by S. Young
He gulped, trying to draw in air, and Ari reached for him, only to have him push her hand away. Heaving in rapid, jerky breaths, Charlie dropped his hands to his knees and tucked his head into his chest as he tried to collect himself.
“Charlie,” she whispered desperately.
“Ari.” She felt Jai’s hand on her arm, attempting to pull her back.
Finally, Charlie straightened, his breathing still uneven, tears streaking his cheeks. When next he spoke, he didn’t even look at her. “Was it yours?”
Ari shook her head in incomprehension. “What?”
“Was it your fault?” he bit out.
Feeling the rip in her chest lengthen and deepen, Ari’s eyes blurred with tears. “I don’t know.”
Without another word, Charlie turned and strode out of the woods, leaving her there shivering in the aftermath of his unspoken blame.
Jai remained quiet for a whole five minutes, letting her gulp back the tears and gather herself. Her head felt too hot and her ears buzzed with disbelief. She could barely breathe. Her chest hurt so much from fear that she’d lost Charlie for good.
Finally, though, Jai sighed at her back. “I know you’re worried about him but we have bigger problems.”
Ari shook her head, unable to look at him. “You don’t understand.”
“You think you’re in love with him.”
“There’s no ‘think’ in that sentence.”
When he didn’t respond, Ari glanced back at him, trying not to let the defeat show in her eyes. “I guess you’re right about the bigger problems, though. So how do we exorcise one of the jinn?”
He shrugged. “You got Yellow Pages?”
“Seriously?”
Jai snorted. “Yes, Ari. There are Aissawa Exorcists in the Yellow Pages.”
Huffing, Ari walked away from him. “You really need to work on intonation when you use sarcasm. That way people will know when you’re being an asshole.”
“And you need to work on your gullibility.”
“I was under the impression you have no sense of humor, so forgive me for believing everything you say.”
“Well, that should be fun.”
“See!” she threw over her shoulder. “No intonation. Jeez, Jai, drop the monotone.”
Stepping in stride beside her, he sighed as if he were dealing with an infant. “You were less annoying when I was invisible.”
“I think that says more about you than me.” When she glanced up at him for a reaction, Ari was surprised to see something spark in his eyes. It was as though he was enjoying himself. The ache in her chest refused to ease, but for a moment, as they shared a long look, she had to work hard not to give him a sad smile.
Abruptly, Jai cleared his throat, and looked ahead. “I take it you want an Aissawa Exorcist for your friend Nick?”
“I would say yes if I knew what an Aissawa Exorcist was.”
“The Aissawa Brotherhood are experts in exorcising homes, buildings, material goods and people that the jinn have possessed. I’ll make a call.”
After muttering a thank you, Ari let silence fall between them, realizing that after years of being alone for much of the time, she wouldn’t have a moment’s peace from this guy for the indefinite future. Sure, Jai could turn into the Great Dane again, so her dad would only question her about a mutt rather than a hot, older guy in jeans that did wonderful things to his ass. But where would Jai sleep? Did he intend to sleep in her room? With her?
The heat of someone watching her brought Ari blinking out of her thoughts, and she glanced up to see Jai looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “What?” she asked.
He shook his head in disbelief. “Hamlet?
Chapter 11
Let me in to your world
I don’t belong in mine
“Maybe you should stop calling him,” Jai suggested without looking up from his book. He laid on the floor in her bedroom, propped up against the wall, sitting on top of the sleeping bag he’d conjured since he refused to leave her side. It had been a few days and if Ari never had to see another science fiction novel, it wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Ari threw her cell on her bed and glared at the jinn who had taken up permanent residence in her life. True to the Red King’s word, Jai lived like a human, mostly. He ate all her food and used up the hot water in her shower. Yes, he could magically conjure clean clothes, but other than that, he was like any unwelcome houseguest. Well… when he wasn’t padding around on four legs as a Great Dane when her dad was around. As for her dad, he still wasn’t speaking to Ari. Adamantly not speaking to her. So much so he’d looked at Jai in Great Dane form and not even said a word. He hadn’t even asked why there wasn’t any dog food, or bowl, or bed. He was that pissed.
