Tales of the Djinn: The Double (18 page)

“Sorry,” she said with a breathless laugh. “Suddenly, I’m very big.”

She was certainly very close, the curves of her figure abruptly making the air feel hot. Joseph took a step back himself. “You shouldn’t be sneaking out from the harem in broad daylight.”

He sounded an awful priss, but she simply shook her head guiltily. “I know. I should have waited. I got a message and couldn’t control myself.” She opened her hand to show him. “It’s disguised as a rose petal. Ramis smuggled it in with a bouquet for the sultana. Right under the package checkers’ noses.”

Joseph lifted the petal carefully from her palm, simultaneously impressed and alarmed. “How does it work?”

“Say ‘one for all and all for one’ and then tap it twice with your fingertip. It’s a code Ramis, Balu, and I made up when we were kids. For when we wanted to hide things from our parents.”

Joseph did as she instructed. The spell had been miniaturized to avoid detection, its activation instantaneous and neat—as good as anything Joseph himself could work. A brief burst of golden sparklers preceded the petal turning into a three-inch square of orange notepaper. The sort of handwriting only taught at exclusive schools conveyed a short message.

Sultan’s Circle in Victory Park. Midnight tomorrow. Come alone.

No sooner had he read it than the paper shifted back to a rose petal.

“That’s clever,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Ramis was a lot of fun when we were kids,” Yasmin said.

She sounded sad. Joseph wanted to squeeze her shoulder, but touching her wouldn’t have been proper. She shook off her melancholy without his help. “I should get back. You’ll contact me when you’ve made a plan?”

“We’ll send Elyse,” he said, sounding like a priss again.

Yasmin didn’t seem to notice. “Until then,” she answered with polite elegance.

Chapter Seven

WHEN
Joseph called her and Cade to the library, Elyse assumed the message from Ramis had arrived. Arcadius was there already, thumbing through the pages of a heavy volume that lay on a table heaped with books. Joseph sat on a long blue couch leaning forward, his attention on a small orange something in his hand. The room wasn’t bright, but a sunbeam from one of the high windows spotlighted the item. For the space of a blink, Joseph’s fingers looked like they were on fire.

“Is that it?” Cade asked as they approached him.

Joseph looked up. How handsome he was struck her, his face weary but masculine. She wondered what he made of Yasmin, if he found it hard not to be moved by her beauty. How did a man pretend to be a eunuch when he wasn’t one anymore?

“This is it,” he said. “Would you like to sit while I demonstrate how it works?”

They took chairs facing him across a lovely stretch of carpet. She guessed Arcadius had seen the show already. He remained standing where he was with his back to them. Only Elyse gasped when the flower petal changed to a piece of paper and back again.

Cade patted her forearm where it rested on her chair. She enjoyed his habit of reaching out to touch her, though she wasn’t afraid. Even an enemy’s magic had the power to delight her.

Cade’s response was more strategic. “Midnight tomorrow isn’t a lot of time to prepare a trap. Not when the person we’re trying to catch is as adept as that spell suggests.”

“No,” Joseph agreed. “I thought the same myself.”

“Was it really that good?” Elyse asked. “I mean, I don’t know how you judge, but I’ve seen you pull off bigger things.”

“He miniaturized the spell,” Joseph said. “And snuck it past a team of screeners with years of experience. That’s high level. My level, in point of fact.”

“I regret to say this,” Arcadius said, turning to them at last, “but whatever plan we come up with, I don’t see a way around involving Elyse in it.”

“Me?” She knew she sounded startled. Cade patted her arm again. She looked at him. He wasn’t denying his double’s words.

“Human magic overrules djinn magic,” Joseph reminded.

“You’ve done spells before,” Cade said.

“Only with your help!”

“You’ll have our help this time. We simply need the advantage your nature can bring us.”

“I’m afraid we do,” Arcadius concurred. “Believe me, I wouldn’t suggest it otherwise. I find putting women in danger abhorrent.”

Elyse wriggled uncomfortably in her chair. It wasn’t necessarily the danger that bothered her, but that the outcome depended on her not screwing up. “I won’t have to be in charge? I’ll just be pitching in?” Pitching in she enjoyed. Pitching in was her specialty.

The men exchanged glances with each other. She didn’t like that they knew something she didn’t—especially when the something might be that her worst fear was true. Cade took her hand and squeezed.

