The pain had brought her from Farhoud’s house to the bustling bazaar.
Everywhere were preparations for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year with its beginning in spring. Temporary stalls crowded one another, competing to sell candles, mirrors, goldfish, dried fruit and nuts, jujubes and poetry books, all the symbols and gifts by which people celebrated and shared the new year. There were new clothes and cleaning supplies to start the year off right. And then there were the fireworks. Traders shouted that their dangerous firecrackers were louder, brighter, fiercer. Chahar-Shanbe Souri, the Fire Festival on the Wednesday night before Nowruz, would be alive with flames and violence.
But the excited, noisy crowd wasn’t enough to hide the deep tainted stench that ran beneath the competing scents of food and spices, flowers and dirt. It twisted around Niki’s feet and coiled up to her knees, an oily, invisible smoke. She followed it around the corner of a spice stall. Cloves and pepper burst upon her straining senses.
“Atchoo.” And more vigorously. “For hell’s sake. A-tishoo!” She rubbed her nose and slipped out of the bazaar into a narrow alley. Cat piss and rotting vegetables replaced the cooking spices. She inhaled carefully, checking that she hadn’t lost the trail of dark magic.
Unbroken by people passing or the pale sunshine of late winter, the trail lay thick and noxious. Something scuttled in the garbage.
Niki hurried. The brick walls on either side were cold and damp. She avoided an ooze on the ground and skipped over a makeshift drain.
The alley opened abruptly to a busy street. A brisk wind snatched away the stink of dark magic, fusing it into the cloud of exhaust smoke and pollution. Engines, brakes and shouted abuse gave the soundtrack of traffic chaos.
“Oh lord.” She’d lost Farhoud. She slumped against a lamp post as the pain of dark magic leached from her bones and muscles. In this chaos of road rage, one stream of violence was lost.
“Out of my way, whore.” A man pushed rudely past her, his basket of tea tins knocking against her hip.
“What is wrong with people?” she muttered as she moved aside. “That hurt.” A couple of passing cars beeped, she suspected, at her. “They’re all bloody rude.”
“You’d attract less attention if you adhered to the local costume.” The angel appeared. His fairness and height, not to mention the expensive black leather jacket he wore, showed little adherence to his own advice about fitting in. “At least wear a headscarf.”
“Are you following me?”
He handed her a scarf.
White with a blue fringe, she wrapped it casually over her hair, letting the ends dangle. “As if clothing indicates one’s moral status.” The grumble didn’t quite squelch the secret quiver below her belly button. He looked good, all fierce controlled power. But she knew how he looked when that discipline broke, when he was simply a man wanting a woman, wanting her.
Like I want him. It was dangerous, beyond foolish, to invite such intimacy, but his strength melted her from the inside out. The intense, immediate desire was disconcerting. She tugged the scarf to conceal her expression.
“People care about such things, scarves, conformity.” He thrust his hands into his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels, dismissing people and their notions of propriety. “I didn’t expect you to look for Farhoud.”
No mention of the desire humming between them—or the fact he’d run from it. Did it disgust him, that he could be aroused by a djinni? The thought hurt. “Didn’t you? So why did you track me to Oxford? Did you need someone to shout at?”
His head jerked, jaw set. “I told you. I was frustrated that no one cared. Do you know his dad doesn’t even know Farhoud’s missing?”
She dragged her mind from the personal to the little boy who was lost. She thought of the neglected house and desk piled high with the signs of dedicated scholarship. How could a man not miss his own son?
The angel shifted his weight, all male impatience. He had a need for action and nothing to act on. A thwarted angel guardian was a dangerous being. His tone was too controlled when he said. “The kidnapper left a note, signing it with the name of Farhoud’s aunt, his dead mother’s sister. ‘As agreed, I’m taking Farhoud out to the family village for a week. Mother hasn’t seen him for over a year.’ Bashir, Farhoud’s father, believed it. He tends to forget arrangements. The demands of scholarship absorb his time and attention.”
