by Pat Esden
My eyes found his, steel gray, mellowed to misty blue.
I lowered the flashlight and, for a breathless second, Chase’s fingers skimmed the outline of my face. I took a shallow breath and leaned into his touch. Only a slice of air hovered between us. Closing my eyes, I tilted my face up, not expecting anything, but wanting it so badly.
His shirt pressed against mine. “This is wrong,” he whispered, so close I could almost taste the words. His lips brushed mine, tantalizing and quick. They came back forceful, hot and moist as I’d dreamed. I slid my fingers along his temples, across his hair, bristly and soft. I shuddered as he crushed me against him. Openmouthed, I kissed him back. He groaned and I let him take control, lips, tongues, and hands frantically exploring curves and skin, necks and throats, eyelids and mouths again. Everything melted away, all my fears, the horrors, all the months and months of worrying about—
Dad.
I pulled away from Chase’s embrace, gulping for air. My thoughts staggered as if I were drunk. “We—I want. Oh God, I want. But this isn’t. Dad. The lamp. The timing is—”
Chase glanced down and scrubbed a hand over his head. “Worse than bad?”
“Yeah.” I had to find a way to bring everything back under control, back to why we were here. I swallowed hard and settled on a question that my heart ached to ask. “Dad,” I said. “I just don’t understand why he did it. Why would he ever allow Culus to possess him?”
Chase’s fingers swept up my arm, lingering when they reached the hollow of my throat, a spot he’d kissed just moments ago. Even in the low light, I could see the glisten in his eyes. “You really don’t?”
“No.” For a heartbeat, I hesitated, gathering my thoughts. “Dad never wanted to come back here. He hates his family. He probably thinks they killed Mother.” Part of me wanted to know what Chase thought. Part of me wished I’d never said a thing. Just like the kiss and his hand against my skin, this wasn’t the time or place—and what I was feeling for him was so much stronger than the onetime hookup I’d wanted to have with him on the beach.
Chase’s eyes found mine again, holding me captive. “I don’t think it was any of those things,” he said.
“Then what?” I could barely breathe, let alone speak.
“I think Culus proved to your father that your mother’s alive. Your father traded the use of his body for her safe return.”
Surprised by his words, my fingers went to my parted lips. “You think so?”
His voice became a husky whisper. “I’d do it for you.”
My heart leapt into my throat. Every inch of my body ached with the desire to rush back to his arms, press my lips against his, and get lost in the rush of warm skin and kisses. This was insane. This was wrong. And the timing couldn’t be worse.
I punched Chase playfully in the chest. I had to do something to break the spell. “Very funny. Then I could turn my life story into a romance novel and make a million bucks.” I frowned. “Are you going to just stand there or show me how this door opens?”
With an exaggerated sigh, Chase turned away from me. He pulled a key ring from his jeans pocket and slid a brass key into a slot. The slot was so cleverly integrated into the vault’s designs, I could barely make it out.
The lock clicked and, with the grinding sound of stone against stone, a door-size grouping of vaults swung inward.
Chase chuckled. “Romance novel, really?” He glanced back at me. “Wait here a minute.”
I took a deep breath and watched him vanish down the pitch-black tunnel. Chase’s idea about Dad’s motive actually made sense. Once Culus had the lamp, then Dad would get Mother. But what Chase had said about doing the same thing for me? Wow. Okay. That sounded as if he really liked me, like a lot. Maybe he’d been pushing me away—not for my sake—but because he was afraid of having his heart broken. I sighed. But who was going to protect mine from him?
Gathering my nerve, I shone the flashlight beam into darkness. Chase had told me to stay, but I should have gone with him. I had the only light.
A chill brushed my face as I stepped through the doorway.
The flashlight’s thin light illuminated a few dozen yards, glistening off spiderwebs, and the stone ceiling and walls.
My breath caught in my throat. Where was Chase? It hadn’t surprised me that he’d forgotten to bring a lantern. Heck, I—Miss-Never-Without-Her-Flashlight—hadn’t thought of it either. But how could he see where he was going without it? It would be awful if something happened to him.
