Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) (8 page)

Faroud took Fay’s hand. He didn’t offer her a token to ensure her safe, independent return.

No reason he should. Fay shrugged it off. Before her stepfather had explained things to her, no other porter had given her a token. Trust was a gift.

Fay walked into the in-between. In its chaos, there was no up or down. Three dimensions split into twenty one, or so she imagined. She closed her eyes in an attempt to limit her sensory overload. She felt Cynthia grip her free hand and Faroud release her. She stepped out of the in-between into Cynthia’s New York basement.

A circle of fluffy toys regarded her suspiciously, their glass eyes sparkling. The most frightening of them, a stuffed toy lamb, butted her ankle.

“Hello, Squiffy.” Fay bent and touched its head.

The lamb gamboled back to Cynthia Nguyen who picked it up.

“Thanks, Cynthia. I appreciate your kindness in accepting my entrance.”

“I’ve set up an account for you,” the other woman said.

“Thank you,” Fay said devoutly. An account gave Fay independence in portal travel to New York. It meant that rather than having to trade on her stepfather’s porter reputation, Fay had been recognized and accepted as a private client.

“I figure you’ll be travelling to the Collegium a fair bit, even if you’re no longer one of them.” Cynthia sat down on a recliner in a corner of her basement. She switched on a television. “I’m waiting on another client. Go on up. Let yourself out.”

Fay started up the stairs.

“The Collegium guardians are watching my house, now.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“I gave them hives when they came too close.” At their portal, porters were powerful. “You have a five house radius, then they’ll sense you.”

Fay wondered how Cynthia’s other clients dealt with the surveillance. Everyone had their own tricks. She slipped on a cloaking spell and amped it up. As she exited the front door, hearing it lock behind her, anyone observing would see an elderly woman. Fay kept her pace slow to match the illusion as she approached and passed through Cynthia’s five house safe zone. Now, a magical watcher would see an elderly woman with the green aura of a healer.

She paused at the corner. Late afternoon, blurring into evening, meant heavy traffic. Even an elderly woman might tackle the subway rather than attempt the impossible: hailing an empty cab.

But miracles do happen.

A cab appeared. Fay hailed it and it stopped. Disbelieving her luck, she scanned it for magical traps. Nope, nothing. It smelled a bit of wet dog and garlic, but she could live with that. A touch of her own magic would help clear its path through traffic to the Collegium. She gave the address and sank back.

Behind her, the two junior guardians she’d sensed were probably making a professional and bored note of her appearance. Thanks to the small secrecy spell she’d used, they would have misheard her stated address as Mercy Hospital.

She’d at least have surprise on her side when she met Lewis.

It was bizarre to stand on the steps of the Collegium’s headquarters and feel the hum of its magic, the power of its wards, and not be tied to any of it. Well, not magically tied. Emotionally, Fay knew she hadn’t truly cut her old loyalties. Perhaps her training as a Collegium guardian had indoctrinated her. Perhaps it was that her great-grandparents had founded the institution. Whatever the reason, she believed in its purpose: to serve. To protect the mundane world from magical excess. Everything had to have limits.

Except love.

She hadn’t understood that before Steve. She didn’t fully understand it now. She only knew that where common sense told her to run from the crazy snarl of the were world, one that could never be hers because she could never be were, she wouldn’t run. She wanted Steve no matter what complications he came with.

That had been how he’d wooed her. He hadn’t allowed any obstacles between them.

The automatic doors of the building swooshed open at her approach. She smiled as she entered. Last time she’d been here, she’d entered with Steve. Without magic, he’d insisted on accompanying her into the heart of magic users to confront a powerful demon. He’d fought, too. With courage and skill and trust in her, rather than with magic. His lack of magic hadn’t made him lesser, even as her lack of were-nature didn’t make her an impossible choice as the Suzerain’s mate.

The receptionist at the Collegium’s foyer desk recognized Fay. It was there in the hyper-stillness of his body and frozen stare. Then he blinked and looked away.

She could read his chagrin at that instinctive flinch.

He brought his gaze back to her, watching her approach.

The foyer held two small groups of people chatting. The quartet standing in the back corner were guardians. Alert and serious, they’d identified Fay as swiftly as she’d noted them. She returned their flat stares. They were no longer colleagues and had never been friends. The other group were five expensively-suited types. The Collegium passed in the ordinary world as a think-tank on international affairs. Evidently that was what was happening in the second group, composed of one magic user and four mundanes.

“I’m here to see the President,” Fay said to the receptionist.

She’d used the phrase so often. Her dad had generally wanted her to report directly after a mission. It was odd to use the phrase and mean Lewis.

