Chapter 6: I Dream of Jeannie (Part 3)

The city of Normal, Ohio was just as alive at night as it was in the warm daylight. Jacob, perched on the roof of a building across the street from the East Main Street Coffee House, was glad for the throngs of people that walked the streets at night; it would help him to not be spotted later. But for now, he didn’t need them; he doubted that the genie would be able to find him up here and realize he was watching her. Through his dad’s binoculars, he didn’t spot anyone who looked supernatural enter or leave, but he kept a careful eye on every person who did so.

The air was chilly, and the whizzing of cars down on the streets below droned at the edge of his hearing. Overhead, low clouds encroached on the sky, fluffy and blocking the starless black blanket. Here and there, an annoyed honk split the air in two. Jacob, who had added a grey sweater to his outfit for protection against the night’s chill, laid uncomfortably on the cement roof, face down with his head leaned out over the edge of the building for a clearer look. Normally, his stomach would have felt like sandpaper after keeping this position on a rough surface for over four hours, but not today. The lack of pain was a terrible reminder of just how undead he was, and Jacob swallowed down another round of self-pity; he’d made a stupid mistake, and now he’d just have to after-live with it.

The Coffee House door opened, and from it stepped a woman much different compared to the rest of the people he’d spied on that evening.

The woman was tall and humanoid, wearing the black and green polo of the average East Main Street Coffee House employee. However, that was where the human appearances ended. She had entirely indigo skin, dark like the twilit sky that hung precariously in the balance between day and night. Her head was hairless, and her eyes filled with stars—brilliant, twinkling galaxies and space dust—except there were three of them. Each of her extensive hands had long, pointy fingers that appeared sharp as knives. She was exotically beautiful, in the way that an exploding star is beautiful as it showers solar radiation and pure color into the empty nothingness around it.

And she looked sad, depressingly so, in a way that made Jacob wish he could retreat inside himself and waste away.

As though she cared not whether a car ran her over, the jinn didn’t even wait for the traffic light to turn red. The indigo woman kept her head down, hugged herself tightly, and raced across the street like a comet hurtling on a suicide mission to the Sun. Chevies, Fords, and Toyotas blared their horns; tires screeched as a dark green Jeep stopped barely a foot from her. The jinn paid them not even so much as a sideways glance.

Jacob let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding when she crossed the street, perfectly alright. Angry drivers opened their car doors and climbed out to shout at her, but she ducked in with the crowd of street goers on the other sidewalk.

Jacob backed away from the edge of the building and stuffed his dad’s binoculars in their hard, leather carrier, which he’d strapped to his jean’s belt beneath his sweater. Then he dashed over to the left side of the building, where a fire escape clung to the stone walls. It was a full story below him, but height had never bothered Jacob. He climbed over the lip on the edge, hung by his fingers, and let go.

The fire escape clanged with his weight as he landed, but he paid this no mind and instead repeated the process upon reaching the bottom. Here, the final staircase had been swung up for protection against thieves, so he was unable to go down, and lowering it would alert authorities that someone had used the fire escape; dropping down to the ground was a necessity. His legs felt no pain from the resulting shock absorption, and he exited the alley he found himself in. Like the jinn before him, he melted into the crowd, becoming just another face of many.

His hand patted his side; there dangled the oil lamp beside his father’s binoculars, clipped to his belt by its loopy handle. The items were a little conspicuous since they made a hefty bulge in the back of his sweater, but curious people could screw off.

Swallowing nervously, Jacob’s eyes searched the sea of heads on the sidewalk for his target. There she was, a good many feet ahead of him, her bald, indigo head standing out like a beacon. No one acted strange around her; no one gave her weird, peculiar looks. She was using some sort of glamour or something to pass as human, then. But Jacob wasn’t fooled by any supernatural disguise.

He didn’t make it obvious that he was tracking her. Jacob moved closer until he was only a couple strides away from her, and then stared at the windows of stores. He pretended that he was window shopping when in reality, he was watching her reflection in the glass. The jinn kept walking with her head down.

All the way to East Jones Avenue did they walk, and the jinn broke in stride for nothing. She didn’t even slow down when they came to stops at intersections, where it was too dangerous to cross because of moving traffic. Just like when she’d left the Coffee House, the jinn simply continued forward, despite the honking cars whose drivers slammed their feet on their squealing brakes. Jacob gaped, flabbergasted. Did she not care whether she lived or died?

Then again, she was a jinn, so maybe getting run over by a car simply wouldn’t hurt her. With a confused frown, Jacob renewed his chase.

It wasn’t until five minutes later that the jinn changed her movement. She turned and shuffled into an alley between two brick buildings, an alley with lots of back doors and garbage cans. Jacob narrowed his eyes and stuck his hand in his pocket, grasping the handle of his trusty dagger. With a self-assured nod, the teen crept forward, peering around the corner of the alley.

