All Your Wishes Read online

  “Always do,” he answered. “You’ll be careful?”

  He worries about me. I know that. I understand. He loves me. And seriously, some of the cases I’ve had the past couple of years would scare the hell out of anybody. Unfortunately, understanding our problems doesn’t solve them. Still, I tried to reassure him. “Dawna and I agreed. No cases this week. We need time to settle into the new office.”

  “Right. Look, I’ve gotta go. Love you.”

  “Love you.” My voice sounded almost as rough as his. Not that either of us was on the verge of crying or anything.

  I hung up the phone and spent a few seconds blinking: First to clear my blurred vision, then in shock. While I’d been distracted by the phone call, the delivery guys had set to work. In midair, directly above my head, a safe that I knew from the specs weighed nearly eight hundred pounds was bobbing gently along. The X drawn in chalk imbued with magic on its base was seeking a similar X on the floor of my office where the boards had been reinforced in preparation for it.

  I didn’t move. Sitting right where I was, I was out of the way. Besides, I didn’t want to distract anyone or do anything that might screw with their concentration and cause them to drop the safe on me. That would be bad—probably very, very bad.

  As I watched, the safe settled onto the floor, gentle as a feather. Impressive.

  As soon as it was in place, I walked over to inspect it. When I got within three feet of it, I could feel the spell work buzzing against my skin. Excellent! Since this was the same model I’d had in my old office, I knew exactly how to set the biometrics and magical settings, and I knew that my weapons and other important gear would be safe against pretty much all comers. Good. I’d been a little nervous, keeping them at the house.

  Not terribly nervous—the estate was pretty secure. But I’d had bad experiences in the past. Once, the bad guys had murdered the pool boy and cut off his hand so they could use it to get onto the premises.

  And people wonder why I’m so obsessive about security.

  I made my way downstairs to sign the receipt for the safe and thank the installation team. I knew they’d relay my thanks to Justin, too. Yes, I paid him well, but over the years, what with him coming by the office to renew the spell work every week, he’d become a buddy. More than once he’d gone above and beyond to help me out, and I always tried to make sure he knew I appreciated it.

  The mages passed Dawna on their way out the door.

  “Hey, you’re here early.” I greeted her with a grin that won me an answering smile. Dawna Han Long is one of my best buds in the world, despite the fact that she is flat-out gorgeous. Tiny and of Vietnamese descent, she has long black hair, perfect features, and the kind of effortless style that makes cheap clothes look expensive and expensive clothes look dynamite. Today she was wearing a gray sports bra with neon green piping, matching sweatpants, and neon green sneakers. Her hair had been pulled into a ponytail—with a matching green tie—and though she wore no makeup, she still looked stunning. It’s enough to make you sick.

  “I remembered they were going to deliver your safe first, then the desk. So I figured I’d come down and wait for the second delivery so that you could move the weapons out of your house. I know you’ve been fretting about them.”

  She wasn’t wrong. I have a lot of weapons. Most are valuable. Some are irreplaceable. And it had been a damned nuisance having to run back and forth to get things. I could have put things in the general vault on the ground floor, but I just wasn’t comfortable doing that. I trusted my people not to steal. That wasn’t an issue. Unfortunately, not all of our clients were completely trustworthy, and the vault wasn’t always locked during the workday.

  There’s a reason why “lead us not into temptation” comes before “deliver us from evil” in the Lord’s prayer.

  “Thanks, Dawna.”

  “No problema.” Her smile grew into a grin that flashed a hint of dimples. “And don’t forget to drop your clothes off at the cleaners. You don’t want the blood of an über-bat like the one you dealt with last night damaging the spells on one of your best jackets.” Her grin faded a little around the edges as she spoke, but she stayed rock solid. Ten points for her. Last night’s vampire had been the sire of Lillith, a vampire that had tried to make Dawna her Renfield. He’d come after me because I’d killed Lillith and freed Dawna.

