Release the Djinni Read online

  “Found you!”

  Wind tore into the room and water violently doused the fire, splashing out in an ugly wash of soot to stain the carpet.

  Niki hastily retracted her feet, shaken from her dreams.

  “You don’t need a fire, you frozen-hearted demon spawn.” The intruder strode through a closed window, walking on air with the arrogance of a demon. But the blazing power surrounding him was angelic. It pulsed with life, like the ocean in storm, wild and true.

  She stared a moment, shocked by the invasion and stunned by his fury. “Get out.”

  He bared his teeth. “Make me.” He turned away, dismissing her and insulting her power. “Heaven grant me patience. A real life ivory tower.” He stalked the room, touching and lifting books, statues, a carved sea lion netsuke. “An ivory tower. So-called because it’s built of bones, the bones of all the people the scholar left to suffer and die while she pursued her studies.” He spat the last word.

  “This is my home.” She defended herself, standing up and fumbling blindly for her shoes while she glared at him. “And you’re not welcome.”

  “That only works on vampires. I’m a guardian angel, djinni. I go where I will.”

  Shoes safely on, she straightened. He was still inches taller, more like a Viking than an angel, all blonde hair, blue eyes and simmering violence. The word berserker drifted through her mind. She folded her arms protectively. “I want you to leave.”

  “And I want you to care, but we don’t get what we want.”

  “To care? But I don’t know you. I’ve never met you.”

  He stalked back to her, stopping too close. “Not me. Farhoud Hamidi.”

  “Who?”

  His right hand flexed.

  Sword hand, Niki noted. She didn’t back away, but she gathered her power.

  “Farhoud is the boy who released you from your bottle. Damn you to hell, you didn’t even bother to learn his name.”

  “Why should I? I didn’t ask to be released.” Or to be haunted by the boy. She saw his face as she fell asleep at nights. She could ignore his expression of surprise at her appearance and his determination to free her—“no one should be cursed”—but it was the fleeting expression in between that haunted her. Farhoud hadn’t believed his wishes could come true. That fatalistic resignation was too old for his young face.

  “I went back,” she said. “After I got my belongings out of sight and my breath back. I returned to…”

  “To what?”

  She didn’t know. “He wasn’t there.”

  “And you left it at that. Did you even try to find him?”

  “No.”

  “You make me sick. Not even honest gratitude. Colder than ice. All the fires of your father’s house won’t warm you.”

  “I am not a demon.” She shouted it at him. The sound rang off the walls.

  I’m a djinni. One of her mother’s seventy seven offspring. Lilith, Adam’s first wife, hadn’t taken his rejection well. She’d sought revenge by screwing demons. The resulting children, part human, part demon, had become the djinn. They had the powers of angels, but unlike angels or demons they hadn’t chosen either service or torment. They had been playing, teasing desert travelers and manipulating weather and events for curiosity, until Solomon decided he’d prove his magic. He’d bound the djinn to bottles and to the service of humanity until they were freed by a human’s wish—and few humans were that generous. The djinn never had a chance to choose their fate, to decide for themselves if they were good or evil. They were cursed.

  “I’m not a demon.”

  Her father’s cruel laughter rang in her memory to a background of screams. Old pain twisted through her bones.

  Whatever the arrogant angel thought of her ivory tower, in it, she wasn’t a demon or the daughter of a demon. In here, she was safe.

  “Only the daughter of one.”

  The truth cut, sharp as a scalpel.

  She’d bleed later, when he couldn’t see. “I am a djinni.”

  “Cruel and cursed.”

  “I’ve never—” She dug her nails into her palms. “Any cruelties I’ve committed have been at humans’ orders. They were the ones who used me to command sandstorms and bitter personal revenges. The suffering and death were not of my choosing.”

  “But you enjoy them.”

  “No!” Why did he think she lived in solitude? To be safe from her own power. Humans had twisted it against her for centuries. She’d been so near to hating them, those men with their evil desires.

