Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) Read online

  She smiled, and the tension in the room ratcheted higher. Her smile wasn’t nice. It said, I dare you.

  Most were-natures were predatory. By instinct, magic or no magic, they sensed her confidence to take them all on.

  Steve had also noted her response. He grinned at her. No more than her did he doubt that they could clear the room. “We’d better find Granddad before we start trouble.” He put a hand to her waist and guided her through a side door.

  It hadn’t quite closed before a confusion of question, answer and exclamation exploded behind them.

  “Haven’t they seen a non-were before?” Fay asked ironically, aware that they likely remained under surveillance by someone. She’d taken the cameras outside as a warning.

  Steve carefully closed the door. It must have been soundproof because the noise on the other side ceased. “Not one wearing the scent of being mated to me.”

  “Oh.”

  Mate. By his tone, it meant so much more than lover.

  She’d felt the difference in him that morning in the kitchen when he’d said he was in deep with her, and she’d confessed the same. They belonged.

  Mate. The rightness of it settled something in her.

  But she couldn’t help but be disconcerted at how swiftly and primitively scent had revealed their connection. Life with weres was a new world, one where things were done differently, experienced differently. However, if everyone here now knew her as Steve’s lover, the corollary was also true. Everyone in the cafe also knew Steve was hers.

  She clasped his hand.

  He smiled at her blazingly and hooked her hand through the crook of his elbow, as if they were to take a stroll.

  Only then did the tension of the moment break. She blinked as the room they’d entered finally burst into her awareness. “Good grief.”

  The café at the fort’s entrance was unexpected, but normal enough. This room was like something out of an eighteenth century palace. Long and narrow, it led inescapably to the heavy door at the other end. Gilt-framed paintings in the Rococo style lined the walls. Graceful, spindly and uncomfortable looking chairs were spaced at regular intervals, and dared visitors to sit in them. Underfoot, a sky-blue carpet edged in gold thread delineated the walkway. The ceiling was painted with a cherub-haunted mural.

  Fay shut her mind to the décor designed to overawe.

  “It’s a pain in the butt to clean. You should hear the staff complain and the art restorers shriek at every cobweb.” Steve led her forward. “It would be simpler to strip it back and have something modern.

  She stared at him and his casual dismissal of such grandeur.

  He put a hand on the heavy door in front of them. “This opens to the Court. It’ll give you an idea of the fort’s real purpose before we pass through it to the corridor to Granddad and Grand-mère’s private rooms. At this hour, they’ll be finishing lunch.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t interrupt their meal?” She bumped into him as he froze in the open doorway, blocking her access and view. “Steve?”

  “I don’t think interrupting lunch will be a problem.” He moved into the room and brought her with him.

  Fay recognized Uncle instantly.

  The djinn had changed his appearance to that of a middle-aged European man with fair silvering hair and a lean build, but the sly mischief in his gaze, as much as the aura of his magic, gave him away.

  Not that Fay could spare the djinn as much attention as his threat level warranted, nor appreciate the vast room with its soaring ceiling, stone walls and tingling sense of power. Not when two elderly people watched her with grave suspicion and disapproval.

  Steve’s grandparents. They had to be. His grandfather sat at the head of the boardroom table with his wife on his right.

  The djinn lounged in an executive chair midway down the table. “Come in. Don’t be shy. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Steve let the door go. The slam of it closing echoed around the stone-walled chamber. It felt ancient, the air in the room heavy with the weight of centuries of judgment. “Good afternoon, Granddad, Grand-mère. Uncle. I’m glad you’re all here to welcome Fay.”

  “Faith Olwen.” Steve’s grandfather supplied her full name, stressing her surname to indicate he knew who she was. In his thin face, his mouth was a tight line of displeasure.

  “Mage and former Collegium guardian,” Steve responded steadily.

  “Oh dear.” The downbeat on the second word was a die-away sigh of distress. Mrs. Jekyll added a tiny, deprecatory shake of her dark auburn-haired head. The soft waves of her hair didn’t move, fixed in place. She was stylish, fastidiously made-up, and gave the impression of a plump, pampered housecat. Her sour expression ruined the look, puckering a mouth precisely outlined in pink lipstick.

