It didn’t feel like dying. I’d gotten close a few times, when my sister trapped me so she could take over for Mother, so I knew I wasn’t dead. There hadn’t been enough pain and fear.

But it wasn’t living. It felt... suspended.

I thought I could already see, though I forced my eyes open and really saw. It was a gray place, with the potential for so much more. I sat on something and looked around, searching for a hint of what the hell happened. The last thing I remembered was a star-filled night compressing around me until everything shrank down into a tiny dot of misery. Then nothingness. Before that, the hyenas raided BadCreek and broke through the fence, and...

The pack. I bolted upright and tried to stand, searching for a way back to the real world. Whatever the hell this was, it couldn’t keep me from getting back to my people.

“We have much to discuss before you leave, little pup.”

The smooth voice sent chills down my spine, and I turned to face the man who appeared out of a cloud of smoke. I blinked; he hadn’t been there before. He definitely hadn’t been there before. Maybe I was in a coma and hallucinated all of this shit. This could have been a product of a hangover and grief. I’d had really messed-up dreams after Cal died.

The man’s olive skin was faintly blue-tinged, more so with the casual, loose-fitting neutral clothes he wore. It looked like linen trousers and shirt, which was an absurd choice for the climate and because of wrinkling... I paused and tried not to stare. He didn’t have a single wrinkle anywhere on him. That in and of itself convinced me he was magic.

I shook myself and got ready for a fight. “Where the hell am I?”

“This is an... alternate place.” He gestured airily and a cascade of sparks ignited around his nails, drifting in a mesmerizing pattern as he waved his hand. “We are waiting until we are summoned from the other side.”

Other side? I gripped my head and whirled, searching for any hint of how to get back to my pack. They needed me. What if the raid failed and they were all captured by BadCreek? What if I’d been captured by BadCreek and this was some weird new project of theirs? “Let me go. I’ll make it worth your while.”

He snorted, carefully twisting long dark hair back from his face. Sharp green eyes studied me, made more predatory by a beak of a nose. “Believe me, girl, you’re not my type.”

I frowned. “What the hell is this place? Who are you?”

“Many questions for someone who has no way to pay for the answers,” he said. “This is an in-between place, as I said. And you may call me Iskander.”

“Isk-what?”

“Iskander,” he repeated, not a hint of amusement in his eyes. I re-thought my strategy; pissing him off probably wasn’t the best idea, particularly when the hyena retreated from anything to do with this in-between place. “My mother named me after the one you called Alexander. The Great.”

“You’re shitting me,” I said. “What are you?”

The striking green eyes narrowed. “You are rude, even for one of the animals.”

And that was it. The silence stretched as he continued to watch me, and I finally pushed to my feet. Maybe there was a way out that he wasn’t going to tell me about. I needed to get free and start exploring, and eventually my nose would lead me home. I could always find home again. I only made it about ten feet before I ran into an invisible wall, smashing my knee and face into it at a near-run. I bounced back and fell on my ass, stars practically spinning around my head.

“You cannot break out of here,” he said, and for the first time, some emotion colored his words. Resignation, maybe, or a hint of sadness. “Believe me.”

“What the hell is going on? Am I trapped here?”

Iskander shrugged and gestured again, and instead of the gray expanse stretching in every direction, a beautiful landscape of trees and hills and mountains spread around us. “Here can be anywhere I like. I just can’t leave.”

I shook my head, staring at him, then turned in a slow circle as I surveyed the surroundings. It had to be some kind of magic. “Are you…are you the djinn?”

“Yes,” he said. Those green eyes flashed, and I wondered if he had magic himself or only through his surroundings. Where the hell was the lamp? Didn’t genies end up trapped in lamps and things like that? His expression soured as he watched me. “This is not inside the lamp; do not fear.”

“Sorry,” I said. As if he could read my mind. I pushed against the invisible wall, trying to breathe normally. I couldn’t panic, or I’d never get out of there. He clearly knew how to move from where we were to the real world, and I needed that knowledge. “What happened? Why am I here now?”

“I brought you here,” he said. Iskander didn’t blink, flicking his fingers so a chair materialized next to me. “We have much to discuss.”

The hyena started paying attention. We didn’t like the sound of that at all. I held onto the back of the chair, not quite ready to commit to sitting just yet. “I’m listening.”

“Something happened, not long ago. Or perhaps it was quite long ago, I don’t know. Time moves differently here. The one I answer to, Ray, disappeared. He used his second wish for a charm that could disable even the strongest of magical creatures, and tried to use it.” Iskander frowned. “He has not summoned me since. I believe he is stuck somewhere.”

