Return Of The Djinn (The Iphigenia Black series #4)

By Nicola Rhodes

Beware of what you think you know.

Eternity! It makes a good holiday home for the gods but frankly, when you’re stuck there with no way out, it gets kind of dull.
Okay – make that very dull. It’s a good job, then, that the universe has laid on a handy battle for dominion of the world, an unexpected enemy, and an even more unexpected ally. Just to keep things interesting.

So, it’s the end of time – or is it? Well, okay, yes it is – technically. But that doesn’t make it the end of everything. Now that the mainframe is gone and all the rules with it, it’s frankly, chaos out there.
But don’t worry, somebody is determined to clean it all up – once and for all. No matter what it takes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicola Rhodes
• Release date: Jun 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370942558

Nicola Rhodes

About the Author Nicola Rhodes often can’t remember where she lives so she lives inside her own head most of the time, where even if you do get lost, it’s still okay. She has met many interesting people inside her own head and eventually decided to introduce them to the rest of the world, in the hopes that they would stop bothering her and let her sleep. She has been doing this for ten years now but they still won’t leave her alone. She wrote this book for fun and does not care if you take away a moral lesson from it or not. You have her full permission to read whatever you wish into this work of fiction. As she says herself: “Just because I wrote this book, doesn’t mean I know anything about it.”

Book preview

Return Of The Djinn

The Iphigenia Black Series – book 4

The Saga Continues

Nicola Rhodes

© copyright 2017 Nicola Rhodes

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Beware of what you think you know.

Eternity! It makes a good holiday home for the gods but frankly, when you’re stuck there with no way out, it gets kind of dull.

Okay – make that very dull. It’s a good job, then, that the universe has laid on a handy battle for dominion of the world, an unexpected enemy, and an even more unexpected ally. Just to keep things interesting.

So, it’s the end of time – or is it? Well, okay, yes it is – technically. But that doesn’t make it the end of everything. Now that the mainframe is gone and all the rules with it, it’s frankly, chaos out there.

But don’t worry, somebody is determined to clean it all up – once and for all. No matter what it takes.

This book is dedicated to all those who have made it this far. I thank you for your patience and will abuse it no more.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the finale.

Prologue

‘A deal is a deal, Tamar Black’

‘I know but…’

‘You cannot renege now, even if I were to change my mind, it would not be possible. And I have not changed my mind.’

‘It wasn’t quite the way I had envisaged it,’ she argued, but she knew she was on shaky ground here.

The next reply confirmed this. ‘Small print. You of all people ought to know by now to always read the small print.’

Tamar sighed. ‘How long?’ she asked

‘Irrelevant.’

‘Not to me!’

‘No, I mean it really is irrelevant. Time itself will have no meaning.’

He shuffled his papers and looked at her over his glasses. ‘I am not trying to be cruel Tamar Black,’ he said. ‘You wanted this, you came to us. If you want to save your child then there is no other way.’

‘I know. But you needn’t try to pretend that you don’t get anything out of this.’

‘I am not trying to pretend anything of the sort. That is, is it not, why we call it a deal? Advantageous to both parties.’

Tamar snorted. How could you deal with someone so aggravatingly reasonable? It was infuriating. She realised she wanted a row. It would relieve her feelings. But this prissy little… thing had no intention of indulging her, that was clear.

She decided to cut to the chase. ‘Isn’t there some way I could… go back?’ she said. ‘She’s so alone, so vulnerable and frankly she’s making a mess of things.’

‘Nonsense,’ came the clipped reply. ‘She is doing extremely well under the circumstances. You merely miss her and wish to exercise your right as a parent to interfere. You would have had to let her go at some point in any case.’

Tamar stood up and gave him the benefit of her best glower. It worked; he cowered back in his seat. ‘I could do nothing,’ she said, ‘just let the chaos in. you couldn’t stop me.’

‘But – but you wouldn’t do that.’

‘You don’t know what I would or wouldn’t do,’ she barked. ‘Don’t test me. I have a bad habit of calling people’s bluff.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ was the muttered response. ‘Very well, there might be something I can do for you that does not violate the terms of our agreement. But you won’t like it.’

