Kitty Raises Hell
Page 63

She held a bottle—she’d finally decided on the kind used to hold powerful acids in a chemistry lab, pint-sized, made of thick brown glass with a heavy rubber cork—over the edge of the boundary, its mouth pointed toward the djinn . Jules put a lighter to a small bundle of hemp tied up with my hair, which he held over the mouth of the bottle with a pair of tongs. The fibers lit immediately, glowing hot red and sending up a tendril of black smoke.
Tina repeated the chant, with variations but with the same meaning, commands of banishment, of release. The djinn turned to look, the flames surrounding it swaying in another direction, sparks licking out behind it. Jules blew on the smoke from the burning hair, so it drifted forward and mingled with the flames writhing around the djinn .
An odd thing happened.
The line of smoke from the burning hair shifted direction and began to move into the jar, as if sucked in by a tiny vacuum or draft of air. The flowing smoke began pulling the djinn with it.
Realizing what was happening, the figure inside the flames flinched back, flailing its arms, like a swimmer fighting against a riptide. It shouted with its furnace-and-flamethrower voice, begging while it gasped.
A burst of light threw me to the floor. I curled up, covered my face with my arms, convinced something had exploded and the house would now fall down around us, killing me, Ben, everyone. Our rapid healing wouldn’t help us if our whole bodies fried first. My nose was dead, unable to smell anything, unable to tell me where Ben had fallen. I thought I had seen him for a split second, holding the fire extinguisher up as a shield, flung away from the circle as I was, a silhouette against the atomic flare. The sound—this must be what the inside of a star sounded like, a constant nuclear explosion times a thousand.
At least, that was what it felt like to my senses. Like the world had ended, like the djinn was ending it with his final scream, with blasts of fire.
Then it all went away, and I sat up and looked.
I had a feeling the room had been still for some time, it was so quiet. No fires burned anywhere, not even on the floor, which had been roaring with flames. The acrid stench of soot and sulfur, which should have been overwhelming, had faded. I could almost taste a hint of freshness, as if someone had opened a window.
The circle drawn in blood on the floor was gone. The djinn was gone.
Jules and Ben were picking themselves up off the floor, brushing off their clothes, shaking their heads as if dazed. Tina, however, knelt at the edge of where the circle had been, one hand clutching the bottle, the other hand clamped tightly over the cork, locking it shut. Far from being dazed, she held the bottle straight-armed, tense before her, staring at it in a panic.
“You got it?” Jules asked finally. “It’s in there?”
She nodded quickly. She had it and was obviously afraid to let it go, in case it escaped.
“I can’t believe that actually worked,” Ben said.
We looked at each other across the room and didn’t need words. A month’s worth of anxiety, and an equal amount of relief, filled the silence. He pursed his lips, and I smiled, and cried a little, tears slipping free. We crossed to each other in a couple of steps, and I nestled in his arms. We rested like that a moment, heads bent together, taking in each other’s scent, reassuring ourselves that our pack, our mates, were safe now. We were safe.
He touched my hair, stroking lightly, and let out a sigh. So did I. He smelled like Ben. Maybe a little scorched, but still Ben.
“You look awful,” he said, and I suspected he was right. My arms stung like a bad sunburn, my face felt scorched and sooty. But none of that mattered. I’d heal soon enough.
“Funny,” I said. “ ’Cause I feel pretty good.”
Gary and Detective Hardin burst in and pounded into the parlor, looking flustered.
“Is everyone okay?” Gary demanded. Hardin had her hand on her belt, where she kept her gun holstered.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so,” Jules said, his voice shaky. He rubbed a hand over his short-cropped hair. The hand was shaky, too. Soot smudged his glasses.
“The video cut out—everything went to static when you lit the hair,” Gary said. “What happened?”
None of us spoke. None of us could explain it.
“Tina, you got that cork in?” Jules asked, kneeling next to the woman.
The shocky look still gleamed in her eyes. Jules put his hands around hers and eased the jar to the floor. Together, they tested the lid. It was tight. Then they let it go. The jar sat by itself on the floor, inert, harmless. Opaque. I imagined the djinn inside, screaming in anger, beating fiery fists against the interior wall, trying to get out, sealed by magic, against all reason and the laws of physics. Or maybe it had been sucked into another dimension, a pocket universe, that the ritual had somehow opened. Maybe the ancients had understood the crazier notions of theoretical physics better than we did. I’d have to file that away to think about later.
Tina heaved a sigh—she’d been holding her breath—and slumped into Jules’s arms. They hugged each other.
“How am I supposed to charge a thing in a bottle with murder? How am I supposed to write this up?” Hardin said, looking lost. She said this sort of thing a lot.
“Can’t you close a case without actually arresting anyone?” I said.
“Say the suspect was killed in the course of arrest,” Ben said helpfully.
“No and hell no. The paperwork for that sort of thing is even worse than the paperwork for... this.” She gestured vaguely at the aftermath of our trap. The whole place was covered with soot, scorched like it had been flash fried.
“Besides, it’s not dead,” Tina said, still staring at the bottle.
Well. Wasn’t that a cheerful thought?
“Let’s get out of here,” I muttered and led the way out the door. It was still dark. Maybe I could get a few hours of sleep. The first sleep in weeks where I wouldn’t be worried about some creature of flames waiting to pounce on me.
The fires in the yards up and down the street were out. The sirens were off, but lights were still flashing, red, blue, and white flickering merrily, reflecting off pools of water in the street. Some people had wandered out in bathrobes to gawk at the commotion, and the police herded them safely out of the way. The yard at Flint House was blackened, and the air smelled of wet soot, thick ash, and puddles of dirty water. However, I didn’t smell any fresh flames or brimstone. Nothing that reminded me of the djinn.