I rubbed my jaw and took a deep breath. “Yeah. He disappeared with the ErlKing several months ago, and we haven’t heard from either of them. Stuck is probably the right word for it.”

The djinn shook his head, eyes glinting. “Then I am stuck as well. He has one wish left, and until that is fulfilled, I cannot be freed of him.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t wished himself free from wherever he is,” I said under my breath. My head ached from running into the invisible wall. It would have been nice to wish myself free of that, although Iskander didn’t look like the kind of guy who appreciated that kind of glibness.

“He has not, or at least has not said so where I can hear.” The djinn stared up at the void that should have been the sky, but was only that colorless nothingness that first surrounded us. He waved and it became the night sky, but the stars were randomly strewn across the dark velvet night. “Which presents a problem. I must be free of him.”

“I wish you were free,” I said, and braced for some kind of reaction.

“That’s not how it works.” Iskander frowned at me, as disapproving as my third-grade teacher. “Someone must deal with him—either kill him or free him—before I can serve another. And I am finished serving others. I wish to be free.”

Didn’t we all. I folded my arms over my chest, sensing a hint of why he might have dragged me away from the forest and the pack. “Am I supposed to be your replacement? You trap me here and that frees you?”

“That is also not how this works,” he said. He sounded bored, as if he’d had this conversation before, but I wasn’t about to let a single option pass by unexamined. There had to be a solution for both of us, or at least for me. “You are in control of the animals who attack the master’s compound and his people. You can find a way to free or kill the master, and I will be free. If I serve you, you can free me. It is very simple, really.”

“Simple,” I repeated. “Except for the part where I have to find and kill Ray, without knowing where he is or if he still has that charm you made for him. What do I get out of the deal?”

“Other than the obvious of being freed from this place?” Iskander leaned forward, elbows balanced on his knees, and his gaze hardened. “You desire to free some of the animals from the compound, yes? I have watched your people try the fences again and again. There is something inside those walls that you desire. I can provide that for you. One wish. Then you free me.”

I started to pace, though I kept one hand on the invisible wall so I could follow the long curve and not smash my knee or face again. “What happens when you are freed?”

He gave me a dark look. “I would hardly know that, would I? Seeing as how I am still trapped here.”

He had a point. I held up my hands. “Fair enough. Just…you’re not going to blow up the city or go on some kind of a rampage, murdering innocent civilians or anything, right?”

“I don’t believe I would do that.”

I frowned. He didn’t sound particularly confident in that assessment. But neither of us had much to go on. “So what guarantees do you have that I won’t just take the wishes and do what I want, and not free you?”

“Your word.” Iskander scowled, and a cloud of smoke billowed up from around him, dark and viscous with anger. “So you can understand my wariness.”

“All you’ve got is my word, and all I’ve got is your word.” I took a deep breath. “Great. But how the hell am I supposed to find Ray when I’m trapped here with you?”

Iskander played with the smoke, wrapping it around his fingers, and I started to wonder what he did with all the time spent waiting. He’d clearly been there a while. It was a small miracle he wasn’t a totally raving lunatic, although only time would tell. The djinn gestured and the smoke formed itself into a door in the space between us. “I have learned how to bring people to me, and send them away. I am stuck, but that does not mean you are.”

I took a deep breath. I could just lie to him and promise the world, then go back to my life as hyena queen and forget all about him. We would eventually defeat BadCreek and free whoever remained in the compound, with or without the djinn. But... I hesitated. He was just as stuck as the women and children, and God only knew how long Iskander had been imprisoned by various people bent on taking advantage of him. He’d been waiting to be freed longer than anyone, it seemed. Just a short while in that gray place, no more than an hour, was enough to make me crazy. I couldn’t walk away from him being stuck there for another eternity.

I nodded and stuck out my hand. “Okay. Send me back and I’ll figure out what happened to Ray. I’ll try to kill him, since I’ve been meaning to do that anyway, but if he’s freed and tries to use that last wish to kill the rest of us, try not to do it, okay? Once he’s out of the way, I’ll free you. Then we’re done and all the debts are repaid.”

Iskander smiled, a disconcerting display of teeth for a man who looked like a beach bum, and leaned forward to shake my hand. Sparks jumped from his skin to mine, and I shivered. “Deal.”

Magic billowed up with the smoke, and I sneezed. Before I could do or say anything, the freezing pressure that I remembered from before surrounded me and I couldn’t breathe. I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped it all wasn’t some horrible joke and I’d end up in the middle of a BadCreek lab.