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1. junk mail
Nandor marched into his crypt carrying a wooden box. The Djinn didn’t look up from the journal in front of him that was opened on a thoroughly enjoyable article on tree law.
His current master was muttering: “Correspondence from one of my generals. Bill for John’s horseshoes. A message from my astrologers warning not to launch an attack or else I would face the wrath of the heavens. Bill for John’s saddle. Bill for those figs that John liked to eat - yeesh, there’s a lot of bills.” The parchment fluttered around him like a hail storm.
He turned to the Djinn. “Are you really sure you can’t help me narrow down my wives to my favorite? We’re down to six, and Guillermo suggested that I try looking into my possessions for mementos to give my memory a jog. But I do not think there is anything important here.”
“No,” the Djinn said, still not looking up. “It is your prerogative. Let me know when your next wife requires their ‘coin.’”
“Wow, thank you, all-powerful wish-granting lamp Djinn. Some help you are.”
“You’re welcome.”
There were more sounds of shuffling paper. The Djinn studied a diagram of trees situated near a property line.
“You would think,” Nandor went on, “that my favorite wife would have had the courtesy to send me a nice little love letter. Maybe packed me a snack for the next siege. Wait, maybe -- no, that is another bill.”
Unbidden, the Djinn found his eyes drawn to a piece of parchment that had fluttered near him on the chaise lounge. Nandor’s name and title were written in a flowery hand at the beginning. He picked it up. “A birth announcement,” he said. “Written by one of your wives, if I’m not mistaken.”
Nandor frowned and plopped himself down on the lounge next to him to get a closer look. “It’s rude to read other people’s mail, you know.” A pause. “That is about my eldest. There were so many--it was hard to keep track. It was a big deal, my firstborn, especially because we first thought she was a son. Though she turned out to be a girl--one of my wives was like that, too, and another wife who was the other way around. I only saw her a handful of times in between all my conquering and diplomacy duties. She liked to ride John, and I believe one of my wives taught how to do assassinations ever since she was little to ensure she didn’t get assasinated herself.”
The Djinn made a short hum of understanding. Having once served an ambitious Mongolian shaman, he was no stranger to court politicking. Although his role was more like watching on the sidelines drinking kumis and dispensing the occasional wish until the palace burned down.
Nandor squinted at the letter. “Anyways. That was a long time ago. I don’t exactly know what the rest of it says because my Al Quolindarese is a teensy bit rusty.”
“The rest is a bill seeking permission to access certain palace funds to pay for the celebration of the birth.” The writer also harangued Nandor for his absence with some choice insults, although the Djinn assumed that Nandor wasn’t interested in that part.
“See?” Nandor said, throwing up his hands. “Not very useful at all, resigning me to keep doing this Bachelor shit like some human guy who doesn’t know the difference between a lance, javelin, and jolf stick. I had hoped that identifying my true love would be peasy-easy.” He let out an annoyed huff, and plucked the letter from the Djinn’s grasp.
The Djinn watched as Nandor tapped his finger on the small saffron-dyed handprint pressed at the bottom of the letter. “Sheesh. So tiny. Like a rat’s tracks. I can’t even remember her name.”
The letter had said Kaveh. The Djinn found his hand straying to his pen resting in his suit. It was inconvenient to have the world’s knowledge flooding his mind 24/7, so he turned his powers off until he tapped into it, sending out a question into the universe and then plucking the answer out like a thread from a tapestry.
“Her name was Kimia,” the Djinn said. “After you were turned, she went into hiding to reform the secret society of assassins that your wife Parvin had defected from and then returned to take your throne.” It was quite a saga; that wasn’t even half of the story. He moved his hand away from his pen and shut off the information stream.
“Oh,” Nandor said. “I thought I had seen a statue of her when I went back to my homeland, but it was hard to tell. Kids grow up to be pretty big.”
