Darkness, Kindled (4 page)

Charlie felt a shot of triumph as 
he readied himself to deliver the bigger news. “You should be. She’s packing some serious heat.”

He decided the arrogant way Ari 
curled her lip was incredibly hot. She’d gotten more confident in the last few months and it was definitely a good look on her. “I can take down a Ghulah carrying a Talisman.”

“Sweetheart … she’s not packing a

Talisman. She’s packing Pazuzu.”

***

Ari thought nothing could be as horrifying as looking at her best friend and discovering that he was really gone. The warmth and personality behind Charlie’s dark eyes was gone. His cheeky smile was gone.

It was replaced by blank indifference and a chilling grin. He was gone.

But perhaps as horrifying was the 
news that one of the deadliest, most ancient Jinn in the world was gunning for her.

When her father, the White King, 
was trying to bully her into accepting his command, he’d gone after her human father, Derek, using the powers of Pazuzu, an ancient Mesopotamian wind demon who’d put a curse on Derek. The only way to break the curse was to hunt Pazuzu down and use the power of the Seal to command him to undo it. Ari and Jai tracked him down to Roswell, New Mexico. Before they battled with Pazuzu, however, they came across a flesh-eating Jinn, a Ghulah, and got into a fight with her while trying to rescue some humans. Ari used the command of the Seal against her, before using it on Pazuzu after an epic but short battle. Now that Ari was no longer the Seal, her commands had worn off from her victims and it seemed they were not very happy with her.

Crap in a shot glass.

As for Charlie …

Ari gazed up at him, desperately 
seeking the old Charlie. The real Charlie. She still refused to believe that this was his end. That because of her, everything good and special and kind about him was gone.

“Or …,” she hedged, taking another step toward him, “you let me negotiate with the Guild. Give me the emerald and I’ll negotiate your rehabilitation.”

Charlie quickly closed the distance between them, his body almost brushing hers as he stared down into her face with a smirk tilting the corner of his mouth. His dark brown eyes were shadowed with so much … Ari couldn’t pin the expression. Scorn? Rage? Indifference?

Hate? Longing?

“One: this emerald is mine. Two: screw rehabilitation. I don’t want it. What I want is for you and your effing Jinn to get out of my life.”

Ari bit back a gasp at his 
aggressiveness. “Charlie …”

“You don’t make this deal, Ari. I will lead that bitch Ghulah and Pazuzu right to you.”

At the determination in the clench of his jaw, Ari felt an overwhelming amount of sadness close in around her.

“He’s gone, isn’t he? My friend is really gone.”

Before she could brace herself, Charlie took that final step toward her so his body pressed against hers. He lowered his head, his mouth almost touching her lips. “We were never just friends, no matter what lies you tell yourself. And yeah. Charlie Creagh doesn’t live here anymore.”

For the first time in her life, Ari felt cold in Charlie’s company, cold and vulnerable. But more worrisome was the naked longing in his regard—a longing that seemed mixed with a frustrated amount of blame and anger. His warm breath blew across her face in a huff and she realized his intent as his head took that last dip toward her.

She jerked back, shaking, feeling lost. “Stop.”

Something flared in his eyes, 
something like rage, before he banked it.

“I need time to think about this.”

Charlie leveled her with an unimpressed look. “You’ve got two days to make up your mind. In those two days I’ll be back here, same time, same place.” He stepped toward her bed, the flames of the Peripatos engulfing him.

They needed to get the emerald back so he wouldn’t be able to do crap like that. Ari shuddered, surprised to find herself so physically affected.

An awful truth was trying to push its way to the forefront of her mind.

The awful truth that perhaps the Guild was right after all.

Perhaps Charlie was beyond 
saving.

Where the Sky Meets the 
Sea

“Ari asked for you again,” his brother told him softly as he stepped beside him. They stood together on the brilliant white balcony of Red’s stylish home in Santorini. People of wealth occupied the traditional Greek village—celebrities, business people—and it was no longer the place of quiet solitude it once had been. Red knew he was a source of curiosity. That the people around him would look to one of the larger homes that gazed over the unreal crystal blue waters of the Aegean and wonder at the tall red and blue-haired man.