‘I’d better like it,’ snapped Tamar.

He lifted his hands in a weary, resigned gesture. She had had him on the ropes a few moments ago – how did she do that? She had no power here and yet… he sighed. ‘You won’t,’ he said. ‘But it’s that or nothing, so you’ll take it, I think. Now get out!’

Chapter One

Not the darkest night, nor the blackest cavern in the deepest sea, nor even the shadowland of infinity was ever so dark as the darkness behind her eyes.

She slept a sleep so dreamless it was hardly recognisable as sleep at all, both more and less than mere sleep. A thin veil lying between the conscious and unconscious mind of the sleeper, and beyond that veil the phantoms of eternity gibbering just beyond perception. The body lay sleeping, but the mind was lost in an endless void, as outside, in the world around her, the darkness gathered.

* * *

Iffie awoke with a vague sense of disquiet – a feeling she had missed something – something important and that a lot of time had passed since she fell asleep. She was disoriented by the feeling. The last thing she remembered was talking to Jack, it had been about something important, she was sure – but the memory was disarranged, it was there, but somehow, she couldn’t manage to make any sense of it. She wondered if it had been a dream. Dreams often felt that way. You remembered them, yet the details were fuzzy and inarticulate. She shook her head irritably. Witches were clear headed – it was part of it; she wasn’t used to being uncertain or unfocused about things and she found she disliked the feeling intensely.

Something, she thought, was going on here, and she intended to find out what. It was then, as she looked around, that she noticed her surroundings. They were unfamiliar, this only added to the feeling of disquiet, of course. And she was alone, although distant voices could be heard outside, or perhaps in another part of the house. Was it a house?

It was. She decided to look around, and, as she opened the door of the room she had awakened in, she saw that it was in fact, her house after all. She turned and saw the familiar garret room that she always slept in and for some reason, her knees buckled. Was she going crazy? Or had the place actually changed right before her eyes as the saying goes?

Just as she was uncertain of her last memory, she was unsure now about the evidence of her own eyes.

Disconcerted, but determined, she made her way downstairs. As she did so, the voices she had heard became louder and resolved themselves into the familiar tones of Jack and Maz. Relieved, she ran down to find them, but when she reached the hallway, the voices ceased and the house took on a deserted air. Undaunted, she stalked deliberately into the large study on her left, it was empty, but she was sure she saw a shadow pass behind her through the open doorway of the living room. She turned quickly but saw nothing. Voices floated down the stairs this time, but she wasn’t falling for that again. Ahead of her, a door slammed and the echo of laughter pealed distinctly from the direction of the conservatory like ghosts of yesteryear. ‘Bloody Haunted House trip,’ Iffie muttered caustically. ‘Been there, done that.’ Although not, as she had to admit, in her own home. But it was like that. It felt as if she had been away for centuries and had returned now to see and hear the ghosts of her own past, lingering in the memory of walls and floors, or hanging like bats in the back of her own mind. Suddenly the years felt like a weight. How old was she now anyway? Was she even far older than she thought? Had she pulled some kind of Rip Van Winkle? Was everybody she knew gone? This suddenly didn’t feel like such a crazy idea. It would certainly explain a lot, including her disorientation. Footsteps sounded overhead, voices whispered behind her and overtaken by fear she took to her heels and ran.

*

Where was everyone? Jack was certain he wasn’t alone, he had distinctly heard voices, but when he turned to look, an uncanny silence fell and all he could hear was the echoing of his own footsteps. He had wandered through the house twice now and seen no one, but he still had the feeling someone was there.

He wasn’t afraid as such, but he was beginning to get very frustrated.

He wasn’t the only one.

*

Maz woke up in a bad temper. He had no idea why, but so it was. He also had the feeling that he was missing something. Not just that he had forgotten something important (although there was that too) but that somehow, something that meant a lot to him had been callously ripped away from him. But he could not, for the life of him, imagine what that something could be.

By the time he had prowled through the apparently empty house several times, accompanied by whispering ghosts and mysterious noises his temper had reached almost nuclear levels. Had Clive, for example, appeared before him, he would have had no compunction in ripping his throat out.

