by L. E. Wilson
As I walked down the sidewalk as quickly as I could without drawing undo attention, I’d never been more grateful she was a creature of the night. Wherever he had her, he couldn’t risk moving her during the day if he wanted to keep her alive. And if by some chance he didn’t have her, perhaps the best place to begin searching was the last place I’d seen her.
I turned up Conti Street. I hadn’t walked two blocks when I could feel the djinn’s presence. I stumbled over a break in the sidewalk, my chest tight with fear. Not for me, but for Kenya. Although I’d believed this entire time Marcus was behind her disappearance, a part of me had hoped it wasn’t true. That she had just gone somewhere and lost track of the time—maybe to feed—and forgotten her phone. And she was just hiding out somewhere waiting for the sun to go down.
The breeze picked up, changing direction, and with it I was able to pinpoint the direction I needed to go. He was close, but not close enough.
I started walking faster. Past the Prince Conti Hotel with its flying flags and wrought iron details. Past the Three Legged Dog tavern, and across Rampart Street. At the church on the corner, I stopped again, closing my eyes and opening myself to the call of the djinn.
His magic felt different than what I was used to, yet also so very familiar. It was easy for me to follow. Or maybe he was laying out a trail of breadcrumbs, waiting for me to walk blindly into his trap. Either way, it didn’t matter. I might be playing his game, but I’d be walking into it with my eyes wide open.
I was almost there.
A few minutes later, I found myself standing outside of the cemetery where I’d met Kenya the night before. He was here. I felt it all the way to my bones. And how fucking poetic. I guess this was his way of telling me that I’d been fucking stupid last night, thinking just because I couldn’t sense him around, we were safe to be together. His way of telling me that I, because of my raging need to see her, was the one who’d put her right into his path.
My teeth began to ache and I realized I was clenching my jaw. Forcing myself to relax somewhat I stopped by the gate, blending in with the group of people about to take a tour, easily convincing the tour guide I’d been there the entire time with a few softly spoken words. Once inside, I lost the group and slipped around a tomb, then headed toward the djinn.
I found Marcus at the back, leaning casually against a tall statue. He smiled when he saw me. “Hello, nephew.”
I stopped a safe distance away. “Where is she, Marcus?”
He cocked his head to the side. “Don’t you think you should start calling me ‘Uncle Marcus’?”
“No,” I told him. “Now tell me where she is, and what you’re planning to make me do to get her back so I can tell you to fuck off and go get her.”
His smile faltered a bit. “You remind me of my brother. I didn’t like him much.”
I didn’t respond, and eventually, he gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Fine. We’ll get right to business.”
“That would be fuckin’ nice.”
His expression tightened. It was so brief I might have missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention. “I can tell you’re eager to know about your lady love, so I will tell you now, the vampire is fine,” he said.
“I want her back.” This last was practically spit at him.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” He pushed himself away from the tomb and came to stand in front of me. “I need her.”
My heart stopped, only to start up again, hard and fast. I tried to calm myself down, knowing he would sense my fear. “You don’t need her.” If this was his way of trying to win me over, I had some bad news for him.
“Oh, but I do. And contrary to what you’re thinking right now, it really has very little to do with you.”
Nothing to do with me? Why the hell else would he want her? Memories of her lying in bed, rotting from the inside out as she died before my eyes, flashed through my mind. Terror for Kenya had me unable to speak for a long moment. And when I could, all I could do was grind out through my teeth, “What are you talking about?”
But he just smiled. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. But first, let’s talk terms, shall we?”
Linking his hands behind his back, he started to pace back and forth in front of me. I took the opportunity to reach into my pocket and wrap my fingers around my cell phone as I tried to think of a way to alert the others without pulling it out of my pocket. If I could manage to get the screen open and call someone by feel, maybe he wouldn’t hear it ring or the person who answered, what with all of the cars driving by and the chatter from the people touring the place.
My only other option was to try to reach out to Alice through our bond. I’ve never done it before, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t work. We weren’t only witches, we were twins. Twins did that all the time, right?
Marcus suddenly stopped his pacing. His head snapped up and his dark eyes zeroed in on me. “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
My hand froze on my phone. I had no idea if I’d managed to type in my code by feel or not, or to get the damn thing to call anyone. “Wouldn’t what?”
“Please, Alex. I’m not stupid, nor am I gullible. So let’s stop pretending that I am.” He walked closer to me until he was only an arm’s length away. “Let’s get one thing out in the open right now, shall we?”
After a pause, I nodded once.
“If you try to contact your sister or any of your coven through magic or more modern means,” he cast a meaningful glance down at my coat pocket where my hand was still wrapped around my phone, “I will know. Doing any of those things will force me to take more drastic measures to get what I want, and I don’t think either of us would want anything to happen to Alice or any of the others.”
“You wouldn’t hurt Alice.” I called his bluff. “She’s your niece.”
“Yes, she is. But I have found in my observations of her that she’s not nearly the djinn you are.”
