Tales of the Djinn: The Double (34 page)

Then the broken bits of tattoo demon began to slither back together.

No,
Elyse thought. Mario couldn’t be doing this by himself. They’d put him on the run in the Arch of Triumph portal room. He wasn’t that powerful. She looked toward Cara, who her father was still restraining by the arms.

Elyse’s cousin was doing something funny with her hands, tapping her fingertips in odd rhythms against her thighs. Elyse realized she was
typing
spells, because her mouth was gagged. Cara was the reason Mario’s magic seemed unstoppable. She was lending her human juice to his experience and skill.

Elyse took a heartbeat to wish it were as easy to be brutal to her cousin as it was to attack a tattoo monster.

Don’t lose your nerve
, she ordered even as she hefted the shovel. Two running steps took her close enough to Cara, where she swung with all her might. She’d played baseball maybe ten times in her life. Luckily, her muscles understood what to do.

The duct tape couldn’t silence Cara’s scream as Elyse broke half the bones in her right hand.

Again,
Elyse commanded herself.

She knocked her father
and
Cara over as she shattered the left one.

Chaos erupted as Cara’s ability to bolster her boyfriend’s magic was nullified. Though she was hurt, Cara flung herself away from Leo. Elyse’s dad struggled to get up from where he’d dropped. Elyse couldn’t tell if Cade threw Mario off, or if Mario let go of him so he could help his girlfriend. Whichever it was, Arcadius took advantage of Mario’s lessened power. He roared like a Viking as he wrested control of the silver spike, driving it so far into the cinderblock that it stuck.

Tattoo demon,
Elyse remembered, grabbing the chance to smash it into smaller fragments with her shovel. This time, the smithereens stayed down.

“The girls!” Balu cried.

Elyse spun back around. Both redheads had collapsed face down on the floor. Mario gripped their silver cords in one fist. The cords still glowed, so she guessed the twins weren’t dead. Cara clung to Mario’s side as well as a person could with two broken hands. The tape still muzzled her. Presumably her fingers hurt too much to pull it off. Elyse noticed her cousin’s eyes blazed with rage. If Cara had ever had second thoughts about siding with Mario, she was over them.

Directly behind her and her boyfriend, the slowly spinning nexus pulsed.

“Stay back,” Mario warned as the two commanders advanced on him. “I can kill these girls with one good tug.”

“Let them go,” Arcadius growled, his voice as deep as it got when he was in smoke form.

“Why should I?” Mario demanded. He looked different without his tattoo: more ordinary, like a big but basically normal bald football coach.

“If you let them go, we’ll let you escape,” Cade said.

No, we won’t,
Elyse protested in her head.

“We’ll escape anyway,” Mario blustered.

“Before he closes the portal?” Cade inquired politely.

He jerked his head toward her father. Leo was on his knees rapidly whispering a spell. Could her dad close it? If he could, he’d better hurry up.

Mario’s naked face darkened. He took a securer grip on Cara’s waist. Elyse held her breath, unsure which way he’d jump. He must have decided he couldn’t fight anymore. He flung away the sisters’ cords, digging the hand that had held them into his pants pocket. He withdrew a long spiral screw, the same her father had enchanted to let people pass through this portal to a particular location in the djinn world.

The screw had taken Elyse and Cade to the Great Desert. She didn’t know where it was keyed to now. The Glorious City, maybe, or some other place Mario could start up his tricks again.

“Really, Cara?” Elyse said, appealing to her cousin one last time. “Your father’s death was for this? Giving up your life, your family, people you used to feel affection for? You want to throw that over to support this crazy-ass power-hungry gangster who wouldn’t actually love you if you hadn’t spelled him to?”

Even with a broken hand, Cara giving her the finger was unmistakable. Seeing it, Mario grinned. Elyse concluded he hadn’t registered everything she said.

“
Hasta la vista
,” he signed off, turning to swipe the tip of the key down the flickering energy.

A brighter opening parted in the nexus, beautiful rainbow-sparking rays spiking out. Mario stepped into the slit with Cara hugged tight to him.

Damn it,
Elyse thought as the light began to swallow them.

But it wasn’t over. Her father leaped to his feet and flung something through the air. Though the object spun like a dagger, it didn’t glint. It also didn’t stop the couple from escaping. It disappeared right along with them as the seam in the portal closed. One last burst of radiance squeaked through.