*

Leda awoke, shivering in the darkness and drew her blanket around her. She felt as if she had been lost in deep water for a long, long time. The feeling was disturbingly familiar to her. She knew she was alone. Hadn’t she always been alone? No matter what people came and went in her life, always she ended up alone in the end. Her head full of voices from the past and her heart full of loneliness. She didn’t know how she had ended up alone this time, and she didn’t wonder about it much. It didn’t seem to matter. She lay back, listening to the voices in her head. Eventually, she would get up and leave this place, but there was no hurry. No hurry at all.

*

Iffie ran outside in a panic. The sky was falling, or so it seemed, the moon was resting on the bosom of the earth, and all around were showers of bright meteors.

Damn! What now?

A figure was coming towards her through the shadows. She thought, from the figure and the walk, that it was Bel, and felt an unaccountable sense of relief. It wasn’t Jack or Maz or Leda, but it was someone she knew at least. Perhaps she wasn’t crazy after all.

What’s going on?’ she demanded as Bel drew nearer.

‘This is the end,’ Bel told her.

‘What – again?" sniffed Iffie, disdainfully, glaring at the stars falling all around her.

‘No,’ a gentle hand was laid on her shoulder. ‘This is really it; it is the end of time.’

Iffie started at the well-remembered voice and looked up slowly and disbelievingly to gaze into familiar eyes.

‘M-Mum?’ she stuttered eventually.

Tamar smiled ruefully at her. ‘The very same. She looked anxiously at her daughter; the unspoken question hovered between them. "Are you glad to see me?’

‘But – what happened to Bel?’ She had seen Bel there, she was almost certain of it.

‘Bel was a figment,’ Tamar said, looking slightly awkward. ‘She never really existed.’

It took Iffie a few seconds for this to register but when it did, she reared back, staggering slightly, and pointed a dramatic finger at Tamar. ‘YOU!’ she gasped.

Tamar had the grace to look ashamed. ‘It was the only way I could come back to you,’ she muttered. ‘And even then, I wasn’t allowed to know who I was, or to remember you,’ she added – a world of bitterness in her voice. ‘I wanted to take care of you, help you.’ She shrugged. ‘That didn’t work out too well, did it? I guess I forgot that without my early training, and without your father … well, I turned out a very different person. ’

‘But you …’ Iffie floundered helplessly. She wanted to say: You gave up everything, even your identity just for me? But her brain refused her even this modest service under the shock of this unimaginable revelation.

‘I always knew you were crazy,’ she managed eventually. Tamar smiled.

‘And …?’ Iffie gestured to the sky.

‘Come and see. It’s quite safe … for us.’

She glanced up at the falling stars and grinned. ‘Make a wish,’ she quipped.

‘I don’t have to,’ Iffie re-joined seriously. ‘You already came back to me.’

Tamar stopped for a moment, as the tears stood in her eyes and she fought for control.

* * *

It wasn’t long before they had company. Jack was first – he had come outside to investigate a mighty crash that had rocked the house and almost knocked him off his feet. As soon as he left the house, he saw the weird new world that had greeted Iffie – then he saw her. They approached each other tentatively at first, almost as if they were not sure, after their experiences in the house, that the other were real. Jack reached out a hand to Iffie, which she grasped in silence.

Next was a bemused Maz who simply stared at the sky in wonder. It took him several minutes to register that he was no longer alone.

At the moment Leda walked out of the front door, the house gave a huge sigh and disappeared like smoke in the wind.

No one spoke; they just watched the sky for a while. Then Jack saw Tamar.

‘Tamar?’ he asked disbelievingly. Maz and Leda looked round in surprise and beheld the most beautiful woman either of them had ever seen framed dramatically against the flaming sky her dark hair a halo of lightning; she was smiling maternally at Jack and holding her arms out to him. ‘Hello Jack,’ she said in a voice that sounded like soft music.

‘Tamar, oh Tamar, you’ve come back,’ Jack gasped and he ran to her to be enfolded in her arms. Iffie was crying, and muffled sobs also came from Jack’s hidden face. Suddenly Maz and Leda felt like unwelcome intruders. The legendary Tamar Black was back, and that was intimidating enough. But more than that, a family was being reunited, and they felt, awkwardly, that they had no part in it.

