Stone Chameleon (Ironhill Jinn #1)

by Jocelyn Adams

  With my back to the full-length mirror, I craned my head around to inspect the mark between my shoulder blades. The snake dragon emblem had been burned onto my skin below my nape, raised and sore, aglow with an angry red. For as long as I lived—however short or long a time that might be—I’d bear the brand of Isaac’s ownership. Whatever magic existed in his blood ran through mine unchecked.

  No matter where I went, he could simply stretch out a thought and summon me to his side, or touch me through his metaphysical tether and find me with ease. I snatched my brush and drew it through my hair with harsh strokes to cover the cursed thing.

  Dressed in black jeans and a white and black striped T-shirt, I collected the final sample of the water I’d taken from the stairs and returned to the living room. “Harper will be here any second. We need to go to...” I stopped, realizing I was talking to an empty sofa.

  A clanking noise drew my attention to the kitchen, where Amun moved a fork around a pan on the range. He must have washed, his face and arms clean and pink, as if he’d scrubbed them hard. I wasn’t the only one feeling unclean.

  “Where?” The way he stopped and winced mid-turn, I wondered if he’d felt his mark when his back muscles bunched the way I noticed mine.

  “Why are you cooking?” My brows arched up.

  “You must be starving.” He returned his attention to the frying pan with a comfort that suggested he did it often, not just when he had company for dinner. “I can’t imagine you being fed while you were in that cesspool. Doesn’t seem like a very ‘Isaac’ thing to do.”

  The scent of bacon and toasting bread tantalized my senses. My stomach growled its approval as Benny shuffled out from behind the counter, chattering up at the exotically handsome man in my kitchen. The little guy had issues with strangers in his space, and clearly Amun was no exception to his rule.

  Amun’s shoulders bounced with his chuckles as he glanced down at Benny. “Where did you find this one?”

  “I walked by a pet shop in the mall a couple of years ago and found him bullying the rest of the poor pigs in his enclosure. I decided I had the firm hand he needed, and I was, well, sort of…lonely.” I drew my lower lip between my teeth, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.

  “He’s an interesting character. And there’s no shame in seeking companionship. I just wish it had been me you sought out instead of a rodent.” His wink suggested he joked, but his eyes told the truth. My rejection had hurt him deeper than he’d ever admit.

  “It smells lovely,” I said to change the subject. “The food, I mean. I hadn’t noticed until now, but I am hungry.” I swallowed the guilt stirring in my gullet. “Thank you. Not just for this, but for everything.”

  “You’re welcome.” His smile seemed genuine. “You like your toast dark, right?”

  “Oh, yes, so it makes a nice crunch in my teeth.” I sat on the stool by the counter and spun the sample tube in my hands, watching the particles spin and sink within. “I didn’t mean to be so rude before. I know this situation is at least partly my fault. Or mostly.”

  A pause stretched into discomfort. “I have a terrible habit of saying whatever’s on my mind when something’s bothering me. It was stupid of me to talk about that in the middle of what you’re facing.” Amun claimed two plates from my cupboard, forked slices of crisp bacon onto both and took them to the table, and then went back for the toast and the butter dish.

  I dove into the meal like there’d never be another, my hunger worsening before it got better. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Amun grinning at me, so I took a daintier bite instead of shoving the rest of the Texas toast crust, dripping with strawberry jam, into my mouth as I’d planned.

  “Don’t mind your manners on my account.” The last of his bacon disappeared between his lips, along with a mighty bite of toast. He spoke from an overflowing mouth. “I might seem wefined in the pubwic eye, but while at home, I’m known to stuff my fafe with weckwess abandom.”

  I laughed, breaking the tension in the air. “I guess I don’t know you very well yet, either.” My giggles dwindled. “I used to imagine you sitting at the end of one of those ridiculously long tables all by yourself while wait staff dressed in finery delivered silver platters to you.”

  After swallowing the last of his mouthful, he snapped his napkin out in mock elegance, his face stretched in a snooty expression. “Silly girl. That’s only on the weekends when the president comes to call. Care to see my diamond-encrusted flatware?”

