Jinn and Juice

by Nicole Peeler

  She used another wisp to run the shower, waiting till it was warm enough before shoving me in. Then she soaped me down, humming a Russian lullaby as her wisps lathered me and pushed me around under the water until I was mostly clean.

  Towels appeared, held on more wisps, and I wrapped one around my hair. The other one I pulled around my body; then I moved back toward my bedroom.

  “Nope,” Yulia said, her wisps steering me to the kitchen. “You’re getting something to eat, and you’re putting on clothes, and we’re going over to Charlie’s. We have things to discuss.”

  I sat, disconsolately, in a kitchen chair as Yulia presented me with a ham sandwich. I ate it mechanically, drinking glass after glass of orange juice, which she placed in front of me.

  When I was done, I looked at my bedroom with yearning, but she was having none of it.

  “Clothes,” she said, pointing at the pile she’d set down on the far end of the table. I dropped my towel and struggled into the underwear and sports bra, Yulia’s wisps helping me with the yoga pants and T-shirt.

  “That’s good enough,” she said, steering me to the door.

  We walked across the moonlit lawn to Charlie’s, the November air cold and crisp. I could smell a far-off hint of leaves burning and the scent of winter on the air.

  It just made me feel even more hopeless.

  Rachel was waiting to open the door as we walked up, pulling me into a crushing, sequined embrace.

  “Baby girl,” she whispered, before pulling away to look at my face. “Is it so bad?”

  I nodded, tears forming in my eyes. She shook her head, tutting.

  “I know you hurtin’, but you look… well, you look scraggly as hell. But we’ll sort you out, won’t we?”

  Then she put an arm around me, and Yulia put a wisp around my shoulder, and we walked into the living room.

  Charlie was there, looking resplendent in a padded dressing gown he wore over an ascot and fine linen trousers. Oz was there, too. He looked sad, and handsome, and my heart broke about fifteen times before I sat down next to him—not touching—on the love seat next to Charlie’s favorite chair. Yulia and Rachel took the sofa across from Charlie.

  Bertha and Trey had the club that night, our second string of dancers performing with Trip and Trap, so we could finally have the talk I hadn’t been able to, before now.

  “So you’re a jinni again,” Charlie said. I gave him a “duh” look, but then my eyes teared up.

  Oz’s hand crept toward my knee hesitantly, as if he were afraid to touch me. Finally he let it rest on the couch with just his pinky touching my thigh. I stared down at it, the tears leaking down my face.

  “That’s enough,” Charlie said, not unkindly. “You’ve been wallowing for days. I know you needed it, and the gods know I’ve done my fair share of wallowing in my day. But the time for self-indulgence is over. We have to figure out what to do.”

  “There’s nothing to be done,” I said. “Kouros cursed me with his dying breath. You know how strong a death curse is. This could last forever.”

  “And it might last a week. Or a month. Or seven hundred and seventy-seven years,” Charlie said, steepling his hands in front of him. “But in the meantime, you’re alive and kicking, Lyla. That’s more than can be said for Tamina and Dmitri.”

  “We never buried them,” I said. “We should go back.”

  “Already done,” said Yulia. “Bertha, Charlie, and I went back to release the kids. But before we did that we buried the bodies. And we took down the portal in the throne room.”

  “Good,” I said, but I sounded as listless as I felt. Nothing was good, not anymore.

  “So now we have to discuss what’s to be done with you.” I looked up at Charlie, feeling a flush rise in my cheeks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been outed, Lyla,” he said, gently. “No one knew you could use the Node here, because you’d never been Bound when you lived in Pittsburgh. But word of your ability is already spreading.”

  “How?” I asked, confusion and sadness making me sound like a child. “No one saw me use the Node except you guys, the jinn who died, Tamina and her minions who are all dead or trapped Sideways, and Kouros.”

  Oz’s pinky strayed closer to me, finally closing around my knee. “Loretta,” he said, his voice quiet. “She got away.”

  I sat back, stunned. In all the chaos of the fight Sideways I’d forgotten about Loretta.

  “Of course she did,” I said, feeling a tremendous darkness invade my soul. “The worst ones always do.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Oz, his sad eyes letting me know he knew that wasn’t enough.

