by J. C. Welker
A glint suddenly entered the girl’s eyes.
A spark like lightning, and Anjeline watched as the girl looked up, down, and all around. “What are you scheming, Faddi?” The girl had fight in her, for sure, and she wondered what a lockpick with those gifts could accomplish under different circumstances. Wondered what Madrath would think.
By his definition, the girl was anything but trustworthy.
But fire was Anjeline’s mother tongue. She didn’t need to entrust a human. Just manipulate one. And this Rebel was a paradox. She’d witnessed the human open locks faster than a skilled magus. Watched her battle wolves. The girl had been beautiful, in the way something wild was beautiful. Jinn were some of the most powerful creatures in existence, to such an extent that power itself became meaningless to her. Yet there was something in this girl… She seemed far too familiar with the darkness, and had somehow managed to tame it, kicking and screaming into the light. Making her shine like a star in a black hole.
As she took in the girl with the hungry eyes, she glimpsed an opportunity. For this thief yearned for freedom as much as her. This human wasn’t at all what it seemed. Which was only fair, because neither was Anjeline. And she would have freedom, at whatever cost.
So, she made a plan of her own.
Chapter Six
Rebel waited until the footsteps faded up the dungeon’s stairs.
A moment passed before she knew Styria had gone. Then she set into action. She hopped up into a crawl, making her shoulder throb and her empty stomach lurch, but she moved anyway. Her raw knees brushed against every crack and stone of the floor as she wriggled to the table, banging into it and knocking over the vase. It rolled toward her, bumping into her chest and filling her with warmth. Using her teeth, she bit down on the vase’s top and gave a yank, uncorking it with a pop.
But nothing happened.
“Hello?” she whispered. “Come on, then?”
Nothing.
Ah. Rebel remembered. Though her knowledge of Jinn lore had been informed by books, they weren’t entirely false as she recalled what the alpha had done. She leaned forward and, with her nose, rubbed it against the base of the vase. As before, the air heated and a shroud of smoke birthed from the spout onto the table, letting loose a flood of magic.
There, in all her splendor, sat the jinni, warming as the sun.
Like some breed of goddess in the guise of a girl. As Anjeline’s eyes flamed with a life of their own and landed on her, Rebel felt as though she’d been hit by a blast of warmth. They were hypnotic, as if powerful enough to start and stop a rebellion. And it did in Rebel’s chest.
“You’re…real.” The sight of her rendered everything else dull. Rebel had an urge to touch the runes trailing up the jinni’s arms, as delicate as feathers. As a divine messenger. She wasn’t exactly wrong. It was a strange and wonderful thing to have stumbled upon this creature at this point in her life. When she needed a wish.
Like…fate.
The brief comfort she felt shriveled when Anjeline said, “And you’re in hell’s kitchen. Karma has dealt you your hand.”
Rebel startled at her reply. “What…” Right. The jinni knew who had pirated her from the safe. A stab of guilt emerged. “I thought it was a vase—”
“You thought wrong.” Anjeline folded her arms, and her gold earrings swayed back and forth. “Just because I reside inside the vessel doesn’t mean I can’t behold what’s on the outer side.” There was a faint timbre to her voice with a slight purr rumbling her r’s. Her eyes, ringed with black lashes, narrowed and stared at Rebel more closely than she’d been looked at probably most of her life.
All Rebel could do was gaze back. Stop staring, she told herself, but her body disregarded her brain. Like most thieves, she had an obsession for glittery things, and the jinni was even lovelier and shinier when annoyed. Then she remembered the attack in the tunnel, and that voice. “You called to me. You said my name.”
“A warning for you to abandon the vessel and run. But you humans lack wits. Now, thanks to you, we’re both in their foul hands,” Anjeline hissed, releasing a glare.
Rebel felt the scowl physically as if she’d been bitten. But neither of them had time to argue. “Just hurry, wish us out of here.”
Anjeline looked offended, as though she’d asked her to wrinkle her nose, fold her arms, and blink a wish into existence. “Oh? So kind of you to take me with you,” she snapped and turned away, sending her hair tumbling over her shoulders in a sea of heat.
