ” There was enough light for her to see him and not nearly enough for him to see her, but he always knew when she was there. Moving out of the shadows to the side of Mike’s bed, she wrapped her fingers gently around his right hand, careful not to disturb the cannula. Most of the damage was on the left—arm broken in two places, collarbone broken in one, three cracked ribs, multiple cuts from broken glass, and impressive bruising for those impressed by that sort of thing. “Besides, it’s not like you’re providing anything else to watch. ”

“Excuse me for being boring. ” He cleared his throat, and she offered him a drink; laid the straw against his bottom lip and studied him while he swallowed. He had a purpling bruise on his cheek, but his body had absorbed enough of the impact that by the time his head had hit, he’d gotten away with only a concussion. “How are you feeling? ”

Pushing the straw away with his tongue, he snorted. “Like I went out a second-floor window and hit a Buick. ”

“You hit a Toyota. ”

“Buick’s funnier. ”

The plastic cup shattered in her hand.

“Not ready to joke about it? ” he asked as she knelt to wipe up the water with a handful of tissues.

Not ever. The aluminum bar running along the lower edge of the bed buckled in her grip. “Do you remember anything? ” she asked as she stood.

“No more than I did yesterday. ”

“So SFA. ” The wet tissues hit the garbage with a dismissive splat.

“Pretty much. ”

The doctors called it retrograde post-traumatic amnesia. Pointed out that it was relatively common in cases of moderate to severe concussion. Offered a not even remotely reassuring number of recovery statistics involving hockey players.

He remembered going to Scarborough to question a witness. After a non-illuminating interview, he and Dave Graham, his partner, had gone into a Second Cup for a coffee, where Dave had run into one of his exes. As Dave and Cynthia caught up, Mike had taken his coffee outside to enjoy the spring sun. Someone had screamed. Mike had yelled at Dave to call it in, and he’d run toward the sound. The next thing he remembered was waking up in hospital.

Dave remembered Mike flying out the second-floor window in a shower of glass, clearing the sidewalk, and landing on the roof of a parked sedan. Police found the apartment empty of both the tenant, Amy Shaw, and of anyone who could toss a six-foot-three, heavily muscled police detective out a window. Shaw, at five-two and barely a hundred pounds, according to the neighbors, was considered more a witness than a suspect.

“You going to whammy me? ”

Vicki raised a brow at Mike’s question. “Whammy? ”

“The vampire mind-meld. ”

“You’re on the good drugs, aren’t you? ”

He ignored her. “I know—you promised to never whammy me, but, as I want the name of the jackass who threw me out a window, I’m asking. ”

“You have a concussion. I’m not playing with your brain while it’s bruised. ”

“Vicki. . . ”

“No. ” She slid back into the shadows as a nurse came into the room, and returned to Mike’s side after the woman left. “You should listen to the scary lady, Detective Celluci, and get some sleep. I’m going to go have a look at the apartment. ”

“Be nice when you whammy the uniforms, ” he murmured, eyes closing.

She bent forward, pushed a strand of hair off his forehead, and tried not to notice how much of it was gray. Kissed the damp, exposed skin, nose wrinkling at the scents of so many other people. “I always am. ”

The apartment looked more like a junk shop than a residence. Every horizontal surface was piled high with old dishes and magazines and, occasionally, a second horizontal surface, also piled high. Vicki spotted six old rotary phones, a Commodore 64, three waffle makers, and two nearly complete sets of thirty-year-old grocery-store encyclopedias. Lamps, electric and oil; velvet paintings, Elvis and otherwise; and a stack of soup tureens—identified with the help of Downton Abbey. Stepping around a disemboweled vacuum cleaner, she found herself reluctantly impressed that when Mike had been thrown out the window, half the contents of the apartment hadn’t gone with him.

The refrigerator held a liter of milk and an assortment of aging condiments.

In the bedroom, a twin bed had been shoved into a corner; the rest of the floor space was taken up by a maze of bookcases. The contents were eclectic at best.

Vicki could smell dust, a variety of molds, and the fear stink of a human female, recently but not currently present. Her clothes were in the closet. Her toothbrush and medications were in the bathroom. The stack of mail on top of a box labeled CAT TOYS held bills and beg letters and a flyer for a chain hardware store. Vicki took photos of the bills. She found no computer, but a laptop and a phone charger filled some of the limited space on the kitchen counter.

Amy Shaw would be back.

And she’d walk right into the waiting arms of the law—who got enthusiastic about making an arrest when one of their own was attacked.

Vicki wanted a crack at her first. For exponentially the same reason.

She acquired a copy of Amy’s picture from the uniform in the stairwell: slender, mid-thirties, white female, short green hair, dark rectangular glasses, and an apparent fondness for liquid eyeliner. Amy clearly didn’t cook and, without a car, it was unlikely she traveled far to eat. Unfortunately, sunset had been at 8: 01. Vicki hadn’t gotten to the hospital until after ten, and there wasn’t a restaurant in the area that stayed open after eleven on a Tuesday. She might be the only person in Toronto who missed January and darkness by five.

For all that she’d bitched about Mike using her as a hunting dog, she couldn’t track the scent of a single woman she didn’t know through Scarborough when that scent was nearly ten hours old. The trail led down the stairs, out the back door, into an alley, along the alley to the sidewalk, and then disappeared under half a hundred footprints. A stranger in the midst of strangers.

