Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) (3 page)

The plane Steve had chartered was a luxury jet.

“I thought you might fly yourself,” Fay said as they buckled in. The cloud-soft seats made Business Class in commercial travel resemble Cattle Class.

“It’s easier to hire a jet with a pilot than without. And I prefer flying helicopters.”

He’d done so in the jungles of the Congo and Laos.

They’d worked in some remote places together. Back then, she’d refused to acknowledge her attraction to him. She’d been a Collegium guardian down to her bones. Her life hadn’t held space for a relationship. Now, she had the relationship, but no job. She figured she was ahead of the game.

Even if she was flying off to meet a not-to-be-trusted djinn and Steve’s potentially hostile family.

In the seat beside her, he bent forward to re-tie his bootlace as the plane gained height. The muscles of his neck showed strong where the collar of his shirt gaped. He was lethal in a fight, devastating as a lover, and the one person in the world that she trusted utterly.

She leaned forward and tugged at his bootlace.

He looked at her quizzically.

“I have a question.” They stayed leaning forward, peering into one another’s faces. “With Uncle being a djinn, why aren’t we flying magic carpet?”

An instant of shock—Steve had clearly expected a serious inquisition on what they’d encounter at the fort—and then, she was laughing, he was tickling her, and it all ended in kisses.

Defensive walls rose up, built of limestone the color of faded sepia prints; an abrupt intrusion in the crowded, narrow streets of Alexandria’s Souq district. The calls of sellers’ promoting their wares blurred with a hundred haggling transactions and the flow of gossip through the market. Tourists wandered, bemused and detached from the scene, bumped impatiently by busy locals, and bumped purposely by busy thieves.

Beyond a colorful spice stall, a ten foot door studded with iron nails and darkened by age, broke the repelling blankness of the tower wall. To Fay, the massive door shimmered with magic. Any who entered through this doorway carrying a magical weapon would find its magic de-spelled. She put a hand to the cool limestone wall and felt an ancient pulse of power.

The weres mightn’t use or be affected by magic, but someone had wrapped their Suzerain’s fort in its protection. People wouldn’t find the fort, let alone the doorway, unless they knew to look for it. A turn-away spell had gained potency through the centuries since it was cast, and now, the tower was probably all but unnoticeable, even by modern technology.

Only weres, unaffected by magic, would see the walls and the fort within—and mages as powerful as Fay.

“Rafe.”

“Steve.” The spice seller returned Steve’s greeting and stared at Fay with the noncommittal, speculative gaze of a security guard. He was Steve’s age, around thirty.

An older, much older, man sat in the shadows at the side of the stall. He’d be there to serve customers, while his young companion dealt with trouble. They were gatekeepers.

Steve pushed open the door to the fort, holding it for Fay.

She walked through. The spell to de-activate magical weapons touched her personal wards and recoiled, stung. The magic here was strong. She was stronger. But that mattered little when a djinn was involved. She lacked knowledge of djinni magic. Her specialty had been demons and evil. The djinni weren’t evil, as such. More like amoral.

Once through the door, a flagstone path led to the true fort, the central keep tucked safe within defensive walls. Its double doors stood open. Narrow windows on the first floor gave way to barred windows higher up. Encircling the keep was a wide strip of raked sand. Surveillance equipment added a high tech element to the defenses.

Steve made no sound as he crossed the flagstones.

Fay’s boots scuffed faintly as she walked beside him. She could feel they were being watched. Did they look like a couple to the watchers? They didn’t touch as they walked, no hand-holding or brush of shoulders. They’d walked like this into other situations before they were lovers. Even before she loved him, she’d trusted him.

She recalled the demon-haunted camp in a Congolese jungle. Then, she’d taken lead and Steve had backed her up. She’d been the demon expert, the stronger fighter against that evil. It had been the same in the Collegium’s New York headquarters. He’d trusted her judgement.

Now, he was the expert on his grandparents, the djinn and whatever else they faced. It was up to her to fill the alert, responsive support role. She wouldn’t initiate anything, but she’d be ready to act.

They walked through the double doors and stopped. She blinked and squinted, trying to adjust her eyes quickly from the bright sunlight outside to the relative dimness within the fort’s walls. She had an impression of shadows and height, of tables and people, a smell of food and the clink of cutlery and china.

