The bell chimed over the door as I entered, braced a hand against the glass to slip the pumps back on, and then limped inside where I slid gratefully into an empty booth.
God, I hurt!
It took a minute to regain my composure and take stock. My elbow ached, and the scratches and road-rub along my shoulder, hip, and thigh burned, but not nearly as bad as my ankle, which was growing hotter and achier by the second. Pulling in my leg, I saw the skin was swelling, but not enough to indicate I’d sprained it.
“Hey, miss, you got to order to take up a booth!”
Yeah, yeah.
Quickly, I smoothed my hair and straightened my shirt before standing. Every muscle protested as I searched the bag for my wallet, pulling out three bucks and some change. At least the counter wasn’t too far away. Wincing, I shuffled forward in the torturous black pumps and ordered a large sweet tea and a chocolate chip cookie.
The clerk lifted an eyebrow at my appearance. “You all right?”
With a wry half-smile, I handed him the three bucks. “Yeah. You’d be amazed what a clearance sale at the Apple Store does to some people.”
He froze. “There’s a clearance sale at the Apple Store?”
“Yeah. Ends today though.”
“Dude. Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”
The door jingled. The clerk looked beyond me and gave a nod to the new person. No, I corrected, smelling the distinct scent of tar. Not a person. A jinn. Shit.
My blood pressure rose, and I mentally begged the clerk to hurry the hell up.
The jinn, I noted via a quick sideways glance, was typically large, his bulky form heightened by a Georgia Tech hoodie. He didn’t pay me any mind as he stood at my right side, his attention firmly on the overhead menu.
“Hey, Len, how’s it going?” the clerk asked as he poured my tea. “Heard about those guys who were killed yesterday in Underground. That’s wrong, man, just wrong.”
Len turned his head slightly, casting an aloof look at the clerk, the muscle in his dark gray jaw flexing.
The clerk slid my tea across the counter and pulled the cookie from the bin with a napkin. His eyes lit excitedly as he leaned forward toward Len, his voice low when he spoke. “Tennin must be calling for blood, eh?”
I grabbed the tea and cookie, pivoting just as Len turned fully toward the clerk. He hadn’t seen my face. But I didn’t miss his deep resonating voice as I walked back to the booth. “If she can’t pay, it will be in blood, yes.”
Poised and alert for an attack, I slid into the booth facing the jinn so I could watch his every move.
If I disappeared, it’d be all-out war against the jinn. But then Tennin didn’t really have a choice. Death prices and blood debts had been a way of life for the jinn for thousands of years. If Tennin looked the other way now, it’d be seen as weakness, and he hadn’t retained his position as jinn boss for this long by being weak. In fact, it was well known the guy bordered on psychotic.
As the clerk made Len’s order, I studied the broad back of the bald-headed warrior, noting his thick gunmetal neck and the beefy hands that flexed and un-flexed at his sides. They lived at the ready, always on alert, always ready to fight.
Memories of the three I’d killed came back to me. The thick black blood they’d bled; the smell of it like liquid tar and iron. I didn’t know how in the hell I’d managed to kill three of them, let alone how I was going to thwart a whole damn tribe.
As the jinn paid and approached my booth with a to-go bag, I lowered my head and broke the cookie in half, trying to temper my adrenaline so he wouldn’t smell it. I fought a two-second battle with myself. Should I glance at him as he passed? Would that be the normal thing to do, or should I ignore him?
With no time to think, I opened my mouth and shoved in half the cookie. Dim violet eyes met mine as he walked by my table.
I froze.
One dark eyebrow dipped a fraction. At my appearance? At the fact that I smiled at him with a mouth full of cookie? Or that he recognized me as the prey he was charged with bringing in?
It seemed like slow motion had kicked in as we locked gazes, but it was over in the two seconds that it happened. I didn’t let out my breath until the bell over the door stopped jingling.
I washed the lump of dry cookie down with the tea, taking a moment to decompress after my near brush with the jinn and get back on track.
Mynogan’s last words slowly crept in my head.
He’d tried to lure me with the promise of power. But why? I released a deep sigh, propped my chin in my hand, and gazed out the window. I was no closer to finding out how he knew me or why he existed in my dreams. And, for all my bumps and bruises, I’d gotten no information, not a single clue on the ash.
