Burn With Me (8 page)

Penn collapsed on the couch with one shaking hand covering her mouth, and Greg walked back over to the window, looking down suspiciously, every muscle in his body tense. Her aunt was the first to speak. “We did. I did. I felt him. Aziza, I heard everything.”

Aziza released the breath she’d been holding, unsure if her aunt’s acknowledgment made it better or worse. Tension coiled inside her, her skin tingling with pinpricks of pain. Her hands. The fire. If they saw
him
, then maybe… Without another word she rushed into the guest room and saw the small jewelry box resting on top of the colorful patchwork quilt she’d slept beneath. Everything in Penn’s flat was so bright and cluttered, so lived in…so different from the muted tones of her family’s home. She studied the box almost as though it would move on its own. But it didn’t. It was waiting for her.

I made it for you…

She walked over to the edge of the bed, a fine tremor in her fingers as she opened the box to look inside. One small gold hoop studded with tiny, perfect emeralds. She lifted her hand absently to her right ear, recalling what he’d said. It wouldn’t protect her. How had he known about that?

When Aziza was a baby, her mother hadn’t just had both her earlobes pierced, she’d had the top of Aziza’s right ear pierced as well and then put in a plain, thin hoop that she’d said was made of enameled iron.

“Never take it off, my darling. Never make my mistake.” How many times had her mother made her swear? “It will protect you. It will make them weak. Make it impossible for them to use you.”

Obviously not that impossible.

She’d always chalked it up to another of her mother’s eccentricities. Another way to control her. As a teenager, Aziza had gotten a matching hoop on her left ear and a third piercing on each side to wear the kind of earrings
she
wanted. A new one every week, none of them made of the boring, nondescript metal. It was a strange, small rebellion, but it had felt like enough. When her mother died she’d almost taken the hoop out. Almost. But she couldn’t. Not when it had been so important to her.

Aziza played with the iron hoop and winced. A small pinch of pain. Why? Because of Ram? Was he what her mother had been trying to protect her from? She could tell from Penn’s comments that was what she had been thinking. Now he’d given her another earring that he also claimed was for protection. Her low laugh held a tinge of mania. Of course it was an earring. How could it be anything else?

She took out the delicate silver bar she’d been wearing since she arrived in England so she could replace it with the emeralds. Holding the hoop in her hand, she studied the gems. They were the same color as his eyes.

Ram.

The earring warmed in her palm and she inhaled sharply, tilting her head to slip the piercing through her ear and close the clasp. She didn’t know why she believed him. Why she wasn’t rocking in a corner. Maybe it was adrenaline, or desperation. She had to trust him for now, because she didn’t want to hurt Greg or Penn. Didn’t want to hurt anyone.

Not even her mother, which was why she still couldn’t take the other earring out.  She might be insane, but she’d be a crazy, mumbling bag lady with the most well-defended ears on the planet.

Her ear was tingling. A tickling sensation combined with a soft humming sound vibrating inside her head. It gave her the strangest sense of calm. The sense of peace might be an illusion, but it was comforting, and she needed that comfort now.

She heard Penn and Greg talking in the other room and, needing to see both of them again, to make sure they were okay, she followed their voices.

“He’s out there.”

“That Ram thing?” Aziza cringed at the fear in Penn’s question.

“No,” Greg assured her grimly. “Not him.”

Aziza walked toward the window, curious. “Who is it?”

But she knew. An instant before she saw him leaning against the building across from Penn’s flat, she sensed him. The same sensation she had every time he was nearby. Did he feel it too? Despite his obvious disgust, despite their strange introduction, he was there. Watching her again. Still.

Brandon.

She turned on her heel and headed for the full glass of cognac on the coffee table. “Drink,” she muttered, wishing she could forget the last few days and go back to fulfilling her now harmless-looking bucket list. She plopped down on the couch, her body heavy with shock. “I need that drink.”

“I need a bat. Maybe a gun,” Greg snarled, glaring at the man on the sidewalk, his hands balled into fists. “Definitely a restraining order.”

Penn moved slowly toward Aziza, hugging herself protectively. “I could use a bit of therapy,” she joked weakly. “Aziza, what he said—are you going to listen? Do you actually intend to meet him tonight?”

