Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

“Adira?” she prompted.

  I swallowed. “My master was murdered. Last night, after I saw you. I fought off his attacker, tried to save him, but by the time the police arrived…” I took a stabilizing breath as Yasmina’s jaw dropped. “He was dead, and his blood was on my hands. Now they’re convinced I killed him.”

  “And you ran just to avoid going back to the farm?” Yasmina exclaimed.

  “I ran to avoid execution.”

  Stunned silence filled the room. Yasmina stood frozen, staring wide-eyed at me.

  “The council wanted to kill me at dawn,” I said, my voice trembling. “So when I had a chance to escape, I took it.”

  “Oh, Adira,” Yasmina breathed. “I had no idea.” She took my hands and gently guided me to the nearest vanity stools, where we sat together. She squeezed my hands. “I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been going through.”

  She paused, then looked over my shoulder. I followed her gaze to Nick, leaning against the back wall, trying to be unobtrusive while he watched and listened.

  “So this human is a rebel helping you disappear?” Yasmina said.

  “No, he’s—wait, what? What do you mean, rebel?”

  Yasmina shook her head and lifted one delicate shoulder in a half-shrug. “It’s just rumors.”

  I tugged on her hands. “Tell me. What human rebels?”

  “Apparently, from what I’ve heard, there are some humans who disagree with the way djinn are treated.” She glanced around and lowered her voice, like she wasn’t supposed to repeat what she’d heard. “Most of them work in secret. I’ve heard stories of our kindred being stolen from the farm, or who vanish right under their masters’ noses. Others are more vocal about change. Not that it will make any difference, though. Humans never change.”

  “Not make a difference?” I breathed. Humans wanting to free djinn… I could barely imagine such a thing. A hint of buoyant hope fluttered in my chest. If the movement could gain momentum, who knew what they might accomplish. “It could change everything.”

  “It also explains why the council wanted to make an example of you,” Nick said.

  My heart sank as another thought occurred to me. What if the rebels somehow knew about Morgan’s relationship with the man I’d given the flash drive to, or even what the flash drive contained? The meet had happened in the campaign office of their opponent, after all, and if they were watching… They might know everything we were trying to discover. Or they might have killed Morgan because of that information. Instead of being my allies, they might be my enemy.

  “If he’s not a rebel helping you disappear,” Yasmina said, pulling my attention back to her, “then who is he? And why are you here? You should be getting as far away from here as you can.”

  I shook my head. “The police won’t investigate Morgan’s murder, so we are. We’re going to hunt down his killer and clear my name.”

  Yasmina stiffened and pulled her hands from mine. “Do you really think that’s wise? That it will matter to the council?”

  “It matters to me,” I said. How could she not understand that? “I didn’t do anything wrong. I shouldn’t have to live on the run and spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”

  Yasmina was shaking her head before I had finished. Anger hardened my resolve like a kiln baking a clay pot.

  “That’s the only way to live, Adira. If you stay in the city, the council will catch up to you, and for what? Even if you find the real killer among the millions of humans in the area, it won’t change anything.” She grabbed my hands again, holding them tightly, her eyes pleading. “You have to run. Please, Adira. I want you to live.”

  “I’m not asking for your permission, Yasmina.” I spoke softly, refusing to let my anger burn my relationship with the only family I had left. “I’m asking for your help.”

  She blinked, one tear dashing down her cheek. “Help? What could I do?”

  “You hear things.” I tightened my grip on her hands and leaned closer, my voice earnest. “You see so many humans here, many of them powerful. You could ask around about my master’s death. Someone might know something that could help our investigation.”

  Yasmina didn’t answer as she dropped her gaze to our joined hands. Her eyelashes moved as she blinked a few times. “I love you, Adira,” she finally murmured, still looking down. “I support you even though I disagree with your choice to stay. But I cannot do what you ask.”

  My stomach dropped, pulling everything else down with it. Yasmina straightened, her eyes dry and cold.