The Djinn inclined his head and returned to his law journal. Nandor was still looking at the letter when his familiar poked his head in. “I got the lobsters you asked for. What do you even want them for, anyway?”
Nandor’s head snapped up. “The lobsters shall be an integral part of the wife elimination process. Just leave them in the kitchen, Guillermo!”
2. rostam’s legacy
Getting summoned from his lamp always felt like getting dragged by the hand by a stubborn child. The Djinn could ignore it for a minute to finish up any business in his lamp’s extensive pocket dimension--putting a bookmark in the latest book, finishing his cup of tea, and several annoying instances of interrupted baths (yes, he could clean himself with magic but that wasn’t the point). Any more dallying provoked the metaphorical stubborn child to seize control of the Djinn’s internal fire powers and attempt burning him from inside out, so thus, the Djinn obeyed.
He appeared in the backyard of the Staten Island vampires’ house. Nandor held his lamp in one hand and had a long rope tucked underneath his arm.
Nandor greeted him with a purposeful nod. “You may be wondering why I called you.”
The Djinn made a motion for Nandor to continue, his pen already out.
“If you recall, I went to the night market last night. I engaged in combat at the familiar fights there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in top-tip form. Guillermo…” Nandor made a dismissive wave. “I could go to the gym, but they don’t have the right equipment. I plan to practice my lariat skills in case I need to unhorse an enemy in the midst of battle.”
“Sensible,” the Djinn commented.
“So, I wish for you to summon me targets. Goats, if you please.”
Click. Three goats sprang into being: two white and one black. They trotted across the grass, braying, with one starting to chew on a genital-shaped bush. Nandor sprang into action--his gloved hands unwound and coiled the rope so that it was poised in the air. He took off with vampiric speed--the rope swirling in a whirling blur above his head--and missed his intended goat by several inches. With a snarl, he dashed off and tried again, and the rope inadvertently caught on a lantern.
The Djinn conjured a lawn chair for himself. Nandor eventually found success with the lariat hooking onto a goat’s back legs, only for it to shake it off and dart toward the pond.
“Fucking goats!” Nandor flexed his gloved hands, spun the rope, and lunged at the white goat that was trying to hide behind the well. Another miss, with Nandor sliding across the dirt and tumbling with a thump. He got up, brushing the dirt from his yellow coat, and pointed an accusatory finger at the observing Djinn. “Did you enchant these goats to be abnormally fast, trickster?”
The Djinn replied, “They are perfectly normal goats. You will probably catch one sometime. This is practice, correct? Keep practicing.”
Nandor muttered something underneath his breath and redid the loop on the lariat. The rope whistled through the air and caught a black goat by the throat. Hissing in triumph, Nandor tugged, and the goat said: “Ow. Excuse me! What the fuck are you doing?!”
Nandor quickly released the rope. “Hey, you’re the familiar of those sexy MILF witches! What are you doing here, Black Peter? Are you kidnapping me again?”
“I was looking for Guillermo to discuss the vampire semen business, now that he’s back in town,” the goat said primly, shaking himself free from the rope’s confines. He turned to peer at the three goats grazing in the backyard. “Are you seriously doing this rodeo shit in this day and age? It’s degrading, cruel, and abusive.”
“Er.” Nandor looked abashed.
“If it helps, he’s not very good at it,” the Djinn offered.
Nandor huffed. “I was practicing. I was much better at yanking enemy soldiers off their steeds back in the day."
Black Peter let out a disapproving bleat. “Nevertheless. Shame on you.” He disappeared through the house’s open back door, his hooves click-clacking on the wood.
Nandor said, “Djinn, I wish for you to send these goats to a farm with lots of hay and open space. The kind of farm my first hunting hound was sent off to when I was a boy. I can instead practice on the stuffed bear in the library. His size is more suited for lariat roping than a mere goat.”
3. slumber
“Again?”
