| |
Truth Seekers
—
Safiye didn’t question Yasmin’s desire to retire to bed with a bad headache. From her perspective, being fired, or nearly, would naturally upset her. What excuse Joseph made for escaping she didn’t know. Yasmin presumed the lie was convincing. Perhaps he claimed to be hand-patting her.
He’d agreed they shouldn’t delay making their next move. Today was Sunday. Stefan’s gathering would start breaking up tomorrow. While not impossible, poking around Milion after that would risk tipping off their targets. Joseph didn’t want to put the conspirators on their guard or—worse—drive them underground.
On her part, Yasmin would rather not give Stefan the chance to disappear more people.
Working on the premise that there was no time to spare, they flew in smoke form to the ruin they believed they’d seen him coming from. Landing in the decaying building was eerier than circling over it. Though the sun was out, the wind had kicked up since morning. Like unmoored spiderwebs, the magic of the In-Betweens blew sporadically through the air. Solidifying a heartbeat after she did, Joseph shivered as some brushed him.
He glanced doubtfully at the crumbling walls. “I hope you’re right about this. I don’t sense anything other than the usual In-Between weirdness.”
“The weirdness is camouflage,” she asserted. “Or it could be. Plus, the nearness of the edge keeps other djinn away. If you were up to skullduggery and didn’t want to be interrupted, this would be an ideal spot.”
“Okay,” he said, seeming to believe her. “Give me your hand. I want to borrow a little power and do a deeper scan.”
She laid her palm in his without hesitation. Joseph was very gentle. She barely felt the draw on her energy as he closed his eyes and went quiet.
“Hm,” he said after a few heartbeats.
“Hm, what?”
He opened his golden eyes. “There’s a stairway. A break in the ground that leads downward. Over there in the left corner.”
They waded through overgrown grasses to get to it. Yasmin thought she saw an opening. The tufts grew so thickly around the spot, shoving them aside was a two-djinni job.
“It is a stairway,” she exclaimed.
The stone steps were cracked and spackled with pale lichen. Barely wide enough for a single djinni, gloom hid their lower reaches, making it difficult to gauge how far the treads descended. A greater concentration of wild magic—which felt oddly hot and cold at once—radiated upward from the bottom.
Yasmin took a breath to steady her resolve. “Down is the logical way to go.”
“I’ll go first,” Joseph said and clasped her hand again.
Down and down they went—twenty steps, then fifty, and then she stopped counting. Joseph called up a palm light to illuminate their way. Though this was basic magic, the glow he’d summoned ebbed and flared fitfully. The magic of In-Betweens seemed to interfere with his.
When Joseph spoke, he sounded like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. “Why do I feel as if we’re approaching the cliff edge? I know we’re moving in the opposite direction.”
“That could be a spell. An illusion to discourage intruders.”
Joseph started to respond but halted in his tracks.
They’d reached the end of the steps. A strange, ancient-looking door blocked their way forward. A bad paint job scabbed its peeling surface, an assortment of ugly colors exposed by the different layers. The knob was tarnished, its decoration spartan in the extreme. Yasmin identified a peephole but no bell—manual or magic-powered. On the landing, just ahead of their dusty feet, a brown, bristled mat bore the dubious word ‘WELCOME.’
No proprietor she knew would own any of these items.
“That’s an old human door,” Joseph said. “Someone must have spelled it through a portal.”
He tried the knob, but it didn’t turn. A telltale hole pierced the plate under it.
“Do you suppose we need a physical key?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’m sensing an open sesame. Usually, I can crack other people’s codes, but this one is evading me. Something about it feels slippery.”
“The wild magic could be helping to disguise it.”
“Maybe.” He bent toward the bristly mat and lifted one corner. “Ah, there’s one of those magic cakes under here. Like the disk you found in the Ozil house’s eaves.”
She thought he’d remove it, to try to depower the protections. Instead, he dropped the mat and straightened.
“Our slipper soles are dirty. Before humans enter someone’s home, they wipe their feet on mats like these. Perhaps that’s the open sesame.”
“Surely that’s too simple.”
Joseph smiled with half his mouth. “One way to find out.”
“All right,” she said, because he seemed to be waiting for her okay. “Go ahead.”
He stepped onto the mat cautiously. He swiped his left foot, his right, and then his left once more for good measure. Yasmin held her breath but didn’t sense anything altering. When he tried the knob again, it refused to budge.
Joseph sighed. “Well, it was a worth a try.”