  Fay snapped her shoulders straight. Judged and found wanting. She’d endured worse. Her own parents had used and abandoned her, even if she was rebuilding her relationship with her mom. That Steve’s family objected to her wasn’t a new pattern in her life—and she had Steve. For his sake, though, she had to make this work. “Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Jekyll.”

  Mr. Jekyll nodded. Mrs. Jekyll continued to glare.

  Uncle grinned. “Pull up a chair.”

  Fay and Steve crossed the chamber, their footsteps echoing on the stone floor. The room was impossibly large and expansively empty despite the hulking boardroom table. The air was cool and still, faintly eddying only now with their movement. Steve seated Fay and placed himself between her and his grandparents, and opposite the djinn.

  Entering the fortress and its café had given Fay a shock and a lesson. For weres, the air itself carried secrets, and Steve’s grandparents were weres. In a second, their senses would reveal the truth the café’s customers had already discovered. She was here as more than Steve’s lover. He’d marked her as his mate. She counted. One, two, three.

  Mr. Jekyll leaned back in his chair.

  Fay couldn’t see Mrs. Jekyll’s response. Steve’s big body hid it. She heard the elderly woman’s wail, though.

  “Steven, what have you done?”

  “Had sex.” Uncle’s answer did not help. Then again, he probably didn’t intend it to.

  Steve shot him a death-glare.

  “Sex does not mean…” Mrs. Jekyll began.

  Her husband squeezed her hand. “Perhaps we can discuss family matters later.”

  “By all means,” Uncle said generously.

  “Without you,” Steve growled.

  “Now, where would the fun be in that?”

  Fay put a hand on Steve’s thigh, aware that he was tensed for a fight, but needing him to stand down. They were here to discover Uncle’s real purpose and what it was the djinn thought she needed to attend to. Was the djinn making mischief or did they face a genuine threat? As Steve had just said, family matters had to wait.

  He covered her hand for a second, a message of agreement, before she withdrew her hand. “Why did you call us here, Uncle?”

  The djinn’s humanly blue eyes suddenly swirled with smoke and stars. “Weres are being enslaved.”

  Steve tensed with a hunter’s instant, predatory alertness.

  “Where?” Mr. Jekyll asked sharply at the head of the table.

  “From every corner of the globe, the lost and unconsidered are losing themselves.”

  “Those who won’t be missed?” Fay’s question was less query than understanding. It was generally the powerless and vulnerable who suffered, and it was those for whom she fought. With her Collegium work that had mostly meant protecting mundanes, the non-magical majority of the human population. But weres could be vulnerable, too. Fury lashed through her as she looked at Steve. Her magic stirred. She would kill and devastate before anyone enslaved him.

  “Warrior-princess.” Uncle sat upright, studying her.

  Fay decided to ask Steve—later—if djinni could read minds. Then again, perhaps Uncle had simply sensed the flare of her magic. Slavery was an abominable evil. She
’d seen demonic possession degrade people, obliterate their personality, and consume them.

  “Uncle, please, tell us more. What would you have us do?” Mr. Jekyll asked.

  Fay stared at him. Was this how you played the game with a djinn? Politeness and a touch of obsequiousness? Steve had been ruder.

  “Tomy.” The djinn almost sounded sympathetic. “This isn’t your test.”

  Mr. Jekyll looked stricken and his gaze shot to Steve.

  “I expected it, Granddad.” The it’s all right was implied by Steve’s tone.

  Fay couldn’t read his emotions, though. Steve had locked himself down. It worried her. She had a sense of things kindling, a disturbance she didn’t understand. What had Steve expected that he hadn’t told her? Why hadn’t he told her?

  She disciplined herself to wait for more information, to observe and analyze. Steve always had a reason for his actions.

  But if Fay was committed to controlling her freak out, Mrs. Jekyll wasn’t.

  The elderly woman’s voice hit a note barely short of shattering glass. “Your test…but then…already? No!”

  Steve didn’t flinch at the ear-splitting shriek. He sat staring across the table at Uncle.

