The Better Part of Darkness

My cell phone rang from inside the bag. I stopped on the sidewalk, fished it out, and flipped it open with one hand.

“Charlie, where the hell are you?”

“I’m fine, Hank.” I just rolled out of a moving car in high heels. “How are you?” The farther I walked, the more my left ankle hurt. Sharp lines of pain zinged up my leg with every step. I reached down and took off the black pumps, proceeding barefoot.

“Please tell me you’re laying low.”

“Um …”

I held the phone away from my ear as Hank yelled. “Damn it! I knew it! I knew you couldn’t stay out of trouble for one day. One day, Charlie!” He let out a loud, disappointed huff, making me roll my eyes. “Where are you right now?”

I glanced at the stop sign as I crossed the street. “I’m at the corner of Walton and Forsyth.”

“Stay there. I don’t care what the chief says, I’m picking you up. Go to the Subshop Deli at Broad Street. I’ll meet you there. Someone ransacked your house and broke into the school early this morning.”

At the mention of school, I froze, nearly causing a collision with the person walking behind me. “Oh, God, Emma went to school this morning.” I started running, the bag slapping against my hip and my ankle forgotten in the sudden panic.

“Calm down. It was before any students got there. Classes have been canceled. Em’s at Bryn’s and Will is on his way to get her. Oh, and Bryn made me go by and pick up Spooky. Who was, oddly enough, spooked by the break-in.” Hank chuckled at himself.

The damn cat could take care of herself. My thoughts were on Em. “Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me?!” I shouted into the phone.

“Look at your phone, smart-ass. We’ve been calling all morning.”

The sound of the rally must’ve drowned out the ring tone. And if it had rung in the limo, I had been too distracted to even notice.

“Fine, just hurry,” I said, approaching the deli.

CHAPTER 9

The bell chimed over the door as I entered, braced a hand against the glass to slip the pumps back on, and then limped inside where I slid gratefully into an empty booth.

God, I hurt!

It took a minute to regain my composure and take stock. My elbow ached, and the scratches and road-rub along my shoulder, hip, and thigh burned, but not nearly as bad as my ankle, which was growing hotter and achier by the second. Pulling in my leg, I saw the skin was swelling, but not enough to indicate I’d sprained it.

“Hey, miss, you got to order to take up a booth!”

Yeah, yeah.

Quickly, I smoothed my hair and straightened my shirt before standing. Every muscle protested as I searched the bag for my wallet, pulling out three bucks and some change. At least the counter wasn’t too far away. Wincing, I shuffled forward in the torturous black pumps and ordered a large sweet tea and a chocolate chip cookie.

The clerk lifted an eyebrow at my appearance. “You all right?”

With a wry half-smile, I handed him the three bucks. “Yeah. You’d be amazed what a clearance sale at the Apple Store does to some people.”

He froze. “There’s a clearance sale at the Apple Store?”

“Yeah. Ends today though.”

“Dude. Really?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”

The door jingled. The clerk looked beyond me and gave a nod to the new person. No, I corrected, smelling the distinct scent of tar. Not a person. A jinn. Shit.

My blood pressure rose, and I mentally begged the clerk to hurry the hell up.

The jinn, I noted via a quick sideways glance, was typically large, his bulky form heightened by a Georgia Tech hoodie. He didn’t pay me any mind as he stood at my right side, his attention firmly on the overhead menu.

“Hey, Len, how’s it going?” the clerk asked as he poured my tea. “Heard about those guys who were killed yesterday in Underground. That’s wrong, man, just wrong.”

Len turned his head slightly, casting an aloof look at the clerk, the muscle in his dark gray jaw flexing.

The clerk slid my tea across the counter and pulled the cookie from the bin with a napkin. His eyes lit excitedly as he leaned forward toward Len, his voice low when he spoke. “Tennin must be calling for blood, eh?”

I grabbed the tea and cookie, pivoting just as Len turned fully toward the clerk. He hadn’t seen my face. But I didn’t miss his deep resonating voice as I walked back to the booth. “If she can’t pay, it will be in blood, yes.”

Poised and alert for an attack, I slid into the booth facing the jinn so I could watch his every move.

If I disappeared, it’d be all-out war against the jinn. But then Tennin didn’t really have a choice. Death prices and blood debts had been a way of life for the jinn for thousands of years. If Tennin looked the other way now, it’d be seen as weakness, and he hadn’t retained his position as jinn boss for this long by being weak. In fact, it was well known the guy bordered on psychotic.

As the clerk made Len’s order, I studied the broad back of the bald-headed warrior, noting his thick gunmetal neck and the beefy hands that flexed and un-flexed at his sides. They lived at the ready, always on alert, always ready to fight.

Memories of the three I’d killed came back to me. The thick black blood they’d bled; the smell of it like liquid tar and iron. I didn’t know how in the hell I’d managed to kill three of them, let alone how I was going to thwart a whole damn tribe.

As the jinn paid and approached my booth with a to-go bag, I lowered my head and broke the cookie in half, trying to temper my adrenaline so he wouldn’t smell it. I fought a two-second battle with myself. Should I glance at him as he passed? Would that be the normal thing to do, or should I ignore him?

With no time to think, I opened my mouth and shoved in half the cookie. Dim violet eyes met mine as he walked by my table.

I froze.

One dark eyebrow dipped a fraction. At my appearance? At the fact that I smiled at him with a mouth full of cookie? Or that he recognized me as the prey he was charged with bringing in?

It seemed like slow motion had kicked in as we locked gazes, but it was over in the two seconds that it happened. I didn’t let out my breath until the bell over the door stopped jingling.

I washed the lump of dry cookie down with the tea, taking a moment to decompress after my near brush with the jinn and get back on track.

Mynogan’s last words slowly crept in my head.

He’d tried to lure me with the promise of power. But why? I released a deep sigh, propped my chin in my hand, and gazed out the window. I was no closer to finding out how he knew me or why he existed in my dreams. And, for all my bumps and bruises, I’d gotten no information, not a single clue on the ash.

But one thing I did know: after seeing Cassius Mott at the rally, connecting the dots was pretty simple. Amanda was Cass’s daughter. Cass was a known drug user. And a new drug was going around. Thanks to his brother, Titus, Cass had a small fortune and access to numerous labs. He had to be involved with ash in some way, and somehow Amanda had gotten hold of it. My house and the school had been broken into. And the only relation there was Amanda, which meant someone, possibly Cass, was looking for something.

But what? My fingers tapped on the table.

Goose bumps pricked my skin. I sat straighter. They’d been looking for something they hadn’t found at