“Wait,” Yasmin said, her heart abruptly beating faster. “I hear movement behind the door.”
She heard footsteps approaching.
The door creaked open before they could retreat.
“Oh,” the person behind it said. “You’re not Stefan.”
“Tara,” Yasmin exclaimed, relief flooding her at the sight of the djinniya. Other than looking wan, Tara seemed unharmed. Yasmin told herself she wasn’t disappointed this secret bunker was, evidently, just an unusual love nest. Tara must be two-timing LaBass with Dimitriou.
“Thank goodness!” she went on, ignoring the shameful reaction. “We were worried about you.”
Tara cocked her head. “Why would you be worried? I’ve never been better.”
“But . . . why are you here? We heard you’d gone home.”
“I am home,” she said simply.
Actually, she didn’t say it simply but like a simpleton. The djinniya Yasmin remembered was livelier than this. Tara’s clothes were out of character as well. She wore a sleeveless, powder-blue human dress whose bodice conformed to her lush figure. Shockingly, the full, swingy skirt ended at her knees. Her calves were as bare as her arms, her feet teetering in heels. Another foreign garment—white with pale orange checks—tied snugly around her waist. Yasmin believed humans called it an apron.
Perhaps Joseph recognized it from his stay in New York. Ignoring Tara’s eccentric garb, he keyed in on something else. “Yasmin,” he said in a low aside. “Look at those red marks on her neck.”
The shapes were faint but reminded her of hands, as if someone had gripped Tara’s throat too hard.
“Manual strangulation,” he explained.
“Do come in,” Tara said, before his words could add up in Yasmin’s head. “I mustn’t forget my manners, not when you’ve come all this way.”
Yasmin and Joseph exchanged glances. May as well, his expression said.
They followed Tara into what appeared to be a home. It had chairs and couches and carpets on the floor. Windows were built into the walls but, this far underground, the scenes they looked out on were made of paint. In Yasmin’s opinion, the depictions of Milion farmland were too slapdash to fool a child. No one had bothered to animate them. They sat still and did nothing.
“Martini?” Hostess-like, Tara gestured to a brass bar cart on wheels. “My master likes one when he arrives.”
“You master?” Yasmin asked, suddenly unsure of her conclusions. “Do you mean LaBass?”
Tara waved as if swatting away a fly. “No, no. I’ve traded masters. I belong to Stefan. My existence is perfect now.”
Her voice didn’t sound like a real person’s. Horror hit Yasmin in a cold, curdling wave. Tara wasn’t a real person. Tara was a dead body with some leftover memories. Manual strangulation was a thing that killed people. Being stuffed full of magic was what allowed her to walk around.
She gasped too loudly. Joseph cleared his throat to cover the betraying sound.
Tara turned to both of them with her brows lifted in question.
“Could you show us around?” Joseph asked. “We’d love to see where you’re living now.”
She beamed at him. “I’d be delighted.”
“One thing first.” He stuck his hand in his trouser pocket and pulled it out, seemingly empty. “Do you see what I have in the center of my palm?”
Tara rose on the toes of her heels before leaning in. “There’s nothing there but a tiny speck.”
“Watch.” Joseph’s lips moved with a silent spell. The speck expanded until a shiny black rectangle filled his hand. It reminded Yasmin of human phones she’d seen pictures of. Hope flared a second before it died. Obviously, they couldn’t use this device to communicate. Scroll networks ran on magic. Humans used different stuff—‘radio’ waves, or some such thing. Otherwise, Joseph would have contacted Iksander and Arcadius already.
“What’s that?” Tara asked.
“It’s a toy. It records sounds and video. A friend brought it back from a trip for me. Would you mind if I filmed this place and you?” He asked this very gently.
He’s sorry for her, Yasmin thought.
“I wouldn’t mind,” Tara said, “but this place is a secret.”
“That’s all right. These pictures are for me. I won’t share them with anyone who shouldn’t see.”
Yasmin sensed loopholes behind his words, but they satisfied Tara. Smiling, she turned and began walking. “We’ll start with the kitchen. That’s my favorite of the rooms.”
Yasmin wouldn’t have sworn it was a kitchen if Tara hadn’t said. The spotless counters were colored plastic, the oven a metal box.
“Someone has a fetish for the Fifties,” Joseph muttered beneath his breath.
Yasmin vaguely understood what this meant.
“We have canned SPAM and Campbell’s Soup!” Tara crowed, stretching up to open a turquoise cabinet. “They’re vacuum packed to last forever. My master is so clever.”