“We’ll work with you,” he said. “Anyone can develop sufficient confidence with practice.”

Ulp
, Elyse thought, praying her expression didn’t betray how
un
confident she was. Arcadius moved from the book-heaped table to sit beside Joseph on the couch. He leaned forward across his knees very much like the magician was.

“Tell me,” he said, “since I wasn’t there to see. What sorts of spells have you done already?”

She thought back to their time in Sheikh Zayd’s Bedouin camp. “I made a kettle boil by cursing at it. It ran on ifrit magic, and Joseph explained praying wouldn’t work. I put Sheikh Zayd’s men to sleep when we were escaping on the flying carpet. I guess that was impressive, but they were shooting at us and I was using panic strength—like those women who lift Volkswagens off their babies.”

“Okay,” Arcadius said, maybe a bit confused by that example. “That’s good. Anything else?”

“Oh!” She hopped a little in her chair. “I freed Joseph from an Aladdin’s lamp. That was the first magic I ever did. Mario cursed him into it, and since he was human, Cade said only another human could get him out. That was fun. For me, anyway. Maybe not for Joseph.”

“It sounds as if you three had a few adventures. And also that you have enough natural talent to pull off what we’ll ask of you.”

“Ah,” she said, realizing where his line of questioning had led. “You’re trying to build me up. That was pretty slick.”

When Arcadius smiled, she felt like a foot soldier a famous general had patted on the back.

Joseph was thinking ahead. “Sucking Ramis in a lamp might be feasible. Elyse has accomplished the reverse already. Better still, being turned to smoke won’t kill him. We could question him about Mario and their operation at our leisure.”

“She’ll need to practice,” Cade pointed out.

“Not on you,” Joseph said. “And not on me, if you’d allow me to bow out. I’ve finally recovered from Mario forcing me into smoke form. I’d rather not risk losing my ability to change again.”

The men turned their eyes to Arcadius. He sat straighter in alarm, his former smile wiped away. “You want me to be her guinea pig? What if my abilities get screwed up like Joseph’s?”

“They probably won’t,” Joseph said.

“Probably!”

“Cade recovered from Mario’s compulsion much sooner than I did. And you’re made of the same stuff as him.”

“It’s for a good cause,” Cade added.

“You do it then.”

“I trust her too much. She needs resistance to work against. Plus, you’ve been having trouble changing on your own. You haven’t got full-strength skills to lose. Really, you’re the ideal test subject.”

Arcadius heaved a sigh.

“Guys,” Elyse said. “If he doesn’t want to, I don’t think we should force him.”

“No, no,” Arcadius said with his head wagging. “As your people say, I’ll take one for the team.”

~

The first thing Joseph did was help her memorize the chant. Some djinn magic seemed to be made up on the fly. This was a specific formula, done in the name of King Solomon from the Bible and requiring her to visualize a special seal at the same time that she said it.

“What if I forget a word?” she asked after twenty minutes hunched with Joseph over the leather bound spell book.

“You’ll practice,” Joseph said—not the most reassuring answer. “Here.” He slid her a piece of paper and a quill pen. “Copy the spell a couple times. That will help you remember it.”

Naturally, the pen required magic to function.

She thought she had it pretty good in an hour, which was when Joseph began fine-tuning her intonation. Trying not to complain, she knuckled the increasing ache between her brows.

“It’s supposed to be hard,” he said. “It wouldn’t be fair if humans could enslave djinn any time they wanted to.”

“It wouldn’t occur to most humans that they could.”

“Nonetheless,” Joseph said. “There’s meant to be a balance between our races. On top of which, that three wishes business really can create havoc.”

Elyse had forgotten about that part. “If I’m practicing on Arcadius, will he owe me three new wishes each time I let him out?”

“No,” Arcadius said very firmly from the nearby writing table where he’d occupied himself with paperwork. Cade had returned to their office, but her future test subject remained with them in the library.

“Yes, actually,” Joseph contradicted quietly. “But it’s considered rude to demand them and sometimes it’s dangerous.”

“You still owe me three,” she teased.

“We’re friends,” he said. “I’m sure you don’t want to put our bond on that footing.”

“I like being your friend,” Elyse admitted, a smile tugging at her lips. “I guess I’ll let you off the hook.”