With Mike in the hospital, she saw no point in returning to the house they shared in Downsview and drove instead to her office. She caught a familiar scent on the west wind as she got out of the car. A familiar fear. When she was three meters from the entrance to the building, the slender, green-haired woman sitting on the step raised a trembling hand.

“Don’t come any closer. ”

Vicki stopped. “Amy Shaw? ”

“That depends. ”

Sometimes it did. Appearances could be deceiving. Arbitrary identities were far from the strangest things Vicki dealt with.

“Are you Vicki Nelson? ”

“I am. ”

Amy’s arms tightened around the bundle in her lap. “I need your help. ”

Getting both of them inside while maintaining the two-meter distance Amy swore was necessary had been an inconvenience, given the double doors and keyed locks. Fortunately, the building’s other tenants had learned to ignore Vicki and her clients, although most of them weren’t sure why.

“The detective came too close. I warned him, but he didn’t listen. ” Leaning against the inside of the office door, Amy gently rocked a roll of purple fabric back and forth. “I don’t like being touched, right? So that’s what I asked for, to make it so no one touches me. ”

Vicki perched on the edge of her desk and shoved her office chair across the room. “Sit. And asked who? ”

Amy unrolled the fabric—it turned out to be a Ryerson University hoodie—and held up. . .

“A brass gravy boat? ”

“It’s a magic lamp. With a genie inside. ” Amy frowned, pulled the chair closer, and sat down. “They told me you dealt with the weird stuff. ”

“I do, ” Vicki sighed. “But hope springs eternal. ” With luck, the smell of scorched metal was coming from the lamp and not the building’s wiring. Again. “So, let me see if I understand the situation. You found the lamp. ”

“I bought it at a charity yard sale with a handheld vacuum and an old Underwood typewriter. I know a place I can get ribbons. For the typewriter, ” she added, when Vicki frowned.

“Okay, sure. When you got it home, you rubbed the lamp. ”

“It was really tarnished. ”

“Then the genie appeared. ”

“Not what I expected. ” Amy shook her head. “I mean, even if I’d been expecting a genie—and I wasn’t, right? —I wouldn’t have expected that. ”

“What? ”

“Fire that didn’t burn. ” Her heartbeat sped up. Her breathing grew shallower and faster. “A voice I could hear”—trembling fingers touched her forehead—“in my head not my ears. It said it was a genie and, as I was the owner of the lamp, it would grant me three wishes. ”

Fire that didn’t burn would make a fairly persuasive case, Vicki acknowledged. “So, you wanted to not be touched, and the genie interpreted that as ‘Toss anyone who comes within two meters out a window’? ”

“Only people intending to touch me! ” Amy protested. “Not random people in a crowd. ”

She was so defensive, Vicki frowned and wondered if she’d been at Victoria Park station yesterday morning. Two teenage boys had gone off the platform and were nearly killed by the next train. Police had assumed they’d shoved each other. Maybe not.

Amy pushed at her glasses. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. ” Arm broken in two places, collarbone broken in one, three cracked ribs, multiple cuts from broken glass, and impressive bruising. . .

“You sure about that? I doubt Detective Celluci intended to touch you. ”

“He wanted me to calm down. ”

Which might not have put touching entirely off the table. And then Vicki remembered why Mike had been in Amy’s apartment. “You screamed. Why? Was it the genie? ”

“It was my second wish. ” Her shoulders rose protectively and she curled around the lamp. “I wanted to find something that would make me special. ”

Given the state of her apartment, it wasn’t hard to work out what something meant. A lost da Vinci. The Arkenstone. Metal arm with a star on the shoulder. “And did you? What was it? ” she asked when Amy nodded. Mike wouldn’t have responded to happy screams.

Instead of answering, Amy set the sweater and the lamp on the floor and stood. She unzipped her oversized Windbreaker and let it slide off her shoulders. She was naked to the waist, but, in the grand scheme of things, bare breasts weren’t particularly notable next to a second and third set of arms. . . .

Not arms—tentacles, Vicki corrected.

. . . which unwrapped from around Amy’s waist and stretched out to either side, bifurcated tips spreading. “I found them”—all four tentacles twitched when she sketched quotes around the word found—“when I took my sweater off. Special. ”

Vicki wasn’t sure if special emerged on a laugh or a sob. “Can you control them? ”

“What difference does it make? I’m not keeping them! ” She grabbed her jacket off the chair and shoved her arms back into it. The tentacles writhed, apparently unhappy about being hidden away again. “You need to fix this! ”

“What was your third wish? ”

“I only made two. ” Elbows clamped against her sides, she struggled with the zipper. “What does my third wish have to do with—”

“Use the third wish to fix it yourself, ” Vicki snapped. It wasn’t that she was unsympathetic; she thought of Mike lying in a hospital bed. Actually, she was entirely unsympathetic.

“No. I’m using the third wish to. . . ” Amy pressed her lips tightly together into a thin, pale line.

