Stone Chameleon (Ironhill Jinn #1)

by Jocelyn Adams

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Did you hear that?” I gripped his arm, wrestling with my jinn magic to keep it at bay. “Is there a lake nearby?” Had the creature followed us from the city?

  “A pond.” He pointed to the far side of the horse enclosure. “There. One of the goats probably went in for a swim. They do that when it’s hot out.”

  Dammit. The whole sorry affair had made me paranoid. “I can’t believe you chose to contact me in the middle of this bloody serial killer business. Wait, did you say goats?”

  “Chickens, too. I’ll introduce you later if you like, though I might have to carry you with those shoes you wore.” The wolfish glint in his dark eyes let me know just how much he’d have enjoyed that. “And I chose now, because I won’t let you to go through this alone. You need your people, and we need you.”

  The dapper Mr. Bassili, owner of half the city, kept chickens?

  My mind wouldn’t process the last of what he said, so I concentrated on the first. “You’ll do no such thing. And what did you expect, telling me to wear something nice, for me to show up in work boots?” I sped through the door he held open for me, itching to be inside and out of the open.

  “I didn’t think you’d listen, though I’m glad you did. You look positively stunning with your dark hair draped down your bare upper back.”

  An urge to cover myself under the weight of his stare drove me to cross my arms again. Had cotton always been so thin?

  His arms spread wide to encompass the open-concept room dotted with country-style cloth sofas and a few wooden chairs that appeared to be hand-made. A well-equipped kitchen took up the entire right side of the room, with stainless steel appliances and soapstone countertops. “Pity, the assassins must have fled. Though, I don’t blame them. You are quite intimidating.”

  I bristled at his amused tone. “You can accuse me of being many things, Mr. Bassili, but I don’t count intimidating among them.”

  That laugh again. “Perhaps you only have that effect on me.”

  I turned away to hide my smile and dropped my purse on a small table that held a cordless phone. Silly, infernal facial expressions. The very thought that I, lowly pest exterminator Lou Hudson, intimidated the mighty Amun Bassili, was so absurd it was laughable.

  “So, now I know that when I make you angry, you call me by my surname. I believe I heard you use my first name once tonight, so I suppose there’s hope we won’t always be so formal.”

  “Don’t hold your breath for that one,” I said to the wall where several photos of Amun posing with famous humans, elves, and vampires hung in black frames. “You said there are more of…us.” It sounded odd to include myself with the jinn out loud. The whole subject constricted my throat after Mum having drilled secrecy into my head every day since I’d been born. “How many others survived?”

  “In our pod, there are only six. Seven now, including you.”

  “Pod?”

  “Like the fae, jinn are happier living in groups, though with times as they are, we’re forced to keep our numbers small and live separately so our collective power doesn’t draw notice if we’re particularly happy or upset. Our colonies are called pods. There’s another group in the south that’s larger, around twenty at last count, and three more overseas that I know of. One in Australia, one in Russia, and the last in the United Kingdom, all larger than we are, though they’re reluctant to divulge their exact numbers. Not that I blame them.”

  My lips parted as I whirled to face him. “So many. I expected you to say one or two, but there are hundreds? How have the powers of the realms not discovered you after all this time?”

  “As a race, we adapted, as we always have. We’re of the earth, built to withstand even the mightiest of storms.” He held up his hand when my mouth opened to unload my next inquiry. “I need to check on our supper before we’re left gnawing on burnt bones.”

  Choking on questions, I watched him enter the kitchen at the far end and pull the oven door open. What an unexpected turn of events. Perhaps Amun had been right, and I’d been wrong. Perhaps he’d come to me at the perfect time, when I’d been desperate for a sympathetic ear during the darkest days of my adult life.

  I walked the perimeter of the room, taking in the rest of the photos on the walls without really seeing them. Collective power? Did that mean jinn living in close proximity could share their energy? To what end? The magic I possessed had enough potential to be deadly on its own as my recent earthquake attested to. Combined with others, it would be devastating.