  “If the situation is as bad as it sounds, then I can’t risk implicating myself or the other girls who work here. I’m sorry, sister. I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

  13

  My mouth dropped open. “What?”

  Yasmina stood. “You can stay for a while if you need to. I won’t let anyone discover you here. But I hope you listen to reason and get out of Los Angeles before it’s too late.”

  She swept toward the door. I shot out of my seat and grabbed her arm.

  “What is so important you would abandon your own sister? Your twin?” She didn’t react, didn’t even look at me. “What happened to the sister who did everything with me, who always had my back?”

  “That was a long time ago,” she murmured. “I think it would be best if we don’t see each other again.”

  I jerked my hand away as though she had burned me, hurt squeezing my heart.

  “Goodbye, Adira.” Yasmina walked out the door, closing it behind her with a soft snick.

  Frozen, I stared at the closed door, tears spilling down my cheeks. Would that really be our last conversation? I shook my head and reached for the door. I refused to leave things like this.

  A hand caught my shoulder, startling me. “She’s right,” Nick said. “Once the authorities realize she’s your sister, they’ll descend on her like vultures. You can’t see her again until we clear your name and put the real killer behind bars.”

  I dashed a hand at my cheeks and sniffed back the hurt. She might have said goodbye, but it wouldn’t be forever.

  I whipped around to face Nick. “Let’s get on with it then.”

  He nodded and pulled out his phone, tapping on the screen for a minute before sliding it back in his jacket pocket. “A driver will be on the corner in a few minutes to take us back to the truck. Then we’ll head back to downtown. The police should have cleared out of the studio by now.”

  Using the dressing room mirrors, I adjusted my makeshift hijab to cover my face again while Nick cleaned the cuts and scrapes on his face from the beating he’d taken. When we were as presentable as we were going to get, we left the same way we entered, squeezing behind the club to the street and meeting the cab at the corner. Nick opened the back door for me before walking around to get in on the other side.

  The driver was a talkative college student going to UCLA who kept Nick engaged the short drive back to the truck. I stared out the window, letting his chatter wash over me. My mind kept swirling around Morgan’s murder, Yasmina’s refusal to help even in a small way, the strange errand he’d sent me on. Who was that man I’d given the flash drive to, and how did Morgan know him? What had they been planning together?

  The driver dropped us off at the parking lot, and we switched vehicles in silence. The truck’s roaring engine soothed my mind like a lullaby as Nick drove us back toward downtown. I closed my eyes, grateful to have a few safe, quiet minutes to rest.

  When I opened my eyes, it was dark. I sat up, instantly awake. The driver’s seat was empty, and as my eyes adjusted I realized the truck was in a parking garage.

  A tap on my window made me jump. I glared at Nick as he opened the door.

  “Rise and shine,” he said. “I drove by to make sure the forensics team was gone, but the parking meters were full. So we’re walking from here.”

  I slid out of the truck and followed his lead. The short walk in the bright sunshine brought me to full alertness after the short na
p. We weaved through another crowd of pedestrians, none of whom paid any mind to me. As we neared Morgan’s building, my heart rate picked up. Finally, we could start finding some answers.

  I slowed, scouring the cement sidewalk and entry area. No glints of light from broken glass pieces. I aimed toward the side of the building to see if the glass had spread out in the fall from the penthouse when a hand seized my arm.

  “What are you doing?” Nick hissed. “You’re drawing attention.”

  I looked past him to see people watching us as they passed. “The glass from the broken window should be here. Let me go.”

  Nick released my arm. “They probably cleaned it up last night so people walking by didn’t cut their shoes. Even if it was still here, broken glass wouldn’t tell us anything. Come on.”

  Nick strode to the door, and the doorman hurried to open it for him. “Morning, sir,” he said.

  Sighing, I followed Nick in with my head down, my heart pounding as I passed the doorman. My disguise worked great in a crowd, but Tattoo Guy had recognized me after only meeting once. I wasn’t nearly as confident in it now. I could feel the doorman’s eyes on me, but I resisted the temptation to look at him, sticking close to Nick as we crossed the lobby to the elevator.