More cars beeped and a young man leaned out a window to shout abuse at Niki. According to the passing stranger—who needed a shave—bad things happened to women who talked with Americans.
“American? I think you look more like a Viking.”
“You’re out of date,” he said. “And my name’s Hugh.”
Her head jerked and the headscarf slid to her shoulders. She hitched it back up, glad of the movement to hide her surprise. He’d given her his name. Such a small thing. It didn’t necessarily mean he trusted her or invited friendship.
Not that she wanted to risk friendship or anything else. He’d reminded her body of passion, but her mind knew the dangers of intimacy. She retreated to their common ground: Farhoud. “I tracked the dark magic through the bazaar to here, but all this traffic and tempers…it shouldn’t affect the trail, but it has.”
“I expect the dark mage had a car waiting.” Hugh put out a hand and a flick of magic spun a car a crucial inch, preventing an accident. The old woman who’d caused the dramatic swerve by stepping out into the street continued her hobbling progress. Safe on the pavement, she gave Niki the evil eye.
“Now what?” Niki exclaimed.
“Me, and your tight jeans. They suspect the worst.”
She tipped her chin disdainfully. Humans could take their opinions and choke on them. The jeans felt good. Practical, attractive. She liked the way her legs looked in them. They made her feel modern.
Strange how much she’d changed in just a few hours. It had been easy enough to keep up with the world even in her prison bottle. Technologies like radio and internet travelled through it, allowing her to follow academic advances. But she, herself, hadn’t wanted to change. Now, she was discovering advantages in this world. Simple things like choice.
She used a touch of magic to take some of the bulk out of her sweater so it caressed rather than hid her curves. Take that, self-righteous humans.
Belatedly, she realized Hugh might think she was trying to entice him. She hurried into speech. “You might be right about the car. It would be difficult to drive one through the narrow streets around Farhoud’s house and the back of the bazaar, and even if you could, it would be remembered. But if I’ve lost the trail—”
“I didn’t expect you could help.”
She glared at him.
“Why would you bother?” he continued. “You don’t care what happens to Farhoud.”
“As you pointed out, I owe the boy my freedom.”
“Yes, that interests me. You said you didn’t want your freedom, that you preferred your prison bottle.”
“I had my life well-organized.” She hated that he’d provoked her into defending herself and her choices, especially now that she was re-evaluating those decisions. “If Farhoud hadn’t interfered, I wouldn’t be standing here aching.”
“You’re hurt?” Hugh straightened, his lazy slouch vanishing to reveal the intensity she’d first encountered. He gripped her elbow.
She pulled free. “It’s the backwash of dark magic. I follow the wrongness of it and I feel it in me. With the trail gone, the pain is fading.”
“I didn’t know it hurt you.” He shoved his hands back in his pockets.
“No. You thought I was a demon. But I’m not. Nor am I a dark mage. I sense dark magic, but I don’t get my kicks torturing and killing. It hurts because the pain resonates. The suffering that gives my father amusement is agony to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What, that I’m not a demon?”
His mouth compressed.
“Forget it.” She dismissed him
and her own anger. Neither changed her father’s demon nature, her heritage. “It was my decision to try and track Farhoud via the dark magic hiding him from you. Since I’ve lost the trail, I’ll have to try something else.” The knowledge of what that would be thinned her voice.
“Will it hurt you?”
“Does that matter if I can find Farhoud?”
He stared at her for a long moment, his expression grim. “It matters.”
Chapter Three
“Before you try anything else, I want to know what you intend,” Hugh said. “Farhoud is my responsibility.”
Dictatorial, mistrustful angel. Niki’s mouth thinned. “You involved me in this. Now you’re reaping the whirlwind.” She walked away.
“That’s what it feels like.” He took three long steps and caught her hand. “I don’t want you hurting yourself.”