Then everything went dark.

Elyse heard a lot of tired men panting. She guessed the djinn couldn’t see through pitch black either. Cade pulled out the phone he’d borrowed and made its screen light up.

“Did they get through?” she asked. “Dad, what did you throw at them?”

Her dad surprised her by laughing. “I hope they got through. I threw a splinter from Shadow Wood after them. I charmed it to override the old key.”

Arcadius and Cade were kneeling beside the fallen twins, checking their vital signs. Despite the seriousness of their conditions, Arcadius flashed a grin. “You sent them to the island of ifrits?”

“I did.” Her dad looked pleased with himself. “Call me arrogant, but Mario and Cara aren’t as charming as I am. I don’t think they’ll endear themselves to their hosts. I also don’t think they’ll get away. I triple-locked the door I escaped through behind me. I didn’t want those ifrits pursuing. Even with Cara to shore him up, I doubt Mario will crack my system.”

Cade pursed his lips. “He’ll have plenty of time to work out Elyse’s revelation that Cara spelled him to love her. That will make for some comfy chats. It certainly was smart of you to save a piece of wood.”

“Benefit of experience,” her dad dismissed. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about magic, it’s that you never know what will turn out to be useful.” He propped his hands on his hips and looked around the room. “This cellar needs a good cleansing. Why don’t I take care of that while you get those girls somewhere comfortable to recuperate?”

“Don’t forget that,” Elyse said, waving at the spike now embedded in the wall.

“Yes,” her dad agreed, considering it thoughtfully. “That thing is dangerous.”

Chapter Twelve

CADE
had never been so grateful a fight was over. The threat Mario posed to his people and Elyse had struck too close to home. Banishing the sorcerer and her cousin felt like real progress. Important hurdles remained, but the breaths he drew in the aftermath were his first easy ones in a while.

Since Leo was handling cleanup, Elyse led everyone back through the cellar’s maze. Flipping on the lights made it a different place, though the illumination didn’t rouse the injured girls. Cade and Arcadius each carried one. The twins seemed to be sleeping and not unconscious—a definite improvement. To his relief, their spirits had detached from the nexuses on their own, their life force returning naturally to their bodies. Once the last of Mario’s spells wore off, he expected them to recover completely.

Also improved was the basement’s atmosphere. Cade hoped Elyse didn’t realize the spike her father had taken charge of was the same artifact Mario used to kill her husband. Though she didn’t seem traumatized by battling supernatural dangers, he’d prefer she not have to revisit David’s death—especially since the man had been sliced to pieces exactly where they’d fought.

Arcadius lifted a single brow, seeming to sense his thoughts weren’t idle.

Cade pulled a face to warn him the topic was better avoided
.
“Let’s get these girls to Elyse’s place.”

“Could we use the cellar apartment?” Balu piped up hopefully. “The others need somewhere to crash too.”

Elyse regarded him with surprise. “There’s only one bedroom. And now there’s six of you.”

“There’s the mirror space. If Joseph the Magician created it, it’s probably wicked rad.”

Shaking her head in amusement, Elyse sidestepped a tower of boxes. “Joseph is a rock star to you kids, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Balu said earnestly. “We’d love to study what he did. Probably the girls would recover faster if they were in that energy.”

“Probably you think you’d have less oversight if you were down here alone.” This dry observation came from Arcadius.

“That never occurred to me,” Balu said with unconvincing innocence. “If you want, one of you commanders could stay with us.”

Balu was no fool. Chances were, he’d calculated the likelihood of that happening. Cade had no intention of sleeping anywhere but next to Elyse. Given her obvious increasing pull on Arcadius, his double would—at the least—want to stay near as well. But Balu was right about one thing. The girls would benefit from being around djinn energy. Cade didn’t doubt they’d feel more comfortable waking among other young people from their own race.

“Do you promise not to wander outside the brownstone?” he asked sternly.

Balu nodded too quickly.

“I mean it,” Cade said. “Arcadius and I will hold you personally responsible for everyone’s compliance.”

The nervous glance Balu shot Arcadius revealed which of them intimidated him more. “Could we wander if Leo were taking us?”

“If Leo clears it with one of us beforehand.”

