Ari quirked an eyebrow. “So you’re still getting wasted at Rickman’s but communication with your mom has improved. That’s good, right?”
“Are you seriously going to lecture me about that right now?”
“No, she’s not,” Jai snapped. “Come on people, let’s focus.”
He was really starting to piss her off. Ari shot him a hateful look. “What crawled up your butt? Did you find out you were the Seal of Solomon and the most sought after weapon in the history of the Jinn?” she mocked. “Oh no, wait, that was me.”
Rolling his eyes at her Jai made her feel about six years old. “You’re breaking rule number one.”
Another stab of hurt.
Nice.
“What, we’re back to rules again?” she huffed at him, ignoring Charlie watching them cautiously. “And technically I wasn’t insulting you, I was mocking you.”
“Technically will you shut up so we can do this?”
“Hey don’t talk to her like that,” Charlie snapped.
Ari shrugged. “Jai doesn’t mean anything by it, Charlie. He was raised like a wolf among people.”
The deeply hurt look Jai used to pin her to the couch stuck through her like a big sharp pointy needle. She gaped wordlessly, remembering him confessing his upbringing with a family who didn’t want him. Jai hadn’t gone into the details but she could guess it hadn’t been good. Or affectionate. Probably like a wolf among people. Crap. He thought she was throwing his vulnerability back in his face. Despite his earlier, baffling coldness, she wanted to reach out and touch him, to reassure him. To apologize. “Jai...”
He smoothed his features again and when he spoke his voice lacked any emotion. “Forget it. Let’s just get started.”
Still feeling awful, Ari bit down the nerves and exhaled. “What should I do?”
“Speak to me,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Huh?”
“Using your mind.”
“OK what?” Charlie interjected.
“You.” Jai pointed a finger at him without breaking his concentration from Ari’s face. “Can’t be doing that. You read that book last night, right?”
“Yeah… I just… I guess I keep forgetting Ari is Jinn. It’s too weird.”
“Gee, thanks Charlie.”
“You know what I mean.”
Ignoring him, Ari leaned forward, her elbows braced on her knees as she stared deep into Jai’s eyes, trying not to flush at the immediate tension she felt coiling within herself trapped under his exotic gaze. “So… I what?” she whispered hoarsely. “Just direct thoughts at you?”
“Exactly.”
“It can’t be that easy.”
He smirked arrogantly. “Try it.”
OK, what do I say to him? Um… you look nice in a towel? She flushed. Jesus Christ don’t say that!
Clasping her hands together and bracing her chin on them Ari bore her eyes into his, imagining the words floating out of her brain across the living room and in through Jai’s forehead. What’s up with the grumpy?
His mouth quirked up at the corner ever so slightly. Didn’t get much sleep last night.
“Holy—” Ari slid back in her chair in fright as his voice echoed around inside her head as clear as if he’d spoken right into her ear.
“What? What did it work?” Charlie asked excitedly, but Ari couldn’t even look at him. She was amazed. In awe. A bubble of laughter floated up out of her and tinkled into the air and there was no mistaking the little spark of something in Jai’s eyes at the sound.
Curious, and eager to continue, Ari leaned back into him. Seriously. What did I do?
The spark promptly sputtered out of his green depths. Nothing. I’m just doing my job, Ari.
You’re being a tool.
What did I say about the name-calling?
Jai.
Ari.
“OK, guys this freaking me out,” Charlie said, finally drawing Ari’s gaze. His eyebrows were practically at his hairline. “Can you do it? Are you a telepath now?”
A slow smile slid across her face and she nodded. Yeah she was a telepath. And it felt weird and strange and unbelievable.
But it also felt right.
Like something that had been right in front of her all this time.
Ari laughed again. “Yeah, I’m totally a telepath.”
She slanted a look at Jai. What next?
You’re Jinn, Princess. You can do pretty much anything you want.
~19~
This Lifeboat Isn’t Big Enough for Three
The act of telepathy to Jai was an exercise. He believed it would be the most straightforward way to unlock Ari’s abilities and she couldn’t disagree with him. It came naturally to her, and although she was more than thankful that Jinn could not read minds, she had to admit there was something mega cool about being able to communicate with Jai through the power of telepathy. To keep her exercising her Jinn muscles he was making her speak to him mostly that way. It was pissing Charlie off, she could tell. It would piss her off too if she were the only one out of the loop, but the excitement of using such a weird and unique gift kind of over-rode her concern for Charlie. Tapping into her abilities wasn’t at all what she imagined. She’d thought Jai would set her up in the living room and start testing her and making her conjure stuff, but according to her guardian that was a pointless exercise. Since she was one of the Jinn, like himself, with a wide scope of power and ability to conjure, Jai insisted that she use her magic for everyday things. He said there was no one muscle that needed to be worked, no inner power that had to be tapped into or explored. It was all about believing. It was as simple as that. Ari had to believe that if she wanted a glass of water that she could conjure it. Or a bag of chips. Or be able to grab the remote for the TV without moving. She even managed to turn a cushion to ash when Charlie threw it at her for cracking a joke about his feeble mind not being able to handle anyone else inside it. She just thought about what Jai did and raised a hand, believing it was ash. Suddenly it was.
