The Seven Kings of Jinn

by S. Young

  The Seven Kings of Jinn

  Book 1

  S. Young

  The Seven Kings of Jinn

  Book One

  by S. Young

  Copyright © 2021 Samantha Young

  Previously published in 2011 under the title Smokeless Fire (A Fire Spirits Novel).

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the above author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This work is registered with and protected by Copyright House.

  Contents

  Also by S. Young

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by S. Young

  Adult Contemporary Novels by Samantha Young

  Play On

  As Dust Dances

  Black Tangled Heart

  Hold On: A Play On Novella

  Into the Deep

  Out of the Shallows

  Hero

  Villain: A Hero Novella

  One Day: A Valentine Novella

  Fight or Flight

  Much Ado About You

  On Dublin Street Series:

  On Dublin Street

  Down London Road

  Before Jamaica Lane

  Fall From India Place

  Echoes of Scotland Street

  Moonlight on Nightingale Way

  Until Fountain Bridge (a novella)

  Castle Hill (a novella)

  Valentine (a novella)

  One King’s Way (a novella)

  On Hart’s Boardwalk (a novella)

  Hart’s Boardwalk Series:

  The One Real Thing

  Every Little Thing

  Things We Never Said

  The Truest Thing

  The Adair Family Series:

  Here With Me

  There With You

  Young Adult contemporary titles by Samantha Young

  The Impossible Vastness of Us

  The Fragile Ordinary

  Other Titles by Samantha Young

  Drip Drop Teardrop: A Novella

  Titles Co-written with Kristen Callihan

  Outmatched

  Titles Written Under S. Young

  Fear of Fire and Shadow

  True Immortality Series:

  War of Hearts

  Kiss of Vengeance

  Kiss of Eternity: A True Immortality Short Story

  Bound by Forever

  The Seven Kings of Jinn Series:

  The Seven Kings of Jinn

  Of Wish and Fury

  Queen of Shadow and Ash

  The Law of Stars and Sultans

  War of the Covens Trilogy:

  Hunted

  Destined

  Ascended

  Warriors of Ankh Trilogy:

  Blood Will Tell

  Blood Past

  Shades of Blood

  Prologue

  The stars are not wanted

  but the sky will submit

  Her eyes attempted to overcome him. Everywhere he glanced, those eyes of a thousand nights, eyes that had made love to every spectrum of color this realm and the others offered, refracted on the cold glass and black marble of his home. He imagined those eyes had prevailed over many a worthy foe. Tonight, he would pretend they had prevailed over him.

  What happened after that was of no interest to him.

  It would not interest him unless He willed it so.

  Chapter 1

  Ghost in the soul

  Ari followed the swipe of Mr. Dillon’s eraser across the board, wiping out the poor chalk-figure hangman who had met his complete death — a head, torso, limbs and all — when the senior class had failed to figure out the blanks equated to accumulated depreciation. The last week of school. Business class.

  Ari hid a yawn behind her hand and stared out of the window at the trees behind the parking lot. She wondered if he was out there already.

  “God, I thought this class couldn’t get any more boring,” Nick Melua whispered at her side. Ari made a sympathetic noise and nodded in agreement. Waiting for graduation was a slow torture in hell. That the waiting room was Mr. Dillon’s Business Studies class only increased the banality.

  She better get used to it, Ari thought with a wince. She would major in business at Penn after summer break. Pushing the future and the host of angry butterflies the thought of it created in her belly out of her mind, Ari concentrated on worrying about Charlie. Was he out behind the parking lot? Again?

  “Miss Johnson?”

  She groaned into her wrist and flicked her eyes up at the board. “W,” she guessed without thinking and felt the heat of the glares from her classmates.

  “Nope.” Mr. Dillon shook his head. “Nick?”

  “E,” he threw across the room belligerently and was rewarded with grateful smiles as the word became clearer.

  “Entrepreneur!” Staci Pike shouted out with such enthusiasm it could fool you into thinking she cared. Ari smirked over at her and rolled her eyes at Staci’s sheepish shrug. Staci hated making anyone feel bad and the perspiration rolling down Mr. Dillon’s face told them he knew he was failing miserably at keeping them entertained.

  Mr. Dillon smiled gratefully. “Correct. Do you want to come up, Staci, and choose a word?”

  Ari grinned at her. See, that’s what happens when you’re nice.

  Staci narrowed her eyes as she swept by Ari’s table. “Meanie,” she murmured loud enough to make Ari snort.

  Fifteen minutes later, the class grew more fervent in their irritation as they struggled to figure out Staci’s word. Finally, Mr. Dillon sighed. “I’m afraid the hangman is definitely… dead. You’ll have to tell us your word, Staci.”

  Her dark eyes were wide with disbelief. “You guys are terrible at this game.”