  I threw my napkin at him, sobering with a new thought. “Had you been to the hive before last night?”

  His smile faded. “No, why do you ask?”

  “I know how secretive he is about the location of it. How did you get him to take you there?”

  Amun’s frown deepened. “When I couldn’t get you on the phone, I went to your apartment. He showed up, we fought, and I demanded to see you, so he brought me there.”

  “Just like that?”

  He sagged into his chair, one hand flat on the table. “You think he knew what I’d offer him in exchange for your freedom?”

  “It occurred to me. The only question is why did he want us both blood traced, and what does he intend to do with us?”

  “Sands of hell. I’m not sure I want to know now that it’s done.”

  I got up from the table at the same moment Harper burst through the door. She paused for a moment, staring at me with weepy eyes, as if deciding whether I was real before throwing her arms around me.

  I hugged her back with a fierceness I rarely used. “Have you spoken to anyone?” The scent of her cherry shampoo filled my nose, gave me a sense of belonging, of home.

  “No.” She turned away and wiped her eyes. “Should I have?”

  I shook my head. “The fewer who know I’m out on good behavior, the better, I think.”

  Harper froze, leaning around me.

  A dark shape entered my peripheral vision. Amun stood behind me, extending his hand, his heat licking up my back. “Amun Bassili. It’s nice to meet you, Harper.”

  She reached for his hand in slow motion, a dreamy smile sliding across her lips. “I hear you rode in on your studly white steed and broke our damsel here out of the arsehole vampire’s keep.”

  “It was nothing,” he said, turning to me with affection in his smile. “Should we get going, then?”

  I nodded, fighting exhaustion that urged me to crawl into my bed and sleep for a week. “We should start at IPC so I can find out if Rachel discovered anything in the other samples. I’ve brought the one I kept just in case…well, just in case she misplaced the others.”

  I thought better of voicing the small part of me who distrusted the sweet nurse. She’d always been helpful and honest as far as I knew, but after her sleight of hand, and under the circumstances I found myself in, I didn’t want to take any chances.

  Harper, still grinning at Amun, held the door open. “Whatcha all waitin’ for? Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I drifted in and out while Amun drove us to IPC in my car. The shutting of his door startled me enough I might have hit the roof if my seatbelt hadn’t been fastened. He came around to my side and extended his hand. “The way your guard reacted to seeing you, I don’t think anyone knows Isaac released you.”

  Blinking away the sleepiness, I stared up at him and Harper beyond. She scanned the area with weapons drawn, her state of alert apparent in her bold stance.

  “Do you think she knows?” I asked. “The woman who murdered Dominic and the vampires?”

  His lips twitched with doubt. “Maybe not. But she seems to know everything else, so I wouldn’t count on her ignorance lasting, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  I took his offered hand and got out of the car, noting the strength and warmth of it. I touched others so rarely, it filled me with a profound pleasure I welcomed at the moment.

  “Would you mind keeping watch out here, Harper?” The conversation would undoubtedl
y include the jinn, and I needed privacy for that. “Make sure nobody plants a bomb in my car or tries to drown it before we leave.” I couldn’t afford a new vehicle.

  “Yeah.” She offered a hesitant smile. “I guess you’re safe enough inside, and anyone trying to get in will have to go through these.” She held up her spare Sigs with little enthusiasm. Still smarting about losing her favorites, no doubt.

  Focused on the front entrance of the building, I walked until we’d moved out of Harper’s earshot, Amun at my left shoulder. “I saw the woman that night. I wish there was a way to tell if someone was like us. She looked human to the eye, but she stood on the bottom of the pool without struggling for breath, controlling the water like it was a puppet. If she is jinn, it will complicate our lives further with the vampires. If we can even find her.”

  “I still can’t believe one of us did this.” Amun jerked on one of his shirt cuffs, then the other.

