Jinn: Exiles of the Realm

by Adrienne Bell

  James Hook? She rolled the name over in her mind as she looked back up at Shay. The name was familiar. Really familiar.

  Wait a minute.

  Her eyes went wide. “That’s not—”

  “Captain Hook?” the man finished for her. “The same.”

  “But he has both hands,” she whispered.

  “I know,” Shay said. “Makes you wonder what else you got wrong, doesn’t it?”

  He shot her a look that brimmed with humor and suddenly she remembered all the annoyance she’d felt just a few minutes ago. It all came rushing back to her. She moved back a step and crossed her arms.

  “I remember what you did to me last night,” she said.

  “Well, that certainly sounds interesting,” Hook said.

  Shay’s lips pressed together. The amusement drained from his face. “Keep to your task, and stay out of our business, thief, or were you hungry for a demonstration of my new powers?”

  “Thief?” she said, her eyes going wide. “He’s a thief?”

  Shay crossed his arms and leaned against the door jamb. “You didn’t think he actually ran around fencing with children all day, did you?”

  No, she guessed she didn’t. But that wasn’t really the point.

  “You brought a thief into my store?” She’d had enough. She pushed past him, slipping in between his body and the door frame.

  “I did,” Shay said plainly. Obviously, he didn’t see anything wrong with his answer. Either that or he was deliberately trying to annoy her in the hopes that she’d get frustrated and leave him alone.

  Well, it wasn’t going to work.

  “Why would you invite a thief here?”

  “Because we need his skills.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Nicole’s cheeks grew hot. She turned around to gesture at the man standing at her counter. “Why in the world would we need a—”

  Oh, God.

  The book. The thief had the book open in front of him. Freakin’ Captain Hook had his thieving hands all over her family’s book.

  “Get the hell away from that,” she yelled, rushing toward the counter.

  Hook didn’t listen, though. His hands still lingered along the edges of the pages. Even when Nicole came around the counter, he still didn’t pull away. His hands brushed against hers as she snatched the book up, the sharp edge of one of his rings scraping the outside of her finger.

  Nicole ignored the slight pain, and she turned her fiercest glare on Shay.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” she demanded.

  “I was hoping to find something. And for all his faults—”

  “Not that I have many,” Hook cut in.

  Shay ignored him. “—the thief is very good at finding things."

  “Some might even say the best,” Hook added with a smile.

  Nicole pulled the book tight against her chest. “And what were you looking for?”

  “A way to access the magic,” Hook said.

  Nicole’s blood boiled. Her jaw tightened. She shot Shay her most withering glower. This time he had the decency to wilt a little.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said.

  “Really?” she spat. “What else could it be?”

  “Hook isn’t lying when he says he’s the best thief there is.” Shay stepped out of the doorway and calmly walked to her side. “He’s broken into countless impossible things.”

  “And now you want him to break into my book?”

  Shay shook his head. “I want him to see if it’s possible. I can guarantee you right now Marrow is searching for a way to access that magic. If there is one that doesn’t involve you and your family, we need to know about it.”

  “So we can be prepared?” she asked.

  “Exactly.” Shay reached out and wrapped his hands around the cover.

  “And that’s all you want with it?”

  “That’s all.”

  Nicole narrowed her gaze. “You promise?”

  “I swear.”

  Nicole gazed up into his eyes. Dark and fathomless. It wasn’t as if she’d been the greatest judge of character before, but there was something inside her, some tiny, undiscovered sense deep within her brain, that was convinced he was telling the truth.

  Slowly, she loosened her grip on the book, and Shay slipped it out of her hands. He placed it back down on the counter before nodding at Hook.

  “I guess I’m a little wound up,” Nicole shook her head apologetically. “When you said thief I overreacted, and—”

  “Well, it’s not a blood bond,” Hook broke in.

  “What?” Nicole pivoted away from Shay.

  “Oh, I stole a little of your blood when you grabbed the book from me,” the thief said. “I needed it to see if the book was bound to your family through a bloodline bond, but it’s not.”

  “What does that leave?” Shay asked.

  “I don’t know.” Hook shrugged. “Whatever strange magic that Asphodel used to bind the grimoire to the Starlings, it isn’t like any I’ve ever encountered.”

  “You stole my blood?” Maybe she hadn’t heard him right.

  “Of course,” Hook said. “You didn’t appear to be in the mood to give it up willingly.”

  No, she hadn’t been…but that wasn’t the point.

  “You can’t just steal someone’s blood.”

  “Sure, you can.” Hook waggled the sharp ring on his finger as proof. “It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

  Red hot fury lit up Nicole’s veins. “Get out of my store.”

  “But I’m not done yet,” Hook said. “I still haven’t figured out what kind of magic—”

  “I don’t care,” Nicole cut him off. “Shay made a mistake letting you come here in the first place.”

  “Nicole,” Shay said, his tone annoyingly smooth. “Calm down.”

  She swiveled on her heel to face him. His expression was apologetic. Nicole didn’t give one single damn.