As she conjured, the act becoming more natural as the day progressed, Ari began to feel the heat build in her skin. At one point she felt as if she were emitting the heat of a thousand suns, her mouth was constantly parched, her skin was too hot to the touch and she felt weak. Jai had assured her it was normal, and sure enough by the time late afternoon rolled around she could no longer feel how enflamed her skin was. She had Charlie run ice cubes down her skin and she couldn’t feel the cold, and she waved a hand over an open flame and couldn’t feel the heat. Well… it wasn’t that she couldn’t feel the temperature changes it was just it had no effect on her comfort anymore. It was weird.
The whole experience was overwhelming and Ari had to stop herself from over-conjuring stuff when she realized she could have practically anything she wanted. It was kind of a high. But a dangerous one, Jai had warned. It was too easy to get drunk on power. Ari had thought she could use his concern to her advantage. What she really wanted to do was learn how to use what Jai called the Peripatos. The Peripatos was Jinn form of travelling. You could literally travel from New York to Sydney just by concentrating on where you wanted to go. However, Jai had said it was pretty exhausting the first time around and he wanted her to build her abilities before she did any of the big stuff. Turned out there was no using anything to take advantage of Jai.
Getting to use the Peripatos was just one of many things Ari felt she was waiting on. Waiting to learn the ‘cool’ Jinn stuff, waiting on word back from The Red King about the Shaitan who had put Derek in a coma, waiting on Derek coming out of the coma, waiting for the day in the not so distant future when she’d have to cut ties with her friends and family.
Now that she knew what she really was.
There were moments throughout the whole day when she had to shake herself because she found her thoughts climbing over her like creeping ivy, scratching and biting into her skin and entangling her in their morbid clutch. Because… wasn’t it true now that not only was she not human but she was kind of a ‘thing’ rather than Jinn? The Seal was an object with no emotion or thought or feeling. It had one purpose. To command the Jinn. What did that really make her then?
It got to the point where she was deliberately drawing on all the bad stuff that broke her heart just to remind herself that she was more than an object. That she was a being with thought and emotion. It was completely masochistic and not at all whom she was.
Realizing how dangerous her position was among the Jinn, Ari was certain that walking away from her life once Derek was well again was for the best. She couldn’t stick around and put the people she cared about most in jeopardy. The plan was to walk away from Ohio and her friends and Derek. No matter how heartbreaking.
But Charlie…
It was so selfish but Ari was glad the stubborn idiot didn’t want to leave her. Asking him to leave, to walk out of her life and never come back was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She was impressed with her poise when she tried to do it (maybe she had inherited a little Jinn decorum after all) but her heart had been slamming like a wrecking ball against her ribs the whole time as she waited for his response. It had been weird with Jai eavesdropping, weird for many different reasons that she didn’t want to think about, but in that moment she and Charlie had shared something new, a spark, something Charlie hadn’t allowed before. He’d actually looked like he had been leaning into kiss her before Jai came out of the kitchen, interrupting them.
Ari hadn’t known what she would have done if Charlie had kissed her.
She’d wanted his kisses for, like, a zillion years but right now was not the time. Plus… she really needed to know where he stood. He was still hanging out with that idiot Rickman after all.
Come on, Ari, her inner voice scolded as she followed Charlie and Jai into the hospital, is that really the problem? You had no issue with hooking up with Charlie a few weeks ago, Rickman or no Rickman. Are you sure this hasn’t got something to do with a pair of green soulful eyes you can’t get out of your head? Growling at her inner monologue, Ari’s eyes darted away from Jai’s back and she picked up her stride, overtaking the boys in the hospital corridor and smiling serenely at the nurse outside her dad’s room. Physical distance would put him out of her mind.
The nurse said there was no change with her dad.
Of course there wasn’t.
Even though Ari knew Derek wouldn’t come out of the coma until she had commanded the offending Shaitan to reverse the enchantment, she was determined to visit her dad every night. She didn’t want him getting lonely. Irrational perhaps, but this wasn’t exactly the most rational experience Ari had ever gone through.
Charlie and Jai followed her tentative steps inside and her heart plummeted into her stomach at the sight of her father. She had forgotten how small and vacant he looked lying there. She clasped his hand in hers, no longer feeling the chill of it like yesterday. It was temperate. Like everything. Distantly, Ari wondered if she would start to miss the heat and the cold.
“I’m going to get a coffee,” Charlie said quietly, edging towards the door. He was still uncomfortable being in the hospital. Ari had told him he didn’t need to join her and Jai for visiting hours but her best friend had looked at Jai dubiously and he’d shaken his head, determined he’d be there for her. Ari was beginning to think Charlie was jealous of Jai. Which was silly.