  “Sometimes anger and hatred make people do illogical things. None of us has had an easy life. Perhaps her trials broke her, and what we’re seeing results from mental illness or post-traumatic stress disorder.” I punched in my code at the door, and we entered the lobby paneled with dark glass.

  A sigh spilled from my lips as we waited for the elevator. “My instincts are screaming at me that this has as much to do with Isaac as it does with me, but I can’t, for the life of me, think of a single person who I might have angered. With Isaac being who he is, I can come up with thousands across all races who’d gladly hurt him any way possible.”

  The door slid back, and we walked in shoulder-to-shoulder. I pressed my thumb against “B1” for first level basement. “This is personal. Who could be so deeply affected by something I’ve done they’d resort to framing me for seven murders?”

  Amun’s troubled gaze remained fixed on the mirrored panel while we descended.

  As if compelled, I fixated on his pleasing profile, his exotic eyes rimmed in black, the shadow of dark beard growing thicker on his sharp jaw, the luxurious sheen of his raven waves, his dark complexion. His behavior aside, I had to admit he was a striking man with a build I’d always been attracted to. Taller than my five foot ten by an inch or two, broad in the chest, but not so thick he made it into bodybuilder territory.

  When I noticed the flush of my skin in the mirror, I shook off the inappropriate direction my mind had taken and realized how still he’d become. “Amun?” I touched his arm.

  He flinched, drawing in quick, hissing breath through his teeth. “You startled me.”

  “Apparently.” I paused a moment, studying the tension in his body, the tendons standing out in his neck. “You know Isaac better than I do. Is there someone angry enough to kill? Another business partner, perhaps?”

  Although Amun’s mouth said, “No,” his eyes said “yes”, but he escaped into the hallway when the doors opened. I rushed out after him.

  Rachel emerged from Dr. Courian’s area before I spit any words out. “Amun Bassili, what a treat to see you again.” She touched his chest with her webbed fingers and beamed up at him, appearing like a child next to him.

  “You two know one another?” I closed the distance to them, looking from one to the other. A funny twinge hit me in the chest before it dissipated, and not a good twinge. That was odd.

  Rachel didn’t appear shocked to see me, but she didn’t leave the compound often. Had she been so immersed in a project word hadn’t reached her about the terrible events of late? If she didn’t bring it up, I wouldn’t either. I didn’t want to be the one to break Dominic’s death to her, as she seemed as fond of him as I was. That task should fall to Blake.

  “We met several years ago,” Rachel said through crackling that erupted from the radio on her hip. “Grandfather was giving a lecture on selkie physiology over in Pittsburg, and Amun was there to present the preternatural hospital there a check. Half a million dollars, can you believe his generosity?” Holding her finger up, she said, “Excuse me,” pulled the two-way radio from her belt, and pressed the button. “I’m here, James.”

  I eyed Amun with a raised brow, but he took sudden interest in a picture of me with an omenian butterfly the size of a house I’d freed from some hydro wires, which hung on the wall next to us. I’d always imagined a crowbar would be necessary to separate him from his money. A half million dollars? Just how wealthy was he? If it wouldn’t have been rude, I’d have asked him.

  “Yeah, Rachel, you got a minute?” James said over the radio. “The shifter turned himself into a giant badger and tried to tear my effing leg off. I don’t think he’s too keen on taking his meds today, and that foot’s only getting’ worse.” James served as a medic and facilitator for the reservation.

  “Oh, that naughty man.” She tisked and started for the elevator. “I’m coming. Just leave him be until I get there, all right?”

  “Before you go,”—I forced a smile so she wouldn’t find me rude—“did you find anything useful in the water samples I left? It’s important.”

  “I left the results in a folder in the lab for you.” As she trotted off, over her shoulder, she added in haste, “It was salt water, not fresh. Funny thing to find on one’s stairs so far from the ocean. I’d very much like to meet this creature if you find it.”

  “Salt water?” Amun and I said in unison. That made even less sense than fresh water.

