Chapter 5

Heatroseallaround me, dry and blistering, as the Jinn"s fire sucked every last bit of moisture from the air. I saw his smile through the lashing tongues of flame, dark and bitter, a cold counterpoint to his fire. Niamh"s fingers squeezed my own, the crushing grip grinding my bones together as we stood under her hastily erected barrier. I poured my own magic into the shield, but the sweat was evaporating from my skin faster than it could form, doing nothing to cool my body. We might not burn at this rate—at least not until he finally wore the barrier away—but we could still die from the heat in the air around us.

Niamh shifted her grip, sliding one long arm around my waist and pulling me close. "We"ve unleashed hell," she muttered. "Any ideas, witch?"

I shook my head mutely while I tried to figure out what to do. All around us, the courtyard had gone up in flames, the rambling, overgrown place reduced to ash in seconds. This wasn"t just any fire. I didn"t know much about Jinn, but I had done my research. There wasn"t anything on this mortal plane that could extinguish a jinn"s fire except the creature who had cast it.

The barrier pinged an odd note, then seemed to warp inward. I tensed, sure we were about to die. But it was just Elijah, the ghost going incorporeal and popping in on our side of things when he found he couldn"t just float on through.

"Andy," he said, his voice desperate as he flung himself at me.

I reared my head back as the ghost…coated me. It was a strange sensation, hard to describe. Not possession. He was still on the outside. But I could feel his sprit essence plastered to my skin. I gasped in a breath of hot air as Elijah"s misty ghost self eased the heat on my skin, his chill touch making it easier to think.

"Why are you fools protecting the Lovell?" the Jinn"s bored, sultry voice purred from right outside our barrier.

I glanced up to find him pacing there, dragging one long claw along the curve of our protective bubble, leaving sparks behind. It reminded me uncomfortably of someone cutting through metal with a saw. I hoped like hell he wasn"t cutting himself a nice little doorway.

"Recall your fire!" I demanded, straightening my spine and pulling away from Niamh slightly. "For fuck"s sake, you"re ruining the wolfsbane. And the poor roses will never grow again."

He tilted his head, molten amber eyes regarding me from a face that was just too pretty to exist. His long black lashes swept downward, and one corner of his sinful mouth tilted up. "Of course," he cooed. "I"ll stop the fire. If you come out and play with me." His eyes met mine again and the smile showed fangs. "I"m going to take you apart piece by piece, bitch. I"ll take back every year your ilk has stolen from me, every ounce of power. I"ll take it out of every slice of that juicy, voluptuous hide."

I ground my teeth together. "Oh, for fuck"s sake. I didn"t do anything to you! I just freed you, moron." I glanced at the fae at my side. "Is everyone in that book mentally impaired? Is that how you got trapped? You"re all just colossally fucking stupid?"

She bared her teeth at me. "Not the time, witch."

I shrugged, feeling Elijah slide all along my skin with the movement, over every inch of my body in a way that was just…whoa. We were going to talk about that later. For now, I ignored it and just told myself I was glad for the ectoplasmic body armor. The jinn had stopped pacing, his stillness somehow even more threatening than his prowling and his threats. "You freed them?" he said, flicking his eyes to Niamh.

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared. "Put. Out. The. Fire. While there"s still anything left in this place to pawn!"

He arched a dark brow at that. "They are not under your control? You aren"t forcing them to use their magic to protect you even at this moment?"

I threw my hands up in the air. "Do they look like I have any control over them? They follow me around by choice. Again, I"m pretty sure you"re all brain damaged. One too many forced spells or something. Maybe it"s the prolonged lack of socialization?"

He stopped smiling. Which, once again, like with the prowling, I think I preferred the maniac smile. "Prove it."

I arched my brows at him. "What?"

He lifted a hand, putting out the flames there so I could see his graceful fingers and oddly delicate, three-inch long claws. "If you"re not forcing the fair one and the ghost to protect you, then it should be no difficulty for you to simply step across the barrier away from them."

I sighed. "Oh, yeah. Sounds like a great plan. I love being roasted alive." But hey, maybe it would be less awful to burn up quickly rather than stay in here and sweat to death?

Those shimmering eyes went half-lidded in a look that was nothing but sultry challenge. "Afraid?" He shrugged one bare, golden-skinned shoulder. "The witches with the most power are always the most afraid of losing it. Their fear of ever appearing weak makes them grasp for things that don"t belong to them. Like the power of others."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine." I stepped away from Niamh. "Elijah, get off, would you?"

