Mob Rules (11 page)

“Damn.”

“I'll come back for you when I'm done. Shouldn't be more than a few days. Work on the solidity thing. Maybe practice flushing or something.”

Jamal was cursing me as I unlocked the door and went out to rejoin Adan. I tried to hold up my end of the conversation
as best I could while my mind worked over the story Jamal had given me.

Adan was the killer. I repeated it to myself, over and over, trying it out. It just wasn't possible. The killer was a sorcerer. Adan wasn't a sorcerer. Therefore, Adan could not be the killer. I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but that logic seemed locked up pretty tight.

And yet, Jamal had seen him do it. If he believed Adan was the killer, what evidence did I have that he was wrong? He should know, after all. And Jamal hadn't just seen him do it—Adan had been hanging out with him for several days at least, maybe weeks, before he hit Jamal. That ruled out the possibility that the killer was an unknown sorcerer who magically disguised himself as Adan long enough to do the killing. Maybe I could see a way to make that angle work if I twisted it just right, but it would take a lot of twisting.

Leaving aside the impossibility of it all, I tried to reconcile all of this with the man I was sharing dinner with. He was kind, and smart, and funny and honest, and his otherwise hopeful and bright outlook on life was tinged with just a little bit of sadness and loneliness. It made him both strong and vulnerable at the same time. It made him irresistible.

And yet, somehow, it seemed that this same man had murdered at least two people with calculating premeditation in one of the most brutal ways I could imagine. He'd used a death ritual, channeling juice from the Beyond, to take their magic before he'd taken their lives.

I didn't work for the Peace Corps. I'd seen plenty of murders and done some myself. Some of my coworkers were sociopaths. But even in the outfit, there were limits. You just couldn't work with someone who likes to skin and crucify people, any more than you could keep a rabid dog as a pet. I'd heard about
guys who went over that line, and they always got put down just like the dog.

This was real evil. If most of my world was shades of gray, this was all the way in the black. But what bothered me most was that I couldn't see even the slightest hint of it in this man.

Given my mood, the conversation wound down before long. We were both stuffed, but Adan insisted on ordering a Washington with cinnamon apples for takeout.

“We can save dessert for the next date,” he said. Despite everything, I caught myself smiling at him and meaning it.

We drove back to his loft and I walked with him up to the door of his building. It was about midnight, and the air was cool. I was wondering if he would try to kiss me. I wasn't sure I didn't want him to kiss me, even with what I suspected.

Adan ended my speculation when he leaned into me and kissed me on the mouth. His lips were soft, and firm and wet against mine. He tasted like garlic and chicken, but that was just the fucking pizza.

I'm weak. I responded before I even realized what I was doing. I pulled him to me and kissed him harder. He put his arms around my waist and pulled me close. I felt his thighs and hips press into me and I heard him sigh.

Then I heard him growl.

He bit down on my lip, grinding it between his teeth, and I tasted blood. I tried to pull away but his arms were locked around me and he was pressing his weight into me, driving me back against the wall of the building.

He drew his head back and laughed, spraying saliva in my face. It was so cold it felt hot on my skin. His eyes were completely black.

“Maybe I'll fuck you when I take your skin,” he said. It wasn't Adan's voice. It was as empty and inviting as death.

I reached for some juice and started to spin a spell. I'd re-charged the pinkie ring, but he was too close for the repulsion talisman. The arcane threads of a combat spell started weaving together in my mind.

And just like that, his eyes cleared, his rough hold on me loosened and Adan was back. He hugged me and kissed me on the forehead, breathing in the scent of my hair.

“That was intense, Domino,” he said, and laughed softly. “I think I forgot where I was for a minute.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, “me, too. I think.”

He squeezed me—the nice kind, where I get to keep my skin. “Call me tomorrow?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

Adan smiled at me and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Bye,” he said. Then he unlocked the door and went inside. I watched him go and wiped blood from my mouth with the back of my hand.

Okay, so my boyfriend was possessed.

I sat in my car all night watching the front of Adan's loft. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, and I wasn't sure what I could do about it, but I wanted to know if Adan snuck out in the middle of the night to go skin someone.

