Heart Strings (Black Magic Outlaw Book 3) (17 page)

 

 

 

 

Despite his anger, Connor surprised me. He kept his seat. It was the sign of a measured being. Of someone old and patient.

Cisco Suarez didn't have those traits. I goaded him on. "I'm afraid you can't buy yourself out of this mess."

"Please," he replied with renewed calm. "Everything has a price. Everyone has something they want. Even you."

"You think I'm gonna deal with you?" I laughed harshly. "You had me killed!"

"I never gave that order."

"Don't talk to me about personal autonomy. You set the Covey loose in Miami to wreak havoc. The blame for the fallout is yours. Because of you, everything I loved is gone."

The jinn sighed. "To be honest, Tunji was overeager. His ruthlessness is what made him effective, but he no doubt created enemies in the process. You're one I would take back."

"You had ten years of zombie service to object to my treatment. But this isn't about that fiend. When a shoddily-built house falls to a hurricane, you don't blame the guy who slapped up the drywall. You blame the architect. This whole shadow play was yours from the beginning." The darkness gathered around me, fighting the candlelight. It cloaked my fist like a boxing glove. "You need to answer for that."

I saw the resolve leave Connor's face. He knew it was a lost cause, that we would come to blows. This wasn't a wound that could be patched up. Yet he was still sitting. I couldn't figure out what he was playing at.

"The little shadow witch," he mused. "You forget that you are human and I am jinn."

"Equals to the seraphs."

"Not equals. Not even close. You could throw your spell, and within a blink I'd be gone. I can vanish and leave you to enjoy the comforts of the Caribbean alone."

I took a confident step forward. "But then you lose the princess. You can run to the Aether with your tail between your legs, but you can't take anyone or anything with you."

He flashed a wry smile. "Too true. Then again, I no longer care about the princess. She wasn't my play. The damage to the politician is done. You can have her."

He beckoned with his hand and a door across the room opened. Ceela stood within, eyes red, hands bound with duct tape. Her aimless gaze drifted past me and focused on nothing in particular.

My head swiveled between them. The jinn did nothing but watch.

"Let us talk then," he said, "about what it is you want. The silvan is only the start. Is it the city commissioner? The Covey? What does your heart desire, Cisco?"

I ignored Connor and approached the satyr carefully. I paused when I noticed the black man in the white suit behind her. He put his hand around her waist and walked her inside the room. Then he respectfully bowed back to the doorway, watching.

"Are you okay, Ceela?"

Her head sagged to face the floor. She blinked slowly as if she were drugged.

"Can you hear me?"

Connor stood for the first time, coming to my side, but still using his phone to browse the news outlets. "Come now, Cisco. She'll be all right."

I turned to him with daggers in my eyes. "What did you do to her?"

He took a deep breath in preparation of a smug answer. Before he got a word out, my fist rocketed into him. The shadow tightened and compressed with the blow, black and unyielding.

Connor disappeared.

His phone plopped to the ground at my feet, but that was all that was left. His clothes were fake, part of him, as with silvans.

"You think this is a boxing match?" he chuckled from behind me.

I spun around and swung at him again. This time when he vanished I dipped into the shadow, sliding backward a few yards, materializing just as he did, him behind me then me behind him. My fist cracked into his back, but again connected with nothing but air.

Connor now stood beside Ceela. She tottered in place, threatening to topple at any moment. He was bent over at the waist, looking up at her face in amusement. "What do you suppose is going through her head right now?"

I lashed out at him with a spear of shadow. It stood erect on the floor like a porcupine's quill, impaling the spot where Connor's belly had been a moment before.

"This is getting tiresome," he yawned, leaning against the wall on the other side of the room.

I palmed my bronze knife and stomped toward him.

He didn't budge. "A knife now? You think your blade can find me where the shadow couldn't?"

"Hardly." I lashed it across my blackened palm. Blood oozed as I muttered a curse on my lips. My hand reached through him to the wall behind, and again the jinn was behind me.

"Enough of this," he snapped.

"Coward!" I screamed. "Why won't you fight me?"

