Exquisite Captive

by Heather Demetrios

  He pulled away. “Where were you last night?”

  This, she realized, was how Malek tempered his feelings for her. How he stayed in control. Getting the bottle from him would require her being in control without him ever realizing it.

  “I had to be away from you for a little while,” she said.

  She needed to stick as close to the truth as possible. Malek was an expert liar—it was how he wheedled the wealth out of Earth’s CEOs and royal families, its heiresses and the sultans of the criminal underworld. If she went too far with her pretty falsehoods, he’d know right away.

  “At the theater everything was so intense,” she continued. “And I’ve been trying to figure out what it means—what we mean—and I just needed to breathe a little.”

  His eyes fell to the necklace at her throat. He touched it with the tips of his fingers and she reached up and clasped them.

  “And now?” he said.

  She smiled. “And now I have to figure out what to wear tonight.”

  He leaned in and brushed his lips against her cheek. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  The place where his lips touched burned long after he’d left her room.

  After ten minutes of searching in vain for a parking spot, Nalia made certain there were no humans around, then leaned across the seat of her Maserati and flung her hand at the sidewalk. Instantly, the concrete lengthened a few extra inches and she pulled the car alongside the curb. It would have been easier to evanesce, but she couldn’t risk it in broad daylight, at one of the city’s prime tourist destinations. She had to be back in Hollywood in a few hours to get ready for the benefit, but she’d needed to get out of the confines of the mansion, where Malek’s presence seeped into the very walls. She’d decided to go to the Venice boardwalk. The sea air would do her good, as always, and she owed Leilan’s stall a visit. She was driving herself crazy about the bottle.

  Nalia stepped out of the car and closed her eyes, filling her lungs with clean ocean air. For just a second, she was standing before the Arjinnan Sea, where the Marid jinn calmed tempests, walked on water, and battled the monsters who lived in its great depths. She’d often gone there to visit the temple of Lathor, a sprawling structure situated half a mile beyond the shore, made entirely of water. At sunset, its undulating spires and domes turned tangerine, glowing with an otherworldly light.

  Nalia opened her eyes: sometimes Earth wasn’t a bad substitute. It was a perfect California day with a bright blue sky, puffy white clouds, and sun sun sun. The cool breeze carried laughter on its back, and when she opened her mouth, she could taste salt and new beginnings. Some of Nalia’s dread lifted out of her chest. She could imagine what it might be like to live without the threat of an executioner around every corner.

  She left the Maserati’s top down and strolled up the sidewalk, past tiny houses that were scrunched together like old friends. The scent of pot hung in the air like temple incense. Here, humans walked around barefoot, carrying surfboards and coolers and long, thick towels. It felt as though Venice were abstaining from the rest of the city, like it orbited a different sun with days measured in passed joints and lovemaking. She didn’t belong here, but Nalia wasn’t sure if there was anywhere on Earth or Arjinna that she could ever call home. She’d become a nomad, lost among the sands of her past, in permanent exile from the land of her ancestors. Nalia came to Venice because it was the opposite of Malek’s ordered world, with its butlers and business calls from Tokyo. Like Habibi, it made her forget, if only for a few hours, that she was a slave on the dark caravan.

  Nalia could smell the boardwalk before she reached it: grease that made her stomach rumble, patchouli from the incense sellers’ stalls, and the tang of the sea, briny and fresh. She turned left, inserting herself into the stream of humans who crowded the oceanside walkway day and night. To one side, a long line of stalls and blankets had been set out where artists, political organizers, and random hippies hawked their wares and ideas. Beyond them lay a wide expanse of white sand that separated land from sea. To her left was a collection of restaurants and stores, where tourists rested and watched the vagabonds and freaks who ruled the boardwalk.

  A black man garbed in white robes and a matching turban rode up and down the boardwalk on his roller skates, strumming an electric guitar with red and white swirls, his smile never leaving his face. He was always there, posing for pictures with tourists and chatting with the locals. Though the strangeness of the place had become familiar to her, Nalia felt just as much wonder and curiosity as the human tourists. It was so unlike Arjinna, an incomprehensible mix of personalities and lives. Here, it seemed as if there were no lines drawn between the races. If you were weird, you belonged.