After a moment, when Vicki was sure she wasn’t going to be told about the potential third wish, she sighed. “You’ve got tentacles. I’m not sure what you think I can do. I’m a private investigator, and there’s nothing about that to investigate. ” She allowed her voice to pick up an edge. “You’ve also acquired a potentially deadly don’t touch me zone, and that’s reason enough to take you down. ” For those two boys. For Mike.

“Take me down? ”

“You’re a danger the police can’t handle. Dealing with that’s my job. ”

“You’re supposed to help me! ”

“How? ”

Amy opened her mouth. Closed it. The sides of her Windbreaker billowed.

“You’ve got the means to help yourself, Ms. Shaw. ”

“I don’t. ”

“Use the third wish. ” If Vicki’s eyes silvered and her voice dropped past command into coercion, she figured an Amy Shaw without tentacles would thank her.

Amy’s shoulders slumped. She dropped back onto the chair and picked up the lamp. “Do it now? ” she asked in a voice that suggested she’d finally realized this was something she’d done to herself.

“Yes. ” Given time to think things over, Vicki doubted she’d go through with it.

“Here? ”

“Yes. Here and now. ”

“I didn’t intend to hurt anyone. ”

“I admit that’s a nice change. ” Most of the people Vicki dealt with fully intended to cause as much damage as possible.

Lamp cradled against her body with her left hand, Amy began rubbing it with her right. From the way the Windbreaker rippled, it seemed the tentacles had joined in.

Vicki hadn’t expected I Dream of Jeannie—in her experience, reality seldom made an accurate crossover to pop culture—but neither had she expected a trickle of flame to become a column of fire that lapped against the ceiling and threw no heat. If the genie spoke, she couldn’t hear it, but she could sense an ancient, barely restrained malevolence, and her reaction was instinctive. Her eyes silvered again, her lips drew back from her teeth, and she snarled.

It had been paying attention to Amy, much the way a child with a magnifying glass pays attention to an ant, but now it turned to her.

Vicki snarled again.

“Nightwalker? ” Beyond the flames, Amy’s voice trembled on the edge of panic. “Undead and undying. Death in the darkness. What are you talk— Blood drinker. Oh. ” And it dove off the edge. “Vampire! She’s a vampire! ”

“Amy! ” It seemed Amy’s accepting attitude toward genies didn’t extend to others in the metaphysical community. “Amy! I won’t hurt you! ”

Amy ignored her, the power in a name not enough to break the power of the genie over the one who held its lamp. “Of course I know what vampires are! No, I don’t want to die! I don’t. . . Do you promise? You won’t let her kill me? I know. I can say that. I can. I wish—”

“Amy! ” Vicki charged forward, hit the two-meter mark, and slammed against the far wall under the loft. She bounced up onto her feet, her bones too dense to break but bruises already rising.

“I wish for the genie kept captive in this lamp to be free! ”

The flame roared.

Vicki leapt onto her desk and flung herself up into the loft she used as shelter from the day, slamming the steel door behind her. She could smell paint blistering. Wood scorching.

Smoke.

Pork.

The inside of the door grew hot under the pads of her fingers.

She’d had the loft built to withstand fire. If the building went up, she wouldn’t be comfortable, but she’d survive. Although explanations, she acknowledged silently, would be a bitch.

The fire alarms in the studio should have gone off, setting off the building’s alarms. They hadn’t.

At nine minutes, the inside of the door felt cooler.

At ten, Vicki opened it.

Her office was empty. She took a quick look under the loft. Completely empty. Except for puddles of melted metal and glass and a pile of ash and bone residue by the door that looked like it had been tipped out of a cremation urn. Crematoriums burned between 1, 400 and 1, 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Wood and fabric burned at a significantly lower temperature than flesh, which explained why her furniture appeared to have been vaporized. The walls, ceiling, and floor looked scorched, but she saw no structural damage. The fire alarm and the brass lamp were the only untouched items in the room. Although the bathroom door was closed, so it was possible the plumbing had survived.

“Genie redecorating. I suspect I won’t be collecting on my insurance, ” she muttered, dropping down from the loft. Her phone and keys were in her pocket, but everything else had been lost with her purse. “I’m half inclined to hunt you down for that alone, you inconsiderate shit. ” Squatting beside Amy’s remains, she poked at the lamp. “Okay, protecting the fire alarm was you being funny—I get that. And you definitely had a few anger issues when the leash came off. But if the lamp is your prison, why not take it with you rather than risk someone using it again? ”

It was obviously still magical, or it would have been destroyed like everything else.

She poked it again. It slid about six centimeters across the floor. Smart money said genies couldn’t handle their own lamps. “At the risk of stating the obvious, Ms. Shaw, it looks like you solved your problem. ”

She watched Mike sleep. Listened to him breathe. The person who’d put him in hospital had been dealt with, and four and a half hours remained until dawn. Vicki stood in the shadows and pretended it was these most recent injuries that had aged him.

He’d be sixty in a couple of years.

She’d always be thirty-four.

“. . . say there is no way all twenty-five hundred ounces of gold could have been removed from the fourteen thousand windows of the Royal Bank Plaza. ”

Vicki stopped drying her hair and started paying more attention to the television.

“Except that all twenty-five hundred ounces are gone from both the south and the north towers, ” Ian Hanomansing of CBC News pointed out.

