Sorcerer…
Philips stiffened.
Rose, sorcerer…
The words sheared through his mind, bringing with them a fresh wave of the memories that had assaulted him earlier.
Yes, memories. That’s what the vision had been, memories. His memories.
His!
But who was he then?
… killed Rose, sorcerer…
He stared at Hastin, branding every inch of the djinn’s visage into his brain.
… killed Rose, sorcerer…
The djinn’s voice from the memory screamed—You killed Rose, sorcerer—digging at something deeply buried in Philips’s past, something important, something… powerful.
What was it? What…
Name. The djinn’s name. It’s there. You know it. You—
“We’re coming for you, sorcerer.” Thick purple smoke swirled around Hastin, even as his form became translucent. “And you will suffer for everything you’ve ever done.”
“I know you,” Philips snarled, inching closer to Hastin’s fading image.
Hastin’s eyes erupted with blinding-white light. So bright, Philips threw up a shielding arm and cried out.
“You know fuck-all, Syrin,” the djinn’s voice whispered from the white light. “You never did.”
And then, the white vanished.
Philips lowered his arm, eyes squinting against an expected onslaught of brightness.
It didn’t come. Nothing did. No sound. No movement. Nothing.
Gone.
Pivoting slowly, he took in his work room through foggy vision.
The djinn was gone.
“Fuck!”
Rage crackled through him, and he snatched up Mrs. Taylor’s head and slammed it back to the floor. What was the fucking djinn prick’s name? His true name? Without the power of Hastin’s true name, Philips could do nothing against or to him.
Scrunching his face, red flashes still blooming on his retinas from the djinn’s white light, he searched through his mind. Dug into the deepest pits of his memory.
The djinn’s name was there somewhere. He just needed to find…
A hot prickle crawled over his flesh and he opened his eyes, a slow smile stretching his lips.
“Syrin.” Not the djinn’s name. The very bones in his body told him that. But an important name. A name the djinn had foolishly, arrogantly, uttered in contempt.
Syrin.
A name to hook a recollection spell on.
“Thank you, Hastin,” he murmured, striding across his workroom to a massive oak bookshelf.
His smile stretched wider as he opened a small and ornate bronze chest on the middle shelf.
A needle-sharp dagger lay nestled on a small black velvet pillow. Carved from the rib of the virgin high priestess of Moneta, the Roman goddess of memory, the dagger had been lost to time for hundreds of years until a collector of rare antiquities gloated about possessing it to Philips one night in a seedy bar.
The collector didn’t survive the night. His collection had found a new home with Philips.
Closing his eyes, Philips whispered the complicated Latin incantation required to touch the dagger. Without the ancient words, he’d forget everything—including how to breathe—the second his skin touched the bleached bone. With the words, however…
A hot ripple passed through him. His dick hardened.
Opening his eyes, he retrieved the dagger, held it aloft, admiring its ageless, powerful beauty, and then pressed its point to the middle of his left temple.
“Recall Syrin,” he whispered.
And pushed the dagger’s tip into his flesh.
* * * *
That was stupid.
It was.
Why had he done that?
Retracting his projection back into his body, he dragged his hands through his hair. Provoking Syrin was idiotic.
He’s not Syrin.
The denial scraped at him and he let out a harsh breath.
Deny it all he liked, the truth had slammed into him the second he’d materialized in the sorcerer’s presence. Syrin—Rose’s father—walked the earth again. Reincarnated and clueless, yes. But alive all the same.
And powerful.
The sorcerer’s force had almost torn him apart. When Syrin—
No, in this life, he was Philips. Doug Philips. Ha, hardly a fearsome name.
When Philips had attempted to snare James’s energy, enslave him with a command, James had almost capitulated.
It was only the fact Philips didn’t know the name Barqan that had allowed James to resist him.
But his force… the power in his magic…
James clawed at his scalp again.
