Master of None (27 page)

Then again, I supposed stealing wasn’t much better.

I arranged the knife in my hand the way he had and stared at the dagger for a long moment. Maybe if I memorized the shape of it, my will would have an easier time imposing itself. I felt far from ready when I copied Ian’s motion and passed the dagger over the knife.

No pain. And no change.

“Brilliant,” I said. “Maybe I should stick with accidental invisibility.”

I tried to give the dagger back. Ian didn’t take it. “Try again, thief. You have made progress.”

“No, I haven’t. This thing is still just a rusted . . . er, wait.” I held up the table knife and blinked. Along the flat blade, copper
had replaced silver beneath the corroded surface streaks. The handle seemed thicker, too. “I’ll be damned,” I murmured.

Without waiting for a prompt, I lowered the knife and tried to concentrate. To tune out everything but the dagger and my need to make this work. After a minute, my chest tightened. Warmth spread through my torso, down my arms. Only a mild ache instead of the intense pain Lark’s healing had caused. I moved the dagger over the base of the knife, and it rippled and expanded against my palm.

For the first time since I’d met Ian, wonder struck me and demanded acknowledgment.

Magic
. I possessed magic. It was in my blood. I could
feel
it, a tingling sensation through skin and bone, raw and comforting at once. Like toweling off in a cold room after a hot shower. The realness of it lodged in my throat.

When I looked down, I realized I hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it. The handle looked almost right, but the blade was still dull and rounded. The world’s first table dagger.

A hesitant laugh escaped Jazz. “You missed a spot.”

I glowered at her and tried again. The same feeling moved through me. I forced my mind to think dagger thoughts. Finally, I finished the pass and fought a whisper of vertigo. A glance at the dupe revealed I’d gotten it right this time—or at least close enough. “No problem,” I said with a slight slur. “Let’s make a hundred of ’em.”

“You really did it?” Jazz slid down from the hood and plucked the copy from my hand. “Holy hell. Ian, you sure you didn’t help him with this?”

I made a face. “Your confidence is underwhelming.”

“Sorry.” Jazz smiled and squeezed my hand. “Guess I picked the right nickname for you after all, Houdini. I’m impressed.”

I grinned.
Impressed
in Jazz-speak was one step shy of worship. Maybe she really didn’t completely hate me.

“I will be impressed if you manage to transform the remaining three.” Ian handed the knives to Jazz, then absently tucked the dupe he held into his waistband. “You must use the true tether as a guide for each transformation. Be as quick as you can. The sooner we depart, the more time we will have before we are discovered.”

“Wait a second. Why do I have to do it? I mean, if you want fast, you should probably do this yourself. I suck at magic.”

“I have explained this. I have no power left. After two transformations, flight, bridging to the djinn realm, and repairing that vehicle, I am drained.” Ian hitched a half-smile. “And you need the practice, thief.”

“Terrific. Well, don’t blame me if they end up looking like shit.”

I managed to get through the rest in a few minutes. They didn’t look half bad.

“Well done.” Ian put a hand on my shoulder. “Now, we must conceal the true tether. I cannot allow Lenka to control me.”

I glanced around at the mountains of junk. “Well, if we had to pick a place to hide it, I’d say this one’s pretty good.”

“Yes. Taregan has prepared a spot where it will be difficult to recognize.” A strange look flickered across his face. “Come. I wish you to know where my tether will be.”

My brow furrowed. “Why?”

“You may need this information eventually.”

“Yeah. If you say so.” I followed him anyway, thinking that whatever was on his mind, I probably didn’t want to know.

T
ORY
HAD CREATED A NEST OF METAL SCRAPS AND PIECES OF
daggers, all the same color and style as Ian’s tether. Once we buried it in the pile, he levitated a couple of cars and piled them on the spot. The feat used up the rest of his mojo, too. I’d seen corpses that looked more animated than Ian and Tory by the time we dragged ourselves back and loaded in the car.