A muscle jumped in the jaw of the middle-aged white man with the two-hundred-dollar haircut and the three-thousand-dollar suit. “Until our investigations are complete, we’re assuming it’s a trick of the light. ”

“Because otherwise it would have to be”—Hanomansing raised an eyebrow—“magic? ”

The muscle jumped again. “And we all know there’s no such thing. ”

“Damn, genie, ” Vicki snickered, “pretty ballsy way of restoring your finances. ” Given that bankers weren’t known for thinking outside the box, the odds were extremely low they’d ask her to track the perpetrator down, so she allowed herself to enjoy the spectacle. Sure, at almost fifteen hundred dollars an ounce, it was a sizable theft, but, as evildoing went, it didn’t even register on the measure she used these days. No harm, no foul.

“As the gold was a microcoating to reduce heat, how could its removal have weakened the glass? ”

“As I said, we’re not certain the gold has been removed. ”

“The police say that the piece that killed Kai Johnston had been stripped of gold. ”

“That may have happened after it fell. ”

Harm.

And foul.

With her laptop slagged and her phone in the charger, she wrapped the towel around her waist and settled in front of Mike’s computer.

The Royal Bank could deny all it wanted, but the gold was missing and Kai Johnston, a fifty-three-year-old Hawaiian-Canadian, was dead. The triangular piece of gold-free glass that had killed him at 2: 34 in the afternoon had fallen from a shattered section covering fifteen square meters of floors thirty-one and thirty-two on the east side of the South Building. Two other people had been injured, but given the amount of glass that had fallen and the number of pedestrians often around the plaza, it was a miracle no one else had died.

The gold had been gone when the sun came up. The weakened glass had taken eight hours to fall. If it had fallen at either the beginning or the end of the workday or when the sidewalks were crowded during lunch. . . The removal of the gold couldn’t have weakened the glass, yet something had. That was the problem with magic: all bets were off.

An Internet search on genies was not particularly helpful.

“Supernatural creatures from Islamic and pre-Islamic Arabian mythology. Come from another world beyond the known world. Well, that depends on whose known world you’re referencing, doesn’t it? ” Her known world was larger than it had been. “Can take different forms. Have free will, can be good or evil. ” Vicki considered Amy’s remains, scooped into a plastic bag and currently sitting on the corner of Mike’s desk. “What do you think? ” she asked, poking the bag. “Good genie having a bad day, or psycho nutbag? What’s that? Yeah, I’m going with psycho nutbag too. It’s not all Disney out there, Ms. Shaw. ”

Searching how to defeat genies pulled up a list of gaming forums too specific to be helpful.

“Once again, people are your best resource. ”

Vicki had been changed for only nineteen years and, not surprisingly, most of the resources she’d nurtured during her years on the police force were seldom helpful in her weird new world. But Henry Fitzroy, the vampire who’d changed her, had been around for more than four hundred years—the tomb of the bastard son of Henry VIII at Richmond empty for all that time. He’d gathered an impressive Scooby Gang over the years, some of whom she’d inherited when he left Toronto. If Dr. Sagara didn’t have the information Vicki needed, she’d know where to find it.

“So, Dr. Sargara says you need information about the jinn. ” Dr. Hariri stared up at her, eyes narrowed. “For work. What exactly do you do? ”

Vicki handed him her card. “I’m a private investigator. ”

“Vicki Nelson. Otherworldly crimes a specialty? You believe a jinn has committed a crime? ”

She shrugged. “Client confidentiality, Dr. Hariri. I don’t judge. ” She could get the information and leave him unaware they’d ever spoken, but she’d rather add a new member to her HR team.

“I see. ” He tapped his upper lip with a finger, then shrugged. “What exactly do you need to know? ”

She pulled the lamp out of an old backpack and set it on Dr. Hariri’s desk. “How to get one back into one of these. ”

“That’s not. . . ” As his fingers touched the handle, he froze and leaned forward, expression shifting from dismissive to awe. “Where did you get this? ”

“My client found it at a charity yard sale. ”

“The inscription isn’t Arabic. It’s Aramaic. The lamp itself looks Assyrian, so that would put it post–Babylonian conquest, sometime between 605 and 612 B. C., which, if I’m right—and I may not be, of course; we’d have to do testing—this could be among the oldest Aramaic inscriptions ever found. Do you have any idea how incredible this is? ”

She thought of her empty office. Of Amy in her plastic bag. Of a triangular piece of glass. “Incredible is one word for it. Can you translate the inscription? ”

“Probably, but not off the top of my head. You’d need to leave it with me. ” Attention locked on the lamp, he slid it across his desk. “Something like this will take time. I’ll have to consult—”

“Dr. Hariri. ”

He met her gaze. Wet his lips. His breath slipped in and out, fast and shallow.

“Get it translated as soon as possible. ” Without breaking eye contact, she tapped the card on his desk as she stood. “Call me the moment you have a result. ”

A new club out in Parkdale meant new business opportunities, so Vicki headed west for a bite to eat. Club drugs were mostly Ecstasy, meth, and LSD, but she found an entrepreneur also selling Rohypnol and led him into the dark corner between the back of a public parking lot and the rear wall of the club.

