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RETROGRADE
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Luna’s essence ripped free of Iksander, propelled by anger so hot it was nuclear. She’d been the perfect hitchhiker: a spark of life of with a mental finger pressed to its lips. Hooked secretly on her enemy’s C3 vertebrae, she’d held her temper through every outrage he’d engaged in.
Watching him hold the human doppelganger’s hand, hearing him speak as if he could fall for her as easily as his wife had been her breaking point.
Whomever you give your heart to will be a lucky man.
Had he learned nothing from Luna’s victory? Even now, after all he’d seen her accomplish, he refused to acknowledge her as Najat’s superior. He’d sooner bow to a clench-kneed human than a beautiful, wise empress. The insult was more than she could bear. Though she’d intended to stay with Iksander and learn his plans, rage flung her from him without regard for strategy.
Her essence hovered in the air above him invisibly.
She couldn’t stay like that forever. She needed a physical shell to maintain her power reserves. Those reserves were large at the moment; she had drunk the downfall of an entire city. Unfortunately, without a body to act as her storage cell they’d soon dissipate.
Think then, she ordered, refusing to scold herself. You’ve done some of your greatest work when you improvised.
She looked at the horrid human, so like Iksander’s wife she made Luna’s spirit crawl. How dare she comfort Najat on her way to hell! For that matter, how dare she comfort Iksander? If this . . . Georgie had to exist, better she torment him. Iksander deserved to suffer every anguish Iblis could devise.
This thought caused Luna’s intellect to pause.
There was something there: a germ of fine idea.
Her gaze fell upon the hideous table by Georgie’s bed. Only a human would construct furniture from scrap heap discards. Though the room was dark, Luna’s disembodied form didn’t need light to see. On the table that offended her, a cheaply framed photograph leaned next to a green-shaded lamp. Luna drifted closer. The picture showed a teenage Georgie within the encircling arm of a smiling woman who—considering their resemblance—had to be her mother.
Georgie mentioned her mother died when she was sixteen, after which the couple who owned the junk shop adopted her. But what if that never happened? What if Georgie reached maturity under a different influence?
Ideally, an influence Luna controlled.
Do it, Luna thought, knowing she had to act quickly. What she intended would require every drop of force in her. Impetuous but determined, she sank her essence into the photograph’s stiff paper. The image on its surface caught the arrangement of light and color from a precise moment. To her delight, Luna discovered a second memento underneath: a lock of the mother’s hair, no doubt clipped from her after death. That was even better. She could time her arrival exactly.
Serve me, the empress commanded the power she had amassed. Carry me now to the time and place I desire.
It took the suffering of an entire city to transport her where she wished. She suspected she couldn’t have done it if she’d had a body. Energy skipped back on the flow of time easier than matter.
Even so, her survival was a near thing. She’d begun her journey as a glorious sun. She arrived as a gasp of fear.
She was actually guttering, her remaining flame one breath from winking out.
No, she thought, drawing her will together. You are Luna, Empress of the City of Endless Night. You are too strong to cease to be.
With the reminder, her consciousness steadied.
She studied her surroundings. It was nighttime and raining steadily, a fact that made her glad for her current nonphysical state. Of a certainty, she was still in the human world. Directly in front of her was a sordid residence, one in a line of miserable connected boxes facing a parking lot.
A townhome, her mental translator informed her.
She drifted toward its glowing windows, taking care to preserve her diminished energy. Peering inside informed her she’d arrived successfully.
Georgie sat in a drab square room, curled up in a chair reading. Though younger than Luna’s last glimpse of her, she was recognizable. The empress would have sneered if she’d had a mouth. This teenager was no rebel, with her good girl clothes and her good girl hair. Georgie fingered the cross around her neck as Luna floated through the wall. The action seemed automatic—a nervous habit rather than a sign that Luna’s presence alarmed her.
Luna sensed at once that no man lived here. The paltry decorations were feminine, the scents and memory echoes. Georgie’s parent was a single mother—alone but for her daughter.
She appeared at the threshold with a dishtowel and a dripping plate.
“Ahem,” she said as the sixteen-year-old looked up. “Don’t you have homework?”