He wasn’t the only one.
Ever since Charlie had walked away from her in the woods, she’d been calling and leaving him messages, but he hadn’t responded. She tried to fight her growing fear by irritating the life out of Jai, but despite first impressions, he wasn’t easily irritated. He didn’t answer personal questions, and every time she asked him when the Aissawa Brotherhood would arrive, he would just say ‘soon’ and return to reading. As far as stalkers went, Ari guessed he wasn’t so bad, although the less he told her, the more curious she grew about him. Attempting to work out the mystery that was Jai was easier than attempting to work out all the relationships she’d messed up over the last few days. Not only was she in the bad books with her dad and Charlie, but also with Rachel and Staci. They were furious at her for not providing a suitable reason for disappearing for two days. Rachel had yelled at her on the phone before hanging up. Thinking she might try to mend fences by contacting Staci, it did not surprise her when her ten calls were ignored. Rachel had gotten to Staci before she could.
Great.
So now she was going stir crazy in a room with Jai, who only offered an opinion on subject matters she had no wish to discuss with him. “Did I ask for your input?”
He sighed, casually turning the page of his book. “Nope. But as a guy, I can tell you the whole desperate thing would push me further away.”
Insulted, Ari threw a cushion at him, only to watch it dissolve into ash before it even hit him. That was the second cushion he’d destroyed. Never mind, it was her own fault for throwing them at a jinn. “I am not desperate,” she muttered.
“Stop calling him then. Be patient. You’re going to lose him or not.”
“No.” She jumped off the bed, outraged at the thought. “I have already lost my dad, and my humanity, and my friends. I am not losing Charlie too.”
“What is it about this kid?”
Disgusted by his callousness, Ari shot him a dirty look. “Don’t you have any friends, Jai?”
He looked up from his book. “One.”
She stopped, frozen. “Yeah?” She smiled tentatively, amazed he had actually offered something personal. “What’s he or she like?”
Jai frowned. “He’s a friend.”
“Wow, your descriptive skills are outstanding. It must be all that reading you do.” When he ignored her teasing, Ari blew out an impatient breath. “Oh, come on, I’m bored. Tell me something. Tell me about your friend.”
“We grew up together. He’s a friend. End of.”
“You’re killing me.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly a day at the beach.”
Deciding to ignore that, Ari flopped down on her bed with her phone and scrolled through Rachel’s tweets. Her eyes narrowed at a certain comment.
Sometimes friendships are a one-way system. Sad but true. A hard lesson I learned this week.
One guess who she was subtweeting about. “Two-faced drama queen.”
“Was that directed at me? Because if so, it was completely uncalled for,” Jai muttered, marking his page before he shut the book. He looked up at her. “You’re bored. Me too.”
She tried to forget about Rachel and dropped her phone on the bed. “Yeah? What would you usually b
e doing now?” Ari knew it was a personal question, but she hoped he had reached the same level of boredom she had and would say or do anything to dispel it. Besides, there really was no arguing with it anymore. She was curious to know more about the hot guy who was sleeping on the floor at the end of her bed every night, making falling asleep incredibly difficult. He made her so hyperaware. What she wore to her bed. If she snored… Oh God, she hoped she didn’t snore.
Jai sat up, drawing his knees to his chest. “Training. Working. The Ginnaye are disguised as major personal security companies around the world. My father is the head of an L.A. company.”
“So you get paid to protect people?”
He nodded, his neutral expression difficult to read. “When a jinn hire us, we prioritize them, but we make our living by not only training humans to be security officers but sometimes also doing human security jobs ourselves. It’s quite lucrative.”
“Must be pretty cool working with your dad.” Ari smiled wistfully, wishing her dad would start talking to her. What kind of dad didn’t question a random Great Dane in his house?
Instead of answering, Jai sat forward. “You know, I could educate you about the jinn. That would pass time.”