Fark, he’d just provoked Syrin. The sorcerer who’d summoned him and trapped him here in mankind’s realm. Who still had the power to control him. Not only provoked him but used his name. How could he have done that? A slip of the tongue was one thing, but giving Philips any kind of knowledge of who he once was…
Fark, he’d lost control.
And why? Because Philips had dared threaten Tahlee. But of course, he would. The whole reason Tahlee was under the protection of Guarded Souls was because she’d heard him—Philips—threatening the life of another unknown woman.
Philips had no clue of Tahlee’s relationship to James. Of course he’d want to get his hands on her; what she’d overheard could destroy him, and most likely Maximillian Rourke, as well.
Stupid. Idiotic.
Dangerous.
“James?”
Tahlee’s soft voice made him drop his hands. He lifted his head and turned to face her.
Worry ate up her face, and the urge to translocate completely to Philips and rip his black heart out surged through him. If it wasn’t for the bastard sorcerer, she wouldn’t be in this state.
If it wasn’t for Syrin, you never would have met her.
His chest tightened. As true at that was, he couldn’t find any sympathy for the sorcerer.
The fact Philips was Syrin reincarnated also meant James couldn’t actually cause him any harm. Not unless the sorcerer made a foolish wish. In that regard, the bastard had James by the balls, whether he knew it or not.
No matter how much James wanted to erase Syrin’s reincarnated arse from existence, he couldn’t.
“Where did you go, James?” Tahlee asked, voice calm. Her reporter’s voice. He’d heard it many times; the tone she used to process shit she didn’t like at all.
James flicked Kitt—standing silently beside her—a quick look.
The wolf shifter regarded him, expression wary. Tension rolled from him, an animalistic aggression.
Kitt would gut Philips in a heartbeat if James asked him to. Shift into his dire wolf form and disembowel him.
James had seen Kitt deal with a murderous threat in just such a way before. A Guarded Souls job that turned deadly, when everyone who worked there was almost killed. The wolf shifter didn’t fuck about when it came to those he cared for being threatened. All James would have to do is ask…
Any of the team would move on the sorcerer.
But if Philips discovered who he was, who he’d once been in a past life, he’d have the power to force James to eliminate every Guarded Souls team member with a single wish.
If Philips connected his past life with James, no one was safe.
“Jimmy Boy?” Kitt’s low voice rumbled through the stretching silence. “Do I need to call Kade? Nim?”
“No.” James shook his head. “I’ve dealt… I’m dealing with Philips.”
“Philips?” Tahlee’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s Philips?”
“The man you overheard in the toilet at the art gallery. He won’t—”
“You called whoever you were talking to Syrin,” she said. “Not Philips.”
He studied her, waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop.
A frown dipped her eyebrows, and she narrowed her stare at him. “Syrin. That’s the name of my father, isn’t it? I me
an, the name of my father when I was Rose.”
And there it is.
Kitt’s eyebrows shot up. “Syrin is the sorcerer who brought James to this realm over a thousand years ago. What do you mean, he’s your father? What do you mean, when you were Rose?” He swung his attention back to James. “Rose is the human you fell in love with, right? How can Tahlee be Rose? What the ever-loving fuck is going on?”
“It’s all good, Rover.”
Kitt’s amber eyes flared gold. “Don’t Rover me, genie. What aren’t you telling us?”
“What the hell?” Tahlee gasped, stare locked on Kitt.
James bit back a groan. If he didn’t calm Kitt’s overprotective agitation, she’d witness the rather jarring—to a human, at least—transformation of a man into a massive wolf. She didn’t need that. Not at the moment. It would probably be the sanity-shattering icing on the cake, given the last twenty-four hours she’d endured.
So, Tahlee… genies are real, you’re the reincarnated soul of a woman from over a thousand years ago, your father back then was a murderous sorcerer—and he, too, has been resurrected. Oh hey, he wants you dead… and by the way, good ol’ Kitt here can shift into the form of a dire wolf whenever he damn well pleases. Cool, huh?