“Please?” Rebel tried again. “Isn’t that the magical word?”
For a second, Anjeline’s lips twitched but no smile came. “Doesn’t work that way. Besides, all you want is your wishes. Greedy as those beasts.”
Well, with that kind of attitude… “Your opinion of me is uplifting.”
“You stole me.”
“Thief.” Rebel drew out the word in an obvious manner. However, the jinni did have a point, though it wasn’t for avarice reasons. “And I stole a vase. If I knew you were…inside, I would have asked first.”
Anjeline squinted at her. “Your lies are smooth, silver tongue. I’ve experienced over a thousand and one humans, and you’re all alike. Deceitful. Treacherous.” Her voice grew soft. “Your kind leave scars upon the world.”
For a being of smoke and flame, there was something tragic about the jinni. Her expression reminded Rebel of a little, grumpy old man with a gray cloud following her. And she became pinned in place at the hopelessness there. “Maybe,” she said. “But not all humans are bad. Some are just bad at being human.”
Doubt worked its way over Anjeline’s brow.
Rebel wanted to say more but remembered their situation. She shifted to her side. “Untie me, please.”
One corner of Anjeline’s mouth lifted lazily as she seemed to consider it. She leaned in close enough to kiss, and replied with a frank, “No.”
Frustration burned up Rebel’s neck and she scowled.
Anjeline’s lips curved more. “You can’t intimate me with your humanness.”
The jinni appeared to be taking petty pleasure in watching the burn appear on Rebel’s cheeks, provoking her desperation on purpose. Anxious knots twisted her insides along with confusion. “Then why did you save me?”
Anjeline fell silent then, her gaze lowering. “I preferred not to watch them turn you into human jerky. Plus”—she lifted her wrists—“we’re both imprisoned.”
Rebel’s gaze dropped down Anjeline’s neck to skin the warmest shade of bronze, trailing down the runes on her arms all the way to the bracelets encircling her wrists. They were engraved with symbols and glyphs. Magic. Rebel saw the anguish on Anjeline’s face. The jinni was trapped. As much as she was, and she didn’t need to ask to know those cuffs were not in fact bracelets, but shackles of a captive.
Something inside Rebel’s chest pinched. “You’re bound to the vase?”
Anjeline’s mouth turned down into a crescent moon. “Imprisoning spirits to objects is favored among the magically sadistic. Those who want to keep us here for endless wishes. But wishes are never enough to escape their horrible hearts.”
A flicker of truth struggled to break free from those chains around Rebel’s own heart. Escape. She turned back to their situation. “Look, we both have mistrust for humans, but I won’t leave you here, I…promise.” She shifted and pain shot up her shoulder. A wave of dizziness emerged and she swayed, falling backward.
A hand caught her.
Heat flared up her back as Anjeline kept her upright. Puzzlement and suspicion battled across the jinni’s face. But as Rebel’s head lolled to the side, brushing against Anjeline’s knee, a shift happened in those eyes. The doubt vanished.
“You must agree to my conditions, then I’ll unleash you. You desire a wish and I…freedom,” Anjeline said, as though just asking for help was too much. Before continuing, she eyed Rebel with an expression where compassion may have rested once, but now there appeared to be a hard shell of m
isgivings, knowing humans always had a price.
“You want to make a pact?” She understood. This explained why the jinni provoked her desperation. Thieves had pacts, too.
“A magical contract,” Anjeline said. “If you uncover a way to release me from the vessel’s bindings, I’ll grant you one wish without consequence.”
“Without consequence?”
She nodded. “All wishes come with a price.”
Rebel hadn’t witnessed harm come as a ramification to the alpha, other than he now possessed the power of rejuvenation. Not to mention, he’d spoken of whoever possessed the vessel gained all the wishes they craved, not three as the legends say—or merely one. She’d read of the different types of Jinn before, ifrits who tricked humans to devour them, and marids drawing people in with seduction to then drown them in it.
This jinni, however, seemed nothing like that.
What game is she playing? Rebel narrowed her eyes, unsure of being swindled. “You want me, who found out hours ago that magic exists, to find a way to magically free you, and then I’ll only get one wish? Those are the words coming out of your mouth?”
