Authors: Jasinda Wilder
Not without Carson Hale.
There’s no other choice, though, I know that much. I may not want anything to do with my father’s criminal activities, but I can’t let my family get hurt simply because I don’t like Hassan. It’s more complicated than that, of course. It’s
marriage
, for god’s sake. It’s permanent. Forever. Once Hassan has me, he’ll never let me go, and the ifrit marriage rites are magically binding anyway.
But what if I just told Carson everything…?
But I can’t do that. I just can’t.
But why not? I’ve already shown him what I can do. He may not know the terms and the history and all the details, but he knows now that I’m not just an ordinary girl. He’s come to some sort of acceptance in regards to Miriam, for one thing, and closed her case despite what might be termed an ethical objection. He’s trying to be open-minded. He’s learning to accept the impossible. So what if I ran away with him?
I can’t stop myself from reliving those moments when the two of us were standing by the river. God, his hands felt
so
good, exploring my body, skimming across my curves. His lips set me to trembling. I wanted so badly to take his hard length in my hands and caress him until he exploded, but I knew if I’d done that, there would be no return. It’s taking every last shred of my will power to stop myself from running back to him. I know he’s still standing back at the railing by the river, watching the waves glint in the moonlight, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.
The way he looks at me, I swear, it turns me to Jell-O. I shouldn’t torture myself like this, but I can’t help thinking he feels about me the way I do about him. I could swear he was moments from telling me he loves me. Which is stupid and impossible and ridiculous, because we’ve known each other for a matter of weeks, two months at the most, but there it is. It’s in his eyes and the way he kisses me and the way he touches me. Greedy, but with restraint. He wants me, but not just for the sake of sex. He could’ve had that already, and he knows it. If he were to push me over the edge, I wouldn’t stop him. I couldn’t. I would’ve made love to him right there in the vortex, a hundred and fifty feet off the ground in the middle of downtown Detroit.
I open my eyes and force myself to pull it together, make my legs take one step after another, away from Carson. With every step, my heart cracks further, splits away from the rest of me. My heart is with Carson, and I’m walking away.
I can’t see him again. That was the last time. I repeat the promise to myself: the last time.
*
*
*
Halfway to my car, I hear the sound of footsteps behind me. Harsh whispers break through my wall of self-pity. I turn my head enough to glance behind me: three young men, two white, one Hispanic, dressed in shorts that sag halfway down to their ankles, T-shirts about ten sizes too big, flat-brimmed ball caps turned not-quite sideways, hands at their crotches, holding up their shorts. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize what their intentions are.
They think I’m easy prey, a pretty young girl alone, downtown, in a little sundress and flats, a clutch purse. Easy, right?
I pity them.
I slow down, letting them draw closer, while wrapping strands of elemental power around me. If they could see my face, they’d see my eyes glowing blinding white. I’m sure they feel the wind that suddenly howls down the street, but they pay no mind. All they see is me—or rather, all they see is my ass in the orange dress, more likely. I sway a bit, taunting them. I can hear them laughing, slapping each other, howling like wolves, jogging quickly to catch up.
I stop and turn around. The smile I give them probably seems seductive. They don’t see the rage boiling behind it. If they could, they’d run screaming. In this moment, I have enough anger and pent-up sexual frustration that I don’t have much ability to control what’s about to happen.
They close in, mere feet away, now. The wind is skirling around me, hurricane-serpents.
“Hey sweetheart,” one of them says, clutching himself and thrusting his crotch at me. “Come on, baby. Make this easy on us.”
“Yeah, sexy,” another one pipes up. “Don’t make us hurt you, ’kay?”
The one who hasn’t spoken reaches behind his back, for a gun most likely, and that’s when I make my move. Three fists of wind smash into their chests, hurling them twenty feet away. I could let it go at that, but it’d be too easy. They’ve picked the wrong day to mess with me.