His tone told me exactly what he thought of anyone, family or not, who didn’t carry enough of his genes. They were disposable, just like any other human. “She’s a powerful witch,” I said, remembering what he’d told me the first time we’d talked. If he thought she was worthy of keeping alive, perhaps it would remove her from the equation.
“Her powers are limited to simple tricks of nature. Nothing that any witch worth his or her salt couldn’t do.”
He was wrong. Alice was way more than a simple Wiccan. But I quickly forced all thoughts of her from my mind, not wanting him to leach them from my head.
Marcus lowered his chin, his eyes never leaving my face. “Have I made myself absolutely clear?”
“Yeah. Perfectly.”
“Excellent.” He grinned at me and resumed his pacing. “So, here are my terms.”
I pulled my hand from my pocket, crossed my arms over my chest, and waited for him to lay it all out. As he began to talk, my mind raced, thinking of and discarding any and every way I could think of to get Kenya and I out of this mess. But he’d been smart to meet me here, in public, with tourists all around. He knew I wouldn’t do anything to put them in harm’s way or to blow our cover.
In the end, with him always one step ahead, there was nothing I could do. At least, for now. I’d just have to bide my time and wait for the right opportunity.
“As I told you the other day, Alex, I want you to come live with me. I want us to spend time together. Get to know each other. We are family, after all. And no matter how much you try to deny it to yourself, or to others, we are much more alike than you think.”
“You’re wrong,” I told him. “I’m nothing like you.”
He showed no reaction to my argument. In fact, he fucking ignored me completely, continuing his speech as though I hadn’t spoken.
“There are advantages to coming to live with me. Some you might have already thought of. Or perhaps not.” He stopped directly in front of me, raking his eyes from my head to my waterproof boots and back again. “You�
��re strong, Alex. Your magic is powerful. But it’s not nearly as powerful as it could be if you learned to harness it. To twist it to your will. Tell me, do the spirits talk to you?”
“What?” The dude was crazy. Of course, if he spent his days hearing voices, that kind of explained a lot. “No. No, I don’t fucking hear voices. I’m not crazy.”
“Hmm,” he nodded his head. “You’ve blocked them. Probably figured out how to do it as a child, which not very many djinn can do.” He waved his hand through the air. “That’s all right. We can open you back up to them.”
My entire body was beginning to ache from the constant tension stiffening my muscles all of this time. I had no patience for this shit. But other than attacking him in front of all of these people, people who were even now making their way closer and closer to us as the tour progressed through the cemetery, I had no choice but to stand here and listen to him ramble on about shit that made absolutely no sense, and hope that he’d eventually take me to Kenya.
Besides, I didn’t know that I would win. If I went after him he might just leave, or kill me, and then I’d never find out where she was.
So I stood there like a well-behaved student, listening to him go on and on about spirits and magic and other dimensions and how he could “help” me learn about all of this fucking power I had no intention of tapping into if it meant I would turn into a creature like him. I played along, even though my blood was rushing through my body until I felt lightheaded and there was a constant buzzing in my head obstructing his words.
I stood there, half-listening, letting him talk himself out. The only thing on my mind getting to Kenya and trying to figure out how I could get us both the hell away from him and off of his radar.
Because I wasn’t stupid, either. And I knew there was no way I could take him out if he saw it coming.
However, as his words flowed over me, there was a part of me—a very small part—that was paying attention to everything he was saying. This part of me wondered what it would be like to be as all-powerful as the djinn. To have everyone afraid of me. To not have to live by rules put in place by others. To be able to live how I wanted. To love who I wanted. With no fear of repercussions. This part of me was not afraid. This part of me was open to the seduction.
And it scared me more than the djinn.
“If you agree to my terms,” Marcus went on. “I will take you to the vampire. And you can have her once I’m done with her. IF, and only if, you stay with me. Learn from me. Become my true family. Then, and only then, will I give you my blessing to be with the vampire.”
“Kenya,” I told him. “Her name is Kenya.”
He smiled. “I am well aware of her name.”
“Then why don’t you use it?” I had no idea why I was picking a fight over something so asinine. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself. It was like I needed to have a win here. Just one win. So I didn’t feel so completely powerless.
“Because she means nothing to me,” he said. “She is a means to an end. An object. I need her to help me get my love back, and that’s all. Once she’s done that, you can have her, and she can be ‘Kenya’ to you.”
Get his love back? Wait, what the hell did I miss?
“Do you agree to come with me? To learn how to be a djinn? To be a family?” He appeared right in front of me, nose to nose, and I didn’t even see him move. Dark sorcery wrapped around me, squeezing me like a constrictor until I couldn’t breathe.
“And you must mean it, my nephew. Don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes because I will know. I know everything about you. Everything you think. Everything you feel. And though I understand you may have some natural hesitations, that is all it must be.” He backed up a step, and I sucked in a breath as he released me.
“Now,” he said. “Do we have an agreement?”
What fucking choice did I have? “Yes.” The word tasted like metal on my tongue. “If you take me to Kenya right fucking now.”
