Djinn & Tonic (The Houri Legends: Book 2), page 1
DJINN AND TONIC
by Amber Sweetapple
To my children, because you are the true magic in my life.
Copyright © 2012 by Amber Sweetapple
All rights Reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All people, events, and locations are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
Formatted by Jason G. Anderson
Edited by Indie Author Services
Dance With Wind
William Cullen Bryant
Wind is the fate we are facing
Wind is the life we are touching every second
Wind is the love we don’t understand but feel
Wind is the bridge we cannot see but feel
Chapter 1: A Breath of Wind
Detective Carson Hale wasn’t sure how he ended up at The Old Shillelagh, a highball of gin and tonic in his hand, watching replays of the Tigers beating the Rockies. He had left the station, intending to go home, but had found his way to the bar instead. He was watching the game but not really seeing it. The game provided a distraction to keep him from thinking about the case. Or, as Carson thought of it in his own mind, The Case—the one he wouldn’t be forgetting any time soon. Miriam was stuck in his head, and he couldn’t seem to shake her. It wasn’t like he was attracted to her; she was beautiful, sure, but it just wasn’t there for him, and she was with Jack anyway. But there was something about her that kept Carson thinking about her and the circumstances of her boyfriend’s death that kept him thinking…analyzing…unable to just end the day and go home.
How could he just let it all go? Just write off the murder of a man as…what? It wasn’t self-defense. Miriam had admitted as much. Could he call it the defense of Jack? She killed Ben because he’d shot Jack first —two to the chest—and then Miriam. A person didn’t survive that kind of injury…he just didn’t. A sucking chest wound was by all accounts one of the most painful ways to die, next to being gut shot. And Miriam had been both. But that couldn’t be right, either. Ben shot Jack, and then Miriam, but somehow, Miriam healed herself and Jack. Carson shook his head, trying to get all the facts straight in his head. According to her account, Miriam had only been shot in the stomach, but she also claimed to have somehow absorbed Jack’s wounds into her own body. Which meant — even if that was at all believable — that she had taken four gunshot wounds to the chest and stomach, and she’d survived. Either she was inhumanly tough, or she healed like Wolverine. There was no other explanation.
Carson finished his first drink, raised the glass, and clinked the ice at the bartender. What was her name? Leila? Yes, Leila. That was it.
She came over with a highball half-filled with ice and a bottle of Bombay Sapphire, tipping it to pour a generous two fingers’ worth. She smiled at Carson, giving him a quick, flirting glance.
“Start a tab?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Carson answered. “Thanks.”
“You seem preoccupied today,” she said, by way of making conversation. She leaned on the bar in front of Carson, toying with a book of matches. Her T-shirt was a low-cut V-neck, and when she leaned over, Carson found it hard to keep his gaze away from her spilling cleavage. Carson had spent enough time in bars and on patrol to know the various ways women leaned over. He’d categorized them: There was the absent-minded lean, in which the woman was simply assuming a natural, comfortable position without realizing or caring about how she displayed herself; there was also the flirt-lean, where she was more aware of the spillage, but not necessarily trying to accentuate it; last was the overt-seduction-lean, where she squeezed her arms underneath her breasts to prop them up, leaning over so they all but spilled out.
Carson was pretty sure Leila was somewhere between the first two. The way she was looking at him and her body language hinted at flirtation, but it certainly wasn’t seduction. He was kind of glad for that, actually. He’d been hit on more times than he could count, mostly by women trying to get out of a ticket or a DUI, or maybe the occasional witness hoping to sway the outcome of an investigation. Sometimes it was just a drunk badge-chaser looking for a quick lay. The kind of women who tried to seduce him, he found, were not the kind he was interested in. At least not long-term. He’d like to say he’d turned them all down, but he hadn’t. Not all of them. He never took favors on the job — Carson drew the line at that — but if a girl threw himself at him off the job, what was the harm?
Carson realized he’d never answered Leila. “Sorry, yeah,” he said. “I guess I am a bit preoccupied.”
Leila laughed at him. “Delayed reaction, much? I was starting to wonder if you hadn’t heard me.”
“No, I heard you, I was just…”
“Staring at my tits?” Leila teased.
Carson flushed and looked down at the bar-top. “Sorry, I guess I was,” Carson said. “But hey, I can’t help it if they’re nice to look at.”
She is beautiful, Carson thought. She was tall and willowy with thick black hair tied back in a neat ponytail, wide, dark eyes holding a world of expression. She seemed to like him, and that made it even better. Carson could use a distraction from his circling thoughts.
“So you must see a lot of gross stuff, huh?” Leila said.
Carson finished his drink, and Leila poured him a third without asking. “Yeah,” he said. “Part of the job, I guess. Most of it I can forget, some of it I can’t. There’s some things people just aren’t meant to see.”
“I bet.” Leila wrinkled her nose, making the expression look cute. “So is that what’s preoccupying you? A bad case or whatever? I hope I’m not being too nosy.”
“Not at all. And yeah, sort of. It’s not one those gruesome ones that’ll give you nightmares. It’s just…a confusing one. I’m not sure what to believe, you know?”
