Jinn and Juice (10 page)

K
ouros and I were sitting at my dining room table, sharing a plate of cookies and milk as if we were old friends.

“What do you want?” I asked him, but my tone was light. Conversational.

Red eyes peered at me from the black flames of his face. “What do you think I want?”

I picked up a cookie, at the last second remembering to examine it before biting. I set the cookie back when I realized that what had appeared to be chocolate chips had antennae that were waving.

“Why would I know that?” My voice held none of the bitterness I felt toward the creature that had cursed me, a trick of the dream.

The roiling black flames of Kouros’s lips split in a smile, revealing the red fire that was his insides. “Because we’re a part of each other, little Lyla. You came to me willingly enough once, didn’t you?”

I nodded. What he said was true. “But you tricked me.”

His Fire flared even darker, making him appear larger. “I gave you a gift. A taste of immortality. Of power. You would
be a pile of bones in a dank hole somewhere were it not for me; instead, still you glow.”

“You made me a slave,” I replied, simply.

Those red eyes flared brighter and I felt that old, remembered pain in my chest. My fingers touched the space between my breasts to find it hot and I knew my heart was on fire beneath my ribs.

“I made you appreciate freedom,” Kouros said, standing up from the table to tower above me, his body swirling black smoke from the waist down.

“And I’m not done with you yet, child. You’re mine…”

The fire in my chest grew till my whole body was in flames and, finally, I screamed.

I woke up covered in sweat in my own bed, blinking in confusion. I’d gone to sleep on the couch. What the hell?

Sitting up, I swiftly regretted that decision as pain shot through my head. Groaning, I flopped back, shutting my eyes against the weak light peering around my well-lined curtains.

Three deep breaths later I was able to crack my eyes enough to see the glass of water and bottle of Advil on my nightstand. Oz had remembered.

I swallowed a handful, not bothering to count, and drank the entire glass of water.

Ten minutes later I felt less like the victim of a thousand hangovers and much more… well,
human
isn’t entirely accurate.

Peeling back my duvet, I assessed the damage. The wound was almost entirely closed, a fat red scar the only sign that I’d had to interfere with myself. It would fade.

I was also very clean. I peered down at my side, reaching my fingers to stroke my skin.

Yes, very clean. And much more naked. I thought I’d still been wearing the scraps of my shirt when I’d passed out on the sofa. I had definitely been wearing yoga pants and hiking boots. Now I was clad only in panties and a bra.

Since Yulia and everyone else was still warded out of the carriage house, that meant only one person could have stripped me down and cleaned me up.

My Master, Ozan.

Heat flamed my face and for a second I remembered the smooth skin of his tattooed throat under my fingertips. Had he seen that as an invitation to get frisky?

I shut my eyes against that thought and stayed in bed for another half hour, letting the Advil soak up into the crevices. But I was fighting a losing battle. It was already five thirty on the following day; I’d lost almost twenty-four hours to the strain of healing myself, and I really had to pee.

I got up and used my en suite facilities, pulling on my favorite black-and-red silk geisha robe after a little quick clean-up. I don’t know why I was bothering, since Oz had already seen most of me yesterday—and all of me must have looked like death warmed over with some cream of hot mess soup for flavor.

Squaring my shoulders, I left my room, walking down the hallway to the kitchen. Oz sat with his back to me, reading one of my belly dancing magazines and eating something.

“Good evening,” I said, striding toward the refrigerator.

He shot up like he’d been fired from a gun, looking worried.

“How are you? You slept so long… I was worried…”

I fluttered my fingers at him as I reached into the fridge for a Coke. I needed caffeine, stat, and wasn’t willing to wait for coffee to brew. “I’m fine. I just used a lot of energy on the healing.” I opened the Coke and tipped it back, nearly doing a spit take as I caught a glimpse of what Ozan was eating.

It was the cantaloupe, neatly sliced into long segments and displayed on a plate.

