by S. Young
She searched his face, his words piercing her with their knife-like perceptiveness. Perhaps what he said was true. She and Charlie were all alone. They did only have each other. But that wasn’t the only reason she clung to him. And this jinn? This king?
His was the coldest promise she’d ever heard.
He had a child to fulfill something within himself, not because he wanted to love the child. And her mother? Her mother had told a lie to a man about her paternity, a good man whom Ari loved, and Sala had done this over some petty argument?
Her parents were monsters.
Her father had gone to all this trouble to get her here for nothing. Making her wish for her mother, making her—
Making me wish for my mother.
Confusion rippled through her and Ari let go of the bedpost. She stood shakily to her feet. “If I wished for my mother, why didn’t I appear before her?”
The White King shrugged. His eyes flicked to the nightstand and for once they expressed emotion: boredom. “You did.”
The sick feeling intensified and she gaped at the purple bottle that had drawn her attention when she first arrived. “No.” She shook her head. “That’s crazy. That’s like something out of Arabian Nights.”
He blinked at her. “Where do you think the legends come from? Sala betrayed me; she incurred my wrath.” He spoke of wrath, but there was no fire in his voice. It remained quiet and chilling. “She is lucky I didn’t strip her skin from her bones and hang her out for the Qaf vultures to feed upon.”
Ari stumbled back in horror at his words. “Oh my God.”
“You do not betray the White King and walk away unscathed. Sala was lashed for her crime and trapped within the bottle. She will remain there for however long I wish it. Perhaps another few centuries.”
“You don’t even care.” Ari’s mouth trembled, fear crawling up her spine. “You’re a monster. You’re not my father. I’m not related to you. You’re a monster.”
He stood up so swiftly, Ari stumbled back against the bed. His tall figure towered over her, casting her in shadow and heat. “I am jinn,” he replied quietly. “You would not be horrified by my actions if I had reared you within our realm, among your kind, as you should have been. As is your right.” He held out an icy hand for her. “Stay, Ari. You are a princess of the jinn. I will not abandon you. Your father will not abandon you.”
She bit her lip, terrified of the consequences of her response. But she wouldn’t stay here. She had a home to return to and two people she loved. And she needed to get back there so she could have a suitable mental breakdown without this psychotic jinn watching her. “No. You may be my father, but you’re not my dad. Send me home.”
Gasping in surprise, Ari watched his black eyes light up like two flames. His body shimmered and shadows moved under his skin like black serpents fighting for freedom. “If you leave, child, you will regret it.”
“You won’t hurt me.” She shook her head uncertainly.
That smile, that horrifying non-smile, returned to his face. “You leave me and I will find a way.”
“You said you can’t keep me here of my own free will. So send me back.”
“You will regret it.”
“Then let me regret it from the comfort of my home.”
An explosion of noise blasted in her ears and Ari threw her hands up to cover them, watching as the whole room went up in flames, including the White King. Fire danced around her, tasting her skin and yet leaving no burn. She heard the odd, disquieting sound of that strange humming noise he had made earlier, just before darkness descended across her eyes.
Chapter 8
One of many bullets
Ari loved rollercoasters. She loved the feel of the wind rushing through her hair, slapping against her skin, making her eyes tear. A rollercoaster made her feel alive. She loved the feeling of falling and rising and dipping and whirling through space, her stomach fluttering, her heart racing, her whole body free.
Rollercoasters were fun because she knew it was pretty safe, strapped into her seat.
This was just like that.
But without the safety part.
Wind rushed into her eyes, battering so hard against her body it knocked the breath out of her and nearly blinded her. All she could make out was a rush of colors blurring together before she was spat out of the wind tunnel onto a hard floor. She groaned, lifting her head off the ground. Her cheek throbbed. Feeling bruised and sore and emotionally destroyed, Ari pushed herself up onto her knees and took in her surroundings.
She was back home. In her bedroom.
Relief rushed over her and she sighed, slumping on her butt. “You here, Ms. Maggie?”
Nothing happened. No light switch turned on, no computer chair moved. Ari bit her lip, shaking her head. Great. Just when she needed the poltergeist the most, the damn spirit had taken off.
“Perfect.” She coughed up phlegm, feeling drained. Biting back burning tears, refusing to cry, Ari spoke out to the room as if Ms. Maggie was still there. “You would not believe where I’ve been.”
The events of the past few hours flashed through her mind and Ari glanced down at her arm as she remembered the terrifying nisnas. Still wearing the jacket Rabir had given her, Ari shuddered and shrugged out of it. She threw it across the room and promised to burn it.
“I found out who my real parents are,” she whispered sullenly. “You wouldn’t believe it. Then again, you’re a poltergeist, so you might.” She laughed, not able to stop. “Oh,” she tried to draw breath, her laughter slowly dying to choked tears. “I’d rather be crazy. I’d rather be crazy than this be real. My father sucks. Big time. And my mother… God… I wish you were here. In fact, if I were wishing for things, I would wish that Charlie was here, but I—” Ari froze. Stumbling to her feet, she turned to stare at the empty bed. “Charlie?” Where was Charlie? He should be here. Oh crap, he must have awoken to find her gone.
