How stupid did that make her?
She made a sort of disbelieving, huffing sound, and wrapped her arms around herself. Taking a moment, she nodded, trying to find the right words. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I—”
“Ari, it’s fine,” he interrupted all business-like again.
“Yeah,” she laughed humorlessly, staring somewhere over his shoulder. “Should I ask my uncle for a replacement or something?”
“What? No.” He seemed taken aback by the suggestion and Ari finally found the courage to meet his gaze. There was a slight hint of anger in the flex of his jaw that made Ari almost smile. Jai was nothing if not professional. He wouldn’t want a girl’s teen crush on him messing with his career. She was a pretty important assignment, after all.
“I’m still your guardian. Okay. We’ll just forget about this and move on.”
Ari nodded numbly. “Alright.”
“Good. I’m leaving. I put my number in your cell, but remember, you can use telepathy. Don’t try anything stupid while I’m gone. I’ll be back tomorrow after I take care of some things and we can discuss your future, maybe train you in using the peripatos and flying.”
Not able to say anything, Ari just nodded her agreement, desperate for him to leave when only five minutes ago she’d have done anything to make him stay.
“See you, Ari.”
She blinked back at him dumbly, hating him for sounding so uncertain. Two seconds later, he went up in flames into the peripatos. Ari burst into tears as soon as he was gone. Sliding down the door to land on the floor with a bump, Ari pressed her face into her knees and cried the million tears she’d locked inside since this all began. She cried for the dangerous and unknown future that lay ahead of her, for a dad who may not love her anymore, for a boy who was starting to want her the way she had always wanted him just when she'd moved on and fallen in love with someone new. And for that, Ari was surprised to realize, she cried the hardest. The place where her heart beat in her chest ached like mad as she relived the moment with Jai. Jai, who loved someone else. Bitterly, she wondered who could have caught Jai’s interest. Someone older and more sophisticated than some stupid jinn girl who was more weapon than heart.
But that couldn’t possibly be true.
Otherwise, why did hers hurt so much?
Chapter 26
This vengeance of mine
Despite the marid’s assurance he had placed an enchantment around the room that acted as a sound barrier and would deter his mom from wanting to come into his bedroom, Charlie still couldn’t help glancing anxiously at his closed door. As if coming out of some two-year dream, his mom paid attention to him again. It was weird. It had coincided with him finding out the truth about Mikey’s death. Like his relief, his release of the guilt that had been killing him had changed him. It had changed his mom. Or Ari had. His mom mentioned Ari talked to her. Beautiful Ari. Couldn’t keep her nose out of his business. Now his mom called him. A lot. Made it hard for him to hang out at Rickman’s—not that he wanted to do that so much, now that all of this weirdness had gone down with Ari.
Now that he had a chance at revenge.
When the Red King came back yesterday after Jai and Ari had left for Roswell, it had shocked Charlie to discover he ‘wanted to talk’. He told him he saw how much he was suffering, feeling useless while Ari and Jai worked their voodoo magic to take down the dick that had hurt Derek. He said he knew Charlie wanted to do the same thing to the person who had killed Mike. And he said he could give Charlie what he needed. All he had to do was promise not to tell Ari that the Red King was the one who handed him the key to it all and to be there when the Red King called in the debt.
Charlie wasn’t stupid. He knew he was making a deal with the devil.
But he was offering him a chance to destroy the bitch that killed Mikey. That’s all he wanted. He knew that this would bring him peace. He’d spent too many nights fighting his own rage, hating himself for killing his brother. No one could know what real self-hatred did to a person unless they’d been through something similar. And to discover that he wasn’t to blame, that he had been paying attention to the road, that magic—jinn—took Mikey, was responsible for destroying his family, left him with a new rage. He needed vengeance. He needed it like he needed oxygen.
The marid the Red King had sent stared down at him from his great height, dressed in a dark, charcoal suit that really ruined the whole ‘genie’ thing for Charlie. “Do you know what you would like to wish for?” The marid's voice rumbled over him and Charlie felt the hum of his dark, angry energy. This guy was not cool.