  Ages passed before the elevator dinged and its doors slid open. We got in, Nick jamming the button to close the doors again before anybody tried to ride up with us. As the elevator rose, nerves fluttered in my stomach. It was both familiar to ride up to the penthouse with a man at my side, and somehow disconcerting to return to the place I watched my master die.

  When the doors opened at the top, the lobby was dark. I flicked on the lights out of habit as we walked in. It was eerily silent and still. A little yellow triangle with the number one lay on the tile floor near the water cooler, tented over a small brown spot. A drop of dried blood, though whether it was Sebastian’s or mine, I had no way of knowing. I hadn’t even realized it was there before.

  Nick stepped around it and gestured for me to keep up. “Come on. We need to see what my uncle’s things can tell us.”

  I stepped around the evidence marker and joined him down the hall. I wasn’t eager to see the office again, but I was more than ready to find the next clue to the real killer’s identity.

  Yellow police tape crisscrossed the door to Morgan’s office. Nick tore it off in one swipe, then pushed open the door. The room was in shambles, the same as when I had magically appeared here last night. But the disarray somehow seemed harsher in the bright sunlight filtering through the plastic sheeting taped over the broken window. Things weren’t just out of place, like they had seemed in the dark and rush of the fight. They were completely destroyed.

  On the far side of the office, Morgan’s desk was skewed, along with everything on it. Dried blood on white paper caught my eye like a black hole, where the attacker had slammed me into the desk. The shelves along the back wall were snapped, his awards in a glittering heap on the floor below like trash. The morning light glinted on shards of glass and snapped CDs littering the floor, along with broken photo frames, random papers, and smashed disc cases. And in the middle of the violent mosaic, a cleared area approximately the size of a man reeked of bleach.

  Nick stepped into the room, the wreckage crunching underfoot, his eyes wide. “Wow,” he said. “It was quite a fight.”

  “Two fights,” I murmured, following him in. I tried to step gingerly, but something crunched no matter what I did. “Morgan struggled, and I fought them when I got here.”

  Nick stopped in the middle of the room, looking at the wall by the door. I followed his gaze to see the mangled doors of a storage closet where I had thrown the attacker after realizing I could use magic to fuel my fight. My eyes widened at the evidence of the damage I had inflicted. In the light of day, I could barely believe I’d done that.

  “You know what I don’t get?” Nick crunched over to the window, peering at it. “Why jump out the window?”

  Everything in me tensed as he examined the jagged break in the window through the plastic sheet. Nick couldn’t find out the real answer to his question. So I gave him a different one. “They really didn’t want to get caught.”

  Nick shook his head. “No, I mean why go for the window at all? Never mind that we’re on the top floor and a jump from this height is beyond suicidal. What drove them to dive out the window instead of going for the door? Or killing you too?”

  “I can’t say,” I said. A weight settled in my stomach like a brick. We’d built a bridge of trembling trust, and I didn’t like deceiving him, even if it wasn’t an outright lie. But what else could I say? One leap of logic and he’d know my secret.

  “Hmm.” Nick looked at the window a moment longer, then turned to the desk, grabbing the fallen chair on his way. “I’ll check out his laptop. You look around and see what else you can find.”

  I breathed a little easier now that he’d left the window and its uncomfortable questions. Hopefully the laptop revealed how and why he’d communicated with the man I’d delivered the flash drive to, or someone with an obvious grudge. Something that would make the chaos of the last ten hours make sense.

  The wall opposite the window showcased album covers of some of the best-selling music Morgan produced. Most of them had fallen or been smashed, but a few were untouched. Otherwise, the wall was empty. I started picking through items on the floor to the background music of Nick’s typing and the occasional growl. Most of the papers were junk mail, useless, but the mark of a blue pen caught my eye. I picked up the postcard, an invitation to a slave auction at the farm. Morgan had underlined a date from last week. He had been gone for a day, leaving me in the studio with a compulsion not to leave unless ordered to by the police in an emergency. I didn’t remember the exact date, but why keep the invitation and underline one of the auction dates if we wasn’t planning on going?