In a perfect world, I'd have been able to use magical surveillance, like my eye spell. As I'd discovered at the club, though, Adan was heavily warded. The spell wouldn't even get a fix on him, let alone follow him around. So I had to do my surveillance the old-fashioned way. This really wasn't such a bad thing. I liked stakeouts, and I didn't get to do it often enough. I liked following people. I liked sitting in my car, listening to some tunes, wondering what surprising shit a person would do next. The odds were good that Adan was going to do some pretty surprising shit.

About ten o'clock the next morning, the door of the underground garage slid up and Adan's red Porsche pulled into the street. He slid into traffic heading east, and I followed.

I used the traffic spell, but I put a little spin on it. This was a kind of hybrid of the spellcasting I usually did and the completely spontaneous on-the-fly magic that was second
nature to a really accomplished sorcerer like Shanar Rashan. It involved altering the spell subtly to produce a similar but slightly different effect. I went with whatever quotation I'd associated with the spell, but changed some of the words to create the modification. The result never sounded as good as the original quotation, but it got the job done.

“Life is too short for red lights,” I said. The modified chaos spell snapped into place around me, insuring that I'd be able to stay one car behind Adan without getting cut off by some asshole or hitting an ill-timed traffic light.

Adan's first stop was a driving range about a mile from his loft. He parked the Porsche in the lot and pulled his clubs out of the trunk. If anything, he looked better than he had the night before, even dressed in a T-shirt and athletic shorts. He was beautiful. He was also possessed, but nobody's perfect.

After watching him go inside, I circled the block and fired up my parking spell. I slid into a space-and-a-half across the street that had been occupied by a black Hummer on my first pass. Then I waited.

And waited. Adan had been busy the last couple days, so I wasn't about to begrudge him a little me-time. Maybe hitting little white balls with a metal stick was the perfect therapy for victims of possession.

I was starting to think I should go in and take a look, that maybe he'd been possessed again, when I saw him come out, dressed in street clothes now, and hop in his car. It didn't look like he'd tried out for the PGA Tour or anything, but he did have a healthy glow about him.

The next stop was the mall, which I might have guessed. Shopping is regarded unfairly as a strictly feminine pursuit, but this was L.A. and young men with a lot of money and nothing better to do weren't afraid of a little retail therapy. Besides,
a guy couldn't dress as well as Adan did without putting in some time. I parked my car in the garage a few rows behind Adan's and followed him in.

An hour or so later we were only on store number three, my feet were aching, and I'd decided that stakeouts were fine as long as I could sit on my ass in my Lincoln and didn't have to hike all over town. I was sitting by a fountain eating a giant pretzel and watching the entrance of Burberry when I finally admitted that this wasn't getting me anywhere. It was already after two o'clock, and I had no way of knowing when or even if Adan would be possessed again.

I stood up and tossed the remains of my giant pretzel in the trash. I noticed I'd gotten mustard on the cuff of my jacket. Swearing, I dipped a napkin in the fountain and dabbed until the stain was a duller shade of yellow.

I pulled out my cell phone and walked off a ways, lurking behind the mall directory and keeping an eye on the store. Anton answered on the third ring.

“Hey, Domino, you find the guy that skinned Jamal?”

“No, Anton, not yet. Listen, I need you to meet me at Beverly Center.”

“Okay, what for?”

“I'll explain when you get here.”

“Okay. There is the huge traffic outside, but I should get there in thirty minutes.”

“Just hurry, Anton.”

“Okay.” A few seconds of silence. “Where are you?”

“Jesus, Anton, I'm at the fucking mall. Right now I'm standing by a fucking fountain, but I have no idea where I'll be in half an hour. Just call me when you get here.” I usually tried to keep the ghetto out of my language as best I could, but I didn't have a lot of patience where Anton was concerned.

“Okay, okay, Domino, sorry. I'll hurry, and I'll call you.”

Twenty-seven minutes and two stores later, I got a call from Anton. “I'm here, Domino. I'm at fountain, but I don't see you. Did you see the pretty girl working at Victoria's Secret?”