“Cross my heart,” Balu swore. “And we’ll take really good care of the twins. We won’t go anywhere or do anything we shouldn’t until they feel better.”

Arcadius and Cade sighed at the same time. “You won’t do anything you shouldn’t, period.”

“Right,” Balu said. “So, is it okay?”

This time the boy looked to Elyse for permission. They’d stopped outside the mechanical room. Elyse was stroking the forehead of the sleeping girl Arcadius carried. Cade noticed the girl’s brow wasn’t sweating anymore. He suspected her improvement swayed Elyse’s response.

“You’d have to be extra responsible,” she said. “More responsible than maybe you want to be. I know you think my world is cool, but it isn’t safe if you don’t know your way around. Sometimes it isn’t safe even if you do. Imagine how you’d feel if you rescued your friends from danger only to have them fall into it again. You kids deserve the chance to have a bright future.”

Balu gnawed his lip. “Is that a
yes
?”

Elyse sighed a lot like Arcadius and Cade had. “It’s a
yes
for now. You’ll have to prove you’re trustworthy.”

Balu victory-punched the air. Cade sincerely hoped they wouldn’t regret this.

~

Arcadius couldn’t quell his unease as the three of them returned to Elyse’s residence. They’d been outside already. Mario’s associates were no longer on “stake out.” Either they’d grown tired of waiting for their boss to emerge or they had other criminal fish to fry. Since they posed no present danger, Cade informed Patrizio, Celia and Jeannine that the sorcerer was defeated and that they had permission to stay in the cellar apartment. Arcadius was surprised by how enthusiastically they received the news. For one thing, it was a
cellar
. For another, they’d hardly had good experiences in the human world. Teenagers must be more resilient than he remembered being himself. The first thing Patrizio had asked was if he could use Elyse’s phone to order “real” New York pizza.

“Should we have agreed to that?” he asked.

“God knows,” Elyse shrugged off her coat and tossed it wearily to the couch. “Patrizio did promise to order salad too. Those kids need actual nutrition.”

“I mean about leaving them on their own.”

She turned to him with a surprised expression. “You seemed like you trusted them.”

“That was Cade.”

“But you didn’t argue. Anyway, I know which of you is which.”

Cade seemed to find this funny. Arcadius wished he did. Vanquishing their enemies ought to have left him ebullient. Instead, he felt like part of him still fought. He wanted to dismiss Mario’s shot at them but couldn’t.

You aren’t twins. You’re two halves of the same person—and inferior halves at that.

If anyone were the inferior half, it was Arcadius. Supposedly, he had ten percent of their spirit. The other him had ninety. Arcadius might not feel like less of a person, but he couldn’t know for sure.

Would the blood-drinking spike have slain him if Elyse hadn’t intervened? Would he even have noticed she carried an implement capable of shattering Mario’s tattoo if Cade hadn’t seen it first? He didn’t enjoy questioning himself this way, but his sense of duty demanded it.

Maybe he’d been wrong to think he deserved an equal share of her.

If Elyse noticed he was troubled, she didn’t guess the cause. She leaned on the wall for balance, bending—rather fetchingly, he thought—to pull off her seductive high-heeled shoes. The casualness of the action, the intimacy she didn’t even realize it implied, left his throat aching.

“Tell you what,” she said, wriggling her toes in relief. “We’ll call Balu in half an hour. Make sure they haven’t gone AWOL and check if the twins have woken up.”

Cade took her shoulders and kissed her mouth lightly. “Sounds like a plan. You hungry?”

“Sweaty,” she said, grimacing as she plucked at front of her sexy dress. “Probably the effect of being scared spitless.” She tiptoed up to return Cade’s kiss and grinned. “I’m glad we’re not dead. I’m going to take a shower.”

She walked toward the bathroom, dragging down her dress’s zipper with one hand on the way. She only bared a thin strip of skin, but Arcadius’s eyes felt glued to the show. Elyse really was growing accustomed to his presence.

Cade was still smiling fondly when he turned back to Arcadius. Would Arcadius have looked that relaxed and happy if Elyse were his woman too?

“You okay?” Cade said. “You seem off.”

“It really doesn’t bother you,” Arcadius said.

“What doesn’t bother me?”

“That a woman—your woman—had to save our butts in a fight.”