Aziza swallowed a mouthful of the strong, foul liquid and gasped as it burned her throat and warmed her chest. “Once I figure out where I’m supposed to go, I think I have to. If I don’t, what’s to stop him from coming back here? Taking one of you over again?” She leaned back on the couch and stared sightlessly at the ceiling. “Jesus, that sounds insane, doesn’t it? I think he did this to me. He must have. Changed me somehow. He knew it would happen. Kept telling me it would happen. Was Mom right, Penn? Do demons really exist?”

“She called them Jinn,” Penn whispered, causing Aziza to lift her head at the same time Greg turned away from the window.

“
Arabian Nights
Jinn?
I Dream of Jeannie
Jinn? Is that what we’re talking about? The wish-granting, puffy-pants-wearing,
desert-dwelling
kind? Here?
In London?
” Greg was incredulous.

Penn shook her head, staring at Aziza as if she were a lifeline. “I’m not certain. No story came close, she said. The truth was stranger. More sinister. She told me they were your father’s curse and she left him—put an ocean between you—to protect you and your brothers.”

Penn rubbed her temples and ran her hands through her curls, pushing them behind her ears as she continued to speak. “Particularly Joseph. She said you, Tarik and Adam had already been touched by it, by them, but she wanted to leave before Joseph was born. Wanted to keep him pure, she said. Her words exactly. She was so distraught I thought Zayid must have beaten her.”

She caught Aziza’s eye with an apology in hers. “We all did. We thought he was abusing the lot of you, and she made up some mad story to escape. We didn’t argue when she took you to America because we assumed she’d come home when she was ready. Tell us when she’d had a chance to heal.”

Her aunt was on the verge of sobbing. “Oh, Aziza.
I didn’t believe her.
And now he…now I…”

“Shh, it’s okay.” Aziza pulled her aunt into her arms, pushing her own desire to break into a thousand pieces aside at the sight of her aunt falling apart. “How could you know? She never told
us
anything at all. Tarik was seven and I was only two years old when we left. I don’t remember our life before Dallas. Don’t even remember my father’s face.”

A lie she’d repeated often to avoid pitying looks. She remembered him perfectly. His smile. His laugh. How it felt to sit in his lap and play with his beard as he read her stories. Remembered stretching her two-year-old body to open the enclosed door of their garden for the beautiful visitors who held her hand and told her stories until her father would shout at them, demanding they leave. The only time he’d ever raise his voice.

She even remembered the last day. Her mother crying hysterically as she picked Aziza up in her arms and ran.

This
was
about her father. Ram had said as much. So her mother hadn’t been completely crazy. At least, she hadn’t been wrong.

Greg swore. “You aren’t going.”

“I told you, I think I have to.”

“If you take one step out that door—” He stopped mid-threat and she heard his frustrated growl. “
Shit.
I’m going with you. Whatever the hell this is?
He
is? I’m in or it’s no deal.”

She looked up to find Greg kneeling beside the both of them, his hand on Penn’s knee, offering comfort. “This is too crazy. Too dangerous. I can’t ask.”

He nodded, his face still on the pale side, but his gaze determined. “You’re my best friend, Aziza Jane. I made a promise, so you don’t have to ask. You never have to ask.”

His temple pulsed with restrained frustration. “This is not the way I imagined this leg of our trip turning out, you know. I was going to have Penn convince you to go to your family’s property so I could selfishly take a break from your usual brand of nerve-wracking fun and get some work done. I didn’t see spirit possession or fire starting anywhere on our itinerary. I didn’t see
Jinn
.”

He was trying to lighten the mood for Penn, she knew, but it fell flat. None of them had been prepared for this. It still didn’t seem real. Invisible lovers who followed you home, hands that caught on fire but didn’t burn, people that simply vanished before you could blink…this was a movie. A novel. This wasn’t real life.

Jinn were her mother’s demons?
Jinn?
Ram hadn’t seemed anything like a Jinn. Genie? However you said it, it didn’t seem real. How could any of it be true?

What
did
seem real was the danger. She held her aunt closer. “Penn, you should go there now. The Stewart place. Take Hillary and get out of the city. You shouldn’t be around this. If I’d known—I swear if I’d known I wouldn’t have come here.”