“Who else am I supposed to ask?” Nandor scowled from within his coffin. “Yes, put me to coffin.” Before the Djinn could move to click his pen, he added, “By the way--I saw a picture of her. My eldest daughter, I mean. We took the child Colin Robinson to the Met earlier tonight, and there was this bowl with her painted on it. Kimia was wearing this veiled dress and holding up my banner: a lion swimming in a river of blood and holding up a mace. I hadn’t known that my country’s artifacts made it this far to these shores.”
The Djinn shrugged his shoulders from his position sitting in the chair by Nandor’s coffin. “That’s par for the course for imperialism. You brought me here yourself, didn’t you?”
“That’s not the same at all.” Nandor craned his head in his coffin to give the Djinn a remonstrating expression. “I am sure that being here is more exciting than being stashed in that old palace hidey-hole that you were in alongside all the other treasures.”
“In a way,” the Djinn acknowledged. His last master had been a servant girl who had nicked his lamp from Al Qolindar’s palace treasury. She had very prudently used three wishes, then tossed him back in the pile, saying that she hoped that his double-edged nature would be a curse on any member of royalty that happened to chance upon the lamp.
The Djinn hated masters like those; they made everything rather boring. Yet it seemed like her centuries-old desire to enact vengeance on the type of careless royals who had lorded over her was being fulfilled in the form of one Nandor the Relentless.
He said out loud, “You are half as entertaining as Mongolian palace drama. Or a quarter as entertaining as that time that a lawyer in Guangdong got a hold of me during the Ming dynasty.” Now that had been real negotiating, unlike Nandor and Guillermo’s penis nonsense.
“You don’t have to compare,” Nandor said, with a deep frown. “I am not a television show. Even if there is a documentary crew filming us… you know what I mean.”
The Djinn stood and made his way toward Nandor’s coffin. He thought of Nandor chasing after the goats in the backyard, and from the night before, flying astride the bee. He felt his tone soften. “Sleep, Nandor the Relentless. Dream of wiser wishes.” He closed the coffin lid with his hand.
4. cinque-point, part one
Nandor’s match against the cardboard cutout of Scottie Pippen ended in tears. Cardboard tears, that was. Nandor leaped to dunk the ball into the hoop and shredded right through the flimsy figure that had pinwheeled to intercept him.
The two cardboard halves of Scottie Pippen twitched ineffectually on the floor.
Nandor winced. “I shall put him in the recycle bin later.” He neatly stacked the still-flailing remains against the trophy case and gestured at the basketball. “Djinn, do you play?”
Throughout his career, the Djinn had been asked many questions by his masters. ‘Can I wish for more wishes?’ (No.) ‘Can I wish to kill [my childhood bully/my rival in romance/my mother/my mother who bullied me as a child and is now my rival in romance/etc.]?’ (Yes.) ‘Can I wish for my favorite palace guard dog to be able to speak?’ (Yes. That was the Al Qolindarese servant girl’s third and final wish.)
This was novel ground.
The Djinn said, “No.”
Nandor nodded thoughtfully. “Basketball is probably not your thing, is it? You strike me as a soccer guy. With the twisty rods on the table. Or possibly--” He darted from the room, and came back bearing a wooden chessboard.
Before Nandor could say anything, the Djinn said, “Ah. The old cliche. You know, it’s never worked in a challenger’s favor.”
“Really?” Nandor said, his eyebrows raised. “I cannot wager for an extra wish or two if I beat you in a game?”
“You can try, but as I said, it never works. I end up taking more than what a wisher has started with.”
“It’s not like I have a soul to lose, sheesh.”
“There are other things to lose aside from one’s soul.” The Djinn felt, suddenly, weary. He met Nandor’s eyes over his glasses. “I would prefer not to. It is more paperwork for me. However, it is, as always, your choice.”
A beat. “Fine.” Nandor swept a hand through his hair, which still hung loose, held only in place by the 1992 United States men's Olympic basketball team headband. “But you totally owe me, since I couldn’t finish my game with cardboard Scottie. We can play chess in the normal non-wish-bargaining way. Or I have a backgammon set stashed in the library somewhere.”