“Is President Bennett expecting you, Ms. Olwen?”

“Fay, Tomas,” she gently corrected the receptionist. “You know me.”

Two of the guardians split off from the group and approached her. The other two stayed at a prudent distance.

She could still take them all out. Not without a show in front of the four mundanes, though. “Phone and ask him,” she advised Tomas.

He reached for the phone.

She turned, positioning to keep him and the guardians in view. The hostility to her wasn’t new, even if it had acquired an edge.

“Fay, what are you doing here?” The confident greeting came from the Collegium’s new Chair of Demonology, Gilda Ursu. She was a short, strong woman with graying hair and blue eyes almost hidden beneath drooping lids. She managed a good glare at the lurking guardians, though. Three more had appeared. “Are you here to see me?”

Tomas was murmuring into the phone.

“To see Lewis,” Fay said.

“Come on up.” Gilda waved an arm in invitation, heading for the row of elevators. She turned her back on the guardians in a move as rude as a one-fingered gesture. Evidently the different factions within the Collegium were at war.

Lucky Lewis.

Fay glanced at Tomas, who nodded unwillingly as he replaced the phone. She was free to go up.

Gilda punched the buttons for the top floor Presidential Suite and for her own Demonology Department. She stood in the elevator and watched the numbers light up in ascending order. “You could work for us as a consultant.”

As far as Fay was concerned, the offer came from nowhere. She hadn’t thought she had a place within the Collegium or even attached to it. “Us, as in the Collegium, or us, as in the demonologists?”

“Either. Both.” The elevator stopped at the Demonology floor. “Think on it, Fay. Everyone needs allies.”

The doors closed, leaving Fay alone.

Allies. She had Steve, her mom and stepfather, herself. She had people who owed her favors. Would the weres become her allies or be a force she needed allies to withstand? What of Steve’s family? What of Uncle, the djinn?

She knew the strength of the Collegium, composed of both magical knowledge and power. Was she here to ensure that she didn’t work at cross-purposes with the Collegium against the rogue mage (if they knew of him or her), or was she here to enlist them as an ally against the rogue mage? Did she intend to actively work with them?

The elevator doors opened.

Despite her intense thought and compelling purpose, her body reacted on ingrained habit rather than logic. Her stomach knotted and her pulse quickened as if she was to face her dad and his personal assistant, who’d turned out to be in league with a demon.

And there I was thinking Nancy was merely a witch.
Funny how the wry comment didn’t amuse. Two weeks wasn’t long enough for the raw wounds of her fight with the demon, and the shock of its presence in the heart of the Collegium, to grow callouses.

Fay walked the short distance along the corridor to where it opened to the large space Nancy had ruled, the lobby to the inner sanctum of the President’s office.

“Haskell?” Fay hadn’t expected to see a guardian she’d trained with sitting behind one of three desks. The other two desks were empty; that is, they had computers and office paraphernalia on them, but no one seated at them. It was just Fay and Haskell, the woman who’d been popular and accepted by the other guardians, but packed barely half of Fay’s magic. That still made Haskell an effective and lethal guardian. What was she doing acting as a personal assistant?

“Good evening, Fay.”

Through the large window, New York City sprawled out, glowing in the golden colors of sunset. It was evening. The day had ended. Such a busy, turn-your-life-upside-down day. “What are you doing here?”

Haskell smiled tightly, standing up. “Shouldn’t that be my question?” Her blue blouse, black trousers and low-heeled shoes were a mix of guardian practicality and office wear. She crossed to the inner door and knocked, opening the President’s door without waiting on a response.

Fay walked past her and into the office, braced for the onslaught of memories and the gut-wrenching emotions of years of failing to gain her dad’s approval. Instead, the room was completely different. The dark, heavy wooden furniture was gone. In its place was light Scandinavian design. The layout was different, too. Lewis’s desk was further from the door, nearer to another door set in the far wall. A door that hadn’t previously been there. Escape route, Fay noted.

For Lewis Bennett had a very different problem to Fay’s dad. Richard Olwen had sought to bolster his limited power via Fay’s magic and his presidential position. He’d abused the oath ties of the mages who’d committed themselves to serve the Collegium. But if Richard’s power had been weak, Lewis had no magic at all. Once, he’d been a strong mage, one of the strongest guardians, almost matching Fay; not on raw power, but in the disciplined way he used his. That was before the North West Passage incident.

“Hello, Fay.” He stood with his back to the window opposite the door. “Close the door on your way out, Haskell. And go home. I’ll be fine with Fay.”

Haskell hesitated.

Fay watched her indecision, the signs of incipient rejection of the order in Haskell’s tightening hold on the door handle, the tiny jerk of her head.