The smile slid off Ari’s face, and she looked away. “I don’t want to learn anything about them.”
“Ari, it’s my job to protect you. If I can teach you about different jinn, it means you might recognize one if you ever come across them while you’re alone.”
“No.”
“This is your heritage, Ari. Don’t you want to learn about your heritage?”
“No!” she snapped, jolting off the bed. “I don’t know who or what I am, okay. Before this I didn’t know and I still don’t know. But the one thing I knew was that I was Charlie’s friend. That’s the only thing I have. So, I don’t want to talk about the jinn. I don’t. I’m just going to sit here and wait for my friend to remember that’s all I have and call me.”
Silence fell between them and Ari was certain Jai wouldn’t respond.
She was wrong.
When he cleared his throat, she turned to him. It surprised her to see he was angry. He shook his head at her. “You’re smarter than that. Don’t make out that who you are depends on who you are to someone else. Being Charlie’s friend isn’t who you are. It’s a part of what makes you tick. But it’s not who you are. And sitting back on your ass while life happens to you… is that really who you are, Ari?” He tutted and grabbed his book again, opening it to the placeholder. “I guess I was wrong about you.”
“He’s right, you know,” a new voice entered the fray and Ari’s head shot up in surprise to see Charlie standing in her doorway. He looked worn out and unsure as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Your dad let me in. I take it he doesn’t know about…” his eyes fell to Jai on the floor, Jai who kept reading his book as if nothing was going on, as if he hadn’t hurt her with his disappointment.
Ignoring him, Ari turned to Charlie. He was here. Of his own accord. Relief blossomed across her chest. “He does the Great Dane thing when dad’s around.” She smiled crookedly. “You’re here.”
Expression shuttered, Charlie nodded and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. He heaved a sigh and leaned against it. She saw a world of hurt in his eyes: trauma, shock, disbelief, relief, fury. Charlie always felt so much and now she could see he was battling to control how overwhelming it all was. “I don’t blame you,” he whispered, those dark eyes searching her face for reassurance. “I’m sorry I made you think I blamed you. I just… God… it was a lot, Ari.”
Afraid to scare him off or do anything to make him change his mind, Ari took a tentative step toward him. “I know. I know. Believe me, I know. So, you took some time to think about everything. How do you feel? I mean, how are you?”
Charlie shook his head. “Forget about me for a second. How are you?”
Ari smiled tremulously. “Coping.”
“I can’t believe all this is true. Actually, I can because I saw it with my own two eyes, but still… jinn. Jinn are real. How freaking weird is that?”
She chuckled humorlessly and was grateful when he returned her smile with a lopsided one. “It is weird.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” he asked, pushing up away from the door. Charlie glanced down at Jai, who still read his book like they weren’t having this momentous conversation in front of him. “Are you going to learn, you know, to be jinn?”
Scowling at the thought, Ari shook her head. “Hell no. No. No way. I want nothing to do with any of it. Once I rectify a few situations, I am going to continue my very human life like none of this ever happened.”
Charlie looked doubtful. “It’s not that easy, Ari.”
“Yes, it is. I mean, I can’t right away, but I will. The Red King refuses to drop the protection, so I’m stuck with Jai until I can figure out how to get rid of him.”
“Thanks,” Jai replied dryly, without looking up from the book.
Charlie frowned down at him. “So that’s it? No jinn stuff? Nothing?”
His look of disappointment baffled Ari. She wanted to question him, but she was afraid of what’d he say, afraid it would spoil the tenuous thread they’d sewn in their torn friendship in the last few minutes. “No. Well, yeah. You remember I told you about Nick? How he’s possessed by one of the jinn?”
“Jesus.” Charlie’s eyes widened. “After everything… I guess that part I kind of forgot.”
“Understandable under the circumstances. Jai and I are waiting for these Brotherhood guys—”
“Aissawa,” Jai interjected before yawning.
“Aissawa Brotherhood guys who specialize in exorcism.”
