“This is plenty,” I said.

  I slipped on another pair of gloves. She had only cleared a few inches of Matt Person’s arm, but that was all I needed. I pulled the light down to see the faint etchings in the bone. Through the latex, I could barely feel the faint electricity pulsing through them. If I hadn't been looking for it, I wouldn't have spotted the barely-glowing symbols.

  “Do you see these?” I asked.

  Ariadne pressed the side of her head against mine.

  “Shoot, I didn't even notice it. I don’t think Deva did, either. It isn’t in her report. She doesn’t usually miss this sort of thing. What is that?”

  “It's Sumerian.”

  “You read Sumerian?”

  “I studied a bit in school.” I'd minored in Middle Eastern magic systems. Considering my parents hadn't allowed me to learn back home, it had seemed like the best way to catch up. “I also read some Aramaic and ancient Egyptian, but mostly Sumerian. Most old Middle Eastern magic uses it.”

  My barriers weren't quite that old. The lettering that allowed me to control the magic under my skin was in Classical Arabic. Sumerian magic was a whole other beast. The power in these etchings made my magic look like nothing.

  “What does it mean?”

  I swallowed. My biggest fear was coming true.

  “It means we're looking for a djinni.”

  Chapter Seven

  “As in, your wish is my command?” Rowan snorted and shook his head. “Come on, Arshad. Get real.”

  It took more self-control than I would admit not to roll my eyes. Every time I said djinni, some smart-ass had to make that comment. Western movies had taken something terrifying and turned it into some family-friendly joke. It was exactly why people did stupid things like keeping monkeys as pets.

  “Not genie, djinni. Djinn for plural.”

  “Isn’t that what I said? Since when do genies cause fucked up deaths? I didn’t even know they were real.”

  “Djinni,” I repeated. “They usually don’t. I mean— They don’t always. They’re rare, but very much real.”

  I had only ever meet one in my life. Oddly enough, it was here in Canada rather than in the Middle East where I would expect to find a djinni. It was funny, considering they liked heat and caves. Canada was one of the last places a djinni would live. Raisa Karim hadn’t lived here. She’d been here for the summer with the Ambassador’s office. We’d had a brief relationship that had been one adrenaline rush after another before it ended as abruptly as it had started. If the djinni we were looking for was anything like her, we were in trouble.

  “Okay, well, everything I know about genies—”

  “Djinni.”

  “— comes from the movie. What are we really looking at? You’re the expert in this shit, right?”

  “I wouldn’t say expert, but between the two of us… ”

  “Yeah. You’re the expert.” Rowan glanced down at his watch. “It’s getting late. Talk it over dinner? There’s a good Middle Eastern place nearby.” He paused and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “Not that I’m suggesting a Middle Eastern place because you’re Middle Eastern. They just make great food, and the guy who owns it is great. I like falafel, okay. Fuck it, let’s just grab Tim Hortons.”

  This time, I did roll my eyes, even though I was still smiling. It always warmed my heart when people enjoyed Middle Eastern food.

  “Ali Baba’s?” I asked. “I love that place. Just give me one minute.”

  Rowan nodded, and I ducked back into the examination room. Ariadne was pushing the bodies back into the drawers.

  “I’m heading out,” I said.

  Ariadne turned to me with a tired smile. She came close enough that I could smell her deodorant beneath the formaldehyde and cleaning alcohol. Shadows hung under her eyes. I brushed the hair that had fallen out of her ponytail from her face and traced my thumb along her freckled cheekbone.

  “Are we still on for date night Wednesday?” she asked. Then, as if she thought I’d lost track already, she added, “Today is still Monday.”

  “I know what today is. I won’t miss it for the world."

  “Not for the world, but maybe for another body.”

  She sounded more tired than angry, so I let it go. This wasn’t a fight I wanted to have again. I’d already told Sabine that my Wednesday nights were sacred. Barring any emergencies, it shouldn’t have been a problem. I lowered my head to kiss her. Her lips parted against mine. It had been far, far too long since we’d had any us-time. We would have to fix that soon.

  “I won't jinx it,” I said. “Do you want me to cook dinner?”

  “If you were a decent cook, I might take you up on that. Just text me what you want for take-out before I come over.”

  I smiled and kissed her again. “Rowan and I are going to eat and figure out our next step.”

  “Don't stay out too late. I mean it. And please text me when you get home.”

  I promised and gave her one last, lingering kiss. By the time I pulled myself away from her, the formaldehyde smell was starting to cling to me. Once, it had bothered me. Now, not so much.

  I found Rowan leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and his eyes closed. He straightened as soon as I approached.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  My heart said no, but my stomach said yes. It could have been a week since I'd last eaten from the volume of its growling.

  The evening air was cold as we crossed the parking lot, and it did wonders to help get my head together. Rowan’s silence was growing on me. It gave me time to sort out my thoughts and figure out what I wanted to tell him, and how best to say it. These things weren’t always easy to explain in Arabic, let alone translate it into English. Even I didn’t properly understand what djinn could do, but I knew they could do more damage than the movies let on.