“Backgammon is fine,” the Djinn said, surprising himself as he said it.
Nandor grinned his fanged grin and began striding outside the room, the Djinn trailing behind him. “Then I must warn you, trickster, that I know more tricks than you when it comes to that game. I am an expert backgammon champion who knocked the boots off all my generals and advisors back in the day.”
“Just as you are an expert lariat user?”
“Hey! That goat thing does not count.”
They played three matches, the board set on a library table while they sat on opposing sides, the Djinn summoning a cup of tea for himself and a goblet of blood for Nandor. For the next hour, there was nothing except the sounds of checkers clicking and dice rattling. Outside the occasional curse, Nandor was, for once, quiet throughout, his brow furrowed in concentration and his moves sharp and decisive.
The Djinn won all three matches, and he finished sipping his tea while Nandor poutingly packed up the board. “The dice were not kind to me in the least. Fickle fuckers.”
“You weren’t terrible,” the Djinn said, mildly.
“I suppose you were right about not playing for stakes.”
And it was a strange sort of pull--different from the urgent burning of being called by the lamp --that drew the Djinn to reach out to fleetingly touch Nandor’s wrist from across the board. “There are stakes, and then there are stakes. I could have taken your name, king of kings. I could have taken your memories, your immortality and your eyes. I did not.”
Nandor blinked as if to reassure himself that his eyes remained in their sockets. “... You are being kind of scary and creepy right now.”
Inside the Djinn’s lamp dimension, on the desk in his office, he had an abacus strung with fifty-two red beads. He said, “It’s not me you should be scared of.” He pulled his hand away and disappeared back into his lamp.
5. wedding gift
The eve of the wedding, the Djinn finished up his records of Nandor’s fifty-two wishes, now completed with the restoration of Baron Afanas; the resurrection of Marwa’s parents and one (1) dodo bird; and the subversion of Marwa’s free will. With a flourish of his pen, he banished the folder into his archives along with the rest of the files on wishers throughout the centuries.
So, it was done. Sitting in his office inside his lamp, he considered the abacus with all fifty-two red beads pushed to the side. He reset it with a brush of his hand, and he found his mind wandering.
Then, with a tap of his pen, he magicked three more beads onto the last rod--this time, yellow ones. He clicked his pen.
“Banu Gol. میتونم یه خواهشی ازت بکنم؟"
The air in front of him shimmered, revealing a projection of a woman with short dark hair wearing a denim jacket.
"!كجايي؟ کم پیدایی"
“New York. Staten Island.”
“Ah, you made it to the other side of the pond, bat. Let us stick to English, then. I’m currently contracted to a Bollywood producer and we’ll be shooting in Toronto in a couple of months, so it’s best to get in the mood. You really should keep in touch more. You wouldn’t believe the wishes these celebrity types come up with.” Gol flashed him a bright red lipstick smile. “Javad told me that the last time he called you, you were still in Persia.”
Gol’s younger brother Javad was cut from the same cloth as her. Both djinn were forthright, talkative, and fond of a raucous party. They weren’t as interested in, say, the nuances of soul contract law as he was, but the Djinn still considered them family in a way. He owed them that much.
“I was waiting for my lamp to be rubbed,” the Djinn said, simply. “The favor I am calling you about… you remember that my enchanted metalworking has never been quite up to par. I want to commission a miniature lamp for three additional wishes. What was the name of that one blacksmith in Mazandaran?”
Gol stared at him, her eyes wide. He had been anticipating her reaction and braced himself. “You want to give your client more wishes? You, bat?”
“Stop calling me that.”
As usual, she ignored him. “Who is he? Is he handsome?”
The Djinn pursed his lips. “The lamp is a courtesy. A wedding gift for his marriage to his ‘perfect wife.’ His wishes have been chaotic, and I merely want to see where else three wishes could take him.”
