Chapter 7
Shapes in the Smoke
Rakan
The two women are still kissing. The dark-haired vampire on the velvet sofa buries her hand in the hair of the blonde succubus by her side. Their mouths move together in a practiced dance. The blonde moans, and it’s a sound that would set human men aflame.
I want nothing more than to not be here with them. It feels a little inhospitable, but ruining your chances with a beautiful woman would make anyone a bad host.
The female vampire pulls back, breaking the kiss. Her dark eyes lock onto mine, and she pats the empty space beside her. “Rakan,” she calls over the heavy bass of the music. “Don’t just stand there brooding. Join us.” The other woman leans in, echoing the invitation with a seductive smile.
A month ago, I would have. Tonight, I can’t muster even the slightest bit of interest.
The penthouse is at full capacity, the way it always is during an infamous al-Rashid party.
I’ve thrown variations of it for longer than many civilizations have existed.
There are humans here tonight who spent actual wishes to get an invitation.
I granted some of them myself, and at the time, it struck me as faintly amusing.
The bar runs the full length of the east wall, stocked with spirits that haven’t been produced in decades. The massive windows extend over the entire upper floor. Asterion Stavros built everything in this penthouse to my specifications and never complained, despite my demands.
“It’s a little eccentric,” his sister Ariadne once told me, “but it suits you.” Perhaps it did, back then.
Suddenly feeling exasperated, I move away from the brunette’s corner. The dancing crowd parts without being asked. It always does, and tonight I don’t even register it.
I thought I’d seen everything. I thought the mysteries of the human heart were easy to untangle.
You’re a fool, Rakan al-Rashid. You don’t deserve what she offered you. You never did.
My self-recrimination isn’t helping, but fortunately, I’m not alone. From the top floor of the penthouse, Sigurd lifts a tentacle in greeting.
He doesn’t usually come to my parties. He likes his privacy too much, and I respect that. If he’s here, it’s only because he knows, or at least suspects, that something is wrong.
I’d be irritated by his ridiculously efficient way of gathering information if I weren’t so grateful. I climb the stairs, desperate for the company. And the distraction.
“The party doesn’t seem to agree with you tonight, Rakan,” he comments as I reach his side. “Why did you throw it if you’re not interested?”
Using a tentacle, he holds out a full glass, and I take it without looking. “It’s habit, I suppose. It’s something to do.”
Sigurd looks at me with his deep, glowing eyes and waits. He’s extraordinarily good at waiting. It’s one of the most irritating—and the most comforting—things about him.
“Something happened at the Obsidian Lounge,” I admit. “With Iris.”
“I gathered.” He flags a server for a fresh glass and doesn’t rush me.
So I tell him. Everything that went right. Everything that didn’t. The private things I keep for myself. I’d never share anything so intimate about Iris with anyone, not even my closest friend. But the sex is really not the root of my problem. Far from it.
When I finish, Sigurd stares at me in what, for him, may be disbelief. “Three thousand years,” he says, “and that is the best you could come up with in that moment?”
“Apparently.”
He crosses his arms and pokes mine with a tentacle. “You are going to have to go back and fix this, Rakan. Whatever you think the obstacle is, it’s not as large as you are making it.”
“She’s not going to want to hear from me.”
It’s true, and we djinn are particular about desires. About the things people want and the things they don’t. After last night’s disaster, it doesn’t seem likely that she’d want to see me. I don’t have it in me to force her.
Sigurd knows that but doesn’t give up. “You’ll find a way. You always do.”
Not this time, I want to say. But the words never come out. A member of my staff rushes to my side. He’s a young faun who’s worked these events long enough to know when to interrupt and when not to. Tonight, he judges correctly.
“Mr. al-Rashid, there’s a Detective Miller at the door. He says it’s urgent.”
“Miller,” Sigurd repeats with a slight frown. His markings pulse once along his jaw. “That’s the detective from the Fifteenth Precinct, isn’t he?”