Nostrils flared, she leaned in closer to the pulse in his throat as he pulled a leather card case out of his pocket. Few dealers used. He smelled clean.

He barely bothered to fake a smile. “So, just the candy, or can I interest you in something else? ”

Her smile was completely sincere.

The smell of fresh urine overwhelmed the stale residue at the base of the wall.

She left him propped against the fender of a Buick—Mike was right; Buick was funnier than Toyota—missing his drugs, his cash, and any desire to continue in the same business. He’d probably shake the compulsion in a day or two, but he’d see her in his nightmares for a while, and that might be enough.

In turn, she’d have to deal with the addicting taste of his terror. Make sure it was entirely out of her system before she fed like this again. Giving in to that darkness would lead to loss of self and eventually torches and stakes, and she wouldn’t do that to Mike.

When he di—

When she los—

Later, she’d have to fight to stay on this side of the light.

“You okay? ”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that? ” When Mike’s brows rose, she smiled the most human smile she had left, the one she saved for him. “Don’t worry; I ate emergency rations. ”

“Dave says Amy Shaw hasn’t been home. ”

“Smooth segue. ” He understood he couldn’t supply all her needs, but he didn’t want to hear the details. Which was fortunate, as she had no intention of telling him. “Do you remember anything yet? ”

“Not a damned thing. Doc says I might never get the memories back. ” His grip on her hand tightened. “You looking into that fatality downtown with the windows and the missing gold? ”

“Yes. ”

“Is it connected to what happened to me? ”

In the old days, Vicki had been a terrible liar. That had changed when her humanity became a lie. She thought about lying to him now, but there were too many external factors she couldn’t control to get away with it. “Yes, it is. ”

“You dealing with it? ”

“Yes, I am. ”

“Good. ” He shifted carefully, favoring his left side. “Unless I start pissing blood, they’re sending me home tomorrow. ”

No. Stay here. Where you’re safe.

One corner of his mouth curled up. “I told them I had someone who could watch me at night. ”

“I thought you didn’t like it when I did that? ”

He waggled his eyebrows lecherously. “I like it fine when you’re watching up close and personal. ”

I don’t want to watch you die.

She blinked the thought away before he could read it off her face and bent to kiss him good-bye.

“You don’t taste like drug dealer, ” he murmured against her mouth.

“I brushed my teeth. ”

She dropped Amy’s remains into the medical incinerator on her way out of the building.

“Well, if it isn’t Victory Nelson. You never text; you never call. Was it something I said? ” Mama Sweet’s arms weren’t as strong as they’d once been, but even at seventy-seven, her mind was as sharp as ever. She held Vicki out at arm’s length and frowned. “And this isn’t a social call, is it? Even though you promised me three months ago that you’d stop by for drinks. ”

“I know. I’m sorry. ” Mama Sweet didn’t accept excuses, so Vicki didn’t make any. “I’m looking for someone. I thought you might be able to help me find him. ”

“Might be able to? ” The older woman snorted and sat back down at the table, waving the three heavily muscled young men away. “Go play Poké mon or whatever it is you kids do these days. I’m safer with Victory than I am with the three of you. ”

“Poké mon? ” Vicki asked when they were alone.

“Pissing off the young is one of the greatest pleasures I have left. ” She folded her hands, the knuckles swollen and painful-looking. “What do you want? ”

“Person I’m looking for needs to convert a lot of gold. ” The genie had been locked away for a while, and gold wasn’t a viable currency anymore.

“Two downtown towers of it? ” When Vicki said nothing, Mama Sweet rolled her eyes. “Fine, don’t tell me. And in return? ”

Vicki slid a piece of paper across the table. No one came to see Mama Sweet empty-handed. She’d started out in Toronto’s Jamaican gangs in the sixties and objected to the lack of opportunities for women, and when she got out of prison—the objection had involved the application of a baseball bat—she’d worked her ass off to become the best fixer in the city. Back when she’d been on the force, Vicki had arrested her twice. She’d gotten off both times and insisted Vicki stay in touch. Which had been weird enough, but Vicki had. Over the years, Vicki’d watched Mama Sweet age, and if Mama Sweet had, in turn, noticed Vicki wasn’t aging, she hadn’t said anything. Yet.

Mama Sweet frowned at the description on the paper. “Who’s this, then? ”

“That’s the man who dumped the body of one of your people in the Don last week. ”

“And you didn’t take it to the police because? ”

“Because the police wouldn’t consider my witness credible. ” Because the police don’t believe a troll lives under the Bloor Viaduct.

“But you do. ”

It wasn’t a question, so Vicki didn’t answer it.

Paper refolded and slid into the pocket of the man’s dress shirt she wore, Mama Sweet nodded toward the door. “Wait on the porch. I’ll make a few quick calls. ”

Vicki perched on the porch rail and watched traffic go up Ossington. And down Ossington. And listened to a passing gaggle of teenagers argue in two languages. One of them might have been Farsi; she had no idea what the other was. The topic seemed obvious, given the way they were waving their phones around.

She turned when the door opened.

