Immortal

these that make me wonder if there is such a thing as reincarnation.

Anyway, I’d miss her, just like I miss all of them.

My cab driver was a lunatic named Mohammed who seemed to show equal amounts of disdain for all the other cars on the road and for all the traffic laws. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was trying to kill me. But he wasn’t. He liked me. I always get along well with cab drivers because I always speak their language, whatever language that might be. Mohammed’s was Arabic. I entertained the prospect of telling him I’d met the original Mohammed, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t believe me. (Nice guy, old Mohammed was. A tad zealous and more than a bit touched in the head, but otherwise all right. He and Lester the subway drunk would have gotten along well.)

We arrived at the curb with a little over an hour to spare before my flight. It looked like my luck had held. All I had to do was make it to the gate and I was home free. I figured the best anyone could do once I was inside was try and talk me into going with them, seeing as how they’d never get a gun past the metal detectors. And if the woman I was sleeping with couldn’t convince me to go to Grindel, what chance did anyone else have?

After tipping Mohammed, I stepped past a man pushing a baby stroller and nearly made it through the sliding doors leading inside when I heard a familiar voice.

“That’s him.”

I should have run straight for the gate. Instead, I turned around and found myself staring at the barrel of a gun. It was wrapped up in a receiving blanket so nobody but me could see it. The man with the stroller smiled. “Don’t move,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked. “You going to shoot me here, in front of the skycaps? You think I’m stupid?”

The happy faux father was still smiling. He was dressed in generic upper-middle class, looked to be about six feet tall and decently muscular, in a daily jogging yuppie kind of way. Probably knew a bit about hand-to-hand combat. I could take him.

“No,” he answered. “I know you are not stupid.” Trace of a German accent.

He held up his other hand, the hand that had been holding the baby stroller. In it was an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of Clara. Clara tied up and gagged with electrical tape.

“Hah! Shit, Adam, you should see your face!” It wasn’t the man with the gun who said that. It was the familiar voice that had caused me to turn around in the first place. It was the baby. I looked down.

“Hello, Jerry,” I said. “You make one ugly baby, you know that?”

Chapter 21

 Clara finally managed to get a map through to me. I’m guessing since she was able to draw it, she also has a good deal more freedom than anything I’m working with. I’m wondering again if maybe she’s not even a prisoner at all. That would be a nettlesome complication. Especially if she tells anyone about my escape plan, which has plenty of holes in it already and certainly won’t need her help to go horribly wrong.

    And even if it goes exactly the way it’s supposed to, I don’t expect I’ll be surviving it. The best I can reasonably hope for is to take out as many people when I go as I can.

*  *  *

An hour later I was in the backseat of a minivan and taking in the less scenic portions of northern New Jersey. (The snow covering helped, from a beautification standpoint, but only marginally.) Beside me, in a baby’s car seat, was Jerry. I can’t even begin to tell you how funny this looked. My captor—who introduced himself as John—was handling the driving. He was doing the limit with a fresh-faced all-American smile on his face. Joe Anybody on a Sunday afternoon jaunt. Which made me the brother-in-law, just in from the airport. Or the other half of a gay couple, depending on who asked.

At my feet was my bag. John hadn’t bothered to search it, which was just as well. I didn’t have anything I could use in there. I’d left the gun in the park, and it would take hours to kill John with Tchekhy’s tape recorder. The only thing I’d rather they didn’t know I had was the satellite phone. Of course, they had one of their own.

It had been assumed from the outset that I would be going quietly. Seemed like a reasonable assumption, as they had my girlfriend hostage and I was supposedly the chivalrous sort and all. And really, you had to give them credit for thinking of getting a hostage since we all know I’m not an easy guy to forcibly transport. They were pretty close to being right about the chivalry part, but that was about it. I certainly wasn’t going peacefully.

“So where are we headed?” I asked John No-Last-Name.

“To see my employer,” he said with a smile one reserves for friendly chats about the weather.

“That’s self-evident,” I said. “I was looking for something more specific. Like what region of the country, or even what country in general. I just want to know how to dress for the occasion.”

“You needn’t worry,” he said. “We’ve made all the arrangements.”

“Uh-huh. Hope you have a lot of cash.”

“I’m sorry?”

“A lot of cash,” I said. “This thing gets what? Twelve miles to the gallon? For a cross-country drive, it’s just not very practical.” John recognized a clumsy fishing expedition for what it was and didn’t answer. So I continued. “Not to mention dangerous for the environment. You know, I’ve been reading up on these—”

“Hey, Adam,” Jerry interjected, “was she good or what?” He was examining the photograph of Clara and doing things to himself that I’m willing to bet the designers of the baby seat never envisioned.

“You like that, do you?” I was decidedly unhappy with my erstwhile friend. “You like to have them tied up like that?”

“I’m more of a handcuff guy myself,” he admitted. “Crashed a women’s prison once? Un-fucking-believable. You know what I mean?”

I took the photo from him.

I guess you’re probably wondering how I ever ended up trusting something as unpleasant as Jerry in the first place. You may have also noticed that while I have some fascinating tales about various other uncommon beings—vampires, pixies, demons—I haven’t told you any about iffrits. This is because there are no interesting stories. Iffrits are completely and utterly useless. They have never, to my knowledge, done anything particularly brave or particularly evil. Or anything at all. No iffrit has made an impact that I know of on history in any way whatsoever. Evolutionarily speaking, I believe their specific niche in the world is to serve as excellent drinking partners, which is exactly how I’ve always treated them. I trusted Jerry in that capacity and never anticipated betrayal from him because betrayal would just be too much work for an iffrit.

“So how’d this play out, Jerry?” I asked him.

“How’d what play out?”

“How did you get involved with all of this?”

“Yer pissed, ain’t-cha?” he observed.

“However could you tell?”

He popped the harness loose and scampered out of the seat. Another thing the designers probably hadn’t counted on. “Awww, don’t be that way, Adam,” he said, leaning across my knee to try to look me in the eye. “It’s just money, is all.”

“Just money,” I repeated. I really wanted to strangle the little prick. “When did iffrits ever care about money? You don’t even have any pockets to put it in.”

“I’m getting entrepreneurial.”

“I’d be amazed if you even knew what that word meant.”

“I figure with enough cash I can maybe buy my own beer truck or something. Or a bar.”

Now that sounded more like an iffrit.

“You’d sell me out for a beer truck?”

“So it’s not the best thing I ever done. Look, somebody who knows somebody tipped me off that you were