“He’s worked for me for years.” A worm of unfamiliar anxiety stirs in my gut. “This is unlike him.”
There is something akin to a silent agreement between the monster aristocracy and the police force. We have our people among the boys in blue—placed carefully, compensated well, never flaunted. Miller is one of the best I have, and he has never once shown up at my door unannounced.
Sigurd uncrosses his arms. “Go,” he says. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
I nod, but before I can leave, he grabs my arm. “And, Rakan, remember. You still have the other thing to fix tonight.”
I close my eyes for half a second and will myself across the building.
The foyer assembles around me, the white marble floors greeting my smoke like old friends.
Miller is standing next to an expensive sculpture from the Ptolemaic dynasty, eyeing the dark basalt as if he expected it to bite him.
When I appear next to him, he takes a sharp step backward and puts his hand to his chest.
“Christ,” he croaks out. “I’ll never get used to that.”
“You’ve had long enough to try, Mr. Miller. But you didn’t come here to be comfortable, did you?”
Miller nods, finding his composure now that he’s been reminded of his task. “Indeed. Is there a place where we can talk in private?”
The moment the faun announced Miller’s presence, I knew this was serious. His request for privacy—or rather, his tone—makes it all the more obvious. “Of course,” I tell him. “Please, come inside.”
The study is through a door that most of my guests never find. I lead Miller through it and watch him take in the room.
The floors in here are covered with layered rugs, the kind that were made by hand in places that no longer exist. The desk is there if you look for it, but what dominates the room is the seating—low, cushioned divans arranged around a carved table.
The smell of incense is thick in the air, though there isn’t an actual burner nearby.
On bad days, this setup is more relaxing than the smooth modernity of the rest of the penthouse. And this will certainly be a bad day. It already is.
“Sit,” I tell Miller. I gesture to the chair across the desk rather than the divans. I have a feeling he’d appreciate the anchor of formality, since this is still a business conversation.
Miller complies, and I take my own seat and wait.
The detective sets a manila folder on the desk and opens it without being asked.
“I’ll start with what my team found,” he says, “because the context matters before the complication.” He turns the first page to face me.
“This morning, Old Quarter. We received an alert about a potential magical homicide. First responders found nothing at the scene, but the forensics unit identified the final traces. Harpy female, a clean execution, down to the last atom.”
“And the culprit?” I prod, already knowing I’m going to hate the answer.
Miller leans forward and taps the page. There’s a full forensics summary on it, three dense paragraphs I don’t bother to read.
“A pure djinn signature,” he says. “No mixing, no masking, no attempt at misdirection. Whoever did this either didn’t think they’d be investigated or didn’t care.
In my experience, those two things lead to the exact same mistake. ”
There’s only one djinn alive who kills without masking his signature, and I know him better than I know myself. I skim the information Miller provided, but it tells me nothing I don’t already know.
Looking away from the file, I let out a slow breath. It comes out as smoke. Miller doesn’t cover his nose, but it looks like a struggle.
“This is out of your area of expertise,” I tell him, and it’s not even a lie. “I need you to bury the report. All of it. The forensics summary, every copy, every system it’s touched. This gets handled through my channels, not yours.”
Miller nods, but he doesn’t close the folder. “I can do that. But there is a complication. The witness who alerted us to the murder.”
A human witness is a manageable problem. Everybody has a price—a wish they’ve been sitting on. Something they want badly enough to trade their silence for. It is perhaps the most reliable truth I have encountered in three thousand years of existence.
“Tell me about this witness,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “What do you know about this person?”
Miller clears his throat, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “She’s a young woman. Human. No priors, no record, no obvious connections to the monster community.”
I give him an unimpressed look. I couldn’t care less about the woman’s record or lack thereof. “What does she wish for, Miller?”
“I don’t think Ms. Beckett wishes for anything but justice, if my understanding is correct.”
Beckett. I know that name. A sudden shiver runs down my spine. I feel colder than should be possible for a djinn.