  “I’m just a jinni; who cares about me?” I tried, but my voice held no conviction. I knew the truth.

  “You’re not just a jinni,” Charlie said. “You’re a jinni that can use Pittsburgh’s Node.”

  I ducked my head and felt, blindly, for Oz’s hand. His closed over mine in a warm, comforting embrace I knew I didn’t deserve.

  “You know what this means, Lyla,” Charlie said. I nodded, snuffling.

  “Well, I don’t!” Rachel said, sounding defiant. “So Lyla is powerful. So what? That just means she can fight off any of those boujie Magi trying to claim her. She can use the Node and send ’em straight to hell, Kmart, or whatever. Right, Lyla?” When I didn’t answer she kept going. “And if she can’t take care of them, we can. We can keep her safe, can’t we, Charlie?”

  “I wish it were that simple,” I said, my voice sounding rusty. “But it’s not. I’m not strong, not unless I’m Bound. And I’m vulnerable to any powerful Magi’s Call. You won’t be around to save me if I’m Called to Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, or back to Persia, then Bound and taken back to Pittsburgh, or whatever.”

  “Shit,” Rachel said, a defiant declaration. But when she saw the look in my eyes, she said it again, this time sounding sad.

  “I know,” I said. “But thank you for being willing to help me.”

  “We’re still going to help you, stupid girl,” Yulia said, her voice harsh and thick with unshed tears. “I will investigate this curse. Death curses are strong, but they can be broken… maybe.”

  “And I will use my Sight,” Charlie said. “As will Rachel. Sometimes she can See what I miss.”

  Then my friends all looked at Oz. They’d already discussed with him what he needed to do, I realized.

  “And I’ll Bind you again, if you won’t hate me for it,” said Oz, pronouncing the words like he was juggling acid on his tongue.

  My hand gripped his, painfully tight. “You hate being my Master,” I said, acknowledging everything that meant about who he was, as a person.

  “I do,” he said. “But I’d hate it even more if something happened to you.”

  I risked looking at him. I hadn’t done more than sneak a peek or two for fear I’d start bawling again. If lifting my curse had been my goal, my sundae, Oz had become the cherry on top that symbolized everything I felt I’d earned for my years spent as a jinni.

  Now he represented everything I’d lost.

  His lovely silver eyes Flared gently when they met mine, his Magi recognizing my jinni. Oz, the man inside those Magi eyes, looked scared and defeated, but also determined. And hopeful.

  “We may never be able to fix this,” I said. “You may have to keep me Bound until you die.”

  “No,” he said, with no hesitation. “That’s not going to happen. We will fix this.”

  “You can’t be sure,” I insisted, but he stopped my mouth with a kiss. It was quick, stolen, but it shut me up and filled me with a terrible desire for him, all the more painful because I knew his feelings on the subject of sex when Bound.

  “I can be sure. We will free you, and for good. None of us will rest till it’s done, least of all me.”

  And for the first time since I’d been re-cursed I felt something other than dread. A spark of hope sprang inside my breast, kindled by the look in his eye and nurtured by the set o
f his jaw, and the steady, firm way he held my hand.

  Then I looked at each of my friends in turn. They were so strong, so brave. They’d come back for me and saved my life. Granted, I’d saved all of theirs a time or two over the years, but that’s because we were friends, and we saved each other.

  We saved each other.

  I was crying again, but this time for an entirely different reason. “Do you really think we can do this?” I asked.

  Charlie shrugged. “Maybe. Your last curse was done by the book. Knowing what we know now, I bet Kouros nudged your father to arrange the marriage in the first place, hoping you would approach him. He had time to prepare. But this time he improvised. And while death curses are powerful, they’re also brittle. Plus…” His voice trailed off. “There may be other factors,” he said, finally, his gaze turning inward in his own particularly creepy way of ending a conversation about a particular subject.

  “Then let’s do it,” I said. “Oz, please Bind me. I trust you.”

  My soon-to-be Master stood, taking my hands in his. “I swear to keep you safe. And as soon as we know how to lift your curse, I’ll free you again.”

