All Your Wishes (6 page)

“Where are we?” I took a seat about halfway down the table, facing the video screen. I had to crane my neck a little to see Gordon, which was a bit uncomfortable, but I didn't complain. If everybody could come in at night to help out—including Gordon and El Jefe, who didn't even work for me—I wasn't about to grumble about a sore neck.

Dawna spoke up first. “El … Dr. Landingham and Mr. Waters have been giving us general information regarding ifrits and the djinn. I've been scouring the Internet to see if there are any news reports of break-ins like the one we're dealing with. I started with Indiana, since our client works at the University of Notre Dame. I checked the campus records too. So far, no luck.”

“They probably didn't call the authorities.”

“Probably not,” she agreed. “But I figured I'd better check. Chris says that the Company wasn't called in at any point, so they don't have anything to give us.” She nodded to Tim, who took the floor.

“I contacted Mr. Levy to see if he could give me a list of mages with enough power to manage astral projection. It's a very short list.”

Kevin entered the conversation. “I'm working on finding out where each of them was at the approximate time of the break-in. I haven't gotten very far.”

I tapped my fingers on the tabletop. Astral projection was a good guess. Rahim's recording showed absolutely no evidence that a corporeal being had busted into that vault. That was the smart way to do it. No physical being, no physical evidence.

Astral projection is not common, and it certainly isn't easy, but it's possible. Astral projection with physical exertion is even more difficult to do, but it's not unheard of. If that was how it had been done, the perpetrator would have been completely exhausted for two or three days—unable to even stand or walk. That would rule out each of the three mages who'd set the trap for Rahim. They had not only been up and about, they'd had power to burn.

So, either there was a fourth to their little party or the break-in had been done another way.

A ghost could have done it. In fact, that was one hell of a lot more likely than astral projection. But talk about your bad karma. Since ghosts are already dead, how much chance do they have of working off the bad already marking their souls? It wasn't like they had a big shot at redemption.

Of course, if they
knew
they were already bound for hell …

That thought led to another, even less pleasant notion.

“Abby, are you here?” I called.

Abby is the ghost of Abigail Andrews, aka Elena Santiago. Alive, she was the adoptive mother and biological aunt of Michelle Garza, known as Michelle Andrews. Abby had gotten murdered trying to protect her daughter from a ritual bloodline curse and had hired me from beyond the grave to save the young woman. I'd managed … sort of. Connor Finn hadn't killed her, but to keep the curse from working, I'd had to have her bitten by a werewolf—Kevin Landingham. Now he gets to mentor her in his not-so-copious free time.

Have I mentioned my life is weird?

Anyway, Abby is my “spirit Guardian” of the moment. I'd hoped her ghost would pass on to her eternal reward when I ended the feud and her daughter's life was saved. Nope. She was still here.

Apparently her raison d'être was to see every last Finn in hell, and there were two who weren't yet. At the suggestion of an ancient deity, I'd spared Jack Finn, Connor's son. And while Connor was undeniably dead, he wasn't gone. The elder Finn was every bit as powerful a ghost as Abby, and he hated me with an unholy passion. Even in death he was a dangerous villain. Maybe more dangerous than when he'd been alive. Because, really, what more could I do to him?

The temperature in my immediate area plummeted until I could see my breath misting the air. A snowflake pattern of frost began to form on the tabletop. The overhead light flashed once, part of a very old code I'd developed with my dead sister. But what one ghost knows, they all do. So Abby knew that one flash was yes, two no.

“Are Finn and his buddies involved in this?”

One flash.

Oh, fuck a duck. Dammit, dammit, dammit. Well, that explained why
I
was involved. I'd thwarted them once—they'd be bound to hold a grudge.

“Are you
sure?
” I was grasping at straws. Ghosts know things we don't and they can't lie. It's not that they're super moral or anything. They're sort of beyond all of that. They just don't have the capacity.

Abby didn't bother with the light this time. Instead, she wrote her answer in frost on the surface of the table. “YES.”

Hell.