A man stood there at the end of the alley, staring at nothing and making no sign of consciousness. The jinn’s speed increased, and she walked with purpose—with desperation.

“Shit,” Jacob muttered, and he dashed into the alley. His footsteps echoed against its walls, and the jinn froze and turned. Her eyes opened wide and… terrified? “Oi, Blue Woman Group!” Jacob hollored, waving his arms. “Fresh bones! My skeleton tastes gooooood!”

“Why have you come here!?” the jinn hissed, regret coating her voice. She glanced at her comatose prey, then back at Jacob, who was now racing towards her. “There was supposed to be only one!”

“Well, bad luck for you then, because I’m player two!” Jacob bellowed, and closed his eyes in concentration. Power surged in his right arm. He opened them again to find the jinn baring her teeth apprehensively as she raced toward him, only her teeth were sharp, pointy fangs. They looked like they could do some serious damage if she bit him.

Jacob tore his dagger from his pocket. The purple glow around his arm transferred to his steel blade. He winced; using his exorcising power felt like he was burning his arm even though it had never done that before. He’d been worried a little that using it while he was a revenant would kill him a second time; it may not have been killing him, but it did feel like his arm was pulling a Wicked Witch and melting. He gritted his teeth and pushed passed the pain; it was worth it to save an innocent life.

Metal dagger rang against fingers the color of twilight, and Jacob’s weapon was locked in the jinn’s grasp. He narrowed his chocolate orbs. It looked like the monster’s fingers really were knives. This was very worrisome, especially since those sharp appendages on her other hand now reaped the air apart on a path to Jacob’s neck.

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He paled and ducked. The jinn’s fingers razed the space his head had just occupied. At the same time, her other hand—the one that clenched itself, uncut but steaming hard enough to make her bit her lip—squeezed. Hard.

With a crack like a gun backfiring, the blade shattered. It broke into a hundred… no, a thousand razor sharp shards that showered the floor like glass from a broken window. Jacob yelped and backed up, his eyes wide with horror. That dagger had been by his side on all his ghostbusting missions for the past seven years. He’d gotten it as a gift from his grandfather on his tenth birthday.

It felt like watching a close friend die.

Jacob, now rather terrified thanks to that impressive display of sheer power, yelped and backed up as the jinn swiped at him again. He seemed to have rather insignificantly more speed than he’d had as a normal human, something he was grateful for. If Jacob had been a second slower, those knife-like fingers would’ve bit into his skin.

His hand, trembling ever so slightly, felt the oil lamp on his belt. It was his last hope now; he doubted he’d be able to get close enough to land enough punches filled with exorcising power to work. Jacob only hoped Tiffany’s instincts had been right on the money.

“You’re fast… for a human,” the jinn admitted, frowning and tensing her leg muscles. “But slow for a revenant.”

Jacob narrowly avoided becoming a couch in a losing battle with a cat. He dodged and sidestepped clumsily, death missing him by just a hair each time. The jinn just kept getting faster until he was getting nicked on the cheek, the arm, his side. Jacob cursed, wondering how he could win; she was much faster than anything he’d ever faced before, although not nearly as fast as the demon.

What was it that Agent Mann had said last night? The madder your opponent is, the more mistakes they’ll make? That was worth a shot.

“Hey, girlie,” Jacob said as the jinn’s slicing fingers grazed his skin again. “My pet tortoise is faster than you! I know skeletons that are better fighters! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!”

The jinn bared her fangs again and continued her efforts to turn him into confetti. She didn’t seem much angrier, however. Jacob gulped as he narrowly danced around her attacks. She just kept getting faster! Jacob had long since shut off his power, since it was using too much of his concentration to keep up, and it hurt his arm too badly, anyway.

Then the woman with the starry eyes chopped a little too fast for him to avoid. Her fingers raked through the air, and instinctively, Jacob raised his right arm and blocked her hand.

Pain flared in his arm, pain like the jinn’s fingers were fire eating away at a log in a campfire. He’d never felt this kind of utter agony in his life. The only time that had come close had been back in his freshman year of high school, when he’d broken his arm and one leg during a job concerning a poltergeist. Even the demon’s trident that had skewered him last night hadn’t hurt like this; he’d died too quickly to feel any pain.

“YAAAARGH!” he howled, his voice bouncing off the alley.

“I’m sorry,” the jinn said sadly, her three eyes closing. “But… I’m so hungry…” She reached back with her free hand and prepared to stab forward. Then her words registered in Jacob’s head, through the feeling of acid in his arm. His eyes widened, and he made several connections all at once.

How sad she’d looked, coming out of the Coffee House… the way she’d simply walked carelessly across moving traffic… how panicked she’d been about Jacob’s arrival. He remembered what Adam had said about jinn without lamps feeding on human bones. A rush of sadness and understanding coursed through the creeks and rivers of his blood vessels, which were now filled with ectoplasm. His arm glowed in its royal purple light, and lodged inside it, the jinn’s fingers smoked.