“No, Anton, I guess I missed that. I'm outside D&G.”

Moments later, Anton ambled up to me, clutching an oversize waffle cone.

I glared at him. “Glad you had time to stop for a bite to eat, Anton.”

“Domino, I'm sorry, I came in right by ice cream and they were giving the free samples.” He nibbled guiltily on the cone. “It only took a minute.”

“Okay, listen. Adan Rashan is in the store. I want you to follow him. If he leaves the mall, you stay on him. He's parked in the garage. You don't fucking lose him, Anton.”

Anton let the instructions sink in. He nodded, but he looked doubtful. “You think Adan skinned Jamal?”

Yes, I thought. “No,” I said. “Just stay with him. I have to take care of something. You stay on him until I can hook back up with you.”

“Okay, Domino.” Anton looked around and finally sat down on the edge of a planter, watching the store and eating his ice cream.

“And Anton,” I said. “Whatever you do, don't let him see you.”

“Okay, Domino.” Anton scooted around the rim of the planter until he was partially obscured by the Cretaceous-size fern. He nodded at me and winked.

I found myself wishing for a spell that would pump a few extra watts into Anton's lightbulb. Some days we could all use one of those.

Back in the parking garage, I noticed a man dressed in black
standing by a Ford Taurus station wagon parked a few rows behind my Lincoln. I remembered seeing the car at the driving range earlier. It was black except for a primer-gray hood. The man saw me looking and quickly got into his car. When I started walking over to him, he panicked and fumbled with the ignition. He finally got the car started and backed out of the parking space.

“All progress is experimental,” I said, and killed the engine.

I leaned down and peered in the window at him. He was maybe twenty years old, with natural blond hair spiking from his head. He had a little blond soul patch on his chin and piercings in his eyebrow, nose and lip. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt with a red anarchy symbol.

“You should probably tell me why you're following me,” I said.

“Fuck you, bitch.” The kid was scared, but he obviously wasn't going to cooperate.

“Friends have all things in common,” I said. The spell would make the kid trust me, feel like he could tell me anything.

“I…I…” the kid stammered. “The voice…it said…” His eyes rolled back in his head and his body jerked once. Then the kid died. A thin line of blood trickled out of his nose.

I swore and quickly dropped the wallflower spell over us. I pushed the kid over in the seat and checked his jeans. No wallet, no ID, nothing. I went around to the other side of the car and checked the glove compartment. A few parking tickets and some CDs, but that was it. I dropped the fingerprint spell on the car and walked away. The wallflower would last for maybe fifteen minutes. With a little luck, I'd be out of the area before someone noticed him and called the cops.

I'd recognized the magic on the kid immediately. I knew
the smell of that black juice, and anyway, I'd run into vampire compulsions before. Fred was onto me.

 

When I got back to my condo, I went directly to my office—really just the second bedroom where I have a desk for my laptop—and fired up the TV.

I have two televisions in my house. The first is a forty-six-inch plasma bolted onto the wall in my living room. The second is a little thirteen-inch Zenith black-and-white that I've had since I was a kid.

One of the first real lessons Rashan had taught me when I joined the outfit was that a sorcerer needs a familiar. A familiar is a minor spirit the sorcerer binds to herself, a spirit that aids her when there's a big job to be done. The familiar's most useful role is to flow a little extra juice on the sorcerer's behalf, allowing her to work with magic that would otherwise be above her pay grade.

Rashan taught me how to summon a familiar spirit and then took me into the desert to perform the ritual. Traditionally you bind the spirit into an animal or an inanimate object such as a jewel, a lamp, a skull or whatever. I didn't have anything like that, so I brought my TV.

And that's how a jinn wound up in the Zenith. There are three things worth mentioning about this. First, I scored pretty high on the familiar-summoning final exam. Most sorcerers come up with a minor spirit with less intelligence than a mouse. The familiar is really nothing more than a spare set of batteries. I got an unimaginably ancient and powerful earth spirit—been around since the dawn of time, knows more about magic than I could learn in, well, do the math.