“Security,” Anjeline replied. “Once I’m unleashed, I’ll be able to grant your wish without consequence. Believe me, you don’t want to pay the price. I’m offering you one wish—with none.”
Her voice almost sounded desperate and Rebel’s insides twinged, knowing what desperate felt like. Trust and secrets had a way of biting back at those who depended on them. She’d learned early on to look out for numero uno, searching for shooting stars with unanswered wishes. But now was her chance at the impossible and she wasn’t going to let it pass her by. Rules of thievery be damned. Rebel sighed. “All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust,” she cited.
Anjeline cocked her head.
“It means I agree.”
“Good.” Anjeline’s eyes lit up, looking surprised, and she appeared to have just decided something about Rebel.
“Now, quick,” she said. “Before sadist girl returns.”
“Afraid she’ll nibble on you, Fingersmith?”
“That’s not my name. It’s Rebel.”
“Yes, I know. Reb-el.” Anjeline said it like she was tasting it. “A person who rises in opposition. Charming.” Anjeline’s grin came out as more a twitch of lips, as though she’d just learned how to do so. It looked foreign on her, like she’d rarely let one come into sight.
Oh, but when she did, Rebel thought, she could’ve made a statue blush.
“Now, then, for our pact…” Anjeline leaned in close enough for Rebel to feel her strange warmth. With a finger, she wiped Rebel’s cheek, cleaning away blood. Long and elegant hands cradled her face, the touch causing a pleasant flutter in Rebel’s chest, and then lips were being pressed to her cheek.
It was not a kiss.
Magic.
It encased Rebel in a shimmering embrace, awakening something within her. Like tasting the sunshine after a lifetime of darkness. Waves of magic flooded into her arteries, settling over her with such comfort she never wanted it to end. Her eyes half closed, her insides drugged with enchantment. And the pact was formed. A promise between human and jinni. It was an agreement they entered with weary surrender that might grant them both their wish, the desire for freedom, one from a vessel and one from a heart.
As the magic swelled, Rebel’s rope bindings fell away.
She gazed up into those eyes and held out a free hand for her. “Promise you’ll be gentle with the vase this time?” Anjeline asked.
Rebel smiled, grabbing her knife. “Gentle is my middle name.”
Not a second passed before Rebel was ushering Anjeline, to her displeasure, back within the vessel. It would be quicker and easier for her to escape the chamber of wherever they were. Once she slipped the vase inside her satchel, she sprang up the dungeon’s stairwell, her shoulder throbbing with every step.
A glance down a hall showed no sign of the she-wolf and Rebel inched down it. Candles set into niches illuminated the corridor, oozing wax and flickering like unfriendly fireflies over the symbols and etchings of creatures carved in the limestone walls. It smelled of earth and she wondered where the lycans had taken her. Still underground. Below London. Yet the hallways were abnormally broad and the ceiling vaulted high enough to fit a giant. She passed an archway leading to other doors, none of which she dared to open. In case other furry creatures spilled out.
Her satchel warmed at her side and tilted to the left, Anjeline nudging her to keep going that way. “Stop that,” she whispered. But she indeed went left, down another hall, where the candles turned into gas lamps. The air itself felt thick and sweet, but a breeze drifted against her.
Outside.
She could see another archway ahead, where she assumed it must have come from. Anjeline gave another nudge to agree. As she inched farther down, beyond the arch, it opened into a chamber. A massive den—filled with lycanthropes.
Rebel froze.
Her breath stopped along with her feet. Her mouth dangled open for what seemed like forever. Until the sounds of snoring reached her ears. Once her eyes darted around, her heart began to beat again at her turn of luck. Sleeping wolves. Bodies of dozing half-human forms slept sprawled out, on cushions and pillows, like cuddling puppies. Though, ones possessing fangs. A pack of beasts, all claws and bond.
Goblets of some type of nectar sat on tables. Other empty ones rolled from dreaming lycanthrope’s fingers. Velvet lined the chamber, trimmed in eighteenth-century carvings of four-footed beasts calling to the moon. It drew her eyes to the passageway and stairs, where the breeze reached across to her.
