And selfishly, underneath it al, Charlie was glad she’d taken off after him. That he stil meant enough to her to drop everything, including Jinn-Boy Jai. A stupid part of him stil hoped that maybe fearing for him would make her remember their bond. That they were family…
… “Okay, who’s winning?” Charlie grinned as he strode back into the sitting room with a glass of ice-cold Coke for Ari. It was a blistering summer day
and the a/c in the house had broken, leaving them to use crappy fans that just blew recycled hot air back at them.
Mike frowned over at him from his place beside Ari on the floor, the game controller dangling from his hand. “Where’s mine?”
Charlie shrugged. “I only have two hands.”
Sighing at him, Ari tried to hand the Coke he’d given to her to Mike. His kid brother grinned at her and shook his head. “Thanks, Ari, but I’ll get my
own.” His grin transformed to a glare when he looked at Charlie. “Don’t think I don’t know you did that deliberately so I’d have to give up the control.”
That was exactly why he’d done it. The brat had been hogging the game, and Ari, since she’d gotten here.
Ari wrinkled her nose. “Well, I’d suggest I give up my controller so you two can play each other, but we all know how that ends and I am not in the mood to clean up blood today.”
Mike grumbled and jumped to his feet. As soon as he left the room, Charlie slid in closer to Ari as he grabbed up the controller, his bare knee touching her bare knee. He tried to be cool as he checked her out in her short shorts and tank top. Aw man, thank God for heat waves. They were a teenage boy’s
dream come true.
Ari laughed, drawing his gaze up and he found her strange but beautiful eyes twinkling mischievously at him. “Are you done?”
Charlie laughed off the embarrassment of being caught checking her out and nudged her with his elbow as he stared at the screen, starting a new game.
“You did wear those shorts.”
She chuckled again and the sound hit him right in his good-for-nothing places. He sucked in a breath. Being fifteen and friends with Ari was hard on his libido. “Charlie, you’re wearing shorts.”
He frowned at his long board shorts. “Not the same thing.”
“Maybe it is for me. Maybe I find it just as distracting, but I don’t blatantly check you out.”
At the flirtatious note in her voice, Charlie turned to look at her again. Her cheeks were a little pink but she was still grinning at him. “You checking me out?” Whoa, he did not mean for his voice to go all low and suggestive like that.
Ari’s smile slipped and he watched her breath catch with a sense of elation. “Maybe.”
With no control over his actions, Charlie’s gaze dipped to her mouth. He had thought about that mouth a lot lately. Okay, more than a lot. Like, every
second.
“What, you haven’t even started a new game?” Mike complained as he sauntered back into the room and broke Charlie’s epic moment with Ari.
Ari laughed and shifted a little so there was more space between them.
Charlie sighed and contemplated fifty different ways to get rid of his little brother. “We’re just about to.”
“Well if you’re this slow starting, I’m putting ten bucks on Ari whipping your ass.” Charlie raised an eyebrow at him and Mike sighed. “Butt. Whipping
your butt.”
“I’ll take that bet,” Charlie replied, reaching over to shake his kid brother’s hand. Ari cleared her throat and the two Creaghs stopped to look at her.
“What?”
Ari shrugged. “You’re about to lose ten bucks. I mean, Mike at least has a fighting chance with me, but you…”
“You think Mike is better than me at Super Mario Bros?”
“Oh definitely.”
Mike laughed happily.
Charlie glared at them both and then turned determinedly to the screen. “Oh it’s on.”
… Charlie was shaken from his memories as a Shaitan approached his cel. The guard from last night. The Shaitan raised a hand and the glow around the bars
disappeared as the bars slid back into the rock to alow Charlie to exit.
“It’s time.” The Shaitan gestured to him with shimmering shackles dangling from his hand.
Charlie stood up and eyed the shackles warily, his knees threatening to buckle. The Shaitan seemed to sense his terror and laughed at him, black eyes flashing red.
His mockery was like a bulet in Charlie’s ass. Stop being a p**sy, you can do this.
Shrugging on a pretense of cool, Charlie met the Shaitan and turned around at his direction. The glowing shackles didn’t burn, but they were heavy as they snapped around his wrists. Walking between the two Shaitans out of the dungeon was humiliating, but as they wound their way up through the earthen tunnels and up a spiraling staircase, Charlie knew true humiliation. The wals of rock around them opened out into wider corridors and inset in the rock was the famed emeralds of Mount Qaf.
The pul of their power whispered to Charlie—it was almost as if every single stone was sucking a little bit of him towards them. He stumbled and groaned, the hunger heavy inside him and the two Shaitans laughed again.
“That is what happens when children are given power beyond their ability to control. They whimper like kittens after milk.”
Their laughter enflamed Charlie’s cheeks and he attempted to ignore the power of the emeralds, his teeth aching with the strength it took him. He tried to focus on his surroundings but there were no doors here, no windows, no pictures, no servants, only torches suspended high along the wals.
When he saw the arched doorway at the end of the corridor, relief shot through him. He wanted out, he wanted away from the emeralds.
