Djinnx'd (The Tamar Black Saga #1)

  ‘Your turn,’ said Tamar, handing him the pencil. He shook his head.

  ‘Sore loser?’ she mocked.

  ‘No, just bored, and I have to pee.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ she indicated the plant pot. ‘I won’t look I promise.’

  ‘Very funny! How much longer?’ It had been at least two hours and this was, to Denny’s mind, the very worst of the quest experiences. He would far rather have been fighting for his life than sitting here with the blood slowly coagulating in his buttocks.

  What was even more irritating was that Tamar seemed perfectly calm and unperturbed as if she could wait here forever, until he realized with a shock that it was because more than half of her very long life had been spent in exactly this manner. At least she had company this time, ‘and I can’t even sit still for a couple of hours, well not without the TV or something,’ he chided himself.

  He squirmed in his seat; at least she was not suffering bladder pain. He did not think he could stand it much longer; the plant pot did not seem such a bad option after all, except that he had the uncanny feeling that they were being watched.

  Tamar glanced at him. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘I told you,’ he said irritably. ‘I need to pee, it’s starting to hurt.’

  ‘Oh.’ She waved a hand over his – trouser area. The feeling went away.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks. How did you ...? Second thoughts, I don’t think I want to know – do I?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘my turn, hand me that paper.’

  She smiled, and then they both jumped. There was a phone on the desk that neither of them had particularly noticed. Desks have phones on them – it’s just the way it is. It had started to ring.

  ‘I suppose we’d better answer it,’ said Denny. ‘It must be for us.’

  ‘Nobody here but us chickens,’ agreed Tamar. She picked up the phone.

  * * *

  Kelon paced up and down the chamber. ‘And you say they now have the last clue?’

  ‘Yes, my gracious liege. But ...’

  ‘Damn!’

  Kelon had given in and brought the little man back. It was either that or come out of seclusion and do the watching instead.

  ‘Forgive me, O’ shining one,’ simpered the little man, ‘but I do not understand why ...’

  Kelon glared, and the little man subsided.

  ‘I am most powerful, am I not?’ said Kelon, almost absently.

  ‘Oh yes indeed.’ Agreed the little man obsequiously.

  ‘And yet not more powerful than they – a Djinn and her master, no?’

  No answer, but Kelon did not require one.

  ‘So, I must wonder, what can they want from me? Do they really seek my aid, as have so many others? Impossible. I run a good business here – witches, wizards, mermaids, wraiths. And in return for my help with their petty problems they owe me a favour, better than payment yes?’

  ‘It is your way.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Kelon frowned at this non-committal answer. “Irritating man”. ‘So, I wonder, what do they want? And I do not like it, I do not like it at all. I sense trouble, little man.’*

  *[If Kelon had ever bothered to learn the little man’s name, it had long since been forgotten]

  ‘Liar!’ thought the little man, ‘trouble indeed? You know very well, I think, what that trouble will be. And you’re afraid of it. Well I never ... One more clue – and then the fun starts.’

  * * *

  ‘Why are we doing this again?’ Denny asked. ‘I mean why do we need this sorceress?’

  ‘Because a sorceress, or sorcerer for that matter, is a lot more powerful than a witch or wizard. It’s like the difference between a – a ... Well put it this way, witches and wizards learn their craft over many years; they’re humans with a natural talent for magic that can be developed. But a sorcerer is a magical creature from birth – not human – not exactly. We can ask this sorceress to do a finding spell on old Askphrit – the νόθος’. It’s got a much better chance of working than the one the witches did.’

  ‘And this sorceress, she’ll know what to look for?’

  ‘No, that’s not the point, she won’t look for him. She’ll find him – without looking; it’s quantum.’

  Denny did not understand this, so he ignored it. ‘How is she supposed to find Askphrit, if he’s not Askphrit anymore?’

  ‘That’s her problem. Look I never said it was perfect – but if anyone can do it, a sorceress can.’

  ‘You couldn’t.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It just is. Look I could do it, if you knew exactly what to wish for. But you don’t, and I don’t. But a sorceress works differently, her power comes from herself, she’s free, the cosmos is her oyster.’