The girl’s cheeks flushed guiltily. Wasn’t that adorable? Georgie was embarrassed—and too principled to lie.
“I left my textbook in the car. I can’t do the assignment without it.”
“Well, if you know where it is, go get it.”
“That’s okay,” the girl demurred. “I’ll just take an Incomplete tomorrow.”
The mother scoffed. “With your perfect GPA? I don’t think so.”
“It’s raining. I saw lightning.”
“For goodness sake, Georgina, you’re not a sugar cube. A little rain won’t melt you.”
The girl’s face twisted. “Mom, you know how I feel about thunderstorms.”
“Fine. I’ll get it,” the mother huffed.
Luna would have thought this solved Georgie’s problem but evidently not.
“Mom, don’t!” she cried, leaping up. “I don’t want you going out there either.”
That was interesting. Was the girl psychic? She seemed to intuit something bad was coming. She actually gripped the mother’s arm to restrain her.
“Sweetheart,” the mother said, smoothing her daughter’s already tidy hair. “The car is barely a dozen steps from the kitchen door. I’ll be back in two shakes.”
“Mom,” Georgie pleaded.
“Don’t be silly. You can watch me from the window.”
The girl released her mother reluctantly. The instant the kitchen door creaked open, she ran to the front window. Outside now, her mother hurried down the rain-pelted concrete walk, a cheap yellow coat pulled across her head for cover.
Georgie let out a worried noise, but Luna couldn’t stay to enjoy her fear.
It was her job to increase it.
Light as a feather but not so harmless, she floated out to join the human.
She had the car door open and was rummaging underneath the seat. “Christ, Georgie,” she muttered, free to curse now that she was alone. “Why did you have to hide the book before you forgot it?”
She was shorter of breath than she should have been, the unsuspected weakness in her heart already beginning to drain her life away. Left alone, she’d be dead within the month. What Luna planned for her tonight barely counted as murder.
Murder didn’t matter, of course. Luna was dark already, and couldn’t be damned twice. No, the reason for killing the mother was convenience, not to mention the drama of allowing the girl to watch. If Georgie blamed herself for her parent’s death, Luna wouldn’t find her guilt displeasing.
A crack of thunder caused the woman’s pulse to jump.
“Crap,” she breathed, laughing nervously. “That was close.”
Almost close enough.
Come, Luna thought, forming an image of herself with hands beckoning the storm. Be my beautiful dragon. Lick your electric tongue down this pathetic human being.
The power in the sky drew nearer, its lovely proto-plasma concentrating at her command. Little persuasion was required to tweak its behavior. Nature didn’t mind doing evil’s bidding. Nature acted . . . and let the outcome be what it may. Just in case, Luna spent a few more drops of her precious power inducing a positive charge at the top of the woman’s head. As if the tempest wanted to please her, a channel sprang into being between the spot and the cloud above.
“There you are,” crowed Georgie’s mother, sitting back on her heels with the book she’d been searching for.
Luna had a tick of time to savor her anticipation, to know the girl’s nose was pressed to the window behind them. As her mother began to stand, the storm discharged. The lightning streaked fat and bright: one jagging branch that held together and didn’t split.
The woman took the full brunt.
She jerked and fell, clothes and flesh smoking. Still alive, her eyes were round with terror as her flawed heart skipped wildly. Would the organ stop? If it did, could it start again?
Luna didn’t wait to find out.
Mine, she said, holding out imaginary palms to the departing fire.
She drank down the mother’s death in a single draught, like a killer whale gulping krill. The woman’s terror was her dessert, the cherry on top the girl’s anguish. With pleasure, Luna watched Georgie run into the rain screaming.
She sobbed as she flung herself onto her mother’s corpse.
Yes, Luna thought. Cry out your little soul. All her enemies should die like this. And see their loved ones perish.
She could have lingered longer enjoying this, but that would have been irresponsible. Luna didn’t have an appropriate body yet. Obtaining one needed to be her next order of business.
Her battery fuller, she rose through the turbulent air swiftly. Apparently, she’d come a ways in time but only miles in space. Her higher vantage allowed her to identify the toy-sized train station where Iksander first met Georgie. Mountains spread out from it in ripples, their trees green now and not colored. Luna was a hop, skip, and jump from the town of Black Bear Mountain.