The food seemed unfit for anything but looking at. Then again, did Tara eat anymore? Without making a fuss about it, Joseph recorded everything.
“Take a picture of my Coldspot,” Tara encouraged, stroking a tall white box with turquoise side accents. “We chill orange juice in it.”
“‘We?’” Joseph asked. “Do other djinn live here too?”
“I didn’t mean them,” Tara said with less enthusiasm. “I meant me and Stefan. But, yes, there are others. If you want, I’ll show you the dormitory.”
The word gave Yasmin a sinking feeling.
“We’d like to see it,” Joseph confirmed.
They followed her down a murky hall. The air smelled musty, as if it weren’t regularly refreshed from the outside. Yasmin noticed Tara only breathed before she spoke. Otherwise, her lungs remained motionless.
“Here they are,” the djinniya said, opening a door. “Don’t expect much. They aren’t interesting like me. You’ll have to do the lights. My master says I shouldn’t waste magic.”
Joseph spelled on a line of dim ceiling pendants. Unlike the rest of the residence, which was painted in flat dull colors, the room she’d led them to was tiled. The tiles weren’t fancy, just tan ceramic laid in a brick pattern. The courses ran up the walls and across the ceiling. The only departure from the monotony was a large brass drain in the floor.
Joseph had a question. “If this is a dormitory, where are the beds?”
Tara pushed up a lever they hadn’t noticed on coming in. Immediately, light shone out through a number of large glass squares in the walls. Yasmin estimated twenty windows altogether. Each provided a view of a room with a narrow cot and a single body laid out on it.
None of the bodies stirred when the lights came on.
“See,” Tara said. “Unless my master wakes them, they just lie there.”
“We’ll look at them all the same,” Joseph said.
Yasmin accompanied him down the line. At the third room, she let out a cry. She recognized the inhabitant.
“That’s Ivy,” Tara said. “Stefan tried to make her the favorite, but she wasn’t any good. I’m better, the master says. I’ll last a long time, he thinks.”
Familiar hand prints reddened Ivy’s unmoving throat. They were darker than the ones around Tara’s neck . . . more violent and bruised looking. Yasmin swallowed uncomfortably.
Ivy hadn’t given up easily.
“Why are you better?” Joseph asked Tara.
“I have my personality.” Tara’s hair was loose and wavy and considerably shorter than was traditional. The unfamiliar style had required a dramatic cut. With one hand, she flipped some behind her shoulder. “If you fight too much, you lose it.”
She meant if you fought being turned into a zombie.
“Tara,” Yasmin said, pushing that aside. “Do you remember how you came to be here?”
“What do you mean?”
“You used to live somewhere else, didn’t you?”
Tara’s nose wrinkled. “I was in the master’s upside house for a while. In the pretty room with my maid. It’s hard to be sure, but I might have been crying.” She touched her cheek where the multicolored spots from her haywire spell had danced. They were gone now, the same as the spark that had given her true life. “I don’t recall why I was upset. Probably it’s not important. The next thing I know I was here.” Trying to remember distressed her. When she stopped, her expression cleared. “Stefan says not to think about it. Living here is everything any female could desire.”
Joseph walked ahead of them, filming each window with his phone. As he went, he dragged the fingertips of his free hand along the tile, a seemingly idle gesture Yasmin wouldn’t have attempted. She was too unnerved to want to touch anything.
“Oh,” he said, stiffening in surprise as he turned the corner. “This room’s occupant is male.”
“I don’t know his name,” Tara said. “Stefan calls him the Handy Man.”
“Well, he has big hands.” Joseph pursed his lips thoughtfully. He glanced briefly sidewise at Tara, then lifted his arms and mimicked a strangling grip. “Yes, about the right size, I think.”
Obviously, he thought Stefan used a proxy for his killing.
His gesture triggered no response in Tara. Whatever she remembered about her death, it wasn’t specific. She pointed to a door whose presence was camouflaged by tile.
“My bedroom’s through there,” she said.
Of course, it was. Who wouldn’t want to sleep in a morgue? Joseph nodded for Tara to show them.
This room was foreign in style as well. Mint green paint clad the walls, between which two flowery yellow beds shared a small lamp table. The windows were curtained in more yellow and looked out on an alien world. Though animated, the scenes of the human town convinced even less than the farmland ones. Here, doll men in doll suits strode up dollhouse walks where their doll wives greeted them with cheek pecks. Wearing aprons like Tara’s, the women’s arms hugged bowls whose mystery contents they never ceased stirring.
