Chapter 16
“This changes everything.”
“Chaz. Lower your voice.” Katja shot him a death glare from across the table.
She sat with Caspar on the inside of the booth.
Caspar was groggy, slowly coming back to consciousness after Katja slipped half a pill into his mouth and the other half into his ginger ale.
It was the compromise she and Malek had worked out to bring Caspar back from wherever his mind was taking him.
“Sorry,” Chaz mumbled. Malek sat next to Chaz on the other side of the booth in the Sibyl Diner, one of the many supernatural-friendly places in the area.
“But this does change everything. All our notes have to be thrown away. We’re not dealing with a demon or ghost possession.
We’re dealing with a fucking djinn and that entire cultural legacy. ”
“But a djinn who clearly has no idea he is one—hence this whole dead-to-the-world routine. Caspar.” Katja snapped her fingers. He didn’t even react to his name being called. “Caspar?”
“What’s he doing right now?” Chaz asked. “Is this like a coma, or…?”
“He’s deep dreaming. Hallucinating. Usually it’s about past lives when someone’s this close to enchanted objects, since they’re alive as much as he is. But a djinn like this is hard to predict,” Katja said, shooting a look at Malek. “Anything else you can add here?”
“No. But… I think I may know what he’s going through.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s just hard to explain fully. Not to someone who hasn’t been there before.
” Malek could only keep his eyes on Caspar.
When he’d lost all his objects and returned to his incorporeal state, all he could remember from the Summerland was music.
Music like Twigs described, full of vivid colour and motion.
When Malek had come out of the Summerland, he’d tattooed the music on his arms so he could keep it close.
He was never lost in that dream state; he was only waiting to be found.
That state of transition, though, was hard to explain to someone with a body.
Even if Katja worked with the dead, and understood it as a primary state of passing, he still wasn’t sure if he could describe the Summerland, or if he’d want to reveal those exact secrets.
“So is he in the Summerland or something?” Katja asked. “The place you were?”
“What? Oh, not quite, since he’s corporeal.
” Malek held the box with the jewels on his lap, protected by a spell and safe from Caspar in his hands.
“What I did was more like limbo. Not quite alive but not quite dead. He’s very much alive, but he’s hallucinating things that have happened and he may not have been around to see. ”
“But I thought cultural memory was a myth?” Chaz asked.
“There has been evidence that we inherit memories. Scientists discovered it a while ago,” Katja said.
“For supernaturals, at least djinns, those memories can be inherited through objects, too. But since Caspar hadn’t been around these objects in years, and also had no idea what they were, he was overwhelmed by the need to update his software, so to speak. ”
“So he’s going to shut off randomly at three in the morning?” Chaz asked with a laugh, only to stop himself and consider what was going on. “You know, that’s actually kind of accurate.”
They all watched as Caspar placed his head on the diner table, mumbled something in Arabic, and then turned over again. Malek listened closely for any familiar names, but heard nothing.
“Okay. I’m getting sick of this,” Katja said, referring to Caspar and his endless updating. “He’s not even getting to the pill in his drink in this state. I cave. This clearly isn’t dangerous anymore, so let’s give him a rude awakening.”
Katja poured out a small thimble of liquid and held it to Caspar’s mouth. As soon as a droplet hit his tongue, his eyes opened. He slammed his hands on the tabletop and set the cutlery jangling.
“Shit,” Malek said. “That was stronger than I’d thought it’d be.”
“Me too.” Katja bit her lip, and then rubbed a hand up and down Caspar’s back. “You with us, Caspar?”
“What? Where am I? Shit…” Caspar touched his temples, clearly in pain. Malek was worried he’d throw up again when Katja grasped the glass of ginger ale and pushed it toward him. “Drink. Now.”
“Ginger ale? Really?” But Katja pressed it to his lips again and Caspar drank. It took him a few moments after swallowing before he seemed to right himself.
“What the fuck is in that?”
“A pill. To help bring you back to the waking world.”
“And the ginger ale is a house recipe,” Chaz added. “The kind that keeps jumbees and soucouyants away.”
“Oh.” Caspar did a quick survey of the diner’s bright colours and flags. “We’re in Little Jamaica?”
Chaz nodded. “This diner is known for being a haven for supernatural creatures, especially when they first turn during puberty and don’t know what to eat. There’s a bunch of different menus under the counter for just that situation.”