That was convenient.
Determined not to miss other useful intelligence, she shifted her attention east. Her interest sharpened. There was the ruined mansion Georgie had driven Iksander to, the one she claimed to be obsessed by. What had she said? The family won’t sell the rights. The term she’d used—surviving heirs—implied a limited amount.
She glanced beneath her toward Georgie. The now drenched girl was on a cell phone, frantically calling for help that would do her mother no good at all. Luna wasn’t sure how humans arranged adoptions, but surely they couldn’t happen immediately. Luna had time to get her ducks in a row, as people in this realm said.
I’ll be back for you, she promised the weeping girl.
~
AS LUCK WOULD HAVE it, four claimants to Ravenwings Plantation drew breath in the present day. Not for long, of course. Howard Kepler and his wife Irene, no children, gasped their last three hours after Georgie’s mother. Howard was in his seventies and perhaps not the best driver. Arranging for his Mercedes to spin off the road in the pouring rain was easy. His brittle bones, on the other hand, were no laughing matter. Annoyingly, he died of a broken neck the instant he and the airbag collided. Fortunately, Irene hung on long enough for the empress to acquire her life force.
She considered an alternate use for the third descendant, Ronnie Hardwick. He was fit and handsome and only twenty-two. In the end, she decided possessing a male body required too much adjustment. He died in a freak accident at his gym, his chest crushed when a rack of weights unexpectedly fell on him. To Luna’s delight, he suffocated slowly, giving her ample time to reap his energy.
His demise left only Alma West, thirty-five, female, and single. Conveniently, she resided in the next town over from Black Bear.
Alma was neither fit nor beautiful, but she would have to do. Luna shadowed her until she fell asleep in her sad spinster’s bed. Once her victim’s consciousness was passive, Luna took over. Upon awakening, the human fought the intrusion. If she’d known any magic worth comprehending, she might have kicked Luna out—despite the power the empress had recouped.
Luckily, she knew no magic at all. The worst she did was plead and panic, her will too weak to compensate for her ignorance. Within two days, Luna had completely vanquished the body’s original resident. Alma’s spirit would trouble her no more. It had passed wherever it was going as irrevocably as those of the other heirs.
Because she could, Luna spent the next few days upgrading her new shell.
She waited a few more for the Kepler estate lawyers to contact her.
What a surprise! She was now the sole owner of Ravenwings. She ignored the lawyers’ advice to sell. The land was worth something, they insisted. The ruin was a write off.
“I couldn’t sell the place,” she declined shyly, batting her recently lushed-up eyelashes. “I’ve harbored a lifelong dream of restoring it.”
When admiration warmed the lawyers’ gazes, she knew they’d be even less trouble than Alma.
~
ONE MONTH LATER, LUNA dressed carefully for her appointment at the Kind Shepherd Home for Children. The handily departed Alma had managed a cell phone store. The suits that hung in her closet were deadly dull, but Luna inferred their quality was fine for her needs today.
Like all djinn, she was good at acclimating to new cultures.
She checked her image in the bedroom mirror before she left. Her hair was wavy black now, her figure a trifle fuller than she preferred. On the grounds that brown eyes were too dreary, Luna had changed them to silver gray. Her body’s skin was smoother than she’d found it, flushed with health and dewily youthful. Humans who’d known her before would assume Alma had had things “done.” Indeed, a few of Alma’s girlfriends showed up at her house for a pre-arranged book club. They’d declared she looked ten years younger and asked which spa she’d used. Though Luna had been tempted to ensure they didn’t leave Alma’s house alive, she’d resisted.
So many humans going missing from a single place would draw attention. Avoiding people Alma knew would become easier soon. Only if she absolutely had to would she pick her friends off later.
At least I’m still tall, she thought to her reflection. Height wasn’t something you could fix at a spa. Alma had always enjoyed looking down on others.
Personal standards notwithstanding, she needed to be careful how much she changed. Human bodies had built-in resistance to djinn magic, assuming their operators knew the right formulas. The more Luna improved this body, the more she’d lose her advantage against possible attacks. Spirit affected flesh. For now, she was as beautiful as she dared make herself.
