Skin Trade(196)

He just nodded. “I might hate the master, but I gained powers, as of old. I could control the two jinn he had found, and the police wizard knew a very old spell. It would have lost me the control over them. The jinn hate to be slaves, and if they get the chance they will turn on their masters.”

“Like a demon,” I said.

“Yes, sometimes.”

I had my knees up, resting the gun on them, still pointed at him. “I know you murdered a cop. I should turn you in, but I also know you had no choice. He can make you do things. Things you don’t want to do.”

“He smells of the truth, Anita,” Victor said.

“I agree.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know yet. Tell us about the jinn.”

He stood there, his hands at his sides, trying to be very still as we pointed guns at him.

“Tell us about the jinn.”

“Do you mean genies?” Victor said.

“If what I saw at Vittorio’s back was a genie, then the movies and story-books have it all wrong.”

“I take it they don’t grant wishes,” Victor said.

Sebastian and I both laughed, but not like we were happy. We looked at each other, and I realized that his eyes were the same color as Domino’s, like fire carved into eyes. I asked, “Where’s Domino?”

“At the foot of the bed,” Victor said.

I nodded. “Okay, now tell us about the creatures.”

“They can be attached to or trapped in an object, and then they can be forced to do the bidding of a sorcerer or magician. That much of the stories is true,” Sebastian said.

“Like his ring,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“If he lost the ring, would he lose control of the jinn?”

“Yes, until he is restored to full power. Once at his full strength, he can call them out of the air without magical aid. It is his gift.”

“There was wind, and then they appeared,” I said.

“They are a second kind of people, Anita, created from air, as we were created from earth. They are very powerful spirits, so powerful that King Solomon destroyed them as a people and made them slaves to his bidding, and they were reduced to servants, or only spirits, whose greatest abilities lie in whispering evil in our ears to manipulate us.”

“King Solomon had a seal made that he used to imprison most of their race, or something, right?” I said.

He nodded. “Yes. Some stories say that he used them to build his great temples.”

“If we can get the ring from him, then will the jinn turn and kill him?”

“They might, or they may simply flee. He is to their race what the bogeyman is to yours.”

I noticed he said yours, like it wasn’t his. I skipped that and tried to decide what to do with him. He had killed a member of SWAT and helped kill others. But I believed that Vittorio had made him do it, just like the vampires at the club last night and the humans in the crowd.

“We have to kill him before he regains all his powers,” I said.

“Agreed,” Sebastian said.

“How?” Victor asked.

“I know his daytime resting place,” Sebastian said.

I lowered the gun, and Victor followed my lead. “Turn on some lights, find some clothes, and tell me the address. Tell me all the addresses of anywhere he’s stayed in Vegas since you got back with him.”

“Happily, does this mean I’m not going to be executed?”

“Yeah, I think it does.”

“You won’t tell them about me?”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, help me kill him before he becomes the Father of the Day again.”

“Yes,” Sebastian said. “If he regains his full powers, he will be able to conjure armies of the jinn from the very air we breathe.”

Victor said, “I have pen and paper.”

“Tell him the addresses.” I started to crawl out over the other man in the bed, but crawling let me see his face better. “Oh, Mother of God, no,” I said.

I fell off the foot of the bed, landing on Domino, who gave a grunt and woke up. “Anita, are you all right.”

“You broke her fall,” Sebastian said.

I got to my feet and was staring down at the bed. Crispin was still there, and the red tiger/stripper, whose name I didn’t even know, but the third man wasn’t a man at all. He was a boy. It was the blue tiger, Cynric, who was all of sixteen.





70




THE ONLY THING that kept it from being one of the most socially awkward moments of my life was that the boy didn’t wake up. I got dressed in the bathroom, and told my reflection in the mirror that hysterics would not help the situation. My reflection did not believe me, but I won the argument.