“What was it that you told me once, centuries ago? That you believed the ideal wish-bestower is somebody who sticks to the traditional protocol and lets the client take the reins to either their own ruin or realization. No need for bonus flourishes or freely bestowed wishes. You stay true to that one road and nothing else.”
He said, sharply, “You also like watching them spiral, Gol.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “but I’ve never pretended otherwise. You have become attached. Oh, bat.”
An angry spark of fire surged from the tip of the pen in his hand, and he swiftly suppressed it. He made himself address the projection of Gol levelly. “There are no laws of the lamp or the universe that bar the gifting of extra wishes. I only wanted to know the name of the blacksmith. This isn’t your business, Gol.”
He hated how well Gol knew him. It was why he often went out of his way to avoid calling her. She had seen him at his lowest and worst--and she had taken pity on him and taught him the ways of the djinn alongside her carefree younger brother, who she had also been mentoring at the time.
And of course, because of that history, she could look at him like this with open sympathy. “I have an extra lamp made by the blacksmith. Here.” She pressed both her hands together and snapped, and a small golden lamp appeared on the Djinn’s desk before him.
Gol continued, “I’ve been reading those papers you’ve been publishing in wish-granting industry journals. It’s clever stuff, but you’re more than an academic hermit. Please don’t forget that you can visit me or Javad anytime.
“Be careful with this client of yours. I have faith in you; I always have, broken little duck.” She snapped her fingers again, and the image of her glimmered and shattered into dissolving fragments.
The Djinn conceded that he had in all likelihood inherited his penchant for dramatic exits from her.
6. panacea
The first sight that the Djinn saw was the decapitated head of a beast. It was stacked neatly on top of a pile of backpacks and suitcases in front of a hunting cabin.
Nandor, following his gaze, proudly puffed his chest. “Me and Laszlo successfully vanquished the Jersey Devil. Ugly fellow, isn’t he?”
“I have never seen an American div before,” the Djinn said, studying it. He had encountered several nasty divs a long time ago--giant monsters skilled in sorcery or swordsmanship. By all accounts, this Jersey Devil paled in comparison.
Nandor did a double-take. “You’ve seen demons back east? I always thought they were stories your mother made up to get you to behave. Like dentists, or horse-eaters that would eat your horse if you didn’t pay attention to your studies.”
“Horse-eaters are very real,” the Djinn said solemnly, prompting Nandor to jerk in surprise, then flush upon seeing his minute smile.
“Don’t yank my chainmail,” Nandor said, scowling, and cleared his throat. “Anyways, the Jersey Devil was dispatched after a light bit of teamwork and a Bon Jovi ballad, though there were some bumps along the way. Jabroni-name-calling, first and foremost. That is why I summoned you.” He held up his hand. “Laszlo shot a hole in it, and I wish for a quick heal up. Obviously it can fix itself naturally after some blood and slumber, but that takes time. Plus it will help to have functional hands since I hope to drive the Honda Element on the way back.”
“No, you fucking aren’t!” shouted a voice from inside the cabin. “The position has been officially bagsied, and I don’t trust you operating a non-animal-drawn vehicle as far as I can throw you.”
“You are a vampire with vampiric strength! That metaphor falls apart because you can throw me very far, and that implies a lot of trust!”
“It’s not as if I can be arsed to throw you any measure of distance. Just finish packing so we can get home before dawn.”
“Sheesh. Fucking…” Nandor made a rude gesture at the cabin and turned to the Djinn. “He has been like this the entire trip. Insulting my dignity as a warrior, buddying up to our human neighbor Sean like I am not even here, and being a know-it-all-things on the subject of Polish bowling. But it is always like this with Laszlo, I suppose.”
The Djinn said, “At least you are returning home soon, where you have your newly wedded wife who likes the same things you like, as well as significantly lower chances of being attacked by divs.”