I dug through my belt pouch. I'd come here out of desperation, ill prepared and out of time, but I had a few tributes left. I fingered a sack of powder. Not poison, really; its effects were disorienting, almost hallucinatory. If he was made of air, maybe I could pollute it.

I waved the sack at him. The dust hung in a mass, enveloping everything. It consumed Connor's form in a cloud. He didn't even vanish this time. Dust settled on glass display cases and the floor, but the jinn was unaffected.

His face went hard and his eyes burned. "I said
enough
!" he roared. Every candle in the room flared and he kicked over a vase in anger. It shattered to pieces, further setting him off.

I didn't let up. Something would hurt him. I just had to find it. I drew my shotgun from the shadows.

That made him even more livid. For a brief moment, Connor Hatch lost control. The jinn lumbered at me and raised his fist. And then... he stopped.

For a full minute, neither of us moved. Him with his fist drawn, me with my sawed-off pointed at his head. I didn't fire because I realized it was a useless gesture. My glueshot would go right through him and I'd have wasted my last shell.

The question on
my
mind was, why was the
jinn
holding back?

I slowly lowered the shotgun, watching him seethe and huff and do his best to stare me down. Eventually he composed himself and he lowered his arm.

"You can't kill me," I realized. "Can you?"

Connor's eyes burned with ire and I knew I was right.

"Never deal with a jinn," I whispered, dropping my guard completely. "You have no power over me. As long as I don't enter a contract with you, you can't hurt me, can you, you son of a bitch?"

Composed now, Connor hiked a shoulder like it was inconsequential. "There are many ways I can have you killed."

"But you can't do it yourself."

He laughed. "You think that means I have no power?" He spun around, presenting the room to me. Ceela, the servant, his grand collection. It was all his. "Everything you see is power."

Connor put his hands in his pockets and walked through the room. "Our kind—some of our number were slaves once. To your people. These stories comprise the totality of what you know of the jinn. But this is barely a speck of sand in our realm."

I scraped my teeth into a scowl and stepped closer to him. "Yet here we are. Just you and me. How does it feel to be alone and helpless?"

He immediately turned to me with a devilish grin. "Is
that
it? You think we're alone?"

My grip on the shotgun tightened.

The jinn raised an arm in the air and called out, "Come."

The man in the white suit moved beside Connor. His skin cracked. Rivulets of orange light seeped through his flesh, setting his clothes alight and revealing rocky flesh below.

I knew this man. Not the face or the build. Not the skin I saw. But I knew the elemental underneath it: Tyson Roderick, Rudi Alvarez's former head of security.

Pieces of ash crumbled to the floor as the volcanic elemental assumed his true form. Molten lava flowed between plates of rockskin. He was another primal being from the Aether, pure magic taking form in the Earthly Steppe as elemental energy. And, for some reason, taking orders from a jinn.

Then another door in the hexagonal room opened. Kita Mariko strolled in, heels clicking against the floor until she joined the elemental. With a sly smile, she slipped her fan from her sleeve. The magical weapon elongated into a rudimentary sword.

So much for my advice to cut and run. The paper mage met my mercy with continuing contempt. The bloodlust was clear on her face.

This was it, then. In a way, everything I wanted. Tunji and the obeah man wouldn't be making an appearance 'cause they were dead. But Connor, Tyson, Kita...

"Well," I announced, impressed (and just a little bit scared). "If it isn't the Covey itself. All present and accounted for."

The jinn's smile grew wide. "No, Cisco, not yet. There is one other."

He snapped his fingers and a third door opened. My heart stopped beating. The next person to enter was Em.

 

 

 

 

I surged forward but Kita moved in my way, forcing me to stop and look over her shoulder.

"Emily," I said frantically. My voice cracked and they heard it and I hated that. "What are you doing here?"

My ex wasn't the same as the others. She wasn't a primal being. She wasn't an animist or a Nether fiend. She was just a woman caught up in her sister's plot. There was no reason for her to be here.

"You speak of power," chimed Connor, puffing his chest out. "What, I ask you, is the most powerful and dangerous force in a sentient being?"

My eyes flicked from one person to the other. Besides Ceela and Emily, all I saw was hatred.