But one thing I did know: after seeing Cassius Mott at the rally, connecting the dots was pretty simple. Amanda was Cass’s daughter. Cass was a known drug user. And a new drug was going around. Thanks to his brother, Titus, Cass had a small fortune and access to numerous labs. He had to be involved with ash in some way, and somehow Amanda had gotten hold of it. My house and the school had been broken into. And the only relation there was Amanda, which meant someone, possibly Cass, was looking for something.
But what? My fingers tapped on the table.
Goose bumps pricked my skin. I sat straighter. They’d been looking for something they hadn’t found at school, so they’d gone to my place.
My pulse leapt. What was the one thing a kid kept on her most of the time, the one thing she kept her belongings in besides her locker? Her backpack. Bingo. And I knew exactly where that was. In the backseat of my Tahoe. When I dropped her and Em off at school the previous morning, she’d been so unusually hyper and distracted about her new Betsey Johnson handbag that it was no wonder she’d forgotten to grab her worn-out old backpack. And probably by the time Amanda realized it, she was already on her way to bliss city. The drug could’ve been coursing through her system from the moment she got into my car, and with Amanda in a coma there was no way to know for sure.
The backpack had to be it.
I got a refill on the sweet tea and then sat back down, waiting for Hank. Will was probably having a fit by now, wondering what the hell was going on with the break-ins at the house and school. I dialed his cell and then hung up before the call went through. I couldn’t explain everything to him now. He had to have seen the news, heard all the details from Hank. Bryn would probably fill him in, too, when he arrived to pick up Em.
Instead, I called Bryn at Hodgepodge and spoke briefly to her and then Emma, just to make sure Emma was okay. She couldn’t have sounded more normal or more excited that school had been cancelled and she got to spend the day with her dad. Ah, the joys of being a kid.
A horn honked outside. I turned in the booth to see Hank’s sleek Mercedes dart into an empty spot at the curb. Grabbing Bryn’s bag, I scooted from the booth with my tea, chucked the cookie wrapper, and then hobbled to the car.
All I wanted was to sink into the soft leather seat and close my eyes.
“Whoa,” Hank said as I plopped awkwardly into the seat, shoved the Styrofoam cup into the cup holder, and shut the door, “what the hell happened to you?”
I yanked down the visor mirror. Half of my twist was out, my hair long and tangled on one side and up on the other. A few scratches marred my left cheek and jaw, and my mascara was smudged. Bloody skin peeked from a large tear in the left shoulder of Bryn’s sweater. “Long story.”
He turned down the radio. “Aren’t they always?”
After I filled him in on the political rally and subsequent limo ride from hell, Hank took a good five minutes to yell at me. Again. I was really getting sick of his holier-than-thou attitude. We were cops. What did he expect? But I cut him some slack and didn’t argue back. He’d been torn in half when I’d died, and his sudden protectiveness stemmed from never wanting to go through that again. I couldn’t blame him.
“So you think Cassius Mott has something to do with this?”
“Don’t you? It fits. And I have a hunch Mott Tech isn’t far behind. Haven’t figured out how Mynogan and the jinn fit yet, but they do. I know they do.”
“Well, while you were rolling out of limos, I finally got an ID on the third jinn that attacked you and Auggie,” he said. “Guess who was signing his paycheck?”
I knew the answer to that.
“Yeah. The CPP,” Hank said.
“So Mott and the CPP could be partners, manufacturing the ash, and they’re using the jinn to distribute it. It’d be a good way to fund their campaign. And maybe Cass wants his own money, to get out from under Titus.”
“Eh, too weak. The jinn could’ve attacked you on their own, Charlie. It might have had nothing to do with the CPP. Plus the only evidence we’ve got is Auggie pointing the finger at Veritas, and Mynogan happened to be there when we went to take a look. And why would the CPP need to create a drug trade to fund their campaign when they have some of the richest nobles in the universe as members? The jinn or Cass could be solely responsible for this whole operation.”
“Thank you, counselor.” My cell phone rang again. I didn’t recognize the number. “Madigan,” I answered.
“Detective.” Titus Mott’s voice breathed relief into the phone. I held the mouthpiece and leaned over to whisper his name to Hank. “I was hoping you’d have time to come back to the lab.”
“For the physical?”
A long pause followed, and my skin tingled.
“I’ve remembered more details about your death … details I think you need to know. Will you come?”
Goose bumps spread like waves down my arms and legs. I swallowed. “Sure. When?”
“This evening, tonight … I’ll be here until morning. Come anytime.”
“All right,” I said, trying to sound casual even as warning bells were going off in my head. “This evening then.”
Mott mumbled a quick good-bye. I closed the phone and turned to Hank. “He’s scared. Spooked, like Auggie was.”