  ‘So, if she can work out the how, then the doing it will be no problem?’

  ‘Oh, she’ll probably already know how, and if she doesn’t, she’ll have ways of figuring it out that I don’t because she’s her own boss.’

  ‘You hope! I just hope we’re not on our way to the Emerald City.’

  * * *

  The latest clue turned out to be a list of numbers.

  ‘Lucky I brought a pencil and paper,’ Denny had said, smugly.

  After she had put the phone down, the gleaming waiting room had become the dingy parlour that one might have expected. And then they had walked back through the beaded curtain. It had all been disappointingly ordinary in the end.

  ‘Why did we have to wait for so long, just for that?’ Denny wondered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Maybe you can ask Kelon, when we find her.’

  ‘If we find her.’

  ‘Now, now.’

  * * *

  As they left the hotel, Euphemia appeared again looking mysterious. She took Denny’s arm and leaned in toward him, looking around her suspiciously as if she expected the Gestapo to come bursting in at the door any minute. Then she whispered conspiratorially right in his very private ear ‘Under the clock at midnight for the password.’ Then nodded happily at Denny’s bemused face and jogged away in a satisfied manner, pleased to have passed her message on.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Tamar.

  Denny told her. ‘What did she mean, do you think?’

  ‘Search me. Maybe she’s going senile, perhaps she thinks she’s in some old spy movie.’

  ‘We can’t afford to ignore it, what if it’s part of the clue? I mean she is involved in all this somehow, isn’t she?’

  ‘But it’s so vague,’ objected Tamar.

  ‘And all the other clues have been so clear-cut and obvious,’ said Denny sarcastically.

  ‘All right, but what clock, where? And midnight when, tonight, tomorrow night? It’s not enough.’

  ‘I expect it’ll all become clear, and it won’t be like that at all.’

  Tamar sighed. ‘You’re right, it never is.’

  ~ Chapter Eighteen ~

  Their first idea had been that the numbers might be co-ordinates, but this turned out to be unlikely when following up this idea planted them squarely in the middle of a desert.

  ‘Maybe we have to cross it,’ suggested Denny.

  ‘And maybe we’ll find “King Solomon’s mines” over that way if we do,’ said Tamar, sarcastically. ‘You can if you want. There’s nothing here.’

  Despite the fact that Denny had wanted to follow this up further, they decided that they could always come back to it later on, if necessary.

  They had then tried turning the numbers into letters by their denomination in the alphabet, a sort of reverse numerology, but if the numbers were a secret code, that was not the way. Tamar even tried it with several different alphabets; but eventually gave up.

  They tried it as a telephone number, and after getting a busy signal several times (causin
g a certain amount of cautious hope) they finally got through to a restaurant in New Delhi.*

  *[This always happens when you ring a wrong number. Either that or you get a generic “Angry Man” or, worse, a person who sounds exactly like the person you wanted to speak to and even has the same name leading to endless confusion and lost tempers. There’s probably some kind of secret society behind this.]

  ‘Well, you didn’t expect it to be easy, did you?’ Denny asked, as Tamar blew up the phone in frustration. ‘Fix that, will you?’ he added absently. ‘You know,’ he continued, ‘it could have been the right number. And, you know, if you’d said who you were, they’d have rung back or something. And the restaurant thing is a cover, like a secret, covert government operation.’

  ‘Your favourite show is the “X Files” isn’t it?’ She manifested a drinking straw. ‘Here’s you,’ she said, ‘clutching.’ She mimed the action and dropped the straw as the rebuilt phone rang. They both spun round to stare at it.

  ‘No way,’ she breathed.

  ‘Answer it,’ he ordered. She tentatively picked up the receiver. ‘Hello.’ She listened.

  ‘Oh – yes, hi.’ The disappointment in her voice was obvious. Denny sagged.

  ‘No, he’s – not here. Oh I see, yes. I’ll tell him, OK, yes I’m sorry too – bye.’ She replaced the receiver.