  “I know,” I said, lifting a hand to his jaw and letting it rest there. Then he spoke the words, his eyes Flaring, and I felt my jinni swell with power and my soul unite with his again in that terrible subservience under which we both chafed.

  When it was done, he rested his forehead down against mine, his expression one of regret and love, and my heart broke a few thousand times more.

  Like Humpty-Dumpty, I didn’t know if it would ever be whole again.

  “So is he moving in?” Yulia asked to break the somber mood, pointing a finger at my Master. She tried to mimic her old animosity, but it was gone. Even she liked Oz by now.

  “No,” Oz said, sounding as regretful as I felt. “But I will need somewhere to stay. I can go back to that hotel I was staying at…”

  “Nonsense,” Charlie said, waving his hand as if that were out of the question. “You will stay here. You’ll need access to my libraries. All of my libraries.”

  My eyes widened. A secret but ferocious hoarder of knowledge, Charlie had quite a few libraries stashed Sideways, and he rarely let people peruse them without his close observation.

  “Libraries?” I asked.

  Oz nodded, his lips curving in a sweet smile. “I’m an academic. I research. Instead of ways to make refugee camps safer, now I’ll be researching death curses. Did you know Charlie rescued the Library of Alexandria?” Oz said sotto voce, just to me. “He’s got it stashed partially in a bathroom closet.”

  “So you’ll stay in the big house?” I clarified, not giving a hoot about the library.

  “Yes,” he said, keeping his voice pitched just for me. “If we were at your place, I couldn’t trust myself. I still have that list…”

  “And we haven’t even gotten to number one.”

  His hand squeezed mine again.

  “But we will,” he said. “As God is my witness, we will get to number one. A lot. Maybe a few times a day, for at least the first month or two.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, then pulled him down for a kiss. He pulled back way too quickly, but it still felt amazing.

  “Maybe this isn’t so bad,” I told my friends. “Or, even if it is that bad, maybe it’s not so bad because of you guys. I don’t know how to thank you. You saved me about a dozen times over the past few weeks.”

  “It’s because we’re such angelic, wonderful beings,” Rachel said, standing up before hoisting her boobs with both hands. “Now let’s have some champagne…”

  A few hours and a few bottles of champagne later, I was still drifting on my little inlet of hope. Yeah, things looked bad, but I had my friends, I had a Master I was more than a little crazy about, and I had myself.

  Including my inner jinni, whom I had gotten used to after all those years, and would have missed, if I was honest.

  And I kept up that hope even when Charlie took me aside and told me the truth. That when they’d gone to bury Tamina and Dmitri and let the kids out, there’d been no little pile of ash where Kouros’s remains should have been.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. He shrugged.

  “It could mean everything or nothing. A gust of wind probably hit that corner of the room. But I wanted you to know.”

  I didn’t know what to do with that information, so I simply said, “He made a death curse. Which means he’s dead. End of story.”

  Charlie didn’t argue.

  By midnight everyone had gone home, leaving Oz and me alone on Charlie’s porch. I built up a warm little fire on the table in front of us. It burned only at the top half, away from any furniture, leaving us warm and toasty without destroying anything.

  Oz put his arm around me, and I snuggled close.

  “We really are going to get through this. I’ll find a way to free you; I promise.”

  I kissed him gently, lingeringly. My own form of promise.

  “I know you will. And in the meantime…” I stroked a hand down his chest, which he caught before I hit gold.

  “In the meantime I’m still your Master,” he said, his voice full of regret.

  I let my head fall on his chest, not pushing it. For now.

  He stroked my hair and we watched the stars, and I felt such hope, at that moment, that all would be well.

  Despite the fact that Loretta, my erstwhile friend turned traitorous, power-hungry turncoat, had walked away scot-free.

  And despite the fact that I would soon be a target for every power-hungry Magi.

  And despite the fact that the jinni race, which seemed to enjoy trying to kill me, once again knew where I lived.

  And despite the fact that I hadn’t been able to safely, and finally, dispose of Kouros’s ashes.

  The Princess Bride told us life isn’t fair, and William Goldman was right. But damn if it couldn’t be pretty darn beautiful.