The door creaked open and a blast of freezing cold air stung his eyes and whooshed down his throat. He coughed a little, letting his lungs adjust to the fresh but icy air. He blinked as he was pushed forward and the scene around him caused his heart to throb from behind his rib cage.
He shivered in his thin t-shirt.
It was like something out of Gladiator.
Before him was a huge amphitheater, ascending seats rising up away from a huge space in the center where Jinn were waiting on him. Jinn were crowded in the
thousands on the seats, a sea of bodies garbed in vibrant silks and velvets and cottons al in the brightest of jewel colors— emerald greens, purple amethysts, sapphire blues and ruby reds. It was like staring into an open treasure box. The amphitheatre itself was less ancient Rome and more Moroccan in appearance, with its stone arches carved with arabesques and twisted pilars wrapped in champagne, ruby and emerald fabric—fabric that fluttered gently in the breeze as if dying to unwrap its arms from around the pilars and fly into the wind. Charlie understood the feeling. Pushed forward again, Charlie descended the stairs in front of him, trying to ignore the murmurs of the Jinn around him. His pulse sped up at the strange mirrored floor beneath his feet, its glass covering the entire main floor space. Shadows against the winter sky caught his eyes in the reflection, and Charlie glanced upwards, his breath leaving him at the sight in the sky above the crowds. News of the Jinn Kings’
involvement in a trial must have traveled because the whole place was so packed there were Jinn floating in the air above the seating, like brightly colored hummingbirds watching him with curious eyes. Charlie gulped, seeing a Jinn sitting upon a floating rug. He felt like rubbing his eyes to make sure he was seeing right. It had al just gotten a little too ‘Aladdin and his lamp’ on him.
Before Charlie could crumple under the stress of being in such a surreal situation, his gaze drew past the flying Jinn and magic carpet and widened at the sight of the mountains glimmering green in the sun in the distance. Now that was awe-inspiring, he licked his lips almost greedily, the need for the emeralds suddenly over-powering any possible humiliation he’d felt earlier.
A prickle of awareness crawled up his neck as he strode into the center and he glanced to his left only to lock his gaze with eyes of a changing color. A worried Ari gave him a tremulous smile as she sat in the front row, dark circles under her eyes teling him she had been up for hours, probably because of her anxiety over today. A rush of warmth flooded his chest and he gave her a tentative smile, feeling better just for having her there. The smile slipped from his lips though as his gaze tripped over the person sitting far too close to her.
Jai.
He gave the Jinn a brittle nod and turned back to face center. Everything felt so surreal, so off, his vision seeming to come in and out. A smal round stage sat center and the Shaitan urged him onto it. The Red King stood off to his left and he gave Charlie a sharp nod of encouragement. On his right was a Jinn almost as tal as Red, his bare head gleaming in the winter sun. Like Red he seemed dressed for the part in black leather trousers, gold armlets, gold wrist cuffs, and a torque around his neck.
Jewels glittered on his fingers and in his ears. His black eyes bore into Charlie with dangerous hatred, and Charlie quickly looked away from who he assumed was The Gleaming King, only to come face to face with life and death itself. The power of the Jinn in front of him almost blew him back off his feet. Charlie felt frozen under the Jinn’s dark gaze. The Jinn was huge, even sitting down on his black marble throne. His long, silver-white hair stayed perfectly stil around his face despite the soft breeze that seemed to whisper through everyone else’s. Turquoise silk robes fel in a waterfal around him. His powerful torso was bare underneath the robes while his long, powerful legs were wrapped in the same black leather as Red and the other Jinn King.
This was Azazil, the Sultan of al Jinn.
Charlie didn’t need to be told that.
The Sultan smirked cheekily at him and Charlie blinked, not sure whether he saw right or not. The blink shifted his gaze to Azazil’s left and he quickly looked away from the massive, young-looking, dark-haired Jinn who was staring at him as if he were about to eat him.
Footsteps interrupted Charlie’s inward frantic thoughts and he looked down to see Red approach him.
“Charlie. How are you?”
He shrugged, pretending indifference. “I’m dealing.”
“I’l be defending you today against my brother, The Gleaming King.” He gestured to the Jinn with the bald head.
Charlie nodded. “Okay.”
Sighing, as if he were already weary with the trial, Red nodded his head towards the white-haired Jinn and his companion. “That is Sultan Azazil. He is accompanied today by his Lieutenant, Prince Asmodeus.”
Charlie resisted the urge to bite the skin around his thumb like he did when he was sitting in an exam. “Is the Sultan… you know the judge?”
“No. Azazil watches over the trial. The Marid,” Red indicated a tal, slim man who was sitting in a sprawled out, bored position just along from Ari, “His name is Adeel: the just, the wise.”
“He looks bored.”
“Wel the trial hasn’t started yet.”
“So Azazil has no say in this?”
Red nodded in assurance, and for some reason the knowledge that the mercurial and frankly, insane, Sultan had no part in the outcome of his trial made Charlie feel better—insane or not, the guy was al-powerful.