Leila nodded, her attention fully focused on him. She had her chin propped on a palm as she listened, watching him intently. Carson found himself talking about the case out loud, which he knew he shouldn’t do with a bartender, but Leila was different somehow. He’d been coming to The Old Shillelagh for years, but when Leila started working here, he enjoyed coming a lot more. She had a way of calming him just by being there, and she seemed trustworthy for some reason. He always found himself opening up to her, although that may have been at least partially the gin. She poured them stiff, more gin than tonic or ice, and Carson didn’t protest.
He found himself telling her about Miriam, how odd things were, how so many elements to the case seemed unbelievable, if not impossible.
“Unlikely, sure,” Leila said, “but impossible? Didn’t we talk about impossibilities before? From what you’re telling me, this isn’t one or two odd little things. It’s several big things, almost too big too ignore, or pretend it’s not what it looks like.”
Carson nodded as he drank. “Yeah, that’s what part of me says, too. And I shouldn’t be talking about this with you.”
“I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
Carson glanced at his phone, noticing it was past two a.m. and Leila was shooing the last customer out and locking the door.
“Better not,” Carson warned. “But what if something goes against everything you know to be true? What then?” Carson heard himself slurring a little. He should slow down on the drinks, but he didn’t want to. He liked the warm muzziness and the gentle floating of his mind. He didn’t feel as uptight about the case now; Leila was easy to talk to, and easy on the eyes.
Leila considered before answering. “Well, it depends, I guess. If you can’t deny it, if it’s just there and so obvious despite the so-called ‘truth,’ then you can’t really keep insisting on what you want to be true, can you? I mean, isn’t that just being obstinate? There’s so much about this world and about life in general that we can’t see, you know? And just because we haven’t seen something before doesn’t make it impossible, does it?”
Leila came around from behind the bar and lifted chairs upside down onto tables. Carson stood up to help her but discovered he was a little more unstable on his feet than he’d expected to be. Leila rolled her eyes at him and pushed him back down onto his stool. Her hands on his back were warm and the feeling of her touching him electric, sending thrills through him.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Carson said. “But that doesn’t make it any easier to accept what you always thought was impossible.”
After all the chairs were up, Leila went back behind the bar, wiping liquor bottles with a rag. Carson watched her, admiring her easy grace. She was light on her feet, every step smooth, each move of the closing ritual flowing into the next. There’s something…airy about her, Carson thought. The idea seemed odd even as he thought it, but it struck as true. She moved as if blown by a secret wind, like she was a leaf. She had a dancer’s body, he realized. Maybe that explains it. She’s a dancer.
She’d taken her hair out of its ponytail and was combing through it with her fingers to fall in glinting waves around her shoulders. Being a dancer didn’t explain the way her hair floated and fluttered as if blown by a breeze. There were no open doors, no windows, no fans, but her hair was definitely fluttering. That’s exactly the word, too, Carson thought. Fluttering.
She was counting the register drawer, her hands peeling bills in quick, sure motions that spoke of long practice; she was standing still, but her hair was moving. Carson knew he was repeating his thoughts, but he couldn’t help it. He was watching her, mesmerized, and he couldn’t deny what h e was seeing. It was weird, all this talking about the case and Miriam and the strange evidence, and now suddenly Leila was part of the mystery.
He considered asking her about her hair, but the words wouldn’t coalesce in a way that didn’t sound stupid. ‘Excuse me, Leila, but is your hair being blown by a wind that doesn’t exist?’ That was stupid. Carson finished his drink, handed his credit card to Leila, and signed the slip with a sloppy signature. He accepted one last drink. He’d lost count again, and the room was wobbling a little as Leila shut off the lights in the kitchen and locked the register drawer in the office.
She sat down next to Carson with a Styrofoam cup of Coke. Carson could smell rum in the Coke and on her breath. She was sitting close to him, her shoulder brushing his, her thigh nudging his as she bounced her knee absently; he was aware of every point of contact between them. Her presence grounded him in some indefinable way, kept the spinning world centered.
“So what are you going to do?” she asked, toying with matchbook again. She lit a match, watched it burn down toward her fingertips. Before it could burn her fingers, it puffed out as if blown by a wind.
“I don’t know. Legally and technically, what she did was manslaughter. She should’ve reported Ben to the authorities and let them deal with him. But as one of the authorities, by the time she did that there’s no telling where he could’ve gone. He would’ve disappeared before we could catch him, and honestly, there’s so many other cases to investigate that I doubt we’d spend much time chasing him. I investigated his death, and along the way he turned out to be an asshole who deserved what he got.” Carson drained the last of his drink, chewed an ice cube as he spoke. “I know what I should do, according to the most correct definition of my job, but I just don’t think I can. I became a cop to get justice for people. There were other reasons, but that was one of them. Miriam did the only thing she could do in those circumstances, and I just can’t make myself arrest her for it. It’s like…ethics versus morals, you know?”
Leila nodded, bumped her shoulder against his. “Hey, all you can do is what you think is right, you know? For what it’s worth, I think you’re making the right choice.”
“Thanks. That does help, actually.”
“So you’re gonna close the case?”