It had to lead outside.
Looking over the throng of snuggling wolves, she noticed Wulfram in the center, sleeping soundly. Cock-up, she cursed. The quickest route to the passage would be a straight line, directly passing the alpha.
Holding her breath, Rebel prowled ahead, her steps as quiet as a kitten’s paw. High on the balls of her feet, she devised a staggering dance between arms, legs, hairy haunches, and cushions. She passed a small boy cuddled beside a woman cradling him, covered in those pelt coats. She expected something else than this—a grotto, maybe, filled with gnawed bones of animals and humans bleeding in cages. This looked, oddly, like a family.
Longing ached in Rebel’s chest. Never had she known that feeling, never felt the love and care even these beasts were privileged with. She shook it away, carefully persisting. Wherever Styria had ventured to, she would’ve discovered Rebel had escaped by now. At last, she passed Wulfram with a tremble. She ignored her throbbing shoulder, putting one foot in front of the other, and made a mental note, wondering if the moody jinni would heal her wound once safe. At the halfway point, her foot caught a hold of something.
Or something caught her.
A clawed hand wrapped around her ankle. She stiffened and glanced down to see who it belonged to. Vandal. By good fortune, he was murmuring in his sleep, utterly dead to the world. She lifted her foot slowly, letting his hand slide off her ankle, and shuddered at the touch. What she wouldn’t give to smother him with a pillow. Brushing vengeance aside, she continued and reached the passageway.
Rebel took a breath, and then she dashed. Up the archway she flew, scaling multiple stairs like a nimble spider, and emerged into a dank tunnel, where the breeze came.
A train’s horn signaled in the distance.
As she’d thought, they were subsurface. Never had she expected a world of beasts to subsist within the Metro system. It seemed she didn’t know the Underground as well as she’d thought. She didn’t glance back at the lycanthrope den, or when her heart sputtered. Instead, she ran dauntlessly, tumbling through the labyrinthine of tunnels, away from the threat, until she glimpsed a concourse. At last, she found her way to the upper-ground world of London’s Trafalgar Square, rushing by the fountain’s statues of mermaids singing her freedom.
With her satchel warming at her side, Rebel slipped into the s
tarry night just as a church bell tolled the witching hour. Ringing a hope in her heart.
Chapter Seven
Rebel sank lower in the darkness, hiding, as the shadows of the Institute encircled her. She pressed into the rug beneath her, hugging her beloved book against her ribs like a living thing. The book she turned to in times of sadness and fear, the leather cover soft from years of being held. A volume of poems and quotes. She could recite them from memory, having read it from cover to cover, even when she’d been too young to understand. The words had imprinted themselves on her heart like a prayer. “I fear no fate. I fear no fate,” she whispered it again and again, along with a wish.
Only when Rebel recognized her hiding place did she realize she was dreaming.
She hadn’t been able to squeeze beneath her book bed since age ten. The many books worked as a platform, keeping the mattress off the floor. It became her fortress, where she’d hidden to block out the world. Where the monsters under here became less scary than the real ones. Her childhood wasn’t stored in photos, but in dreams, in stories, in corners of a dark room, and venomous words. In the good dreams, her heart was healed, her cup runneth over.
This, however, wasn’t one of those.
This dream was a usual one, and as it untangled before her, she knew how it would play out. It was part memory, part nightmare. The thump of footsteps would sound, the creak of the door would open, the smell of mothballs would surface, and a hand would reach for her. Soon Madame Gramone would seize Rebel by the hair, drag her out, and press raptor fingers into her skin, sinking them into her chest to pull out her heart.
But this time when the hand came—the dream altered.
The walls of her room bent outward, dark faces appeared in the carpet pattern beneath her, and the floor disintegrated, until night surrounded her. Snow crunched beneath her feet, but they weren’t her feet, and then she gazed up into her mother’s eyes. The woman cradled Rebel’s smallness in a blanket, hurrying down a street between banks of winter white. “I’ll come for you again, my little starbright.” Her mother crooned, holding Rebel tight as the woman’s voice fluttered around her, singing.