Two Deals: a Djinn Paranormal Romance (Blackwell Djinn)

by Nikki Kardnov

WILLA

  Once the club closed and people started to filter out, Willa worked quickly to take care of her dishes and the stuff that needed restocking.

  Just a little after two, the crowd had thinned considerably as the bouncers ushered people through the doors. Willa checked the corner booth and her heart sunk. It was empty. She scanned the rest of the club’s dark corners and couldn’t find Raina.

  She sent a quick text to her sister. You still at Drav?

  Raina replied right away.

  Nope. At Caleb’s.

  Willa grumbled and tried to hurry through the rest of her tasks. She grabbed the basket of dirty bar towels and went to the backroom.

  When her and her sister arrived in Blackwater three years ago, Willa had rented them a tiny efficiency apartment on the lower east side unaware that their landlord was Caleb Corvin, a man steeped in magical connections.

  Coming to Blackwater had been intentional. Willa had heard that it was a safe place for the others of the world.

  Instead, as always, Willa seemed to drive them right into the maw of the beast.

  Technically the Locke sisters were half-sisters. Their mother was a witch. Raina’s dad was a witch, too. Willa didn’t know who her father was, but her mom told her he was human and a son-of-a-bitch.

  So Raina got all the witch magic and Willa got...well...something sorta magical but not quite. She vividly remembered going to an antique store with their babysitter when she was ten years old. The babysitter, Natalie, was always on the hunt for rare tin toys that she kept on a high ledge around the perimeter of her living room. It drove Raina and Willa crazy that they couldn’t play with them.

  On that particular day, Willa came across a worn set of Tarot cards. She’d immediately been drawn to them. The box had been threadbare, the paper peeling back at the corners. She pulled the deck out. The oversized cards barely fit in her hands and she clumsily shuffled through them.

  When she came across the hanged man, she stopped. She didn’t know what it meant at the time, but later she would come to identify with that card more than any other. She was always sacrificing one thing or the other for her sister. Until she sacrificed everything.

  Natalie gave in when Willa begged her to buy the deck. She’d made a bargain for two weeks’ worth of dishes and was glad to pay it.

  Later at home, when she’d shuffled the cards and lay them out on the table, they spoke to her. She’d thought it was just her imagination making up stories...but then the things they whispered started to come true.

  At the time, she’d been overcome with the power of it all. She’d always thought her mother’s magic had skipped her. But here was something at least. Something that was all hers. Turned out it was not a gift. It was a damn curse.

  Willa tossed the towels in the washer and hit the start button. Water rushed through the pipes.

  Sometimes she wished she could hit start on her life and wash away the past so she could finally start on her future.

  Yeah right.

  That will never happen.

  She grabbed her bag and flicked off the light.

  She needed to hurry home and check on Raina. At this late hour, it was the shadows that worried Willa the most. Because while the tarot cards spoke to Willa, the shadows spoke to Raina and their whispers were far more volatile.

  Chapter 6

  WILLA

  Willa was eight years old when she learned about addiction. She was in third grade at the time and the sixth graders were taking the Don’t Do Drugs program at school. Willa overheard a few of the girls talking about crack on the playground and asked them what that was.

  “It’s a drug stupid poor people smoke,” one of the girls said. “You know, like your mom.”

  “My mom doesn’t do drugs,” Willa had argued, but even as she said it, she wasn’t sure it was true.

  And because her mom didn’t care what her and Raina did or where they went, Willa dragged Raina to the public library after school and searched crack and drugs on the internet and learned real quick that her mom was, in fact, an addict.

  But the sixth graders had only gotten it half right: Willa’s mom wasn’t just addicted to drugs, she was addicted to magic too.

  Willa wasn’t sure where or when it started, but she did have a keen memory of seeing her mother in the living room late one night hunched over a bowl that expelled black smoke. Her mother had breathed in the smoke and then said in a deep, husky voice, “Auxillium Evadere.” Then her eyes had rolled back in her head and she’d toppled over.