The fae immediately grabbed my arm, halting me. "Oleander, this is madness. How do you know you can trust him?" Her green eyes flicked over my shoulder toward the jinn, then back.

I shrugged out of her grip. "I don"t. But I"m hot. I"m fucking exhausted from working the spell to free his ass, and…I"m tired, Niamh. Just really fucking tired. Maybe he"ll put me out of my misery."

Elijah flowed off my skin and formed a misty man-shape between me and the jinn, blocking my escape—as much as he could. "Witch? You can"t mean that. Do not throw away the precious life you"ve been given. Trust me when I say you will mourn its loss." He lifted a ghostly hand to brush along my cheek. "I will mourn its loss. Please don"t go, Andy. We"ve work yet to do."

I side-stepped him. "You guys act like I"m going to an execution," I said dryly. "But I"m not. At an execution, your fate"s already decided. The guillotine will fall. But he"s one of you. There"s always a small chance I"ll live." I dragged out my best devil-may-care grin and stepped through Niamh"s barrier and into the firestorm.

My hair immediately started to crackle, and blisters formed on my skin. I was sure my clothes were burning and sticking to me. But hey, it wouldn"t matter in a couple more minutes anyway, right?

Seemed a fucking stupid way for my cursed life to end, but what did I know?

A pair of flaming hands gripped my upper arms, drawing me forward a step so I stared into the jinn"s eyes. He was utterly terrifying, but some dim recess of my brain found it amusing that I was taller than him. "You"re a gutsy thing, aren"t you, witch?" he purred.

His touch set my shirt on fire, and I swallowed down a whimper. "It"s not so hard," I croaked, the dry air and smoke making it nearly impossible to draw breath. "When you"re never given a choice."

Those mesmerizing amber eyes flickered. Kind of pretty. Not the worst thing to be staring at as you died. "There is always a choice," he whispered, leaning in so his lips touched the scorched shell of my ear. "Do not make me regret mine."

Then the fire was gone.

A whirlwind of fresh air whipped through the courtyard, clearing the smoke so I could breathe. I wasn"t sure if it was the jinn or the fae who called it. I was just thankful I could draw another breath.

"Look what you"ve done to her!" Niamh barked, shoving the smirking jinn aside and snatching me close.

I hissed and yanked away from her touch. "Fuck!" I griped. "Not making it any better here, fae."

Elijah hovered at my side. "Andy. Please let me help."

I rolled my eyes. Damn. Even my eyelids were seared. "If you must."

His cool caress made me sigh in relief as he wrapped himself around me. It must be costing him energy to keep himself so tangible, but at that moment, all I cared about was making the pain stop. At least I still felt pain. Which meant the burns probably weren"t deep enough to damage nerve tissue. Yay!

I tried to straighten my spine and look like a badass. But working heavy magic and being cooked alive had really taken a lot out of a girl. "So," I said to the jinn, who was lounging against a blackened tree stump, his flowing harem pants pristine and his perfect, compact dancer"s body bare from the waist up, and dripping gold jewelry. "That was fun." I made a shooing motion. "Well? Off you go. Free to make someone else"s life a living hell."

The slow smile that stretched his lips did not seem like a good thing. He pushed himself off his tree stump and swaggered our way, a little dancing pep in his step that made me want to smack him. "Oh, I think I"ll stick around for a while," he said with a wink. "See how that heals."

He reached out to draw a finger along one of my arms, barely touching my blistered skin. Then he grinned at Niamh. "Is there drink in this place? Food? I"ve been starved of pleasure for far too long in those moldy old pages!" He linked his arm through the fae"s and dragged her from the courtyard like they were old friends, and this was all some happy lark.

Fuck my life.

I stiffly shuffled after them, turning and heading upstairs to my room when they went toward the kitchen. I couldn"t care less what the fuck they did as long as I could sleep. And maybe a cold shower. Yeah. Possibly. If I could manage to peel my clothes off my crisped skin.

I had just set my foot on the bottom stairstep when something occurred to me. I stopped, turning toward Niamh before the jinn could drag her all the way to the kitchen. "The cost," I said, my voice carrying weirdly in the creepy mansion. Sure, I was tired from un-working a massive set of binding spells and helping Niamh with the barrier. But I hadn"t had a massive hypoglycemic crash or felt any other weird magical balancing act occur as payment for the power I"d used. "I didn"t pay the cost."

The jinn chuckled, the sound like tinkling bells, and completely at-odds with his wicked look. He leaned around the taller fae woman and winked at me. "I did." He shrugged when we all gaped at him. "Took quite a chunk out of my reserves. But I"ll recover, thank you for your concern."

