The Angel: Tales of the Djinn, #3 Read online

  “Turn out the light,” she said.

  He figured out how to after a moment.

  “Good night,” she said.

  “Good night,” he returned huskily.

  He knew Georgie heard because her fingers contracted on his again.

  Peace washed over him, so profound it was dizzying. How miraculous that emotion was—and how unexpected to feel it here, as a gift from a stranger and a human. He didn’t deserve it, but for tonight he would accept.

  He rubbed his nape where the itch he’d felt before returned. What was that anyway? The sensation burned and prickled as if his nerve endings were on fire. Had he formed his new body with a glitch? Would he have to suffer this discomfort for the length of his sojourn here? To his shock, he realized he no longer minded how long that sojourn was.

  Meeting Georgie had changed an ordeal into something more like an adventure.

  He spoke softly into the darkness. “Whomever you give your heart to will be a lucky man.”

  Without warning, the itch behind his neck became too intense to bear. Red-hot pain radiated outward from the spot, tentacles of fire seeming to stab into his head. Though he didn’t want to disturb the human, he cried out.

  He didn’t know if she heard. White blazed blindingly around him. He dropped as if the chair beneath him had simply vanished. His hindquarters hit the floor, the impact jolting up his tailbone. The light blinked out, and spots danced before his eyes.

  “Almighty,” he breathed, blinking them away. “Georgie, are you all right?”

  She didn’t answer. More than a bit alarmed, he fumbled in front of him for the bed. It wasn’t where it should be.

  Actually, nothing was. He didn’t find the bedroom wall or the door, not even when he stood and walked cautiously forward. He didn’t comprehend at first that his vision had adjusted. He was in a large empty room. It was chilly and dark and smelled of old wood and mouse droppings.

  “Georgie?” he tried again.

  This time he didn’t expect a response.

  Shit. He’d run afoul of some spell. He spotted a square window and moved toward it. The glass was chicken-wired and dirty, but he could see through it. He couldn’t swear nothing was different, but the silent street outside appeared the same as when he’d gone for his newspaper. Though shuttered, the tractor supply was easy to pick out. Ditto for Stuckey’s Diner. Homely cars lined the roadside just as before.

  The back of his neck tingled.

  I’m in the Black Cat’s building, still on the upper floor.

  His stomach dropped. Something—or someone—had eradicated every sign that Georgie resided here.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  —

  RETROGRADE

  Luna’s essence ripped free of Iksander, propelled by anger so hot it was nuclear. She’d been the perfect hitchhiker: a spark of life of with a mental finger pressed to its lips. Hooked secretly on her enemy’s C3 vertebrae, she’d held her temper through every outrage he’d engaged in.

  Watching him hold the human doppelganger’s hand, hearing him speak as if he could fall for her as easily as his wife had been her breaking point.

  Whomever you give your heart to will be a lucky man.

  Had he learned nothing from Luna’s victory? Even now, after all he’d seen her accomplish, he refused to acknowledge her as Najat’s superior. He’d sooner bow to a clench-kneed human than a beautiful, wise empress. The insult was more than she could bear. Though she’d intended to stay with Iksander and learn his plans, rage flung her from him without regard for strategy.

  Her essence hovered in the air above him invisibly.

  She couldn’t stay like that forever. She needed a physical shell to maintain her power reserves. Those reserves were large at the moment; she had drunk the downfall of an entire city. Unfortunately, without a body to act as her storage cell they’d soon dissipate.

  Think then, she ordered, refusing to scold herself. You’ve done some of your greatest work when you improvised.

  She looked at the horrid human, so like Iksander’s wife she made Luna’s spirit crawl. How dare she comfort Najat on her way to hell! For that matter, how dare she comfort Iksander? If this . . . Georgie had to exist, better she torment him. Iksander deserved to suffer every anguish Iblis could devise.

  This thought caused Luna’s intellect to pause.

  There was something there: a germ of fine idea.

