“There it is. The language is Arabic, the words are chock-full of insult. Now I’m asking you. Animal, vegetable, mineral,
or something from the great beyond? And I do believe I’ve got my first call of the evening. Joel from Pittsburgh, hello.”
A very serious-sounding man said, “Hi. Kitty. Clearly, Islamo-fascist terrorists are not just targeting us on the mortal plane.
Obviously they’ve sent their netherworld demons after us, as well. We should have expected this. Those people will stop at
nothing
to destroy the American way of life.”
I winced. I should have known, as soon as I broadcast someone speaking Arabic, the paranoid political loons would raise their
freak flag. “Actually, I have it on pretty good authority that this is a personal attack directed at me in response to . .
. well, in response to various things. Trust me, this isn’t an ideological attack rooted in international terrorism. I’m not
so egocentric or paranoid to think that I’d even be a target for international terrorism.”
“That’s exactly the sort of liberal head-in-the-sand attitude that is going to bring this great country to its knees! You’ll
never see reason because you’re part of the biased left-wing media establishment.” I swore the guy was slavering.
A sane talk radio host would cut the guy off right about there. Instead, I spoke calmly, baiting the guy. Because, you know,
it was funny.
“Let’s say for a minute you’re right,” I said, in the space where the caller paused to take a breath. “And this is a terrorist
campaign waged by Islamic extremists. And, by the way, my research has indicated that the Koran does acknowledge the existence
of genies. What would you do to counteract the attack? How would you stop it? Should I try throwing Republicans at it?”
He didn’t get the sarcasm. They
never
get the sarcasm.
“Kitty,” he said evenly, in all seriousness, “to rid yourself of this demon you must accept Jesus Christ as your personal
savior.”
“Actually, exorcism is pretty high on the list of recommendations. But if we’re right about this thing, a Muslim cleric would
probably be more helpful than yours. Moving on.”
Some folks weren’t convinced it was a genie.
“Hi, Kitty. Thanks for taking my call.”
“It’s my pleasure. You’ve got something for me?”
“It’s not a genie. It’s the Human Torch,” Mike from Austin said.
“As in the superhero? From the movie?”
“No, I’m talking about the Golden Age Human Torch. He was a scientific experiment that got out of control, escaped the confines
of his underground tomb, then became the archenemy of the Sub-Mariner, and—”
“So what you’re saying is the Human Torch is fictional,” I said, wincing.
“Yeah, but he could totally do everything you described.”
“Except that he isn’t real. And if he was, wasn’t he a hero? Didn’t he help people, not burn them down?”
The guy huffed. “The Wolf Man isn’t real, either, but
you’re
still sitting there, aren’t you?”
“There are so many things wrong with that statement I don’t know where to start. Next call, please. Hello.”
I was definitely grasping at straws here. But at least it was entertaining.
“Hi—could it be a phoenix? Because I think of fire and I think phoenix. Maybe it’s like a were-phoenix . . .”
“. . . or a will-o’-the-wisp. Like they say happens with burning swamp gas . . .”
“. . . a thunderbird spirit . . .”
“Pyrokinesis is a well-documented phenomenon, and I believe it’s more widespread than anyone imagines . . .”
Most of what we got wasn’t entirely helpful.
“You’re supposed to put genies back in their bottles, right? So that’s all you have to do.”
“And how would you suggest I do that?” I said the fourth time someone made that recommendation.
“Uh, I don’t know. You just kind of stuff it in?”
“Hard to do when you can’t even see the darn thing,” I said, frustrated, and hung up.
By the last half hour of the show, we hadn’t gotten anything substantial. I was getting frustrated, and Wolf was pushing against
the inside of my skin. Then one of the calls listed on my monitor said “Nick from Las Vegas.” What were the odds? I punched
up the call to find out.
“Hello, you’re on the air.”
“Kitty, baby, I expected to hear from you about this days ago.” The voice was male, suave. So full of himself there was obviously
little room in there for tact, or raw intelligence.
