“We intercepted some interesting communications between SCARE and Washington.” The tone is almost conversational.
Because of the mild tone I almost miss the import of what I’ve just heard. He intercepted an encrypted message and read it. Siraj isn’t a technophobe like the Nur or a man living in the past like Abdul, the Nur’s son. He has been building a modern intelligence service and I missed it. Because I’m a holdover from that earlier era—an Arabian Nights fantasy, a useful killer and very little else.
Siraj is continuing. “The explosion in Texas for which we were blamed.” I give him a look of questioning interest. “It was an ace. A child. A little boy. You will go to America, and find him. Help him.”
“Where is he being held?” And I’m terrified that Siraj will actually know, and then how in the hell do I get out of that?
“He escaped custody and the Americans are hunting him to kill him. We will befriend him, and your power combined with his . . .” Siraj smiles, a mirthless grimace that never reaches his eyes. “The West will withdraw from the Caliphate.”
I salaam. “I must return home and change into Western dress. I will find him.”
I turn and start for the door only to hear him say—
“One of you will.”
London, we have . . .
“. . . a problem,” Flint whispers.
We are walking around the base of Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square. A gusty wind off the Channel is tossing the pigeons back as they try to land on the admiral’s bronze head. It holds the promise of fall, and Mecca seems very far away. I’m still in my Bahir form. The effort of changing just to change again seems monumental.
“Obviously you cannot deliver the boy.”
“So, do I find him before the Americans, kill him, and tell Siraj so sad, too bad?” I consider. “Or maybe I don’t need to be involved at all. Allow Bahir to be spotted a few times in America so the word gets back to Siraj that I’m trying, but let the Americans kill their little problem.”
“Siraj has a point. With your power and the boy . . . well, it would be a potent combination.”
“So, you want me to find him, but for us.”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to go home first. Check—”
“No.”
The Tears of Nepthys
THE SECOND TEAR: ALIYAH
Kevin Andrew Murphy
JONATHAN HIVE SAT NEXT to her on the plane in his camelhair sport coat, green eyes intent on his laptop. Apart from some guy called the Llama, he’d been the only ace left at the UN. “So,” he asked with a reporter’s intensity, “why do you want to join the Committee?”
Ellen had already been around the same mulberry bush with Secretary-General Jayewardene. She gestured to her cameo. “You know my power. I’ve been freelance too long. And I’m sick of hiding.” She glanced out the window at the rolling scallop of the Gulf Coast as the plane began its descent. “So John Fortune’s still in Africa?”
Jonathan didn’t answer, but had probably just nodded. He clattered at his keyboard as Ellen fixed her makeup and adjusted her suit. She wasn’t certain what one wore to a hurricane, but Chanel was classic and would have to do. It paid to have Coco’s sewing machine.
Of course, there wasn’t a hurricane. Not yet. The air in New Orleans was warm and balmy. And sweating on the runway was a study in opposites. With the crisp linen suit and little beard, Holy Roller looked like Colonel Sanders after a ten years’ supply of fried chicken. To his right, garbed in a billowing kaftan, stood willowy blond supermodel Michelle Pond.
Who did not seem pleased to see Hive. “Bugsy, you’re wanted by the Feds.”
Jonathan shouldered his laptop bag over his sport coat. “Do you think they’ll have time to arrest a hundred thousand wasps in the middle of a natural disaster?”
“He has a point, my dear.” Holy Roller then turned to Ellen with a beatific smile. “Reverend Thaddeus Wintergreen, ma’am, at your service. And you’d be?”
“Ellen. Or Cameo. Or, well, someone else.” Ellen was tired of explanations. It was time to let another person do the talking. She took off her jacket and handed it to Jonathan. As she began to unbutton her blouse, Reverend Wintergreen averted his eyes. The Amazing Bubbles merely stared, remarking drily, “That shirt so does not go with that skirt.”
Aliyah laughed and embraced her. “Bubbles, I’m back!”
Michelle pushed Aliyah away. “Who are you?”
Aliyah turned a pirouette on the tarmac. “I’m Aliyah!”
Bubbles wasn’t buying it. “Funny. You don’t look a bit like her. Who are you, really? What sort of game are you playing?”
Holy Roller was no longer averting his eyes, now that the threat of overt nakedness had passed. “If this is a prank, it is a cruel one, Jonathan. Aliyah is with the Lord now.”
“Maybe,” said Jonathan, “but Cameo here is with the Committee. Jayewardene and I already played twenty questions with her in New York. She’s an ace. She channels dead people from, uh . . . well, jewelry and stuff. Hats. She’s Simoon. Sort of.”
The Reverend Thaddeus Wintergreen seemed willing to believe in miracles. “Can this be true?” he said cautiously. “The Lord works many wonders, but even so . . . Aliyah, is it really you, returned to us like some Lady Lazarus? How . . . how are you?”
Aliyah flicked one hand. “Oh, just great. I got to go sailboating with my mom. But it would have been a lot cooler if I, like, hadn’t been possessing the body of a forty-year-old woman.”
Thirty-something, Ellen corrected.
Michelle gave her a cold hard look, then turned back to Jonathan. “I’m sorry, no. This is creeping me out, and . . . oh, crap, here comes Mayor Connick . . .”
A stretch Hummer pulled up. Out stepped a handsome man about forty years old, with bright blue eyes, pouting lips, and a casually rumpled gray suit. “Mr. Tipton-Clarke.” Harry Connick Jr. nodded to Jonathan. “Welcome to NOLA. I never saw ya—but nice work on the Pyote story. An’ I guess this’d be the latest member of your Committee,” he surmised in a rich N’awlins drawl, extending his hand to Aliyah. “An’ jus’ who do I—”
“That’s Cameo,” Bubbles cut in. “She channels the dead. She’s Simoon right now.”
Connick’s smile vanished as Attractive Woman My Age was swiftly replaced by Creepy Possessed Lady. He released her hand like it was a dead fish, and not a very fresh one either. “Well then,” he said, “how many of y’all’re in there?”
“Uh, just me and Ellen,” Aliyah replied.
“ ‘The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise again,’ ” quoted Reverend Wintergreen.
Mayor Connick looked unhappy. “I’m sorry. The police get calls all the time about some hoodoo mama raisin’ zombies in the French Quarter. The last thing we need is some ace showing up who can actually do it.” He glanced at her clothes. “I have to say, I never would have guessed. Ya gotta be the least likely voodoo queen I’ve ever seen.”
“Well,” Bubbles said, still frowning, “I did ask Jayewardene for reinforcements. If Harriet changes course . . .”
The dead that walk and the wind that wails, Ellen thought immediately.
“The dead that walk and the wind that wails?” Ali repeated, confused.
Everyone looked askance. Osiris had a prophecy, Ellen explained. Zombies and hurricanes. “Uh, my uncle had a vision,” Aliyah paraphrased. “Hurricanes and, uh, dead people. My uncle’s Osiris. He, like, rose from the dead. . . .”