  Fay recognized his readiness to do battle. He could move in an instant to attack or defend. She was already on alert.

  Djinni did test and tease humans, that much she knew. But this test Uncle mentioned had provoked a crisis. If Mrs. Jekyll was enraged, her husband has slumped.

  Mrs. Jekyll pushed her chair back from the table and glared around Steve at Fay. “This is your fault. You’ve created this.”

  “I don’t even know what’s happening.” Fay kept her tone even, her body relaxed, broadcasting that she was no threat and had no intention of responding to the old woman’s attack.

  Steve slid his chair back, blocking his grandmother’s path to Fay.

  Mr. Jekyll got up hurriedly and gripped the back of his wife’s chair. He pushed her back to the table, trapping her in her seat.

  “Tomy!” she complained.

  “If I retire, we could take a cottage in the south of France.” Mr. Jekyll dangled it like a candy bribe to a toddler.

  A feline, somehow feminine, snarl answered him. “Steve is too young.”

  “And I am too old,” Mr. Jekyll said, emotionlessly.

  “You’re experienced.”

  “Enough.” The command in Uncle’s voice silenced the room, even Mrs. Jekyll’s near-hysterics. Yet the command was absent. The djinn’s attention was for Fay. He watched her across the table. “I remember your great-grandparents when they started the Collegium. It was her idea. He’d come back from the war hollowed out. His temper…” A boom exploded in the air above the table.

  Mrs. Jekyll shrieked.

  No one else reacted.

  Uncle leaned forward, towards Fay. “She gave him a way back into the world. He had the greater power, but she understood people. She knew there would be more wounded mages than him, more men traumatized by what they’d seen and done. They needed a structure, rules, a sense of purpose.”

  “The Collegium’s motto is to serve,” Fay said.

  “Chosen, no doubt, to remind them all that great power, untied to service, destroys most people.”

  She knew, it had been shown again and again in her Collegium training and work, that she had more magic than her great-grandparents, and less than a month ago she’d broken her oath ties to the Collegium. She served no one.

  Her ties were those of love: to Steve, to her mom and stepfather. That wasn’t a whole heap of relationships to bind her power.

  But then, she might have broken the ties that bound her to serve and obey the Collegium, but in her heart, she felt responsible for keeping mundanes safe, for protecting the vulnerable. Collegium-linked or not, she persisted in service.

  So she met Uncle’s ancient gaze steadily. “The djinni have immeasurable power. Who binds you?”

  “Uncle, forgive her. She doesn’t understand.” Mr. Jekyll rushed in with apologies, while Mrs. Jekyll forgot hysterics to sniff in disapproval.

  Steve, on the other hand, lounged back in his chair. He smiled without humor. “The djinni are smoke and fire, trouble and miracle. Uncle serves no man.”

  “Very true.” Uncle acknowledged Steve’s words. “We have our own kingdom.”

  An ordering of the world that he seemed very comfortable with. Fay refrained from pushing her luck, but she had a sudden suspicion. In the realm of the djinni, Uncle would be near the top of the hierarchy. He was too familiar with the responsibilities of exercising power to merely endure it. He wielded control. His enjoyment of mischief was real, but underlying it…Uncle had an agenda.

  “Do you serve Uncle?” Fay asked Steve.

  Uncle smiled then, his attention shifting to Steve. “Do you?”

  “No,” Mrs. Jekyll snapped.

  “No, you do not,” Uncle agreed, but he obviously meant her alone—and dismissed her as of no account.

  She bridled, but Mr. Jekyll’s hand over hers stopped her responding.

  Steve answered, addressing Fay. “Uncle established the Suzerainty centuries ago.”

  “Millennia.” Uncle murmured the correction.

  “It was formalized in Roman times and globalized in the Middle Ages,” Steve continued. He could have provided all of this information—background briefing—earlier. That he hadn’t, had to mean something. “In the early nineteenth century, inheritance of the Suzerainty shifted to my family. Uncle tests us before the role of Suzerain passes from grandfather to grandson. What we’ve never been able to understand is by what criteria he assesses us.”