I recognized the voice. It called up a picture in my mind of a young man with a Chippendale physique, sun-baked blond hair,
a sultry smile, and the strong scent of lycanthrope—were-tiger, specifically, sleek and feline. The new alpha of the Band
of Tiamat.
“Nick,” I said, speaking as brazenly as I could. I put a smile on my face and sugar in my voice, no matter how angry I felt.
I curled my hands into fists and squeezed tight, because I could feel claws trying to break out. “What an unpleasant surprise.
Listeners, I have here as my sudden unexpected guest Nick, a real genuine were-tiger and the star of the King of Beasts show
at the Hanging Gardens Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas. Bet you didn’t know the whole act is made up of lycanthropes, did you?
Well, now you do.” To think, when I’d first met them I’d been so sensitive about revealing their true natures. Keeping their
secret. If only I’d known. I felt no compunction about blathering on about them now.
“If you think that kind of exposure bothers me, you’re wrong,” Nick said. “I always thought we should go public. I suppose
I should thank you for getting rid of Balthasar. He was holding us back.” Balthasar, their old leader, who was killed in the
course of my escape from them.
“You may have called in to taunt me, but I don’t actually have to let you talk at all.”
“But you will, because you like talking. Tell me, how’s life been for you? Getting a little hot?”
Ha, so it
was
the Band of Tiamat and not Roman who summoned the genie. Rick was wrong. Unless of course he wasn’t, and the two were working
together. No time to think about it now.
“Well, Nick, since I’ve got you on the line, maybe you could help me out with that. I’m really curious about where you dug
up this thing. Do you have some kind of grimoire of evil demons? You flipped through and decided this one looked like more
fun than a plague of locusts? Or is there a mail-order catalog that will deliver underworld creatures to an address of your
choosing? I have to tell you, if that’s the case I think you got ripped off, because their gift-card option sucks.”
He laughed, which aggravated me. I refrained from growling. I tried not to growl on the air.
Tina and Jules were watching me, wide-eyed.
He said, “I thought you’d learned during your visit here that these are powers you don’t understand, can never understand.
You’re dealing with the consequences of trying to interfere with them.”
I groaned. “The consequences of saving my own life, you mean? And there is nothing more boring than the old ‘dealing with
powers you don’t understand’ shtick. I think that’s a lame excuse used by people who don’t have any better clue what’s happening.
Is that it? You and your priestess unleashed this thing, and that’s all you could do with it? You don’t understand it yourselves,
and you can’t control it. Once it’s loose, you can’t stop it.”
That was a terrifying thought I hadn’t considered until now. I had entertained the notion that if I figured out how to placate
the Band of Tiamat and its priestess, they might call off their demon. But what if it wasn’t theirs to control? Their cult
was all about chaos. They might not
want
to control it.
He didn’t answer right away. A couple seconds of dead air ticked over, and I started to switch to a new call.
Then he said, “I thought you of all people could appreciate anarchy.”
“Anarchy only works when everyone’s sane,” I shot back. “I have another question for you: Where’s Odysseus Grant?”
Nick hung up.
Shit.
Deep breath, had to keep going. I could panic over what was happening to Grant in, oh—I checked the clock—about ten minutes.
“Well,” I said at my microphone. “I don’t know much about laying curses, but if any of you
do
know anything about laying curses, I know someone who needs cursing right about now. Next caller, hello.”
The woman spoke with an accent, something clipped, refined, Middle Eastern.
“Kitty, this thing that haunts you. You’re right. It is
djinn
.” She pronounced the word with a different inflection, and I could hear the different spelling. She was pronouncing it correctly.
“Go on,” I said, glancing at Jules and Tina. They were listening closely.
“The
djinn
are said to be fallen angels, or sometimes spoken of as a kind of person made up solely of spirit, where humans are made
of matter. Among the
djinn
there is the
ifrit
. An
ifrit
is a spirit of fire, and it loves mischief. I think this is what has found you.”
There it was, the chill up my spine, the gooseflesh on my arms. The ring of truth.
“I think you may be right,” I said. “Now. How do I stop one of these
ifrit
?”