Two men exiting a tea shop stopped to eye his foreign appearance and Niki’s captured hand. Their swift assessment took in her tight jeans and discounted them. Eyes on her strained expression, they moved forward.
“Is the American bothering you, miss?”
They were burly porters from the bazaar, significantly shorter than Hugh, but broad and powerful.
“I mean her no harm or disrespect.” He released her hand. “I forgot that different customs apply in Iran. I thank you for your concern.”
Their eyes bulged at his fluent Farsi, but the older one kept to the issue. “Miss, it is for you to say. We could hold him here while you go home.”
She inhaled deeply, finding control. “Thank you.” She smiled. “But he’s harmless.”
All three looked skeptical at that statement.
She met Hugh’s eyes. “Good-bye.” She put a sashay in her walk, liking the idea of him tethered by human concern and hoping it would make him doubt the emotion she’d shown. She feared she’d betrayed the piercing sweetness of someone caring whether she hurt—not that she believed him. Angels had to care for everyone. It was impersonal. A duty.
When she glanced back, he was nodding to the two porters before striding in the other direction. One, two, three steps...He reappeared beside Niki on the next street.
“Why did you look like that, as if I’d hurt you?”
“I didn’t.” She kept walking.
“Liar.”
“You want the truth?” She whirled to face him. “I don’t trust you. Yesterday, you broke into my home. You tried to use passion to punish me.”
“I kissed you and you responded.”
“I know,” she said angrily. “You wanted me out of my ivory tower and looking for Farhoud. Well, I am. Congratulations.”
He shifted, trapping her between a wall and his body, not quite touching. “Are you scared I’ll try to kiss you again. I won’t—it wasn’t one of my better impulses.”
She looked at his chin and gave him the truth. “I don’t want you pretending to care what happens to me.”
His head jerked, as if she’d delivered a punch.
“Pretending to care?” He repeated her words in a strange voice. “I’m not pretending, Niki. I don’t want to care what happens to an ivory tower cop-out, but that’s not all you are, is it? You gave yourself away, yesterday.”
“I didn’t give anything.”
“I took, you’re saying? Yes. I have a filthy temper. But it was a revelation. You tasted of woman and hunger.”
Embarrassment flooded her. “And you were like a pillaging Viking.”
“Taking what I wanted? Be honest. That flash fire of desire was mutual.”
She didn’t want to share that degree of honesty and wriggled under his arm to freedom.
He let her. “Where are you going?”
“I found Farhoud’s house through his school records.”
“You could have asked me for the address.”
“You’re kidding. When? One microsecond between your anger and seduction?”
When he didn’t immediately answer, she glanced up and saw the color deepen over his cheekbones. Good. He deserved to feel embarrassment or perhaps it was simply chagrin at his loss of control.
She walked faster, trying to outpace her body’s instinctive response to his closeness. He simply lengthened his stride, and the brush of his leather sleeve against the soft wool of her sweater sent a secret shiver over her skin.
Unobtrusively, she put out a hand to touch the rough brick of the shops they passed. It grounded her, reminding her of life’s harshness. “Farhoud’s house held nothing I could use to connect with him through the cloud of dark magic. And since its trail has petered out, my only chance of finding him is a stronger focus object.”
“Farhoud is my charge. I have a strong bond to him and I can’t find him. That damned dark magic obscures everything. How do you expect to see through it—No!” Hugh gripped her arm and whisked them both up from the street and onto the iron roof of the bazaar.
Niki slipped on the sloping roof and he hauled her upright. She swore. “What in the five fathoms of damnation do you think you’re doing?”
“No one ever bothers to look up, and since you don’t seem willing to exercise basic precautions and wink out of humans’ sight and hearing…”
“Never.”
Her vehemence stopped him mid-sentence, derailing his outrage. “Why not?”
“It’s horrible, as if I don’t exist. In that state, I don’t cast a shadow and I can’t see my reflection in water or glass. I’m a ghost.” She looked away from him, across the rooftops in their dilapidated, dusty glory. The lurking fear was the price she paid for her precious detachment. If no one remembers you, do you cease to exist?