  Dawna was still in therapy to deal with the aftereffects of what Lillith had done to her, even though that had happened years ago, and I’d worried about yesterday’s events being triggering for her. But she seemed okay and, as usual, was on top of the details.

  “Hit the cleaners on the way in, but thanks for the reminder. And if you’re serious about your offer, I’ll head back to the house and pack everything up.”

  “I am. Go.”

  I went.

  2

  Heading back to the office a couple of hours later, I was very careful to obey all traffic laws and stay well within the speed limit. My relationships with the various members of law enforcement varied from very good to incredibly bad, and I was currently transporting enough weaponry and magical geegaws to take over a developing nation, or arm a Texas nuclear family. All of it was legally acquired and perfectly justifiable given my line of work. But if I got pulled over with it I would still be in deep caca.

  Not that speeding was an option at the moment. It wasn’t. I was stuck in traffic. It wasn’t bumper-to-bumper. But one of the narrower sections of Oceanview had been blocked for a while by a wreck and things were still pretty backed up.

  I couldn’t believe it was already one o’clock. The day was racing by. I took a sip of the warm beef juice I’d fixed myself for lunch and felt some of the tension ease out of my body: Tension that came right back when an asshole in a blue Mercedes cut me off.

  I considered giving him a one-fingered salute, but decided to take the high road instead. Who knew, he might be a future client—assuming his driving didn’t get him killed.

  The phone rang and my nifty new view screen flashed Dawna’s picture. Pressing a button on the steering wheel, I accepted the call.

  “Hey, Dawna, what’s up?”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the car, stuck in traffic. Why?”

  “We have a client on the way.”

  I fought not to sigh. Dawna and I had agreed: No clients this first week so that we could get unpacked and set up properly. We’d already broken that rule once. And now someone else had shown up. Ugh.

  “I thought—” I began.

  “Yeah, I know. But we kind of blew that out of the water last night.”

  True enough. And that had been my fault. “All right, who is it and what do they want?”

  “His name is Rahim Patel. He’s flying out from Indiana in his private jet. I’ve just started researching him, but what I’ve found so far is impressive. He’s a full professor at the University of Notre Dame, in their Metaphysics department. He specializes in magical beings, particularly the djinn. He’s written the go-to book on the subject. He’s a fully certified pilot, qualified to fly pretty much anything up to and including big commercial planes, and he owns his own jet—one of those brand-new Sparrowhawks. Oh, and he’s apparently got more money than Bill Gates.”

  I let out a long, low whistle. The Sparrowhawk was the newest, flashiest thing in personal aviation. There was a long waiting list to get one. A four-seater jet, it had all the best spells for protection and fuel economy and all the creature comforts, plus leather interior and real wood trim. There was an on-board bathroom and a small interior compartment for luggage. The Sparrowhawk was a little bigger than the average corporate jet and had a top speed approaching five hundred miles per hour. I’d heard all about it because a rock band for which we’d done a protection detail had been lusting after one—but had decided it was just too pricey.

  “Good to know he can pay the bill,” I said with a laugh.

  “No kidding. Anyway, he called ahead. Says he’s desperate. He
sounded pretty panicked, swears it is imperative he see you immediately. His wife is a seer and she says you’re his only hope. I told him we were closed for the week and he literally begged me to make an exception. Lives are at stake, apparently.”

  Well, hell. That wasn’t good.

  “Did he give you any details?”

  Her voice grew icy. “No.”

  Not good. Dawna’s my partner, not a lackey, and clients should be able to tell her anything they’d tell me.

  “What does Dottie say?”

  Dottie was our receptionist, an elderly woman with fluffy white hair and a penchant for brightly colored tracksuits. She was also a highly skilled and well-trained clairvoyant. My great-aunt Lopaka, queen of the sirens, said that Dottie was my “prophet.” Dottie took the responsibility very seriously and kept close tabs on what the future had in store for me.

  “I wasn’t able to reach her. Fred said she was on her way to the office, though.”

