“Don’t you dare touch me.”
Jinn. He was Jinn. Just like Penn said. Like her mother said. Greg had seen it. How could she possibly trust Ram now? Trust any of them? “I need to take him back home. Are we done? Does he have what I need to know? Did it work?”
Te stepped into her field of vision, nodding as he studied Greg’s reaction. “I am confident it did. He handled the light with more skill than most humans. There is something about him…his intellect is adequate.”
“What a compliment.” Greg’s chuckle was raw, but genuine. “Just don’t ask me for directions, right, Te? Right. Right or left. Up or down.” He began to mumble again, reaching up to clutch his head. “Everywhere. Life is everywhere. Every
when
. Is the number of dimensions constant? If one is destroyed will the others that surround it fall? The sand conceals the truth but no one knows who keeps the sand. Sends the sand.
That
line remains cloaked.”
“That’s right. Let’s go, handsome. Tell Mama all about it.” Shev moved past them and bent down to slip her hands under Greg’s arms, hefting him up without much effort. “Looks like you may have been Te’s first time. Too bad, really. I was planning a fun night for us.”
Te stiffened, his youthful face reddening as Aziza watched. “I have studied this procedure extensively. I have no doubt that the transfer was successful.”
Greg moaned as he was lifted to a standing position. He seemed drunk. Crazy. “Aziza is screwed,” he rasped. “Niyr with no experience. Jinn with no patience. The female child was born to continue the line. This isn’t her destiny. Tarik was first.”
Aziza tried to ignore his words, glaring at Shev when the woman wrapped Greg’s arm over her shoulder. “Let him go. I can take him from here.”
Ram’s partner rolled her eyes. “No, you can’t. You don’t have the strength yet.”
She stood and planted her hands on her hips. “You’d be surprised.”
Greg was her responsibility. Her family. He’d been there for her without question. There was no way she would abandon him now. Without taking her gaze away from Shev, she addressed Te. “Thank you for making the attempt to help us.”
“I am fulfilling my duty as far as I am able, Fireborne, and I will take all we’ve spoken of into consideration.”
He glanced up at the Jinn beside her. “I assume you have been given permission to take a more active and visible role in her protection, if not her education?”
Ram and Shev nodded before he continued. “Good. Then I believe we should bring this meeting to a close. On the wisdom of Jibril, I leave this place of peace with no thoughts or plans of war.”
Ram bowed his head and placed his fist over his heart. “On the soul of the mother of our people, we leave this place with fire and passion, but no desire for retaliation.”
Aziza heard the words both had obviously memorized by rote. The importance of it reverberated up her spine. All they’d said began to make sense. War and peace. Neutral territory. Jinn and…whatever that child Te really was. She’d somehow found herself in the middle of two enemies. Two enemies who were not remotely human.
For some reason, both sides were interested in her family. In her.
She followed Shev as the woman carted her wobbly legged best friend away from the statue and toward a nearby cab that appeared to be waiting for them.
Home. She had to get Greg home. If anything happened to him…she’d start a little war of her own.
Chapter Five
Fingertips gently caressed her cheek, drawing her back to awareness and away from her troubling dreams. Aziza blinked her dry eyes rapidly, uncertain for a moment where she was.
Greg’s voice was hoarse, but warm. “Have you been there all night, Aziza Jane?”
She lifted her head and winced at the crick in her neck, raising her hand to rub the soreness away. She was sitting on the floor beside the couch where they’d laid Greg down last night. She must have dozed off right before dawn, resting her forehead on the pillow closest to his feet. “I guess so. This corset feels like it’s burrowed into my rib cage.”
And then she remembered. She pushed herself up to sit beside him on the sofa and wrap her arms around him. “You’re up. You’re talking to me. Do you need anything? Are you okay?”
“A moment of coherence in a sea of wonder.” Greg laughed tiredly when she let him go to get a good look at him. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin far too pale.
She frowned, noticing the lighter, almost-platinum threads of hair above his temples. Because of the light? What other effects had the experience had on him? And why had she ever agreed to let that happen in the first place? “What have I gotten us into, babe?”