One of the muscular young men handed her a piece of paper and said, “Mama says a not-very-big guy beat the shit out of Two Ton until he gave up Marie Bilodeau who, in turn, gave up Eddie Ease. Mama also says come by next Tuesday evening. ” He frowned. “Bring pie. ”

Eddie Ease owned a condo in a building across from St. Lawrence Market. An upper-middle-class building beginning to show its age; the lobby looked as though it had been renovated recently to make room for a concierge. Vicki flashed her fake badge through the glass and, once the door opened, walked straight to the desk and the middle-aged white man behind it. Probably downsized recently from a better job, he clearly thought being a middle-aged white man was protection enough. Idiot.

Vicki smiled and let him fall into the silver in her eyes. “I was never here. When I leave, you won’t see me. ”

“You weren’t. I won’t! ” He licked his lips, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the desk. “I’m sorry. Please, I. . . I have a family. ”

Not as much of an idiot as she’d thought. Or a more perceptive one, at least. “Good for you. Next time, check ID and ask questions when someone flashes a badge. Don’t just open the door; these things aren’t hard to come by. ”

“I will. Thank you. I’m sorry. ”

She could feel the pull of his fear all the way to the stairs and felt it fade the moment she stepped out of sight and literally out of mind. The temptation to step back was strong. Hunger fighting control, she gritted her teeth and climbed to the sixth floor, moving too fast to register on the security cameras. Eddie Ease had a corner unit at the far end of the brightly lit, freshly painted hall. Odds were very good he kept his business away from his home.

As she walked, she sifted through the surrounding lives. Hearts beating; blood flowing, slowed in sleep.

Power.

The hair lifted off the back of her neck and continued to lift as she approached Eddie’s door. She remembered fire, and the Hunter broke loose as instinct took over from rational thought. She raised a hand to force the door. It opened just before her palm made contact.

“I didn’t hear anyone knock, ” Eddie said over his shoulder, and turned to look at her and moaned. His heart sped up. Visible skin gleamed with sweat. Blood pounded through wrists and temples and throat. Vicki snarled before she could stop herself. Eddie staggered back until he hit a wall; then he slid to the floor, eyes rolling up, consciousness surrendering to terror.

“A little extreme, don’t you think, Nightwalker? ”

The genie was. . . five-seven. Six-two. Dark. Fair. A slender Asian. A burly redhead. Female. Male. Both. Neither. No heartbeat. No blood moving temptingly under white, black, brown skin. Nails cutting half circles into her palms, Vicki pulled herself back from a darkness she didn’t own and said, “At least he wasn’t a screamer. ”

“Oh, well done. You know what I am and still manage a jest. ” It rose out of the leather club chair and became a pillar of smokeless fire. “You have found me. What do you want, Nightwalker? Have you come to pay homage? ”

“Not even close. ”

“Then why are you here? ”

She frowned, suddenly realizing she had no idea of what to do now. For fifteen years, she’d been the fastest, strongest, darkest. She’d come up with a way to find the genie, found it, and faced a pillar of fire. How did she defeat a pillar of fire? She didn’t even have the lamp.

“Ah, hubris. ” Vicki could hear the amusement in the fire’s voice. “I stand between the gods and humanity, little blood drinker. When I last walked this world, taking who and what I desired, there were heroes and sages and mighty wizards fit to challenge me. Now your wizards are children, your sages are unable to see the truth, and the only hero I have to face is you. A hero out of the darkness for a time without light. I tremble. I shake. I. . . ”

“Am a genie. You’re a genie, ” she clarified.

“Jinn. ”

“Right. Jinn. Given you’re a jinn, why do you need Eddie to change your gold to currency? You took the gold off a skyscraper. Can’t you change it yourself? ”

“I did. ” It moved aside, and Vicki saw coins spilling out of a basket on the floor next to the chrome-and-glass coffee table. “But the daric is no longer in use, and I am unfamiliar with its modern replacement. ”

Makes sense, Vicki acknowledged silently. There were more than a few Canadians still having trouble with the new plastic bills, and they hadn’t spent centuries locked in a magic lamp. And it clearly couldn’t just create what it wanted, or it wouldn’t have taken the gold. “You plan on staying around? ”

“The way to my home has long been closed. ”

A troll lived under the Bloor Viaduct. Surely the city had room for a displaced jinn?

“All right. ” Her city. Her rules. “Amy held your prison; you get a pass for frying her. Kai Johnston could be considered an accident. Don’t have any more. Humans aren’t toys; don’t play with them. If you stay, no more of them die at your hand. ”

To her surprise, the fire began to laugh. In her own defense, even given her life, laughing fire was still way out past the borders. “Oh, I have missed the ridiculous arrogance of your kind. For such enjoyment, you may live a while longer. ”

One moment, she was enclosed in flame.

The next, she stood in her empty office.

“What part of it’s creepy when you watch me sleep do you not understand? ”

Now that he was awake, Vicki settled on the side of Mike’s bed, pressed against his hip, enjoying the warmth she could feel through the thin hospital blanket. “The part where I care about being creepy. ”

“Yeah, I guess you’re a few pints past that. ” He took her hand, wrapped it in his, and pressed it to his chest over his heart. “What happened? You look thrown. And not through-a-window thrown either. Find something new in the woodpile? ” When she hesitated, he tightened his grip. “Talk to me. ”

“Not here. ” She saw a flicker of red in the corner of her eye, turned, and realized it had to have been an LED on the machine shoved into the corner of the room. Had to have been, because there was nothing else in the room. “There’s too many vulnerable people here. I need a favor, ” she added, before he could respond. “I’m waiting for a call from a Dr. Hariri. If it doesn’t come in before dawn, I want to forward it to your phone. Tell him I’ve been detained, that he should get some rest, and I’ll see him in his office at nine tomorrow—” It was five thirteen. “Tonight. ”

“You want to use my phone and you want me to pass on a message? ” The creases around Mike’s eyes deepened when he smiled. “What did your last slave die of? ”

She could hear the nurses talking down the hall. Room 417 was terminal.