It shocked her. She’d expected a reception area, or perhaps, an old-fashioned great hall to suit the fort’s age. Instead, they’d entered into a café. People of every age sat eating, drinking and chatting.

Curiosity had one or two of the customers turn at her and Steve’s entrance. They stiffened, shocked at something, and like a wave, that tension pushed through the crowd. Everyone stared at Fay and Steve.

She stared back, guarded and uncertain. Was it so unusual for a non-were to enter the Suzerain’s fort, or was it that she entered with Steve?

He waited for the shockwave to crest. “Good afternoon.”

Seventy faces looked back at him with varying degrees of consternation and calculation.

Fay recalled what he’d said about weres and reputation. Bringing her here clearly risked some aspect of his power. Given the lack of communication between weres and the Collegium, likely no one here recognized her. And as non-magic users, they couldn’t sense her power, either. Perhaps they wondered if Steve had lost his mind, bringing a non-were to the fort? Did they think she diminished him?

She smiled, and the tension in the room ratcheted higher. Her smile wasn’t nice. It said,
I dare you
.

Most were-natures were predatory. By instinct, magic or no magic, they sensed her confidence to take them all on.

Steve had also noted her response. He grinned at her. No more than her did he doubt that they could clear the room. “We’d better find Granddad before we start trouble.” He put a hand to her waist and guided her through a side door.

It hadn’t quite closed before a confusion of question, answer and exclamation exploded behind them.

“Haven’t they seen a non-were before?” Fay asked ironically, aware that they likely remained under surveillance by someone. She’d taken the cameras outside as a warning.

Steve carefully closed the door. It must have been soundproof because the noise on the other side ceased. “Not one wearing the scent of being mated to me.”

“Oh.”

Mate
. By his tone, it meant so much more than
lover
.

She’d felt the difference in him that morning in the kitchen when he’d said he was in deep with her, and she’d confessed the same. They belonged.

Mate
. The rightness of it settled something in her.

But she couldn’t help but be disconcerted at how swiftly and primitively scent had revealed their connection. Life with weres was a new world, one where things were done differently, experienced differently. However, if everyone here now knew her as Steve’s lover, the corollary was also true. Everyone in the cafe also knew Steve was hers.

She clasped his hand.

He smiled at her blazingly and hooked her hand through the crook of his elbow, as if they were to take a stroll.

Only then did the tension of the moment break. She blinked as the room they’d entered finally burst into her awareness. “Good grief.”

The café at the fort’s entrance was unexpected, but normal enough. This room was like something out of an eighteenth century palace. Long and narrow, it led inescapably to the heavy door at the other end. Gilt-framed paintings in the Rococo style lined the walls. Graceful, spindly and uncomfortable looking chairs were spaced at regular intervals, and dared visitors to sit in them. Underfoot, a sky-blue carpet edged in gold thread delineated the walkway. The ceiling was painted with a cherub-haunted mural.

Fay shut her mind to the décor designed to overawe.

“It’s a pain in the butt to clean. You should hear the staff complain and the art restorers shriek at every cobweb.” Steve led her forward. “It would be simpler to strip it back and have something modern.

She stared at him and his casual dismissal of such grandeur.

He put a hand on the heavy door in front of them. “This opens to the Court. It’ll give you an idea of the fort’s real purpose before we pass through it to the corridor to Granddad and Grand-mère’s private rooms. At this hour, they’ll be finishing lunch.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t interrupt their meal?” She bumped into him as he froze in the open doorway, blocking her access and view. “Steve?”

“I don’t think interrupting lunch will be a problem.” He moved into the room and brought her with him.

Fay recognized Uncle instantly.

The djinn had changed his appearance to that of a middle-aged European man with fair silvering hair and a lean build, but the sly mischief in his gaze, as much as the aura of his magic, gave him away.

Not that Fay could spare the djinn as much attention as his threat level warranted, nor appreciate the vast room with its soaring ceiling, stone walls and tingling sense of power. Not when two elderly people watched her with grave suspicion and disapproval.

Steve’s grandparents. They had to be. His grandfather sat at the head of the boardroom table with his wife on his right.