  “Aw come on, Staci.” Nick beat his fist against the table, his voice climbing to a whine. “Just tell us.”

  “Fine,” she huffed. “The word or words, rather, are ‘Bill Gates.’”

  Ari laughed as the class exploded into an uproar.

  “I still don’t see what the big deal was.” Staci shrugged as they walked toward their lockers.

  “You were supposed to use a business term.” Ari chuckled, plucking a spit ball out of Staci’s hair and flicking it to the ground. She grimaced, wiping her hand against her T-shirt.

  “Bill Gates is a businessman, hello!”

  “Hello to you too,” a warm voice purred before Staci was pulled back into the solid embrace of her boyfriend A.J. Half Japanese (on her mom’s side) Staci’s slight frame was swallowed up in the stocky shadow of A.J.’s wr
estler’s body. Her eyes widened before she relaxed into him, tilting her mouth up to his for a kiss.

  Ari sighed and turned from them, yanking her locker open with more force than she’d intended.

  “Is someone in a bad mood?” A.J. asked, grinning at the glare Ari threw him over her shoulder.

  Staci shook her head. “Nah, I think she’s just bummed out after the longest class in the history of classes.”

  “What’s there to be bummed about?” Rachel’s voice entered the fray. Ari craned her neck around her locker to smile at her best friend. Rachel returned her smile, her blond hair swinging against her chin as she jerked her gaze back and forth between her friends with the excitement of a puppy. “We’re officially free in a few days and then, drum roll, please.” She gestured to A.J. who supplied the request with his imaginary drum sticks. “It’s Ari’s 18th birthday slash graduation party!”

  As her friends talked enthusiastically about their plans for the 18th birthday party her dad, Derek, was letting her throw in their house at the end of the week, Ari tried to smile with sufficient animation. Not that she hated birthdays, or graduation even. It was more the promise of the future. A future she wasn’t so sure about.

  “Oh, guys, I have to bring the stethoscope Mom and Dad bought me to the party… it’s awesome,” Rachel chirped, her eyes glittering at the prospect of leaving for Dartmouth to start her pre-medical studies. After Dartmouth, she planned on applying to John Hopkins, and Ari knew that whatever Rachel wanted, Rachel would eventually get.

  “They bought you a stethoscope already?” A.J. snorted. “Dude, you’re not even going to med school for another three years.”

  “Seven years of college. You are so insane.” Staci shuddered. “I can’t even imagine.”

  A.J. shrugged. “I don’t know. Seven years making movies sounds kind of fun.”

  Staci rolled her eyes at him. “Anything sounds like fun to you as long as it gets you off that farm.”

  Ari felt like sinking into the floor. Her friends were so clear about who they were and what they wanted… it terrified her. It made her feel like a freak. She glanced around at them as they started yammering on about college sweatshirts, roommates, the freshman ten, wondering what on earth happened to her. She didn’t know what she wanted out of life like they did. Staci and A.J. were heading off to RISD together to study film and animation, something they had talked about doing nearly the whole three years they had been dating. Ari shut her locker, trying not to have a panic attack. Never in her life had she suffered from anxiety, but she’d had three attacks this last month. She closed her eyes, her back to her friends. When her dad suggested she studied business at college, Ari hadn’t argued. What else was she going to do, right? Unlike her friends, there wasn’t anything she’d ever felt brilliant at, or drawn to. How could they possibly understand that? She needed someone to understand.

  She needed Charlie.

  “Hey,” Rachel murmured, resting her hand on Ari’s shoulder. “You okay? You’ve been so quiet lately.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Really?”

  How could she not talk to Rachel about this? Rachel was her best friend. But then… Rachel hadn’t always been her best friend.

  Growing up, Charlie had been Ari’s closest friend. Her family, really. He’d been there when her dad forgot her ninth birthday, and the time she couldn’t stop crying after the lie she told when she was ten years old caused her dad and his girlfriend to break up. There was also that time she’d gotten her first period, and she’d completely freaked out. She’d run from school during lunch and Charlie had chased her into Vickers' Woods behind the interstate. When she’d confessed what was wrong, he had silently taken her hand and walked her all the way to his house and stammered through a blushing explanation to his mom. Mrs. Creagh had hugged her close and called the school and her dad to explain where she’d disappeared to and why. A trip to the pharmacy followed the phone call and a lot more hugging.

  Anything good, bad, small or huge that had happened to her, Charlie was the one who had been there. And then something huge— too huge—happened to him and suddenly Charlie wasn’t really there to be there.

  “Are you worrying about Charlie again?” Rachel huffed.

  Ari threw her a 'don't start' look.

  “Let’s go to lunch,” A.J. interrupted, dodging any discussion about Charlie. He thought Charlie was a loser and hated that Ari ‘wasted’ so much time and energy over him.