  ‘Um, that was Bo,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this. He says you’re fired.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said, to fill the silence. ‘This is my fault. I could probably fix it if you ...’

  Denny started to laugh. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘I hated that job anyway.’

  ‘But ...’

  ‘Who would have thought he had it in him?’ said Denny, still laughing. ‘I guess he was more on the ball than I gave him credit for. Who the hell’s got time to work anyway?’ he said, picking up the last clue and waving it under her nose. ‘We’ve got more important things to do.’

  ‘You really don’t mind?’ she asked. ‘I thought you said you needed that job – to keep you grounded in reality.’

  ‘Reality bites,’ said Denny, apparently thinking this very funny.

  Tamar stared. ‘Does it?’ Something had clicked in her brain.

  ‘Yeah, it does,’ said Denny, now hysterical with laughter.

  ‘Reality bites?’ mused Tamar. ‘And maybe sometimes it stabs you, or clubs you to death with a big truncheon.’

  Denny stopped laughing, confused by this apparent divergence from accepted sanity. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘And it always catches up with you in the end.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Yes.’

  * * *

  Every time a child says he does not believe in fairies, (it’s always the boys) a fairy drops dead. This is true – fairies are not real (oops another one bites the dust – get clapping) they exist only in the collective belief of children everywhere – and some adults, usually the ones who are waiting to be released into the care of the community. The same goes for gods, spirits, aliens (so be careful what you believe in) and of course, the Djinn. Mostly they do not let it bother them and just get on with their lives – you can’t worry about every little thing, or you would never get anything done.

  Denny believed fervently in Tamar, (this despite the fact that she had told him many times that she was not real) but Tamar was beginning to lose her belief in herself.

  * * *

  ‘But of course you’re real,’ said Denny, perplexed. ‘I can see you, talk to you. Don’t go all “Scully” on me.’

  ‘Hold that thought,’ said Tamar grimly. ‘I’m going to need it. The truth is out there – and it has teeth.’

  They decided to get back to work on the clue. What else was there to do? It would take their minds off it.

  ‘May as well see it through,’ said Denny. ‘Anyway, I can’t see that you’re in much danger as long as I’m here.’

  Tamar thought there wasn’t much point. ‘It’s bound to get me in the end,’ she said gloomily.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ argued Denny. ‘Maybe this Kelon can help with that too, and anyway it might not be that – you’ve been wrong before. Anyway, I’m the boss, so let’s get on with it.’

  ‘Sir, yes sir!’ barked Tamar. But she was comforted by the idea, and they set to work.

  * * *

  ‘We’re going about this all wrong,’ said Denny later.

  ‘We always do,’ said Tamar. ‘We have to go through all the wrong answers before we get to the right one, it’s ...’

  ‘Standard,’ they said together.

  ‘Well it is,’ she said. ‘You wear your brain out and then the answer comes when you’re not looking for it.’

  ‘Well, my brain feels pretty worn out – why don’t we try not looking for the answer down at the “Pig in a Poke”,’ he winked.

  ‘That’s not funny,’ Tamar groaned.

  ~ Chapter Nineteen ~

  In the end, they compromised. Denny went down to the local “Off Binns” and got beer, and they ordered a pizza. They let Slammer out to join them, Denny felt sorry for him, and Tamar thought there might be a slim chance that he would be some use with the clue (after all Hank had worked out the jar) but he was not.

  He did entertain them, though, by turning himself into Tom Cruise and flamboyantly shaking cocktails for them. Now that he was not trying to kill them, he was pretty decent company, apart from the way he kept trying to trick Denny into making his final wish. But since he did this with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the nuts Denny had no problems deflecting these attempts even though he was pretty drunk, and it did not detract from the fun.

  They had got to that stage of the evening when it seemed like a good idea (to Denny, at least) to make silly phone calls to complete strangers out of the phone book. Example: -

  ‘Is Mr. Wall there?’ Answer, ‘No.’

  ‘Is Mrs. Wall there?’ Answer, ‘No.’

  ‘Well, are there any Walls there?’ Answer. ‘No.’

