Scarlett Undercover (9 page)

I
followed Manny behind the chancel and down a narrow spiral staircase. The smell of spices and meat hit me, as unexpected in the musty old church as jugglers at a funeral. At the bottom we walked through a plain wooden door that opened like Alice’s looking glass into a room spanning the whole basement of the church. Clusters of furniture and folding screens divided the place into living areas decorated like something out of a design magazine. All four walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Platters of lamb, spiced green beans, vermicelli rice, tabbouleh, hummus, pita, and chocolate-covered dates were laid
out on a long wooden table next to the kitchen. It was more food than I’d seen in one place since
Ummi
died. Three places were set.

“You shouldn’t have,” I said. “Especially since I didn’t know you were going to.”

Manny motioned for me to sit. “I apologize for the abrupt nature of your invitation. Asim possesses a number of remarkable qualities, but tact has never numbered among them.”

The meal thing had me off my game. Food was for guests.
Ummi
had raised me knowing that guests were to be fed, honored, then fed some more. They were supposed to bring a gift, too.

“I’d have brought something if I’d known,” I said.

“You came. That is enough.” Manny bowed his head.

“You didn’t seem to think so the other day,” I said.

“I didn’t expect you the other day. Perhaps this afternoon we’ll both be more… in tune with each other.” He smiled.

A drawer slammed shut at the back of the room and the rag lady stepped out from behind a four-panel silk screen. Only she wasn’t in rags anymore.

From the halo of raven-black hair pinned up with silver combs to the slender arms and legs peeking out
from her silver-embroidered kimono, everything about her was gorgeous. Her smooth skin shone against the apartment’s rich fabrics; her seashell-pink nails matched the natural blush on her high cheekbones.

You could have knocked me over with a sneeze.

Then one of her toes caught on the curved leg of a chair, and she let loose a banshee shriek.

“Shite!” She dropped into the chair. Yanked her foot up to inspect the damage. “You and all this abominable, heavy furniture!” she raged. “There are only two of us! Why in Hades do we have so many chairs?”

“Nuala, dear,” Manny said calmly, “we should eat.”

“I’ll be lucky if the fekkin’ nail doesn’t come off!” she groused.

“Scarlett, you’ll have to forgive my wife.” Manny got up to pull out her chair. “I’m afraid she takes the hot-tempered Irish stereotype rather seriously.”

That earned him a dirty look and a string of curses from Nuala that would have made the drug slingers out front blush. It was just the kick in the crotch I needed to help me remember this wasn’t a social call. I was there on business.

“Look,” I said, “I appreciate dinner and a date as
much as the next girl, but that’s not why I accepted your invitation. I came because I think you might be able to help me bail out a grade-schooler who’s in trouble up to her eyeballs, and because your pal Asim stole something from me that he can’t keep. So if you don’t mind, let’s skip the formalities and start talking for real.”

Manny looked wounded. Nuala cracked a Cheshire grin and chuckled. “You’ve got a bloody cheek on you, girl!”

For just a second, Manny’s expression was enough to make the guilty little Muslim kid inside me duke it out with the pushy detective. The detective won.

“Give me back my bottle, answer a few questions, and I’ll get out of your hair and let you get back to”—I looked around the room, at the mismatched pair of them—“whatever it is you do.”

“Ask what you will,” Manny said. Nuala settled in, ready for the show to start.

I put everything on the table at once, no punches pulled.

“Who are you, what do you know about my father, and what can you tell me about the
Shubaak
, King Solomon’s ring, and the Children of Iblis?”

Manny shook his head. “So sure of yourself,” he said quietly. “So sure and so impatient.”

I pushed my chair back and stood up. “Where’s my
abbi
’s bottle?”

He sighed. Closed his eyes. “Please,” he said, opening them slowly. “Sit.”

I did, but hard enough to let him know I wasn’t happy about it.

“Are you sure you want to hear?” he asked.

I didn’t answer, just glared.

“Very well, then.”

He gave Nuala a nervous glance. She arched a cryptic eyebrow. He started talking.

“I’ll begin with the ring. As the legends say, it was a powerful seal that gave Solomon dominion over weather and beasts. Humankind and jinnkind, as well.”

“What about his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines?” Nuala snarked. “What effect did the ring have on them?”

Manny smiled patiently, but his eyes gave nothing away.

“To continue,” he said, “the ring was given to Solomon by Nathan the Prophet as Solomon’s father, King David,
lay dying. It was adorned with an interlocking design that resembled the one you saw on the door of your young friend’s brother, and on Decker’s chest, as well.”

He paused, making sure I’d kept up. I had.

“Solomon was intelligent and respected the inner spark—the divinity—in every living creature. The ring magnified those qualities.”

“Sure. Right up until he died and it disappeared,” I said, thinking back to Dr. Sawalha’s article about the
Shubaak
.

Manny suddenly looked tired.

“The ring did not disappear. It was taken, along with the
Shubaak
, by Solomon’s most beloved wife, known to us only as Pharaoh’s daughter. She entrusted the ring to her firstborn son, and the
Shubaak
to her second-born—a daughter. Both were charged with the safekeeping of those objects, and both made a covenant to pass that duty on to their heirs.”

“And you know this because…?” I said.

“I know this because
I
am an heir of Solomon.
I
broke the family covenant.
I
grew careless and began wearing the ring openly.”

He paused. Took a jagged breath.

“Forty-three years ago a pickpocket stole the ring
from my finger on a crowded Las Almas street. And I would very much like it back.”

Nuala handed Manny a goblet of water. Manny gulped it down like he’d just come in from the desert. “Dearest,” Nuala said, “we’ve discussed this so many times. You have to forgive yourself in order for us to move on and recover the ring.”

