All Your Wishes (20 page)

Ah. I think I may know what happened. I'll have to do a little research to be sure. In the meantime, Celie, you need to be more careful. A demon
and
an ifrit is a bit much, even for you.

Tell me about it!
I paused, taking a deep breath.
How's your mom doing?

A little bit better, actually. She regained consciousness for a while yesterday, even managed to say a couple of words.
He sighed.
We all know it's only a matter of time, and the doctors have her pretty heavily sedated, but at least she's not in any pain.

I'm glad for that. Are you doing okay?

Not really,
he admitted.
There's a lot going on. Sal's dealing with some bad business, on top of the usual family stuff.

Bruno's family is big, close, and has more past issues than
National Geographic
. I wasn't surprised he was having to deal with “stuff” in addition to his mom's illness.

I love you
, I told him
. I miss you so bad.

I love you too. Did Dawna give you my message?

What message?

He swore, then said,
Sal heard through the grapevine there's been a high-money hit contracted on you. It got picked up by a couple that usually works out of Europe. They're real pros. You need to be careful.

My thoughts about that were colorful to say the least. The vision had been a warning. Pradeep really was trying to kill me. Why?

Then it hit me, and I felt like an absolute idiot for not seeing it sooner.

If I died, Hasan could take over my body, just like he'd done on the beach, but only for a few minutes. But I'm an abomination. I'm not fully alive any more, even though I'm breathing and have a heartbeat. Which might mean that so long as I'm not fully dead either he could inhabit me for as long as he wanted. Why he'd want to, I had no clue. Still, I was betting there was a reason—it was the only thing that made sense.

I had to fight not to throw up, I was that horrified and sickened by my thoughts. But that would explain why Hasan was so determined to keep me alive—and why Pradeep had been furious with Rahim for reviving me.

My connection with Bruno was severed as neatly and abruptly as a surgeon cuts flesh. In my head, instead of my lover's voice, I heard Hasan.

Ah, so you've figured it out. But that doesn't change anything.

Why do you need a body?

You'll find out soon enough. In the meantime, do be careful. I'd prefer my vehicle didn't sustain any unnecessary damage.

By the time I'd finished my mental swearing, Rahim had finished with the car. The absolute instant he wasn't working other magic a blank white wall of mental shielding slammed into place around me. While it was a relief to end the contact with Hasan, I didn't like the fact that Rahim was high-handedly interfering in my communications.

“Hey!” I glared at Rahim.

“You are on duty. I need your
full
attention.”

He wasn't wrong, but I was pretty damned sure that wasn't why he'd cut me off. Saying so wouldn't be productive or diplomatic, so I remained silent and on guard while Rahim stowed my suitcase and my black duffel along with his own duffel and his medical bag. I guarded him until he was in the car, then walked around to join him—all the while very obviously scanning the area for outside threats.

The drive from the airstrip to the campus was quite pretty. The weather was cool and crisp, the sky a cloudless, china blue. A gentle breeze fluttered leaves that were all the brilliant colors autumn in the Midwest has to offer. Rahim stopped at a PharMart that had gas pumps to fuel up the Honda, and reluctantly agreed to go inside with me so I could pick up some sunscreen and quick nutrition in the form of baby food. I'd had a diet shake on the plane, but that had only taken the edge off my hunger. A tube of sweet-potato/applesauce mix, combined with a little tub of turkey puree, washed down with a can of soda, and I was good to go. While I ate, I tried to use my telepathy to contact Bruno and Dawna and got nada. Just what I'd expected, but unhappy news nonetheless.

We drove from PharMart straight to Rahim's office.

Like most universities, Notre Dame has a problem with parking. There's not enough of it. It was four in the afternoon, so you'd think that there'd be less of a problem. You'd be wrong. Rahim had a faculty sticker, so he could go into any of the reserved faculty lots. But the covered parking lot was full. So was the open lot closest to his office building. As he circled around, looking for a spot, I slathered every bit of exposed skin with sunscreen. When we finally did find a place to park I was able to walk with him to the building without burning … much.

