The primal beauty of the forest, its vibrant hues and lush foliage lost its charm once the gnats and mosquitos started swarming around.
“Can’t you tell them to buzz off,” Ryker joked.
Carver chuckled but didn’t comment.
“I can talk to animals, not bugs.” Despite the remote location and the challenges ahead, I was exhilarated. Which meant I probably needed therapy and lots of it. The toucan, whose name wasn’t Sam—it was Lo-kwahk—had been scouting ahead for us, then coming back to report when all was clear. Some other forest animals followed us at a safe distance, curious about the woman who could understand their language and her companions.
We’d had snakes, a white-tailed deer, some smaller birds, and a cute little coati that reminded me of a skinny raccoon with the tail of a cat and a tiny piggy snout at the end of its nose. The coati stayed with us long after we left the other animals’ territories.
I glanced over a few times, giving the small, sleek creature a nod and a smile. Every time, it would duck behind a tree or into a bush. For all its fear, it didn’t stop following us. After a couple of hours, I was sweaty, tired, hungry, and thirsty. On top of that, my thighs and low back were in pain.
“Can we stop for a few minutes?” I was exhausted. Maybe I should’ve taken Rose up on her offer to get me a guest pass for her gym. Of course, hindsight was twenty-twenty. I couldn’t have known at the time that I’d be hiking miles and miles through a dense forest in Mexico. “I need a break.”
Ryker dropped her packs. “We’ll take five and hydrate.”
“And carb load,” I added hopefully. The one thing I hadn’t packed for was getting stranded in the middle of nowhere without food.
“I have protein bars,” Carver said. “Vanilla or maple pecan?”
“Ooo. Maple pecan, please.” I set my bag down and used it as a seat to keep me off the forest floor. “I don’t suppose you brought your magic supplies?” I asked Carver. “I’d pay good money for a bug-be-gone potion.”
He shook his head. “I brought some items, but not my potion supplies.”
“I wish someone would’ve thought of bug spray,” I grumbled.
“Who knew you’d turn into a fireball and we’d end up trekking through a forest?” Ryker questioned. “Not me, that’s for sure.”
I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic. I took the protein bar Carver handed me and ripped open the package like a marooned sailor who’d found his first coconut. “Mmmmm,” I hummed as I chewed the first sweet bit. Oh, man, it smelled so good—like pancakes with maple syrup and toasted pecans. As hungry as I was, it tasted like a meal fit for a queen. “So good,” I said through a mouthful. “Thank heavens we don’t have to eat bugs.”
Ryker swatted at the ones flying in front of her face. “There’s plenty around if it comes down to it.” She’d taken one of the protein bars as well. She had some bottled water in her bag and passed it around. “Drink up. We still have a way to go and need to stay hydrated.”
“Were you a Girl Scout or something?” I asked.
“I was,” she said. “I was a Daisy, Brownie, Junior, and Cadette. I quit before I hit senior rank.”
“How come?” I was fascinated. This punk rock chick in front of me didn’t seem like the type to join the scouts. “What made you stop?”
“My mom got sick when I was thirteen. I was all she had, so I spent the next four years helping to take care of her until she died.” She said it so casually I almost choked on my food. “Not a lot of time for scouts when that happens.”
“Damn.” I had so much sympathy for Ryker. I’d been an adult when my mother died. Grace Everlee was a queen among mothers. I’d gotten lucky when she had chosen me to be her daughter. Her death had been devastating for all of us. I couldn’t even imagine what it would’ve been like to suffer through it as a young teenager, let alone do it alone. My sisters, brother and I had all rallied around each other, checking in and ensuring we had whatever support we needed. On top of that, we shared the responsibility of looking out for Dad. “I’m so sorry, Ryker. It must’ve been awful to be alone through all that.”
“It was a long time ago.” She shrugged and took another bite. “Sometimes it feels like another life.”
“Wasn’t she from Indonesia?” Carver asked before taking a swig of water. Carver, like me, was built more for finding the comfiest spot on the couch than running a marathon. “I think I remember you telling me she’d been a refugee when she came to the United States.”
“That’s right,” she said with a slight smile. “Mama was of Chinese descent. In the sixties, the regime in Indonesia blamed the ethnic Chinese for a failed coup attempt. After, they slaughtered over half a million Chinese Indonesians. They took land indiscriminately and imprisoned those who were spared. My mother, a true beauty, had been in hiding when a young, handsome Indonesian man found her and helped her escape to America. She never saw him again.” She gave me a sly look. “But I did. It turned out he wasn’t Indonesian at all. He was a marid djinn.”
I got goosebumps. “Your father?”
Ryker nodded. “I think he’d cared for my mother as much as a djinn can.” She gave me a meaningful look. “Are you sure you want to continue this pursuit of the ifrit? Even if we find him, I am not sure the ending will be the one you want.”
“If the ending finds him safe and free, I’ll call it a win.”
“You’re an unusual woman, Marigold.” She blinked, her wide eyes curious. Suddenly, she narrowed her gaze. “Would you like to know more about the ifrit Za’fir of Mesopotamia?”
“You’ve heard of Zev?”
“You can’t call yourself a djinnologist and not know who the most prominent working djinns are. Especially the ones who have fought to free many enslaved djinns.” She finished the last bite of her energy bar. “Including my father.”
