Make Me Burn: Fireborne, Book 2 (3 page)

“So, Te, what are you doing here?” Aziza asked. “Do your people have a fondness for
dolmas
you never told me about?”

Te held herself stiffly beside Greg and shook her head. “I don’t eat, Fireborne. I believed since the two of you were alone and the discussion was of some import, you would require guidance.”

Reaching for another bite-sized treat, Aziza smirked. “Since when did you think this topic was important? The last I heard you were against my plan. In fact, weren’t you the one who tried to trick us into giving you Tarik’s vial because of the one-portion-of-sand-per-customer rule?”

“I thought we were Team Te now.” Greg put his arm around the Niyr’s shoulders protectively. “Ignore her. She had another fight with her werewolf.”

“I know.” Te’s voice reflected no emotion, but the way she glanced at Greg’s hand was revealing. “She is antagonistic but not incorrect. The Niyr were not expecting her to attempt a retrieval of all the vials sent out by the keeper. As I’ve said before, the Zhaman’s allotment is exact. However, a consensus has been reached that while I may not aid the endeavor, I will also make no effort to impede the Fireborne’s chosen course.”

“I’m so glad you all agree on something you have no say in,” Aziza murmured, refilling her glass.

Te tilted her head. “As to the Enforcer, from what I’ve observed, the time you spend defending your exiled Jinn Qarin appears to be the primary source of friction between you.”

Ram again.

“No,” Aziza corrected with exaggerated patience. “Brandon’s insistence on treating me like a helpless female and breaking our dates without telling me why is the primary source of friction. Weren’t you paying attention? And are you advising me on my love life now, Te? The Niyr aren’t exactly known for their empathy. Now if my problem was statistics or taking over the universe—or if I needed Greg’s brain fried with bolts of crazy telepathic lightning again…”

Greg reached up to touch the single platinum strand hidden in his sandy hair, a direct result of said brain-frying. To be fair, Te had also saved him from Razia, so Aziza couldn’t be too hard on her.

Aziza sighed. “Okay, I’ll accept that you can’t help me with my search for the sand, but have you found Joseph? Have you and Shev had any private meetings in the center of some town about getting Ram reinstated that you haven’t told me about? Can you tell me what Brandon is up to with his Enforcers?”

“No.” Te made no effort to specify which question she was answering.

Aziza felt a vein pulse at her temple. “Then why are you here?”

There wasn’t much outward sign of it—Te’s large, dark eyes were unblinking and her body still—but Aziza could almost
feel
the Niyr’s reaction. Hurt. Insecurity. Confusion. Surely that couldn’t be accurate. Niyr didn’t experience emotions the way humans did. The way Jinn and werewolves did. She’d never felt or seen any sign of it before.

You feel it now.

Well, hell. Now she felt like a jackass. She only had one Qarin at the moment, and she was pushing her away. “Sorry. I’m just frustrated about…everything. I wasn’t expecting you to show up unless it was an emergency.”

“But it’s a happy surprise,” Greg chimed in. “Right, Aziza Jane?”

Te shifted subtly in the booth, away from Greg’s hand. “There is no need for fabrication, Gregory Prophet. I understand the Fireborne’s frustration. And my arrival must add to that since I would second the Enforcer’s warnings pertaining to the Jinn exile and the establishment he frequents. It may not be wise to spend much time there.”

Te’s shockingly dark lashes shielded her gaze and Aziza could hear—could feel—the care she was taking with her words. It suddenly dawned on her that they weren’t concealed, that Te was speaking with an audience of her peers listening in.

Oblivious to the undercurrents of the Niyr’s words, Greg groaned. “We’ve talked about this, Te, remember? Whenever you tell Aziza Jane not to do something, it has the opposite effect. Trust me on this.”

