He went to the back office, opened the city directory, and found the number for the New York Herald.
18.
Will you tell me your name?”
He was lying upon the forge, stretched his full length, the coals whispering in his ears. She hovered over him, facing him, all but touching. Flames below him, flames above. He didn’t think he’d ever been so deliriously happy.
—I don’t have a name, she said. Not anymore.
“You were banished,” he said, remembering.
—Yes.
“And I can’t tell you my own name, either.”
—Then we’ll be nameless together, she said, smiling.
He grinned back. Again he wanted to ask, Is this truly happening? How had everything changed in a single moment? And yet—wasn’t that how jinn lived their lives? A sudden encounter, an impulse acted upon, and all was new again. He’d merely forgotten.
She turned slightly in the air, gazing up at the steel above them.—Jinni, she said, what is this place?
“It’s my home,” he said. “I built it.”
A hint of doubt touched her features.—But . . . why?
“To pass the time. And to prove to myself that I could.”
He felt her shudder slightly.—I don’t understand. To touch all that iron . . .
“It doesn’t hurt me.”
—I know that. Still, it feels . . .
He smiled. “Obscene?”
—Yes.
“I’ve worked with iron for years. A metalsmith released me from the flask by accident, and I needed a skill to survive. It was a convenient choice.”
—But—why do you say you needed a skill to survive? Even bound as you are, you’re more powerful than any of them.
It was a simple question, asked in a language that tugged at his deepest instincts. Why had he chosen to be a metalsmith, to hide his nature behind something that his own kind counted as obscenity? “I didn’t feel powerful at the time,” he said. “A thousand years had passed. I had no idea where I was, and I couldn’t remember what had happened to me. I was . . . afraid.”
—So they took advantage of your fear, she said, as though finishing the story for him.
Had that been the case? He, not Arbeely, had been the one to propose a partnership—but the man had quickly agreed, and grown rich in the bargain. And the Golem, too, had encouraged his hiding. They had influenced him, the both of them.
He shook his head, the coals rustling at his scalp. He wanted to justify his choices to her, but he sensed that any attempt at an explanation would only turn into a litany of his own weaknesses. Why had he tied himself so strongly to Arbeely, and put himself at the man’s service?
Because Arbeely was kind to me, he thought distantly.
As though bored with his silence, the jinniyeh pulled away from him and began to float about the remnants of the workshop. He propped his elbows on the coals, watching as she examined the anvil and hammer, the racks of tools with their wooden handles. “Careful,” he called, as she drifted toward the forge’s exhaust hood. “You’ll end up on the roof.”
She shot him a surprised look, then peered up inside the hood.—Would it hurt me?
“I doubt it—but you’d come out filthier than a ghul in spring.” He grinned.
She laughed—the sound was like sunlight—and moved on, studying the hose that was fastened to the wall.
“That would hurt you,” he told her. “It goes up to the water tower.”
She backed away as though it might snap at her.—Is that the smaller building, on top of this one?
He nodded. “It’s a reservoir.”
—Why do you need such a thing? Is it for defense?
“No, it came with the Amherst.”
—What is an . . . Amherst?
The sound of the word made him smile. “This building is the Amherst. I wasn’t the one who named it.”
She made a derisive sound.—They name their boxes as well as number them?
He raised an eyebrow. “‘Boxes’?”
—Yes, the boxes they so adore. They live in them, they put things inside them, they would turn the entire world into walls and corners if they could. I am heartily sick of boxes.
He thought of his river-pebble model. “I feel the same. It’s part of why I built this.” He gestured upward, at his work. “To show that there’s another way.”
—But it’s still inside a box, she said, dubious.
“That’s true.” He didn’t want to think about it, though, didn’t want to argue or scrutinize. He only wanted to be happy in her presence.
She floated back and settled above him, warm and beautiful. He reached up, and flames caressed his fingers.
—Shall I tell you a story? she whispered.
“I would like that.”
—An old story, or a new one?
He smiled. “Will you tell me of the iron-bound jinni?”
—Oh, but there are many versions of that story.
“Then tell me all of them.”
She laughed in approval.—Of course. And afterward—if we cannot think of anything else that might occupy us—
Another caress; the Amherst blurred above him—
—you can tell me which one comes closest to the truth.
* * *
Toby stood on the corner of Allen and Delancey, peering into the Radzin’s Bakery window.
He’d never been inside Radzin’s, not even once. His ma had always made a point of hurrying past it on errand days, her eyes dark with the grudge she still carried. Just to be here at all felt like a sin and a betrayal. Even knowing his ma was at the laundry, he found himself checking over his shoulder—but then, he’d been checking over his shoulder all day, thanks to his trip to the Hotel Earle. The memory of that room made his skin crawl; it had dogged him through his rounds, turning his smile nervous and false, cutting his usual tips in half. In a different life, he might’ve come home and said, Ma, I delivered a telegram at the Hotel Earle and I think the place is haunted! But he hadn’t said a word to her about the hotel, or the man in Little Syria, or any of it. She would only tell him it was all nonsense, a hard edge of fear in her