Lewis simply stared his PA down.

“Good night.” Acceptance of the order, along with a healthy dose of resentment, colored Haskell’s voice. She closed the door behind her.

Fay felt a silencing spell lock into place. She looked a question at Lewis.

“Not my magic,” he said evenly. “I’ve had some spells installed with activation nodes keyed to me.”

“Ah.” It would be incredibly frustrating and frightening to head up the Collegium, reliant on others’ magic, and at the mercy of it, too.

No one had ever accused Lewis of lacking courage.

“Sit down.”

Echoes of his old authority as Captain of the Collegium guardians had her dropping into one of the comfortable armchairs set around a low coffee table.

Lewis sat opposite her. He’d lost weight, strain showing at the corners of his eyes. He wore a business shirt and black trousers. A discarded jacket hung on a coat rack behind his desk chair. He was a physically imposing man; over six feet tall, broader than Steve and all of it muscle. His dark blond hair was cut short. His brown eyes met hers steadily, unrevealingly.

“How are you?” Fay asked. She hadn’t expected to open the conversation that way.

Nor had Lewis, evidently. His eyebrows rose a fraction.

Fay shrugged, going with the unconventional opening. She wasn’t under his command any more. “You might as well tell me. I’m one of the few people who understands the Collegium, but isn’t under your orders.”

“Orders.” Lewis snorted. “The mages in this place wouldn’t know an order if it bit them in the ass. They debate everything.”

“Welcome to the world beyond the guardians.”

“How are you finding it?” he asked.

“Good.” She smiled, thinking of Steve. “Complicated,” she answered, remembering why she was here.

“Does one of the complications involve the Collegium?”

“Potentially. Peripherally.” Time to choose her words with prudence because were secrets weren’t hers to share. “I expect you’ve realized my partnership with Steve Jekyll is romantic as well as work-related.”

“You’re lovers.”

“Yes.” She would not blush, even if this was the man, emotionless and haunted, whom her dad had recommended to her as a life partner. At least Lewis didn’t know it.

“Yet, you’re here alone.”

Man-woman nuances weren’t her area of expertise, but she caught a strange tone. “What are you implying?”

“If you were mine, you wouldn’t walk into the Collegium alone. Not now.”

“I can look after myself.”

“Why should you?”

Her mouth opened, closed.

Lewis leaned forward. “Richard wanted me for you. Your father got a lot of things wrong, but he understood what made people tick.”

“And what makes you tick?” Hey, it wasn’t she who’d wrenched this conversation into the deeply personal. She had never thought to have a heart-to-heart with Captain Lewis Bennett.

“Loyalty. When I gave my oath to the Collegium, I meant every word. I’ve lived that oath.” He’d given his magic to its service. “I saw how you looked at Steve Jekyll. I heard him claim you. If I had that bond to a woman, she’d know that she was never alone—and she wouldn’t have to hide me from the mages, here.”

“I’m not hiding Steve, or protecting him.”

“I don’t see him beside you. Fay—” He broke off. “The last few months, before he resigned, your father dropped heavy hints that he’d look favorably on a relationship between you and me.” A twist to Lewis’s mouth showed what he thought of that parental blessing—not much. “I never followed up because I was no good for you.”

“You were interested?” Her voice squeaked.

The grim line of his mouth relaxed. “Fay, you scare most men, but for a few of us, you’re a challenge.”

Her brain literally couldn’t comprehend it.

Lewis smiled, an actual smile. “Steve saw it. I’ve worked with him. He’s tough. Loyal. Determined. You chose well. He chose well.” His smile vanished. “But he needs to be with you. Being alone makes you a target.”

“I’ve always been that.”

“Within limits,” Lewis said. “You were one of the guardians. You had it tough. Richard insisted on it.”

She hadn’t known of that order from her dad. It hurt, but she believed it. Her father had approved the attacks on her, the harsh extra edge to her training; no reason not to accept that he’d also instigated them.

“But at the end of the day, people who mattered knew that the guardians would back you,” Lewis continued.

“You would?”

He nodded. “But not anymore.”

Her stomach hollowed out.

“There’s debate around you, Fay. You broke your oath ties to the Collegium. It’s not meant to be possible.”

“I was able to defeat the demon threatening the Collegium
because
I’d broken those ties. None of you could have done it.”

“Exactly.”

She was lost. “I don’t understand.”

“You’ve always packed more magic than any other mage. More than some people think any one person ought to control. But people were reassured because your oath ties bound you to the Collegium.”

“And now, I have no such constraints.” And people hated—and attacked—what they feared.

“Steve should have come here with you, to show that you’re not alone.”

Except, what would the presence of one leopard-were prove?