The Magic and Metaphysics Department was housed in Richards Hall. It was a huge, beautiful Redbrick building with big white columns and large windows with white trim and black shutters. Passing through the halls, I found out just how popular Rahim was. Students, faculty, and staff all waved, and more than a few tried to stop him to talk about how glad they were he was okay after “that thing in Florida.”

Rahim was pleasant and polite, but firm, keeping us moving forward until we reached the central staircase. The three flights of stairs we climbed were easily as steep as the ones in my old office, but both of us arrived at the top in good time and not the least bit out of breath.

The wards on the building itself hadn't bothered me much. The ones on Rahim's office door were an education in agony.

“Ow, oh,
ow.
” I automatically followed him into his office. That was a mistake. I found myself standing just inside Rahim's not terribly large and hideously cluttered professorial office with tears streaming down my face. “Are those wards even legal?”

“They're sub-lethal,” Rahim assured me.

“Barely.”

He didn't argue. “They are only triggered if someone actually enters the doorway. So long as my office is undisturbed, no one is harmed. It's a new process, one I devised myself. The magic affects all of the surface nerves of the body, aggravating the pain centers. It's keyed to recognize my bloodline. Anyone else gets the full treatment.”

I suspect the glare I gave him was less than effective, what with all the crying I was doing.

“I can't risk the artifacts I have stored here. Everyone in the department knows that my office has strong protections.” He sounded a little defensive. “Why don't you wait out in the hall? I won't be long.”

I didn't really trust him, but I was useless inside that room. The second I stepped back over the threshold, the pain eased. “How do you meet with students?” I asked as I wiped tears from my face and scanned the hall for threats. There were none that I could see, so I watched Rahim through the doorway, staying alert to my surroundings. The walls were thin enough that bits of several nearby conversations would have been audible even without my enhanced hearing.

“I use one of the small conference rooms on the first floor for office hours and appointments.” He bent down to pull open a cabinet door, revealing a small safe. He turned his body slightly, so I couldn't see what he was doing as he opened the safe, but I suspected that was due to an excess of caution. I was pretty sure that, like my own safe, Rahim's had magical and bio-keyed controls rather than a mundane lock. I wouldn't have been able to break into it even if I'd wanted to. And why would I want to?

Setting his bag of magical gear down nearby, he flipped it open. While I watched he transferred several items from the safe to the case, beginning with Hasan's djinn jar and a large gem, both of which he set carefully into his bag. Next came an antique knife and a small, worn, leather-bound book. Once all had been loaded, he snapped the bag shut, then closed the safe and the cabinet door.

I moved aside as Rahim stepped out of the office, carrying the medical bag. He pulled the door closed and reset the wards with one hand.

“We'll use the staff spell room for the working,” he said. “It's close at hand.”

“We're doing this
now?
Right now?”

“I don't dare waste time. Every moment we wait gives Hasan more of an advantage.”

When he put it that way, it sounded oh so reasonable. I was beginning to think that perhaps he specialized in that—perfect rationalizations for any occasion.

Perhaps I was misjudging him, but I didn't think so. First, there was the whole thing with Rahim blocking my siren ability; then there was Hasan's warning; and finally, the professor's body language was just a teeny bit off. I couldn't have said exactly what the tells were—it was too subtle for that. But he was not acting and moving the way he had the other day. Pradeep might be the one who had hired the assassins, but Rahim was up to something—something involving yours truly. I really, really, wished I felt less mentally foggy. I needed to be at my best right now and I just wasn't.

Rahim and I took the elevator down to the first floor in silence almost as absolute as that of a spell disk. We walked in similar silence down a hall, through an open area divided into cubicles and rimmed with copiers and other shared office equipment. The secretarial staff smiled and greeted him by name, looking up from whatever end-of-the-day tasks they were trying to complete. He smiled in acknowledgment, but didn't slow his pace, hurrying around a corner and down another hallway, this one lined with classrooms, until we finally arrived at a pair of metal double doors with a sensor lock similar to the one on my safe.

