Chapter 6

Ipacedtheboundaries of the charred courtyard, my bare feet crushing the ashy remains of flowers and overgrown weeds. My mind was still unwilling to truly believe I was free. The time I"d been bound in the book was agony enough all of its own, but…it was only a drop of sand in the hourglass of my long imprisonment.

I had been foolish. So foolish. Any other Jinn would have laughed me out of existence if they knew how I"d ended up imprisoned in a spelled bottle for an eternity before I landed between the pages of a musty old witch"s grimoire. How I"d practically handed the witches the means to enslave me, to use me, first for their pleasure, then for power.

But I would never be that foolish again. I had learned my lesson. Thoroughly. Witches were not to be trusted. They liked to side with the humans, calling my kind demons and monsters…but witches were the real monsters. They used their magic only to grasp and greedily hoard power that didn"t belong to them, all so they could control and subjugate others.

My lips curled up into a bitter smile. The tables had turned. Now I had a witch of my very own to torment and use as I saw fit. I would extract every ounce of vengeance, for every decade I had lost, from her witch hide. And I would make sure it hurt as much as my own betrayal.

My original betrayermight not be around to pay for her crimes. But the Lovell"s weak little descendant would do just fine. Rage boiled inside me like the churning of lava inside a volcano, ready to burst out at any moment and destroy anything that stood in its way.

I glanced down at the remains of an old, overgrown rosebush that was somehow still identifiable after my rampage. Memories assailed me, when by all rights, they should have long faded. Rage and bitterness would do that—keep things close to your heart that could only wound.

She had loved roses. Wore their scent on her skin and in her hair. We had made love many nights on a bed of rose petals as we made plans to defy the order of things and marry. I growled, swiping a clawed hand through the remains of the bush, erasing it from existence. At least I had the smug satisfaction of knowing that she was dead, her bones long-decayed in the ground or her ashes scattered in a funeral pyre hundreds of years ago. She was nothing more than a bad memory in the mind of one neurotic jinn.

"You are nothing," I whispered to the ghost of her memory. But somehow it didn"t make me feel quite as satisfied as I had hoped.

"Aahil?" A hollow, otherworldly voice called me back from my desperate musings. I stopped pacing, turning to look at the ghost that hovered nearby.

Elijah was an annoying pest. He"d been given more freedom by the witch who bound us all in the book, his main usefulness in the ability to travel unseen and spy for his owner. Afterall, it wasn"t like the ghost could do anything to harm the witch who"d imprisoned them, incorporeal as he was. But that freedom had always made me resent the ghost, even though I knew it was utterly absurd to envy a dead man. Especially one who had never really lived while he was alive.

"Oh, Spook! I"m sorry…I didn"t see you there," I purred, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning against a smoke-blackened stone bench. "Apologies." I leered.

Elijah, always the epitome of goodness and light, simply regarded me with a sad look on his see-through face. Pity the asshole was so…dead…he might have been quite good looking once upon a time, if the hints of lip, and jaw, and high cheekbone that occasionally rose to the surface of his churning etheric being were any indication.

"Aahil," Elijah said again in that whispery voice. "Release your bindings on Andy. She means us no harm."

I snorted and waved a hand in a "go on" gesture. "Oh, good one. Please, tell me another jest, my misty friend."

Elijah drifted closer, only his upper body formed, the legs trailing into whisps of silvery smoke that curled along the ground. "It is no jest. She"s the one I"ve been looking for, hoping for all these years. A Lovell who isn"t evil. She has a conscience. Her moral compass tells her she should release us and destroy the grimoire. We need her. All of us."

I straightened and strode right through the ghost, shivering in delight at the cold almost-touch against my superheated skin. Elijah gave a hiss, some of his ethereal being turning to actual smoke as the jinn fire that danced on my skin managed to burn away a bit of that ghostly magic. I grinned happily. There was nothing quite so satisfying as annoying the holier-than-thou spirit.

"Oh, she can continue her work," I said, turning and spreading my arms like a benevolent god. "In fact, I insist upon it." Fire leapt into my hand and I rolled the flames over my fingers as I tilted my head and glanced toward where I knew the little witch had come upon us and stood eavesdropping. "If she doesn"t, I will burn her alive from the inside. Slowly. Starting with the very cells that make up her blood and organs." I flexed my fingers, demonstrating how my binding connected me to the disgusting witch.

A gasp and a throaty groan were my reward as I heated up her tissues by just enough to avoid permanent damage.

"Aahil!" The ghost actually tried to attack me, mustering enough poltergeist strength to push me back a step before Elijah ran out of power and popped out of existence.

The witch hit her knees, then fell on her face on the sooty garden pavers. Such an overreaction to this minimal demonstration of my power over her.

"You sonofabitch!" she muttered into the ash-covered ground, struggling to push herself to her knees.

I frowned, then went to crouch nearby and observe. "Your aura doesn"t look so good, Lovell," I observed, keenly aware of how the roles were reversed—of how many times a Lovell had used me, drained me so badly I could barely crawl across the ground like a worm, turned into a burned out husk of my former self.

The fat witch managed to get to her hands and knees, but her arms shook as if they could barely hold up her weight. "Are you so weak?" I said with a cluck of disapproval. "How disappointing. This will take all the fun out of the torture I have planned."

Interesting gray eyes met mine from under a mop of unruly—and slightly singed—dark green hair. "Oh, fuck you," she muttered in a husky alto. Then I felt her begin to draw power from the earth. Truly a green witch, then. But too bad for her, I had destroyed all the plants nearby. And I doubted anything was left alive in the soil.

Reaching out, I placed a hand on her shoulder and shoved, easily sending her tumbling back onto the ground. "Don"t try to use your magic on me, witch. I"ve had enough of that to last me several lifetimes."