Jazz insisted on driving. No one objected. She eased the Caddy onto the main road and pointed us in the general direction of Trevor’s place. She’d suggested that Tory ride shotgun, since he was the least wanted. The rest of us crammed into the backseat and tried to shrink, to avoid touching each other. I wished we’d rigged a van instead. Close quarters made me itchy.

“This is a bad idea,” Lark said for the hundredth time.

I let my head fall back against the seat. “Like I said, you got a better one? Jazz knows what she’s doing. We’ll be fine.”

Lark muttered something that sounded suspiciously like
Go fuck yourself
. Up front, a station giving the news and weather droned. Tory perched rigid and alert in the passenger seat, scanning the night for dangerous creatures like cops or stray deer or maybe innocent-looking hitchhikers who were actually evil snake djinn in disguise.

I slumped between Lark and Ian and tried not to think that things couldn’t get any worse. If I let myself believe that, fate would be eager to prove me wrong.

“It will not work.” Beside me, Ian toyed with the dupe he carried, regarding it with an expression normally reserved for offensive things like shit on a shoe and Canadian bacon.

“Sure it will.” I sounded about as convincing as a politician’s promise. “It’s a classic con. The old shell game. They’ll never see it coming. I mean, there’s no way to tell these things are fake, right?”

“There is one, outside of my obvious failure to die when one is destroyed.”

“And that’d be . . .”

“Blood tells.”

I frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Ian unsheathed the dagger and ran a finger along the flat of the blade. “A tether reacts to the blood of the one tied to it. If my blood were spilled on the real tether, my symbol would be revealed. These false ones will not mimic that response.”

“Great. Does Trevor know this?”

“I am not certain. But Lenka does.”

“So we’ll just have to stay away from Lenka. Wherever he is. It’ll work out.”

Ian sighed and stowed the dagger in his vest. “Perhaps. But we should plan for the possibility that something might go wrong.”

“What could happen?”

The instant I said it, I wished he wouldn’t answer. I could imagine plenty of things going wrong. Sudden death. Drawn-out, painful death. Or worse, as Trevor had promised on my last visit with him.

“I am their primary target.” Ian spoke soft and low, as if he didn’t want the others to hear him over the radio babble. He looked at his hands and touched the index finger that carried his bond with Akila. The golden glow shone briefly. “They will attempt to take me first. If they succeed, they will use me to find you and the boy before they destroy me. And I’ve no wish to exist as Lenka’s plaything.”

“Ian. Don’t even think about it.”

“We
must
think about it.” His gaze held mine, and I couldn’t look away. “If I am captured—”

“No. I won’t—”

“—you must destroy my tether.”

The words hung between us, impossible to take back. “I can’t do that,” I whispered.

“You can. Your abilities are more than sufficient. If you destroy me, it will be far more difficult for them to hunt you down. You and your son will survive. The barrier must remain.”

“I can’t kill you. I won’t.”

A small smile tugged his mouth. “Then do not. Free me.”

“Calling it something else doesn’t change what it is.”

“Perhaps not. Still, it must be done.” He gripped my shoulder. “Promise me, thief. Promise me you will do what is necessary to save my realm and your family. Your world. Every human will suffer if the Morai are permitted to regain control.”

Was anyone listening to this insanity? Lark faced the window as if his life depended on looking anywhere but at me. Jazz concentrated on the road. I glanced at Tory’s profile. In the gloom, it was hard to tell whether he’d heard our discussion, but I thought his eyes seemed too bright, his jaw too firm. “How am I supposed to get to it?” I said. “I can’t lift cars.”

“You will find a way,” Ian whispered. “You must.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. When I couldn’t come up with another excuse, I snapped, “Fine. Damn you, I promise. But it’s not going to be necessary. This will work.”

“Thank you. I do hope you are right.” Ian sank back into the seat and closed his eyes, as if asking me to kill him had taken more power than creating a dimensional portal.

I kept my mouth shut and fought the urge to protest further. Ian was wrong. Killing him wouldn’t save my family, because he was part of it. Like it or not.