  ‘So, what’s holding up the roof then?’ At which point the caller hangs up the phone to a stream of angry expletives and so on.

  Denny also had a nice line in bogus requests to speak to funny named people in pubs, gleaned from years of watching “The Simpsons” (he was also the sort of person who saved the jokes out of crackers). Slammer, having led a sheltered life, found all this hilarious and the party became riotous – in the manner of a four year old’s birthday party.

  Tamar was inclined to be indifferent to all this; it was better, she felt, than marauding the village, singing rude songs and looking for maidens to abduct (and arousing the wrath of a hound of Hell to haunt your family for generations).

  Slammer had joined in this game with immense gusto and had suggested afterwards that he or Tamar magick up a karaoke machine. Denny hailed this idea with enthusiasm and Tamar was nothing loath, she enjoyed hearing him sing. But she soon regretted it. For although Denny’s voice was unimpaired by the vast quantities of beer he had consumed, the same could not be said of Slammer and after three rounds of “We Are The Champions” she was about ready to throttle the pair of them. Mr. Whinger downstairs apparently shared her opinion and was making his objections known in his usual manner, which did nothing to accompany the singing. Then Denny wanted to go out and have Tamar hex a cash machine (the morals are always the first thing to go) so that he could pay his rent, but, of course, she would not agree to this.

  ‘Riches beyond the dreams of avarice I can do,’ she said, ‘but no petty stealing – well, not without a wish anyway.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Slammer. ‘I can do that – no problem boss. You need money? That’s what I’m here for.’ And he winked hugely.

  ‘Get back in your bottle you,’ said Tamar. ‘Denny – tell him.’

  ‘Yesh,’ slurred Denny. ‘Bock in yer baccle – I mean bockle. Who’s the boss ?
??ere anywhere? Me that’s what!’ He was stabbing vehemently in the air and swaying alarmingly. ‘We could always try computer fraud,’ he said before he threw up and passed out.

  ‘My God!’ said Tamar.

  * * *

  Drunkenness produces a lot of those ideas that seem inspired at the time but which turn out to be disastrous in the cold light of day when you wake up in a fountain twenty miles from home with no trousers. Well, searching for pirate gold in downtown Basildon seemed like a good idea at the time. The lack of trousers is just an inevitable consequence of drunken tomfoolery which nobody has ever been able to satisfactorily explain; it’s “standard”.

  Drunken ideas which seem stupid at the time, but which turn out to be inspirational, on the other hand, are much rarer (you try saying “Eureka” when you can barely articulate your own name).

  * * *

  Denny woke up feeling like he had put his head through a meat grinder. He lurched through the living room with his head in his hands, groaning like Frankenstein’s monster and looking like a vampire in the sunlight.

  ‘Oh God,’ he moaned. ‘I feel like something the cat barfed up.’

  ‘Yuck,’ said Tamar. ‘Do you have to say things like that?’

  ‘Can’t you do something?’ he pleaded.

  ‘Here,’ she said, manifesting a smoking phial of purplish liquid and handing it to him.

  ‘You don’t deserve it, but I need you in full working order.’

  Denny eyed it dubiously. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hangover cure, beyond that you don’t want to know.’

  ‘If I turn into Mr. Hyde or the Incredible Hulk, there’s going to be trouble.’

  ‘It couldn’t be any worse than how you look now – drink it.’

  He closed his eyes and swallowed. He opened his eyes. ‘AAAAGH’

  ‘Oops.’

  ‘Oh God, get me a drink – nobody deserves to be this sober.’

  Tamar grimaced in sympathy. ‘Sorry, I must have overdone the formula a bit. I devised it for the Norsemen; big drinkers the Norsemen – mead makes lager look like Tizer.’

  ‘Drink!’ barked Denny like a crazed Irish priest. ‘Drink!’

  She handed him a bottle of Jack Daniels. ‘There’s no beer left – just drink a little at a time until you feel normal.’

  ‘I hate this stuff,’ he complained, sipping at it like a wino on a building site until he said, ‘that’s better. What did you do to me?’

  ‘I removed the alcohol from your system – took out too much it seems.’