“Ye-s,” Nandor said, looking at the Djinn with slight suspicion, and for not the first time, the Djinn was vividly reminded of the Al Qolindarese servant girl’s favored dog. It was a bristling little thing that constantly slept through guard duty and got itself lost in the palace.
The Djinn withdrew his pen and clicked. Nandor let out a hissed exclamation and fluttered his newly healed hand in the cool blue dark of early morning. Two more, the Djinn thought, to see this through to the end.
7. the whole club was looking at her
While the vampires’ house was empty, the Djinn had taken up the habit of wandering around. It was nice to get out of his lamp for a few hours and examine the strange curios on the shelves and in the drawers. Tonight, he had settled in a fancy room armchair to read a half-finished contract that Laszlo Cravensworth had drafted with the devil to become a better guitarist, mentally cataloging the loopholes that he would take advantage of if he was in the devil’s cloven hooves.
He was interrupted by the sound of laughter. Arm in arm, Nandor and Marwa--the Marwa who was now Freddie--entered the fancy room to stand by the fireplace.
“I cannot believe I was able to emerge from that musical play about witches with my semen intact,” Nandor was saying. “The green witch and the blonde witch have a twisty complicated friendship and were in love, I should think.”
“That’s generally the popular consensus,” Freddie agreed, and he beamed. “Thank you for the fantastic date, Nandor. It’s everything that I dreamed of for my first trip to New York.”
Nandor tapped him on the nose. “You’re welcome. You are a very sweet and smart guy. It is cool, all your history knowledge, about the stuff from Al Quolindar in the Met. I wasn’t the most diligent student back in the day.”
“We Brits have sadly appropriated a fair amount of artifacts from the Near East, so it’s right there in the curriculum back home. But, really, you have the most amazing stories of your own! I still can’t believe you actually know how to handle a shamshir.”
“Well,” Nandor said, his fingers moving to play with the scarf at Freddie’s throat, “it is not the only thing I am talented at penetrating with,” and Freddie laughed. Nandor began unraveling the scarf, his eyes dark and hungry, and Freddie let him. The human’s coat was tossed onto the fur rug on the ground, and Nandor pressed kisses on his exposed throat, his fangs flashing in the firelight. Freddie swayed against him, eyes fluttering, yet Nandor held him steady, his hand at his hip.
The Djinn looked at Nandor’s mouth--Nandor’s hands--Nandor’s eyes. And every single thing in the room that was on fire sang: the flames in the hearth leaped and the candles winked out before reigniting.
The roar of the flames finally alerted Nandor to the Djinn’s presence in the fancy room. Freddie hadn’t seen, his eyes still shut, so it was as if the moment had frozen between the two of them. The Djinn, staring, with Laszlo’s contract with the devil forgotten in his lap. Nandor, his lips curled in a snarl that was a mix of annoyance, surprise, and something else.
The Djinn met his gaze without flinching. He brought his pen to his mouth with his index finger raised--a silent shh--then drew it away like an air-blown kiss. Nandor opened his mouth as if to say something.
But the fire flickered again, and the Djinn was gone, the piece of parchment fluttering to the floor in his wake.
8. cinque-point, part two
Before the revelation in Atlantic City, Nandor had liked looking at the stars. No matter where or when he was, the Pleiades were a constant in the dome of the sky. He would imagine the world turtle and elephants dancing through the constellations like a clubgoer funking out underneath the lights of a spinning disco ball.
But there was no turtle--there were no elephants. There were only celestial bodies and the vast reaches of space, the stars cold and lonely.
Still, he couldn’t help looking at the night sky now. It was hard not to, since he had escaped to sit on the roof of the house. He had previously been immersed in reading about the military general Qi Jiguang, who had fought Mongols and pirates in the sixteenth century. However, he felt restless, and it didn’t help that Laszlo kept playing sad songs on a loop on his piano, over and over again, the melodies reverberating throughout the house. Sometimes they were showtunes; sometimes they were lullabies, the kind you would sing to make a child sleep; and sometimes it was the Go Flip Yourself theme song.