Aziza’s lips quirked, but her mind was full of questions she knew Te couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer. “Damn straight, Te. But I’ll tell you what—the next time we go to Underbridge, you should come with us. I know you’ve watched us from a distance—which, by the way, is considered a fetish in some circles—but maybe you need a personal experience to enjoy it. With those new breasts and your…demeanor? I know a few men
and
women with whips who would love the challenge.”

Surprise. Curiosity. Fear. Aziza could sense it all before Te attempted to remove herself from the booth. Unfortunately, Greg was blocking her escape. She glanced around furtively before nodding to Aziza. “Perhaps we should continue our conversation another time.”

When she disappeared from view Greg scanned the restaurant to see if anyone had noticed the abrupt, inhuman exit, while Aziza narrowed her gaze on the swiftly dissipating ripple of energy in the spot where Te had been. “Weird.”

Greg sighed heavily and lifted his arm, gesturing for their bill. “We should go and see how many people you can chase away with your mood by the time we get home.”

So much for catching up.

“You didn’t have to be so hard on her, Aziza Jane.”

Greg kept his arm around her shoulder as they walked down King William Street. They’d taken the light-rails from the restaurant to get to the underground subway station that would take them back to Penn’s place. The Tube, they called it here, but that made it sound more confining than it already was. As if she were about to be shoved into a narrow casing and then squeezed out the other end like a sausage.

They really needed to rent another car.

“I know I didn’t, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.”

“She was trying to help.”

“Bullshit.” Aziza laughed. “Did she ever give me a straight answer about why she was there? Did she give us
anything
new? No. She latched on to something Brandon said in our fight and used it as a reason to show up and test-drive her expanding cleavage. And you, horn dog that you are, were more than happy to notice it.”

“I’m a man, Aziza Jane. I’m wired to notice. But there’s nothing between Te and me, other than our desire for knowledge. Knowledge we need to help you, by the way.”

“What do you mean?” She glanced up at him suspiciously. “Have you…Greg, have you seen her when I’m not around?”

He looked guilty. “Only once or twice. We’ve gone through my notebooks, the ones I wrote after she zinged me and before all those facts disappeared from my mind. We’ve gone through the books Tarik sent to the Stewart house about the ruins in the desert. She’s not big on specifics—she really can’t be without being hidden—but I know she’s helping us as much as she can. She wants us to be ready, to be able to protect ourselves in case Razia and his cronies attack again.”

What did books about buried treasure and ruins have to do with helping her? Aziza thought about her dreams. She’d seen the tops of great spires sticking out of the sand. Seen the scorched earth around the buried cities. Was there something there she needed to find? But if there was, why was Te talking to Greg about it instead of her?

Greg is necessary.

Te had said that to her the night Razia almost killed Penn. But did his being necessary have to do with what was coming for Aziza…or with Te’s obvious attachment to him? “I think your creepy lost child is working on a crush.”

Greg grimaced. “And with that image, my night is ruined and I may need to bathe in bleach.”

Aziza opened her mouth to tease him but was struck by an anxious, sick feeling, a cold coiling in her stomach. Her throat tightened and she shivered. What the hell was that?

“Greg?”

“Yes?”

She saw the opening for the stairs leading down to the Tube and tugged her jacket closer in the damp night air as she turned to face him. “Why did they stop?”

He looked confused. “Why did who stop what? What are we talking about?”

“You said she wants us to be ready for the Jiniyr, but we haven’t seen or heard from them since that night. Why did they stop coming after me? According to Razia’s overconfident villain monologue, they went to a ridiculous amount of trouble to make me the Fireborne. To make sure the broken girl who’d lost her family and hadn’t known anything about her father’s line was the only one left for the sand to choose. They
needed
me so the treaty between the Jinn and Niyr could be broken and they could have their psycho version of Utopia or whatever it is they want. If I’m so important, why all the radio silence? Brandon says there’s been nothing. No strange deaths. Nothing on the Enforcer radar. What are they waiting for?”