Arcadius snorted. When she glanced at him, he was smiling faintly too.

“Let’s go over this a few more times,” Joseph said. “Then we’ll test it out on him.”

~

Iksander’s bed would have been more comfortable, but Arcadius preferred not to let Elyse experiment on him in those surroundings. His attraction to her wasn’t Joseph’s business, though—given how sharp he was—the magician had probably noticed it. He wondered how the other him and Joseph had become so familiar in so short a time. Being friends with one’s associates opened one to all sorts of awkwardness.

He felt ornery and slightly nervous as he stretched on his back on the long sapphire couch. The cushions were too overstuffed for his taste, the velvet reminding him of stroking Elyse’s breasts. He shifted and willed himself not to get an erection. What had happened with Elyse and Cade in the closet had been a one-time thing.

Neither Elyse nor Joseph was paying him any attention.

“We’ll use this in place of a lamp,” Joseph said, handing her a fat bellied brass vessel. “I’ve drawn Solomon’s seal on the side. Feel free to stare at it and get it set in your mind before you start your chant. Once all the commander’s smoke is inside, slap this fitted iron stopper into the opening. It also has the seal on it and will prevent him from smoking right back out. I want you to cultivate the habit of securing your captive immediately.”

“Right,” Elyse said, not sounding sure at all. She looked at Arcadius and pulled an apologetic face.

It really was sort of sweet.
Resist her,
he thought.
She needs something to work against.

“Just do it,” he said grumpily.

Nothing happened the first ten times she said the chant.

“Keep repeating it,” Joseph instructed. “And relax your shoulders. You’re too tense.”

Her tongue began to stumble on the words.

Arcadius lost patience. “Pull yourself together. This is important!”

“I’m not one of your recruits.”

“More’s the pity. I’d whip you into shape.”

Her soft green eyes narrowed angrily, her arm tightening on the squat brass vase. She restarted the invocation, her will focused behind it now. His edges began to slip and by instinct, he fought against giving up control. He belonged to himself. No one forced him to change form but him. She chanted faster. Now his insides began to turn. It felt awful, far worse than when Joseph triggered him to shift. Joseph was a fellow djinni, and he’d been trying to be gentle. Elyse couldn’t have been gentle even if she’d wanted to. Her raw human power was a hammer, his desire to command himself the nail it was smashing on. His cells were on fire, their molecules trying to fly apart. His vision blurred. He groaned with what was left of his vocal chords.

Elyse lost her nerve and let go.

His physical self snapped back from the half-smoke state. The sensation was like packing two hours of spinning into two seconds. He jumped up to escape the effect and his head whirled the other way. Before he could do a single thing to stop it, his vision went black. He had a sick sense of falling and then nothing.

He woke on the floor with Joseph’s palms smacking his cheeks sharply.

“Oh, my God,” Elyse cried. “Arcadius, I’m sorry!”

“Fuck,” he gasped. His head hurt as he sat up.

“Careful,” Joseph said. “You fainted. And broke a statuette on the way. I’ll get something to spell the shards into.”

He fainted? That was embarrassing. Groaning, he heaved himself back onto the couch. He touched his temple, which felt sticky. His fingers came away bloody, but the cut the blood had come from seemed to have healed.

He guessed he was glad that much of his power functioned.

“I’m sorry,” Elyse repeated miserably. She’d laid her hand on his shaking shoulder. “I shouldn’t have stopped, should I?”

At least she understood that much. He found the steadiness to cover her hand with his. “Next time, you’ll do better.”

“Err,” she said. “Couldn’t I practice on a houseplant instead?”

He collapsed against the couch’s arm and considered her. Despite how terrible he felt, part of him longed to laugh. Humans weren’t supposed to be as tenderhearted as this woman. They were the rival race, the Creator’s preferred pet project. Elyse bit her lip when she saw how warmly he was gazing up at her.

“I’ll make tea,” she offered. “I know Joseph keeps some here.”

He didn’t want it to happen, but his heart softened: a bit of the tightness that was always there relaxing. “Tea would be good,” he admitted.

~

Joseph was magically good at cleaning, but Elyse suggested they switch to a different corner of the room anyway. Fresh spot, fresh start, and all that. A big leather chair with an ottoman gave Arcadius a new place to sit.