After five minutes of unsuccessfully trying not to remind
myself that I’d just promised to murder someone—and worse, someone I cared about—I decided to attempt distraction. I leaned between the front seats and touched Jazz on the arm. “So,” I said, “what’s it like over there?”

She blinked. “Give me some context here, Donatti. Over where?”

“The djinn realm.”

“Oh.” She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s okay, I guess.”

“That’s it? Just okay?” I scooted forward as far as I could without falling off my seat. “C’mon, Jazz, it’s not like you were visiting Boston or anything. It’s a magic realm. There must’ve been something interesting, right?”

“Well, I—” She glanced in the mirror, and I realized with a start that she’d looked at Ian. Did she need his permission? Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “It’s beautiful. Like a dream. Ian . . . I won’t talk about it if you don’t want to hear it.”

A sad smile arranged itself on his face. “No, lady. It is all right. I would not mind hearing of home.”

Jazz nodded. “It’s hard to describe, but everything is alive. The furniture, the clothes they wear, even the walls. Everything moves like it’s breathing, and the air—you know how people say there’s music in the air? It’s real there, the music. You can just hear it, all the time, bells and voices and whispers. But it’s not singing. It’s the wind and the water. It’s life music.”

I grinned. “You’re downright poetic, Jazz.”

“Hey, you wanted to hear about it.” She smiled back. “They have this statue in the palace courtyard. It’s a tree. A Joshua tree, I think. It’s made out of flowing water, and the leaves are flames. It just hangs in the air and rotates. You can touch it and get wet, but it doesn’t lose its shape. Cy . . .” She drew a quick breath and laughed softly. “The first time we saw it, Cy
splashed around in the trunk for half an hour. Then he asked if he could have a wet tree in his bedroom.”

“The elemental fountain,” Tory said. “I’d almost forgotten. A tree of fire, rendered in water, suspended in air. At sunset . . .”

“It catches the light and burns red.” Ian trailed fingers down the window glass. “It is supposed to represent unity, though the hypocrisy of the Council makes a mockery of its own symbol.”

“Anyway,” Jazz said after an awkward pause, “they have this amazing hot drink. I don’t know what they put in it, but it tastes like silk sugar coffee with berries and nuts and cream, and it makes our fancy gourmet stuff seem like muddy water.

“
Asir’an de labaan
,” Ian said. “The nectar of the gods.”

“Yeah. That.” Jazz tightened her grip on the wheel for an instant. “I didn’t really see anything outside the palace, though. We were more or less under house arrest.”

Ian sighed. “I am not surprised. Kemosiri would not wish the entire realm to know he had allowed humans into the palace.” He gestured in the air, a quick blur of motion that left soft, glowing fingers hanging before him. They faded so fast I was sure I’d imagined them. “It is a shame you were not able to visit the outlying realm—the misted mountains of the Bahari proper, the lush forests of the Lycheni clan, the glittering lakes of Amahnri. And the eastern lands, the painted desert. The country of my clan held such beauty before the wars. Fine colored sands and cascading rock, blooming
lo’ani
and the sweet barbed flesh of the
kaktao
. And music! Our nights were filled with it. We danced and sang beneath the spangled sky until dawn burned the dunes. We were . . .” He closed his eyes, and pain twisted his mouth in a grimace. “Free,” he whispered.

Ian’s impassioned speech wove a spell of silence through the
car. After a moment, Jazz shattered it with a throat-clearing cough. “What was all that about?”

“Didn’t you hear him?” I said. “He was talking about forests and lakes and colored sand and music. Dancing, Ian? I never would’ve pegged you for a dancer.”

Tory sent me an odd look. I frowned, glanced at Lark, and discovered him staring at me as if I’d just lost the last marble rolling around in my skull.

“What?”

Lark ignored me. “Is he right?” he asked Tory.

Tory nodded.

“I’ll be damned.” This from Jazz, who smirked and offered a disbelieving headshake.