“Bro?”
“The White King.”
“Oh you mean the asshat who ripped me from my bed and coldly told me he was my real father and that I’m Jinn?”
“Asshat. I like that.” He grinned and then promptly wiped the smile off his face when he noted she wasn’t smiling with him. “Yeah, that guy.”
Ari gulped. “Just that. That my mother hid me with my dad, with Derek, and that The White King couldn’t find me because of some enchantment she put over me, hiding me from him. He said it wore off when I was sixteen.”
She waited, somehow hoping that information would be enough to make him leave.
“It did.” The Red King nodded eagerly. “Azazil had me searching to find you before The White King could get to you. Unfortunately my psychotic brother got to you just as we did. Well… I might have been able to stop him if someone had told me about Rabir a little sooner.” He threw a dirty, pointed look over his shoulder at the guy in the doorway, and the said guy took a step forward into the light.
“Hey,” the guy snapped. “If you had told me what the hell she really was,” he jerked a hand in her direction, “I would have gone directly to you rather than to my father.”
“Have you forgotten who you’re speaking to, kid?” The Red King’s voice purred threateningly, suddenly reminding her of The White King.
The guy, who Ari now noticed was younger than she’d first thought, stiffened. She noted, however, that he didn’t look frightened by The Red King, merely annoyed, and somehow that reassured her. Instead he nodded tightly, the strong line of his jaw clenching. “Apologies, Your Highness.”
He sounds way less than apologetic, Ari thought.
The Red King’s eyes flashed and he turned back to her. “I like this kid.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the young guy. “He’s got fire.” He grinned and winked. “Get it?”
Ari almost rolled her eyes, amazed that this weird bizarr-o world was really her life now and that in just a few hours she’d reached a point she didn’t even blink when someone introduced themselves as ‘The Red King’. “He’s Jinn too I take it?” She ran her eyes over the young guy who appeared to be in his early twenties. She noted his ‘normal’ height at a couple of inches above six feet. He was strong looking, however, broad-shouldered and fit. Like The Red King he wore black jeans and a plain white t-shirt, his olive skin formed over tightly roped muscle.
“He is,” The Red King replied. “This is Jai. Jai is one of the races of Jinn who live as humans. He is also a highly trained member of the Ginnaye.”
Jai nodded at her, all serious and growly, and she found she couldn’t quite take her eyes from him. He smirked at her. “You need to watch where you’re looking when you cross the street.”
“Excuse me?”
“Corner of West and Frederick? The truck.”
Holy macaroons! “You!” she cried, her eyes wide with disbelief. “You were the invisible hands that pulled me back?”
“You’re welcome.”
“What?” she squeaked, anger bubbling dangerously in her blood. “I’m welcome? You made me think I was being stalked by some crazy poltergeist!”
“Just doing my job.”
Ari looked to The Red King and she suddenly realized she was staring at him as if she were waiting for him to come to her defense. Irritated at herself now, she threw a disgusted gesture in Jai’s direction. “What is he? Why has he been following me? Or should I say, Invisible stalking me?”
“As I said, Jai is one of the Ginnaye’s youngest and most promising members.”
She glared at Jai. “The who?”
“The Ginnaye,” Jai answered in his rough voice. “Protectors. Guardians. We’re high-paid security for Importants.”
Eyes narrowed, Ari slowly sat down in the armchair that faced The Red King. “You hired someone to protect me because you consider me an Important?”
“I see my brother at least filled you in on Importants.”
“I’m not an Important. I’m…” she gulped, hating to admit it. “Apparently, I’m Jinn.”
“Well I just—” Jai’s eyes glittered dangerously at The Red King as he held up a hand to silence the guardian.
Ari glanced warily between the two of them. “You just what?”
The two Jinn continued to stare at each other in strained silence until finally Jai lifted his head and pinned her to the wall with a strange and intense look that sent a shiver rippling down her spine. “I just found that out. I thought you were human.”
“OK. Um…” she watched them both for a moment, trying to work out her next move.
But she was just so tired.
Deciding she couldn’t find anything remotely hostile or cruel about The Red King (upfront anyway), Ari leaned in towards him. “Just tell me why you’re here? Please.”
He sighed, clasping his large hands together in front of him. The White King had been so alien, so strange, apathetic and sinister in his emotionlessness. His brother was the opposite. If it weren’t for his beautiful but strange skin and long flowing red hair, he’d almost pass for an ordinary guy. “Azazil has asked me to protect you. That’s why I’ve hired Jai. Your father, Ari, may become persistent in his goal to retrieve you.”
“But why?”
“My brother, did he tell you anything of the Seven Kings and Azazil?”
Ari pressed a hand to her temple to stem a gathering knot of tension. “He told me about your war. That you each trespassed upon one another’s duty.”