The intake form is the second sheet in the folder. Miller slides it across the desk without a word, and I read the name printed at the top.
Iris Beckett. 14 Riverton Road, Apartment 4B.
The decanter on the shelf behind Miller develops a crack along its left side. The bourbon runs in a slow line down the glass and onto the shelf below. Smoke starts to gather over the floors, making the expensive threads in the carpet curl in protest.
I have no idea what Iris could have been doing on a Saturday morning in the Old Quarter. But knowing her, I suspect she has no clue what she just stumbled into. She provided the police with the information she had—my name, as it turns out.
Then she presumably went home to her apartment, believing that justice was coming. It will not. What will arrive for her is considerably worse.
Miller breaks the silence carefully. “Mr. al-Rashid, is everything all right?”
I force myself to suppress my power. The crack in the decanter stops spreading, and the smoke dissipates. “Of course,” I say, and my voice comes out level. “Everything is fine. Why would it not be?”
Miller is too clever to believe that. He’s also too human to question it. He accepts the answer because that is also part of the arrangement.
“Now, for your price,” I say before he can close the folder.
In all the years he’s worked for me, he has never been extravagant about this part.
The wishes he asks for tend toward the practical and the small.
The last time we met, he asked me for a limited-edition toy his son had been unable to find anywhere in the city.
I produced it in two seconds, and he thanked me as if I’d done him a political favor.
He isn’t asking for something small tonight. I can see it in the way he takes a breath before he answers.
“M-my wife,” he stammers. “She was diagnosed four months ago. Stage three. The doctors have given her eight months. Please, Mr. al-Rashid. I know it’s a lot, but… Can you help her?”
It brushes against that one wall every djinn hits eventually—our inability to create life.
But I’m old enough to understand subtleties.
I can reach into a living thing and shift the conditions, altering a trajectory that was already set.
It’s difficult in a way that most wishes are not.
It requires precision rather than power, and it leaves a mark on the djinn who does it.
Miller has worked for me long enough to understand the difference between what is easy and what is possible. He’s looking at me as if he didn’t actually expect me to agree.
He has no idea just how valuable his information was to me. But that’s fine. He doesn’t need to know.
“It’ll be done,” I tell him, and I mean it completely. “Before the week is out. Your wife will live.”
Miller’s eyes go very wide. He lets out a small noise, as if I’d just caused him physical pain. Maybe I did. Hope is a painful thing, and that is exactly what djinn are exceptional at giving people.
But the hope I provide isn’t empty. Miller knows that. He straightens his back and picks up the folder. For the first time since he arrived, he looks like a man who might actually sleep tonight.
“Thank you, Mr. al-Rashid,” he says quietly. “Truly, you have no idea what this means to me.”
Actually, I just might. I don’t tell him that, only acknowledging his words with a silent nod. He takes his cue and lets himself out.
The door clicks shut behind Miller, and I stop restraining myself entirely.
The smoke pours from my skin and fills the study in seconds. Thick and dark, it swallows the edges of the room. The heat spikes, making the silk wall panels shift like something alive.
Shapes move through the smoke, impressions of my own anguish and desires.
There’s Iris behind the coffee counter, the particular way she holds herself when she’s ignoring someone she has absolutely noticed.
Then again, in the Obsidian Lounge, our dance, the way she looked when she reached her peak, the last moment before everything became complicated.
And now here we are. The first person in three thousand years who actually means something to me is standing directly in the path of the most dangerous thing I’ve ever failed to contain.
You couldn’t have done anything else, I think. No. That isn’t the point.
The smoke shifts. The Iris in it scatters and dissolves, and a threatening figure steps into the space she left behind. In some ways, the silhouette looks just like me. But the angles are sharper, and the darkness deeper. And through the smoke, two bright points of cold fire shine like beacons.
I stare straight at them, at the eyes that had once been just like mine. “So you’re back, Kasim.”