The scratch of a wooden match striking against stone came from a little ways down the tunnel, followed by a whuff and the bright flash of something igniting.
Chase appeared, holding a torch aloft.
Around his entire outline was an eerie blue glow. An aura.
My free hand went to my mouth, silencing a gasp. I’d have dismissed the glow as a trick of light and shadow, except I’d seen it before: the night Dad and I arrived, coming from the window of Chase’s cottage, the cottage with no television. And I’d seen it one other time as well, in the library when I’d shone the flashlight beam on him. I couldn’t even begin to guess what it was, but it wasn’t a product of my imagination.
I lowered my trembling hand from my mouth that still tingled from his kisses. “He belongs to them,” Dad had said.
Chase had admitted he’d been a slave to the djinn and was being trained to become a Death Warrior. Maybe the aura was some sort of mark, like his brand—or a beacon. Chase acted like he hated the genies. He’d pretty much said Malphic wouldn’t come after him for revenge, but maybe the aura was so Malphic could find him for some other reason.
Whatever it was—it wasn’t normal. And I couldn’t say he hadn’t warned me.
Chase moved away from me, farther down the tunnel. Using his torch, he lit another one that sat in a bracket on the wall, then another. He turned back.
“Come on,” he called. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Oh God. What kind of guy had I fallen for this time?
CHAPTER 24
The creatures know the fruits and spice
that inspire a human woman to be with child:
cinnamon and apples under the new moon
for a boy, raisins and cardamom create a girl.
—www.MagicOfDjinn.com
As I hesitantly followed Chase, the blue aura vanished. But I knew I’d seen it. And I wished I hadn’t. If only I were sitting in the Mercedes with Dad, driving to an auction on Cape Cod, or heading for a college interview, any college. If I could turn back time, I’d make sure Dad never got his hands on the poison ring. Then I wouldn’t be here with my pulse going crazy and this war inside of me—was I wrong to trust Chase, could I trust myself, did I have something to fear or not?
Everywhere, spiderwebs swayed in the wavering torchlight. Silence pressed in, making the drum of my heartbeat as loud as thunder.
In one place a wall had collapsed, and stones and dirt littered the floor. A bat dove through my flashlight’s beam. Trembling, I shuffled on, following Chase deeper into the darkness. I kept telling myself to forget about the aura for now. But I couldn’t. Not with so much at stake. Not when he was someone I was trusting. I had to ask, even if I didn’t want to.
When we came to where water trickled down the walls, I took a fresh grip on my sweat-slicked flashlight and glanced back toward the mausoleum, now gone from sight.
“How much farther do we need to go?” I asked.
Chase turned to me, his face masked with dancing shadows. “I don’t know. I’ve never been in this far.”
“Sure it’s safe?”
“I’m certain it’s not. But the old treasury should be just ahead.”
An image of him wiping the sheep blood off his knife wormed its way into my mind. “Chase?”
“What?”
My throat contracted and I had to force the words out. “There was—you had. I saw a blue aura around you. Is that—did Malphic do that to you—like part of the b
rand? Some kind of magic?”
He lowered his torch and stood stock-still, staring at me. “Ah—something like that,” he stammered.
Regret clenched my stomach. I wanted to kick myself for letting my doubts get the better of me. I was such an idiot for not trusting him, and a double idiot for wasting time we didn’t have to ask him about it.
He opened his mouth to say something else.
But I spoke first. “Another scene for that romance novel, huh?” I said it with a laugh in hopes of relieving the tension.
He smiled. “It would be one weird book.” His voice deepened. “I’ll tell you more about it later. We really don’t have time right now.”
“I know—we need to get this done.”
I jogged to him and we hurried on together, his torch and my flashlight casting circles of brightness into the dark tunnel ahead.
After a few minutes, the floor sloped downward and the tunnel appeared to drop off into nothing. As we edged closer to the void, Chase’s torch’s light rippled across the top of a crumbling staircase and streaked the darkened outline of a chamber below.