  Mr. Jekyll interrupted. “My own test was simple. Uncle asked me to spend a night on the beach and at dawn to write a single word on the sand, to be washed away with the tide.”

  “Other tests have been violent,” Steve said. “Combat, quests, impossible challenges.”

  What word had Mr. Jekyll written? The old man had Steve’s height, but his lean muscularity was ageing into gauntness. Gray hair, brown eyes, an expensive suit. He would never have had Steve’s edge. That wasn’t something that vanished with age. Steve was a fighter. His grandfather…a diplomat. He knew when to withhold information, and when to share it—like now, telling her the bare bones of his quest after Uncle made his interest in her unmistakable.

  She looked at Uncle. “Are your tests usually for the heir to the Suzerainty alone or do they include his mate?”

  “Tcha,” Mrs. Jekyll exploded.

  Laughter danced in Uncle’s eyes. “With you, Fay my lovely, I shall make an exception.”

  “Because I’m not a were?”

  “Because, my dear, you wouldn’t stay out of Steve’s quest even if I bound you in bonds of flame.”

  The compliment startled Fay. She glanced instinctively at Steve.

  He smiled at her. Proud of her.

  She blushed. Praise had been rare in her life.

  “I knew she meddled!” Mrs. Jekyll exclaimed, triumphantly. She hadn’t understood, at all. She’d heard criticism where there was only respect.

  Steve’s grandfather had understood. He squared his shoulders in acceptance of a new reality; possibly in acceptance of a new burden—her. “Uncle, I would like to hear the details of the slavery, even if it is Steve and Faith’s test.”

  “Yes. It is something you should know—in case they fail,” the djinn added blandly.

  “I do not want to hear such horrors.” Mrs. Jekyll pushed back her chair.

  Her husband and grandson stood instantly. Steve nodded at Mr. Jekyll, who sank back. Steve escorted his grandmother to the door.

  The display of manners surprised Fay; they were so outdated and courtly. She was discovering so many new aspects to Steve. With her, they were always equal partners.

  Then she remembered how he’d guide her with a hand to her back and how he held doors. They were small gestures that didn’t diminish her or her power, but showed he cared and treasur
ed her. She watched him stand a moment at the door, head bent, listening. Then he bent further and his grandmother kissed his cheek.

  Fay looked away.

  Mrs. Jekyll might be hostile to her, shrill, hysterical and capable of missing the point of a discussion, but she loved Steve. She cared about appearances and—Fay guessed—social standing. She might never approve of Fay, but Fay could live with her disapproval, within bounds, if it came from love for Steve and wanting the best for him.

  Steve seemed to see his grandmother’s flaws and accept them. Love didn’t insist on perfection.

  Fay’s own love for him swelled and steadied her.

  He returned to his chair. “All right,” he addressed Uncle. “What are you willing to tell us of the situation?”

  “Let me show you.”

  An image akin to a holograph appeared in front of the far wall. A woman in her late twenties sat on the steps of a house, a well-tended garden shading in before and beside her, the stone walls of the Court showing through the image’s vegetation. But the woman looked solid. Tired. Blank. Her fair hair lay lank against the contours of her skull. Her forearms rested on her knees. She sagged.

  “A wolf-were from North Carolina.

  “No.” The protest jerked from Steve.

  “Lone wolf,” Uncle said. “Or her pack would have noticed.”

  “Is she sick?” Fay asked cautiously.

  “She must be.” Steve studied the image. “A wolf would never reveal weakness. She’s sitting on a front porch where anyone can see her. She’s not monitoring her environment. A lone wolf would be even more alert.” And to Fay, reminding her. “Mom and her family are wolves.” He knew what he was talking about.

  “She’s not sick in the sense you mean,” Uncle said. “Her dream essence has been stolen. Harvested?” He tipped his head to the side, apparently considering his word choice.

  “By whom?” Mr. Jekyll asked.

  “Now, that is the question.” Uncle looked at Steve.

  Steve looked back.

  Uncle smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I’ve found the problem, but I haven’t sought the solution. Two dozen weres, perhaps a few more I haven’t found, are like this. Zombies.”