Dawna's response was … colorful. Mostly blue. Everybody else stopped what they were doing and looked at me with varying degrees of alarm. Kevin was the most calm. But even he reached down to give Paulie a reassuring pat.

I was now officially terrified. Yeah, I was scared of the ifrit, but that was kind of an abstract fear. My terror of Connor Finn was deeply personal.

Even before Abby had hired me, a psychic had warned Finn that I was a danger to his plans. So he'd taken preemptive action. He'd had his men kidnap me, put me in a full-body bind, and leave me on the beach in my underwear in broad daylight.

Given my sensitivity to sunlight, that was not good. Very not good.

I wound up with second- and third-degree burns over most of my body. Recovery was excruciatingly painful. I'd had to call so heavily on my vampire healing to survive that the attack had put me back to square one in my fight to retain my humanity. It took me long months of hard work to get back to the point where I was today—where I could usually manage some baby food and other purees and didn't have to watch the clock like a hawk to be sure I ate every four hours to avoid blood lust.

I'd used those same months to work with my therapist on my brand-new, breathtaking fear of burns. With minimal success.

Frosty letters began forming across the tabletop. “He will see you dead.”

Everybody gasped at once. Pandemonium broke out when everyone tried talking at once. When it became apparent that no one was going to stop and listen to the others, I raised my hand and they shut up, waiting for me to say something.

Okay, this was bad. No doubt about it. Connor Finn would see me dead. Ghosts can't lie; ergo, it was truth. But Abby hadn't said
when
—and that was a very important detail. It could be today, but it could also be when I was ninety-eight and in a nursing home. Granted, given the life I lead, the latter didn't seem likely. But, hey, I cling to hope where I can find it. And, since dwelling on my possible demise was counterproductive—and likely to distract me from the task at hand, thus leading to my possible demise—I pushed my fears aside and started issuing orders. Yeah, my voice was a little higher pitched than usual and might have been threaded with a little panic. My team ignored that entirely.

“Dawna, get online and get me all you can find on what happened at the Needle.” I closed my eyes, taking a deep, calming breath. The government had clamped down hard on the situation rather than risk widespread panic, so information would be hard as hell to find. I knew more than most, since I'd been there, but there was much that I didn't know, like the names and abilities of the two dark mages who had escaped.

“Kevin, do you have any contacts who can look into what Jack Finn has been up to?”

“I'm on it.”

I didn't like to leave Warren and Gordon hanging on the line, so I asked if they wanted me to call them back or if they'd rather hold. Warren stuck his head into camera range, right next to Gordon's. An older, more distinguished version of Kevin's, his handsome face was stern and serious. “We aren't going anywhere. We want to help.”

“Thanks.”

Warren gave a curt nod in acknowledgment.

There were three men who might have info I could use, but none of my team could reach out to them. I needed to be the one to call or they probably wouldn't talk. The hour would be damned inconvenient for all three of them. Still, life or death and all that happy crap.

Pulling my cell from my pocket, I dialed Dom Rizzoli first.

Dom used to work for the FBI, in the Los Angeles branch. We'd met in the course of a couple of cases that were particularly hairy, helped each other out, and become friends. Later, Dom sort of became my liaison with the bureau. He'd been promoted and moved, with his family, to Washington DC.

If anybody could get the sealed files on the Needle unsealed for me, it would be Dom Rizzoli. If I called now, in the middle of the night on the East Coast, I'd probably wake him up. He'd be grumpy. Then again, he'd probably be even more grumpy if I didn't ask for help and something bad happened.

Sometimes you can't win. I called his cell.

I got his voicemail. When I heard the beep I left a message. “Dom, it's me, Celia. I have a situation that involves the ghost of Connor Finn and I need information. It's important. Call me back … please.”

Normally at this point I'd call Matty DeLuca and see what he could get me from his contacts with the Church. The militant arm of the Catholic Church is very well informed on anything that involves the demonic, and there had definitely been demons at the battle at the Needle. But Matty was, like Bruno, at his mother's deathbed. It didn't seem right to call, particularly in the middle of the night. Maybe I'd call tomorrow. More likely, when Bruno checked in I'd ask him to pass a message to his brother. Of course, then I'd have to give Bruno all the details, and he wouldn't be happy.