Charlie’s eyes lit up, such animation on his face it startled Ari. It had been two years since she’d seen him excited about anything. “You’re doing an exorcism?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Yeah, we are. Once we figure out how to get Nick in a secluded place where we can, you know, depossess him.”
Jai snorted. “Exorcise him.”
“Whatever.”
“I want in,” Charlie said, glancing up and down between the two of them.
“What do you mean you want in?” Jai lowered his book, his rough voice all serious and antagonistic. Ari wanted to punch him.
“Just that. I want to help.”
“No wa—”
“Of course you can,” Ari cut off Jai’s protest. Charlie was offering to do something that didn’t involve sex, drinking or drugs. There was no way she was leaving him out of this. “I’ll call you when it’s time.”
He smiled at her. “Great. Look, I have to go because Mom and I are, you know… well… we’re actually talking so I said I’d be home for dinner.”
Warmth spread through her, and Ari grinned at the news. “Charlie, that’s great news, that’s—”
“Yeah, yeah.” He stopped her, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. “We’ll talk soon, okay. Lots to discuss.” He winked at her and then turned, casting another puzzled and wary look at Jai before disappearing out the door.
When Ari finally stopped mooning at the doorway, she looked down at Jai, only to find him glaring up at her. “What?”
“You invited a human, an addict to boot, to help with the exorcism?”
“Hey, until a few days ago, I was human.”
“No, you just thought you were. And he’s not coming.”
“This is my exorcism. I say who goes.”
“You’re such a child.”
Ari guffawed. “Excuse me? I am not the one making spurious accusations about people. Charlie has had problems but he’s not an addict.”
“But you admit he has a problem?”
“Had,” she argued. “Had a problem. I haven’t seen Charlie that sober or that animated about anything in two years. If coming along to a freaky jinn exorcism keeps him that way, then fine by me.”
“Just be careful with him, okay. You don’t know what his
agenda is.”
“You know, Jai, some people don’t have agendas. Some people are just friends.”
“God, Ari,” he groaned.
Surprised by the entreaty in her guardian’s voice, Ari spun about to look down at him, blinking in confusion at the begrudging smile he wore on his lips. “What?”
“You.” He thumped his head back against the wall. “Your loyalty is exhausting.”
Ari flushed at the backhanded compliment, ignoring the flutter of butterfly wings in her stomach. She suddenly grew irritated and confused. Shaking her head at Jai in disbelief, she bit out, “I am going to the bathroom and you better not follow me, perv.”
“Child,” he muttered as she hurried past him.
Ari was surprised but pleased when Charlie called that night to talk. They hadn’t talked on the phone for a long time. He asked her to tell him more about her visit with the White King and as she recounted the terrifying tale, she really wished Jai would disappear so she could have some privacy. After a while, the conversation puttered out a little and she realized it was going to take more than the revelation that ‘genies’ lived among them to repair the damage to their relationship. But the call had been a start, and when Ari hung up, she felt eager and hopeful.
As she lay in bed in the dark, listening to Jai’s soft breathing as he slept, she wondered what his story was in all of this. She knew her own. She knew Charlie’s. She even knew Azazil’s and the White and Red King’s. She also knew her dad’s. But what about Jai, who liked science fiction and one-word sentences and black coffee? Who was this guy who was sharing her life? What life had he left behind? Surprised that he was taking up so much of her thoughts, Ari rolled onto her side to look out the window. It was only natural. It was only natural to wonder about the guardian assigned to her.
It was only natural, she promised herself, and let the sound of Jai’s breathing slowly lull her to sleep.
With his jinn vision, Jai could make out every detail of Ari’s room as if the lights were still on. He waited, watching her, relaxing, when she finally closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. Waving his hand over the floor, he drew on his magic to conjure and began thinking about everything he thought was useful for Ari to know about the jinn. About her heritage, about the truth, without overwhelming her or going directly against the Red King’s orders. He’d tried now for several days to get her interested in the jinn, but she was in denial. She thought if she buried her head in the sand about it, it would all go away.