“Hush.” He lifted his hand to show her the notebook he was holding. “Never could write as well as you. Prefer numbers. Sketching past and present to understand the pieces I can’t calculate. Too many pieces. Need more paper. Damn creepy brat.”
Her heart twisted. He was still affected by what Te had done. Ram promised her it wouldn’t last long. That Greg would come back to her by morning. But how many times had her mother told her how well demons could lie? She didn’t know what to do. Helpless was not her favorite feeling. “What can I do for you? What do you need?”
He glanced around Penn’s flat as if he didn’t recognize it. “Jinn gone?”
“Not far, I’m sure, since I’m their
assignment
.” She exhaled slowly, standing up and moving toward the sink to get them both a glass of water. She was barefoot, only realizing it when the cool floor of the kitchen chilled her feet. “I kicked them out last night. I didn’t want to talk to them. Not until you… We just needed a break from all the insanity.”
She turned off the faucet and lifted the glasses in her hands, pausing. Nothing had caught on fire since she’d put on Ram’s gift. Not even when her anger at what they’d done to Greg had made her lash out and send them away. One silver lining in a wickedly dark storm cloud. She hadn’t blown anything up. “Does your notebook say anything about my fun hand trick?”
“Just the beginning,” Greg answered enigmatically, and Aziza could hear the paper rustling as he began to write again. “The Mayet could shape the sand, but no one knows how the sand will shape a Fireborne. No one can see into the soul.”
The Mayet? She walked over to him and set the water on the table, watching his pen fly across the lined pages as if he were possessed. “So the sand started this? When I broke the glass? Do you know… Greg, did Joseph send it?”
He stopped writing long enough to look up at her with an apologetic expression. “The black sand comes from the hidden line. Joseph must be lost, because nothing is hidden from them. They see in every direction. Past and present. If they had found him he would have received the sand after his brothers had fallen. It wasn’t meant for the daughter of Zayid to accept the call. She had a different path.”
Her eyebrows lowered and she looked away from him, toward the window across the room. “What path?” she muttered. “And before you answer, even in your state of info overload you should be aware that this is already starting to sound really fucking misogynistic. I am—I
was
his older sister.”
He didn’t answer, didn’t stop writing, but when she glanced back she could see it in his expression. “Oh God, it
is
that sexist, isn’t it?”
“Proposal predicament,” Greg murmured.
Son of a bitch. “The
proposal
predicament? What? Was the daughter of Zayid supposed to be a good girl, get married and turn into a barefoot baby factory? Was that my big destiny?”
Greg nodded but rolled his eyes; some part of him agreeing with her, even as he relayed the information Te had thrust on him. “The original Qarins were given the task to push. To persuade compatible human males to the female of the Ammu line. Niyr and Jinn agreed on this mission, but the proposals stopped with their deaths. Now the danger supersedes all.”
“If I wasn’t so worried about you, I would smack you just for saying that. And when I see that little evil pipsqueak again I might smack him too, for good measure.” She clenched her fists and smirked sarcastically. “They must have been so disappointed with me, huh? Maybe if they hadn’t scared my mother half to death—leaving her to spend the rest of her life crying into her pillow for my father—I wouldn’t have been this emotionally unavailable. This damaged.”
She shook her head, her pride stinging. “So the sand came to me because there was no one else left. Got it. Great. Not that it matters. I still have no idea what I am or how I can possibly protect myself from this curse.” She nudged his side with her leg. “I was right about that, you know. This is definitely a curse.”
Something was gnawing at her heart. She didn’t want to know, but she had to ask. “How did my brothers die, Greg? Did he know? Other than Joseph, that bomb…they were accidents. Freak accidents. Did these people—the Jinn and Niyr—did they have anything to do with it?”
“Unseen. Hidden in shadows. Could be either. Or neither.” Greg turned a page and started scribbling furiously, his head bent in concentration. “But there were no accidents. The males of the Ammu line were murdered before they could become Fireborne. Their Qarins assassinated, unable to protect their charges. Aziza Jane should have died when her Qarins were killed. They’ve yet to learn why.”