"Passion," said the jinn, answering his own question. "You can pay a soldier a fortune. You can threaten him with eternal suffering. But, to a man, each will fight harder and better if they
believe
in you. If they
love
you."

Connor lifted his finger. "Passion is what I inspire in my Covey. It's what made you blind to Emily's advances ten years ago when she planted the seed in your head. She invisibly guided you—made you believe it was you who wanted to find the Horn."

I stared at my ex, wordlessly imploring her to do something—to say something. She held her lips taut and avoided meeting my gaze.

I frowned. My finger lightly rubbed the trigger of my sawed-off, but I held it down, at my side. The jinn reveled in my hesitation.

"Passion is nature," he continued. "Passion stirs us to do incredible things. Brains control reason, but hearts veto logic every time. The excitement of discovery, the drive to create, the urge to kill..." Connor strolled to Emily and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Even the desire for affection. You remember that passion, don't you? I bet it still nips at you."

The smug son of a bitch. I worked my jaw, wondering how I could break his.

"What about you, darling?" The jinn moved to Ceela and leaned into her. She flinched at his touch, but didn't retreat. "Ah, this one needs more time." His finger traced her cheek and ran down her neck, right past her heart locket.

Her.

Heart.

Locket.

My eyes darted to Emily. She had the same locket. Kita and Tyson had bare necks, but Emily and Ceela wore lockets. Suddenly Emily's inconsistent behavior made sense. She'd betrayed me but named Fran after me. She was sorry for what happened to my family, and hers I think, yet she continued to operate within the organization responsible. The conflicting emotions made sense because she was in a conflict. Fighting. Trapped. Just like Ceela.

I snuffed out the closest candle with my palm, keeping my hand on the hot wax so the jinn couldn't rekindle it. My eyes pulled in the shadow again.

"Give me light!" boomed Connor, and the flames swelled.

A white brilliance flooded the room. It was much brighter than before. Like looking at the sun, and it hurt twice as much. I strained to see through the glare anyway, but it was no use. From this distance, it was impossible to inspect the lockets.

My eyes burned and the shadow began to dry up. Then Ceela moved. It wasn't much, just a quick stumble to the side. Connor laughed and let her go, but it wasn't important. The movement was. Even with my fading shadow sight and the white haze obscuring my vision, that sharp movement drew my eye to something I'd seen earlier.

A red twine of magic leading to Ceela.

I flushed my eyes and blinked. I was blind. Hoping I had a good poker face, I rubbed my eyes casually and stood in place.

But my mind was moving a mile a minute.

"Why are you still here?" I posed, more to myself than the others.

The jinn's light footsteps returned to his position between Kita and Tyson. "Hmm?"

I wet my lips as I worked it out. "If you can blink out, return to the Aether in a flash, what are you still doing here? Why confront me at all?" Vague hazes of light swam in my face.

"Why not?" Connor answered. "You can't hurt me."

"It's because you're a collector." I waved my shotgun across the room as I started making out smudges of color again. "You collect valuables. Antiquities. Even people."

A smile played across Connor's face. "Like baseball cards."

"Or maybe it's something else." I nodded, my expression weighing the riddle. "Maybe it has something to do with what's in the cigar box over there?"

The air in the room went still, and the jinn's smile faltered.

"For a long time," I explained, "I was a thrall to the vampire's compulsions and the obeah man's spellcraft. Ten years of my life, not only wasted, but upheaved. So I know something about service." I saw how frightened Ceela was. I saw the pain in Emily's eyes. "How many others have been similar victims?"

Connor snorted. "You misunderstand. The vampire's methods were crude. I do not numb the mind. I merely whisper to it. Those who follow me respect the revolution. They feel the winds of change blowing."

I smiled. "The winds of change, huh?"

"Every revolution starts with a single insurgent."

"Isn't that right," I agreed, and raised my shotgun to the China cabinet.

Connor didn't have time to give orders, or to even shout. In a flash, he appeared between me and my target.

I pulled the trigger and the gun barked, sending a spread of glue in a wide cone. Connor vanished and the glass display shattered, rocking the entire case back into the wall. The three shelves below the cigar box were a gooey mess, but my aim had accomplished what I wanted. I charged the cabinet and ripped open the cigar box with ease.