  “Okay, I should be there in an hour.” I’d even packed a couple of changes of clothes that I’d intended to keep in the office in case of emergency, so I could change into something more client-appropriate than my current sweats and ratty Bayview tee.

  “Good. See you then.”

  I leaned back in my seat, stretching a little, to think things out.

  Clients lie, and they hide things. They just do. Sometimes, like the night the vampire tried to turn me, it’s a setup. More often, they just try to put themselves in the best possible light. I get that. But I need to know the down and dirty if I’m going to protect them. By the time I arrived at the office Dawna would have dug up everything there was to find on Mr. Patel. In the meantime, I pondered what little we knew.

  He was an expert on the djinn. And he was in trouble.

  I felt my stomach roil a little, the beef juice I’d been drinking for lunch sitting uneasily. I really, really hoped that our extremely urgent problem didn’t have anything at all to do with the djinn. That would be so bad. Seriously. There are three types of djinn. All of them are dangerous, alien beings that are unimaginably powerful both magically and physically. They can, with a thought, alter reality in serious ways. The jinn are the most benign—mainly because they never willingly come to this dimension. They stay home and leave humans alone. Genies are bad. Exiled to the human world, they have to earn their way home by proving themselves worthy through doing good works: sort of a preternatural probation. The trick is, humans aren’t supposed to know. If we find out, it doesn’t count. So, nobody much runs into the genies either.

  Then there are ifrits.

  Ifrits are bad news: really, really bad news. Fortunately they are so rare that the last known encounter with an ifrit was centuries ago—well before the founding fathers brought forth this great nation.

  So, maybe it wasn’t a djinn problem. I mean, just because Patel wrote about them and was a world-renowned expert on them didn’t mean that he couldn’t have a much more ordinary problem.

  I told myself this. Unfortunately, I didn’t believe it. That little niggling voice in the back of my mind was pretty sure we’d be dealing with the djinn and that I should “just say no.”

  I should listen to my instincts more often.

  3

  I saw Rahim Patel before he saw me. Weapons stowed and outfit changed, I was coming down the stairs from my office and spotted him standing in front of the reception desk.

  First impression: he was pretty. He was not handsome, at least not to my mind. His features were too soft for that. Slender, he stood five foot six or so. His eyes were lovely, wide and dark, with just a hint of laugh lines at the corners. His lips were full, with a cupid’s bow, very kissable, but not very manly. While he wasn’t a big man, he held himself with poise and confidence. His suit was high quality, well tailored, and immaculate. The white shirt he wore stood in stark contrast to the dark caramel color of his skin, and against his black suit it was so bright that it practically glowed.

  His appearance was perfect—which seemed a little odd to me in light of the fact that Dawna claimed he’d been in such a panic. I’ve found that people who are that upset don’t take time to polish their appearance. Then again, he might have stopped at a hotel to change so he would make a good impression.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Patel.”

  He turned to face me and extended his hand. “Ms. Graves, thank you so much for agreeing to see me. I know this isn’t a convenient time for you, but the situation really is urgent.”

  He looked me up and down as I approached. I could tell from his expression that I didn’t quite look the way he’d expected. Oh, I was still five ten and leggy, but I hadn’t had a lot of publicity since the debut of my new, very trendy, very short hairstyle. And my eyes were no longer gray; they were blue, thanks to a brush with the same heavy-duty magic that was killing Bruno’s mother.

  As we shook hands, I caught a glimpse of what looked like it might be a curse mark on his wrist, peeking out from beneath the cuff of his shirt. Interesting.

  “Would you like something to drink?” I really hoped he wouldn’t. The kitchen was at the far end of the building—next to what had once been the altar area. It hadn’t occurred to me until just that moment how inconvenient that was going to be for Dottie, who had to use a walker to get around. Crap. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw she’d already taken measures. A small table had been set up in her corner, with a coffeemaker and bowls of sugar and packaged creamer.

