Tales of the Djinn: The Guardian (23 page)

Joseph laughed as her questions tumbled out.
“No people. No animals. Plants, though. I once knew a mage who
could recreate a whole forest in just one day.”

Elyse’s mind boggled. “That is so weird. And
cool.”

She dropped onto the end of the copied bed.
The coverlet was velvet soft, the mattress so inviting she nearly
curled up to take a nap. Her thoughts were too busy to let her
sleep. Though she was aware of Arcadius and Joseph watching her,
she took a minute to sit like a lump and think.

No wonder her father always seemed so
interested and full of life. He’d been in on some truly marvelous
secrets. Maybe she should be angry he’d kept them to himself, but
she was too caught up in amazement.

At last, she looked up again.

Arcadius was smiling at her faintly.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. “I
gather we’re safe for now, but we can’t hide out here forever. It’s
a closed system, yes? Nowhere to go but here. We’ll run out of tea
in no time. On the other hand, if we leave, Mario and his boys will
pounce.” She turned her gaze to Joseph. “I don’t mean to offend
you, but his magic trumps yours, doesn’t it? Because he’s a human
being.”

“To a certain extent,” Joseph said.
“Fortunately, he’s not experienced. He hasn’t mastered the nuances
of the craft as I’ve had a chance to do.”

“Can you nuance us out of this? Not that this
ought to fall on you. My family is responsible for causing a lot of
this trouble.”

Joseph sat beside her. Remember the shyness
he’d exhibited around women—certainly around Cara—she took this as
a compliment.

“This isn’t your fault. You didn’t know about
the nexus, and you weren’t involved in the struggle to control
it.”

“Arcadius said—” She glanced at the other man
briefly. “He mentioned your people were in trouble, and you need
the nexus to return to them.”

Joseph nodded soberly. “If we can’t save
them, every soul in the Glorious City is doomed to die.”

His golden eyes filled with tears. This was
no tale to him, no beguiling cabinet of curiosities. Real people he
cared about would be lost.

“Can I help?” she asked shyly.

Joseph patted her knee. He probably didn’t
know how condescending the gesture seemed.

“I mean it,” she said. “I’m not afraid—or not
too. Having a human on your side might be handy.”

“If you could help us find your father’s
door,” Arcadius put in, “that would be invaluable.”

~

Perhaps it was shameful to admit, but
Arcadius couldn’t recall feeling such unadulterated respect toward
a female before. Elyse wanted to help. And she’d asked to do so as
if them allowing it would be a favor to her. She could have been
the most hideous being on her plane, and he’d still have admired
her.

Joseph was moved by her offer too. He sat
next to her as easily as if she were a man.

“I’ve been trying to think what the door
could be,” she said. “Uncle Vince wasn’t wrong to say Dad would
have stashed it where he could get at it easily. Plus, if my father
really wanted to keep me in the dark, he wouldn’t have hid it in
the apartment. I think the door must be here, in the basement
somewhere.”

“Mario likely searched it from top to bottom.
And your husband too.”

Arcadius didn’t relish bringing him up, but
Elyse absorbed his words calmly. She rubbed her hands along her
blue jeans, unaware that the motion drew his gaze to her strong
little thighs.

“One thing about my dad,” she said. “He had a
goofy sense of humor. He loved puns and wordplay and riddles so
obvious you couldn’t believe you didn’t guess the answer right
away. I’m pretty sure the opener for his precious nexus is an
actual door.”

“An actual door,” Joseph repeated, turning
his head to her.

“Well, maybe part of one,” Elyse amended. “I
suppose dragging a whole door around would be awkward.”

Joseph and Arcadius looked at each other.

“The door to the mechanical room,” they said
in unison.

“Sure,” Elyse said. “It’s original to the
brownstone, so it would have been around when he was alive. Maybe
Dad spelled a hinge. Or the doorknob. Or something along those
lines.”

“
Someone
would have thought to examine
it,” Joseph said.

“Could Dad have found a spell to avert their
attention?”

“Maybe.” Joseph rubbed his chin
thoughtfully.

“Unfortunately—” Elyse heaved the word as a
sigh “—if I’m right, it doesn’t do us much good. The real door is
on the other side. Mario will notice if we sneak out to check.”