“Then he only told you part of the truth.”
“What more is there? And what do I have to do with it?”
“My brother lives for power. Nothing else. He wishes to dethrone Azazil and he will do anything to attain that goal. He’s divided my brothers in this war, destroyed the order he claims to want to uphold.” He shook his head disgusted, seeming more Jinn now than he had five minutes ago. “He’s gathering an army, Ari. And you… you’re conception was merely to create another soldier for his cause.”
It literally felt as if her stomach had dropped to the floor at her feet. She stared at the carpet numbly, noting her bare feet still looked red and cold from their time in Mount Qaf. Her toe nails sparkled with the blue glitter nail polish Rachel had forced on her at school last week when she was wearing flip flops. She smiled humorlessly, thinking how funny it was that her feet seemed to sum up her life before and after she discovered the unbelievable truth. “Why? Why would he want me?”
“You were born. You are his. That is enough reason for him. My brother doesn’t like losing what he considers his.”
“Is that why he trapped Sala in a bottle?”
The Red King nodded. “Unfortunately Sala is one of many Jinn who walk the fine line between good and evil, only to discover when faced with true evil that they are not at all prepared to cross the line. She is being punished for her naivety.”
Ari gulped, clenching her hand into a fist, wishing she didn’t care if a mother who had abandoned her was being abused at the hands of the monster who called himself her father. “Will she ever be free?”
He sighed heavily, drawing her eyes up to his kind face. It was amazing that this man was related to The White King. In a weird way it made her feel better about being related to the psychopath. “Ari, you cannot worry for Sala. You have enough to worry about for yourself.”
Her heart did this weird little jump in her chest, a jump that vibrated, causing a wave of nausea to rise up and over her. She felt her skin prickle into a cold sweat and knew the color must have leached from her face. “Why?”
“For two reasons. One: my brother will not give up his attempts to lure you back to Mount Qaf to be with him. And two: your bloodline is significant. You may not have tapped into your magical abilities as Jinn but you emit an aura, an aura that only the very powerful emit. It comes from you being the daughter of a Jinn King and a powerful Ifrit. This aura attracts Jinn. It’s already attracted Jinn.”
Head whirling at this new information, Ari narrowed her eyes at his last comment. “What do you mean?”
He shook his head, seeming to marvel at the fact that she hadn’t put two and two together. “The Ifrit living in your home for a start.”
She frowned. “The Ifrit? There’s no If—” she gasped, her eyes flying wide to the open hallway. “Ms. Maggie? My poltergeist?”
“Not a poltergeist,” Jai replied from the doorway. “Ifrit. A solid, living being. She’s just invisible. She’s been using the Cloak to stay hidden.”
Crushed, Ari tried to hide her upset. “I thought she was my friend. I mean she’s been nice to me. She’s been my friend.”
Jai grunted. “Ifrits are rarely friendly.”
Hugging her arms around her body, Ari tried to remind herself that she wasn’t alone just because Ms. Maggie turned out to be Jinn. She had her dad. And Charlie. Charlie who was probably going crazy wondering where the hell she was. Oh God... Charlie. She needed Charlie. “I should call Charlie.”
“About that…” The Red King had that sympathetic look on his face again and Ari felt her heart flip. “The brother. The kid that died… your Ifrit tells me that was a Labartu.”
“You’ve spoken to Ms. Maggie? Wait… what… Mike? What’s a Labartu?”
“Yes. I questioned the Ifrit for answers. I also sent her on from here while you were searching the house like a hellion with a baseball bat. I also cleaned up the mess from your party btw. You’re welcome.”
Ari blinked, looking around the living room, only now realizing in all the craziness that she hadn’t noticed the house had been completely cleaned of any evidence of a party. She nodded wearily. “I appreciate it.”
He shrugged. “It’s cool. Anyway, according to the Ifrit, your friend Nick is possessed by a young Jinn attracted to you, and your friend Charlie… His little brother was killed by a Labartu; it’s one of the Jinn that specifically gets off on the destruction of young children. The cyclist that apparently came out of nowhere wasn’t human. It was a she. A Labartu. And she killed Mike.”
Like someone had snapped their fingers everything that she’d been told, her father, her mother, her uncle… it all fell away. She stood up, her eyes wide. She had something she could fix. Something she could focus on. Something that she could make sense of. Something good out of all of this. She had to tell Charlie the truth. She had to tell him that he wasn’t responsible for his brother’s death. Of course there was the small matter of convincing him that she wasn’t a complete head case. Ari glanced sharply at Jai. He might prove useful after all.
“And this guy.” She nodded in his direction. “He’s my bodyguard or something?”
Jai seemed to take offence at her tone but The Red King shushed any snarly retort by standing to his feet. “My brother wants to use you, make you learn your magic. Azazil would rather keep you hidden and protected.”