“It’s because I can’t trust my judgment with you,” he muttered.
Her eyes narrowed. “And what does that mean?”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t deal well with shades of grey. You’re human and demon, a djinni, with the potential to be and do anything. I find such ambiguity difficult.”
“So you reduced me to pure evil, demon spawn.”
“That was wrong. I…I have a history with demons. Then, when I saw you, I wanted you. I resented my response, especially when you didn’t seem affected—at first.”
“Excuse me?” She stared at him.
“I want you.” Muscles tightened along his jaw. “I don’t know you or the choices you’ll make in your life, but the violet flame of your spirit calls to me. I want to be so deep inside you that I forget where I end and you begin. I said I wanted to make you burn, but I’m the one burning up.”
Chapter Four
“I don’t believe you.” Niki put a hand against Hugh’s chest and pushed. “How can you want someone you don’t trust?”
“You tell me.” Unmoved, he turned her challenge back on her. “You kissed me like a lover coming home, when the truth was I was an intruder in your ivory tower.”
“You demanded that kiss,” she said fiercely. “You didn’t ask. You didn’t care what it would do to me.”
“What did it do to you?” The back of his fingers brushed her face.
She steeled herself against the rare tenderness of the gesture.
There was no such tenderness in his eyes or the stern line of his mouth. It seemed he demanded everything of her, but he gave nothing of himself; only the grudging admission of a desire he resented. Now suddenly he’d decided to coax her to share her feelings, her hopes and fears.
“You are stupid.” She was suddenly and ridiculously near to tears. “You want me to help find Farhoud, but now that I’m trying, you’re getting in the way.”
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
She’d always thought blue eyes cold, but Hugh’s were a lose-your-mind shade of indigo.
“I won’t.” She forced her gaze away from his before he read the lie. Her breath shuddered. Concentrate on Farhoud.
“Solomon bound us djinn with a powerful magic bedded in the energy of the earth and sea. Anything less and we’d have torn free. When Farhoud’s wish broke the curse at least a part of that power must have wrapped around him and me. His gift to me created a tie I hadn’t considered. Not gratitude, but the reality that he broke the curse that bound me. The two of us are tied together by the winding up of the spell. I can’t reach him through the cloud of dark magic, but if I can find a shard of my bottle, the remnants of Solomon’s power might be enough to pierce the darkness.”
That was half the truth. She closed her mind to what else she might have to do. Every encounter with dark magic meant increasing agony. But then, the only way she’d found to avoid pain was to close herself off from life.
She stared out across Isfahan. She had to accept that the serene retreat of her prison bottle was gone forever. This was her new reality: a dirty roof with rust eating at its edges, truck engines growling in the streets below, harsh shrieks of brakes and voices, and an angel, his emotions buffeting her more strongly than the swirling desert wind; distrust, desire, reluctant concern.
Oxford. She clung to the thought of sanctuary. There is always Oxford, scholarship, my tower room. Solitude, peace—guilt.
She couldn’t find peace till she’d found Farhoud.
“It ought to be easy to find a shard of my bottle. Judging by the state of the shop, its keeper never sweeps the floors.
“I’ll accompany you.”
“No need.”
For answer, he whisked them both into the shop and folded his arms, indicating with the lift of an eyebrow that the search among the dirt and debris was all hers.
Thank you so much. She skirted a battered, brass-bound trunk and followed one of the winding trails amid the junk to the corner where Farhoud had freed her. The floor was even dirtier than she remembered. She could see their footprints in the dust. There was the drag of his left foot and then the tip of his crutch. God, how did I not see his lameness?
She crouched and tipped old chipped bowls this way and that, moving them aside with a sweep of her arm when she found nothing. She sneezed and bumped her arm on a low shelf.
“It can’t have all disappeared.” She rubbed her bruised elbow.
But what if that was exactly how Solomon’s curse worked? When it ended, everything vanished.
No! Centuries of imprisonment and slavery can’t vanish without a mark.