Wait.
Ari strode over to the window, looking out over the day-lit sky. How could it be day when she had only been gone two hours tops? Heart pounding now, Ari spun around and dashed for her phone on her nightstand. It was dead.
Oh hell.
Rummaging through her jewelry box, she pulled out the digital watch she hardly ever wore.The date and time blinked up at her, taunting and teasing, so much so Ari could have sworn they were lying. The watch fell from her hands and she gasped for breath, shaking now from head to toe. It was too much. It was all too much. “I’ve been gone two days? Two whole days.” Ari’s fake calm flew out of the window. If she wasn’t convinced everything was real before, the two days lost on Mount Qaf certainly cemented the truth.
“Holy crap. I’m jinn,” she exhaled, staring at her apparently magical hands.
A loud thud sounded from downstairs, and Ari tensed, her fingers curling into fists. She tried to slow her heart by reminding herself that it could be Charlie. When another thud sounded, however, she was also reminded of her father’s threat that she would regret leaving him.
Not your father! She winced, mentally slapping herself. The White King.
Fed up of being scared out of her wits, Ari quietly delved through her closet until she found the baseball bat from her days in Little League with Charlie. Clutching it firmly between both hands, Ari stealthily made her way out into the hall, ignoring the pounding behind her ribcage and the rushing whoosh of blood in her ears. She strained to hear as she tip-toed downstairs. She couldn’t call out for Charlie in case it wasn’t Charlie. It took her less than five minutes to scope out the ground floor, and Ari couldn’t find anyone or anything that could have caused the thud. Deciding it must have been Ms. Maggie, Ari dropped the bat on her living room couch and stood facing the window, trying to find calm in the neat, peaceful neighborhood that didn’t know genie legends were true. That living next door to them was one of the jinn. A jinn who was the child of two monsters. Was that what she was? Was that what she had been looking for all this time? She bit dow
n on her lip so hard—trying to hold in the tears of despair—she drew blood.
“You know there was an ifrit living in your house, right?”
Letting out a startled cry, Ari spun around to find two men standing in the doorway of her living room. No. Not men. Ari took in the one closest to her with abject dread. If it was possible, he stood even taller than the White King, and there was a similarity in the cut of his features that made her stomach flip. However, instead of bleak black eyes and a shiny bald head, this guy had bright blue eyes, brown skin tinged with a slight reddish hue, and long flame-red hair tied back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. The tip of the ponytail swung at his lower back as he took a step closer to her. Ari retreated, not fooled by the jeans and T-shirt he wore. He was jinn.
She wanted them to leave her the hell alone! Why couldn’t they do that? What did they want from her? “What are you?”
He smiled at her, a genuine, beautiful smile that wiped away any similarity to the White King. “I’m your uncle,” his deep voice boomed around the room. He didn’t speak with the same accented, careful, old-fashioned correctness the White King did. He spoke like her, American accent and all.
Ari shivered and glanced around for some kind of weapon, since her baseball bat was too far away from her. “I told the White King to leave me alone.”
His eyes dimmed. “Oh, I’m not here for your father. The opposite, in fact. I’m the Red King. You may call me uncle if you wish.”
She frowned as he slipped into a more formal speech. “I don’t think so. What do you want?” She glanced warily over the Red King’s shoulder at the guy standing in the doorway. Something about him made her pause. When his eyes glittered back at her from the shadows, Ari felt his gaze on her with a jolt. A shiver rippled down her spine. She eyed him, guarded, before shifting her attention back to the enigmatic redhead before her. “I’ve had my fill of jinn. And not the good gin that my dad keeps locked in his liquor cabinet. The creepy jinn that took a bite out of my arm and destroyed reality as I know it.”
“Yeah.” The Red King heaved a sigh, sitting down on the couch. “Sounds like big bro.”
Ari raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing here?”
“The sultan sent me.”
Her eyes widened. “Azazil?”
The Red King scooted forward, his features taut with expectancy. “How much did my brother tell you?”
“You mean the asshat who ripped me from my world into another one and coldly told me he was my real father and that I’m jinn?”
“Asshat. I like that.” He grinned, and then promptly wiped the smile off his face when he noted her displeasure. “Yeah, that guy.”
“Just that. That my mother hid me with my dad, with Derek, and that the White King couldn’t find me because of some enchantment she put over me that hid me from him. He said it wore off when I was sixteen.”
She waited, somehow hoping that information would be enough to make him leave.
“It did.” The Red King nodded eagerly. “Azazil had me searching to find you before the White King could get to you. Unfortunately, my psychotic brother got to you just as we did. Well… I might have been able to stop him if someone had told me about Rabir a little sooner.” He threw a dirty, pointed look at the guy in the doorway, and said guy took a step forward into the light.
“Hey,” the guy snapped. “If you had told me what the hell she really was,” he threw a gesture in her direction, “I would have gone directly to you rather than to my father.”
“Have you forgotten who you’re speaking to, kid?” The Red King’s voice purred threateningly.