  Leilan always set up the paintings she sold across from the Venice Beach Freakshow, a carnival of strange where humans ate fire and displayed their anatomic anomalies. For five dollars, visitors could enter through its doors, though Nalia had never been tempted. Before she reached Leilan’s stall, Nalia stepped into a little hole-in-the-wall place that sold fries, burgers, and shakes. She bought two malts and two orders of fries, then made her way over to the easels that displayed Leilan’s art. Nalia hung back for a moment while a few tourists gazed in awe at her friend’s work. They assumed Leilan painted from an extremely vivid imagination, but Nalia knew better: they were real illustrations of daily life in Arjinna. Some showed jinn evanescing, which Leilan said gave her booth an exotic flair, but most of them were landscapes or renditions of unicorns, gryphons, dragons, and the occasional phoenix that populated their realm. Her paintings were lovely, rich in color, and so real that the subjects practically jumped off the canvas—which they did in glimmering 3D for the jinn who bought them.

  Nalia gazed at the paintings, her heart thudding against her chest. She realized she might be back in that world sooner than she thought. She didn’t know how long it would take to get the sigil. Was it possible she could be in Arjinna within a few weeks? It seemed unreal that after all those endless nights locked away in a foreign land, she might feel Arjinna’s sweet air on her skin or drink from the Infinite Lake’s crystal waters. The hope of it crushed her so that she could hardly breathe, hardly think.

  The tourists were moving on. Nalia walked up to the stall and hoped Leilan wouldn’t pick up on the waves of anxiety rolling off her. Her friend looked completely at home on the boardwalk, every inch of her perfectly playing the part of the Venice Beach artist. She wore a pair of red harem pants, a beaded tank top that showed off her jeweled belly-button ring, and her thick red hair was held back with a paisley scarf that offset the bright Marid blue of her eyes. Bangles covered the scars on her wrists and her feather earrings shivered in the sea breeze.

  “There you are!” Leilan said as she caught sight of Nalia. “I thought you ran off with the revolution and I’d never see you again.”

  Nalia rolled her eyes and handed Leilan her food. “I don’t think the resistance recruits Shaitan.”

  “Could have fooled me.” Leilan took a sip of her malt and groaned with pleasure. “Don’t get me wrong, I miss Arjinna, but godsdamn do I love human food.”

  Nalia laughed and sat beside Leilan on the cinderblock wall behind her easels full of paintings.

  Leilan pushed up her sunglasses and gave Nalia an appraising glance. “Did you go home with him last night?”

  Nalia had been expecting the question, of course, but she stalled when it came.

  “Who?”

  Leilan picked up a joint that sat in an ashtray beside her coffee can full of money and gestured to Nalia with it. “You know exactly who I’m talking about. But let me jog your memory: the realm’s sexiest bachelor who just so happened to have his hands all over you for half the night.”

  “We were dancing!”

  Leilan’s full, glossy lips curled into a mischievous grin. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  She held the joint between her thumb and index finger, then flicked her lighter. The flame swayed toward Nalia a
nd Leilan cursed. Nalia directed the flame back toward her friend with a surreptitious flick of her fingers.

  “Ugh,” Nalia grunted. “No, I did not go home with him. I have an extremely jealous master, or have you forgotten?”

  Another lie, this time hidden inside the truth. She could still feel Raif’s chiaan as they made their vow to one another on his roof, the exhilaration of the ritual, and the warmth of his hand gripping hers.

  Leilan puffed on the joint then held it out to Nalia, who shook her head and sipped on her malt. Haran was out there somewhere and she had to steal her bottle. The last thing she needed was a cloudy mind.

  Leilan took another hit, then stubbed it out. “Well, you made pretty much every jinni at Habibi green with envy. After you left, everyone was asking me about it.”

  Nalia was now realizing what an epically bad idea it had been to dance with Raif. Just when she’d needed to remain anonymous, she’d gone and made herself fodder for the jinn gossip mill. They’d be talking about this for days. Nalia hadn’t made any other jinn friends, but she had a passing acquaintance with Habibi’s regulars, mostly because she was always with Leilan. Everyone loved the club’s vivacious bartender, but Nalia had always been careful to stay in the background.