She locked the door to Alma’s house behind her. She hoped not to reside here after today, but you never knew when a previous resource might be handy. Alma’s car was nice, thankfully—a speedy silver Aston Martin on which the human must have blown a chunk of her previously limited Kepler cash.
The engine purred like a cat with Luna at the wheel. Though she planned to acquire a chauffeur, she quite enjoyed driving to the group home.
Kind Shepherd was a stucco-and-timber Tudor in dire need of TLC. As Luna parked at the curb in front, a crowd of varying youthful ages, uniformly ragged and unruly, played a chaotic game. To and fro they ran across the patchy yard, chasing—and obscuring—some individual among them.
Luna couldn’t make out their cries until she exited.
“Goodie Two Shoes!” they chorused. “How do you like bare feet?”
They threw a pair of white sneakers one to another, presumably just out of their victims’ reach.
“Give them back!” a new voice yelled.
A smaller teenager erupted through the crowd. It was Georgie. That pale red ponytail could belong to no other girl. She barreled into the midsection of the boy who currently held both shoes. Though she knocked him to the weedy ground, she didn’t succeed in reclaiming her footwear. He laughed and tossed them to another adolescent. Georgie growled and tried to hit the boy she straddled, but he was much larger. He caught her wiry biceps before the blow could land.
The sight of Georgie’s fury was interesting. It seemed Najat’s twin wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows.
“Oh yes,” the boy urged as she twisted atop his waist angrily. “Squirm on me some more. I guess you do like me.”
“Let me go!” Georgie demanded then, not strong enough to wrench away.
“Say ‘fuck,’ and I will,” the boy retorted. “Say ‘Jesus ate shit and died.’”
“Punk,” Georgie snarled instead.
“Ooh,” the boy taunted.
A new participant interrupted before he could continue his mockery.
“Get off my boyfriend!” this girl ordered. She swung her bunched hand at Georgie’s head, the assault a combination of punch and slap. Whatever it was meant to be, the clout connected with Georgie’s eye.
“Ow,” Georgie exclaimed, covering the injury with one palm.
The boy released her, no doubt amenable to watching girls fighting.
Though Luna wouldn’t have minded that either, she sensed an adult’s approach. She decided her goals would be better served by stopping the quarrel herself.
“That’s enough,” she said, grabbing both females by the scruff of their necks. The girl who claimed to be the young man’s sweetheart seemed startled by her strength. Georgie was too enraged to notice. Wanting their attention, Luna gave both a shake. “You two are acting like you were raised by wolves.”
“She started it,” the girlfriend accused, the standard child response to grownups.
Unfortunately for her, Luna wasn’t the sort of grownup she was used to.
“I don’t give a fuck,” she said in a voice as dark as the night itself. The girl jerked back at the power she’d put in it. Luna smiled creamily.
“Go, little girl,” she went on in the same magic-infused tone. “I don’t want to see you again.”
The girl ran—how far, Luna neither knew nor cared. She let go of Georgie.
Free now, her true target stared at her warily. Her right eye was puffing shut. Luna suspected it would turn black shortly.
Georgie didn’t get a chance to speak, whether to thank her or pose questions. A heavyset harried older female trotted down the group home’s front steps. Her lumpy brown cardigan was the ugliest garment Luna had ever seen.
“Oh Lord,” she exclaimed to Luna. “I’m so sorry. Sometimes these children get away from me. I’m Beulah. I run this madhouse. You must be Alma West. Why don’t we go inside and talk?”
Because Beulah didn’t scold the children or instruct them to give back Georgie’s shoes, Luna spared a moment to point a finger at the ruffian with possession. She mimed an unmistakable order for him to return them.
“You should ice that eye,” she threw over her shoulder to Georgie. Georgie nodded numbly but didn’t say a word.
Luna smiled to herself as she followed the home’s administrator up the uneven brick front steps. That could hardly have gone better if she’d planned it.