He could even catch snatches of Laszlo’s current song now: You are my moonshine, my only moonshine, you make me happy when skies are gray…
Nandor arranged his cloak to drape more comfortably around him. The next few hours seemed to slip by without his notice. At some point, Laszlo’s song had ended. The moon and the stars were dimming, the sky shifting to a softer blue. He knew that he would soon have to transform into a bat and slip into the house, heading toward his crypt to slumber, and then he would awake and the night would begin again.
Isn't it wonderful, he had told Guillermo about nothing changing. But he felt change, or the weight of it, or the pull to it, like a fever, like a wound, like a mosquito transformation form that you would get stuck in for a week and resigned to sucking rat blood.
He saw the sun before he felt its sting--golden rays streaming through gathered clouds--and he let out a breath in half-wonder and half-pain.
There was a shadow overhead. The Djinn was standing on the roof as if he had always been there, holding an umbrella over Nandor’s head. He said, “Come. Play a game of backgammon with me.”
Nandor shook himself out of his stupor. He blinked. “Sure, why not.” There was a click, and they suddenly were in the library. The backgammon board was laid out on the table, the black and white checkers in position. The Djinn’s umbrella had vanished, replaced with his pen in hand.
Nandor ambled over to a chair, claiming black, leaving the Djinn to take white. He won the starting roll, and went to shake his cup of dice for his first move. Maybe there was something about his heightened state of tiredness that worked in his favor--maybe he had remnants of luck left over after all--for he played the best backgammon he had played in perhaps three hundred years. He called, “Shesh besh!” at a 5-6 roll, and built a solid prime that trapped the Djinn’s pieces.
He bore off his checkers. He grinned at the Djinn, who was watching him with a thoughtful expression. “I won. You didn’t let me win, did you?”
“No,” the Djinn said. “That was all you.”
And there was something about that statement that brought Nandor crashing back to reality, to this moment in time where he was sitting with his hair an unbrushed mess, his cape rumpled, unread piles of books next to his coffin and an ache in his heart.
He said, “I messed up. Didn’t I. With Freddie, with Marwa, with Guillermo, with everything. It is like what you said about challenging you to games of chance or skill.”
Wishers end up with less than what they started with.
“It’s a common assumption and source of blame,” said the Djinn, quietly. “‘It was the djinn.’ As if the djinn drove Majnun to lovestruck madness--made Bijan pursue Manijeh to get his foolish self trapped in a hole in the ground--or regularly seize control of people’s minds to give into their worst natures. But it never is. It is an old pattern across lifetimes, across nations, across humans and vampires and even gods. People create and perpetuate their own misery.”
Nandor murmured, “I wish -- and this is not a real wish, mind you! I am just thinking out loud -- that I knew what it would take to truly be happy. Because I know that Laszlo is sad about child Colin Robinson right now, and Nadja is sad about her nightclub, but I am pretty sure they will get over it. They have each other, and time, and music, and this way of looking at immortal undead life that I cannot even begin to understand. I merely have time, and it is… long.”
“Ah, that’s the question,” the Djinn said. “Scholars and philosophers have devoted their entire lives to figuring out the meaning and purpose of life.”
“... Do you mean that I was right to schedule the next twenty or so years of my life for reading?”
The Djinn shook his head. “They provide several comforting answers, but ultimately, that is a conclusion you must figure out for yourself.”
Nandor clenched his fists, opened them. “So, djinn magic is clearly not the solution to my troubles. What am I supposed to do with my last wish? Donate it to charity, like to sick horses or children with sick horses?”
“I think you know.”
Nandor considered the matter. “It is like the time with the goats. I shouldn’t have summoned them for my own selfish lariat-practicing purposes. It would have been better to let them be free and do whatever they wanted, whether it was chewing grass or pissing on Laszlo’s perverted bushes. And it is arguably even worse because Marwa is an actual person.”