“I’m coming with you,” Hank said before I could argue. “If Cass is working with the CPP and they are responsible for the ash, Titus could be, too … I mean, they are brothers. It might be a setup, Charlie. If they are involved, they already know you’re on to them, especially after your little limo ride. You’re not going alone. We’ll go in, I’ll take off the voice-mod, and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
I turned in the seat. “Yeah, and you know it’s against the law to do that. We’d need an interrogation warrant for you to use your voice. Civil rights, remember? You go in there and question the head of the CPP and the best-known scientist since Einstein, and we’ll have the biggest lawsuit on our hands the department has ever seen.”
Sirens couldn’t just go around making people follow commands or talk against their will. It had taken years of legislature to create laws and restrictions to protect everyone from the individual powers of the off-worlders. And law enforcement, especially, had to be careful. Use a siren’s power before you had an interrogation warrant securely in hand, and it’d make everything a suspect said, criminal or not, inadmissible in court.
“Since when did you go all procedural?” Hank glanced in his rearview mirror before switching lanes.
“Since nailing the people who put Amanda in the hospital and made me enemy number one is a promise I made to my kid and myself. I’m not going to screw it up. If they’re responsible, they won’t walk free on a technicality.”
“Unless we take a mage with us. I’ll make them talk, and he’ll make them forget we were ever there.”
“If only,” I said, knowing neither one of us would go that far.
We both had suggested going off the book a time or two, and, yeah, we’d taken a lot of leeway with police procedure, but never anything that would let a suspect off the hook.
“Since we’re on the subject of you,” he said carefully, “I heard you’re thinking about giving Will another chance.”
Immediately I realized where he’d gotten his information. Emma.
This morning in the bathroom I told her I’d think about it. Now my mistake was glaringly obvious. I’d given her hope without meaning to, without considering my words and how she’d take them.
The air in the Mercedes turned tense. I swiped the tea and took a long drink.
“Is it true then?”
“I don’t know. Will’s been clean ever since that night. He’s done the twelve-step program for black crafting addiction and still attends meetings. He’s even sponsoring a new member. Who knows … maybe in the future …” I fiddled with the straw in my tea. Why did I feel like a kid suddenly in trouble, like I had to explain myself? “Everyone is guilty of bad judgment once in—”
“Bad judgment? I think it was a little more than bad judgment, Charlie! Wagering your marriage, black crafting, basically leading a whole other life in secret … Every time he lied about where he was going and what he was doing, it was premeditated. You almost died because of him. Doesn’t that matter to you?”
“Of course it does; why the hell do you think I divorced him? Jesus, Hank. Will went through a decade of black crafting addiction. That’s what addiction does, it ruins lives, takes lives, destroys everything …” Old memories grabbed hold of my heart and the never-ending reservoir of hurt closed my throat. Hank didn’t have a clue what it was like to have your entire world pulled out from under you, to grieve for the loss of the fucking fairy tale you thought you had. Fuck Hank. He didn’t know what it was like to love someone the way I had loved Will. How hard it was, even now, to stop caring completely. Twelve years of loving someone just doesn’t go away overnight, divorce or not.
Something stirred inside me, snaking beneath my skin, wanting release, wanting a fight. I swallowed it back down. “Just back off, okay? I know how you feel about it, but …” It’s none of your business.
Sometimes words didn’t need to be said aloud to be understood. I could feel him look over at me in shock.
“It is my goddamn business, Charlie, whether you like it or not.”
Fine. I turned in my seat. I knew where this was heading but I couldn’t stop myself. “Then why the hell didn’t you say anything? You’re a siren. You can sense shit like that. All that time you had to have known, and you’re going to sit here and lecture me? When you knew?”
So there it was. Finally out in the open. Hank, being an off-worlder, was way more in tune to sensing auras and the taint caused by black crafting. There was no way he had missed sensing it on Will back then. Yet he’d said nothing at the time. Had he told me, maybe that night never would have happened.
“It wasn’t my place.” He kept his eyes focused on the road.
“So first, it’s not your business. And now it is. Which is it, Hank? Because you can’t have it both ways.”
He held up his hands for a second as though he was about to make a point, but then put them back on the steering wheel. He stared ahead for a long moment, and I knew he was trying his hardest to calm down. We were both treading on the edge of an explosive situation if one of us lost it.
A thought occurred to me. “Let me ask you this then: have you sensed it on him since that night?” I certainly hadn’t, and I’d gotten pretty good at detecting the fine, smoky odor since learning of Will’s addiction.