Red cared nothing for their inquisitiveness.

He came here for one thing.

To be close to his love.

Sala had loved coming to visit him here. She loved the startling beauty of the water contrasting against the whitewashed walls of the homes. She loved how, on a cloudless, warm day, the sky would meet the water and one wouldn’t know where the other began. She said the sky and the water were like her love for him—she didn’t know where she started and where he ended.

They were two halves of one piece.

Agony ripped through Red. He imagined that he could still see the scattering of her ashes across the water below his home. His love’s beautiful face flashed before him and at Glass’s words, it shimmered, changing to the face of his love’s daughter.

He shook himself, glancing at Glass who stared out into the water. “I’m surprised. After I gave Charlie that emerald, I expected her to be angry with me.”

Glass shrugged. Red had noticed Glass had taken to dressing in mortal clothing—jeans and T-shirts—and he did not need to wonder at the change. “I think she understands that it was done to protect them. You didn’t know the boy well enough to have understood how destructive he could be. And as for Ari, she seems … frightened. I wonder if we are missing something.”

Red ignored the flare of concern and deflected, perusing Glass’s attire. “Perhaps if you weren’t distracted by the young Ginnaye, you would know.”

That earned him a sharp look.

“Leave him out of it.”

A new concern needled him. Glass was growing close to Trey and Red feared that it would end as badly as his relationship with Tamir had centuries ago. Tamir had been the only man Glass had ever loved and their mother had killed him in front of them. Since then, Glass had shown little interest in men beyond sex. Until now.

“Red … what of Ari?”

He sighed inwardly and turned to face the water again. The truth was he had been unable to face Ari because she looked so much like Sala. After his initial anger had cooled, he realized that he did not blame Ari for what had happened. Sala had foolishly jumped into the situation because she read the situation wrong and lost her cool at the sight of Ari in White’s clutches. And in her foolishness, she’d left him and Ari alone without her.

Ari.

Red frowned, trying to ignore his growing fatherly concern and feelings of shame—as though he had abandoned her these last few months, when she was never supposed to be his to abandon.

He hit out at his other concern instead. “The boy will grow old and die. What then?”

Glass turned, leaning against the low wall to face him. His gaze was searching and forever patient. “There are ways around that.”

Red jerked back in shock. Fear followed. Fear that his brother, his one true friend, would even think of making himself so vulnerable. “You wouldn’t dare.”

His brother grew sad but it was sorrow tempered with time and with the healing properties of what Red feared was love. It couldn’t be love. “I didn’t with Tamir because of the danger Lilif posed, but she is no longer with us, and no one else would dare try to kill us.

No one is powerful enough. Trey would be immortal and protected.”

Incredulous, Red shook his head.

“And you would have sacrificed a piece of yourself to gain him that.”

“I will not lose him. Not like Tamir.”

“But you loved Tamir.”

His brother stared at him.

Red sighed, closing his eyes, his worry now tenfold. “You’ve only been with him for a little over two months.”

“You loved Sala in one glance.”

It was fruitless to argue with him.

Glass did not give his affection easily. If he said he loved Trey, then he meant it. And Red unfortunately believed him. He should’ve known the moment he met Trey that he would capture Glass’s attention. The young man was charismatic, irreverent, and full of life. He was like Tamir in many ways. And like Tamir he was a burning soul of energy and light, a light that Glass, with his grave demeanor and weighty responsibilities, found soothing to his own soul, a balm against the dark.

Still, what Glass was proposing was a commitment he could never back out of. “Think on it a little longer, brother.”

“I will.”

Silence fell between them and together they stared out over the still water. Red wondered if his brother was also wishing that life could be as calm as the Aegean was today. But no. There was always some catastrophe on the horizon. Lately that catastrophe was his other brother, the White King. And “lately” had lasted centuries. He wanted to hate him. A part of him did. But their bond as the Seven Kings of Jinn, the connection that tethered them together and to the world, kept the hatred from growing into something unmanageable, into something like vengeance. He may not be able to make White pay for killing Sala, but Red would certainly make sure White never got what he wanted.

