“It’s worse than that,” she said. “Their wish grants them long life. But it doesn’t say how. They could live out their whole lives with a terrible disease, unable to die. Same thing if an accident leaves them in unbearable pain. Their ‘gift’ could easily become a prison.”
Khalid slowly lowered his teacup and murmured a prayer. That was the thing a lot of people didn’t understand. Magic abhorred imbalance. And always exacted a price.
“I’ll keep an eye on them, then,” he said soberly before adding: “Thanks ya Jahiz.”
Fatma nodded at the familiar Cairene slang—evoked with praise, sarcasm, or anger, at the long-disappeared Soudanese mystic. The very one who some forty years past bored a hole into the Kaf, the other-realm of the djinn. She was young enough to have been born into the world left in al-Jahiz’s wake. It was still at times a dizzying affair.
“The kid was right, you know,” she said, eyeing him. “You didn’t have to tip me off. You could have kept that bottle for yourself. Tried to get your own wishes.”
Khalid scoffed. “And risk Muhammad Ali’s curse? God forgive me for such a thing!”
Another bit of Cairene slang. Muhammad Ali Basha, the Great, was rumored to have consolidated his power with the help of a djinn advisor—who abandoned him in his greatest time of need, answering the old Khedive’s pleas with laughter that echoed unceasing in his head. When the aging ruler was forced to abdicate, many blamed the djinn’s curse for weakening his mind.
“Unlike the young,” Khalid continued, “I know the difference between what I want, what I need, and what might just kill me. Besides, I thought all that business about djinn locked away in lamps was some bad Frenchman’s writing.” He looked to where Supernatural Forensics was gingerly placing the Marid’s vessel into a wooden crate for transport. They’d get a proper seal back on and find someplace to store the thing—allowing its ornery occupant to wait out humanity’s demise.
“Lamps are overdone,” Fatma said. “Bottles, on the other hand…”
She didn’t get to finish as she spotted a man walking toward them. In that red kaftan, not with Supernatural Forensics. At second glance, not a man either—a boilerplate eunuch. By its lithe frame and sleek gait, one of the newer messenger models.
“Good evening and pardon my intrusion,” it stopped and spoke. “I bear a message for the recipient: Agent Fatma el-Sha’arawi. The sender is: Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities.”
“That’s me,” Fatma indicated. A message at this hour?
“The message is confidential,” the machine-man stated. “Identification required.”
Fatma held up her badge to the sensors beneath the boilerplate eunuch’s featureless face.
“Identification confirmed.” Its mechanical fingers produced a thin cylinder and handed it to Fatma. She opened the casing and unfurled the note, quickly scanning it.
“More work?” Khalid asked.
“Aywa. Looks like a trip into Giza.”
“Giza? The way you’re going, won’t get much sleep tonight.”
Fatma stuffed the note away. “Sleep is for the dead. And I plan on doing lots of living.”
The big man chuckled. “Go in peace, investigator,” he called as she walked away.
“God protect you, Khalid,” she replied before stepping from the ahwa into the night.
CHAPTER THREE
The ride into Giza by automated wheeled carriage was about forty-five minutes this time of night. But Fatma would be happier when the aerial tram extension got up and running. The Transportation Ministry claimed it would make the trip in a quarter of the time.
As she rode, her mind cataloged the night’s events. It had taken days to follow up on Khalid’s tip. Identifying the bottle. Arranging the meetup and creating her undercover persona. She’d even gotten a new suit—to perfect the look of the eccentric socialite. Things hadn’t exactly gone as planned. Then again, did they ever? Who thought that kid had it in him to summon up a Marid djinn and then demand wishes?
“A fool’s heart is forever at the tip of his tongue,” she muttered. One of her mother’s sayings, for every reason or occasion. Of course, this was Egypt. You could hear such adages everywhere, uttered from a hundred lips, and often unsolicited. Only her mother seemed to use them every other sentence. That had to be some kind of record. Not just Egyptian either. She seemed to pull them from who knows where. Her father joked she must have begun spouting them at birth, chastising the midwife, and keeping it up right through her subu’.
Thoughts of her mother, as usual, reminded her of home. She hadn’t been home in months. Not even for Eid. Too busy with work, she’d told her family. It wasn’t that she didn’t miss them. But whenever she visited her village, it all felt so small. She remembered when Luxor had been the biggest city in the world to her eyes. But compared to Cairo, it seemed like a big town full of old ruins.
The glare of lights made her sit up to peer out the window, meeting the ghost of her reflection—dark oval eyes, a fleshy nose, and full bold lips. She was in Giza. The city was growing, filling with newcomers escaping the cramped neighborhoods of Cairo. Paved lanes and newly constructed buildings stretched across the plateau—illuminated by electric lamps like lotus columns in Neo-Pharaonic style. The girders of an unfinished mooring mast jutted over rooftops, where cargo airships would soon be making dock, turning this place into a hub of commerce. Still, whatever Giza was becoming its past remained prominent—the skyline dominated by towering pyramids, ancient sentinels to this modern age.
The carriage passed through downtown, moving along shop-lined streets onto a road surrounded by flat desert. After what seemed an eternity, the unvaried landscape was broken by a large well-lit structure—the pyramids in its background looming up like mountains.
The Worthington estate was a thing of squares and rectangles, as if several buildings had been lined up unevenly against each other—so that it