  The jinni might have the most gorgeous eyes she’d ever seen. He might sizzle with a magnetic heat that she’d never dreamed of. He might even have enough power to throw the whole world into chaos, but he didn’t get to tell her what to do. Especially not in the middle of her own shop.

  “And while we’re talking about mistakes, Shay Madrid,” she said. “You made a huge one last night using your magic to knock me unconscious.”

  He pressed his full lips together for a full second before responding. “I helped you fall asleep. You needed the rest.”

  “Strange, I don’t remember asking for your help,” she said. “I remember telling you that I wanted to stay up and keep watch.”

  “That wasn’t the right choice.” A tiny glowing ember drifted up in his eye. He didn’t like to be challenged. Too bad. She didn’t like having her independence steamrolled.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. The point is, it was my choice. Not yours.”

  “Nicole—”

  “Don’t try to sweet-talk me, Shay. It won’t work.” Nicole moved in closer, butting her chest right up against his. She wasn’t about to back down. Not this time. “But I’m happy to talk about your choices. Especially your bad ones.”

  “Like?”

  “Like leaving me to wake up alone this morning without any clue of where you were or what had happened to you. Hell, I didn’t even know if Marrow had managed to kill you in the night.”

  “I told you,” Hook said. “They always worry.”

  “Shut it.” Nicole snapped her head toward the storybook villain and glared. Hook had the decency to throw his hands up in a guilty pose, but the wide grin on his face showed no sign of real regret.

  When she turned back to Shay, he was gazing down at her with a quizzical expression. “You were worried about me?”

  Nicole rolled her eyes. “Of course I was.”

  “Not about the store or the book?”

  “Well, yeah. I cared about those too, but they’re not living things.” Nicole eased her hard stance as she watched his
confusion grow. “You can’t seriously think they were the only things I cared about?”

  “I know how important both the book and the store are to you.” The earnestness in voice had a way of cooling the worst of her temper.

  “Sure, but I am a human being, Shay. We can worry about more than one thing at a time.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Hook said.

  Nicole groaned. “Seriously, don’t make me waste one of my wishes on shutting you up permanently.”

  A smile flickered across Shay’s face. “Hook, I think it’s time for you to go.”

  “But I still haven’t figured out what kind of magic is binding her to the book.”

  “We’ll finish up another day,” Shay said.

  “But—”

  “Let me make this easy for you, Captain Smartass, you have three seconds to walk out the front door, or I’ll make Shay snap his fingers and send you to Alcatraz.”

  Hook grinned. “Sweetheart, there’s not a prison in the three worlds that can hold me.”

  “Without your clothes,” Shay added.

  Hook cleared his throat. “In that case, I’ll take the door. But only because it’s such a cold day.”

  “Good choice.” Shay nodded solemnly, but his huge grin gave his real feelings away.

  Nicole found herself smiling just as wide. Apparently, there was nothing like a shared annoyance to bring two people closer together.

  “I’ll be at my apartment if you need me.” The brass bell above the door chimed as Hook opened it.

  “We won’t,” Nicole called out as he stepped outside. She turned to Shay. “Thank you for that.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said. “You were right. It would have been wiser to consult with you before summoning Hook.”

  Nicole’s eyes went wide. “Is that an apology?”

  “Take it as you will.”

  She laughed. “Then I am definitely taking it as an apology. And what’s more, I accept it.”

  Shay’s expression turned serious as he studied her face. “Why would you worry about me?”

  “What do you mean, why?” Nicole jumped up and sat on the edge of the counter top. Her stocking feet dangled over the side. “I care about you, Shay.”

  Chapter Seven

  Shay blinked at Nicole’s words.

  She cared about him.

  Sure, he’d felt her desire for him, her dreamlike longing. That was nothing new. Many women found him attractive. But no one had ever cared about him. He wasn’t even sure exactly what the word meant.

  Responsibility. Obligation. Those were concepts he understood. That’s where his determination not to let any tragedy befall the Starlings had come from. Wasn’t it?

  He was just looking out for those who had sheltered him. It was logical. Transactional.

  But the emotion in Nicole’s voice when she said she cared about him—that was something else entirely.

  It went deeper than simple desire or a mutually beneficial contract. It plucked at that tender spot in the center of his chest again.

  “Why would you care about me?” he asked. “You barely know me.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” she said. “You’ve lived above the store for a while now.”

  “And in all that time I only said six words to you.”

  “Seven words,” she corrected him. “And just because you were ignoring me doesn’t mean I was ignoring you.”

  Ignoring her. That’s what he’d been trying to do. He’d done everything in his power to avoid her. Anything to avoid looking in her beautiful eyes, avoid hearing her voice, avoid any contact at all.

  But it had all been in vain.

  The intoxicating caress of her soul had found its way to him all the same.

  “Of course, I hoped one day you might break down and talk to me,” she said.

  “I never would have.” It was a hard answer, but it was the truth. A prick of regret stabbed at his heart as the corners of her lips dropped down in disappointment.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I figured I wasn’t your type.”

  His brows pulled together. “My type?”

  “You know. The type of girl you like to talk to.”