“White is tearing through Mount Qaf looking for Mother’s remains.”

“He does realize that could take him a thousand years or more?”

“He can be patient when he wants to be.”

Glass grunted in agreement and turned, his large hand coming to rest on Red’s shoulder. “Will you speak with Ari?”

Ari.

Sala.

Pain.

Red nodded reluctantly, willing the ache out of his chest as he thought about facing the physical reminder of all he’d lost. “In a few days.”

Expecting the Moon and 
Getting the Sun

“Should I tell her?” Jai asked Michael, his voice hushed with the weight of what he was asking, with the need for direction from a man older and more experienced than he was.

When Michael called, Jai could hear in his voice that something was up. Upon Michael’s arrival at the house, Jai’s suspicions were confirmed when he saw Michael’s face.

The Guild believed Charlie Creagh was back in town. It wasn’t because he’d used magic. It was because his picture had been passed around the entire Roe Guild and two of them thought they’d seen Charlie in the neighborhood. He’d been coming out of the mall on Mount Holly Road. Before the two Hunters had time to blink, they’d lost sight of him.

Now everyone was on alert. Except Ari, who had no clue.

In an effort to beat back the aggravation and uncertainty he felt over his and Ari’s relationship, as well as expel the frustration that Ari would probably have to confront Charlie very soon, Jai had spent the entire day in training. Ari hadn’t stopped by at all, which meant she was avoiding him too.

Why she was avoiding him, Jai could only guess.

Why he was avoiding her? For a number of reasons, Charlie not the least of them. The truth was Jai had been worried for days about her and the growing distance between them. She’d been snapping at him, throwing him fake smiles, and generally frustrating the hell out of him. He had no clue what was going on with her and would admit only to himself that he was starting to panic. Buried deep somewhere inside him was the worry that Ari’s feelings for him weren’t real—that they were born of fear of being alone, and born from feeling safe with him. When she’d started pulling away, Jai worried that she’d finally realized the truth of that.

However, that was until this morning.

In the kitchen.

That nightie.

Damn, that nightie. It was like she was deliberately trying to kill him. But at least the nightie had cleared things up a little bit.

Ari thought he wasn’t hot for her because he hadn’t slept with her yet.

Jai couldn’t believe it. Part of him felt like a damn idiot for not putting two and two together. The other part of him resented the fact that being a good guy had suddenly made him a bad guy.

Hell, did she not know what kind of willpower it took to walk away from her?

They had a lot to talk about.

Starting with Charlie.

Michael stared back at him with masculine sympathy. He’d come down to the gym to tell Jai how late it had gotten. “I try to never keep anything from my wife. I learned fast that secrets come back to bite you in the ass.”

Jai sighed heavily, stepping back from the punching bag. “I don’t want her in the middle of this.”

“She’s already in the middle of this. You can’t protect her from that. Plus, you’re the one person she trusts in this whole world. Don’t take that away from her.”

Feeling a rush of fierce protectiveness, Jai nodded gratefully at Michael. Michael and Caroline had to be two of the strongest people he’d ever met. The loss of their daughter, Fallon, still hung heavy in the air, in their eyes and even in the almost drugged movements of their bodies. Yet they carried on protecting everyone and taking time to help out. Jai didn’t know how he could ever repay Michael for letting him start his life over again away from the incredibly poisonous influence of his so-called family.

Knowing Michael wouldn’t want 
thanks, Jai clapped him on the shoulder as he passed and steeled himself to return home to Ari to figure it all out.

Jai walked into the low-lit sitting room, his heart beating a little faster than usual. Trey would laugh at him if he were here to see Jai Bitar of the great Bitar Ginnayes anxious and nervous about facing a girl. Not just any girl, though, he reminded himself. The girl he loved.

Ari sat in the armchair near the large window, only the table lamp beside her illumination against a darkening sky. Her long legs were draped over the chair’s arm and she watched him warily, her book now closed on her lap.