  Bile rose in my throat. Had Morgan been thinking about purchasing another djinn?

  “Something’s wrong,” Nick said. More clacking followed.

  I stood, my hand trembling as I stared at the evidence of my people’s oppression. Something was wrong, all right. Very, very wrong. I clenched my teeth and tightened my hand, forcing it still. I suddenly hoped the human rebels would be loud enough and persistent enough to make a difference for djinn, whether they were my enemies or not.

  “There’s nothing here,” Nick said, sounding exasperated. “No files, no contracts, no music. Not even an online browsing history.”

  I forced my attention to my companion, who glared at the screen. “There has to be something. He works at that laptop every night. That’s where he was when he gave me the—”

  Pressure suddenly squeezed my vocal cords and slammed my teeth together with an audible clack. Pain radiated into my jaws and brought tears to my eyes. Damn Morgan’s compulsion to keep silent.

  “And we’re back to whatever he ordered you to keep secret.” Nick sighed. “Did you ever see the killer anywhere near the laptop?”

  “No,” I said. “They were here behind the desk when I arrived, but the intruder was intent on him. They didn’t seem interested in anything else.”

  Nick glared at the laptop. “Well, we know Uncle John had at least one secret. Maybe it got him killed.”

  A tinny wail started up, filling the room. Nick’s brows furrowed as he pulled his phone from his jacket pocket. He tapped a few times and the noise died, but Nick continued to stare at the screen.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “An emergency alert. About you.” Nick set the phone next to the laptop screen and swiped. The news alert with a video waiting to play filled the larger screen. Nick turned up the volume and clicked “play.”

  An attractive woman with too much makeup in a bold red suit filled the screen with a serious face. “Police have discovered alarming new footage of the djinn at large in LA, who is currently charged with murdering her master and escaped police custody around four a.m. this morning.”


  My stomach clenched as the woman was replaced by grainy black-and-white video of a train car. The camera pointed down the length of the car, so it missed Leila. But I was easy to see, along with Tattoo Guy and his men. Without Leila in the screen, it looked like they were talking to me.

  “This video comes from a train car on the red line as it returned to Union Station late last night.” A red arrow appeared on the screen, pointing at me, as the woman continued her report. “Police are still investigating what she was doing in West LA yesterday evening alone, and what ties she may have to the Koreatown gang, also captured in this video.”

  “So that’s when you pissed them off,” Nick said as Tattoo Guy tripped over my outstretched foot.

  Horror and guilt churned in my gut, making me nauseous. I knew what came next. I desperately didn’t want Nick to see it, but trying to stop him from watching the rest would only be suspicious. And if the millions of humans in the area were about to discover my secret, there was no point keeping it from Nick.

  “But the djinn’s possible involvement with the gang is not the alarming part,” the newswoman continued as a sudden bright flash filled the grainy video. In the flaring light, my shape fell to her knees before the light intensified, blinding the camera. When the light faded, I had disappeared from the train car. “As you can see, the djinn disappeared directly from the train car. The bright light in the video indicates very powerful magic. Police believe this display of illegal magic means the djinn’s slave cuffs have malfunctioned and no longer keep her magic safely contained.”

  The grainy video vanished, showing the news anchor again. “Having murdered her master, the djinn was already high priority for local law enforcement. After this use of illegal magic, she is now considered armed and dangerous. If you see her, please call or text the number on your screen. Do not engage with her. Police are increasing patrols and using all available personnel to hunt down the escaped djinn before anyone else gets hurt.”

  The screen went black. Nick sat frozen in the chair, still staring at the laptop. Silent tension hung in the room like a dark cloud, ominous and foreboding.