Second, while I might have hoped for a friendly genie in the Barbara Eden mold, what I got was Mr. Clean. That is, he
looks like Mr. Clean, with the bald pate, the bushy eyebrows, the gold earrings, the rumbling voice and the steroidal musculature. His name is Abishanizad. I call him Mr. Clean.

And finally, genies cannot, in fact, grant wishes. At least Mr. Clean can't. Or won't. I tried.

I hit the power switch on the Zenith—this ancient artifact didn't come with a remote control—and the spirit appeared on the screen in all his thirteen-inch black-and-white glory.

“What do you want, mortal? Still wishing for a larger bra size?”

“I was fourteen when I made that wish. Let it go.”

Mr. Clean is my familiar, but I don't think he's particularly satisfied with the arrangement. He's arrogant, overbearing, sarcastic, sexist and generally unpleasant. Then again, ancient earth spirit, unfathomable power, dawn of time—it could be worse.

“What do you want? I have things to do.”

“Like what? You live in a TV.”

“Springer is on.” No wonder he's always in a bad mood.

“Tell me everything you know about possession. It's really important.”

“It's nine-tenths of the law. Can I go now?”

“No, I mean the other kind.”

“Oh. You don't have enough time.”

“For what?”

Mr. Clean sighed, and it sounded like the Santa Ana winds wheezing in from the desert. “For me to tell you everything I know about possession,” he said.

“How much time do I need?” I said, checking my watch.

“You'll be dead before I get to the good parts.”

“Oh. Okay, how about I ask you specific questions, and you
answer them as best you can in terms that a puny and barely sentient mortal woman can understand?”

“Fine. It is not an insignificant request,” he said.

And so the bartering began. This is why I don't call on Mr. Clean more often. If there's a downside to having a jinn as a familiar rather than an extra set of batteries, this is it. Everything I ask of him is a favor he says I'll have to repay in kind someday.

The key, here, is someday. I won't have to do a favor for him immediately, and in fact I won't have to repay the favors for as long as he remains my familiar. So the exchange is never a simple “I'll do this for you if you do that for me” kind of thing. The price is set in hypothetical terms of the sorts of tasks I might someday do for him when he's no longer my familiar. It's kind of like using a credit card when you're not really sure how much you're spending or when you'll have to pay it back.

“What are we talking here?” I asked. “Like, I could visit you one day and rake your sand dune.”

“I don't live in a sand dune. It's not that kind of desert.”

Really, it's exasperating. “Well, what then? How about a Hershey bar with almonds? You like those. I'd bring you one—all you'd have to do is ask.”

“One Hershey bar, one question,” he countered.

“I'm probably going to have a lot of questions, but I'm not sure how many.”

“You could bring me a Hershey bar once a month.”

“Once a year, duration proportional to the number of questions.”

“Done,” said Mr. Clean, crossing his arms. “Ask your questions.”

On the surface, this looked pretty cut-and-dried.
Unfortunately I hadn't just agreed literally to bring Mr. Clean a candy bar once a year. I'd agreed to do some similar service, a favor of like magnitude. It was like throwing in a player to be named later in a baseball trade. Of course, there's absolutely no way for me to keep a precise record of these transactions. I figure I'll just try to weasel out of anything unpleasant if and when the time comes.

“I need to know how to protect a victim of possession.”

“What kind?” asked Mr. Clean.

“A guy. He's young, gorgeous, he has these little dimples when he—”

“No, monkey brain, I mean what kind of possession.”

“There's different kinds?”

“Demonic, ghostly, spiritual—benevolent and malign, to name just the most common instances.”

“My bad guy channels juice from the Beyond and rolls with a spooky mummy jar, so I'm thinking ghostly possession.” I described the ritual murders.

“If the entity is channeling juice from the Beyond, it is not a ghost. A ghost
is
juice from the Beyond, but it has no power to manipulate that medium. In other words, based on the evidence you have presented, you are precisely wrong. The entity is not a ghost, but it could be a demon or spirit.”