Depending on what he knew about mirror
spaces, Mario might figure out where they’d disappeared. Arcadius
was willing to go up against him, but the human’s magical
advantages meant this was better avoided. He’d long ago learned
strategy was more useful than raw courage.

“Joseph,” he said, drawing his associate’s
eyes to him. “Will the mirror space include a facsimile of the
nexus? And if it does, might the relevant portion of the copy door
open it?”

Joseph’s gaze sharpened. “Yes, and yes,
though I can’t swear either will function.”

“If we had enough energy to pump into them .
. .”

Joseph knew that by “energy” he meant a large
enough sacrifice. He glanced at Elyse and back to him. His
expression probed Arcadius’s a bit more deeply than was
comfortable. “We could probably open the nexus. Whether we could
get it to transport us where we want in the djinn dimension, I
couldn’t say.”

Ironically, Elyse was more excited by this
prospect than they were. She bounced a little on the mattress.
“It’s worth a try, right? We could slip away without getting shot
by Mario.”

“Yes,” Joseph said. “I expect we could do
that.”

Arcadius wasn’t looking forward to what came
next. He’d avoided thinking about it too hard as he got to know and
like Elyse. Regrettably, he couldn’t postpone it much longer.

As they left the bedroom, Elyse put her hand
on his arm—not to stop him but because touching him seemed to make
her feel safer. Her approach to venturing farther into the mirror
space was a mix of caution and curiosity.

Once in the hall, she peered toward the
living room. “There’s no
out
outside the front door. All I
see is swirling mist.”

“That’s right,” Joseph said. “Beyond the
mirror space is simply unformed potential.”

She gnawed her lower lip. “What would happen
if I tried to step into it?”

“You’d feel a very strong aversion before you
did. If you persisted, your soul would separate from your body.
You’d need a good necromancer to call it back.”

“In other words, don’t do it.”

“That would be best,” Joseph conceded.
Elyse’s question had amused him. “Why don’t we concentrate on the
door here for now?”

The replicated entrance to the mechanical
room was in the hall. Its multiple layers of paint were as ancient
looking as on the original. Joseph and Arcadius scanned the panel
for enchanted hotspots while Elyse removed the padlock.

“My key still works!” she exclaimed, sounding
pleased by that.

“The hinges aren’t spelled,” Joseph said.

“Or the knob,” Arcadius added. His statement
wasn’t as sure as Joseph’s.
Was
there a tickle of something
there?

“Maybe there’s something inside the
mechanism,” Elyse suggested.

“We’d need tools to take it apart,” Joseph
said.

Elyse responded with an eye roll. “Guys, I
am
this building’s in-a-pinch handyman.”

She had a miniature toolset attached to her
key ring. The clever folding collection included a screwdriver, a
penknife, plus a number of utensils he couldn’t identify. With
their love of unusual gadgets, Arcadius knew he and Joseph
immediately coveted the thing.

Elyse opened the door cautiously, seeming
relieved to find a dust-free and very shiny mechanical room behind
it. Reassured it was safe to do so, she knelt and began
disassembling the knob. The apparatus was the same dull old brass
as before—a circumstance he found noteworthy. Mirror spaces usually
prettied up their contents.

“Here we go,” she said. “The threads on this
screw are more worn down than the others. It’s been removed and put
back in more often.”

The screw was the length of her index finger.
She handed it up for Joseph to examine.

His eyebrows rose as he ran one thumb up the
spiraled shank. “This is it. I can’t believe you found it so
easily.”

Elyse grinned. “See? Already I’m
convenient.”

Joseph’s answering grin was forced. He knew
how they were going to repay her.

Elyse used the side of the door to pull
herself to her feet. “Should we try the screw on the duplicate
nexus now?”

Joseph rubbed one eyebrow. “No point putting
it off. Why don’t I lead the way? In case any parts of the mirror
space are wonky.”

They weren’t wonky in the way he meant, but
the improvements the mirror space had produced did distract Elyse’s
attention. The room with the abandoned Christmas trees brought her
to a halt. It was as picturesque as an old-fashioned holiday
card.

“The trees are
lit
,” she said
wonderingly. “And decorated. Gosh, is that real snow on the
floor?”