  Her gaze fell upon the hideous table by Georgie’s bed. Only a human would construct furniture from scrap heap discards. Though the room was dark, Luna’s disembodied form didn’t need light to see. On the table that offended her, a cheaply framed photograph leaned next to a green-shaded lamp. Luna drifted closer. The picture showed a teenage Georgie within the encircling arm of a smiling woman who—considering their resemblance—had to be her mother.

  Georgie mentioned her mother died when she was sixteen, after which the couple who owned the junk shop adopted her. But what if that never happened? What if Georgie reached maturity under a different influence?

  Ideally, an influence Luna controlled.

  Do it, Luna thought, knowing she had to act quickly. What she intended would require every drop of force in her. Impetuous but determined, she sank her essence into the photograph’s stiff paper. The image on its surface caught the arrangement of light and color from a precise moment. To her delight, Luna discovered a second memento underneath: a lock of the mother’s hair, no doubt clipped from her after death. That was even better. She could time her arrival exactly.

  Serve me, the empress commanded the power she had amassed. Carry me now to the time and place I desire.

  It took the suffering of an entire city to transport her where she wished. She suspected she couldn’t have done it if she’d had a body. Energy skipped back on the flow of time easier than matter.

  Even so, her survival was a near thing. She’d begun her journey as a glorious sun. She arrived as a gasp of fear.

  She was actually guttering, her remaining flame one breath from winking out.

  No, she thought, drawing her will together. You are Luna, Empress of the City of Endless Night. You are too strong to cease to be.

  With the reminder, her consciousness steadied.

  She studied her surroundings. It was nighttime and raining steadily, a fact that made her glad for her current nonphysical state. Of a certainty, she was still in the human world. Directly in front of her was a sordid residence, one in a line of miserable connected boxes facing a parking lot.

  A townhome, her mental translator informed her.

  She drifted toward its glowing windows, taking care to preserve her diminished energy. Peering inside informed her she’d arrived successfully.

  Georgie sat in a drab square room, curled up in a chair reading. Though younger than Luna’s last glimpse of her, she was recognizable. The empress would have sneered if she’d had a mouth. This teenager was no rebel, with her good girl clothes and her good girl hair. Georgie fingered the cross around her neck as Luna floated through the wall. The action seemed automatic—a nervous habit rather than a sign that Luna’s presence alarmed her.

  Luna sensed at once that no man lived here. The paltry decorations were feminine, the scents and memory echoes. Georgie’s parent was a single mother—alone but for her daughter.

  She appeared at the threshold with a dishtowel and a dripping plate.

  “Ahem,” she said as the sixteen-year-old looked up. “Don’t you have homework?”

  The girl’s cheeks flushed guiltily. Wasn’t that adorable? Georgie was embarrassed—and too principled to lie.

  “I left my textbook in the car. I can’t do the assignment without it.”

  “Well, if you know where it is, go get it.”

  “That’s okay,” the girl demurred. “I’ll just take an Incomplete tomorrow.”

  The mother scoffed. “With your perfect GPA? I don’t think so.”

  “It’s raining. I saw lightning.”

  “For goodn
ess sake, Georgina, you’re not a sugar cube. A little rain won’t melt you.”

  The girl’s face twisted. “Mom, you know how I feel about thunderstorms.”

  “Fine. I’ll get it,” the mother huffed.

  Luna would have thought this solved Georgie’s problem but evidently not.

  “Mom, don’t!” she cried, leaping up. “I don’t want you going out there either.”

  That was interesting. Was the girl psychic? She seemed to intuit something bad was coming. She actually gripped the mother’s arm to restrain her.

  “Sweetheart,” the mother said, smoothing her daughter’s already tidy hair. “The car is barely a dozen steps from the kitchen door. I’ll be back in two shakes.”

  “Mom,” Georgie pleaded.

  “Don’t be silly. You can watch me from the window.”

  The girl released her mother reluctantly. The instant the kitchen door creaked open, she ran to the front window. Outside now, her mother hurried down the rain-pelted concrete walk, a cheap yellow coat pulled across her head for cover.