  “Thank you. Your receptionist offered me something, but I said no.”

  I glanced at said receptionist, trying to get her nonverbal take on our client. Aside from the fact that she’s a powerful clairvoyant, she’s smart and observant. She doesn’t miss a thing, and she is cheerfully capable of using her age and seeming disability to gently bully people into revealing more than they intended … and doing things they hadn’t wanted to do.

  In short, she’s an absolute gem in the front office. I honestly don’t know what we’d do without her. Dottie doesn’t put in quite as many hours now that she’s married to Fred, but she gets the work done. In exchange, she gets a salary that is just barely below the amount that would screw up her benefits—and the opportunity to spend time with her beloved Minnie the Mouser, though the cat was nowhere to be seen at that moment.

  “Let’s head up to my office.” I gestured to the staircase, letting him take the lead. I don’t like having people behind me, particularly in an enclosed space. It makes me twitchy. Gwen, my long-term therapist, says I have trust issues. Talk about your understatement of the millennium.

  “Dottie, will you please buzz Dawna and ask her to join us?”

  “Of course.”

  Walking into my office was like stepping into a rainbow filled with boxes. The sun wasn’t yet shining directly through the stained glass, but it was bright enough outside that the colors shone like jewels just the same. Patel stopped and stared.

  “Wow.” He smiled as he turned his attention to carefully removing Minnie from her seat on the visitor’s chair facing the desk. He brushed the seat with his hand to clear away any stray cat hairs, then sat. Minnie, offended at finding herself on the floor, gave him a baleful, green-eyed glare.

  “It is pretty impressive,” I agreed. “It almost makes up for the temperature difference.” Actually, it more than made up for it to me. I could get another fan or a room-cooling unit easily enough, and the play of light was beautiful and unique.

  I moved a stack of boxes from atop the desk to the floor so that I could see my guest, then settled in. Dawna arrived and took the chair next to the client, shifting it close enough to my desk that she could set her iPad on it and take notes. “So, Mr. Patel, what is it you need from our firm?” she asked.

  “I am about to undertake a very dangerous quest. My wife tells me that I need you,” he stared directly at me when he spoke, to make his point absolutely clear, “to ensure that I survive long enough to complete it.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t he
ard someone seriously refer to something as a “quest” in a while—if ever. But he meant it. His expression was terribly serious, and there was a hint of sadness in those beautiful brown eyes. “Your wife?”

  “Abha is a level six clairvoyant. She was most insistent.”

  Dawna and I traded a knowing glance. You ignore the advice of a seer at your own peril. That explained why Patel was here, in spite of his visible misgivings.

  He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a device approximately the size of a cell phone. I recognized it immediately. It was the latest piece of technology to take the market by storm. Ridiculously expensive, it combined magic and electronics and was the darling of law enforcement agencies, criminal defense firms, and more. It used a spell disk to create a holographic recorder and projector and could produce accurate, three-dimensional scenes that seemed so real you could practically touch them. The little machine even incorporated smell. The movie industry was desperately scrambling to find a way to incorporate the technology into the theater experience, although, honestly, I wasn’t sure having slasher flicks seem that real was a particularly great idea. And really, who’d want to live through the explosions in action movies? I’ve been in real explosions: there’s nothing fun about it.

  Still, I’d bought one when Isaac Levy first got them in stock. I wasn’t sure what use I would make of it, but I’d splurged on one just the same. I mean, seriously, it’s a tech toy. How could I resist?

  “May I?”

  “Sure, go for it,” I answered.

  He set the device on my desk, pressed the button, and “poof,” just like that, I was on the holodeck of the old science-fiction show I’d watched as a kid. Well, not really. But I might as well have been. My office disappeared and while I knew Dawna and Rahim Patel were there, I couldn’t actually see them unless I concentrated really hard. Instead, I was sitting in a well-lit room full of shelf after shelf of … djinn jars.

  Shit, shit, shit! I cursed inwardly. I knew it. I just knew it.