  I didn’t like wasting time. If it were up to me, we would already be tracking the djinni down. But when I said so, Rowan shook his head and insisted we needed to eat and regroup first.

  “Who are you going to help if you drop from low blood sugar, huh?” he asked.

  It sounded like he was repeating what somebody else had told him. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. If I didn’t think I knew enough about djinn to handle one even after having dated one for several months, there was no way he did. It was unfair of me to drag him into something without as much preparation as possible. I owed it to both of us.

  If we were lucky, it wouldn’t be dangerous. This djinni might not have even been doing this intentionally.

  Rowan was right. There were too many unknowns to go rushing in. With somebody from Homicide, it wouldn't be so bad. I had worked with them long enough that we knew what each other was capable of, and we could work on the fly. This thing with Rowan was still far too new for that. Not only did we not know each other well enough to read each other's body language, I didn't know much about dryads. And even if I was an expert in dryads, that said nothing for Rowan’s marksmanship or his ability to fight. He could outrun middle-aged witches, but beyond that, who knew?

  We both ordered falafel wraps. It wasn’t my go-to order, since I could make them at home, but his mentioning it had put me in the mood for it. Once our orders were placed, I let him lead me to a booth in the back corner. He took the spot with the best view of the restaurant and, more importantly, the exit before I could. So we both had that habit.

  Without thinking much about it, I pulled my compact mirror from my purse. I gave my reflection a brief glance — it was no surprise that I looked like a mess — before setting it open on the table, angled to make up for my poor position.

  “Really?” he said, snorting. “You’re checking your makeup now?”

  “It’s never a bad time to check makeup.”

  “Untrue.”

  “And it’s not fair that only you get the view of the door.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but paused with a frown. He looked down at the mirror, then at the door. Another one of those crooked grins appeared.

  “Smart,” he said with a nod.

  “I’m not just pretty, you know.”

  He tipped his head in concession. “I gotta’ admit, Arshad, I keep misjudging you.”

  “Most people do,” I said.

  His grin turned apologetic. I rested my chin on my knuckles and watched him for a few seconds.

  “You don’t talk much,” I said.

  “You hear more that way. Plus, I picked up a bit of an Albertan accent and it makes me sound like a dumbass.”

  “Accents make people sound like a dumbass?” I asked, not trying to hide my own accent the way I usually did.

  Rowan held his hands up, shaking his head. “Woah, back up a sec. I didn’t say all accents. I said Albertan accents. You ever hear a full Alberta accent? It’s like the Canadian version of Texan.”

  “I think Alberta is Canadian Texas.”

  He laughed at that. It was a proper laugh, not one of the repressed chuckles he’d been doing so far.

  “What about Lebanon? What’s that like?” he asked. “Lots of cedar trees, right?”

  I nodded. “It’s full of them. They’re my favourite. See?”

  I pulled my pendants apart and held out the silver-plated, stainless steel cedar tree. His smile reached his eyes this time.

  “You like trees?”

  “I love them.”

  “Do you hike? There’s some decent trails not far from here. I’ll send you some links to places later.”

  He was so casual about it. Gone was the stiff, self-protective demeanour. He almost seemed like a real person instead of an attitude.

  Our food came, and the smell reminded me exactly how many hours it had been since I’d last had a proper meal. The sound my stomach made was obnoxious. I was too hungry to care. I unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. Falafel had definitely been the right choice, though I lamented the lack of garlic sauce. As much as I loved garlic, I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night smelling like it. The formaldehyde was bad enough.

  “All right, now that we’re getting our blood sugar up, tell me about gen— djinn.”

  I swallowed and washed the wrap down with some water.

  “They’re a form of what Westerners call demon. In Europe, you have fae. In the Middle East and Africa, we have demon.”

  “Wonder how that happened,” he muttered.

  I didn’t quite hide my smile.

  “They’re an old species. According to the records, they date back to some of the oldest civilizations. The belief now is that all magic in the Middle East originated from djinn, like how European magic is said to originate from faeries.”

  Rowan nodded. I could see a well, actually behind his eyes but whatever it was, he must have decided it wasn't relevant right now because he said nothing. Later, I would ask him about it. It might have been good information that would come in handy someday.

  “Some people,” I continued, “say they are a form of afrit.”

  “Fire demons, right?”

  I blinked in surprised. He knew what afrit were?

  “That’s right. They have similar origins, but they are not the same. Like sirens and concubi, I think. Afrit are made of fire, and djinn are made of smoke.”

  “Made of smoke,” Rowan repeated.

  I hesitated. I wasn’t explaining it right.

  “Not made of smoke. They— How do I say it? They are corporeal, but not… solid? They are made more of energy than matter, I think.”

  “Gotcha,” he said slowly.

  He didn’t get me. I barely got me. There was no way to explain djinn without meeting one, and I didn’t want the first time Rowan met one to be in the middle of a fight he didn’t know how to win. It was a fight I didn’t know how to win.

  What time was it in Syria? If I emailed Raisa Karim now, would she be able to respond soon? Even if she got it right away, it would probably be awhile before she opened it. Busy work life aside, she was a social butterfly, always out to one event or another.

  Maybe djinn physiology wasn’t the way to start.