The guy, who Ari now noticed was younger than she’d first thought, stiffened. She noted, however, that he didn’t look frightened by the Red King, merely annoyed. Somehow, that reassured her. He nodded tightly, the strong line of his jaw clenching. “Apologies, Your Highness.”
He sounds way less than apologetic, Ari thought.
The Red King’s eyes flashed and he turned back to her. “I like this kid.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the young guy. “He’s got fire.” The Red King grinned and winked. “Get it?”
Ari almost rolled her eyes, amazed that this was really her life now. “He’s jinn, too?” She ran her eyes over the young guy who appeared to be in his early twenties. She noted he was shorter than the king, standing at around six foot two. He was powerful looking, however, broad-shouldered and fit. Like the Red King, he wore black jeans and a plain white T-shirt. His olive skin formed over tightly roped muscle.
“He is,” the Red King replied. “This is Jai. Jai is of a race of jinn who live as humans. He is also a highly trained member of the Ginnaye.”
Jai nodded at her and she found she couldn’t quite take her eyes from him. He smirked at her. “You need to watch where you’re looking when you cross the street.”
“Excuse me?”
“Corner of West and Frederick? The truck.”
“You!” she cried, her eyes wide with disbelief. “You were the invisible hands that pulled me back?”
“You’re welcome.”
“What?” she squeaked, anger bubbling in her blood. “I’m welcome? You made me think I was being stalked by some crazy poltergeist!”
“Just doing my job.”
Ari looked to the Red King and she suddenly realized she was staring at him as if she were waiting for him to come to her defense. Irritated at herself, she threw a disgusted gesture in Jai’s direction. “What is he? Why has he been following me?”
“Jai is one of the Ginnaye’s youngest and most promising members.”
She glared at Jai. “The who?”
“The Ginnaye,” Jai answered in his rough voice. “Protectors. Guardians. We’re high-paid security for importants.”
Eyes narrowed, Ari slowly sat down in the armchair that faced the Red King. “You hired someone to protect me because you consider me an important?”
“I see my brother at least filled you in on importants.”
“I’m not an important. I’m…” she gulped, hating to admit it. “Apparently, I’m jinn.”
“Well, I just—” Jai was interrupted by the Red King who he held up a hand to silence the guardian.
Ari glanced warily between the two of them. “You just what?”
The two jinn continued to stare at each other in strained silence until finally Jai pinned her to the wall with a strange and intense look. “I just found that out. I thought you were human.”
“Okay.” She studied them, trying to work out her next move.
But she was just so tired.
“Just tell me why you’re here? Please.”
The Red King sighed, clasping his large hands together in front of him. The White King had been so alien, so strange, apathetic and sinister in his emotionlessness. His brother was the opposite. If it weren’t for his otherworldliness and long, flowing red hair, he’d almost pass for an ordinary guy. “Azazil asked me to protect you. That’s why I’ve hired Jai. Your father, Ari, may become persistent in his goal to retrieve you.”
“But why?”
“My brother, did he tell you anything about the Seven Kings and Azazil?”
Ari pressed a hand to her temple to stem a headache. “He told me about your war. That you each trespassed upon one another’s duty.”
“Then he only told you part of the truth.”
“What more is there? And what do I have to do with it?”
“My brother lives for power. Nothing else. He wishes to dethrone Azazil and he will do anything to attain the throne. He has divided my brothers in this war, destroyed the order he claims to want to uphold.” The Red King shook his head, disgusted. “He’s gathering an army, Ari. And you… your conception was merely to create another soldier for his cause.”
It felt as if her stomach had dropped to the floor at her feet. She stared at the carpet numbly, noting her bare feet still looked red and cold from their time on Mount Qaf. Her toe nails sparkled with the blue glit
ter nail polish Rachel had forced on her at school last week when she was wearing flip-flops. She smiled humorlessly, thinking how funny it was that her feet seemed to sum up her life before and after she discovered the unbelievable truth. “Why? Why would he want me?”
“You were born. You are his. That is enough reason for him. My brother doesn’t enjoy losing what he considers his.”
“Is that why he trapped Sala in a bottle?”
The Red King nodded. “Unfortunately, Sala is one of many jinn who walk the fine line between good and evil, only to discover when faced with true evil that they are not at all prepared to cross the line. She is being punished for her naivety.”
Ari gulped, clenching her hand into a fist, wishing she didn’t care if a mother who had abandoned her was being abused at the hands of the monster who called himself her father. “Will she ever be free?”
He sighed heavily, drawing her eyes up to his kind face. It amazed her this man was related to the White King. In a weird way, it made her feel better about being related to the psychopath. “Ari, you cannot worry about Sala. You have enough to worry about for yourself.”
Her heart did this weird little jump in her chest, a jump that vibrated, causing a wave of nausea to rise in her. She felt her skin prickle into a cold sweat and knew the color must have leached from her face. “Why?”
“For two reasons. One: my brother will not give up his attempts to lure you back to Mount Qaf to be with him. And two: your bloodline is significant. You may not have tapped into your magical abilities as jinn but you emit an aura, an aura that only the most powerful emit. You are the daughter of a jinn king and a powerful ifrit. This aura attracts other jinn. It’s already attracted jinn.”