Except that they did, all the time. No one wanted to remember suffering. Pity and guilt were too uncomfortable. She hadn’t even seen Farhoud’s pain.
She pushed a footstool aside. “There has to be something to tie Farhoud and me to the breaking of Solomon’s curse.”
A shuffling sound came from the inner room, punctuated by the rattle of the bead curtain.
“Salam. Peace and health.” The shopkeeper blinked in the gloom of his shop, attempting to focus on not one but two customers. He wore slippers and had pushed his glasses absent-mindedly to the top of his head. His clothes were clean, though, and his grey hair neatly trimmed. “May I help you?”
She saw Hugh’s infinitesimal shrug. This was her expedition; she should answer.
“I was looking at your pots,” she said, a touch too loud, her anger with herself, the situation and with Hugh leaking through. She didn’t like how he stood and watched her. She couldn’t guess what he was thinking and she resented her awareness of him.
“Of course, madam.” The shopkeeper looked bemusedly in her direction then around at his junk collection. “I think there are some better examples…” But he clearly couldn’t remember where.
Niki used his distraction to study the first level of shelving—and drew a blank.
“Ah, here we are. Pots. No, urns. I think…”
She ignored the shopkeeper and turned her attention to the other objects near the pots. The phonograph held no slivers of purple glass. Nor did the footstool. She pushed up the sleeve of her sweater and investigated the inner hollow of a rolled up carpet.
The tips of her fingers touched a cool, smooth surface and tingled.
“Thank God.” She withdrew her hand with the stopper of her bottle held securely in her palm.
Belatedly, Hugh took up his responsibility to distract the shopkeeper.
“Actually, we’re not interested in pots.” He spoke in English with a strong American accent. “We’re after something unique.”
Clever, she admitted. He told the absolute truth, but sounded like a tourist.
“Ah.” The shopkeeper dropped his glasses to his nose. He still looked helpless. But it became clear he understood and spoke English. An educated man. He answered Hugh in his language. “Perhaps you would care to look around?”
“Amin.” An imperious voice called from the doorway, and for a moment the newcomer blocked the light from the street. Then she stepped fully inside and her features became visible.
She was lovely, her appearance carefully preserved and presented, so that only the eyes and the wrinkling skin on the backs of her hands gave away her age. She wore a chador, but the glimpses of clothing beneath it, as well as the shoes she wore, hinted at luxury. The high heeled shoes were alligator leather.
“Malih.” Pleasure colored the shopkeeper’s greeting. “It has been too long.”
“Three weeks.” Her laughter was appealingly husky. It stroked the senses in the same manner that her heavy perfume wound through the shop.
“You’ll have time for coffee?”
But although Amin had forgotten his customers, Malih hadn’t. She smiled at Hugh and said in Farsi. “I am interrupting.”
He blinked, giving a convincing impression of incomprehension, and glanced at Niki. He was the picture of a confused tourist.
She sighed and pushed the glass s
topper into her jeans pocket before rising from the shadows of the corner. She spoke in Farsi. “Good morning. Don’t let us disturb your plans. We’ll just look around and call you if we find anything to buy.”
Although, in truth, she planned to vanish as soon as they turned their backs. She had the glass stopper. There was nothing more in the shop.
“I wish you good fortune,” Malih said to her. “That you find a memento of your visit to Isfahan?” The rising note made it a question. The shop didn’t look capable of producing a desirable memento.
Niki simply nodded acknowledgement of the politeness. She’d encountered women such as Malih before: courtesans, dependent on their looks and manipulating the world with their calculated appeal. It seemed Malih was a successful one, perhaps retired. The training showed in every graceful movement. Certainly, she’d hooked Amin.
“Forgive me,” he said in English. “Malih is an old friend. But that is no excuse for discourtesy. Please, if I may help…”
“We’ll let you know,” Hugh said.
Amin nodded, smiled and ushered Malih through to the inner room.