  “Can I offer you a drink?” Amun set a roasting pan on the counter.

  I stopped and frowned at his amused face. “Because last time you offered me a drink it went so well.”

  Chuckling, he forked the perfectly golden brown chicken onto a plate and went to work making gravy on the stove with the drippings. “Technically, it wasn’t me who offered the drink, and I apologized for that.”

  “You could have just asked me if I was jinn, you know.” It didn’t come out as petulant as I would have liked.

  “Would you really have told me?” His one raised eyebrow challenged me to deny it.

  “Fine, I concede. I wouldn’t have told you a bloody thing. Ever.” A mutinous grin twitched my lips as I rested my hip against the back of the plaid sofa. “Is Amun your given name? I had mine erased, though clearly not well enough if you found it.”

  “My full name is Ramun, and I, too, had mine permanently removed from all record by a warlock. I shortened it to Amun as it’s actually an Egyptian name. Since my father was born there, I have a story to go along with it if anyone asks.”

  I had a sudden need to know his age, but how to ask politely? “How old were you during the war?”

  “I was eleven.”

  Really? I squinted at his profile, but he didn’t look like a man in his mid-forties. “That can’t be right.”

  “We age slowly, Baylou. I’m closer to my mid-twenties than my mid-forties when compared to humans. Our sexual maturities differ, too. You’re just coming into the period when the jinn would consider you a full-grown woman.”

  “You’re joking.” I was thirty-four years old. Did that make me a jinn teenager of sorts?

  He shook his head. That would explain why dating held little interest for me in the past, and why when I found someone I liked, the heavy petting had left me wanting and wondering what all the fuss was about. It also might have been the reason I’d been feeling increasingly lonely and frisky over the last year or so. Apparently, I’d just hit jinn puberty.

  “Elias, the boy who delivered me the flowers, is he one of your pod?”

  “Our pod, and yes.”

  “How can that be when he only appears to be a teenager?”

  “Seventeen, to be precise.” His jaw tensed, and his voice fell into sadness. “One of the survivors from my original pod took a human girlfriend, who became pregnant with his child by accident. Shortly after the birth, it became apparent the child had inherited a jinn spirit when the plant in his mother’s hospital room grew into a lush jungle of fragrant flowers.

  “To protect our people’s secret, Francis snatched the child and fled back to the pod with him. In his haste to flee, he lost control of the car near the house where we’d first settled. The babe survived, but he didn’t. The rest of us raised Elias as best as we could, and I’m now his legal guardian.”

  My heart clenched. “Such a sad beginning, but he seems to be growing into a fine young man. I feel protective of him. Can you explain that, because I don’t understand it?”

  “Children are precious to us, stirring attachments that go beyond anything human beings can understand. I told you we’re designed to survive, and part of that is our inborn need to protect our young. Your natural instincts are beginning to surface despite your upbringing outside of our society.” His smile held a heavy dose of pride, inducing the same in me.

  So much I wanted to know and so little time. “You must remember what it was like to live
in a large pod. Can you tell me? Do you miss it?”

  He must have found something amusing about my questions, because he chuckled as he mashed the potatoes. “It was wonderful and safe. When I was a boy, there were almost a hundred in my pod, and we were one of the smaller ones in the area. We didn’t have separate bedrooms, but large sleeping rooms that held about thirty each where we slept in big groups. There were large dining rooms where we all ate together. The concept of family extended far beyond bloodlines, bonded by unwavering loyalty.” His amusement faded as he dumped the vegetables into a bowl. “Yes, I miss it, more than I can possibly express.”

  It all seemed foreign to me, but not strange, somehow. “It sounds like a good life.”

  “It was. An amazing life. And once, a safe life.”

  Family. I thought I’d lost the only one I’d ever have, but could these people be what I longed for in my life? “What really happened to the jinn, Amun? I know what I can do, but I’ve never used it intentionally for harm. From what I know of the fae and their love of torture, I don’t know how we were condemned and not them, or the vampire nation.”