Well, neither were any of us. Bruno might as well join the club.

The third person I needed to speak to personally was Isaac Levy, my tailor, my friend, and a mage at the tippy top of the hierarchy of the local magical community. He's also pretty old, and I hated the idea of calling him this late, since he and his wife, Gilda, were sure to be in bed. On the other hand, he already knew something was brewing since Tim had spoken to him while I was out of it.

Isaac answered on the first ring, sounding less sleepy than I would've expected.

“Hi. Sorry to bother you so late, but…” I explained what was going on as succinctly as possible. By the time I was finished, any chance he'd had of falling asleep was long gone.

“I am glad you called. You need to be very careful, Celia. These are very deadly people, and they hold a grudge against you.” Isaac sighed. “That Finn is involved in this, as a ghost, does not surprise me. He was a very willful and powerful man. He would not give up life easily. Do we know what his purpose for clinging to this plane is?”

“Abby says he will see me dead.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line: a long, ominous silence.

I broke it. “Do you know the identities of the other two mages in the working at the Needle?”

“Yes. Isabella recognized their magical signatures. Meredith Stanton was one. She was Harold's mistress and a nurse at the Needle. She's a very powerful witch and seriously deficient in ethics.”

“She'd have to be, to be part of that crew.”

“Indeed.” He continued, “Bob Davis was the fourth.”

Bob Davis had been the warden at the ultra high–security prison. He'd escaped in the confusion of the battle. He was way up at the top of the FBI's most-wanted list, had his picture in the post office and everything, but no trace of him had been found, as far as I knew.

He probably had nearly as big a hate-on for me as Connor Finn did, so if Finn's ghost was involved in this, the odds were good Davis was too. But why? What did they hope to gain? Like a lot of villains, I could see Davis not giving a rat's ass about collateral damage—but why risk setting loose a creature that would be nearly impossible to control? It didn't make sense. I said as much to Isaac.

“Power,” he answered. “If they'd gained control of the node at the Needle and loosed whatever it was they were going to, they'd have had unlimited power with no constraints, ethical or otherwise. It is the same here.”

“But why would they need that much power?”

“For some, it is an addiction.”

I could get that, but it didn't feel like the right reason to me. Apparently Isaac agreed, because he said, “But I think there is more than that to this. Let me see what I can find.”

“Thanks, Isaac. Call Dawna with your results, please. I'm liable to be unreachable, dealing with the client.”

“Be careful, Celia. Be very careful.”

“I plan to.”

I disconnected and turned to the video screen.

“Okay, Gordon, Warren, what have you got for me?”

“Hasan's jar is in a pattern of flame and ash because of the primary disaster he was known to have caused,” Gordon said.

“Which was?” Kevin shifted to stand beside me and slipped me a note. I glanced at it:
Jack isn't involved. He's in a coma. Slipped on ice and fell down stairs. Abby?

Could a ghost of Abby's power have coated steps with ice? Easily. Would she have, to kill the man who'd been part of her being tortured to death? Hell yeah.

Gordon's voice derailed that less-than-happy train of thought. “The eruption at Vesuvius.”

“You just had to ask, didn't you,” Tim complained.

Bubba started humming under his breath. Kevin glared at him, but the other man was unrepentant. It took me a minute to recognize the tune—I'd heard it on an oldies station: Carole King's “I Feel the Earth Move.” Cute.

“So Hasan causes natural disasters?” Dawna asked.

“That seems to be his specialty,” Gordon responded. “I can e-mail you a list.”

“Please do. Any known weaknesses?” I asked.

“Not really,” Warren answered. “It's true that the djinn are arrogant, but with good reason. There's not much regular humans can do to counter them. There's been a Guardian in every generation with special powers to deal with them since a couple of centuries BC, but not a lot is written about them or their abilities. The djinn generally stay away from both the angelic and the demonic, so we haven't found a lot that indicates either of those forces would be of help.”