She hesitated. “This is a difficult thing. There is anger here, and vengeance. I risk drawing it on myself, if I help you
more than this. He would know.”
“Wait a minute,” I begged, because my on-air sixth sense told me she was about to hang up. “If you know this much, you must
know how to protect yourself. You know how to stop it.”
“I have only listened to your show for a little while, Kitty, but I can tell you understand much. That in every tale there
is a grain of truth. The trick is to separate truth from tale.”
“You’re right, I’ve found grains of truth in a lot of tales. But how do you separate them?”
“Wisdom. Intuition. We are not so far from the times when the tales ruled us. Our hearts remember.”
“Maybe we can do this with twenty questions,” I said. “The bottle part—stuffing it back in the bottle. Is that true?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And how does one go about stuffing a
djinn
into a bottle?”
“You don’t stuff,” she said. “You coax. You lure.”
“All right. Makes sense. How do we do that?”
“Aren’t you a scholar of the arcane arts? Aren’t you versed in the principles of spells and curses?” Her voice had turned
playful. I recognized teasing when I heard it.
“Only the kind of curses I’m not allowed to say on the radio.”
“Something had to call it to this world, to its current hunt. Learn what it was. Use that to banish him out of it. He will
not be able to resist.”
God, who
was
this? She talked like the old vampires did, or the real magicians. Who needed conspiracy theories when these guys were around?
“May I ask you a question? What are you?”
She put a smile into her answer, and for some reason, I imagined her winking. “Let’s leave that another mystery, shall we?”
“Are you one of them?” I said, impulsively. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? A
djinn?
Can
djinn
even use the phone? What—”
But I was talking to air, because she finally did hang up.
From the corner, where they were stationed with their laptop, Jules and Tina were looking back at me. Their eyes gleamed,
and they smiled. They’d found something, then. Maybe now we had everything we needed to stop this.
But first, the show. “All right, faithful listeners. I’m about at the end of my time with you tonight. I have to say, some
days I finish off the show feeling more confused than I did when I started. Just when I think I’ve encountered everything
there is to encounter, something like this comes along and smacks me upside the head. But that’s a good thing. It keeps me
on my toes. Until next week, be careful out there. Look under the bed one more time before you go to sleep. This is Kitty
Norville, voice of the night.”
And that was it. I was done.
With the credits still rolling in the background, Matt came out of the booth. Fuming, he pointed at me. “There’s no way you
can convince me that
I Dream of Jeannie
is after your ass.”
I blinked. “I wouldn’t do that. This thing’s a little more with the flaming death and less with the cute blond nose wiggle.”
“I think the nose wiggle was
Bewitched,
” Ben said.
I rolled my eyes. “Details. So what is it? What have you got?”
Tina and Jules had been writing and making sketches on a pad of paper. Jules said, “Your caller was right. Some symbols, some
basic principles, are the same in nearly every culture. The circle, for example, as a symbol of eternity and protection. She
seemed to be suggesting that any sort of banishment spell ought to work on this thing.”
“So we’re back to exorcisms,” I said.
“Sure,” Tina said. “But we’ve seen this thing before, we’ve seen what it can do. Jules and I have a spell that ought to work.”
“Custom banishment,” I said. I almost said it wouldn’t hurt to try, but it could. If we didn’t succeed in trapping it this
time, what would it do next when it lashed out? Why did I get the feeling the
djinn
—the
ifrit
—listened to the radio and knew we were up to something?
“We’ll need some of your hair,” Jules said with a perfectly straight face.
I stared.
“Just a strand or two,” he said quickly. “Nothing terrible.”
Using something personal like someone’s hair was a common bit of spell lore from all over the world. I found the end of my
ponytail and pulled out a few hairs, wincing. “Should I even ask?”
“The thing’s after you—we’re just going to make sure it knows you’re around.” He smiled as he stuffed the strands into a plastic
bag.
Tina tapped a pencil against the table. “The thing I can’t figure out is what kind of bottle we need to use. I mean, it seems
kind of gauche to use just a plastic soda bottle or something. Like maybe we ought to use something all glass and fancy.”