  His long-suffering sigh suggested he didn’t like what he was about to tell me. “Most of us aren’t as even-tempered as you, Baylou. Have you ever lost control of your emotions?”

  “Only once, at my mother. I was only seven.” It wasn’t the first time I’d disappointed her, nor the last.

  His sympathetic nod made me look away. “What happened?”

  “The earth split open with my anger, leaving a deep crevice that stretched half a mile. The authorities thought an earthquake had caused it. Our picnic basket fell in, and Mum almost went with it, all because she wouldn’t let me touch the stone that called to me from under the soil in case someone saw me. She could have died. I’ve never let myself feel that deeply again.”

  “Now, imagine an entire pod attacked for one reason or another, or they lose a beloved member of their society to foul play. Especially if it’s a child.”

  I didn’t want to know and did all the same. “One of the pods unleashed their power, didn’t they?”

  “We’re walking natural disasters waiting for circumstance to pull the trigger. A werelion from southern Australia killed a pregnant wind walker just for the thrill of it and dumped her body on her lover’s doorstep. A pod of more than two hundred jinn, insane with grief, decimated a thousand square miles, houses, people, and all. That was the worst case I know of, but far from the only one.

  “It was grief over lost brothers and sisters that decimated Philadelphia, not the fighting itself. A few of those still in their right minds defended City Hall where they were holed up, which is why that alone survived. Over the years, earth callers have broken their brethren out of prison and robbed corporations of millions using their abilities to manipulate earthen materials. Entire cities have been burned when a flame’s lover left him or died in childbirth. I heard talk of other atrocities when I was quite young, but the records have been expunged so thoroughly I don’t know what else happened for certain.”

  I’d never considered such power, nor such poor control of it. “Was that what caused the fae to declare war on us? Did they have people in Australia, or some other place one of us destroyed? I have to know if my father…” I didn’t have the heart to finish the sentence. I didn’t want my father to be a bad man, always having idolized him as daughters are wont to do.

  “None of us know the entire story. All I know is that some pods sought power like lightning seeks a grounding point. They coveted artifacts the fae possessed and had stolen several of them just before the three most powerful nations pooled their armies and wiped us out. No one event was recorded in the last of the journals that stands out as ‘the one’ that sent the fae over the edge.”

  A million questions caused a train wreck in my head. “You must know more. Did the fae try to get their artifacts back and one of the pods did something unspeakable to them? Did our people murder? Torture them? Tell me this mass genocide wasn’t about the possession of some trinkets.”

  “Nothing the fae possess are merely trinkets, Baylou, but I have to agree that one of ours must have done something so horrible it struck fear into the fearless. Our minds are impervious to their tricks, their glamour. Perhaps that factored into the equation, that the all-knowing, all-controlling fae couldn’t enforce their will. They weren’t even in this realm when our people were at their worst, and it isn’t like they follow human news programs or read our newspapers. Something bad enough happened it scared them into destroying us.”

  From what I knew of the fae, they didn’t enter the human plane lightly. “So we deserved to die?”

  Amun didn’t answer right away. “Some of us deserved it, but most didn’t. We’re mostly a gentle, loving race.” His flexing jaw suggested he had something more to say, so I bit.

  “And?”

  “It takes a strong will to keep power like ours, which comes from nature itself, in check. Extreme circumstances could make any of us explode.”

  I shivered at that revelation. Vampires and fae could be deadly to one or a few people at a time, but jinn could wipe out a whole country in a matter of hours by drowning, burning, ripping up the earth with a tornado, or causing an earthquake so monumental entire cities would disappear into the ground. Although it shouldn’t have shocked me, the notion of combined jinn power scared the living daylights out of me, so I changed the subject. “How did you survive?”