  Her father had laughed at her. She recalled his hand stretched out, alive with fire, and the echo of his words. “Hate them, daughter mine. Dirt-crawling worms. Watch them writhe in the flames of disaster. Taste their suffering.” He’d been drunk on it, on the desperate, dying screams of a city reduced to rubble by an earthquake.

  The earthquake she had caused fulfilling a human’s wish to “Bring a mountain out of the earth and build me a palace on it.”

  Well, that palace was in ruins now. Picked over by archeologists and tourists.

  She’d rejected hate, but it had been a near thing. Hate was easy when you were abused. She had rebuilt her life painfully over centuries, withdrawing, hiding. Now she was free. Humans couldn’t touch her.

  Nor can the angel, she reminded herself.

  He watched her angrily, baffled accusation in his eyes. “I know demons. I’ve fought them.”

  “I know demons, too.” She found a thread of humor. “I’m related to them.”

  His hand chopped, refusing the humor.

  He hadn’t come here just to insult her. Grooves of tiredness ran from his nose to the corners of his wide mouth and there was a golden glint of stubble on his square jaw. The rain outside had darkened his hair to the color of old pine and raindrops gleamed on broad leather-clad shoulders. His black leather boots were splashed with mud.

  Whatever had brought him to her rooms in this state, it was more than annoyance that she hadn’t granted the boy three wishes.

  I don’t want to know. Whatever has happened to the boy, it’s not my problem. It’s not. She groped for balance, support, and found the mantle place. She gripped it. “What do you want?” It was the angel, secure in his own rightness, who was responsible for the child. Not me.

  He stared at the rain streaming down the window, distorting the vision of the rooftop world. “I’ve lost Farhoud.”

  For an instant, she thought she saw the boy’s face, a shimmering image on the rain-stained window. So young. So vulnerable.

  Lost. Her heart tightened painfully. Panic bloomed, black and monstrous, sucking her breath. Terrified and alone.

  She gathered the comfort of the room around her, sinking into the chair and curling her legs under her, tucking her toes under the skirts of her rose gold, soft wool dress. She sent a tiny pulse of magic towards the fireplace and it swept up the soot and water. A moment later, the apple wood fire crackled into flame. She tried to find reassurance in the restored order, tried to still the internal tremors.

  “Ask! Ask how I lost him.” The angel loomed over her.

  She kept her voice cool, her face expressionless, and her hands folded, relaxed, in her lap. The internal tremors worsened, but she’d be damned if she paraded her emotional scars for the intruder. “Why should I be curious? Losing the boy is your failure.”

  He exploded into anger faster than the apple wood caught fire. “Farhoud is eight years old, crippled, unloved, lost, and you sit there looking like a golden Madonna, but with ice in your veins. You say you’re not a demon, but what happened to your heart, djinni? Do you even have one?” He gripped the back of her armchair with one hand, caging her with his size and strength.

  Her heart beat in her throat.

  “My heart is my business.” And I’m not defending myself to you. “I didn’t notice anything wrong with Farhoud.”

  “The accident that killed his mom, lamed him. Poor kid. His dad’s like you, a scholar. He doesn’t have time for hi
s own son.”

  She winced. The angel made “scholar” sound worse than “demon”.

  “He could have used one of your three damn wishes to heal himself. Instead he freed you.”

  Oh God. Realization of the truth stabbed her. She recalled the resignation on the boy’s face when she’d explained that some wishes were impossible. What had she said? Some nonsense about not being able to turn the oceans into lemonade. But healing a broken body was definitely within a djinni’s powers. All it took was knowledge of anatomy and repairs at the cellular level. She could have done it without thinking.

  “An honorable person would have healed Farhoud out of gratitude for her freedom.”

  “I was content in my bottle.” The words slipped out, an habitual, meaningless defense.

  He released the back of the chair and swung round on his heel, not seeing the hand she reached out to call back her words. “Another hell-blasted ivory tower.”

  “I’m sorry.” For not noticing, not caring, for sounding so cold. What price self-protection when innocents were sacrificed to it? Oh God, Farhoud. Eight years old. Lost.