  Especially in the dancing shadows of my jinni’s dark Fire.

  Acknowledgments

  Books are not written in a vacuum, and I have so many people to thank. First of all thank you to all the good folks at Orbit Books. You are beautiful human beans who do wonderful things, and I know this book was a particular slog. Thanks to all of my wonderful, supportive colleagues and students at Seton Hill, who are always an inspiration. Special thanks have to go to Philip Palmer, Rachael Herron, and Mario Acevedo, who told me how to fix this thing when I was convinced it was Humpty Dumpty. Huge love to my own family, as well as to Mark Henry, Liliana Hart, Jaye Wells, Molly and Judy Harper, and Heather Osborne, my writer family. And huge thanks to my Pittsburgh Tribe and to Shon Kelley, for all of their support.

  extras

  meet the author

  Robert Trudeau

  NICOLE PEELER writes urban fantasy and is an associate professor at Seton Hill University, where she co-directs their MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. Having recently finished her award-winning Jane True series, she is looking forward to the publication of Jinn and Juice, the first book in a series about a cursed jinni living in Pittsburgh. Nicole also lives in Pittsburgh, although she’s neither cursed nor a jinni.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  JINN AND JUICE

  look out for

  TEMPEST RISING

  Book One of the Jane True series

  by Nicole Peeler

  Living in small-town Rockabill, Maine, Jane True always knew she didn’t quite fit in with so-called normal society. During her nightly clandestine swim in the freezing winter ocean, a grisly find leads Jane to startling revelations about her heritage: she is only half-human.

  Now, Jane must enter a world filled with supernatural creatures alternatively terrifying, beautiful, and deadly—all of which perfectly describe her new “friend,” Ryu, a gorgeous and powerful vampire.

  It is a world where nothing can be taken for granted: a dog can heal with a lick; spirits bag your groceries; and what
ever you do, never, ever rub the genie’s lamp.

  Chapter One

  I eyeballed the freezer, trying to decide what to cook for dinner that night. Such a decision was no mean feat, since a visiting stranger might assume that Martha Stewart not only lived with us but was preparing for the apocalypse. Frozen lasagnas, casseroles, pot pies, and the like filled our icebox nearly to the brim. Finally deciding on fish chowder, I took out some haddock and mussels. After a brief, internal struggle, I grabbed some salmon to make extra soup to—you guessed it—freeze. Yeah, the stockpiling was more than a little OCD, but it made me feel better. It also meant that when I actually had something to do for the entire evening, I could leave my dad by himself without feeling too guilty about it.

  My dad wasn’t an invalid—not exactly. But he had a bad heart and needed help taking care of things, especially with my mother gone. So I took up the slack, which I was happy to do. It’s not like I had much else on my plate, what with being the village pariah and all.

  It’s amazing how being a pariah gives you ample amounts of free time.

  After putting in the laundry and cleaning the downstairs bathroom, I went upstairs to take a shower. I would have loved to walk around all day with the sea salt on my skin, but not even in Rockabill was Eau de Brine an acceptable perfume. Like many twentysomethings, I’d woken up early that day to go exercise. Unlike most twenty-somethings, however, my morning exercise took the form of an hour-or-so-long swim in the freezing ocean. And in one of America’s deadliest whirlpools. Which is why I am so careful to keep the swimming on the DL. It might be a great cardio workout, but it probably would get me burned at the stake. This is New England, after all.

  As I got dressed in my work clothes—khaki chinos and a long-sleeved pink polo-style shirt with Read It and Weep embroidered in navy blue over the breast pocket—I heard my father emerge from his bedroom and clomp down the stairs. His job in the morning was to make the coffee, so I took a moment to apply a little mascara, blush, and some lip gloss, before brushing out my damp black hair. I kept it cut in a much longer—and admittedly more unkempt—version of Cleopatra’s style because I liked to hide my dark eyes under my long bangs. Most recently, my nemesis, Stuart Gray, had referred to them as “demon eyes.” They’re not as Marilyn Manson as that, thank you very much, but even I had to admit to difficulty determining where my pupil ended and my iris began.