  “Djinn magic is very high level magic. I think it’s why there aren’t many of them. They have this way of… manipulating the universe. They can’t break any laws of physics, but they can alternate probability in their immediate vicinity and cause certain…” I waved my hand, struggling to think of the right word.

  “Changes?” Rowan suggested.

  “Changes to their surroundings.”

  Rowan nodded as he chewed a bite of his sandwich.

  “So, when we say changes… Are we talking things like boosting somebody’s metabolism to insane proportions?”

  “Or increasing the size of brain cells until they explode.”

  “Or fucking up somebody’s pheromones. Fucking fuck… So how do we contain something like that? Is the thing about trapping them in a lamp true?”

  I glanced down at the mirror. There was nothing behind me to worry about.

  “It’s true, but inhumane. Think of it like stuffing you into a big dog carrier. I might have to break your bones to do it and you would be horribly uncomfortable, but I could do it. You might also suffocate before I can let you out.”

  “Talking from experience?” he asked, making a face.

  “You see bad things when you work in Homicide.”

  “Shit, no kidding. No wonder you bailed.”

  I wanted to say that I didn’t bail, but there was no point. He wasn’t attacking me, just making a statement. And the truth was, I had bailed a little.

  “Besides,” I continued, “trapping a djinni in a lamp requires a specific type of magic. I don’t think I could do it.”

  “We’ll call that Plan B, then. What’s Plan A?”

  I took a bite of falafel so I didn’t have to respond right away. There was no way for me to avoid telling him, not if I wanted his help. I didn’t just want his help, I needed it. I couldn’t take on a djinni on my own. If not for the fact that telling him djinn’s weakness would also be telling him my weakness, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

  In this country, everything was based on European magic. In European magic, iron was a universal suppressor. And it was true that iron would dampen our powers — mine, at least — but it didn’t have nearly the same effect as it did on European, fae-based magics. It wasn’t a well-known fact, though. Even in my Middle Eastern magic classes, it had only come up once. I wanted to keep it to myself as long as I could.

  I couldn’t stay quiet for long. He was expecting an answer, and I had to give it to him.

  If I lied, would he be able to tell? Catching me in a lie would undo all the goodwill I’d bought so far. Telling the truth about djinni didn’t mean telling the truth about myself. He might not connect it.

  “Silver,” I said.

  “Silver? Like fucking werewolves?”

  “Similar to fucking werewolves.”

  Rowan reached under his beanie to scratch his hair. Then he laughed a little, though there was no humour in it, and shook his head.

  “Not a whole lot we can do about that today, then. Might as well call it a night. I’ll put in a request for some silver bullets. We’ll hit the streets first thing in the morning.”

  “What if another body turns up before then?”

  “What if? You gonna’ spend all night running around looking for this thing? Come on. Don’t tell me that’s how Homicide runs shit.”

  “All three bodies were found in the same place,” I pointed out. “It’s reasonable to assume they’ll go back.”

  Rowan nodded. “See, now we’re getting reasonable. I’ll call in to have a unit stake out the place. No sense killing ourselves over it.” He leaned forward and set his arm on the table, almost reaching out to me. “I’m serious, Arshad. Go home. Have sex with your girlfriend. Get some fucking sleep. We will handle this in the morning.”

  I clenched my jaw shut. Homicide would have let me do what I wanted as long as the job got done and I didn’t make extra paperwork for him. If I spent the night running around after the djinni, how would Rowan know? What would he even do about it?

  “Arshad.” There was a warning in his tone that suggested he would absolutely know. “Promise me you won’t go doing dumb shit.”

  I crossed my fingers under the table and promised.

  Chapter Eight

  When I got home, the ‘dumb shit’ I did was fall asleep as soon as I sat down at the kitchen table with my old textbooks spread around me. I woke up some time after 2AM with several missed text messages from Ariadne and the worst crick in my neck. I sent her a poorly-typed reply to let her know that I’d made it home all right.

  Even though it was past midnight, I took a long shower to comb the knots out of my hair and ease some of the tension in my muscles before shuffling to my bedroom. I could admit to myself that I was a little glad I wasn’t the one staking out the office building tonight. I might have fallen asleep there, too. That would have been worse than falling asleep at the table. Not that I would tell Rowan he was right. He seemed like the type to say I told you so and I did not need that right now. I sat down on the edge of my bed and checked my work phone. There were no updates about the stakeout, though there was an email from Sabine asking after the storm witch’s arrest report, which I made a point of ignoring. It was one of those ‘no news is good news’ situations. Here, no news meant no new bodies.

  I should have shut my phone off and gone right back to sleep. I was certainly tired enough for it. Keeping my eyes open was a losing battle. And yet, I still couldn’t stop myself from checking my personal phone. As soon as I’d arrived at home, right before I’d fallen asleep sitting upright, I’d emailed Raisa Karim. I didn’t tell her any details about the case, only that I suspected I had a djinni problem on my hands. If she knew anything that could help me, it would be great.

  Yes, the first thing I’d done was email my ex-girlfriend about work instead of telling my current girlfriend I’d gotten home all right. I was not the best at this whole ‘dating’ thing.

 

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