“This looks like the perfect place to set a trap,” he said.
I swept the flashlight’s beam across the chamber. Huge black and gold statues that looked like Egyptian cats glistened under its fingering light. There were ceiling-high columns and a figurehead. And camelback trunks bound in copper, and carved boxes mounded with what looked like gazing balls and gleaming coins. “Holy shit! It looks like a pirate’s treasure.” My voice echoed off a distant wall.
“The lamp will fit right in,” Chase said.
“Sure will.” I fanned the flashlight across the chamber again. “I’m just surprised. Wow—this isn’t the real treasury?”
Chase laughed. “No.”
I glanced back at the tunnel. “We should get going. Kate’s probably finished the oil by now.”
“You do realize”—Chase’s voice had a serious edge to it—“when we come back, we can’t light the torches. The place has to look deserted.”
Fear clogged my throat, but I swallowed it back. “I’ll be okay.”
“You don’t have to come. Your grandfather and I can do it alone.”
“No. I can deal with it.” What was I saying? Hiding in the dark with a hotter-than-hell glowing genie-slave, waiting for a monster to emerge from inside my dad, this was beyond insane.
Sweat stuck my shirt against my back. My pulse slammed in my ears. I didn’t want to do this, but I had no choice. If something happened to Chase or Grandfather, they would need my help.
This was my plan. I had to follow through with it.
I raised my voice. “When we come back, we should take a car and park it by your cottage. We can walk here from the back side. If Dad or the shadows spotted us a little while ago when we walked up here, it might not have raised a red flag. But if they see us returning, it’s bound to make them suspicious.”
“Good idea,” Chase said. “Driving would be easier on your grandfather, too.”
As we made our way back down the tunnel toward the mausoleum, Chase followed behind me, extinguishing the torches he’d lit.
After a couple of minutes, I looked back to make sure he wasn’t watching, then shut off my flashlight and let the gloom close in around me. My fear of the darkness had come from seeing my mother kidnapped and having my memories stolen. Real darkness had never done anything to me.
In fact, when we returned, the darkness could hide and protect me.
I needed to remember that.
The trip back down through the graveyard went quickly. Chase seemed preoccupied, and I was too focused on keeping up with his long strides to talk.
When we came to where the path left the woods and emptied into the field, Chase’s head whipped toward the garage. “Was that Tibbs?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I didn’t see anyone.”
“I could have sworn . . .”
Chase jogged toward the garage. “Tibbs should still be with your father.”
“Maybe it was Zachary or David,” I said, running after him.
Our feet crunched as we crossed the gravel to the garage door.
Chase punched the code into the lock. As he opened the door, a tiger-striped kitten tore past him and sped outside.
“Tibbs?” Chase shouted. He cocked his head, listening.
I held my breath. But there wasn’t a sound.
Finally, Chase shrugged and shut the garage door. “I must have been mistaken.”
“Well, at least you let the kitten out,” I said lightheartedly, but my fake cheerfulness did nothing to relieve my building sense of apprehension. Hadn’t I read on the Internet that cats freaked out when supernatural things were around—like shadows in the garage?
We were almost to the front door when Zachary bolted out. “There you guys are!” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “It’s ready.”
Two minutes later, we were in the kitchen elevator, heading down to the basement and the research room. I studied our reflections in the mirrored wall and thought about asking Chase and Zachary if I was right about the mirrors being doorways, and if either of them had seen what was on the other side—most likely a maze of remodeled tunnels and, somewhere, a treasury filled with objects—like the vases that held Solomon’s genies and the Lamp of Methuselah.
The elevator stopped and the doors clunked open. Chase pulled the key ring from his pocket and unlocked the door Grandfather and I’d gone through last night.
We all hurried inside the tunnel. As we dashed past the suit of armor, Zachary tugged the back of Chase’s T-shirt. “When I’m taller, I’m going to put on armor like that and challenge you to a duel,” he said.