The Djinn sighed. “It is undoubtedly worse.”
Nandor nodded, his mind made up. “For my last wish, I wish for my revived wife Marwa, now a clone of Freddie, to be restored to her original self, where she will be provided with all the resources she needs--money, identity papers, spoons, whatever--to do whatever she wants with her life.”
Click. “It is done.”
“What next?” Nandor asked, and he loathed how forlorn he sounded.
And the Djinn looked at him. It was the same expression with which he had looked at Nandor in the woods before healing his hand: gentle and bright pity. He said, “I am taking a trip to visit my cousin Javad. You can join me, if you wish. He wants to show me around where he is in California, and then we plan to go to Mazandaran to see how it has changed in our absence. You might get the chance to see a div or two--and your old homeland is on the way.”
“I have already done there, been that, with traveling,” Nandor said, frowning. “It is kind of you, but I do not think it will be any different.”
“Sometimes it helps to have different company, and hopefully different eyes,” the Djinn replied, with a shrug. “I cannot be your tour guide to the meaning of life, but you may find something that you are looking for. It is at least a new adventure. And you should be aware… your eldest daughter is alive, in a manner of speaking. She is a vampire, and I believe she is somewhere in Istanbul right now.”
Nandor pictured her from the illustrations he had seen of her. Kimia, who was every bit the warrior he had been at his prime and had the same dark eyes and prominent nose as him. Wincing, he said, “I do not know if she would like to see me after abandoning her and her mother and the rest of the court. I am worried that I may ruin things again, or frighten her like my many-times-great-granddaughter Madeline.”
“She is not a woman who would frighten easily,” the Djinn said, with a snort. “In any case, it would not hurt to try. But it is up to you. It is, remember, your choice for all things.”
His choice. It felt heavier than any sword, heavier than the weight of the earth held aloft in space by the scientific powers of gravity. Nandor knew, immediately, that if he departed, he would return, because Staten Island was his home. He was fond of this ancient gas leaky house and was glad that the contractors were hammering it back together. Furthermore, despite their innumerable faults and the fact that they often made him want to commit housemate homicide, Laszlo, Nadja and Colin Robinson were his dear friends. And he wanted to see Guillermo again after giving his former familiar, bodyguard, and… best friend the space and time he needed.
Yes, Nandor would be back. But for now, he turned the Djinn’s invitation over in his mind and declared: “I shall take you up on your offer.”
The Djinn said, smiling, “As you wish, king of kings,” and Nandor felt a jolt in his chest, as if his undead heart had been shocked by lightning, and he wondered what it meant.
9. a soft epilogue
So, they left. They first went to California, where Javad mercilessly teased the Djinn about his vampire client turned traveling companion, but at least he had the manners to show them the sights. They went to a Dodgers game (Nandor caught a fly ball and nearly decapitated the pitcher with his returning throw)--they went to Disneyland (the Djinn had a weakness for the flight-simulating rides)--and later, just the two of them, they watched the waves while sitting on the shore of a moonlit beach.
It was there where the Djinn parted the long curtain of Nandor’s hair and kissed him for the first time. Nandor’s mouth opened against his, then closed, and the first kiss turned into the second, then third.
When they broke apart, Nandor said, “You have been wanting to do this for a while, haven’t you? Very unprofessional, a djinn and his former master.”
“There are quite a number of unprofessional things I want to do to you,” the Djinn agreed, and Nandor flushed. The Djinn reached out again to run his fingers through his hair, inducing Nandor to lean into his touch. He mused, “You really do remind me of my last master’s pet dog.”
“That is not even remotely romantic. I am not some mutt, sheesh.” A beat. “Was it a pretty cute dog?”
“The most endearing,” the Djinn said. And he pressed Nandor down onto the sand, making him sigh and squirm underneath his touch as the stars shone overhead and the ocean crashed on.