Tara sighed happily as the window loop recommenced. “Isn’t it nice? The other night, when we first tried it out, Stefan made Ivy lie on the second bed. He said it’s exciting to have an audience.”
Yasmin’s stomach clenched. Dimitriou had sex with what remained of Tara here, while what remained of Ivy watched. This was why he’d encouraged Safiye to lie back and enjoy. The human decade of the Fifties wasn’t all he had a fetish for. He wanted—or needed—his partner to pretend to be deceased. When he’d left his prospective fiancée on their first night together, he risked everything to fly here. That was more than cheating. That was a compulsion. For him, this charnel house offered the only sort of union that sated him.
The realization horrified her. On the other hand, it would probably put an end to Dimitriou—and LaBass’s—political ambitions.
“Dimitriou likes sleeping with dead people,” she blurted.
She’d grown accustomed to Tara not understanding what she said.
“That’s not nice,” the female reproached, unexpectedly comprehending this.
She frowned strongly, her fists planted at her waist where the blue skirt poofed.
“Sorry,” Yasmin said. “I, uh, didn’t mean to suggest you weren’t . . .”
She trailed off, not sure what she ought to explain. Did Tara know she was dead? If she found out, would it upset her?
“You acted like you thought my house was nice,” the soulless corpse accused. “As if you were my friend. You’re not, though, and I think you’re not the master’s friend, either. You’ll be sorry when I tell him!”
She ran from the room—zipped, really—leaving Yasmin to stare in shock. She hadn’t imagined a dead woman could move that fast.
“We’d better go after her,” Joseph said.
“She can’t be meaning to go outside. People will see her.”
“She might have another way to contact Dimitriou.”
Okay, that would be bad.
They ran through the dormitory, down the murky hall, and across the living room. They weren’t catching up very well. Tara knew the territory . . . or had better gloom vision. She didn’t trip on rugs or knock into tables the way they were.
“Shit,” Joseph panted, skidding to a stop. “I can’t hear her. How did we lose the trail?”
Could living-dead people smoke? Maybe Yasmin should try. To even the playing field.
“No,” Joseph said, catching her wrist as she began to blur. “We’re too close to the In-Betweens. I don’t want them to lure you in.”
She stopped dematerializing. She didn’t think she was at risk of that, but who knew, really? The mists weren’t predictable.
“There,” she whispered, her arm jerking up to point. “I heard a door click shut.”
The sound came from the double doors to an adjoining room. Joseph reached them first and flung both open. Inside, Tara stood by a waist-high desk, lifting an ominously familiar object toward her ear.
Dimitriou had an old-style human phone like that.
“No!” Yasmin cried, leaping for Tara before her pink-manicured index finger could turn the rotary dial.
Determined to tattle to her master, the female fought for control of the receiver. She was stronger than Yasmin was prepared for. They wrestled back and forth without either gaining ground.
“Help me,” she urged Joseph, who seemed not to know how to intervene. “That phone doesn’t use the scroll net. It’s connected by actual wire to Dimitriou’s home office.”
Joseph joined her in the fight. The two of them together managed to press Tara back onto the desktop.
Disconcertingly, she hissed through bared teeth and thrashed.
“Let go,” Joseph ordered, his hold clamped around her wrist. The strength required to subdue her brought out his ruthlessness. With all his might, he slammed the Tara’s hand against the hard surface. Yasmin heard dead bone break, but the pain a living person would have felt didn’t register for Tara. Though she seemed to lose steam with both of them fighting her, her fingers gripped her prize like steel.
“Let go,” he repeated, magical influence behind the command this time.
“She won’t obey you,” Stefan interrupted from the door, jolting all three of them around. “Only I can compel my pets.”
“Master!” Tara cried, wrenching free to run to him. Like a child whose parental savior had arrived, she hugged him tightly from the side. “How did you know I wanted you? Did you read my mind?”
“How could I, kitten? You have to have one for that to work. I found pillows stuffed under that one’s covers, and followed her trail out here. Really, Yasmin,” he clucked to her. “You might have put an effort into your subterfuge. A spell to imitate your sleeping self, at least. Your laziness insults me.”
“You checked my bed to see if I was in it?”
“Who was going to stop me? I’m master of that house too. I simply said I wanted to patch things up between you and Safiye. Friends shouldn’t be at odds when there’s so much to celebrate.” He smiled in anticipation of the news he was going to drop. “You’ll be pleased to hear Lady Toraman agreed to marry me.”