Marcus smiled, and this time it was true. “Then let’s go see your vampire.”
Chapter 17
Kenya
I sat in the corner of the kitchen of the swamp house with my knees pulled up to my chest and my arms wrapped around my legs—the same house where Killian had hidden me when I was ill—and watched the sun as it crept toward me along the floor. There would come a point where I would have to either risk it and move, fast enough that I won’t catch on fire as I cross the floor, or just let it burn me alive.
I wasn’t sure yet which option I was going to take.
I’d woken up from the djinn’s sleep on the couch, blinking against the sunshine coming in through the window of the living room. Sunshine I hadn’t seen in eighty years. Another five minutes, maybe less, and it would’ve been on me. With a hiss, I’d scrambled off of the couch and ran toward the back of the house, where Killian and Jamal had sealed the windows so we would be safe to spend our days here. I’d completely forgotten that most of it had been demolished by Killian’s anguish when he’d come here after Lizzy had left him. She’d come back, but the house had never been fixed. And now there were giant holes in the walls and roof.
Veering to the right, I’d gone into the kitchen, frantically opening cabinets as I looked for a place to hide for the day. But they were all too small for me to fit into, and none of the doors fit right, leaving cracks where the light could get through even if I’d managed to get into them somehow. This house had once been a place for crocodile hunters to find shelter. It wasn’t meant to be a home, and therefore only had the minimum requirements to keep a human semi-comfortable for a short period of time.
Faced with the option of either burning slowly or just getting it over with in one fell swoop, I’d curled up in the corner, far from the large window over the sink and the threat of day. Yet, in my panicked state, I’d forgotten what time of year it was and how I’d just lined myself up perfectly to be held captive by the encroaching sunset. Because once it started to go down, it would come right through the kitchen window, eventually brightening the entire room before it sank below the horizon.
And, in the time it had taken me to find this spot, the sun had already moved to the side of the house. I could probably get around it if I ran fast enough, but I didn’t know what I’d be running into when I got to the other room. Disoriented by the time of day and the brightness, I couldn’t seem to think straight.
I didn’t know how much time had passed when the front door opened and two sets of footsteps trod across the wooden floor of the living room.
“Where the fuck is she?”
Alex?
It sounded like him, and yet…it didn’t.
One set of footsteps approached the kitchen entry. I held completely still and waited, afraid to hope.
But it wasn’t my warlock who appeared to rescue me, but the djinn. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Do you want to roast yourself?”
I’d kind of been thinking about it, yeah.
With a look of disgust, he waved his hand, and I watched as the blinds lowered and heavy curtains I hadn’t even noticed before pulled themselves closed, blocking out the rays of the sun, except for two thin strips of light on the walls on either side. After sitting there so long, I blinked in the sudden darkness as someone else came to stand beside the djinn.
I recognized him right away, even before my vision cleared enough to make out the blurry details of his face.
“Where are her glasses?” he asked the djinn.
When all he got was a shrug, he left the room and his boots trod back across the wooden floor.
I got to my feet slowly, wondering what was going on. Why was he here with the djinn? Did he come alone? And why weren’t they fighting?
I had a sinking feeling he wasn’t here to help me, and that I’d been right all along.
At that moment, he came back into the kitchen and tried to hand me something. I could only stand there, staring at his blurry face, hoping against hope I was wrong and looking for s
ome sign this was all some sort of a trick.
“Kenya,” he said, holding his hand up higher. “Here’s your glasses.”
His voice was cold. Hard. I felt as though I were outside my body, watching as my hand slowly reached out and took them from him. My eyes never left his face as I opened them up and put them on.
Alex studied me, a look in his golden eyes I couldn’t read. Behind him, the djinn was watching us with interest. “As you can see,” he said. “The vampire is alive and well.”
I frowned as Alex, with one last sweeping look at me, turned away. “She wouldn’t have been if we hadn’t gotten here when we had. I thought she was so important to you.”
The djinn looked over at me. “I left her on the couch. She was perfectly safe.”
I was so confused. Why was he talking about me like I was some sort of animal without a mind of my own, and why was Alex acting the same way?
“When do we leave?” he asked the djinn.
“Tomorrow night. I have something I must do before we go.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked him. “Go where?”
The djinn—what was his name? Marcus?—leveled a stare at me. Then he sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to fill you in. The sooner you know, the sooner I can have what I want.”
I glanced over at Alex, but he wouldn’t look at me. I had to admit, it hurt worse than I thought it would, his betrayal. Even though I kinda knew it was coming. My instincts had told me all along that he couldn’t be trusted. And as usual, they were right. He’d been in on this all along.
But if that were the case, then what I didn’t understand was why hadn’t he just taken me to the djinn himself? It would’ve been so easy. Last night, he could’ve handed me over to him with little fuss. I never would’ve suspected a thing because I, in my infatuation with him, had trusted him completely when he’d told me it was safe. When he’d told me that he was as taken with me as I was with him.