A shiver rippled over Niki’s skin as she watched them vanish. The British had an apt phrase to describe the sensation: a goose had walked over her grave. The real issue, she knew, was the old sense of recognition. When she’d been trapped in her bottle, cursed to serve humans’ wishes, she’d seen her situation reflected in that of courtesans and harem girls. Like them, she’d waited on others’ wishes.
That slavery ate at the soul, and she’d chosen to withdraw, retreating deep into the shadows. She’d hidden her bottle in this dusty forgotten shop. It choked her now.
“Let’s go.” She wove a path through the junk, heading for the door.
“I assume that means you’ve found a shard?”
“Better than that. I found the stopper.”
“Excellent.” Hugh stretched out his hand and picked up an oversized and moth-eaten fan of peacock feathers.
“You don’t have to buy something,” she said, exasperated.
He exchanged the fan for a tarnished silver trinket box and headed for the back room.
“Honestly.” It was the most foolish negotiation she’d heard. Hugh wanted to overpay and Amin wouldn’t let him. By Malih’s low laughter, it amused her. Finally, the men settled on a price and Hugh strode out to the street.
Niki slid some money under the doorstop where Amin would be sure to find it when he closed up, then she followed Hugh. Like him, she’d seen the worn patches on the shopkeeper’s clean clothes. She would consider the money rent payment for the years her bottle had lain hidden in the shop.
“Well?” Hugh said. They turned a corner, heading away from the bazaar. “What now?”
A boy raced past with a bag of sweets and a girl, vengeance on her face, ran in hot pursuit. “Thief! Ali, you are the worst brother.”
Niki glanced back at the bazaar. With preparations for Nowruz in full swing, it was chaotic, crowded and filled with over-excited children. They ran everywhere, with adults shouting threats and warnings as their high spirits endangered passersby and stalls.
“You said two street kids were kidnapped and killed. How are you protecting them?” Her gesture encompassed the whole city and its inhabitants.
“I’m not.”
“What?” She looked for flying pigs. They’d have been more believable than Hugh’s statement. “I don’t believe it. They could use you to illustrate over-protective in the dictionary.”
“Funny. Even angels have limits. And in this case, the city authorities are alert and active. The Chief of Police and the mullahs have organized the children’s protection. Zeke’s keeping an eye on them—it seemed fitting since human’s chose him as patron of police. Sometimes not interfering lets the humans step up and develop their courage and moral strength. The kids have safe places to sleep at a couple of local schools and everyone is keeping an eye on them. I think that vigilance is why Farhoud was kidnapped.”
“Because no one cared about him.” Her included. She dealt with her sense of shame by becoming severely practical. “I have the stopper from the bottle. Now we leave.” She seized Hugh’s hand and whisked them back to her study in Oxford. It never occurred to her to leave him in the bazaar.
The book-lined stone walls of her study shimmered before locking into place.
“You’re out of practice,” he said.
What should have a been a near-instantaneous translocation had juddered over the deep waters of the western Mediterranean. But she resented his amused condescension. “You weigh too much.”
“Pure muscle.”
“Pl-ease.”
He grinned, then laughed. Power and generosity radiated from him. He was an immense, amused, totally confident Viking warrior. And yet, beneath the vitality she saw a tiredness of spirit that his usual composure hid. His own laughter surprised him.
Forever the protector, never the cherished. It was a revelation for her that someone who cared so much could be lonely.
Impulsively, she stroked his face with its hard line of cheekbone under stubbled skin. She knew the exhaustion of isolation, when there was no one with whom to share laughter or tears, no one to hold you through the dark nights. She hadn’t thought an angel could feel loneliness.
He froze beneath her hand till she ended the caress.
“I’m sorry.” Belatedly she recognized her intrusion. She hid her hand behind her back, still able to feel the rough tingle of his golden stubble. “I shouldn’t have…”
“Reached out? Shattered haloes, Niki. Don’t be so scared to take what you want from life, to share your emotions.”