Aziza should have died two years ago. That was when her “Qarins” apparently did. Right around the time she’d learned Joseph was gone. The same time strangers stopped randomly proposing to her. The same time she’d realized her life was finite. That she was cursed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Ram had tried to explain about them last night. The Qarin. That all the children of her family were given two guardians at birth, picked from Niyr and Jinn, one from each side to ensure the other did their job and no one was influenced to choose one over the other. For the most part they merely watched, helping if they could, if they were needed. They were meant to walk, unseen, beside their charge—as close as a shadow—until the Fireborne potential died a natural death.
It didn’t explain Shev. Ram mentioned something about the reassignment being unexpected. That it was an unusual circumstance. That partners had never before been sent to watch over a single human.
Was
she? Should she stop calling herself that? Was any part of her human at all? Her dreams last night seemed to cast even more doubt on that idea. They’d been disjointed. Full of fire and blood. Full of confusion. She’d seen the symbol again. The one that had appeared on her palm. She’d seen darkness. The details were fuzzy, but the disturbing feelings remained. She looked down at her hand and flexed her fingers. “What the hell am I?”
“Fireborne,” Greg insisted. “You bear the burden of the fire. You are all of them and none of them. More than they will ever be. They all fear you and what you could become.”
She looked over at him in time to see him reach the last page and swear, his tone turning frantic. “I need more paper. Can’t survive without it. Like bread and water. A human body is made of clay. Malleable until it hardens. A new Fireborne is malleable too. Choice is always the obstacle. Which side? Which path? What power? No one knows how the sand will shape the Fireborne.”
Aziza brushed away a tear that had escaped down her cheek and took a shaky breath. “It’s okay, babe. There’s more paper on the counter.” She grabbed the small notepad and walked back over to him, setting it beside him before turning on her heel and heading for the door. She saw a pair of black kitten flats under the bar stool and, deciding they might be more appropriate than her spiky heels for a morning walk, slipped them on. “And I know what you need to survive. Food. Penn doesn’t have any, so I’m going to grab us some breakfast. I’ll be right back.”
“No.” Greg’s attention suddenly focused on her and he shifted on the couch as if he would rise, but he still looked so tired. Pale. “I have to protect you, Aziza Jane. Have to stay at your side. It’s my job.”
She paused at the door and shook her head. “I have to protect
you
this time, babe. Please. You have to let me do this. My guardian asshats are still watching, you know they are. And I’m just going to the store. If you want to help, give me this. Keep writing and let me take care of you.”
He paused, hesitant, before lowering his head almost compulsively back down to his notebook. “I’m not supposed to leave you.”
But he was already gone. She wasn’t sure he could help it.
“Good.” She swallowed a sob. “Just keep writing and you won’t even notice. And if any of you jackasses are listening, someone keep an eye on him. Keep him safe until I get back.”
She used the stairs, needing to move. Needing to run. She was a coward. Afraid of what he was saying. Afraid of how this was affecting him. She’d done this. Before they came here, before she’d made him leave Dallas, he’d been fine. His life had been good.
What had Te done to him?
She wished for a moment that her mother were still alive. She wanted to tell her—
needed
to tell her that she was sorry. For hating her. For hating all the rules and the prayers, all the evenings where she’d hidden in her room with Joseph, covering his ears so he wouldn’t have to listen to the chanting of priests and shamans as her mother begged them all to cleanse her children. To keep them safe.
Aziza didn’t want to know this. Didn’t want to know that her brothers had been murdered. Didn’t want to wonder why her mother decided to take all those sleeping pills when Joseph was away for the weekend. She knew it would be Aziza who found her. Or did she?
What if she hadn’t planned it? She didn’t know what was true now. Her family was gone and she’d survived, and nothing about that made any sense. Tarik would have known what to do. Adam would have discovered the truth. What sick twist of fate was keeping her alive in their place?
She pushed open the glass door of the building and ran into an old woman. “I’m so sorry. Excuse me.”
“I imagine I’ll survive.” The woman’s easy laugh drew Aziza’s gaze. She had to be in her eighties, though her eyes were still clear and sparkling. She wore a daisy-yellow pantsuit and the clunky jewelry around her neck and wrists matched it perfectly. She was holding a large tote bag that was currently overflowing with oranges and yellow roses, and on her feet were a pair of sensibly low-heeled shoes the color of buttercups.