  So much for that.

  Leilan dipped a fry in her malt. “Seriously, how do you know him?”

  “I don’t think the humans do it that way,” Nalia said, pointing to Leilan’s ice-cream-coated fry.

  “Then they’re missing out.” She narrowed her eyes. “Now, spill.”

  A prospective buyer distracted Leilan for a moment, so Nalia took in the painting of the Infinite Lake that Leilan was currently working on. She’d perfectly captured the lake’s indigo hue, bathed in silvery light from Arjinna’s three moons, and the way the palace jutted out of the rock face above it. The sky was shot through with pinks and greens: nighttime in Arjinna put Earth’s northern lights to shame. Nalia stroked the lapis lazuli that Malek had given her as she gazed at the bright blue Qaf Mountains that towered above the lake. She didn’t know how Leilan could stand painting their home so much—just looking at her pictures filled Nalia with a homesickness as bottomless as the Infinite Lake itself. She smiled as she remembered a story her Shaitan tutor at the palace had told her long ago, and which Nalia had then told Bashil. Legend had it that in the early days of their realm, in the time when the gods could still be seen in Arjinna, a particularly talented Marid jinni used his natural ability with water to get to the bottom of the lake, only to find himself in the sky. According to myth, this is how rain first came to Arjinna—when the Marid broke the surface of the lake-that-was-sky, the first drops fell to the earth below. Some say he swam down to Arjinna on a waterfall that came from a cloud; others swore that he returned to land on the back of a dragon.

  The buyers moved on to the stall beside Leilan’s, where a woman sold beaded necklaces and painted skulls. Leilan waved her hand in front of Nalia. She blinked, returning once again to Earth.

  “So . . . ?” Leilan said.

  “So what?”

  Leilan gave Nalia a playful push. “How do you know Raif Djan’Urbi?”

  “We . . . met in Arjinna. Um. When we were kids.”

  “A Shaitan and a Djan? How did that happen?”

  Nalia grasped at the first idea that came to mind. “My father took me with him to visit Raif’s overlord. I was playing in the gardens and Raif was there.” Nalia shrugged. “He was nice.”

  It was far-fetched, but it was the best she could do. In her worries over the bottle and Haran, she’d forgotten to craft a better story. It didn’t really matter—in a few days she would be gone or dead. Guilt wormed its way inside her gut. How could she just leave Leilan on Earth while she went back to Arjinna?

  “And you recognized each other right away, huh?” Leilan gave Nalia a sideways glance, but Nalia just shrugged, keeping her eyes focused on her fries.

  Leilan snorted. “Fine, be mysterious. At least tell me this: are you gonna see him again?”

  “Probably not,” Nalia said. These days, it felt like all she did was twist and bend the truth. Reality had become soft and malleable—a toy to be played with, a weapon. “I mean, he can’t stay here long. They need him in Arjinna.”

  She was going to say more when the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She sat up, suddenly tense.

  “Nal? You okay?”

  Nalia shook her head and slowly turned around. She could feel a menacing presence, lurking near. She couldn’t place it, but it somehow felt familiar. Like it knew her.

  “Lefia,” she whispered.

  The word of command was supposed to reveal the truth of things, but as the wind bore the word away, nothing changed. The group of dirty young humans skateboarding near the boardwalk were exactly what they appeared to be. The long-haired man holding a sign that said WILL WORK FOR WEED strolled right past them, paying no attention to Nalia. A large, shirtless man stopped for a moment in front of the stall beside Leilan’s, but he seemed harmless. Still, someone was out there—an Ifrit? Maybe even Haran himself.

  “Lei, do you feel something . . . unnatural?” Nalia asked in a low voice.

  Her friend furrowed her eyebrows. “Not really. I mean, we’re the only jinn here, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t sense anyone else’s chiaan.”

  Nalia frowned, scanning the crowd moving up and down the boardwalk. It would be so easy for Haran to glamour himself and hide among the packs of humans, but Leilan was right—there weren’t any other jinn around.

  Then: a hot breath on her neck and a low, sinister laugh. Nalia jumped up, knocking her fries to the ground. She whirled around, but no one stood behind her.