Choking the cola down, I watched my Master pull out a chair for me. To my surprise he helped me into it, as if I were an invalid.

“Are you sure you are okay? That cut was horrible. I know you’re strong, but…”

“I’m fine,” I said, cutting him off. I knew I sounded rude, but there were bigger fish to fry.

Oz’s silver eyes met mine, big and guileless and shockingly, irritatingly kind. “I put you to bed. I hope you don’t mind. It’s just…”

Feeling my heart stutter, I raised an eyebrow at him.

“It’s just I used to do that for my dad, after a fight. He hated waking up all bloody, and there was so much blood… I figured I could get it out if I got your clothes into cold water fast enough. They’re soaking in your washing machine. Well, the jeans are. The shirt and the hoodie were pretty destroyed.”

I reached for a slice of cantaloupe, unsure of what to say. He’d stripped me, cleaned me up, and put my clothes to soak… because it was the right thing to do?

Sure.

“Well, thank you,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “That was… kind.”

Oz ducked his head, his thick hair looking very red in the soft light of my kitchen. “I hope I wasn’t too forward… I just figured I’d already seen you in your costume. And you were getting blood everywhere. I had to Resolve the shit out of your sofa.”

When I realized I was shaking my head at him in obvious disbelief, I only just managed to stop.

“It’s fine,” I said, faintly. Because it was. He could have done
pretty much anything he’d wanted to me last night, and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. Not only had I been dead to the world, but I was Bound to him by every magical law in existence.

My new Master must play a mean long game, because his short game was already confusing the hell out of me.

“I’m going to have to go to work tonight,” I said. “And I need to talk to Charlie. And to Bertha.”

She wasn’t going to be happy her great-uncle was missing, but maybe she knew something we didn’t. Did trolls take vacations, for example?

“Hopefully her uncle wasn’t eaten. Maybe he just moved?” Ozan said, as if reading my thoughts.

“Hopefully,” I replied, with about as much confidence as I felt for that rosy scenario.

I went to get another Coke from the fridge, grabbing a plastic container of Giant Eagle chocolate chip cookies while I was at it. Ozan watched me skeptically as I gobbled a cookie, swigging it down with the Coke.

Unsure why I felt the need to defend myself, I still heard my own voice explaining. “Headache. Sugar helps.”

He raised an eyebrow, but I pointedly ignored him, reaching instead for my cell phone. Ozan, helpful Master that he was, must’ve put it on the little speaker I used as its charger.

I scrolled through my messages—a few from Charlie and Yulia, asking if I was okay, one from Bertha asking me to call her. I texted them all, telling everyone I was fine and I’d see them at Purgatory tonight. What had happened in the fodden-littered field, and the probable demise of Bertha’s great-uncle, wasn’t appropriate for a text.

But I did send a quick text to Loretta, to let her know the bugbear had been taken care of… by the field of fodden they’d
now need to clear out. Luckily, fodden and slugs share a similar reaction to salt, so they are easy to kill if you knew they’re there. And if they don’t eat you before you can grab the Morton’s.

“What’s wrong?” Oz asked, and I realized I was frowning.

“Nothing. I just haven’t heard from my friend Aki. But he’s like that… I shouldn’t worry.”

“But you are worried,” Oz said. “Is it because of what happened at the park?”

I put my phone down, determined not to let my kitsune friend’s lack of a text bother me. “Aki wouldn’t be caught dead hiking, so he’s safe from those fodden. And he’s like this—he disappears all the time. It’s no biggie. He’ll pop back up.”

Oz raised an eyebrow at me, but my new Master didn’t say anything else till I’d polished off the rest of my cookie and another to boot.

“Your friends are very important to you,” he said, as I closed the package of cookies.

“Of course they are. They’re my friends.”

“They seem more like family.”

I smiled. “Talk about dysfunction junction. But yeah, you could say we’re family.”