“Vicki? ”

“Don’t die. ”

“Hey. . . ”

“Just don’t. ”

He studied her expression for a long moment, then kissed her knuckles. “I wasn’t planning on it. Not until I’m old and wizened and people give me shit about robbing the cradle. ”

He pulled her head down onto the right side of his chest, the side not arguing his mortality with cracked ribs, and she listened to his heartbeat and thought, Not then either.

“. . . police were already on their way, called in to assist a member of the staff having trouble with a customer. The assumption is that the two incidents aren’t connected, as a preliminary investigation by the fire marshal suggests the cause of the fire that destroyed the restaurant was most likely an exploding gas range. The customer is assumed to be among the nine dead. The fire marshal had no comment on why the fire seemed to be contained within the restaurant, not spreading to the surrounding buildings or the apartment upstairs. ”

Vicki gently leaned the bathroom door against the slightly scorched wall of her still-empty office and released the crushed handle. She had a comment. She had a few comments. Most of them involved profanity.

“The words engraved on the lamp appear to be the spell that contained the jinn. It seems the”—Dr. Hariri paused, rubbed tired eyes, and sighed—“wizard who imprisoned it wanted to ensure the jinn could be reimprisoned, should it escape. ”

“Just what I wanted to hear. ” Vicki patted the lamp. “How does it work? ”

“The words are inscribed in a circle”—he moved a book from the closest tottering pile on his desk and flipped it open to a tabbed page—“sorry, carved in a circle. The lamp is placed in the center of the circle. The jinn is summoned. That’s another spell. . . . Wait. ” He yanked at a piece of paper protruding from the bottom book.

Vicki caught the top three books as they fell.

“I had to call in a few favors. ” The notes had been written in two different colors of ink. “Fortunately, I have a colleague at Istanbul University cataloging its ancient literature collection. Took her about four hours, but she was able to put her hand on what I needed. I was fairly certain I’d read a reference to it in a 1930s dissertation, but eighty years later, there’s no telling where the manuscript might have gotten to. It was written by. . . ”

“Dr. Hariri. ”

He blinked.

“The spell? ”

“Right. We had to fill in a few words with frog DNA. . . . That’s a Jurassic Park joke. ”

“I know. ”

“It’s just you’re a little young for. . . Never mind. The spell. Problem is, it won’t work. ”

“Because of the frog DNA? ”

“No, that should hold. It was synonyms mostly. It’s because”—he pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves and opened a book even Vicki could tell was ancient—“you don’t have an angel. ”

“I’m sorry? ”

“In the Koran, jinn, humans, and angels make up the three known sapient creations of God. As jinn predate the Koran, I suspect the word angel actually refers to one of the lesser gods who helped humanity lock away certain trouble-making jinn. ”

“Okay. How do we summon this lesser god? ”

“We don’t. We can’t. Mythology is not reality, Ms. Nelson. It doesn’t matter anyway, because the angel”—Dr. Hariri touched the text with a white cotton finger—“approached the wizard. ”

“Wonderful. ” She swept her gaze around the room—at the books, at the papers, at the lamp. “All right. Back to square one. What does the lamp actually say? ”

“‘Place me in the center of words carved round’—I won’t read the words you’re to carve. ” He traced the etched lettering. “And after, ‘Summon the jinn to be sealed with immortal blood. ’”

“Say again. ”

“‘Summon—’”

“After that. ”

“‘Sealed with immortal blood’? ”

“Thank you, Dr. Hariri. You’ve been a great help. ” She picked up the lamp and the summoning spell and frowned down at the paper. “Could you write this out phonetically? ”

“He’s buying one of the last of the old warehouses on the waterfront. ” Eddie Ease twitched in Vicki’s grip. “Said he needed room to build a palace. He doesn’t want to deal with the city, so I’m acting as his agent. ”

“He’s not a he, ” Vicki growled.

“Yeah, well, that’s his choice, isn’t it? ”

To be fair, Vicki acknowledged, it was.

Vicki was impressed the jinn had found real estate in the Lower Don Lands that hadn’t already been gentrified. But then, jinn. It could be convincing in ways other buyers couldn’t.

The bulk of the warehouse had been given over to storage—a huge, two-story space with high windows and a stained concrete floor. The security lights provided an artificial dusk; plenty of light for Vicki to carve the words on the lamp into the enormous circle she’d drawn on the floor with a tire iron, a rope, and a piece of sidewalk chalk. Not her first rodeo—approximately a circle wouldn’t do. Retrieving the tire iron and setting the lamp in its place, she began gouging out the words of the spell as quickly as accuracy allowed, the concrete rolling up like lines of chunky orange peel. It was almost eleven. She didn’t have all night.