Chase swiped his hand across his sweaty forehead. “How about we live through today first?”
My legs felt like someone had strapped hundred-pound weights onto each of them. Live through today. Holy crap. This was a harebrained idea.
Before that thought could paralyze me, I pushed it aside. No time for second-guessing, not now.
Zachary rushed ahead and waited by the fresco of dancing demons. When Chase and I got there, he held up his hand, palm out. “Let me do it,” he said to Chase.
“All right.” Chase breathed on Zachary’s palm, then Zachary pressed it against the tiles and the door to the research room swooshed open.
Zachary grinned at me. “Cool, huh? It works on DNA.” He scowled. “Grandpa and Aunt Kate are lucky. They can get in here or visit the cursed skulls or the armory anytime they want. Me? They don’t let me have access to nothing!”
“Shush,” Chase said. “Once this is over, I’ll talk to Kate. See if she’ll give me access to the armory. Then we’ll go there anytime you want.”
“That’d be great.” Zachary dashed inside.
I trailed behind them, blinking against the vestibule’s brightness. A burnt-clove-and-cabbage smell irritated my nostrils. I pinched my nose to keep from sneezing.
“We’re down here!” Selena waved from the laboratory below us. A black rubber apron draped her from chest to ankles. A bathing cap covered her hair. Beside her, Kate held a small copper funnel while Olya poured a liquid into the fake Lamp of Methuselah.
“How did it come out?” I asked.
Olya smiled as she finished pouring. “Good, I think.”
“Adequate, is more correct.” Kate set the funnel down on the workbench and took the lamp from Olya. “The memory formula needs time to mellow. But it should work.”
The zing of metal against metal rang out behind me. I spun around, muscles tensed.
Chase had pulled the scimitar free from the wall display.
He glanced my way. “Nice, isn’t it?”
“You can’t intend on waltzing through the house with that,” Kate said, walking up the ramp from the lab and into the vestibule. “What if James sees you?”
Selena laughed. “You’re talking about Chase. Knives and swords equal normal. Unarmed, that would be weird.”
“Don’t worry. No one will see a thing.” Chase handed the scimitar to Zachary. “Hold this—and no fooling around.” He pulled off his hoodie, revealing Malphic’s knife and another one holstered at his waist. He took the scimitar from Zachary, and by the time he got it strapped to his back and his hoodie back on, not a single weapon was visible. “Does that pass inspection?” he asked Kate.
“It’ll do.” Kate held a small messenger bag out to me. “The lamp’s in here. I’ve corked the spout and wrapped it in a cloth. But be careful with it.”
I slung the bag over my shoulder. “Thanks for doing this.”
“Just don’t make me regret it.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.” I glanced at Kate’s watch. “It’s almost three. We need to find Grandfather and get back to the mausoleum.”
“Tell him I’ll be up in a minute,” Kate said. “I’ll give you a half hour to get in place, then I’ll make sure your father gets his chance to slip away.” Her mouth worked like she wanted to say something more, but couldn’t quite get it out. Then she added, “Be careful.”
Selena galloped up from the lab and gave me a hug. “Good luck and be careful.”
As Chase and I turned toward the door, Zachary stamped his foot. “It isn’t fair that I get stuck here with the women. I really, really want to go.”
Olya took him by the arm. “Young man, they’re not going on a picnic. What they’re doing is very dangerous.”
“I know.” He frowned. “I just want to help.”
I gave him a serious look. “Staying here and watching over the research room is important.” I smiled. “Besides, you’ve already been a huge help. You were the one who found the lamp, right?”
He puffed out his chest and grinned. “It was even better than the ones Chase found.”
As I smiled back at him, a bittersweet feeling settled in my chest, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been as rambunctious as a toddler and I wished I’d gotten to watch him grow up, to know them all before now.
A minute later, Chase and I were in the elevator heading up to the first floor, and the bizarreness of the situation closed in around me. It was like I was playing a part in one of Dad’s stories and had discovered a Trojan horse on Moonhill’s terrace, jam-packed with genies.