Her mother
had
told her not to come.
Had
warned her.

Penn shook her head and pushed away from Aziza’s embrace. “Are you having me on now? Telling me to run off with my girlfriend, quick as you like, while you and Mr. Prophet go and sort it all out, is that the plan? You don’t even know
where
he wants to meet.”

She stood abruptly, wiping her tears away while Aziza and Greg looked on in silence. “But I do. I’ll ring Hill and send her up on holiday. She loves the place, and if I tell her it’s important, she’ll listen. She’s been dying to spend more time at the house anyway. But I’m not leaving you behind.”

Penn pointed out the window, her voice growing louder and more adamant with each moment that passed. “I don’t know what’s happening. I saw it with my own eyes but…I
will not
be scared off by that thing. Not now when I know that Emma was…well, she was right, wasn’t she? You’re family, Aziza. The only one left I care to know. I can handle this.”

“Penn, I’m not sure
I
can handle this. And I know I can’t handle seeing anything happen to you.” Aziza looked to Greg for help and he nodded in understanding.

“We’ll call,” he promised. “We’ll tell you everything that happens. And I promise, the second we figure this out we’ll join you.” Penn opened her mouth to argue, but Greg stopped her with his words. “You’re all she has left in the family department. If you stay, come with us,
that’s
the only thing she’ll be thinking about.”

Her aunt sighed. “She has you, though, doesn’t she? No matter what she decides to do, whether you agree or not, whether you understand or not, you’re stuck to her side. Aziza’s big American bodyguard.”

“Damn straight.”

Penn made a sound of frustration and stomped one booted foot, but Aziza could see she wasn’t as vehement as she’d been a moment ago. Greg had made his point. Aziza needed to know that Penn was safe and taken care of in case anything happened to her tonight.

She reached up to touch her new accessory, trying not to think about the fact that—whether Ram was a demon or Jinn—he hadn’t been a dream. What they’d done to each other hadn’t been a dream. She pressed her thighs together when the image of him flipping her onto her back, his eyes brilliant with lust and demand, flashed in her mind.

After she found out what was going on, she needed to stay as far away from him as possible. Ram was trouble. A risk she’d have to keep reminding herself not to take again.

She forced herself to focus on the task at hand. “Penn, tell us where we’re going while I help you pack.”

Aziza glanced at the clock. Only four in the afternoon. How would she make it to midnight?

Chapter Four

Aziza’s phone chimed in the pocket of the fitted leather jacket she’d changed into for the evening, letting her know it was eleven forty-five. Fifteen minutes left. She brushed her windblown hair out of her eyes and glanced over at Greg with a worried frown. “Are you ever going to talk to me again?”

Her best friend was walking right beside her, but he couldn’t have felt farther away. He hadn’t reached for her hand, had hardly spoken to her since Penn left to take Hillary out of the city.

He shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans and shrugged his shoulders. “We’ve talked, Aziza.”

She blew out a frustrated breath, trying to keep up with his long strides despite her precarious choice of footwear as they walked down Northumberland Avenue toward the statue Penn had told them about. “Sure we have. You’ve said, ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘I’m not hungry’ and ‘Have you seen Penn’s keys?’ That’s it.
Eight hours
, Greg. Eight of the longest hours of my life, after the weirdest, most frightening afternoon imaginable, and you haven’t even mentioned it.

“The Greg I know would be talking about LSD in the water supply or government experiments. He’d be checking for hidden cameras or postulating on the possibility of dragons while he dragged me kicking and screaming back to Heathrow and onto the first plane out of Dodge. He wouldn’t be avoiding my gaze or ignoring me. If you want to leave, all you have to do is say so. If you’re freaked out, you can tell me. But you have to say
something
.”

He stopped so abruptly she almost walked past him. He gripped her arm and pulled her toward the nearest building, a restaurant with a maroon awning that appeared to be in the process of shutting down for the night, despite the continued flow of human traffic. There was an out-of-character hardness in his usually warm hazel eyes that startled her. “I deal with facts, as a rule. Fantasy is a two-hour distraction. A video game, not real life. So yes, I’m freaked the fuck out.”