  He didn’t tell her that he hadn’t spent much time talking to any women over the years, no matter their type.

  Still, there was something in this conversation that intrigued him.

  “What would make you care for something more than your own life?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You nearly died banishing those soldiers from this shop.” It was nothing short of a miracle that he and Emily had managed to keep her in this world long enough for Merlin to draw the magic out of her. “Why would you choose to do that?”

  Nicole lifted her chin. “Because if someone like Marrow figured out how to break the bonds that kept him out of the grimoire the consequences would be catastrophic. Countless people could die.”

  “People you have no connection to.”

  “Why should that matter?”

  She couldn’t be serious. “Because you only have one life.”

  “So do you.” She laughed. The beautiful sound filled his senses. “So does Emily. So do your friends. I’d be a monster if just stood by and let you be slaughtered.”

  Emily’s life, Shay understood. They were bonded in friendship, which meant a whole lot more in this world than it did in his. He didn’t agree, but he understood. But the rest of them? Her words only left him with more questions.

  “You were thinking about our lives?”

  “Why is that weird to you?” She shook her head. Confusion radiated out of her. “Is it really so hard for you to understand?”

  Her dark eyes were filled with a desire to understand. The innocence in her expression shot right through him. Getting closer to her had provided no new answers, only more questions. It seemed the experience was the same for her.

  “What if I had been the only one in the store?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, but he couldn’t seem to keep himself from asking the question. “Would you have acted any differently?”

  “No.” There was no hesitation in her voice. “I know that makes me sound pathetic, risking my life for a guy who wouldn’t give me a second glance, but I really don’t care.”

  “You're not pathetic.” She was the furthest thing from it.

  “The thing is, I felt a connection to you the first moment I saw you.”

  Shay stilled. Now he knew he didn’t want to know her answers. Not because they were incomprehensible, but because they were everything he’d felt for her.

  “Without saying a word, it was like I knew you,” she continued. “It was magical. Of course, now I realize that was because you are magical.”

  The intensity of her emotions grew with each word. Her honesty shot right through him, baffling him even more than before.

  She’d been feeling the same things he had these last few weeks. She’d been tuned to his energy, like he’d been tuned to hers. Note for note. Beat for beat. But they’d dealt with it in opposite ways. She’d tried to open her arms; he’d closed himself off. She’d spoken the truth; he’d kept his mouth shut. She’d risked; he’d retreated.

  But that was only because he knew the risks. He knew what was at stake, and he’d done what he could to protect her from the danger he posed.

  But it hadn’t mattered. The worst had happened anyway. Nicole had not only been dragged into their war with the fae, but he now held a piece of her soul.

  Which meant there wasn’t any harm closing some of the distance between them.

  “You aren’t pathetic,” he said, cupping a hand around her upper arm. “And you weren’t wrong to hope.”

  The words felt strange leaving his mouth. They were a kind he’d never spoken before—a personal kind. The intimacy felt foreign to him.

  Being a jinni meant knowing the secrets of so many creatures. He held all their hidden hopes and all their desires inside him. He
fed off their power.

  But Nicole wasn’t afraid of the truth. She didn’t run from the darkness inside her. She might not put it on public display, but she didn’t turn away from it. She faced it. Dealt with it.

  It wasn’t that Nicole didn’t have shame, he realized. It was that her painful emotions didn’t control her.

  Shay knew all too well what happened when shame took over a person’s actions. That’s when they turned to him, desperate to sell their very souls to make the pain go away. He wasn’t willing to live that way.

  And that meant he needed to take a page from Nicole’s book. If hiding hadn’t helped him, maybe stepping out into the light would.

  “I didn’t ignore you because I…disliked you.” Despite his best efforts the words still came out haltingly.

  A puzzled frown pulled down the corners of her mouth. “So, why did you?”

  “To protect you.”

  “From the fae?”

  Shay shook his head. “From me. When I moved in you had no idea you were allowing a monster to move in above your shop.”

  “You’re not a monster,” Nicole said.

  “You only think that because I’ve shielded you from what I really am,” he said. “You’ve known me as a man, as a mortal, not a jinni who could tear your world in half.”

  She blinked. “That’s not something you’re planning on doing, are you?”

  “That all depends on you, and your second wish.”

  She gave a relieved laugh. “Well, then it looks like civilization will get to continue on for at least one more day.”

  She wasn’t taking him seriously, but he knew how to make her listen.

  “I thought about killing you last night.”

  Her laughter died in an instant.

  “Excuse me?”

  Shay didn’t clarify. He knew she’d heard every word. He knew from the pulses of barely contained panic shooting out of her.

  An unfamiliar part of him wanted to rush over and tell her that he wasn’t going to hurt her, but he couldn’t. Right now he needed to be cruel to be kind. So he let the statement hang in the air between them.

  Eventually, Nicole was the one to break the silence.

  “Why would you think about that?”

  “I thought about how your death would solve so many of my problems,” Shay said. “How I would be free to do as I pleased. How I would still retain a sliver of your soul’s power, and might be able to use it to access the power of your grimoire.”