Leila had a ring on her right hand that she twisted absently. It looked like a keepsake of some kind, a plain, tarnished gold band, engraved with a faded inscription so rubbed and worn as to be indecipherable. It looked like something that had emotional value to Leila, and Carson found himself wondering what the story was. He remembered the first time he’d met her, the way she’d paused before answering, how much of a story he’d sensed there.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” he answered. “I’ll tell the captain it’s a cold case and that there’s just not enough to go on. And technically, there’s not. There’s no physical evidence tying Miriam to Ben’s death, and even if there might be plenty of motive, there’s no way to make a charge stick, I don’t think. It would waste everyone’s time and money, and just cause more trouble for Miriam. And she’s had enough of that.” He hesitated for a moment, then asked, “So…what’s your story? You said you needed a fresh start. What’s all that about?”
Leila took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if wishing he hadn’t asked that. “Oh, it’s a long story. Not very interesting, if you weren’t there.”
“Oh, you never know what I’d be interested in.” Carson reached over the counter, grabbed the soda gun, and filled his glass with water. “I’m interested in you, for example.”
Oh, God. I did not just say that, Carson thought. He drank his water to cover his flush of embarrassment. Leila had turned on her stool, regarding him with several emotions showing on her face: surprise, embarrassment, curiosity, maybe a little fear.
“You are, huh?” she said. There was a slight smile on her lips as she chewed on her straw. Curiosity was winning, apparently.
Carson laughed, an awkward chuckle. “Yeah, that just kind of slipped out. But it’s true.”
“A Freudian slip? What else are you thinking about me that you’re not saying?”
She had inched over on her stool so she was just at the edge of his personal space. Carson shifted toward her, thinking, I hope I’m reading her body language right.
“Oh…I don’t know,” he said. “You’re hot.” Shit. That didn’t come out right.
Leila laughed, an infectious, musical sound that made him not feel quite so stupid. “Is that right? Keep going.” She crossed one leg over the other, facing him.
“Um…” There were a lot of things going through his mind. Her lips looked soft, a slight glimmer of lip gloss on them. Carson heard himself speaking the words as they entered his mind. “I’m wondering what your lips taste like. God, I have no filters suddenly.”
Leila arched an eyebrow. “Filters are a nuisance anyway,” she said. “I’ve always believed in saying what you mean.”
“Yeah? So…now that I’ve thoroughly embarrassed myself, what are you thinking?”
Is it my imagination, or is she leaning in to me?
“Oh, so it’s my turn?” Leila said.
She was definitely closer than she had been a moment ago. Her wide eyes were inches from his, sparkling with amusement and secrets and something he wanted to believe was desire.
“You haven’t embarrassed yourself at all,” she continued. “I’m glad you can say what you’re thinking.”
“You’re avoiding my question,” Carson said.
Leila was sitting facing him, her feet on the rungs of his stool, her knees between his. He had his hands on her knees, and she wasn’t pulling away.
“You caught me. Okay, so what am I thinking?” Leila said with a mischievous tip of her lips. “Hmmm. I’m thinking…you’re cute, in a rugged sort of way. I’m thinking you’re also a little drunk.”
Carson nodded. “Keep going. I’m not arguing yet.”
Leila’s fingers were plucking at a loose string on the collar of Carson’s shirt, and then they were playing with a lock of his hair at his neck. It was an odd intrusion into his personal comfort zone; touching someone’s hair was a strangely intimate thing. He didn’t mind.
“I’m thinking…” Leila spoke without looking at him directly. “I’m thinking I like you, and I’m hoping you’ll ask me out. There. How’s that for embarrassing yourself? Admitting that to the guy you’re interested in goes against every rule of the dating game I know.”
“I’ve never been too interested in the dating game anyway,” Carson said.
“Me neither,” Leila said. “I know I’m avoiding your original question, but…I don’t want to talk about that just yet.”
Carson nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Leila asked. “Or a wife?”
Carson shook his head. “Nah. Would I be here, talking to you like this if I did?”
“You’d be surprised what some guys will do, even though they’re with someone.”
Carson shrugged. “You’d be surprised how much it takes to surprise me. I’m a homicide cop, remember? I’ve seen just about everything. What I should’ve said was, I wouldn’t be here like this, with you, if I was with anyone else.”
Carson had been about to kiss her, but the moment seemed to have passed with the turn in the conversation.
“Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t like to have any surprises come up later on.” She glanced down, saying, “If there is a next time.”
“Why wouldn’t there be?”
“Well, I left you a pretty big opening to ask me out just now, but you didn’t.” Leila chewed on her lip, scratching at a stain on the leg of her jeans.
Carson cursed himself for being so dense. “Yeah, I guess I missed the boat on that one. Is it too late?”
“You’ll never know until you try,” Leila said.
“So…do you want to go out with me? For dinner? Sometime?” Carson was fumbling. He took a drink of water and tried to clear his head. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. Lemme try again. Leila, would you like to have dinner with me?”
Leila shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You’re funny,” she said, a teasing grin on her face. “Yes, Carson, I would. I’m off this Tuesday.” She was slipping forward again, touching her lips with her tongue, an invitation in her eyes.