  Willa had run to her and shook her. “Mom? Mom, are you okay?”

  Her eyelids had fluttered open just enough for her to look up at Willa and say, “Go the fuck away.” And then she’d shoved Willa. Willa stumbled back, slammed into the coffee table and bit her tongue so hard, her mouth filled with blood.

  Her mom barely noticed.

  It was Raina who had later found Willa in the bathroom sobbing, blood still crusted to her mouth.

  “What’s wrong with Mommy?” Raina had asked. “What’s wrong with you?”

  And like a light switch, Willa had stoppered the tears and climbed to her feet and said, “Mommy’s just resting. Come on, let’s go back to bed.”

  The next morning, their mother was gone and Willa was almost glad for it.

  She stayed gone for another two weeks. By then, their school had figured out what was going on and called in Child Protective Services. That was the first time the girls found themselves in foster care. When their case worker tried to break them up between two different homes, Willa had said, “We don’t go anywhere without each other.”

  Later, after they’d moved to Blackwater and Raina started dating Caleb, he’d asked her to move into his place. Over the phone, Willa heard Raina say, “I don’t go anywhere without my sister. So you get both of us or none of us.”

  Which was how Willa found herself living in a 19th century converted factory surrounded by magic once again.

  On the bright side, the rent was free. On the not bright side, somedays the magic was so thick in the place Willa felt like she could barely breathe.

  Caleb called the converted factory the Compound. It was on the city’s lower east side where the Rine River met the ocean. Caleb was really proud of the building’s history and had given Raina and Willa the rundown on the day they moved in.

  “A hundred years ago, the area was mostly warehouses and industrial docks,” he’d said as Willa struggled with their mismatched duffel bags. “Later, the warehouses were turned into factories. The Compound had been a watch factory in the late 1800s. Get down on your hands and knees and look at the floorboards.”

  Raina had giggled and did as he asked.

  Willa stood there in the hallway, arms burdened with bags and gave him a blank stare. Was he serious?

  “Oh, I see one!” Raina said. “Come on, Will. Look.”

  Willa sighed and dropped the bags, then got to her knees beside Raina. She’d squinted and peered into the crack between boards. A tiny gear winked in the light.

  “This is so cool,” Raina had said. Everything Caleb did and said was so cool to Raina. Willa should have seen the signs even then that Caleb was the very last person they should be moving in with.

  But free rent and stability? It sounded good. It sounded damn good. It was the only thing she’d ever wanted for Raina. And for herself.

  Willa had to admit, she did find a lot to like about the large, four-story red brick building with its decorative stone window casings and leaded glass.

  If only the place didn’t feel so wrong to her. She’d never felt like she belonged there. She wasn’t one of the military-like members of Caleb’s security team. She wasn’t one of the powerful witches that Caleb somehow charmed into his sphere. She was just a byproduct of one.

  Willa parked her car in the garage across the street from the Compound and walked over in the darkness. One of the guards at the side door greeted her as she came up. Billy was one of the sweetest men o
n Caleb’s payroll. He also happened to be a werewolf and easily three times the size of Willa.

  She’d never seen him shift and really didn’t want to. The less she had to do with that layer of supernatural the better. Her sister was a witch, her mother was a witch, and Willa could tell futures through cards, but she did not want to see a full-grown man turn into a wolf, thank you very much.

  “Evening Ms. Locke,” he said, his eyes glowing in the shadows. “Busy night?”

  “Extremely. But the tips were good.”

  “Bright sides.”

  “I had to look far into the tunnel to see it tonight.”

  He chuckled as he opened the thick steel door for her.

  Willa stopped. “Did you see Raina come home?”

  “I did.”

  “Did she seem all right?”

  Billy shrugged. “No different from any other night.”

  Great. Willa was never sure if Raina’s normal was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “Do you know where I can find her?”