I held up a hand. "No!"

He just smiled. "Too late, witchy-poo. You owe me."

Fuck, fuck, fuck! He"d paid the price for my magic so I would be in his debt. And with a magical creature of his power, I couldn"t refuse if he decided to call in the favor. The rules of magic would just bitch slap me until I paid up. "Motherfucker," I muttered, turning and trudging up the stairs. The sound of his rich laughter followed me all the way to my room.

I slipped into my bedroom and shut the door behind me. Bis scampered across the hardwood and started to climb my pantleg with an agitated peep. I awkwardly bent and scooped him up before he could dig his little claws into anything crispy. "Hey little guy," I said tiredly. "It"s been a really bad fucking day." I touched my nose to his and set him back down on the blanket pile he"d made in the corner of the room. "Just…stay there for now, okay?"

The rat-skunk-hedgehog hybrid trundled over obediently and hunkered down on his bed. I was pretty sure he could understand me. Which was creepy in so many ways, since I knew how he"d been created. I wouldn"t put it past my family to throw a dash of human intelligence into the mix just for funzies.

The fucking creeps.

Elijah slipped from me to go have a word with our new jinn friend, and to relay a list of ingredients to Niamh for a burn salve. But I wasn"t alone for long. The fae appeared at my door far quicker than I had expected, carrying a bowl of something. Her leaf green eyes traveled over my singed self and her gaze hardened into something that could cut. "I"d kill him, if he wasn"t already trying to make amends."

I arched a brow at the fae hunter as she kicked my bedroom door closed and paced over to set the bowl on the nightstand. "Strip. I"ll get the shower going."

I sighed and wrestled my insulin pump out from under my shirt. The pump itself was a little hot, but it was warded with enough magic to survive a nuclear strike, so I was pretty sure it would survive. The plastic tubing was completely melted. But no biggie. I could replace that. Setting that aside, I got rid of what was left of the adhesive patch, then gingerly started peeling off the remains of my t-shirt and jeans. It wasn"t as bad as I expected, since my clothes were all-natural fibers. They were only stuck to my blisters in a few spots. Finally I was gloriously naked, reveling in the feel of nothing but air against my poor, abused skin.

I padded to the bathroom to find Niamh waiting. She had turned the opulent, but aged, shower on so it was just a trickle. That way it wouldn"t beat against my raw skin. I took her hand and let her help me in, since walking and maneuvering pulled on my tight, blistered, cracked flesh. The water was just the right temperature—cool enough to be soothing, without being too cold.

"Thanks for helping back there," I said, feeling awkward in the silence since Niamh didn"t seem inclined to leave. "With the barrier and all."

She nodded, an edge of anger to it still. "It was stupid, stepping outside the barrier like that. You can"t trust everyone you meet, Andy. Just because the creatures in the bestiary have been wronged, that doesn"t mean theyaren"t evil themselves. You had no reason to think he wouldn"t just burn you to ash."

I tilted my head back to wet my poor, singed hair. "I"m not an idiot, fae. I don"t just go around blindly trusting people. Hello? Did you ever meet my family? I couldn"t trust my own damned mother, and I knew it from the time I was born."

She came to perch on the closed toilet lid closer to me, and I didn"t miss how her eyes lingered on my body. "Then why? Were you truly…. Did you wish to die?"

I sighed and turned the tap off, gingerly lifting my arms to squeeze the water out of my short hair. "Honestly? No. Not really. But it"s not like I"m afraid of dying, either." I let her wrap a towel loosely around me, then looked up into her eyes. "I"m not suicidal or something, if that"s what you"re worried about. I just had a really good idea about the kind of game we were playing." I waved a hand in the general direction of the kitchen downstairs. "That is a very powerful being who has been powerless for ages. He needed to be in control. He was asking me for a show of good faith. Otherwise there was no way he was going to back down. Don"t you get it? He needs to feel like he is in control, or he"ll lose his shit." I could tell that within five seconds of meeting the lunatic. But then, I was good at reading people—especially the psychotic ones.

She let out a sigh and some of the tension left her shoulders. Her graceful fingers traced my jaw. "I forgot," she said softly, her voice full of sadness. "I forget sometimes that you aren"t at all what you seem."

I arched a brow at her, making my tight face skin pull. "Oh? And what am I then?"

One side of her pretty mouth curled up in a mischievous smirk. "Oleander Lovell. The one who came after."

I just stared at her. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

She stepped back, and I immediately missed her touch. "It means you are more than the human or the inept ex-witch that you pretend to be. You may not want to be in tune with the magic. But you are. And thanks to your horrid family, you"re more…aware…than anyone I"ve met in a long time."

