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God, who was this? She talked like the old vampires did, or the real magicians. Who needed conspiracy theories when these guys were around?
“May I ask you a question? What are you?”
She put a smile into her answer, and for some reason, I imagined her winking. “Let’s leave that another mystery, shall we?”
“Are you one of them?” I said, impulsively. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? A djinn? Can djinn even use the phone? What—”
But I was talking to air, because she finally did hang up.
From the corner, where they were stationed with their laptop, Jules and Tina were looking back at me. Their eyes gleamed, and they smiled. They’d found something, then. Maybe now we had everything we needed to stop this.
But first, the show. “All right, faithful listeners. I’m about at the end of my time with you tonight. I have to say, some days I finish off the show feeling more confused than I did when I started. Just when I think I’ve encountered everything there is to encounter, something like this comes along and smacks me upside the head. But that’s a good thing. It keeps me on my toes. Until next week, be careful out there. Look under the bed one more time before you go to sleep. This is Kitty Norville, voice of the night.”
And that was it. I was done.
With the credits still rolling in the background, Matt came out of the booth. Fuming, he pointed at me. “There’s no way you can convince me that I Dream of Jeannie is after your ass.”
I blinked. “I wouldn’t do that. This thing’s a little more with the flaming death and less with the cute blond nose wiggle.”
“I think the nose wiggle was Bewitched,” Ben said.
I rolled my eyes. “Details. So what is it? What have you got?”
Tina and Jules had been writing and making sketches on a pad of paper. Jules said, “Your caller was right. Some symbols, some basic principles, are the same in nearly every culture. The circle, for example, as a symbol
of eternity and protection. She seemed to be suggesting that any sort of banishment spell ought to work on this thing.”
“So we’re back to exorcisms,” I said.
“Sure,” Tina said. “But we’ve seen this thing before, we’ve seen what it can do. Jules and I have a spell that ought to work.”
“Custom banishment,” I said. I almost said it wouldn’t hurt to try, but it could. If we didn’t succeed in trapping it this time, what would it do next when it lashed out? Why did I get the feeling the djinn—the ifrit—listened to the radio and knew we were up to something?
“We’ll need some of your hair,” Jules said with a perfectly straight face.
I stared.
“Just a strand or two,” he said quickly. “Nothing terrible.”
Using something personal like someone’s hair was a common bit of spell lore from all over the world. I found the end of my ponytail and pulled out a few hairs, wincing. “Should I even ask?”
“The thing’s after you—we’re just going to make sure it knows you’re around.” He smiled as he stuffed the strands into a plastic bag.
Tina tapped a pencil against the table. “The thing I can’t figure out is what kind of bottle we need to use. I mean, it seems kind of gauche to use just a plastic soda bottle or something. Like maybe we ought to use something all glass and fancy.”
“Don’t use plastic,” Jules said. “It’s not sturdy enough. Those oil lamps, like you see in the Aladdin story, are made of brass, right?”
“So what do we do?” I said. “You have a plan, right?”
Jules took a deep breath. A “here goes nothing” breath. “We’ll go someplace we know the thing’s been before—Flint House. We use components we know affect it—your potion. Something of yours because it has a connection to you—your hair. Build a trap, set the bait, and there you are.”
“So it’s a plan,” I said hopefully.
“It’s something,” Tina said.
“Then let’s get going.” The sooner we got started, the sooner we’d find out if it worked. Or not. I didn’t want to think about that.
“I swear, this job gets more surreal every week,” Matt said, wandering back to the safety of his booth.