When Rahim placed his palm against the reader, a small drawer sprang open to reveal a needlelike protrusion. Without hesitation, Rahim jabbed his finger, drawing blood. Only after the machine had a chance to confirm his identity did I hear the locks click open.

We stepped through the double doors into a room that was awash with magic, absolutely beautiful, and so sunny I could feel my skin start to heat the instant I cleared the doorway.

The space was the size of a large auditorium, and opened up the full five floors of the building to a skylight that took up the entire ceiling. The floor was polished hardwood stained a dark mahogany and polished to a warm glow that matched the paneled walls, on which elegant Art Deco light fixtures were spaced at regular intervals. The room's understated elegance was completely overwhelmed by the casting circle affixed to the floor. It was huge, the biggest active circle I'd ever seen.

The outer edge was gold, the center six inches silver, and the inner edge, copper. The metal was deeply etched with runes in various languages and from assorted schools of magic, and gems had been set in its surface at regular intervals. They were angled to catch the light, sending forth flares of color that formed patterns in the air of the room.

“I can't stay in here without better sunscreen.” Since it was fall, and this was Indiana, there hadn't been much summer stock left on the shelves. The SPF 15 that had gotten me from the car to the office building wouldn't be up to protecting me from prolonged exposure to the light in this room.

“Hang on a second,” Rahim said. Setting down the medical bag, he closed the doors, then hurried across the room to a control panel set into the far wall. As he did, I discreetly pulled the recorder from my pocket and set it on the floor in a shadowed area just inside the door. As cover, I slipped off my shoe, pretending to shake a stone out of it before sliding it back on.

Rahim flicked a switch and the glass of the skylight tinted until it was the dark gray of expensive sunglasses. The pain of the sunlight faded as the glass darkened. While I could no longer see the play of colored light cast by the gemstones, I felt it in painful flares of blistering heat against my skin. It was fascinating and more than a little scary. If the circle had this much latent energy, it was hard to calculate how much juice it would give an active working.

“So,” Rahim said, giving me an eager and somewhat calculating look, “are you willing to assist me?”

I stayed right where I was, near the wall, outside the circle.

“I think you should try it the other way first.” I smiled at him sweetly. “With the power in this circle, you may have enough magic that you won't need me.” The circle was that amazing.

He didn't bother to hide his disappointment. “As you wish.” Retrieving his bag, Rahim moved to the center of the circle, where he took out the jar, the gem, and a rondel dagger.

The knife looked old, as if it had actually been made back in the Middle Ages when that style of blade was popular. The hilt was round—hence the name—and made of carved wood, well worn from use and dark from the oils of the many hands that had undoubtedly wielded it over the centuries. The blade was a little over a foot long, tapering to a needle point, and was coated with some sort of green paste—I didn't know what, but I was guessing it was poisonous. It smelled bitter.

Rahim repeated the preparations he'd made on my new casting circle back in California. When he'd finished, he returned salt and holy water to the bag, leaving it outside the circle and not far from the door, where it would be handy to grab when it was time to leave.

Finally, he moved to the center of the circle, picked up the dagger, and began to chant.

I should have seen it coming. Seriously. I knew I couldn't trust him. I knew there was a link between me and Hasan and that Rahim wanted to exploit that link. But I didn't think that he'd be able to use Hasan's jar on
me.

I was wrong.

Power hit me like a club, staggering me. I stumbled one step closer to the circle's outer edge before I could stop myself. Bracing my legs, I fought hard not to move, not to lose consciousness. I was sick and dizzy from the magical blow, but I wasn't giving in. With more effort than was pretty, I managed to pull Kevin's Glock from my holster, training the gun onto the center of Rahim's mass. “Stop it, now.”