Greg shrugged, but she could see by the look on his face that he’d thought about it before. “I don’t know. You killed Razia’s partner. Maybe he’s in mourning. Or maybe your big pyrotechnic show combined with the werewolf posse in the Cotswolds scared him away.”

Or they were planning something new with which to torture her. Razia was still out there, along with the rest of his Jiniyr brethren, free to kill again, free to target her loved ones whenever they chose.

Aziza turned again and started for the stairs. “I have a bad feeling. I wish Ram’s punishment were lifted,” she said, raising her voice in case they were listening. “Or Shev would show her face so I could punch it, accept her apology and then find out what she knows. I can’t believe the Jinn are keeping her away from me when my Niyr Qarin has been on the job, potentially filling my head with anti-them thoughts and attempting to seduce my best friend with her breasts.”

Too bad Te’s presence hadn’t been more helpful tonight. Aziza had hoped it would provoke some response from the Jinn, who always demanded equal representation with the Fireborne. Maybe Ram, even as a powerless exile, was enough in their eyes. It was possible…but she didn’t think so.

She put her hand on the railing and began taking the steps two at a time before the view in front of her made her stumble. “What the hell?”

The stairwell had become a whirling tunnel. A shimmering whirlpool of strange swirling white light. She reached out to touch the air in front of her and gasped when it rippled like water against her fingertips. Through the waves she could see someone standing at the foot of a golden staircase, staring up at her with tears like diamonds glistening on her cheeks.

It almost looked like… “Shev?”

No. Not Shev. But the dark-haired woman had already disappeared before she could find out, the stairs morphing from gold to gleaming silver from one blink to the next. A tall male Niyr appeared at Aziza’s side and blocked her view, bending to look into her eyes. Too close. He was studying her as if she were a lab rat he was going to dissect. His skin glowed as if lit from within, but his cold, black gaze made her scream.

Aziza fell backward and familiar arms caught her just in time. Greg. “Aziza Jane! Can you hear me? What the hell was that?”

Gone. It was gone. All she saw was a normal set of stairs leading down to the underground tracks. No Jinn. No Niyr. No world but this one.

It had happened again—a momentary psychedelic flash of the two alternate dimensions that she’d been thinking was one of the side effects of taking “more than her share” of the sand. She hadn’t told anyone about them but Greg.

“Aziza Jane, if you don’t talk to me, I am taking you to the hospital. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“I’m fine.” She shook her head, pushing away from him and walking carefully down the stairs. “I saw them again and got dizzy for a minute, that’s all.”

This was the third time it had happened. She didn’t count the glimpse of the Jinn she’d gotten at her family home in the Cotswolds after Brandon had taken her on the dining room table—the day she’d learned she was the Jinn’s favorite soap opera. This was different. It was more intense. As if veils were being torn open against their will. As if she had no control.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Greg grabbed her arm and turned her toward him. Poor Greg. He deserved a break from the insanity. Deserved to crunch his relaxing think-tank numbers and stare at perky breasts in peace. Unfortunately, crazy kept finding her and dragging him along for the ride.

He frowned. “You saw them again? Both of them?”

“Yes. One right after the other. I saw Te leave earlier and the way the air rippled after she was gone, but it wasn’t the same.”

This isn’t the same,
she thought woozily, the strange nausea that always followed the experience rising in her throat. She always got sick to her stomach, but this was almost violent. This felt…wrong.

Something is wrong.

“I think we need to find a place to sit down.”

“I’ve got you.” Greg wrapped one arm around her waist and walked her toward the benches that lined the curved enclosure.

The walls across from the tracks were covered in colorful advertisements that weren’t helping her find her footing. She sat down and closed her eyes. “It should’ve passed by now but it’s getting worse.”

Greg sounded worried. “What should have passed? The nausea? What are you feeling?”

What you feel isn’t life. It’s death. Death is nearby. Unnaturally caused.

There it was. Another thought in her head that didn’t feel entirely like her own. Another side effect that was happening more and more often. But she could sense that it was true. “Something’s wrong.”