  “You should be. Maybe if Farhoud had been able to run, he’d be safe now.”

  “What?”

  He turned back to her. “Farhoud is my charge. I’m a guardian angel. I ought to be able to find him anywhere on Earth, but I can’t. Dark magic is hiding him. He’s the third child taken from the Isfahan bazaar. The first two turned up dead. The girl had a scarred face. The boy lacked an arm.”

  A maniac with a hang up about imperfections. Horror crept through her veins. And now that maniac had Farhoud. She gripped the arms of the chair. “Can you really not find him?”

  “All I get is darkness and the blood-copper and sulfur stink of dark magic. I can’t pierce it and I can’t undo it. It blasts my senses.” Rage at his impotence deepened his voice.

  It can’t be a demon. Demons couldn’t hide from angels and they didn’t kill their victims. They preferred them alive and suffering. Whoever had Farhoud was human, a dark mage. “Would you know if Farhoud was already dead?”

  “Yes.” He slammed his hand against the wall and stone vibrated. “I’d know too damn late. I want him to live and grow, to love and be all that he can. But what would you know of living and loving?”

  He was sniping at her again, cutting, scorning. She didn’t understand why he’d made her the focus of his frustration. “I’m a djinni, not a human, not even an angel.”

  “And a scholar. A passionless scholar. As remote as you are beautiful. La belle dans merci. Pride like a demon’s in your own detachment. By heaven’s gate, I’ll show you passion. I’ll make you burn with it.”

  He hauled her out of the chair and hard against him, pulling her up on her tiptoes while he tilted her head back and held her ruthlessly for his kiss.

  Off balance and unaccustomed to attack, Niki tried to push him away with her hands and her powers.

  He staggered and his mouth missed hers, dragging instead across her face. His breath warmed her ear an instant before his teeth grazed it.

  Earrings. I should have worn earrings. They protected women from this vulnerability, the shivering sensation that softened her muscles. A diamond earring could have cracked his teeth, or at least, cut him.

  He licked the whorl of her ear.

  She twisted her head sharply, but that only brought them mouth to mouth, with her lips already parted. His tongue penetrated, filling her with the flavor of coffee and cardamom, man and hunger. Angrily, she batted at his tongue with hers.

  Get out. How dare you invade me? She glared at him while their tongues dueled and their mouths shifted like wrestlers maneuvering for dominance. It was hard and fierce and passionately violent. Blood thundered through her veins, flushing her skin and driving out the cold. She pressed closer, seeking the heart of the tropical storm—

  And staggered as he pushed her away. She fell back against the chair and clutched at it.

  “No.” They said it in unison, equally appalled.

  He shook his head, surfacing from the riptide of desire that had taken them. Color burned across his cheekbones. He half raised his hand, as if to touch her again. The fingers curled to a fist and dropped to his side.

  “Get out.” The hoarse whisper scratched her throat.

  “Niki—”

  “No.” She knew she was shaking, shivering like a kitten. Her name, in his deep voice, was the final straw. No one had said her name, no one had known her, for decades. He was tearing apart her shell of indifference, the protection of detachment that was all she had. “For the love of God, just go.”

  He vanished.

  Wind howled in the open window, bringing a storm of drenching rain with it. Papers scattered. A vase of roses fell, flowers crushed, porcelain shattering.

  She stood alone in the wreckage. She turned her head and saw her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. Her neatly coiled hair had come undone and fell in heavy waves around her shoulders. She looked lost and abandoned. A wild sense of despair screamed through her mind.

  Farhoud’s wish had destroyed her physical prison, and now, his guardian’s kiss shattered her mental one. Passion exposed the truth: her solitude wasn’t freely chosen, but the price of her cowardice.

  She looked down at the dress she wore, soft wool, modest, self-effacingly feminine. Lies. All lies. A story I want to believe. Gentle, reserved, safe.

  The fabric tore under her hands, her power fracturing out of control.

  She didn’t know who she was: her father’s daughter, half-demon? Scholar? Woman? Djinni? Afraid of her own power.

