Darkness, Kindled, Page 3

  Great.

  “Can’t wait,” she answered sarcastically.

  With an unamused sigh, Jai stepped back into the Peripatos.

  Stomach in knots over their disagreement, Ari rushed to her room to shower. Having lived with Jai temporarily months ago when they first met, Ari already knew some things about him. He was incredibly organized and tidy and he didn’t have a lot of stuff.

  Ari, on the other hand, liked to nest, so she’d bought a lot for the house using her Guild Hunter money. Jai didn’t say anything as she gradually filled what had been a fairly modern but masculine home with little girly knickknacks—cushions, candles, ornaments, vases …

  They didn’t share a bathroom so she hadn’t been introduced to the intimacy of that, but she had on occasion watched him as he shaved. She knew he made his bed every morning like a soldier, that his bedroom was filled with two things—clothes and books—that he ate well—protein shakes, fruit, nuts, oatmeal, vegetables, grilled chicken, fish—and that he rolled his eyes every time he took in Ari and Trey’s side of the refrigerator—pizza, burgers, pudding, diet soda. She knew he worked out every day for two hours and if he worked out longer than that, something was bothering him. Sometimes she got that something out of him; other times he just pulled her onto the sofa and switched on a movie. All these things she knew and yet she still felt like she didn’t really know him. He was holding back and she didn’t know why, and the thought of talking about it scared the hell out of her because she was so terrified he was going to tell her this had all been a huge mistake.

  Trembling at the thought, Ari got

  out of the shower and wrapped in a towel. When she stepped out into her room, the steam cleared and the sight that greeted her knocked the wind right out of her.

  “Looking good, Ari.” Charlie

  grinned at her from where he lounged on her bed. The grin was wide but not wide enough to reach his eyes. “Nice towel.”

  ***

  Once Ari had picked up her jaw from the floor, Charlie felt a tingle of magic in the air seconds before the towel was gone and replaced by jeans and a T-shirt. He felt a flicker of annoyance that she’d cover up around him—as if she wasn’t safe from him. He snorted inwardly.

  Who was he kidding? Of course she wasn’t safe from him.

  With less difficulty than before,

  Charlie managed to keep his expression blank as Ari took a step toward him, whispering his name. He felt the familiar ache in his chest whenever he was around her. Would it kill her to stop being so beautiful and caring just long enough for him to get through this? He didn’t want her to care. Fallon had died caring about him.

  Feeling the fury build in his blood, Charlie dropped his gaze, trying to control the rage.

  What happened to Fallon was not happening to Ari.

  The plan had been to stay low, to figure out what his next move would be now that he was a fugitive and had a chunk of Mount Qaf emerald in his possession. There were options. After he’d killed the Labartu, he’d gone somewhere dark, started thinking some pretty shitty things about Ari. After a week of hiding out, he’d begun to feel a little normal again and realized that they’d all been right. The emerald had changed him. But he wasn’t giving it up. He was, however, intent on giving up Ari. He harbored some deep resentment against her, resentment he feared would one day get the best of him. Thus, all the options he’d drawn up … well, not one of them had included her ever being in his life again.

  But then the Ghulah found him.

  “Charlie, what are you doing here?”

  Ari asked in a low, panicked voice.

  He sighed as though bored, as if being in the same room with her, smelling her perfume, seeing a pair of her panties lying on the floor didn’t do a number on him. Just because he resented her, didn’t mean he wasn’t still attracted to her.

  It was quite the pickle.

  “I’ve been approached by a Ghulah.

  Apparently you and Jai attacked her in Roswell.”

  Ari blanched, nodding slowly.

  “Remember, I used the Seal on her.”

  “Yeah,” he grinned, “she’s pretty pissed at you for that. And guess what? She knows you’re no longer the Seal and that you have no power over her. She wants my help in bringing you down.” He watched Ari’s face grow ashen. Part of him wanted to comfort her. He squashed that feeling like an ant beneath his thumb. “She thinks since you’re apparently hunting me with the intention of killing me, I might be up for a little preemptive attack.”

  “Charlie, I—”

  “Relax, Ari. If I thought you

  wanted to kill me, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Noting her suspicion, Charlie had to temper his growing irritation. She would never trust him again, would she?

  “Why are you here?”

  He slid off the bed and stood, standing a few inches taller than her. “To bargain with you. I’ll help you take care of the Ghulah if you’ll keep the Guild off my back.”

  “How?”

  She hadn’t immediately scorned the idea. Charlie tried not to growl. Goddammit, she had to stop caring about him!

  And yet … he needed her to care if his plan was to work out. It was such a mess. “You make it hell for them every time they think they got me. You mess up, you cause problems, you do what it takes to give me the time to get the hell out of dodge. In exchange, we’ll take the Ghulah down together.”

  She was clearly worried about his plan and his intention for her to betray people she’d grown to care about. “I don’t need help taking down a Ghulah. I’m not worried.”

  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.

  3

  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.”

  4

  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.