Her entry into the building was less agreeable. The moment she and Beulah stepped inside, the squalls of what sounded like a hundred infants assaulted her. Wails and screeches intertwined with excited babbling that was no improvement on misery. Unable to control her reaction, Luna covered her nose in horror. To go by the awful smell, more than one diaper was overdue for changing.
She didn’t want to know what Alma’s boring black pumps had just stuck to. Too shocked to continue, her legs simply stopped moving. No wonder Georgie had told Iksander her time here had been hellish!
A toddler wearing nothing but a saggy nappy stumbled into the hall in front of her.
“Juice!” he declared, seeming to offer Luna his bottle.
“Justine,” Beulah admonished the thin young woman in the chamber the toddler had escaped from. “Please keep the little ones corralled.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Justine responded faintly as Beulah resumed sailing down the passage.
Luna held her breath and followed.
To her relief, Beulah shut the door to her office firmly behind them. The sounds and smells disappeared. With at least a semblance of manners, the human offered Luna a chair before noisily dropping her own broad bottom into the seat behind the desk. With the same unwarranted self-satisfaction Luna often saw in petty potentates, Beulah folded her hands atop it.
“Now,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re interested in fostering?”
Luna was grateful she’d prepared an answer ahead of time. If she hadn’t, in that moment, she doubted she could have summoned a reason.
The administrator heard her out, nodding in approval at intervals. The only thing that took her aback was discovering Luna had a specific foster child in mind.
“Oh we couldn’t do that,” she said, shaking her head so firmly her jowls wobbled. “There are procedures. We don’t hand out children like candy.”
“Don’t you? Not even if I make a much-needed donation to the home?”
Beulah didn’t blink at the offer of a bribe—which Luna took to mean she wouldn’t refuse one.
“Donations are always welcome,” she assured her. “Georgie is special, though. Bright. Maybe a little moody now, but that’s to be expected. Her manners are lovely compared to most of the hellions who roll through here. The problem is I had a different couple in mind for her. They’re from my church and have been looking to adopt for a while. Wonderful people. Plus, they’re married and not single.”
“I may be be single, but I can certainly provide for a growing girl—nor do I rule out adoption. Georgie would have every opportunity in the world with me. A beautiful home. Higher education. Have this couple even met her? Are they prepared to take on a teenager?”
“Well,” Beulah said, her expression a bit less sure. “It’s true the Hamiltons were thinking of adopting a younger child. I just had a feeling the moment I met Georgie that they were meant for each other.”
“Everyone has feelings,” Luna said, hoping she struck the right note of dismissal. “I had a sense of fate myself when I saw her. As a female professional, I’d enjoy taking a girl old enough to mentor beneath my wing. Girls need role models, don’t you think?”
Though Luna was using magical persuasion, Beulah’s mouth pulled sideways dubiously. Some humans were naturally more resistant. Their inflated sense of self-importance made them a challenge to influence.
Since Luna wasn’t one to back down, she tried another tack. “Suppose Georgie agreed I was the right person to foster her? Perhaps you could let me take her out for a day. See if we both get on. Wouldn’t that be sensible?”
“I suppose,” Beulah said unsurely.
Luna treated her to a brilliant smile. “Wonderful! I’ll complete a few preparations and return for her tomorrow.” Suspecting the deal required a sweetener, she dug Alma’s checkbook from her purse. “Why don’t we discuss what sort of donation would help Kind Shepherd most?”
As expected, the payoff eased Beulah’s reservations. Only as Luna was getting into her car did she recall the story Georgie told Iksander. She’d been beaten to a pulp, she’d said, due to a fight for a pair of shoes. After crying herself to sleep, she’d connected psychically with Najat. Luna’s intervention had changed that chain of events. She’d rescued Georgie before she’d received major injuries.
A smile spread across her face, but not for sparing the human pain.
If she’d prevented Georgie from playing I see dead people with Najat, she had two checks in the plus column.
~
THE EMPRESS MADE HER preparations, most of which involved Ravenwings, and returned for Georgie the following day. When the girl emerged from the home, she was neat as a pin in jeans and a candy pink button-up sweater. Her face was scrubbed, her red hair combed ruler-straight, her black eye mostly covered by concealer. Luna wondered if Beulah had encouraged her in this. Georgie could have adorned a brochure for adoptable older girls. Only her sulk contradicted the pretty tale.