  “Nalia, what—”

  “I’m gonna run to the bathroom really quick,” she said to Leilan. “I’m fine, I just—I’ll be back.”

  Heart pounding, she didn’t wait for a response. If it was Haran, Nalia wanted to get him as far away as possible from her friend. She clambered over the cinderblock wall, trying not to trip over the long sundress she wore, and ran toward the beach. Instead of going into the bathrooms that sat at the edge of the sand, she sprinted past them, toward one of the pale blue lifeguard huts that dotted the beach.

  Even though it was a beautiful day, it was a little chilly, and there weren’t many people camped out on the sand. If she had to fight Haran, this would be the best place to do it. She could feel the presence behind her, trailing her as she pushed herself across the hot sand. Fear spiked through Nalia. If Haran was using dark magic and able to remain invisible, she had no idea how she could fight him. It wouldn’t be like Raif hiding behind cars and within shadows in Malek’s garage. It would be like fighting the wind. She kicked off her sandals and ran faster, pulling energy from the earth, connecting her chiaan to the ground beneath her feet. Her fingertips drew the sand around her and when she was ready, Nalia stopped suddenly and whirled around, thrusting streams of sand behind her. The yellow particles swirled, settling over a man-sized shape of empty air.

  “Play fair, little jinni. You’ve already made me invisible. The least you could do is let me freak you out for a few minutes.”

  “You,” she snarled. The client. She should have known.

  He chuckled. “Yes, me.”

  Nalia filled the air with sand so that she could see his movement, creating gusts all over the beach so that this one patch wouldn’t draw attention. Then she pulled up the side of her dress and slid her dagger from the sheath strapped to her thigh. The jade glimmered in the sun. One swipe of it and he’d be paralyzed from head to foot.

  The client whistled at her brief show of leg. Nalia sent a clump of sand in the general direction of his face, then smiled wickedly as he coughed and spluttered.

  “How did you find me?” she said.

  He spit and a white glob appeared on the sand to Nalia’s left. “I know where Malek lives because I’ve been to a few of his parties. I simply waited by the gate and followed you.”
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br />   Nalia bit her lip, trying to remember.

  “The black Town Car?” she asked. She hadn’t paid much attention when she’d left this afternoon, but she vaguely remembered passing one as she drove down Mulholland.

  “Yep. I’d drive myself, but being invisible does have its limitations. However, I have a discreet driver and can do most of my trading online or by phone. I’d say the only thing your evil plan did was complicate my sex life. Then again, my girlfriends kind of like the blindfold. They say it makes things mysterious.”

  “You’re disgusting,” she said.

  Two girls passed by, giving her matching scowls.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Nalia said to them.

  She heard a whispered, “Fuh-reak!” as the girls ran off toward the water.

  “If they only knew,” said the client.

  “What the hell do you want?” she snapped. Thinking he was Haran had drowned Nalia in adrenaline and if she didn’t do something soon, all this chiaan would burn her up.

  “Fix my wish,” he said.

  “Can’t. It’s impossible to undo a wish once it’s been made. You wanted invisibility—you have it. Go be a Peeping Tom or whatever it is you plan to do with the rest of your miserable life and leave me the hell alone.”

  She could hurt him, if she wanted to. Her chiaan itched to take out all the bottled up frustration of the past few days—the past few years—on him. But then she’d be like her enemies, getting her pleasure from screams and tears and the smell of scorched flesh.

  “I have every intention of murdering you, I hope you know that,” he said, his voice a drawn blade. His form inched closer to her, like a ghost in a sandstorm. “And you’ll never see it coming.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  Nalia sprinted toward the ocean, not out of fear—she simply didn’t trust herself to ignore his barbs. Maybe, if he hadn’t been such a lascivious jackass in the first place, Nalia would have exercised a little self-control. Maybe. Hers was a twisted form of judgment, she knew. The client hadn’t really done anything to her, but she was making him pay for all the things he’d wanted to do, punishing him for treating her like a servant when she was the rightful empress of a magical race. She didn’t have time to deal with him now. She just had to hope her power outmatched the threat he’d made.