Arcadius stooped to touch it. “White sand,”
he answered her.

Elyse let out a soft laugh. “This is too
crazy. How does the mirror space decide?”

“Religious scholars say each time a mirror
space is seeded, God gives it its own angel. The angel’s
intelligence guides it.”

Elyse looked at him. “You absolutely mean
that—as if there’s no question God and angels are real.”

Arcadius shrugged. “Djinn don’t understand
how humans doubt.”

She laughed again, sounding like she enjoyed
the differences between them.

He hoped she still enjoyed them when this was
over.

They reached the cement block room without
more delays. In this version of the basement, the blocks were sugar
white and twinkled. Wariness marked all their footsteps as they
went in. To Arcadius’s relief, he sensed the presence of the nexus.
The vibration was slightly different but it was strong.

“I don’t see anything,” Elyse said. “I saw
the other glowing beach ball thing. Is the one on this side
working?”

“You saw that nexus because Mario activated
it. Joseph will do that here.”

Before Joseph could try, the energy center
flickered brightly and then pulsed off.

“Uh,” Elyse said. “Is it supposed to do
that?
”

“No, it isn’t.” Joseph stretched his palms
toward the power as if warming them. He snatched them back
abruptly. “Shit. Mario is trying to force a portal open without the
door.”

“He can’t do that,” Arcadius protested. “Can
he?”

“He might be able to if he isn’t trying to go
far. This copy connects more closely to
his
nexus’s
vibration than any spot in the universe.”

“He knows we’re hiding in a mirror
space.”

“That is the logical conclusion.” Joseph
looked worried. “We need to hurry this up.”

Arcadius’s stomach plummeted, as it hadn’t
for Joseph’s previous bad news.

“What’s wrong?” Elyse asked, noticing his
dread.

Arcadius ordered himself not to lose his
nerve. This wasn’t the first time he’d broken this sort of news. In
the past, his partners’ reactions had ranged from anger to tears to
throwing an entire collection of perfume jars at his head.

“Elyse,” he said, taking her hands in
his.

“Closer,” Joseph instructed from the side of
his mouth.

Joseph held the enchanted screw at the ready,
poised to shove it in the nexus the moment the signs seemed right.
Arcadius shifted himself and Elyse nearer to the power center, near
enough that its energy wisped along their skin like smoke. The next
time the illumination flickered it stayed on. Arcadius wasn’t
certain, but he thought he heard Mario chanting. Elyse didn’t seem
to. She lifted her face to him, her green eyes wide and perplexed.
She was a good woman: bright and warm and endowed with rare spirit.
He told himself he had to do this, no matter how little she
deserved it.

“Elyse,” he repeated, aware that his palms
were damp. “I’m not in love with you.”

Her eyes grew wider, and her mouth formed a
little
O
. Even though Arcadius felt awful, he forced his
expression to remain unyielding.

Then Elyse burst out laughing.

Okay
. This was the first time a woman
had done
that
.

“Arcadius!” she exclaimed, snorting a bit
with her inexplicable amusement. “Why would I think you were? Is it
because we slept together? It’s nice of you to worry about my
feelings, but women don’t take that as seriously here. Sometimes,
sure, but not necessarily. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m not
helping you because I think you love me. I’m helping you because I
think it’s right.”

Arcadius felt very strange, as if a large
sack of rocks were sitting on his chest. He and Joseph had been
hoping to draw on a very specific power. From a magical standpoint,
it exceeded the potency of a hundred mourners’ sorrows. Only a true
heart could produce it . . . and only when it broke.

Arcadius couldn’t doubt the goodness of
Elyse’s heart, though evidently she wasn’t in love with him. He’d
ended her husband’s spell. He’d exerted himself to court her. She’d
trusted him enough to share her bed. Nonetheless, he hadn’t broken
anything.

Was it normal for people in his position to
want to dig a hole and crawl into it?

Her hand lifted to pet his cheek, her brows
beginning to pucker above her nose. “Are you okay? You look
funny.”

“Got it!” Joseph announced before he could
answer.

Arcadius jerked himself alert. For a second,
he’d forgotten the very important goal they were trying to
accomplish.