  Billy cocked his head to the side, obviously listening to the Compound’s interior with his supernatural hearing. “Sounds like they’re in the great hall.”

  “Thanks Billy.”

  “Ms. Locke?”

  His eyes had gone dark.

  “Yes?”

  “Careful in there now.”

  Willa’s heart picked up speed.

  Goddammit.

  What was Raina up to now? What was the “thing” Caleb said they’d had planned?

  Willa hurried through the side hall that connected the front of the Compound to the service rooms in back. She turned down the next hallway and followed the thumping bass music and whirling laughter.

  At the wide arched doors, Willa threw them open and stormed into the great hall.

  In the mid-19th century, the Compound had been sold and converted into a dance hall. The great hall was the main dance room back then and it was Caleb’s preferred hang out space.

  Willa’s boots thudded loudly on the gleaming wood floor.

  The ceiling lights were turned off in the room, but the wall scones glowed, warding off the shadows in halfmoon arches.

  Willa spotted Raina and Caleb on the dais at the front of the room. They were dancing languidly, smoke from Caleb’s joint curling around them like ribbons. Raina had changed clothes since Club Drav and now wore a skimpy green romper that barely covered her ass. God, Raina.

  Willa looked away but it wasn’t better anywhere else in the room. Everywhere people were draped over the easy chairs and velvet settees that dotted the room half-naked and stoned out of their minds.

  It was so much like the crap that Willa and Raina had witnessed all the time growing up with their mom. A night wasn’t a night worth living if a party wasn’t involved. That was the motto Mom had practically tattooed across her forehead.

  Loud music played all hours of the night. Drugs. Alcohol. People came and went like their trailer had a revolving door.

  Willa might not have understood all of the things she witnessed as a kid, but she knew even then that she didn’t want to end up like her mother. And she thought if she took care of Raina and showed her the love they were always missing from their mother, then maybe Raina would stay on the right side of things, too.

  But the older Raina got, the more like their mother she became.

  It made Willa so damn tired.

  She stood in the doorway of the great hall for several long minutes trying to decide if she should coax Raina off to bed or leave her to her…fun. A few joints weren’t so bad. A bottle of wine, fine.

  Willa almost turned away until she caught the faint scent of witch magic mixed with something spicier.

  No. No, Raina, tell me you didn’t—

  “Raina!” Willa called out sharply. No, she was wrong. She was tired and jumping to conclusions just because she was in a bad mood and—

  Everyone turned to look at her. The scent in the air grew sharper.

  Goddammit.

  This was not happening.

  This was not happening again.

  Goddammit, Raina.

  Willa tossed her bag to the floor. She ran up to the dais and grabbed her sister by the arm, forcing her to look her in the eye. They weren’t white—the sign that a demon was possessing her—but that didn’t mean much. It only meant the demon was hiding.

  “Tell me you didn’t,” Willa said.

  Raina laughed lazily. “Okay I won’t.”

  Willa turned to Caleb. “Why would you let her do this?”

  Caleb dropped into the throne-like chair behind him and draped one leg over the arm. “She wanted to.”

  Everything inside Willa crumpled. For a second, she couldn’t even take a breath. And when she could, it was only to whisper, “She can’t handle this kind of thing. They never let her go.”

  Once upon a time, a demon had nearly stolen Raina from her.

  Once upon a time, a demon had nearly cost them everything.

  This was the other reality of Willa’s life. The decay of it.

  For most people, inviting in a demon was like going on a three-day bender. It took them to the highest highs. And yeah, sometimes they found out they did things they regretted, like smashed a window of a storefront or stole someone’s cat. But for others, for people like Raina with a bit more power and a lot more vulnerability, the three-day bender turned into a lifetime of dependency.

  You had to say yes to a demon to succumb to possession, but every yes eroded away at your resolve, and every time it got a little easier to say it.

  And demons were very, very persuasive.