“No.”
“Well, gee, don’t sound so happy about it,” I snapped. I returned to my proper sitting position and folded my arms over my chest. “You could give me a little credit, you know. And Will, too. He’s been clean for eight months, going to therapy once a week, and he’s a good father. So lay off him.”
My hypocrisy was not lost on me. Hank was right and he’d said everything that I’d pretty much said to Will earlier. Yet here I was taking up for Will. I knew Will was clean, and I knew it was his addiction that had caused all the trouble in our marriage. But it didn’t erase the hurt and the deep sense of betrayal I still felt.
Hank didn’t respond, and I let the subject drop.
Talking about Will gave me a rush of nervous energy. Usually a long run or a good workout put me back to rights, but there wasn’t exactly time for that. And I hated being on the outs with my partner. So, in typical fashion, I changed the subject to redirect my energy toward something I could better control. “So what do you know about the two Houses of Charbydon? Astarot and Abaddon.”
Hank took the ramp to the highway, which wasn’t the fastest way to get back to the station.
Focusing on work, on the investigation, was where we needed to put our concentration, not on bickering about the past. He seemed to agree, because his shoulders relaxed a little and his grip loosened on the steering wheel. “Not much. They’ve been at war for centuries. Mostly political, but they’ve gone to the battlefield many times over the years. The Astarots blame the Abaddons for causing their moon to fade, among other things.”
“How do you cause a moon to fade?”
“Not sure—pollution? Someone messing with the alignment, who knows? Their moon is like the sun is to our planet. It’s different than the moon here, stronger, brighter, bigger … And now it’s dying.”
“That’s what Auggie meant.” I chewed on the straw for a few seconds, and then put the cup back down. “He didn’t want to go back home. He said it was dark, too dark, that no light shined.”
“Moonlight. The days in Charbydon are said to be blacker than black, a time of rest, but the nights are bright and active.”
I remembered Carreg’s odd words in the limo, and now I realized what he’d meant. “Both Houses are working together to find a solution. That’s what Carreg was referring to in the limo.”
Hank cast me a knowing glance. “And who best to help them figure it out? Who is the best and brightest scientist this side of the Atlantic?”
“Titus Mott,” we said in unison.
“So Mott Tech is helping them revive their moon. Could be totally unrelated.”
I shook my head. “We’re missing something. We’re missing huge pieces. Don’t you feel it? Mynogan. The jinn. The Motts. Ash. My connection to Mynogan. Hell, even the dying moon. I don’t know … My gut says it’s all related somehow. Yet none of it seems to fit.”
“Well, that’s what we’re here for, kiddo,” Hank said, pulling into a parking spot near the station. “To figure it out. Maybe one of the pieces we’re missing is in Amanda’s backpack.”
“Let’s hope.”
As soon as we stopped, I slid onto the floorboard of the car, knowing the jinn had to be watching the station and the last thing I needed was to be hauled in front of Grigori Tennin. He’d have to wait. Hank set the alarm and then went inside. All he had to do was retrieve Amanda’s backpack from the backseat of my vehicle parked in the lot out back. No one would think anything of it. Sounded simple enough, but with everything that had been going wrong, I had my doubts.
A few minutes later he was back, tossing the backpack into the passenger seat above my head. As soon as he pulled away from the station, I got into the seat and searched the pink-and-black REI backpack.
Notebook. Makeup case. Geology textbook. Glitter pens. Crumpled paper and wrappers.
“Nothing.”
I checked all the front pockets. Empty. Hank parked the car in an open spot near Dewey’s Pub. “Here,” he said, grabbing the pack. He pulled out the books and leafed through them.
I fished around in the trash, hoping for a clue. The first thing I uncrumpled was a piece of notebook paper with a boy’s name written all over it. A gum wrapper … and then a pill wrapper.
“What’s this?” I asked more to myself than Hank. It was one of those individual packets with an indentation that held medicine or gum. “This is like those old square gum packs, like Chiclets.”
“Chic what?”
“Before your time,” I said, examining the packet. The strange thing was there was no brand name written on either side of the paper. I sniffed the inside, surprised to detect a honeysuckle-like scent. There was a perforation line along one edge, as though it had been separated from a bigger pack. No markings or words anywhere.
“This looks just like the other one we found on that vic near Solomon Street.” I passed the wrapper to Hank.