  “This way,” I said, leading him into the lab. All the computer monitors were dark save the one on Rachel’s workstation, casting a ghostly blue tint into the room. Images of the pool haunted me, but I closed my eyes for a second, and they passed. I sat down on her stool and opened the only folder on the desk. Amun looked over my shoulder as I scanned through her findings.

  “Particles of grouper feces.” He leaned harder against my back. “That’s a big fish. A partial scale matching that of an Emperor Angelfish?” His warmth and the vibrations from his voice kept disrupting any attempts to think, so I slid out from under him, taking the file with me.

  “A pet store, perhaps?” My mind moved sluggishly, like wading through deep snow, and it wasn’t happy to be functioning on so little sleep.

  Head tilted, he stroked fingers over the scruff on his chin. “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean, is that maybe the woman works at a pet shop where they sell tropical fish. If she’s like me, she needs to touch whatever she takes the form of. Perhaps she sticks her hand in one of the tropical fish tanks when she wants to evoke her talent as a water chameleon?”

  A disgruntled sigh rushed from his lips. “So you’re convinced it’s one of us, then?”

  “You aren’t?” At his averted gaze, I stepped nearer. “You have an idea why someone might go after Isaac. I saw it in your face back in the elevator. The eyes almost never lie unless you’re a vampire. Given the pulse jumping double-time in your neck, I’m comfortable guessing you’re still among the living.”

  “Tell me what the woman looked like.” Lids crimped shut, he curled his fingers into fists, as if preparing for me to deliver a painful blow to his midsection.

  “Long hair, slightly wavy, in an odd shade of lavender a bit lighter than lilac. Her green eyes glowed. The water distorted her a little, but I think she was slim at the waist and full at the hips and bust. And completely nude.” Who went around that way, anyway? It wasn’t like she was in chameleon form and had no choice.

  His breath shuddered as his eyes opened. “It could be. Sands of hell, it could be her.”

  “Who, Amun?” I took his hand and forced his fingers to uncurl. “If we’re to save ourselves, you can’t hold anything back from me.”

  A nod and another breath seemed to settle him further. “The woman I told you about, Caroline, the water chameleon in the picture. I heard right before the fae declared war on us that she’d had a daughter.” His gaze met mine, shining with fear. “I thought she died in the fighting along with her mother. Those born of water often had pastel shades of hair, and Caroline had green eyes.”

&nbs
p; Confused, I squinted at him. “How much older than you was Caroline?”

  “Fifteen years or so. She matured early for a jinn.”

  Oh, ick. “Are you telling me that when you were ten years old, you wanted to be promised to a twenty-five-year old?”

  His nose wrinkled. “It isn’t a sexual bond at that point, Baylou. You’re making something seem wrong when it was a beautiful tradition all young males dreamed of.”

  Swallowing my disgusted rant, I waited for more, but he made no move to speak. Probably for the best, because I couldn’t stomach any more of the jinn’s twisted cultural practices. “Okay, so she might be the water born daughter of a jinn woman. I’m not following why that would make her go after Isaac.”

  Amun’s lip curled in distaste before he turned away. “He led the assassination squad the councils of the fae, vampire, and elven nations assembled. It was him they sent after the water borns and a few other key members of our society, because he possesses magic able to kill the deadliest of us.”

  “Oh.” Understanding bloomed in my head, knocking the wind from me. I knew Isaac had been involved in the genocide because all vampires were, but not as a commander. No wonder Amun hated him with such passion. Why would he have gone into business with our executioner? “He killed Caroline, so her daughter wants revenge?”

  “It’s possible. As I told you, they’re fiercely loyal to their own kind and, at least in the past, were known to be vengeful if harm came to those they loved.”

  “You don’t want it to be true.”

  “Why would I?”

  “The water born might have been our downfall the first time. It strikes fear into the soul of me that one could destroy us all now, after the pains we’ve gone through to survive, by pissing off one powerful vampire.”

  “You know little about your people yet, but we’re a proud race. At least, most of us are. The water pods were always greedier for power, status, money. I thought they were extinct, and if they’re not, our blood will rain down on Ironhill’s streets again. All of us are in danger, not just you.”