“Huh. And I guess I’m one of those supernatural creatures now, aren’t I?” Caspar shook his head. Pieces of the last forty-five minutes seemed to come back to him. Katja pulled another concoction from her bag and pushed it toward him.
“Drink this, too.”
“What is it?”
“Just drink it. It will keep you from swaying on your feet again. It’s… an elixir of sorts.”
Caspar sent Malek an unsure look. Malek nodded. “It’s best to do what Katja says. At least in my experience.”
“Yeah,” Chaz echoed. “Mine too.”
Caspar smiled, just barely, as he knocked it back.
He made a face like it was bitter, sticking his tongue out when he finished it.
When Caspar touched his head again, he didn’t flinch like he was in pain.
He closed his eyes, as if the dreamworld he’d just visited had come back to him for a moment. “Um. I—”
“Are you taller?” Malek asked suddenly. He tilted his head, eyeing Caspar’s crumbled body at the diner table. He seemed paler, sicker as he descended into his memory palace. But Malek was certain, absolutely certain, that Caspar had started to grow.
But before Caspar could say anything else, a waitress with large eyes and dark skin came by their table. “Hello! Can I get anyone anything else this afternoon?”
“Um. Probably. But give us two minutes?” Katja flashed her smile at the waitress, who blushed a little at Katja’s good looks and charm. “Then I promise I’ll sing you the rest of the order and give you a good tip.”
The waitress’s dark skin blushed a faint rosy pink before she nodded. As soon as she was out of sight, Katja dropped the act. “Oh, God. We’re going to have to order a smorgasbord if we want to keep this table for as long as we need it.”
“How much more work do you have to do?” Malek asked. “I mean, just look at him. We know he’s a djinn now. And you know it, too, Caspar?”
After a moment, Caspar nodded.
“What do you remember from your dreams?”
“Not a lot, if I’m being honest. A lot of Arabic I don’t remember much of. Some faces that were like my parents’, but not.”
“And names?” Malek asked. “You hear any of those?”
Caspar shook his head. “No, sorry. No names. Is there something you guys can tell me about this? I’m still lost.”
“You have been wandering through your family’s legacy. So, we can give you a break,” Katja said. She took a sip of her coffee before she ran over the details that they’d just discussed—trinkets, cultural reboot, and his sickness.
“Huh. I’m still not sure if I understand everything,” Caspar said, “but I do know that I want cherry pie when the waitress gets back. I can see it from over here and it looks really good. Is that okay?”
“Definitely.” Malek smiled. If Caspar wanted cherry in this moment and was attracted to the colour alone, it was a good chance that Caspar’s family line was part of the red djinns—not blue like Malek.
He placed his hand against his chest, utterly relieved.
He and Caspar were not related, and the momentary panic of realizing that Caspar was a djinn, and that he was possibly attracted to a far-distant cousin, passed by without comment in Malek’s subconscious.
When the waitress came by, everyone ordered their meals. Caspar got his cherry pie with whipped cream, Malek got blueberry pie with ice cream, Katja ordered the soup of the day, and Chaz just wanted another round of coffee. When everything had been organized, Chaz was the first to speak.
“So, you’re not a ghoul. Congrats.”
“Yeah, I know that. Didn’t think I was one before.”
“True, but you are a supernatural, and that was the confusing thing we were trying to figure out from your blood work.” Chaz passed over a sheet from his large file folder. Malek couldn’t see the results, but he recognized the similar blood patterns used in research.
“I don’t understand,” Caspar said after studying the paper. “I was always told my blood panels came back as normal.”
“Or inconclusive?”
Caspar paused. ”Ms. Patricia. Oh. I thought I had gotten sick from the attack.”
“No, but the attack finally led us to examine your blood again. It was suddenly inconclusive. Maybe it had been that way in the trial, too, since tech couldn’t always detect the same levels as they can now.”
“And inconclusive doesn’t always automatically mean supernatural,” Katja added.
“Right. It means that there was a spectral disturbance. Our first thought was a demon, like in your first story. Then maybe a hostile ghost, so we got your medical records, and Katja looked them over.”
Katja gestured to her own research she produced from her briefcase.
“When someone dies, but is brought back to life, they can become a portal to spirits. We figured that if you had no idea what had happened that night, someone could have killed you, brought you back, possessed you, and killed your parents. An inconclusive blood result would show up that way. But you’d need to have marks, and you don’t. ”
“Marks?”
“On the chest, the feet, and the neck,” Chaz said. “We sent Hayden into the prison to see if they were there. They weren’t.”