Though Luna could tell the teenager was curious, and that she admired Alma’s silver convertible, her demeanor as she got in the car was sullen.
The empress was too elated at her success thus far to be cast down by Georgie’s reaction. Her prize was sitting beside her, nearly within her grasp. If there’d been no work to catching her, Luna wouldn’t have enjoyed it.
“Cat got your tongue?” she teased five minutes into their windy but exhilarating drive. On the grounds that it would be more exciting, she’d put the car’s top down.
Georgie frowned and looked at her sideways. “Why are you doing this? Most women your age want to adopt babies.”
“Babies smell,” Luna said honestly. “They’re a lot of work, and frankly they’re boring. I’m interested in fostering someone I can talk to.”
“You’re a lonely old spinster,” Georgie declared.
Luna sensed the young human wanted to see if she’d be called out for her rudeness.
“Do I look like a lonely old spinster?” she asked instead.
Again Georgie shot her a suspicious sideways glance. Luna was garbed more glamorously today, in a snug red dress with a sheer white scarf that loosely wrapped her hair and billowed behind her. These were Alma’s “date” clothes, and consequently not as bleak as her business suits. Though Luna didn’t need the white-framed shades’ protection, she appreciated their stylishness.
“You look like you could get any man you want. And eat them for breakfast.”
Luna laughed, startled and pleased by this. Georgie didn’t know how right she was. “That’s an exaggeration,” she said, smoothing the sports car’s wheel. Red kid leather gloved her hands. “Though I’m gratified to see I was right about you being smart.”
Georgie said mmph and turned her gaze to the side window. She used one hand to drag her whipping hair from her face.
“I’m smart too,” Luna said, ignoring the seeming withdrawal of interest. “I recognize a girl who’s had it up to here with doing what she’s told.” This bull’s eye earned her a startled look, so Luna pressed her advantage. “I saw you fight back against those bullies. You’ve got spirit. You know there’s more to life than perfect report cards.”
“I like school,” Georgie said stubbornly. “Learning new things is fun.”
“I have lots to teach,” Luna said, honestly enough. “Things no one else in the whole world knows.”
Georgie narrowed her eyes but didn’t press Luna to explain. Her finger and thumb rubbed her golden cross. Luna concluded she wasn’t ready to admit she was intrigued.
“That’s fine,” she said, shifting the car into high gear and gunning it. “You have all day to decide if you want to kick off your good girl shoes.”
~
THE EMPRESS WASN’T worried about Georgie admiring Ravenwings. Flush with power, she’d called up a crack crew of ifrit minions to fix the place. Though inclined to mischief if not closely supervised, they made useful slaves. They’d been laboring nonstop since she’d taken possession, so to speak.
In addition to restoring the red brick mansion, the demons had cleared the entangling growth. No longer hidden by forbidding thicket, the house’s stone-surround windows gleamed in the morning sun. The breeze that riffled the emerald lawn set it shimmering like satin. Huge hundred-fifty-year-old tulip poplars shaded everything gracefully, the freshly raked pebble paths inviting worthy wanderers to draw near.
Luna doubted the plantation looked this good when it was first built.
Too impressed to hide her reaction, Georgie got out of the car and blinked. “Wow. Nice digs.”
“Georgian,” Luna said, having enjoyed a rummage through Alma’s mind during their battle for her body. “My ancestors settled here in the 1700s. Union troops used the house as a hospital. Much of the furniture was shipped over from England.”
It had been shipped—and recently—by larcenous ifrits who liberated it from scattered historic houses and museums. Georgie didn’t need to know that, of course. The girl bit her lip, visibly fighting an urge to dash everywhere at once and investigate. Luna congratulated herself on the lure she’d chosen.
“Shall we take a tour?” she suggested delicately.
Georgie’s grudging but eager nod was almost everything Luna hoped. The girl was sharp for a human, and not as quick to trust as would have been convenient. Just in case she was too sharp, Luna mentally said a spell to prevent her from discovering who and what her tour guide was.
If the enchantment needed strengthening down the road, she had no doubt she was up to it.