Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Raises Hell

Tina repeated the chant, with variations but with the same meaning, commands of banishment, of release. The djinn turned to look, the flames surrounding it swaying in another direction, sparks licking out behind it. Jules blew on the smoke from the burning hair, so it drifted forward and mingled with the flames writhing around the djinn .

An odd thing happened.

The line of smoke from the burning hair shifted direction and began to move into the jar, as if sucked in by a tiny vacuum or draft of air. The flowing smoke began pulling the djinn with it.

Realizing what was happening, the figure inside the flames flinched back, flailing its arms, like a swimmer fighting against a riptide. It shouted with its furnace-and-flamethrower voice, begging while it gasped.

A burst of light threw me to the floor. I curled up, covered my face with my arms, convinced something had exploded and the house would now fall down around us, killing me, Ben, everyone. Our rapid healing wouldn’t help us if our whole bodies fried first. My nose was dead, unable to smell anything, unable to tell me where Ben had fallen. I thought I had seen him for a split second, holding the fire extinguisher up as a shield, flung away from the circle as I was, a silhouette against the atomic flare. The sound—this must be what the inside of a star sounded like, a constant nuclear explosion times a thousand.

At least, that was what it felt like to my senses. Like the world had ended, like the djinn was ending it with his final scream, with blasts of fire.

Then it all went away, and I sat up and looked.

I had a feeling the room had been still for some time, it was so quiet. No fires burned anywhere, not even on the floor, which had been roaring with flames. The acrid stench of soot and sulfur, which should have been overwhelming, had faded. I could almost taste a hint of freshness, as if someone had opened a window.

The circle drawn in blood on the floor was gone. The djinn was gone.

Jules and Ben were picking themselves up off the floor, brushing off their clothes, shaking their heads as if dazed. Tina, however, knelt at the edge of where the circle had been, one hand clutching the bottle, the other hand clamped tightly over the cork, locking it shut. Far from being dazed, she held the bottle straight-armed, tense before her, staring at it in a panic.

“You got it?” Jules asked finally. “It’s in there?”

She nodded quickly. She had it and was obviously afraid to let it go, in case it escaped.

“I can’t believe that actually worked,” Ben said.

We looked at each other across the room and didn’t need words. A month’s worth of anxiety, and an equal amount of relief, filled the silence. He pursed his lips, and I smiled, and cried a little, tears slipping free. We crossed to each other in a couple of steps, and I nestled in his arms. We rested like that a moment, heads bent together, taking in each other’s scent, reassuring ourselves that our pack, our mates, were safe now. We were safe.

He touched my hair, stroking lightly, and let out a sigh. So did I. He smelled like Ben. Maybe a little scorched, but still Ben.

“You look awful,” he said, and I suspected he was right. My arms stung like a bad sunburn, my face felt scorched and sooty. But none of that mattered. I’d heal soon enough.

“Funny,” I said. “ ’Cause I feel pretty good.”

Gary and Detective Hardin burst in and pounded into the parlor, looking flustered.

“Is everyone okay?” Gary demanded. Hardin had her hand on her belt, where she kept her gun holstered.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so,” Jules said, his voice shaky. He rubbed a hand over his short-cropped hair. The hand was shaky, too. Soot smudged his glasses.

“The video cut out—everything went to static when you lit the hair,” Gary said. “What happened?”

None of us spoke. None of us could explain it.

“Tina, you got that cork in?” Jules asked, kneeling next to the woman.

The shocky look still gleamed in her eyes. Jules put his hands around hers and eased the jar to the floor. Together, they tested the lid. It was tight. Then they let it go. The jar sat by itself on the floor, inert, harmless. Opaque. I imagined the djinn inside, screaming in anger, beating fiery fists against the interior wall, trying to get out, sealed by magic, against all reason and the laws of physics. Or maybe it had been sucked into another dimension, a pocket universe, that the ritual had somehow opened. Maybe the ancients had understood the crazier notions of theoretical physics better than we did. I’d have to file that away to think about later.

Tina heaved a sigh—she’d been holding her breath—and slumped into Jules’s arms. They hugged each other.

“How am I supposed to charge a thing in a bottle with murder? How am I supposed to write this up?” Hardin said, looking lost. She said this sort of thing a lot.

“Can’t you close a case without actually arresting anyone?” I said.

“Say the suspect was killed in the course of arrest,” Ben said helpfully.

“No and hell no. The paperwork for that sort of thing is even worse than the paperwork for... this.” She gestured vaguely at the aftermath of our trap. The whole place was covered with soot, scorched like it had been flash fried.

“Besides, it’s not dead,” Tina said, still staring at the bottle.

Well. Wasn’t that a cheerful thought?

“Let’s get out of here,” I muttered and led the way out the door. It was still dark. Maybe I could get a few hours of sleep. The first sleep in weeks where I wouldn’t be worried about some creature of flames waiting to pounce on me.

The fires in the yards up and down the street were out. The sirens were off, but lights were still flashing, red, blue, and white flickering merrily, reflecting off pools of water in the street. Some people had wandered out in bathrobes to gawk at the commotion, and the police herded them safely out of the way. The yard at Flint House was blackened, and the air smelled of wet soot, thick ash, and puddles of dirty water. However, I didn’t smell any fresh flames or brimstone. Nothing that reminded me of the djinn.

I spotted the figure on the sidewalk only because he was so pale, stark against the flashing police lights. He emerged from shadow, stepping toward me up the walk, regarding the scene with an appraising, military look. Like he was trying to figure out how to take it all apart.

It was the vampire, Roman.

A frown creased Roman’s face as he studied the house. He seemed to glance at me only as an afterthought, then said, “Usually, a house that stands empty as long as this one has, there’s nothing to keep me out. I ought to be able to walk right in. But there’s something here.”

I stopped on the porch and stared, causing a bottleneck behind me. Just as well. I wanted to turn and tell them all to run, get out, get away from him. This couldn’t be good. But he couldn’t enter the house, the home. Something’s home. A ghost’s home? If the place really was haunted, did the ghost call it home? It made a weird kind of sense. It meant as long as we all stayed on the porch, or behind the door, the threshold, Roman couldn’t hurt us.

“Upset because the ghosts won’t invite you in?” I said. He didn’t credit that with a response. He only smirked at me. Softly, I said, “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been following you. You know that. For longer than you think.”

I took a breath and prepared for a battle of wills. “Oh, really?”

“You saw me, even. In Dom’s penthouse. In the foyer outside the elevator. Do you remember?”

I remembered... vampires standing guard. Part of Dom’s entourage. The one that looked like a linebacker, and... the other, quiet one, with the short-cropped hair, the cold gaze. He’d looked like a bodyguard. He’d blended in.