At two forty-three, she straightened, cracked her back, and moved to stand beside the lamp, paper in one hand, knife in the other, prepared to read the summoning.

“As if I wouldn’t know you were here. ” The pillar of fire moved around the outside of the circle. “As if I wouldn’t feel words of binding in a space I’d claimed as my own. ”

Probably for the best. Her French accent sucked; her phonetic Aramaic could only be worse.

“Do you assume you’re safe from me, Nightwalker, there inside the words you carved? ”

“Talking pillar of fire, ” Vicki pointed out. “I’m not assuming anything. ”

“Clever meat sack. ” It advanced toward her, crossing the spell.

Sealed with immortal blood was a little unspecific regarding the necessary volume. Figuring too much beat too little, she drew the blade of the knife across her left forearm, then her right. She hissed at the pain, and, about to be engulfed by fire, took the fight to the jinn, throwing her arms around the flames.

It screamed.

And it burned.

Vicki screamed and hung on.

The flames became a lion, fetid breath in her face as teeth tore at her shoulder.

The lion became a snake, length looped around her, her ribs cracking.

Through the pain, she wondered if she’d wandered into the wrong story. Or if the sidhe were jinn seen through a different geography and culture.

The snake became a fucking enormous crow with a beak like a pickax.

Tentacles. . .

Then a man. Broad shouldered, dark eyed, skin slippery with her blood. “I can give his youth back to you, Nightwalker. ” It smiled knowingly. “I can give you two or three times the years you have remaining. Delay the time you’ll spend in darkness without him. ”

What would she give to delay Mike’s death? To delay watching him die?

If she changed him, she’d lose him the way Henry had lost her. Vampires were apex predators and they did not, could not, share a territory. Not that it mattered; Mike would never agree to the change. He’d made that profanely clear on more than one occasion.

If the jinn changed him, made him young again. . .

. . . She would lose him the moment he realized she’d made the decision for him. It might be worth the risk with someone else. His youth restored, she could wait a year or two while he dealt with the betrayal of his trust. But that wasn’t something Mike would, or could, forgive.

She knew what the future held. He’d lose his strength. Muscles would weaken. Bones would grow fragile. Hands that now touched her with passion would turn to swollen joints and tremors. If he were lucky, his heart would fail before the rest of his body wore out a piece at a time. She would watch, forever thirty-four, as he diminished.

Died.

Rotted.

The last anchor to her humanity gone. No one left who’d known her before. No one left to say Enough.

Did it matter if he never forgave her, as long as he had a few more years before death claimed him?

Yes.

Because it wasn’t about Mike. It was about her. Always had been.

Mike would live the life he chose, and she would love him for however long that lasted. When he died—at the end of a mortal span, or next Thursday while trying to bring in a couple of Scarborough gang-bangers—she would mourn him. She would weep and she would rail and she would paint herself with the blood of the undeserving. Of the dark dregs of society who dared to live while he was dead.

And then she’d stop, because she was Vicki fucking Nelson, and if she was strong enough to watch the man she loved wither, if she was strong enough to watch him go into the ground because that was what he wanted, she was strong enough to do what she had to.

“Make a wish, Nightwalker. ”

Her lips drew back. “You have nothing I want, ” she snarled, and slammed her forehead into his nose.

He swore as he jerked back, eyes wide, nose bleeding.

Tossed his head, became fire again as a drop of blood fell. . .

. . . and hit the lamp.

Vicki stumbled, arms empty, a little faint from pain and blood loss.

Sealed with immortal blood.

“Points for originality, ” she muttered, and touched the growing lump on her forehead. “Also, ow. ”

Licking her own arms, as undignified as it felt, put the coagulant in her saliva to work, and by the time she’d eradicated the spell—not the sort of thing she wanted left lying around; that never ended well—the bleeding had stopped. A spray bottle of bleach took care of the DNA evidence—splatters of blood on a torn-up floor would be investigated sooner or later. Probably later, given the backlog in the labs Mike kept complaining about, but, still, no point in being careless.

The lamp. . . Three wishes and, after, the jinn would still be confined.

Glass falling.

Mike thrown through a window.

And the sort of metaphysical SOB who thought nothing of lives lost.

She picked up the lamp, holding it carefully so as to keep from even suggesting the faintest possibility of a rub. The brass felt warm, satin smooth, and smelled alive. She touched it to her cheek, bit through her lip, and wrapped the sneaky SOB carefully in three layers of green plastic garbage bag.

It was 5: 37. Sunrise was at 7: 25. She should wake Mike so they could spend at least part of that two hours together, both of them conscious. She’d fed on the way home—another packet of drug money donated anonymously to Covenant House. The edge taken off before Mike insisted on their reaffirming he was alive. For however much longer he had.

He threw an arm up over his head and the sheet slipped down around his waist. The gray threaded through the thick mat of his chest hair turned silver in the predawn light.

Maybe watching him sleep was a little creepy.

Vicki slipped out of her clothes and slid into bed on his right side, tucking her face into the curve of neck and shoulder, listening to his heartbeat, lips against his pulse.

The lamp was downstairs in her basement crypt, safely hidden.

Not the least bit tempting. . .

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