“So, what do you want?” I asked. “A next level mentalist who can erase this from all our memories, someone we trust enough to do it, and somebody who isn’t gonna do it, and then abscond with an army and take over the world. Is that what you’re asking for?”
Zheng crossed his arms and gave me his best glare. “I will not burn. Find a—”
There was a knock on the door.
“What the hell?” Zheng was on his feet in an instant, furious. “When I say we’re not to be disturbed, I mean it, damn it!”
“Please do not blame your men,” came a familiar, soothing voice through the flimsy wood. “They simply . . . forgot.”
The door opened and I turned around to see Hassani standing there, looking like an angel in brilliantly white robes.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
“Bahram and Rashid are good boys. A bit rambunctious at times, it is true, but they have a useful talent. Together, they can summon a portal from anywhere they have been to anywhere they are. They cannot hold it for long and it takes two of them to channel enough power, so it is not a very useful master’s gift for them. But I have made use of it, many times.”
“You said to call you—”
“And I am sure you would have, eventually. But it seems that you need my help now.”
“Your help?”
I suddenly remembered what he said when he came in. And then I remembered something else: all he’d suffered, and that his people had suffered, at the hand of a so-called god. There was nobody in the world I trusted more to know the dangers of absolute power, and to avoid them like the fucking plague.
“Tell me you’re a mentalist,” I said, fervently.
“I am not, as it happens. I do know one, however.” He stepped aside, and—
“Maha?”
“I always was good with the mind,” she said, apologetically.
“How good?” Zheng said.
Epilogue
Dory, Cairo
“Our host is very strange,” Louis-Cesare said, sliding into the bath alongside me.
“Tell me about it.”
We were back at “work” in Egypt, finishing out our time here while our team geared up for the next adventure. I was glad for the brief break, which both of us needed. And also glad to be with vamps who didn’t scowl when they saw me.
I could get used to that.
But there were still . . . let’s call them peculiarities . . . about this place. I guessed every court had its quirks, and all things considered, this one was way less weird than our own. But it was still weird.
Take tonight, for instance.
Hassani had invited us to his study after dinner, to watch him burn some old bag. He’d been cackling the whole time, like a mad thing, like he had the day he’d burned the great snakeskin. Hassani, I was starting to think, maybe needed a vacation, too.
Maha had been there, as well, I had no idea why. But after all the leather pieces were curled up and black, and half the bag was simply powder on the desk, Hassani had looked at her. “Are they?”
She’d nodded. “Still there, all of them. The man, the creatures, and . . . him. They will always be there.”
“Eternity,” Hassani had said obliquely. “But perhaps not the way he’d envisioned it.”
She had stepped closer to him. “Do you want me to—”
“Not now. Take it from me tomorrow, as we discussed. For tonight . . . I wish to remember.”
She had bowed silently and left.
I’d noticed a small pot on the floor, the one I’d seen glowing with blue light the last time I was in these rooms. Its cover was off now, and it was empty. Hassani saw me looking and smiled.
“Another problem solved. Amazing how things dovetail, isn’t it?”
“A problem?”
“The col de mort, as you call it, did not work on our friend Sokkwi. It killed him, but he has died many times. The wood, I am afraid, was no different to him than any other stab wound.”
“You mean, he could come back?” I said, already halfway out of my chair.
Hassani made a calming motion. “He could have. Not now.” He chuckled again and swept the ashes of the little bag into a garbage can by his desk.
“Why not now?”
“Oh, let’s just say, I sent him off to enjoy his endless rebirths with someone who could appreciate his unusual talent.”
And then he’d cackled again.
Louis-Cesare and I had gotten out of there as soon as