But they slowly became aware of someone standing with them, also watching and smiling gently. Now that they were aware of him, they wondered how they could have missed him. He wasn’t tall or imposing. Neither handsome nor well built, in fact, he was as skinny as Maz, his untidy hair fell over his eyes and his chin was unshaven. He certainly wasn’t much to look at, but somehow his presence filled the world.

‘Denny!’ deduced Maz in a tone of surprise, from what he had heard about him from Iffie and Jack.

Denny winked at him conspiratorially and made and put a finger to his lips. ‘Shhh,’ he whispered and nodded to the emotional tableau before them. He was clearly enjoying himself hugely.

Leda’s mouth fell open unattractively and Maz himself could only stare.

This – this was Denny? Denny? ‘Why, he’s not any better looking than me,’ thought Maz. There was no doubt in his mind, that this was Denny, even though he couldn’t understand yet, how it could be, nor how Denny could look so, so… commonplace . Yet he wasn’t a disappointment, if only because, as Maz looked at him, he saw Iffie’s eyes looking back at him, with an expression of wry amusement twinkling in their Aegean depths. Somehow, this was enough.

‘I guess you must be a friend of my Iffie,’ said the putative Denny holding out a hand amiably.

‘M-Maz,’ Maz stuttered. ‘And this is Leda,’ he added in response to a hard kick on his ankle.

Denny grinned. ‘I see. I’m Denny, as you seem to have guessed anyway. Nice to meet you. How are you enjoying eternity?’

‘Eternity?’

But Denny had been spotted. With a girlish squeal that ever after she denied all knowledge of, Iffie had flung herself on her father almost knocking him to the ground. ‘Dad!’

Tamar turned, releasing Jack as she did so. ‘Denny,’ she whispered in tones so full of longing that Jack was embarrassed to hear her.

Tamar controlled herself with an effort of will and turned to Jack, who had suddenly figured it out. ‘This is the end of time,’ he stated, ‘isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she answered tersely. ‘Eternity.’

‘Eternity?’ breathed Jack, unconsciously echoing Maz in both words and tone. And yet, he wasn’t really surprised. The falling stars and general mayhem around him was a big clue of course, and the arrival, unlooked for, of Tamar herself and Denny, was pretty conclusive.

Finally, Iffie prised herself away from her dad – overwhelmed as she was, she understood that this moment would mean at least as much to Jack as it did to her. And, with all her faults, Iffie had never been selfish. ‘Jack, Jack!’ she called him over, waving her arms excitedly. ‘It’s dad, its dad. Aren’t you coming to say hello?’

Jack hesitated and it was Tamar who, with noble self-denial, pushed him forward. ‘Go on then,’ she urged.

Jack did not squeal, or throw himself on Denny, he was too moved. He walked forward slowly, hesitantly. He was nervous. Had he done enough? Had he measured up? He had made so many mistakes since Tamar and Denny had left. Would Denny be disappointed in him? Would he think he had let him (and Iffie) down?

Denny seemed to understand Jack’s thoughts and fears, because as he came forward to greet his foster son, he put out a hand onto Jack’s shoulder like a benediction and said: ‘It’s all right, son.’

Son! Jack’s face broke into a jubilant smile. It was enough.

*

When the reunions and introductions were over, it was Maz who asked, ‘What happened to the house?’

‘It doesn’t belong here,’ said Tamar. ‘It’s a part of mainframe really and that’s gone now. Destroyed by the chaos.’

‘Gone?’ exclaimed Jack. ‘What, really gone? How is that even possible?’

‘And where are we supposed to live?’ added Iffie, laughing.

‘Ah,’ said Tamar with a grin. ‘That’s the easy part.’ She waved a hand and a house appeared. ‘Houses I can do,’ she chuckled ‘or a boat, maybe?’ she suggested, changing the house to a luxurious looking yacht, that sat incongruously and yet quite steadily against the landscape. ‘Maybe a castle?’ and again, she suited the action to the word.

Iffie was laughing uncontrollably. ‘Mum!’ she wailed in mock chagrin. ‘Don’t be so daft.’

Maz