She hissed in pain and ripped her knife-like fingers from Jacob’s right arm. They were charred as if they’d been stuck in a bonfire. Black ectoplasm now flowed freely from Jacob’s newest wound, but even as he groaned and cursed, upon shutting off his power again, he found that the agony from being stabbed like that was already starting to fade. He panted and clasped his hand around the oil lamp’s clip, beneath his grey coat.

“You never wanted to kill those five other people, didn’t you?” he declared, and the jinn backed up.

Her eyes reflected the cosmos as they widened. “If you already know that much, then why are you hunting me, user of the Right Hand of God?”

Jacob blinked. Right Hand of God? he thought, looking down at his right arm. So that’s what this power is called? Come to think of it, I think I heard McArthur’s ghost and Agent Mann mention that. I’ll have to ask Mann about that.

“I only just figured it out now,” he admitted sheepishly. “But tell me, if you don’t want to kill, why are you doing that?”

“Why would you care!?” the jinn cried, and she swiped at Jacob again. This time, though, the attack was slow enough to fully dodge. He leaped away and skidded to a stop.

“Because I might be able to help!” Jacob said, and he smiled to show he truly meant it.

She looked like she was going to attack again, but hesitated. “Why would you wish to help me?” she asked tiredly.

“Because I want the pointless deaths in this town to stop. I want everyone to be able to live peacefully, and if I can do this peacefully then that’s even better.” He hesitated and sighed. “And honestly… I think I can kind of understand you. I just died myself last night, and apparently almost became wrapped in vengeance… so I guess I’m feeling a little forgiving tonight. What’s your story?”

The jinn looked at him, studying him carefully. Then she deflated and a tear slipped out of her eye. “My past master…” she began, choking up, “wasn’t a very good man. Not to me, at least. When he bought my lamp from an auction in Colorado and accidentally rubbed it three times, I came out, but he was so terrified that he broke it. My lamp, my home. He ran and ran, and I was left all alone, wandering the country, weak and a mere shell of the jinn I was before. I had to rely on human bones to keep going… I was afraid of death.”

Jacob swallowed. He understood; when he’d finally realized that Agent Mann was right and he was dead, he’d been terrified. He’d been beside himself with worry and fear about what he was going to do, what was going to happen to him.

“I can give it all back to you,” Jacob promised, unclipping the oil lamp and bringing it out from under his coat. “I can give you a new home, so you don’t have to kill anymore.”

The jinn stared. “A-Are you sure? After everything I’ve done, I… I d-don’t deserve to live…”

“Everyone deserves to live except the evil bastards who kill for the sake of killing,” he told her. He offered the oil lamp out and shook it. “Do you want to not have to kill or not?”

She looked down at the lamp, then up at Jacob. She hesitated a moment more. Then the jinn smiled. “Thank you, revenant,” she said, her tears flowing freely. “It’s been months since I’ve had a proper home. My name is Hilaal. If you are ever in need of a wish, please rub the lamp three times, and I will be there. You need not worry about any problems with the law, for my job at the East Main Street Coffee House was nothing but a glamour, and the other employees as well as anyone else who interacted with me will soon forget about my having worked there; any documentation of my presence will also be erased.”

Jacob shifted awkwardly. There it was again—that being thanked thing again. It gave him a lump in his throat that he wasn’t sure if it was a good feeling.

“Don’t mention it,” he muttered, and Hilaal the Jinn reached out and touched the oil lamp.

There was a rush of air like a tornado getting sucked down a drain, and Hilaal spun and grew smaller. She became smaller and smaller, a shrinking indigo whirlwind, until finally all of her was sucked through the spout of the oil lamp. The whooshing died down, leaving only the sound of the pedestrians and cars outside the alley way. Far at the end, the man who’d been about to be the jinn’s next unfortunate victim blinked, and looked around.

“W-What…?” he muttered, scratching his head in confusion. “Where am I? Why am I in this alley?” He looked up it and saw Jacob standing there with an oil lamp in one hand, and the hilt of a shattered knife in the other. He backed up against the back of the alley in terror. “A g-gangster! Please don’t hurt me, I have a w-wife and k-kids!”

Jacob’s fingers clenched around the hilt of his dagger. He hated being confused for a gangster on these jobs, simply because he was a black man living in the city, carrying a dagger at night. “Relax, I won’t hurt you,” he said soothingly, and turned to walk away. The poor guy was left exceedingly confused.

The teen frowned and considered the day’s events.

His brother Daniel didn’t care that he was a revenant. Neither did his friends. He’d almost died at the hands of that jinn, and probably would’ve had he not offered to help her.

Jacob sighed and ran his hands through his dark hair.

He supposed it was time to call Agent Mann.