  Georgie let out a worried noise, but Luna couldn’t stay to enjoy her fear.

  It was her job to increase it.

  Light as a feather but not so harmless, she floated out to join the human.

  She had the car door open and was rummaging underneath the seat. “Christ, Georgie,” she muttered, free to curse now that she was alone. “Why did you have to hide the book before you forgot it?”

  She was shorter of breath than she should have been, the unsuspected weakness in her heart already beginning to drain her life away. Left alone, she’d be dead within the month. What Luna planned for her tonight barely counted as murder.

  Murder didn’t matter, of course. Luna was dark already, and couldn’t be damned twice. No, the reason for killing the mother was convenience, not to mention the drama of allowing the girl to watch. If Georgie blamed herself for her parent’s death, Luna wouldn’t find her guilt displeasing.

  A crack of thunder caused the woman’s pulse to jump.

  “Crap,” she breathed, laughing nervously. “That was close.”

  Almost close enough.

  Come, Luna thought, forming an image of herself with hands beckoning the storm. Be my beautiful dragon. Lick your electric tongue down this pathetic human being.

  The power in the sky drew nearer, its lovely proto-plasma concentrating at her command. Little persuasion was required to tweak its behavior. Nature didn’t mind doing evil’s bidding. Nature acted . . . and let the outcome be what it may. Just in case, Luna spent a few more drops of her precious power inducing a positive charge at the top of the woman’s head. As if the tempest wanted to please her, a channel sprang into being between the spot and the cloud above.

  “There you are,” crowed Georgie’s mother, sitting back on her heels with the book she’d been searching for.

  Luna had a tick of time to savor her anticipation, to know the girl’s nose was pressed to the window behind them. As her mother began to stand, the storm discharged. The lightning streaked fat and bright: one jagging branch that held together and didn’t split.

  The woman took the full brunt.

  She jerked and fell, clothes and flesh smoking. Still alive, her eyes were round with terror as her flawed heart skipped wildly. Would the organ stop? If it did, could it start again?

  Luna didn’t wait to find out.

  Mine, she said, holding out imaginary palms to the departing fire.

  She drank down the mother’s death in a single draught, like a killer whale gulping krill. The woman’s terror was her dessert, the cherry on top the girl’s anguish. With pleasure, Luna watched Georgie run into the rain screaming.

  She sobbed as she flung herself onto her mother’s corpse.

  Yes, Luna thought. Cry out your little soul. All her enemies should die like this. And see their loved ones perish.

  She could have lingered longer enjoying this, but that would have been irresponsible. Luna didn’t have an appropriate body yet. Obtaining one needed to be her next order of business.

  Her battery fuller, she rose through the turbulent air swiftly. Apparently, she’d come a ways in time but only miles in space. Her higher vantage allowed her to identify the toy-sized train station where Iksander first met Georgie. Mountains spread out from it in ripples, their trees green now and not colored. Luna was a hop, skip, and jump from the town of Black Bear Mountain.

  That was convenient.

  Determined not to miss other useful intelligence, she shifted her attention east. Her interest sharpened. There was the ruined mansion Georgie had driven Iksander to, the one she claimed to be obsessed by. What had she said? The family won’t sell the rights. The term she’d used—surviving heirs—implied a limited amount.

  She glanced beneath her toward Georgie. The now drenched girl was on a cell phone, frantically calling for help that would do her mother no good at all. Luna wasn’t sure how humans arranged adoptions, but surely they couldn’t happen immediately. Luna had time to get her ducks in a row, as people in this realm said.

  I’ll be back for you, she promised the weeping girl.

  AS LUCK WOULD HAVE it, four claimants to Ravenwings Plantation drew breath in the present day. Not for long, of course. Howard Kepler and his wife Irene, no children, gasped their last three hours after Georgie’s mother. Howard was in his seventies and perhaps not the best driver. Arranging for his Mercedes to spin off the road in the pouring rain was easy. His brittle bones, on the other hand, were no laughing matter. Annoyingly, he died of a broken neck the instant he and the airbag collided. Fortunately, Irene hung on long enough for the empress to acquire her life force.