I whipped my gaze to Carver. “Did you know this?”
He shook his head. “It’s the first I’ve heard about it.”
“It’s the reason I agreed to come in the first place.” She gave Carver a lopsided smile. “Our friendship aside, I wanted to meet the man who saved my father from an eternity of slavery and, in turn, my mother from certain death at the hands of soldiers or worse. A wealthy sultan had trapped my father for over a thousand years. Forced to do his master’s bidding. Zev freed him.”
My brow furrowed. “How?”
“By killing the sultan.”
“That’s anticlimactic.”
Carver snorted a laugh, then groaned. “I shot water out my nose.”
I shook my head and giggled. “I only meant that it seems like a pretty easy solution for someone trapped for a thousand-plus years.” My brows raised as I realized what I said. A thousand-plus years. How could the sultan live that long?”
Ryker grinned, which made her look even younger. “Now you see. This man had bargained for immortality. Taking that from him was no easy feat.”
“Wait a minute.” I scooted forward, my bag shifting under my weight. Zev once told me that there are certain wishes djinns can’t grant. Immortality was one of them. How’d the sultan manage to make it happen?”
“The sultan, a cunning man, was granted the traditional three wishes. One was that my father would serve as his closest most true advisor and defender for the rest of his life—for a djinn, not a life sentence. Most humans, especially in the late seventeen hundreds, had shorter life spans. However, the sultan's second wish was to live as long as my father lived.”
“Wow. Immortality loophole. Twisted,” I said. “Why didn’t your father let him age without dying? I’m sure once the sultan turned into a dried husk of a man, he’d have begged to get out of the wish.”
“Ah.” Ryker held up a finger. “The sultan’s third wish was to stay young in body and mind.”
“So he got to stay young in the process.”
“Yep.” Ryker took another drink of water and gestured for us to do the same.
“This guy thought of everything,” Carver said, swatting at a bug on his face.
“No doubt.” I tilted my head to Ryker. “So, how did Zev save him then?”
“As the sultan’s truest and most trusted advisor and defender, my father couldn’t allow any harm to come to the sultan as long as it was in his power to prevent it. So, Zev prevented it. He put my father in a bottle, capped it, and sealed it with his fire.”
“The old djinn jar trick,” I muttered. “I know it well.” After all, it was the reason Zev embraced his fire again.
“Then what happened? The guy was still basically immortal.”
“But immortality doesn’t grant freedom from pain and agony.”
Carver shook his head. “Zev tortured him.”
“And then some.” Ryker laughed as if she’d been there. “After your Zev sawed off the sultan’s arms with a dull knife, he gave the sultan one wish. This wish would nullify the ones he bargained for with my father. “You can live, but I will torture you until you pray for death, he told the man, or you can wish for me to stop torturing you, and I will simply kill you now. What shall it be?”
I whistled. “A real dilemma.”
“The man chose to stop the torture.”
“I bet he did.” Carver blew out a breath. “What happened after?”
“With the sultan dead, there was nothing left of him to defend. Za’fir let him out of the bottle and became his new master.”
I pressed my fingers to my lips. “Okay, another plot twist.”
“Not to worry. Zev’s three wishes were that my father would aid the helpless, when possible, find a purpose for his long life, and he would never again go back in the bottle. Effectively, he freed my father for eternity.”
Damn it. Just when I thought I couldn’t love the man more. My heart did a jumping jack. “That’s my guy.”
“He cut limbs off a guy,” Carver said. “Don’t get all romantic about it.”
“Some girls like flowers.” I gave him a feral grin. “Some like stems.”
Ryker belly laughed for nearly an entire minute. When she settled, she said, “Five minutes are up. We better get moving.”
The coati following us poked its head from behind a tree. “Hello, beautiful lady. I am Racón.”
“Oh my.” I tucked my chin. “Hello, Racón. Can I help you with something?”
“I help you, pretty lady.”
“You want to help me?” I got up from the ground. “How would you like to help me?”
“Do you understand anything that rodent is saying to her?” Ryker asked Carver as she closed her duffel.
“Nope,” he replied. “She’ll fill us in when she’s finished.”
“Here.” Racón held out a bunch of leaves in his clawed paw.
“Leaves for me?” I took them and then wrinkled my nose at their earthy but also astringent odor. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Bug away,” he chittered. “Pretty lady. No bites. No bother.”
I looked at Carver. “Racón the coati says these leaves will keep the bugs away.”
“Really?” he crossed over to me and took one of the leaf branches from me. He started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?
“Do you know what this is?”
“Please don’t tell me it’s something awful like poison ivy.” I held the leaves away from my body.
Carver shook his head. “It’s Mexican Marigold.” He laughed again. “The coati brought Mexican Marigold to an American Marigold.”
“Ha ha.” After a quick roll of my eyes, I laughed. “And it will keep the bugs away?”
“Yep,” Carver said. “And I can use it to create a repel spell to keep the bugs far away.”
“I’ll take some of that,” Ryker told him.
The toucan began to grunt and snort. “In the trees. Coming. Coming. Must go. Come.” The large bird flew off in the direction it wanted us to follow.
I rubbed the leaves on my shirt and then handed them to Carver. “We’re going to need that potion on the go,” I told Ryker and him. “Company is closing in from behind.”