Yeah, she didn’t need that. Which meant he had to defuse Kitt. Now.
“Kitt,” he said, meeting the wolf-shifter’s glowing eyes. “It’s okay. We’re all okay. Honestly.” Bit of a stretch there. “What we all need now is a cup of tea.” He pointed a finger at Tahlee, letting a relaxed grin play with his lips. “You’d like a cup of tea, wouldn’t you, Hope?”
She looked at him like he’d grown an extra head.
He grinned wider. “I’d like a cup of tea.” He returned his focus to Kitt. “And I know you’re partial to a good Darjeeling, Rover, because the Darjeeling teabags I keep in the staff kitchen go missing almost every week, and I know you’re the culprit.”
Kitt’s eyes flickered back to amber. The knot in his jaw loosened. “Jim, you need to tell me what’s—”
“I will, Rover.” Was it the use of Kitt’s nickname or the resignation in his voice? Whatever it was, the tension left Kitt and he frowned at James. Giving the wolf shifter a sheepish smile, James chuckled. “I promise. Over a cup of tea. I think we all need it.”
Kitt’s broad chest swelled with a deep, slow breath. “Okay.” He gave Tahlee a quick glance. “I’ll go make it. Let you two finish up whatever it was you were doing before I barged in.”
He hurried from the bedroom without another word.
“Shoulda just conjured up a stick and threw it,” James murmured.
“What the hell is going on, James?” Tahlee’s fingers wrapped around his wrist and he turned back to her. Yep, the journalist was back. But a shadow of uncertainty darkened her eyes. “No flippant charm, no sheepish sidestepping. I want simple answers. Please?”
Her voice cracked on the plea and before he could stop himself, he cupped her face in his hands and brushed a soft kiss over her lips.
His Rose, his Tahlee. His Hope.
Hope for an existence he’d never thought he’d have. Hope for a love he knew he could never accept.
His Hope.
She sighed into the kiss and sighed again when he broke it.
Tears shone in her eyes as she stared up at him. “Talk to me, my love.” She pressed her palms to his chest and gave his shirtfront a gentle tug. “I don’t care about Syrin, or who I used to be. All I want to know right now is why you left me three years ago. I need you to explain that to me. I need to understand that first.”
Chest tight, he closed his eyes.
“Please,” she whispered.
Opening his eyes, he brushed his thumb over her bottom lip, and then took a step backward. “The curse Syrin placed on me with his last breath…” He let out a ragged breath of his own, and then chuckled at the bleak irony of it. “It devastated him, you see. Having his beloved daughter fall in love with a djinn was bad enough—a creature far more powerful than he was or could ever be, but to have a djinn love her in return? Offer her a life away from his oppressive control, his possessive, unnatural affection. That infuriated him. Destroyed him. On an emotional level. Tore his selfish, perverse heart apart. His daughter belonged to him. No other male—whether human or magical being—could have her. So he cursed me to experience his pain. If I ever fell in love again, and gave voice to that love, admitted it to another, my djinn’s heart—the source of my magic and immortality—would be forfeit. I would become mortal… and eventually die.”
Tahlee’s eyes widened.
“And the second, the very second you told me you loved me in that restaurant in Wimbledon, I felt the words form on my lips, the words to tell you I loved you in return—and I ran.”
She stared at him.
“That’s why I left you,” he finished. “Because without my djinn’s heart, I am nothing.”
More importantly, if he wasn’t a djinn, he couldn’t do what needed to be done if she was in danger. Not just in her Tahlee reincarnation, but in all those to follow.
An unreadable frown dipped her forehead. She narrowed her eyes at him. “What does that mean? You’d stop being a djinn and become human?”
“I think so.”
“So you’d die? Straight away? Or would you live like a normal human?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve only known of two djinn who’ve lost their hearts in mankind’s realm. Neither returned to the djinn realm.”
“They suffered?”