They were engaged? Yasmin tried to hide her dismay. She did a better job than Tara. The undead djinniya pouted like a teenager. “You’re marrying that awful woman? Whatever for?”
Dimitriou stroked her hair like the kitten he’d just called her. “For appearances, darling. You’re the female I care about. Here, I brought you a treat.” He drew a silvery wild magic cake from his sash pocket. “This is all for you. You can use it to heal your wrist.”
“You’re the best!” Tara seized it from him, then ran to the corner and turned her back. They heard her whispering a spell but not the words she said. Yasmin sensed Joseph straining to magically augment his hearing.
Possibly Dimitriou sensed it too.
“I must say,” he observed, drawing Joseph’s attention back. “I had my doubts about the wisdom of clueing Miss Baykal in, but your participation in her nose-poking disappoints. I thought your political principles genuine.”
“That’s not worth debating,” Joseph said. “I’m more interested in how you make those things.”
Dimitriou’s eyes half-hooded with amusement. “Of course you are.” He thought a moment and then shrugged, seeming not to mind answering. “A childhood nurse taught me the formula. She learned it from her mother, who learned it from hers in turn. All Milioners benefit from the wild magic hereabouts. It gives us more power to draw on. Alas, it evaporates. My nurse’s method preserves the advantage for later use.”
“Why would she share it with you?”
He smiled. “Why does any servant serve? In this instance, a mutual resentment toward my parents bonded us. As you might imagine, I won’t be giving up visits here when my bride and I relocate to the capital. One does have to refill the well.”
Yasmin couldn’t hide her disgust. “That isn’t the only reason you’ll return—unless you intend to set up a bunker there. Living women just aren’t the same, are they? Not even when they’re willing to roll over and play dead.”
Dimitriou laughed unashamedly. “You’re quite right. They’re not the same at all. My pets can be anything I desire whenever I desire it.”
“So long as they don’t run low on power.”
“Yes, preserving them does pose challenges. In their not-quite-alive condition, they aren’t always reliable. Memories linger, but intelligence dissipates. It’s sad, really. Do you know, the first djinni I reanimated was a lucky experiment? A friend of mine, a long-time, valued associate who for years had handled my most sensitive challenges—”
“You mean your fixer,” Joseph interjected.
“Yes, my fixer. But he thought he was my friend, and he was marvelously loyal. He died by accident, fulfilling a task for me. Since no one knew he was dead, I thought I’d tinker with his remains. See if I could bring him back and continue to get good out of him. Not being a prodigy like yourself, I exhausted my whole store of cakes reviving him. I did it though. And he was more attached to me than ever afterward.”
“He’s your Handy Man,” Joseph guessed.
Dimitriou seemed to enjoy his quickness. “Tara mentioned him, did she? He’s forgotten his name, and I’ve discovered it’s best if I don’t remind him. Upsets him quite a bit. Other than that, he’s better than obedient. I don’t have to tell him what to do. I simply hint at what I’d like. Wishing to please me, he decides on a course of action by himself. I suspect I’m splitting hairs with the universe, but as of yet, I’ve not turned ifrit. I am glad of that. That would take energy to hide.”
“You’re a gray practitioner,” Joseph said.
“Is that what it’s called? Good to know.”
“Your charity school for orphans,” Yasmin said, another conclusion springing into her mind. “You killed their parents!”
“Some of them,” Dimitriou admitted pleasantly. “Knowing that gives me a pleasant buzz when I visit them. And thank you for reminding me I need to arrange for Cedric Ozil to encounter some mishap.”
“You . . . you’re—”
“A monster?” Dimitriou suggested mockingly. “The universe doesn’t think so. In any case, you’re a fine one to talk. Aside from Iksander’s other irregularities, rumor has it your former master likes to make love in his smoke form. Your current partner can’t get it up, despite which you don’t hesitate to use him for your jollies. Maybe, Miss Baykal, you shouldn’t be shaming others’ kinks.”
“I wouldn’t equate a fetish for corpses with either of those things. Nor would your new best friends.”
“What makes you think LaBass and Co. don’t know? I believe they might. I know their sort. They’ll have vetted me down to my last ass hair. They’d might prefer having a shameful secret they can hold over me. To their mind, our city’s people would never stand for it.”
“They wouldn’t! You’d be tarred and feathered and tossed into a dungeon for good measure.”
“Perhaps you’re right. In any case, that theory need stand no test today. Not when I can so easily counter the threat you pose to me.”