Manny sighed. “You’re right, my love.” He reached for the pitcher, filled the glass up again.

“So your name,” I said, feeling a little bad for the guy. “Manny. Short for Suleyman. Solomon. I get it.”

“Clever girl,” Manny said. “What else have you deduced?”

“Enough to keep me going, not enough to brag about. One thing that’s driving me nuts is what makes the ring and the
Shubaak
worth dying over. Are they really that special?”

Nuala snuck a sideways glance at Manny.

“I suppose that depends on who you talk to,” he said.

“Well, at the moment, I’m talking to you. What do
you
think?”

Manny rested his forearms on the table. “I’d like you to tell me what you know of jinn.”

I shrugged. “The basics, I guess. Allah made them from smokeless fire, like he made angels from light and humans from clay. That’s what the Quran says, at least.”

“Exactly.” Manny set his glass down. “In Islamic theology, jinn live and die in a realm beyond human perception and are rarely, if ever, seen by us. But according to some accounts—call them myths or folklore—jinn were once able to travel between our worlds through portals, called
Shubaak
. Just like humans, jinn could be good, bad, or somewhere in between. The problem was, their ability to manipulate the laws of physics in this realm made them extremely powerful. Immortal, even. Thanks to his ring, Solomon managed to control that power and maintain a fragile peace for many years. Right up until Iblis declared war against humankind.”

“The Children of Iblis,” I whispered.

“That’s right,” Manny said. “As I’m sure you know, Iblis was the jinn who refused Allah’s command to bow down before Adam, peace be upon him. Iblis believed mankind was inferior to the jinn, having been created later, and from clay rather than fire. After he fell from
grace with Allah, Iblis convinced other weak-minded and wicked jinn to join with him in his war. Together, they were called the Children of Iblis, and they grew extremely influential during Solomon’s reign. In fact, were it not for Solomon’s ability to hold them in check, humans would have been enslaved by jinn thousands of years ago. And slaves we would still be today.”

“Okay, so where does the
Shubaak
come in?” I asked, thinking back to Dr. Sawalha’s paper.

“We’ll get to that momentarily,” Manny said. “For as Solomon grew older, Iblis and his followers devised a plan to steal the ring. A small group of jinn loyal to Solomon learned of Iblis’s plan, and told their king. It was then that Solomon realized no human would ever be truly safe as long as jinn were allowed to remain in this realm, practicing what amounted to magic. So he issued a decree that all jinn were to return to their own world by sunrise the next day, or remain trapped here, stripped of their powers and immortality, forever.”

I dropped my chin into my hands. “The ring let him turn them into humans?”

“Effectively, yes. Now, at that time, there were four
Shubaak
, four portals to the jinn realm, in existence. When sunrise came, Solomon destroyed three of them,
saving the last for fear of destroying completely a passage willed by Allah. Then he used the ring’s magic to strip all powers from those jinn who had ignored his warning, trapping them on this side forever. And where their eyes had once been the color of pure gold, Solomon took all but the trace of it you see around the irises of the jinn’s descendants today.”

I looked at Nuala. “You have those eyes. So do Asim and Decker and the two women following me around town like bad credit.”

“Of course they do,” Manny said. “They are descended from the Children of Iblis. Some, like Asim and Nuala, wear the reminder of their ancestor’s rebellion like a scar. Others consider it a call to arms, and believe that finding Solomon’s ring will restore their rightful powers. The Children of Iblis have convinced their followers that if they gain possession of the ring and the
Shubaak
King Solomon chose not to destroy, they will be able to reopen the passage between human and jinn realms, and bring forth jinn armies to enslave humanity. In short, to the Children of Iblis, the rebellion that began three thousand years ago is still very much alive.”

“So,” I said, putting my doubts on hold, “there are
certain genetically linked…
individuals
with gold-ringed eyes running around Las Almas, calling themselves the Children of Iblis, looking for a ring and a bottle they think will give them magical powers and let them take over the world.”

Manny nodded.

“And magical or not, any artifact from King Solomon’s reign definitely would be worth a fortune and a half,” I went on. “Add in the fact that these
individuals
believe they’re actually jinn, and that makes them dangerous for real.”

“Precisely,” Manny said. “They are very, very dangerous.”

All the things I’d learned from Sam and Emmet were starting to fit together like double-sided puzzle pieces. There really was a cult out there—a cult of batshit crazy, funky-eyed nut jobs convinced they were genies poised to take over the world. To make things worse, they were brainwashing high school kids, getting them to help hunt down Solomon’s ring and the
Shubaak
and do God knew what else. Gemma had been right: her brother was in trouble. Serious, messed-up trouble.

I pressed the inside corners of my eyes. Took a deep breath.

“So Asim’s like them, only he’s on our side?”

Manny was watching me gravely. “Correct.”

“And Decker’s his son.”

“Yes.”

“Asim said he knew my
abbi
.” I spoke carefully, taking care not to mince a single word. “How?”

“Your
abbi
was a descendant of King Solomon and Pharaoh’s daughter. That made him an
Abd al-Malik
. A Servant of the King, like me.”

My hand went to my backpack.
One Thousand and One Nights
was inside,
Abd al-Malik
inscription and all. Even under a layer of nylon, the physical reminder of my father was a comfort.

“Then you and
Abbi
are related?” I asked.

“Distantly. As are you and I. But where my family line traces its roots to Solomon’s son, yours and your father’s goes back to his daughter.”

“And
Abbi
was guarding the
Shubaak
, just like Solomon’s daughter?”

Manny gave me a tired smile. “The
Shubaak
and two of the three decoys created by King Solomon to replace those destroyed and confound the Children of Iblis. And now that you know all of this, it falls to you to assume your family’s duty.”