I walk forward as they’re picking themselves up, obviously wondering what happened. I send a trickle of magic out, just a little illusion to make the winds visible. Now they can see the power rushing around me, illuminated by skeins of red flame. The fire is the illusion, cold and harmless, but they don’t know that. I lash out again, wrap the wind around them, crushing their arms to their sides. I lift them up, letting them see the white glow of magic in my eyes.
I smell urine: one of them has a wet spot on his pants leg. I laugh, and the sound echoes like thunder from the buildings around me. They’re pleading with me to let them go, not to hurt them, that they were just joking. I don’t answer. At least, not with words.
I throw them, hard. They smash into a building across the street, fall to the sidewalk in a shower of broken glass, crumbling concrete and droplets of blood. I let the winds turn me ethereal and blow me across the intervening space to stand over them.
I feel no remorse as I look down at them. Blood trickles from their mouths and noses and ears. They cough, and gobbets of dark red bubble from their lips. And they are terrified.
They won’t last the night.
I’m sure I’ll feel a few pangs of guilt later but, for now, I feel relieved. The pressure has been lifted, a little. It felt good to have someone to lash out at. They would’ve killed me, I’m sure.
*
*
*
I make it home and fall fully clothed into bed. I can’t stop the tears from flooding through me once again. I wonder what Carson is thinking. I wonder if he’ll believe what he experienced, or if he’ll try to block it out. He has a hard time believing in anything other than hard facts.
It’s strange, though: I’ve never taken my ifrit powers too seriously. I’ve learned to control them, of course, because every ifrit child has to learn the basics to survive in the human world without giving themselves away. But I’ve never used them for much of anything, and besides, girls are only taught the basics. Not like boys, who are tutored and trained until they can wield their powers as second nature. When Hassan showed up and threatened me the other day, that was the first time I’d used my powers in several years. And then again, tonight, with Carson. They seem to be flying out of control. Whenever Carson kissed me, they flared up, and tonight, at the river walk…it was all I could do to keep them contained. I couldn’t have stopped that if I’d wanted to. And, honestly, I didn’t want to. It was a way to let Carson see some of the truth I couldn’t spell out for him.
None of the other boyfriends I’ve had have ever made my powers flare up like that. Granted, there haven’t been many, but the ones there have been were lackluster and boring compared to Carson. I knew it when I dated them, but I think I wanted it like that. I wanted to use them more to rebel against my father’s conservative, Old-World prudishness than for any real desire for the boys themselves. They were boys, too, not men. Yuppy Chicago boys, all of them. I’d parade them in front of my father’s study, knowing he dare not show his anger in front of humans. The boys would be in awe of all the marble and the Aston Martin out front, and the grand, curving staircase…all bought by drug money, some of it paid for in blood.
Those poor, clueless boys.
It wasn’t until I moved out that I let one of them take me past “second base,” as they called it. It was quick and awkward and not entirely pleasant.
Jeff Yardley, his name was. Barely twenty-one, worked at a gas station. Attended community college and had no clue what to do with his life. He was cute, in a puppyish sort of way. He was completely innocent. I don’t think he’d ever been in a fist fight. White bread, my friend Tameka called him. Tameka was an ifrit too, of Moorish descent. She is an Almoravid, I think, but we never discussed our lineage. We both wanted to get away from all that. Tameka wanted me to find someone “worth my while,” not an awkward boy like Jeff, but all I cared about was spiting Father.
Eventually I got tired of Jeff and stopped answering his calls. He got the point after I let Father throw him out.
Carson…is unlike anyone I’ve ever known. He makes me feel like a woman, sultry and sexy. He’s a man. He’s dangerous, in his own way. He’s both seen and experienced violence. He’s shed blood; I can see it in his eyes. There’s a hardness there, not terribly unlike the hardness in Hassan’s eyes, but with Carson, it’s counterbalanced by kindness, goodness, and compassion.