The djinn lounged in an executive chair midway down the table. “Come in. Don’t be shy. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Steve let the door go. The slam of it closing echoed around the stone-walled chamber. It felt ancient, the air in the room heavy with the weight of centuries of judgment. “Good afternoon, Granddad, Grand-mère. Uncle. I’m glad you’re all here to welcome Fay.”

“Faith
Olwen
.” Steve’s grandfather supplied her full name, stressing her surname to indicate he knew who she was. In his thin face, his mouth was a tight line of displeasure.

“Mage and former Collegium guardian,” Steve responded steadily.

“Oh dear.” The downbeat on the second word was a die-away sigh of distress. Mrs. Jekyll added a tiny, deprecatory shake of her dark auburn-haired head. The soft waves of her hair didn’t move, fixed in place. She was stylish, fastidiously made-up, and gave the impression of a plump, pampered housecat. Her sour expression ruined the look, puckering a mouth precisely outlined in pink lipstick.

Fay snapped her shoulders straight. Judged and found wanting. She’d endured worse. Her own parents had used and abandoned her, even if she was rebuilding her relationship with her mom. That Steve’s family objected to her wasn’t a new pattern in her life—and she had Steve. For his sake, though, she had to make this work. “Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Jekyll.”

Mr. Jekyll nodded. Mrs. Jekyll continued to glare.

Uncle grinned. “Pull up a chair.”

Fay and Steve crossed the chamber, their footsteps echoing on the stone floor. The room was impossibly large and expansively empty despite the hulking boardroom table. The air was cool and still, faintly eddying only now with their movement. Steve seated Fay and placed himself between her and his grandparents, and opposite the djinn.

Entering the fortress and its café had given Fay a shock and a lesson. For weres, the air itself carried secrets, and Steve’s grandparents were weres. In a second, their senses would reveal the truth the café’s customers had already discovered. She was here as more than Steve’s lover. He’d marked her as his mate. She counted.
One, two, three
.

Mr. Jekyll leaned back in his chair.

Fay couldn’t see Mrs. Jekyll’s response. Steve’s big body hid it. She heard the elderly woman’s wail, though.

“Steven, what have you done?”

“Had sex.” Uncle’s answer did not help. Then again, he probably didn’t intend it to.

Steve shot him a death-glare.

“Sex does not mean…” Mrs. Jekyll began.

Her husband squeezed her hand. “Perhaps we can discuss family matters later.”

“By all means,” Uncle said generously.

“Without you,” Steve growled.

“Now, where would the fun be in that?”

Fay put a hand on Steve’s thigh, aware that he was tensed for a fight, but needing him to stand down. They were here to discover Uncle’s real purpose and what it was the djinn thought she needed to attend to. Was the djinn making mischief or did they face a genuine threat? As Steve had just said, family matters had to wait.

He covered her hand for a second, a message of agreement, before she withdrew her hand. “Why did you call us here, Uncle?”

The djinn’s humanly blue eyes suddenly swirled with smoke and stars. “Weres are being enslaved.”

Steve tensed with a hunter’s instant, predatory alertness.

“Where?” Mr. Jekyll asked sharply at the head of the table.

“From every corner of the globe, the lost and unconsidered are losing themselves.”

“Those who won’t be missed?” Fay’s question was less query than understanding. It was generally the powerless and vulnerable who suffered, and it was those for whom she fought. With her Collegium work that had mostly meant protecting mundanes, the non-magical majority of the human population. But weres could be vulnerable, too. Fury lashed through her as she looked at Steve. Her magic stirred. She would kill and devastate before anyone enslaved him.

“Warrior-princess.” Uncle sat upright, studying her.

Fay decided to ask Steve—later—if djinni could read minds. Then again, perhaps Uncle had simply sensed the flare of her magic. Slavery was an abominable evil. She’d seen demonic possession degrade people, obliterate their personality, and consume them.

“Uncle, please, tell us more. What would you have us do?” Mr. Jekyll asked.

Fay stared at him. Was this how you played the game with a djinn? Politeness and a touch of obsequiousness? Steve had been ruder.

“Tomy.” The djinn almost sounded sympathetic. “This isn’t your test.”

Mr. Jekyll looked stricken and his gaze shot to Steve.

“I expected it, Granddad.” The
it’s all right
was implied by Steve’s tone.