He studied it and then sniffed the inside, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. “Sweet,” he muttered. “Smells like the other one, too. We should get this to the lab. They’ve been dying for another sample.” He let his head fall back against the headrest, completely still, and his eyes closed for a long time. Frowning, he passed it back to me, the blue in his irises turning darker with his frustration. He scrubbed his hands down his face and sighed. “It’s the smell, though. I swear I’ve come across this scent before.”
“Sucks getting old, doesn’t it?”
“Speak for yourself.” He glanced over his shoulder to pull into traffic. “Sirens don’t age.”
“True. You don’t age on the outside, but the mind is another ballpark. Give it a few hundred years more and you’ll be like Doctor Dolittle, attracting all the little birds and creatures of the land.” I wiggled my fingers in the air as though they were little birds, flying toward Hank.
“You’re insane,” he said under his breath.
“And talking to yourself is one of the first signs.”
We stopped at a red light, and he turned to me. “Charlie … I want to apologize for what I said. I—” He stopped me when I went to speak. “Let me finish. I should have said something back then, found some way to tell you. We were still getting to know each other, and I guess, after a while, I convinced myself you knew. So I just ignored it. And you’re right, it’s none of my business now. But watching you die …” A trace of anguish crossed his face, making his eyes dim. The light turned green, and he quickly faced the windshield. “Anyway, for what it’s worth I am sorry.”
A wave of emotion lodged in my throat, and I could only nod as we drove through the intersection. I tucked the wrapper into Bryn’s large pocketbook. “Well, maybe we can lift a print from this.” Most likely not. We’d only get partial prints, if anything. And Amanda’s would be the most prevalent.
“Maybe,” he echoed.
After a long moment, he said, “I ran into the chief inside. He’s putting an undercover officer on Bryn’s place, just in case the Charbydon idea of street justice gets out of hand. It’s not hard to track you to her or to Emma.”
I hated bringing my family into this! I hated that someone was going to great lengths to use me as a scapegoat. And I had a pretty good idea who was behind it. The bastard’s black aura would never spread to my family. I’d die before I let Mynogan infect them the way he had infected me. And I sure as hell would take him down with me, if it came to that.
I caught Hank looking in the rearview mirror again. He’d taken the most roundabout way to the station, and now we were headed back toward the interstate when we were just there minutes ago.
“We’re being tailed,” he said softly.
My stomach flipped as I caught sight of a dark blue SUV in the passenger side mirror. “Mmm. Probably Len from the deli.”
“Who?”
“A jinn at the Subshop Deli. How long has he been following us?”
“Since the station for sure.”
I turned in the seat to stare directly at the car behind us. “You know we’re going to have to talk to Grigori Tennin. Get the jinn off our backs for a while.”
A snort issued from Hank’s mouth. “Yeah, good luck with that.” Then he glanced over and saw I wasn’t laughing. “Charlie—”
“What? It’s not your ass being hunted. And the way I see it, I don’t really have a choice. They’re all trying to find me and bring me into the summons anyway. No, I need to fix this now, under my terms.”
“You mean we,” Hank corrected. “We need to fix this.” He glanced in the rearview mirror, his profile going hard and grim. “Time to walk the line, kiddo. You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Anticipation fired my blood, and, despite my better judgment, I was still itching for that fight. “Absolutely.”
Hank navigated the car away from the interstate and down a small side street lined with warehouses that eventually dipped under the highway overpass. It was the perfect place for a trap. I turned in the seat, withdrew my Nitro-gun, and set the weapon to a hard freeze.
Once we cleared the overpass, the Mercedes accelerated fast, drawing away from the SUV. But no sooner than Hank had gunned it, he slammed on the brakes and did a one-eighty, turning to face the SUV, which braked hard, skidding head-on, straight toward us.
We were out of the car, weapons drawn just before the SUV’s locked-up tires came to a smoking halt inches from Hank’s fender. Before the driver had a chance to reverse, I ran to the window, aimed the gun, and ordered him out. Hank went to the passenger’s side. “All clear!” he called.
I opened the driver’s side door and stood back. “Out of the vehicle. Hands where I can see them.”
Len’s dark fingers flexed around the leather steering wheel, and his violet irises burned with rage. He wasn’t moving. Apprehending an irate jinn was like trying to put a collar on a rabid hyena. No one ever came out unscathed.
Hank came around the SUV, his weapon trained on Len. His steps were careful as he scanned the area under the overpass. “I thought you guys traveled in packs,” he said, coming to stand at my side.