The prize in this particular cereal box was a multi-faceted ruby heart. It was weighty, the size of a small fist, etched with writing I didn't have time to make out. I knew an artifact when I held one.

So the genie had a lamp.

Except this lamp enslaved
other
people. Not with a compulsion, but by stirring their souls. By making them believe they were doing the right thing. This artifact, whatever it was, hooked heart strings to helpless victims, each wearing a locket as an anchor.

I rubbed the scratch on my neck and imagined the scar on my heart. The heart locket. That was what Simon had tried to use on me. Why I'd been so dazed back there. It was also how Simon had kidnapped satyr royalty so effortlessly. The jinn couldn't directly attack us himself so he'd used trusted animists to do it. Simon for me. Kita for Emily.

I knew Emily had been the privileged one. Henry Hoover's only child from his wife. The one who traveled the world instead of being left behind. Just as Kita had always hated her father, she'd condemned her own sister too.

Each passing second drew a different tragedy to my mind. All the ills caused by a single gemstone. My knuckles went white as my grip on the artifact tightened.

"Get the heartstone!" yelled the jinn.

Kita immediately flanked me and brandished her fan. The elemental inhaled a long gulp of air, and I knew what was coming next. I'd seen his lava magic before—had a similar problem with Simon's lightning. Both Intrinsics created light, disrupted my shadow, and stung like a bitch.

The room was still bright. Unless my eyes hadn't fully recovered, the orange flames had somehow swallowed much of the available shadow. It weakened me, no doubt, but there was enough darkness to play with. As long as I was careful.

"This is where we're different," I taunted Connor. "I can take things with me."

A river of lava spewed from Tyson's mouth. I used the shadow, not to become ethereal, but for speed, darting out of the way of the molten liquid. It steamed and melted the glass behind me.

I slipped behind Kita with the same dash. I readied a shadow punch but she was faster, kicking a leg behind her and catching me in the gut. I doubled over and dropped the heartstone to the floor.

I reached for it but Kita's extended fan blade came down. I dove to the side and swept my boot into her legs, sending her tumbling.

"Don't do this," I urged. "Don't betray your sister."

We both scrambled to the heart but I was faster. I slithered forward in the darkness and scooped it up.

"More light!" bellowed Connor. "I want more light!"

A hand wave from the jinn sent all the candles in the room into overdrive, burning three times brighter than should've been possible. But he wasn't the real source of light. Another animist stepped forward and I just now noticed her raised hand, fingers clawed around an orb of pure incandescence.

I choked up. "Em?"

My ex-girlfriend avoided my gaze and held her hand high. The light was coming from her. The shadows cowered from the brilliance, drying up my playground with blinding white radiance.

Blind indeed. That's what I'd been.

Emily Cross was an animist.

Kita pulled a backwards somersault and vaulted to her feet. In the small opening, the volcanic elemental came for me, igneous rock shaking the floor as he stomped. But the paper mage held up an open palm.

"He's mine!" she snarled, licking her lips. "Keep the light on him."

Still on the floor, I gripped the ruby heart in both hands, drew it above my head, and slammed it down hard. It nearly bounced out of my grasp, still intact.

Kita came at me with a feint and a swipe. Her fan moved so fast it left tracers of yellow in the air. There was too much light. I kicked a sconce at her. The fan sliced it in half with ease. The candles dropped to the floor right next to me, flaring brighter.

"Smooth," I said to myself.

The paper mage spun on her heels, flipping her attack to the opposite side. I gritted my teeth for the pain I knew was coming and threw up my forearm. Right before the fan struck, she flicked the back half of it open.

The impact was blinding. Golden sparks met the protective turquoise of my armor. Power hopped between us. The force was explosive. Literally.

But Kita held her own, using the open portion of the fan as a shield. Instead of being forced back, she kept the edge of her weapon firmly planted on my armor tattoo, pressing down, both hands backed by her full weight.

The Intrinsics went crazy, fighting to complete their purpose, dazzling and cracking and popping and burning. I averted my eyes and pressed against the fan with everything I had, but she had leverage. She had light. She had a razor-sharp fan.

And it was cutting into my skin.