“It’s weird, though, because you seem really alone. Like you think you’re alone, even though you’re obviously not.”

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I just mean that there’s something about you. Like you don’t let things touch you.”

I raised the hem of my T-shirt just enough to show off the pink scar from last night. “I let plenty of things touch me.”

He grimaced. “That’s not what I mean.”

“Look,” I said, leaning forward. “The thing is, I know you think you’re a nice guy. You probably want to be a nice guy. But
in this scenario, you’re my Master. We’re not buddies. We’re never going to be friends. You
own
me.”

His eyes widened a bit, and the creamy Irish skin he’d inherited from his daddy somehow managed to pale a few shades more.

“I already said I’d release you, the second we find Tamina. And I mean it.”

I took a deep breath, trying to keep my anger in check. Blowing up at him and making him mad, too, wouldn’t help my situation any.

“Besides,” he said, “yesterday proves I’m not just being a dick. We would have been fodden snacks if you hadn’t had your magic yesterday.”

My eyes narrowed, my temper boiling. The part of me that wasn’t completely immature knew that part of my anger stemmed from the fact that he was right, damn him. But there’s nothing like a “told you so” to make me Stabby McStabberson.

“If you hadn’t Bound me, then I wouldn’t have come on Loretta’s radar,” I said, mulishly.

Oz squared his wide shoulders, clearly not accepting my logic. “And if you hadn’t been Bound, that bugbear would still be running around eating people.”

That took me a second. “The Exterminators would have figured something out,” I said, eventually.

Oz knew he had me. “Bullshit. Or they wouldn’t have Called you, right? You were the only thing standing between that bugbear and all of those people, and you couldn’t have helped if you weren’t Bound.”

“But what about my curse?” I shouted, my voice admittedly petulant.

“I will free you,” he said, his eyes locking on mine. “I swear on my mother’s grave that I will free you the minute we find
Tamina. And in the meantime, stop blaming me for keeping you Bound. It has saved our lives twice now.”

We both fell silent, him staring at me in challenge and me keeping my head ducked.

“It’s not that simple,” I said eventually, peering up through my bangs at him. “It’s just…”

“I get it,” Oz said. “At least as much as I can. I get that anywhere you are, everything you have can be taken from you. I get that you’ve lived like that for longer than I can imagine, and that you’ve probably had it happen to you—over, and over, and over. So I get why you feel like you’re alone and why you’re scared and why you don’t want to believe me.”

Tears prickled my eyes and I furiously blinked them away.

When he spoke again, his voice was gentle. He leaned forward, staring at me intently. “But that’s life, Lyla. Any life can be turned upside down, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Mine was, too. I went from living in one world that I knew and thought I could make better, to living in an entirely different one, overnight. Everything I took for granted is gone. And
that
is why I’m going to free you as soon as I can, and certainly before your curse is up.”

I blinked at him, feeling hollow. I hadn’t thought of it like that; hadn’t thought about
him
at all. Oz was just a Master to be outsmarted, not a man who’d gone through his own ordeal and might be different than I’d assumed.

“How are you so calm about everything?” I asked, giving him that.

He gave me a grim smile. “Because I came to terms with the fact life is unfair a long time ago, when my mom died. Then I made it my job to study the fact that life was even more unfair to millions of other people. In my studies, then in my career, I
chose to rub my nose in the fact that nothing’s static, that there are no guarantees. And so I couldn’t be all that surprised when it happened to me.

“Life is what it is. A crapshoot.”

I shook my head. I was being lectured by a man who was a veritable infant compared to me.

And who was infinitely more wise, it seemed.

“So that’s it? You just accept that life sucks?” I wanted to deflate him a little bit; poke some holes in his Yoda mask.

“Nope. I wish I was that strong, but acceptance is hard. Instead I focus on the good stuff. Yeah, I’ve lost my old world. But this new one seems pretty cool. It’s definitely full of interesting people.”