  Some nights, when Willa lay awake unable to sleep, she would ask the universe why it cursed her and her sister.

  Why couldn’t they be normal and have movie nights with cheesy rom-coms and greasy pizza?

  Why did this have to be their curse to bear?

  But the whys didn’t matter. Willa sucked in a deep breath and centered herself. It was their curse and there was nothing to be done about it. Except for what always had to be done.

  Willa yanked Raina toward the door. Raina planted her feet firmly on the hardwood, unmoving.

  So it was going to be like that, was it? Willa set her hands on her hips and squared herself against her sister.

  And that’s when she noticed the leather collar in Caleb’s hands.

  What the—? She wanted to scream at her sister, what were you thinking?!

  But there was no time. There was no time and there was no giving up. Because she’d never give up on her sister. Never.

  So Willa jumped forward and snatched the collar from Caleb.

  And because he was drunk either on magic or booze, he only laughed and didn’t try to fight her.

  “What did you plan to do with this?” Willa cried, shaking the collar in her sister’s face. The magic of the collar pulsed against her skin.

  “What do you think I planned to do with it?” Raina asked lazily, eyes glassy.

  Who was she speaking to? Her sister or the demon, Rozen? Willa knew this particular demon well. It was the pest that just wouldn’t leave Raina alone.

  Raina stared at her.

  This was the thing about demons—there were no levitating beds. No deep scratches or rotted teeth. No monstrous voices and alien tongues.

  There was only a distant coolness. Only the vague feeling that you were speaking to your loved one who was being yanked around by something darker.

  “Come on,” Willa said, heart racing but fighting to project calm. She was hedging her bets that the demon might just be curious enough to play along. “We can talk about this in private.”

  Raina’s shoulders leveled out and her spine straightened, all of her usual slouchy carelessness slipping away as her eyes filmed over.

  Shit. No. No!

  Willa just needed a little more time. A little more—

  “Raina? Can you hear me?”

  But the whites of Raina’s eyes just kept bleedi
ng into the irises.

  “Dammit, Raina! Fight it!” she yelled, even though she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Raina had invited this thing inside of her. She’d never had the strength to fight it.

  Sure enough, with a blink, Raina’s pupils were gone too and her eyes were two colorless orbs.

  The hair rose at the back of Willa’s neck. Tears pricked at her eyes.

  Raina stood before her unmoving.

  “Wait.” Caleb stumbled to his feet. “You’re not taking her anywhere. We were in the middle of something.” He snatched at the collar.

  Willa pushed him back.

  The collar might seem small and innocuous, but it would change everything.

  It was one-of-a-kind, forged in dark magic. It was inscribed with the runes that spelled out the demon’s name.

  Rozen.

  No one knew exactly where a demon’s collar originated. Some of the research Willa had done said the collars originated with the Demon Prince, but he was only mentioned in name in the texts. No one seemed to actually know him. How the hell had Caleb even gotten hold of the thing?

  Willa had taught herself how to perform an exorcism years ago to get rid of Rozen. She could practically do it in her sleep now as long as she had a salt bag ready.

  But put a collar on a host and the only way to get rid of a demon was to kill the host.

  It had the added benefit of killing the demon too, but most people were unwilling to murder their loved ones in order to get rid of the demon.

  Willa was definitely in not-kill-my-sister camp.

  Which was why she could not, in no way shape or form, allow that collar to be placed on her sister’s neck.

  “Raina, listen to me,” Willa said as she edged toward the door. “I can help you.” Panic fluttered in her throat. She needed to control the situation, but she had no friends here. No magic to fight with.

  Raina’s eyes returned to normal. She held out her hand. “Give it to me, Will.”

  Willa took another step back. “No.”

  “Willa.”

  “I won’t let you do this to yourself.”

  Raina lunged.

  Willa twisted around and ran, but even without an added benefit of a demon inhabiting her body, Raina had always been faster.