  The pain stirring behind his eyes told of the unimaginable horrors he’d endured. “When word spread about the fae’s declaration of war against us, those with young ones hid them in caverns far to the north, with supplies enough to last a year. Out of the forty of us hidden there, the six of us are all who survived that first year, five from my pod, and one from another.”

  “I’m so sorry, Amun.”

  “Don’t be. Our trials have made me stronger than I ever would have been without them.” While holding a basket in one hand, he loaded freshly baked rolls into it with the other. “We’re almost ready. I just have to check the gravy to see if it’s thick enough.”

  Fighting to overcome the discomfort growing in my chest, I asked the one question I most wanted to know. “Do you know who my father was?”

  Amun’s whisk stopped mid-circle of the pan. “You don’t?”

  “Before Mum went into Mayvern with her illness, she said little, only that he was jinn. I don’t know his name or what he looked like, only that he died three days before I was born.”

  Resuming his work at the stove, Amun’s stare turned inward. “That would make his death on April 3rd during the war. I’ve had my suspicions about who fathered you, but knew nothing for certain. The date of his death might help me narrow it down for you, if the entry made it into one of the diaries I saved.”

  Some of the tightness went out of me at his admission. Perhaps I wanted to like Amun, and knowing he’d kept information about my father from me might have damaged that possibility. “If you can look into it, I’d be grateful.”

  Feeling silly for talking to him from across the room, I moved to one of the wooden stools at the island separating the kitchen from the living room. “I know you have power over the air, if I really did see you turn into a tornado. Due to your sleight of hand with the soda, the events of that night are a little foggy.” I pointed my best stare at him, earning me another mesmerizing smile. “Do the others have talents like yours?”

  “Oh. It hadn’t occurred to me you didn’t know everything about us, given your degree, but with most of our records destroyed, that was silly of me.”

  After pouring the gravy into a stainless steel serving cup, he carved the chicken, staring intently at the knife. “I’m a wind walker. You, on the other hand, are my direct opposite on the metaphysical compass, an earth caller. I didn’t know which element you had an affinity for until the tiles in the main office looked as if they wanted to break free and come to you in the ladies room that night.” He turned to me w
ith obvious interest in his gaze. “I’d love to know what you said to the earth to evoke such a reaction.”

  “A reaction, by the way, that caused enough seismic activity to raise suspicion among the scientific community.” At my glower, he gave a sheepish shrug. “And I didn’t ask it anything. When I evoke my magic, the earth always sings to me.” I stared at him a moment. “Are you saying you’ve never seen that happen before, with the tiles, I mean? There must have been, or maybe still are, others like me?”

  “All jinn talents come in varying degrees. I can call the wind, and become the air itself, as you saw that night. Connor, though he is also of the air, can control all aspects of the weather, but he can’t take the form of our element.” As Amun passed by me holding a platter of sliced meat, he paused. “Are you a chameleon, Baylou?”

  Years of running from that name caused me to cringe before I remembered I was in safe company. Theoretically. “I assume you’re not talking about curly-tailed lizards.”

  Amun deposited the platter on the table and went back to the kitchen, returning with the bowl of mashed potatoes and one of steamed vegetables, silver spoons poking out of each. “Can you take on the form of your element? Become one with the earth, as if it remade you in its image?”

  The words turned sideways in my throat, refusing to come out. It was hard to talk about my oddities, as I accepted I’d never be able to, but it was strangely cathartic as well. “I can transform into any stone I touch. The soil will listen if I speak to it and will usually do what I ask, but I can’t assume that form. I can use seismic vibrations to see shapes and listen across short distances.”

  His whimsical smile sent my heart pitter-pattering. “A stone chameleon. Incredible. I’ve never met an earth caller who was also a chameleon. Earth is the most difficult element to emulate and stone itself even more so.”

  “Are you saying I’m the only earth caller left?”

  “There’s one from our pod who can make plants grow with what little magic he possesses. He’s happy enough working in our gardens, one of the business we own collectively as a pod.”