She shrugged and turned away from me to head back into the bedroom, and I absolutely took a second to enjoy the view. That ass. I shook myself and followed her. "Okay."

She picked up the bowl and motioned me closer. "I was going to bring you the herbs for a tonic. But the jinn conjured this from somewhere. He said it would help with the burns. Do you wish to inspect it? I can"t sense anything evil myself."

I padded over and leaned in to sniff at the bowl, which appeared to contain some sort of creamy herbal mixture. "At this point," I said with a shrug, "I"m willing to try just about anything to make it feel better."

She nodded and gestured at my towel. I let it drop and spun to present my back as indicated. "I think…" she said as she carefully smoothed a dollop of the mixture over my back, "that you"re correct about the power play. But I have no idea what to make of the man now. He"s downstairs drinking something he found in a cabinet and telling ribald jokes to your ghost. He acts as if he has not a care in the world. How is he not…upset…after his imprisonment and all that has happened?"

I sighed at the immediate relief that flowed from wherever the lotion touched. "I don"t know," I said at last. "He seemed pretty damn pissed down in the courtyard."

She huffed and I relented. "But yeah, I know what you"re saying. Still…you came back here pretty quickly after you stormed off. And who knows? He"s a jinn. Maybe he just likes the chaos. I suppose we"ll find out soon enough."

She smoothed the heavenly mixture over my shoulders, back, and buttocks, then down the back of my legs. I relaxed bit by bit, the pain melting away so all I felt was the slow, sensual glide of her hands over my skin. "Turn," she said, her voice a bit lower than usual.

I smiled to myself, then spun, holding my arms out at the sides and pointedly not reminding her that I could do the front myself. Leaf green eyes burned into mine as those graceful hands slid over my shoulders and chest, pausing to circle the heavy globes of my breasts, then skate downward over my belly and hips.

I grinned when she went to her knees, her hands sliding over my thighs and down my legs. When she finished, she looked up at me, the heat simmering in her eyes plain to see. "My arms?" I asked, holding out my hand.

She smiled, slow and predatory, then took my hands, working the lotion up to my elbows before she stood again to get my upper arms. Then she tossed the bowl aside and returned to my breasts, stroking the light, oily stuff over my nipples, bringing them up to tight peaks. "How do you feel?" she breathed. "Still hurting?"

I tilted my head, letting my damp hair brush my shoulder. I wasn"t a pretty girl. Not delicate or terribly feminine. But I"d been around long enough to know that didn"t matter so much to some people. Sex was all about the energy. And the buzz of electricity that hummed between me and the fae was everything. "No, surprisingly," I said, licking my lips. "Apparently, the jinn really is sorry he almost cooked me like a hotdog over a campfire. That mixture was magic."

She snorted, stepping back to draw her shirt off over her head and drop the sweatpants to the floor. "You"re still not up for anything vigorous," she said, coming close again, pressing her long, lean body to mine as she crowded me back toward the bed. "Magical fatigue."

I rolled my eyes as I looped my arms around her neck. "Bossy. Because, of course you are."

She growled and nipped at my neck before trailing those lips up across my jaw to my mouth. Goddess, she tasted like tender new grass in a meadow of sunflowers in high summer. That"s the only way I could explain it. Something that was so fair folk you"d have to experience it to understand. "The blood runs hot after a battle," she murmured against my lips. "It races for the hunt."

I chuckled and tilted my head back to let her nibble at my ear. "Not much of a battle. Or a hunt, really. More like us almost dying. But I get it." There was something primal thrumming just below my skin, pounding in my veins. I"d felt it before, a time or two—usually when I had been extra close to ghosthood.

Niamh backed me onto the bed, then slid down my body, skimming over my sensitive flesh with hands and lips, avoiding the recently burned bits, nibbling and suckling at my nipples, biting a line down my ribs, pressing lingering kisses to the soft swell of my stomach. Then she parted my legs and bent her head, stroking the flat of her tongue along the entire length of my aching pussy. I growled impatiently and reached down to grip her antlers, guiding her to where I wanted her. I was too tired and magically drained to want much more than a quick orgasm. But Niamh seemed to understand. She attacked my clit with a vengeance, swirling her tongue over the nub, sucking on it so hard I saw stars. I bucked under her, chasing my release, feeling the magic swirl between us. Sex magic was as potent as any earth element. For a moment, it brought you closer to the source of all creation. That was something humans never seemed to understand, but that a witch knew in her very blood and bones. I"m sure the fae felt it too, with their connection to nature.