I’m torturing myself yet again. My body is remembering the feel of his hands, squeezing and caressing so gently, and I want that again. I want him here, in this bed. I want to feel him peel off my dress, inch by inch. I want to feel him above me, his strong arms around me, pulling me against him as our passions rise.
I know I’ve promised myself I won’t see him again, but deep down, I know I will. It’s inevitable.
Chapter 11: Dreams and Visions
Carson
I’m upset. I’m confused. I’m angry. I’m hurt. I’m a turbulent, potent mix of emotions, and I don’t know what to do with any of them, so I go to the shooting range with a box of shells, riddle paper targets with holes while my thoughts wander in circles.
Why do I care about Leila so much? She’s just a girl, and girls come and go. I’ve dated a shitload of girls, and none of them have ever meant anything to me. But Leila has wormed her way into my every waking thought after just a few weeks. It’s not just her looks—although god knows she makes my mouth go dry and my breath catch and my cock go iron hard. Even now, with the acrid smell of gunpowder in my nose, the crashing of pistols from down range, and the pinging of spent shells, all I can think of is the way she curled into me, the way she wordlessly encouraged me to kiss her more deeply, to touch her, to hold her…
Of course, that leads to thoughts of her skin under my hands and the wind blowing around us, the way her dress was molded to her curves…
The wind. I can’t deny what happened by the river; I’ve tried to pretend it didn’t happen, but that only worked for about five seconds. The truth is undeniable: a windstorm kicked up, gale-force winds strong enough to hurl vehicles across the street and uproot street signs from the concrete. That same wind somehow formed a tornado around us and lifted us off the ground, gently and carefully.
I know without a doubt that it was Leila’s doing. She was showing me something; she wanted me to see who she really is. Maybe that business with the wind is her secret, maybe she’s worried I’d be scared off by her crazy powers.
It’s a little scary, yeah, I don’t mind admitting. If she can do that, lift us off the ground and throw a Taurus across Jefferson Avenue, then there’s no telling what else she can do. That would certainly explain the strange tornado damage at The Old Shillelagh…but it doesn’t explain the fire.
My mind goes back to Miriam. She killed a man in self-defense, and she did it with fire.
I’m a djinni
, she told me. I remember sitting in an interview room at the precinct, watching a candle flame waltz across the table and hop onto my hand. Unexplainable, but real. Miriam’s boyfriend Jack saw the flame too; I saw his reaction to the little flame-figure.
I’m pragmatic enough to admit that what I experienced with that flame was real, and that what happened tonight with the maelstrom was real, too. What did it mean? Was Leila…what? Something other than human? A djinni, like Miriam? What’s a djinni? A genetic mutation, like the X-Men? Miriam and Leila are similar, in some way. Their…abilities, for lack of a better term, use different elements, but seem to function in the same basic away. When Miriam summoned the flame, her eyes changed, turned to flame. That, combined with Betsy Willis’s report of a glowing woman, leads me to believe Miriam could…become flame entirely, somehow. I don’t even know how to think about it, but that seems right. The little flame was a miniscule portion of her powers. Snapping her fingers, just to prove her point, essentially.
So how does this relate to Leila? Miriam was a fire-woman, which makes Leila a wind-woman. Where the powers come from is irrelevant, although a facscinating question. The real issue is what Leila’s other-than-human nature means for me, for any possibility of an
us
. She showed me her powers, showed me, at risk to herself and to me, she claimed, who and/or what she is. So the truth of her nature isn’t the obstacle keeping her from being with me. She ran away from home, so it’s not her parents or religion or whatever. It’s something else. Something significant. Some…duty, or…I don’t know. I can only conjecture at this point. She walked away from me again, claimed once more that she just couldn’t explain anything to me. For my protection, and her own.
What a mess.
I pop off the last few rounds in the clip, then set the pistol down, removing the sound-baffling ear protectors.
When she walked away from me today, it was painfully obvious she was saying goodbye permanently, and the thought of never seeing her again makes my heart clench. This is not an option I’m willing to consider. I don’t care what I have to do.