Len’s answer was to spit at our feet. I cocked an eyebrow at his show of contempt. Like I hadn’t seen that one before. “Whatever.” I grabbed a handful of his hoodie and jerked him from the vehicle, holding the Nitro-gun at his back as I shoved him against the SUV’s hood and kicked out his feet with my borrowed pumps.
I pulled two knives, a set of brass knuckles, and two spell vials from his person. Hank took each one from me, examined it, and then pocketed the items. “So how much am I worth to the one who brings me in?” I asked as I patted down the insides of his thighs. “Must be a lot if you came alone.” Len must have seen an opportunity and taken it. Too bad for him.
“I don’t need help with one little female.”
Hank’s mouth dropped a fraction, obviously offended at being left out of the danger factor. “Uh, hello? Siren here … She does have a partner.”
I straightened and exchanged a wry smile with Hank, ignoring his remark. “It’s got to be the outfit.” I had to admit I did look all soft and girly in this getup. “Need I remind you,” I said to Len, “who’s got who pinned against the side of the car?”
It was never a good idea in any situation to goad a jinn, but I couldn’t help it. I had a reputation to uphold.
His muscles tensed right before he twisted around and grabbed my wrist, jerking it aside just as I squeezed the trigger. The blast skipped across the hood of the vehicle. He grappled with my arm, trying to use his force to spin me around and hold my back against his front. His beefy arm encircled my waist as his other hand still worked on trying to relieve me of my gun. I nailed him in the nose with my elbow, using every ounce of strength I had, and heard a sickening crunch for my effort.
“Any time now!” I barked at my partner, jamming the heel of my pump into Len’s shin and then dragging it down. He growled, grabbed my hair, and then jerked my head up. Pain flashed across my entire scalp, making my eyes water.
“These are second-rate, man,” Hank said to Len, examining one of the spell vials.
“Hank!” It was one thing to know your partner had complete confidence in your fighting abilities … But after I got through with Len, I was going to beat Hank senseless with one of my sister’s black pumps.
He shook one of the vials and then said, “Duck.”
The small glass tube came hurtling toward us. I barely had time to relax my body and drop through Len’s arms, despite the fact that he still had a nice chunk of my hair clenched in his fist. As I dropped, I grabbed the chunk to alleviate some of the pain even as hair began to pull from my scalp.
He let go as the vial broke against the side of his smooth, gray head, engulfing us in a cloud of muddy green stench.
Immediately, I held my breath, glad my arms were over my head, shielding me somewhat from the chain reaction above me. If I didn’t breathe it in, I was okay. Len stiffened for a count of three, then tipped over like a dead tree in the forest. Coughing from the thick scent of something acrid and tangy, I crawled out from under the small mushroom cloud. Whatever it was, it burned the insides of my nose and throat raw.
I grabbed on to Hank’s leg and pulled up, my fingers digging as hard as they could into his knee, thigh, and then arm.
He was laughing. Not out loud, but with his eyes. And to me, that was the same thing.
When I straightened and regained my balance, I shoved him hard. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I coughed again, hacking loudly and trying to get the taste out of my mouth. “Idiot! You could have shot him!”
“Yeah, I know,” Hank sighed, chuckling softly.
“I know you’re Mister Invincible and everything, but could you try to take things seriously once in a while?” I eyed him with a glare of disbelief. “You’re so annoying. Don’t even talk to me. You almost hit me with that friggin’ vial. You have no idea how lucky you are right now.”
Blue eyes glittered back at me. He tried to put on a serious face. What the hell was so damn funny? I turned to study Len, and didn’t see anything amusing about his unconscious form. I whirled back to Hank. “What the hell was in that potion?”
“It was an attraction spell. To lure a jinn female.” He rubbed his chin, studying Len. “Don’t think you’re supposed to use the entire bottle though.”
“Ya think?”
I massaged my closed eyelids, trying to ease the stinging aftereffects of the spell shower. “Come on, let’s get him into the back or else we’re gonna have the entire female jinn population sniffing him out in no time.”
“That guy’s not going anywhere near my car.” Hank made an offended face. “Neither one of you.”
I bent down and grabbed one of Len’s ankles, but not before shooting Hank a dark look. “Payback will come, my friend. When you least expect it.”
“Hey, all I did was save your ass.”
“Uh-huh. Help me get him into the SUV.”
It took Hank and me a good fifteen minutes to drag the two-hundred-fifty-pound jinn to the back of the SUV, pick him up, and deposit him into the back. I’d have to drive with the windows down all the way to Underground.