Niamh"s strong hands gipped my hips as she drove me higher, and I moaned loudly as I came, unashamed of my pleasure. The fae continued to kneel between my legs for a time, pressing lingering kisses to my thigh. Then she slid up my body, hovering over me with her hands braced on the bed to press a kiss to my forehead.

I reached for her with heavy limbs, intending to return the favor, but she pulled away. "Not now," she said, her voice velvet and promise. "Later. When you"ve rested."

She stood. "I"ve got a jinn to babysit," she reminded me, returning to her no-nonsense hunter tone of voice. "It"s not like Elijah can do anything if the guy decides to go on a rampage."

I didn"t think the fae could do much more than the ghost, when it came right down to it. She was powerful. But a jinn was stronger. And their magics were different, not on the same plane. I let her go, though. Because she was right. Someone should probably go play adult. And it certainly wasn"t going to be me. I crawled onto the bed the right way and pulled a blanket over myself. "Thanks for the orgasm," I mumbled into the pillow. "Ten out of ten for efficiency."

She snorted a laugh and bent to press a kiss to the side of my head. "Stupid witch," she muttered fondly. "So trusting."

I ignored her and pretended to sleep.

She was wrong. I wasn"t overly trusting. I just knew people. And what I was rapidly coming to understand about the fae was that she was terrified of being alone. She had her freedom. But when she found out that her clan was gone, she"d come right back here to me and Elijah—to the only people she knew. And she had refused to leave. Now she wanted to bond more deeply with me. She wasn"t going to get closer and then fuck me over. That wasn"t how the creature worked.

Now the jinn downstairs? That guy would use sex as a weapon, as a tool to manipulate and dominate people. It was part of what he was. If he climbed into your bed, you"d better bet it was time to run. I snorted to myself at the thought.

He was pretty though.

I woke slowly from dreams of some eastern-looking place with high, arch-ceilinged buildings and piles of sumptuous cushions, where everything was made of sheer, brightly-colored fabrics and a person could drown in sensual pleasures.

"The fuck?" I scrubbed a hand over my face, erasing the harem from my brain. Goddess, maybe I had brain damage from all the heavy magic use the past few days. I really needed to get this bestiary dismantled and go the fuck home to the human world where I belonged.

A cool sensation glided over my skin, and I turned my head to find Elijah hovering nearby, running one misty hand along my arm, up across my collarbones to cup my cheek. "Feeling okay?" he asked softly, his blue eyes glowing.

I swallowed hard. Oh. Ghost in my bed. Ghost who could poltergeist and touch things sometimes. Clearly the fae had broken my brain earlier with her little let"s-sex-up-the-witch routine. "I"m fine," I managed to answer, flinging the covers aside and sitting up.

That meant I sat through Elijah. But he just meandered on out of my body and went to float around my room as I got dressed. "The jinn is coming," he said calmly, his expression something I couldn"t interpret. "He said he needed to inspect your burns."

I finished pulling on a pair of loose lounge pants and a tank top, then ran a hand through my tangled, singed hair. I"d need to trim off the burned parts, damn it. I was going to ask what Elijah meant when the bedroom door opened and in walked temptation incarnate.

Fucksticks.

The jinn prowled across the room, his hips doing this little rolling thing that most men"s bodies just didn"t do. He still wasn"t wearing a shirt, and I couldn"t help but notice the glittering gold nipple and belly button piercings. "Hello, my witch," he purred in that soft voice. Crap. That was no good.

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared down at him. "Howdy. What the hell are you doing in here?"

He just continued on past me, prowling around me in a slow circle, his head tilted as if he was examining me. "Oh, that"s beautiful. I did a lovely job, don"t you think?"

When I just arched a brow at him, he reached out a hand and drew a claw down my forearm, drawing my attention there. "My markings. Beautiful, aren"t they? That one is my name."

My blood ran cold. Glancing down, I saw what he was talking about. Not red marks or scabs from my burns, but barely there, slightly raised symbols and curlicues, like decorative scars lacing over my skin. I turned my arm over in horror, realizing that the marks were everywhere, covering every inch of me that had been burned a few hours before.

"What did you do?" I breathed, my voice shaking as terror and rage consumed me in equal measures. Goddess save me. He"d…put some kind of binding on me.

The jinn just smiled pleasantly and looked me right in the eyes. "Why, I marked my property, of course. How does it feel to be owned, Lovell?"

Then he turned toward the door and started whistling, rolling a little ball of fire between his ring-bedecked fingers. "Oh, this is going to be so much fun."