She huffed, but the trickle of a power draw continued. "Not. Using. It. On you. Asshole."

She fumbled for something at her waist, pulling out some black and silver device that was covered in wards. Some combination of magic and technology? Strange. But then again, she was a Lovell, and they were nothing if not…inventive. Usually in increasingly horrifying new ways. I snatched the device, yanking it free when I found it was attached to some sort of plastic tubing.

The witch growled, "What the hell?"

But I ignored her, turning the device to and fro as I studied it. There were numbers on the front, lit up in glowing circles. I touched them in the order the lights seemed to indicate and was rewarded with a new display. "What manner of weapon is this?" I demanded, trying to make sense of what looked like a graph and some numbers. Maybe a power grid of some sort? A reading of the thing"s magical charge?

The fae hunter chose that moment to come jogging into the courtyard. "Andy?" Her sharp green eyes zeroed in on me, where I knelt near the fallen witch. "What have you done?"

She slid to her knees and pulled the plump witch into her arms, and I raised a brow. "Oh, is that how it is? Fucking your captor now, Niamh? I thought you said that was the action of the weak-minded? Careful now, or you"ll end up labeled a dirty jinn. Or worse—a hypocrite."

She bared her sharp little teeth at me. "I will gut you." Then she turned back to the witch. "Andy? Oleander?" The woman had closed her eyes, and Niamh patted her cheek in a soft slap. "What do you need? Your injector?"

The witch"s eyelashes batted open slowly and hazy gray eyes focused on the fae with apparent difficulty. "No. It"s not that bad. Just…some juice." She sighed. "And get my fucking insulin pump back from that asshole before he finds a way to destroy it. I need that."

The fae held out her hand for the weapon. "Give it to me."

I huffed and stood. "What manner of weapon is it? Will she just turn it on us? Is this what she used to enchant you and the spirit into believing her lies?"

Niamh stood, carrying her witchy burden with supernatural strength despite her lithe form. She was quite a bit taller than me, and I didn"t care for how she towered over me. Lesser beings loved to give me shit about my size. Not that it mattered when I could fry them with a flick of my fingers. I lifted my chin a notch and squared my shoulders to reminder her who she was speaking to.

"Give me the box," she ground out. "It"s a medical device. She needs it to live."

I tucked the box into the pocket of my harem pants. "No. If she needs it to live, then I will keep it right here." I smiled, slow and sensual. "I control whether she lives or dies. Let her see how it feels to be so powerless."

The fae turned away, muttering "You"re a dead man."

Empty threats. We both knew she wasn"t strong enough to defeat a jinn, fae hunter or no.

I followed the fae, a niggling curiosity moving my feet without conscious thought. She took the witch to the kitchen—which was one of the few places in this derelict cesspool of evil that looked like it had been thoroughly cleaned. Depositing the witch in a chair at the table, Niamh hurried to the refrigerator—wonderful inventions, those things—and pulled out a glass picture of what looked to be orange juice. Hurrying, she poured a tall glass of the stuff and set it before our would-be captor.

The witch"s hand shook as she grasped the glass. Really? All this over a little heating up? Pathetic.

The witch chugged the entire glass of juice like the pig she apparently was. I scoffed. "So ladylike."

Oleander Lovell lifted a shaking hand and extended her middle finger in a gesture I recognized as an insult. I might not have soaked up much current culture in my brief times out of my prison, but that gesture was one I knew well. "Go fuck yourself," she added for good measure.

I shrugged and gave her a lurid leer. "Are you threatening me with a good time?"

She rolled her eyes and leaned forward, putting her forehead on the table with a thump.

Niamh hovered like a fussy mother goose. "Are you okay now? How long will it take to know if you"re okay?"

The witch waved her away. "I"d know when my blood sugar starts coming up if that donkey fucker over there would just give me my pump," she said, her voice muffled. "It has a monitor on it."

Niamh rounded on me and paced forward, stalking. As if she had any hope of overcoming a fire elemental. I laughed. "Oh, gods. You really are besotted with this disgusting creature, aren"t you?"

Then the fae lunged, fangs bared and a hunting knife appearing from somewhere. I easily dodged the knife and dematerialized, teleporting and appearing right next to the witch. "What have you done to bespell the fae, Lovell?" I demanded. "A potion, perhaps? Infatuation? Some sort of lust spell?"

The witch elbowed me directly in the cock and balls.

Well, didn"t see that one coming. I could have put up more of a fight, of course. But I bent over, sending magic from my root chakra to soothe my injured jewels, allowing the fae to snatch the device from my pocket.

I let her. I didn"t want the thing anymore. It had lost its entertainment value. And I was sick of listening to the two of them whine. Surely there was food and drink around here somewhere? Something more pleasurable than observing these imbeciles.

I snorted at myself. There was revenge to be had. But jinn weren"t exactly known for having a long attention span.

Oleander lifted her head and took the device, then she stood and went to a kitchen drawer. I dematerialized and teleported over to stand at her side again, peering around her to see what she was up to. Was she about to power up the weapon? Entrap me somehow? I"d burn her to ash where she stood before she could fire off a spell.

"Would you get out of the way?" the witch said, shoving me aside.

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Do not touch me, filthy Lovell."

She didn"t look at me as she pulled out a plastic packet that held more of that tubing that dangled from the device. She pulled a blue cap off the end of something that was attached to the tubing, revealing a long, wicked-looking needle. Then my puzzling new toy proceeded to stab herself in the soft, pudgy flesh of her stomach.

"Witches really are strange creatures," I mused. "It will make it harder to torture you if you actually enjoy pain." I smiled, slow and wicked. "But I can work with that."