His hand tightened on her arm, wrenching her round to face him. “You’re too troublesome to be a ghost. Vividly alive even if you’d like to deny your power and passion.” His hold relaxed, becoming a caressing movement of his hand up and down her upper arm. “In my incorporeal senses I can see your life force. It’s a violet flame, such controlled intensity. If I had looked yesterday, I’d have seen it burning at the barriers of self-discipline, passion waiting to explode.”
His energy surged, pushing against her incorporeal senses—those strange knowings that pierced the physical world and entered the spiritual. His energy wanted the fire in her.
She closed her eyes, her awareness spiraling inward to the flames licking at her spirit. They pulsed with the rhythm of sexual love. She swayed, incredibly tempted to relax her guard and surrender. If she let him, he would—
Hurt her.
This need was just a trick of her loneliness. She strengthened the cage around her spirit, rebuffing Hugh and protecting herself.
“Scared?” he murmured.
She opened her eyes. “Taunts are for teenagers. I choose to remain alone.”
He touched her mouth with his thumb, smoothing over the satin of her lips.
She only just stopped herself from gasping.
“Unlike you, I shift frequently between corporeal and spirit states. It’s part of being a guardian. In body, I can interact with humans. In spirit form, I set things in motion or intervene when disaster threatens. There is pleasure and truth in both states.” He placed his hand at her waist. “Enjoyment in accepting everything life offers.”
“There is always a price,” she said.
“God is good. The joy outweighs the sorrow.”
“Perhaps.”
He ran his hands up her back to cup her shoulder blades through the thick sweater. “According to the Guardian Council I intervene too often in people’s lives. By training and logic I understand the concept of free will, but I can’t stand aside while stupidity, evil and fear ruin people’s lives.”
He inhaled and the push of his chest brought her to sudden awareness of her hands flattened against his shirt beneath his open leather jacket. She flinched at her self-betrayal. She’d reached out to him, and she couldn’t force herself to withdraw, not when he held her so carefully.
“I brought you into this situation,” he
said. “I challenged and insulted you because I failed to protect Farhoud. I was wrong. I put you in danger. Without me, you wouldn’t have shadows under your eyes and pain thinning your mouth from following dark magic.”
“Isn’t any price worth paying if I find Farhoud?”
“Not if it means using dark magic,” he said definitely. “The end doesn’t justify the means.”
“Pardon?” She snatched her hands back.
“I won’t have you using dark magic to find Farhoud.”
Her mouth dropped open, then closed in a tight, bitter smile. “You really do think I’m demon spawn. Well, what does that make you? You want me, even knowing what I am.”
“I don’t think you’re demon spawn. I think you’ve retreated so far from life that you might use dark magic because your scholar’s mind says it’s effective.”
“Effective? Fed by suffering and death, and you think I’d consider it effective?”
“I can’t read your heart,” he said quietly. “It is hidden from me. Djinn are equal in powers to angels, after all.”
“Good. Because my heart is my business.” She folded her arms. “But for your information, I would never torture someone to gain power. You really are holier than thou, thinking that you are sole determiner of means versus ends. I followed the trail of dark magic from Farhoud’s house using my own pain, the ache evil puts in my bones as it tries to twist my muscles against me. My pain, not someone else’s suffering.”
He defended himself. “You followed a trail that you lost. Why shouldn’t I think a djinni scholar might see an inhuman logic in using dark magic to track dark magic?”
“I would never use blood, pain or death. Dark magic is power and an excuse to indulge in torture. Not even to find Farhoud would I wade in that sea.”
“I’m sorry.” He pushed a hand through his fair hair.
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing you think matters to me.” Except that it did. She’d felt the incorporeal touch of his energy, had wanted to surrender to it, and all the time he still thought she might use dark magic.
Release the Djinni Page 3