  Afraid. Hiding from the world and herself.

  “Farhoud, I will find you.” She made the vow from her own damaged heart: no one had saved her. The boy would be different. He’d have a djinni and an angel fighting for him. “No one will hurt you.”

  Chapter Two

  “Shameless hussy.”

  “Fallen woman.”

  “Jezebel.”

  The ugly whispers followed Niki through the Isfahan bazaar, but they were mere mosquito stings compared to the misery that cramped her muscles and spiked pain through her head.

  I hate dark magic.

  By the use of blood and terror, humans imitated demon powers. They took the power of life and bent it to serve other purposes, their selfish and cruel intentions. Here in the bazaar, she could smell the brimstone stench of dark magic and feel the twisted violence in her bones. Her demon heritage gave her an affinity to it, but nothing in this world or under this world could make her embrace it.

  She’d found the stink of dark magic in the house of Farhoud’s father and shuddered at what that meant for the boy’s fate. Someone had come prepared to kidnap and hide him, to steal him for who knew what purpose, except that at the end of the path lay death.

  Dark magic always ended in death, and usually in the soul-death of the dark mage. You couldn’t play with evil. Its claws were poison. Its scars forever.

  She pushed the memories away. Evil didn’t always win.

  If there was one saving grace in Farhoud’s situation, it was that the taint of dark magic lay on the surface of things, which suggested the dark mage was a one-time visitor rather than a resident or regular caller. To be stolen and killed by a family member or friend would be the ultimate betrayal of trust, an abuse neither child nor adult should suffer.

  Then again, the shabby Hamidi house with its peeling paint and air of neglect probably had few visitors. The kitchen held dirty pots and plates. The parlor, where guests were received, was stacked high with books, too many to fit on the plentiful shelves. A desk in the sunniest corner showed that this was where Farhoud’s father worked. Reprints of Ancient Greek texts lay open beside scrawled notes.

  Upstairs, the two rooms and primitive bathroom suffered even greater neglect. Farhoud’s bedroom had a window opening over a fetid alley. The taint of dark magic was strongest there. His kidnapper had entered through the back door, climbed
the creaking stairs to the boy’s room and—

  The edge of a bread stall cut into Niki’s hip as boys raced through the bazaar, jostling and shouting.

  The stallholder muttered after them, then brought her attention back to Niki, the target closest to hand. “Disgraceful, indecent, man-mad.” She gathered her breads closer, as if Niki’s presence might contaminate them.

  Niki rubbed her hip. Even through jeans and the thick sweater she wore, the bump had hurt. She flushed faintly. How did the women of the bazaar know she’d kissed an angel?

  They couldn’t. She knew that intellectually, but it still felt as if she wore her guilt for the world to see. The over-sized green wool sweater concealed her figure, but couldn’t hide from her the memory of wanting him. His strength had been challenge and promise, and she’d pressed close, shifting restlessly because the ache low in her stomach demanded—

  She cut off the thought. I’m not that woman. She wasn’t earthy or sensuous. She didn’t indulge or share her body.

  Humans thought angels were asexual, but they were wrong. Angels understood the ecstasy of intimacy.

  Niki avoided it.

  Angelic emphasis on commitment and respect ought to have protected her from the angel’s games, but he’d been angry. “I’ll show you passion. I’ll make you burn with it.”

  They had both burned. He hadn’t liked it, but the angel had been aroused, too. Before he pushed her away.

  She folded her arms across her breasts and walked away from the market stall. It wasn’t the angel or memories of unwelcome lust that had driven her from her Oxford study. She was here because a boy had been stolen.

  Farhoud’s life had touched hers, changed hers. If she resented his gift of freedom and loss of her prison retreat, it had, nonetheless, been generously meant. She would find him, save him and heal his crippled leg. At the least, she would try.

  The angel couldn’t follow dark magic. Its nature was antithetical to his and blunted his senses. But she was half-demon, half-human, and wholly djinn. She could follow dark magic to hell itself. All she had to do was open herself to its pain.