  She considered an alternate use for the third descendant, Ronnie Hardwick. He was fit and handsome and only twenty-two. In the end, she decided possessing a male body required too much adjustment. He died in a freak accident at his gym, his chest crushed when a rack of weights unexpectedly fell on him. To Luna’s delight, he suffocated slowly, giving her ample time to reap his energy.

  His demise left only Alma West, thirty-five, female, and single. Conveniently, she resided in the next town over from Black Bear.

  Alma was neither fit nor beautiful, but she would have to do. Luna shadowed her until she fell asleep in her sad spinster’s bed. Once her victim’s consciousness was passive, Luna took over. Upon awakening, the human fought the intrusion. If she’d known any magic worth comprehending, she might have kicked Luna out—despite the power the empress had recouped.

  Luckily, she knew no magic at all. The worst she did was plead and panic, her will too weak to compensate for her ignorance. Within two days, Luna had completely vanquished the body’s original resident. Alma’s spirit would trouble her no more. It had passed wherever it was going as irrevocably as those of the other heirs.

  Because she could, Luna spent the next few days upgrading her new shell.

  She waited a few more for the Kepler estate lawyers to contact her.

  What a surprise! She was now the sole owner of Ravenwings. She ignored the lawyers’ advice to sell. The land was worth something, they insisted. The ruin was a write off.

  “I couldn’t sell the place,” she declined shyly, batting her recently lushed-up eyelashes. “I’ve harbored a lifelong dream of restoring it.”

  When admiration warmed the lawyers’ gazes, she knew they’d be even less trouble than Alma.

  ONE MONTH LATER, LUNA dressed carefully for her appointment at the Kind Shepherd Home for Children. The handily departed Alma had managed a cell phone store. The suits that hung in her closet were deadly dull, but Luna inferred their quality was fine for her needs today.

  Like all djinn, she was good at acclimating to new cultures.

  She checked her image in the bedroom mirror before she left. Her hair was wavy black now, her figure a trifle fuller than she preferred. On the grounds that brown eyes were too dreary, Luna had changed them to silver gray. Her body’s skin was smoother than she’d found it, fl
ushed with health and dewily youthful. Humans who’d known her before would assume Alma had had things “done.” Indeed, a few of Alma’s girlfriends showed up at her house for a pre-arranged book club. They’d declared she looked ten years younger and asked which spa she’d used. Though Luna had been tempted to ensure they didn’t leave Alma’s house alive, she’d resisted.

  So many humans going missing from a single place would draw attention. Avoiding people Alma knew would become easier soon. Only if she absolutely had to would she pick her friends off later.

  At least I’m still tall, she thought to her reflection. Height wasn’t something you could fix at a spa. Alma had always enjoyed looking down on others.

  Personal standards notwithstanding, she needed to be careful how much she changed. Human bodies had built-in resistance to djinn magic, assuming their operators knew the right formulas. The more Luna improved this body, the more she’d lose her advantage against possible attacks. Spirit affected flesh. For now, she was as beautiful as she dared make herself.

  She locked the door to Alma’s house behind her. She hoped not to reside here after today, but you never knew when a previous resource might be handy. Alma’s car was nice, thankfully—a speedy silver Aston Martin on which the human must have blown a chunk of her previously limited Kepler cash.

  The engine purred like a cat with Luna at the wheel. Though she planned to acquire a chauffeur, she quite enjoyed driving to the group home.

  Kind Shepherd was a stucco-and-timber Tudor in dire need of TLC. As Luna parked at the curb in front, a crowd of varying youthful ages, uniformly ragged and unruly, played a chaotic game. To and fro they ran across the patchy yard, chasing—and obscuring—some individual among them.

  Luna couldn’t make out their cries until she exited.

  “Goodie Two Shoes!” they chorused. “How do you like bare feet?”