“Like you share yours?” she challenged.
“Anger, passion, the need for love.” His mouth dented at the corners in the beginnings of a wry smile. “Okay, so I don’t like admitting the last one. Perhaps I’m as guilty as you in wanting to believe I’m self-sufficient. None of us are.” The last sentence was a low-voiced invitation. He traced the curl of her ear, running his hand down and curving to cup her throat. His thumb nestled in the hollow there, measuring the beat of her pulse. “Niki?”
She was scared to move forward and unable to step back.
“A kiss would be too easy.” He bent and picked her up.
Before she had time to panic, she found herself in his lap. It wasn’t seduction. It was far more dangerous: comfort and kinship. She breathed in his scent, while the strength of his arms cradled her.
The fire in the hearth crackled into flame at a whisper of magic. It and their quiet breathing were the sole sounds in the room.
She turned her face into the curve of his shoulder and slid her hand inside his jacket to touch the cotton shirt warm with his body heat. She flattened her palm over the reassuring beat of his heart and closed her eyes. Muscles, tense for decades, relaxed as she surrendered to the intimacy. The silence let her accept what she’d have otherwise questioned and fought: her need for someone.
And Hugh needs me. Because she asked nothing of him, only shared his experience of loneliness. How lonely it must be to care for everyone, to pour out your love and have it ignored, rejected. She tugged his arm tighter around her. “I couldn’t be a guardian.”
“Is it the uniform?”
The teasing question surprised a huff of laughter from her. “What uniform? A leather jacket and jeans?”
“There are wings.”
“Where?” She slid a hand under his jacket, between his back and the armchair, tracing his shoulder blade.
“Thereabouts.” He rubbed his face against her hair in approval of the caress.
The gesture was piercingly sweet. Too much for her lonely heart. “I have to look for Farhoud.”
“Yes.” Hugh’s chest expanded and contracted in a deep sigh. He dropped his hand to her hip. “Can’t you do that here?”
To stay in his arms? She wriggled the stopper out of her jeans pocket. It lay in her palm, as light as an empty, painted eggshell. The fireligh
t called odd colors from the glass, not just purple shades, but bronzes and greens, reds and storm-cloud blues. A prison door ought to look more substantial. She closed her fingers round it.
“I’ll try.”
Chapter Five
Usually, Niki worked her magic alone. She’d structured her life carefully to keep people and their demands at a distance. She asked nothing of them and she gave nothing of herself. But here she was in Hugh’s arms, on his lap, and she didn’t want to leave.
“It’s not really magic,” she said to him. “Not yet. First, I must find if I can sense Farhoud’s spirit like a shadow in Solomon’s old spell. If I can, then I’ll see if the power of the broken curse is sufficient to sustain a tie between Farhoud and me that I can follow even through dark magic. So, since it’s not magic, your angelic nature won’t interfere with it.” She concentrated on the stopper of the glass bottle that had been her prison.
The frayed power of the broken curse lingered around the stopper like anemone tentacles, searching, luring, beautiful and greedy. She brushed them cautiously aside. Later, she might want their power. For now, they were too reminiscent of being trapped inside the curse.
Her head buzzed as she intensified her focus, trying to reach for the memory of Farhoud in the glass. Sustained concentration was an everyday part of her scholarship, but this went beyond concentration, being a cross between meditation and dissection. She had to see clearly and yet sink beneath sight into the world of spirit and power.
She gripped Hugh’s wrist with her free hand and threw her entire consciousness at the stopper.
It blazed across her spirit senses in the manner of a comet, exploding with thundering impact. Her head arched back in an extremity of agony and she shifted unconsciously to incorporeal form.
The assault was too much for her solitary soul. Every human who’d wished on her bottle now burned against her spirit. They were all there. Every memory. Every demand. Every desire—healthy and hateful.
God, this is what I ran from.
Release the Djinni Page 4