His chest tightened. “There are rumors, some absurd. Some believe they died of old age.”
“Old age.”
He nodded. Old, impotent age. Incapable of anything except being… ineffective.
Her frown faded and she shook her head. “So I was wrong, after all.”
“When?”
Her eyes closed for a second as she rubbed a hand over her face, and then she met his stare again. “When we first came face to face back at in the Guarded Souls office. You said you left me without a word because you were a coward, and I said you were a lot of things… but not a coward.”
The memory of their confrontation sank into James’s chest. The sting in her words followed.
“I would have surrendered everything I knew for us, James,” she said. “I would have changed everything for us. But… but you…” She shook her head. “Did you even contemplate it? Or even think about talking to me? Or did you just run because that was the easiest option?”
“Tahlee.” Her name fell from him on a whisper. “That’s not… It’s not what you think.”
“Perhaps I was wrong about you, James.” Disappointment shone in her eyes. Rivaled only by pain. “Maybe you are a coward.”
Wish it away, Jimmy Boy. Wish it—
BARQAN! a cold, triumphant voice boomed in his head.
A familiar voice.
Ice flooded through him, at the very second every molecule in his ethereal body began to vibrate.
“Fark,” he breathed, gaze holding Tahlee’s. “He’s remembered my name. He’s remembered my—”
BARQAN, BY YOUR NAME, I SUMMON AND ENSLAVE YOU, Syrin finished, tearing James’s existence apart.
The safe house vanished. Everything vanished. No light no sound, no darkness. Nothing layered over nothing as he flung through Actuality, incapable of denying the summons of the sorcerer who’d first pulled him from his realm.
Incapable of doing anything until, a heartbeat later, he materialized into the very room in which he’d projected himself a few short minutes ago.
“Welcome back, djinn.” With a nasty smile, Philips flicked the fresh goat’s blood and entrails dripping from his fingers into James’s face. “Told you that you’d be mine.”
James balled his fists. “You’ve made a mistake, Syrin. You will suffer for—”
“Kneel, djinn,” Philips snarled, slamming his open hands in a downward direction.
James crumpled to his knees.
Incapable of doing anything else.
Enslaved and controlled, once again, by the most malicious sorcerer he’d ever encountered.
* * * *
Tahlee bolted for the kitchen, the sheer terror in James’s face as he disappeared before her eyes lashing at her sanity.
He had him.
Syrin had him.
What does that even mean?
She had no clue. Except for what the horror in James’s eyes told her.
It was bad. Worse than bad.
Oh God, James.
“Kitt!” she yelled, sprinting into the kitchen. “He’s got James!”
Kitt spun from the counter, eyes glowing gold, a growl rumbling deep in his chest.
She skidded to a halt, her bare heels slipping on the cool tiles, her heart smashing into her throat. “Kitt, it’s me!” she yelped. “Tahlee. James’s Tahlee.”
James’s Tahlee.
The gold light evaporated and, staring at her with human eyes again, he took a step closer. “Who’s got James?”
“I think… I think Syrin.”
He growled again. Jesus, what a scary flipping sound. “What do you mean, Syrin?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he ran from the kitchen. “Oi, Jimmy Boy!” he yelled.
Tahlee ran after him. Ran into him when he stopped just inside the bedroom.
“He was here,” she said, rubbing at her knee. Better to concentrate on the small ache from running into a six-foot-plus mountain of a man than the angry words she’d said to James… and the dread on his face when he’d vanished a few seconds after.
It’s not what you think…
His voice, low and racked with pain.
He’s remembered my name. He’s remembered my—
His last words. Full of horror.
A sick weight rolled in her stomach. “We need to save him!”
Kitt held up his hand. His back swelled with a deep, slow breath. “I can’t detect anything.” Worry shone in his eyes as he flicked her a quick glance over his shoulder. “What happened?”
The weight in her stomach doubled. Her blood roared in her ears. “We were talking. And then fear filled his face and—”
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