  Stemming a wave of anger at her friends, Ari pulled away from them. “I’ll catch up in a minute, save me a seat.”

  A frown appeared between Rachel’s smooth brows. “You’re not going over there?”

  Clenching her jaw, Ari turned her back on them. “Just save me a seat,” she called over her shoulder, dodging students in her path.

  “You need to give her a break about him,” she heard Staci say, but A.J.’s response was indistinct as Ari moved farther through the throng of teenagers.

  Bursting out of the front entrance, Ari inhaled a lungful of warm summer air, shaking her hands out as if the gesture could shake out all her worries. She scanned the parking lot for Charlie, but she couldn’t see him, which meant he was out behind the lot in the trees where the teachers couldn’t see. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to get kicked out. They had already held him back a year. Not that he cared. A rush of angry wasps awoke in her stomach, as they always did when she was about to face him. That hadn’t been the case in the past. In the past, just the thought of him used to relax her. Pulling her shoulders back, Ari started off across the lot with a determined stride. She just had to know he was alright. They hadn’t spoken in two weeks, which was officially the longest they had gone without speaking.

  As if coerced onto the scene by a sad Fate, a little boy of nine or ten years old, with dark brown hair and eyes, shot toward her.

  “Have you seen my sister?” he asked, out of breath.

  Concerned by his appearance at the high school during the day, Ari stopped, grabbing his arm before he could shoot off without an answer. “Who’s your sister?”

  “Gemma Hall.”

  Ari frowned. Gemma was a junior. “I’ll—”

  “Bobby!” They both spun to see Gemma rushing down the school steps toward them. “Did you bring them?”

  “Yeah, but you owe me, like, twenty bucks…”

  Satisfied there was nothing dramatic going down between the siblings, Ari left them to it, only glancing back once at the kid. He looked so much like Michael.

  Michael Creagh. Charlie’s kid brother. And the reason Charlie was so screwed up. Two years ago, on Ari’s 16th birthday, Charlie had taken his parent’s SUV out to pick up his little brother from Little League. He was hurrying, trying to get Mike home so he could pick up Ari and take her out to celebrate. The cyclist came out of nowhere. Charlie had swerved into oncoming traffic and the passenger side took the full impact of the collision. When Charlie had come to, Mike was already dead. Everything changed that day. The happy Creaghs stopped being parents to Charlie and Charlie stopped being… Charlie. He blamed himself for his brother’s death and Ari wasn’t so sure his parents didn’t either.

  Ari felt a rip of pain across her chest at the thought of how much agony her best friend was in. How did you live with that kind of guilt? Ari stopped hanging out at the Creagh’s because Charlie didn’t want her to. He told her his dad had started drinking and his mom had gotten her old job as a manager at FoodLand back to keep them afloat financially and to avoid her husband and the son who hadn’t died. Eventually, Charlie started hanging with a new crowd: slackers, potheads. He started skipping school, dropping grades. She’d even, occasionally, found him wasted in Vickers' Woods. She’d hoped he’d snap out of it eventually, that it was just his way of grieving. But it had been two years.

  Before Mike’s death, Ari had been psyching herself up to talk to Charlie the night of her sixteenth. After confiding in Rachel, her new Chem lab partner, she had be
en persuaded it was time. She’d been moping after Charlie for three years. Ari didn’t know when her feelings for him stopped being platonic. There wasn’t a precise moment when everything shifted and suddenly she loved him. It was more that she turned thirteen and suddenly boys were cute and gave her butterflies. Charlie gave her butterflies. Not raging wasps like he did now. She’d been sixteen years old and in love.

  And Ari still loved him.

  Even though he wasn’t her Charlie anymore.

  Ari’s skin cooled as she stepped into the trees, winding her way over the worn path that took her into the clearing that was popular with stoners. Surely the faculty knew about this place, but they were too lazy to do something about it or just didn’t care. Taking in the gathering, Ari saw mostly sophomores and juniors. She only knew a few people by name, and she nodded at them warily. They were lounging around on the grass, leaning against one another and on rocks, their pupils dilated, their features slack. Drifting through them, Ari walked toward a guy she recognized. He was tall, his long legs stretched out before him in dirty, ripped jeans, his Nirvana T-shirt wrinkled and worn. His expression was blank as he gazed up at her. He brushed his unkempt dark brown hair out of his deep brown eyes. He had a pleasant face, handsome in that boy next door kind of way. As she stopped before him, he tilted his head back and the corner of his mouth quirked up. A flash of emotion sparked in his eyes, transforming him from cute guy next door to sexy and dangerous ‘anything is possible with me’ guy. Before her was a boy who could hurt her more than anybody else.