He brushed past them, feeling their shocked stares. He shook off a shiver, feeling vulnerable. Jai hated feeling vulnerable. “Hurry,” he snarled, pulling the front door open.
“What the hell is his problem?” he heard Charlie mutter behind him, the sound of bags being picked up the only thing cooling Jai’s growing temper.
“Just leave him,” Ari replied quietly, and the understanding in her voice made him turn around and glare at her as she walked toward him. He didn’t want her to understand. Why had he told her that stuff about his family? He was an idiot. Even worse, Ari didn’t return his glare. Her eyes were soft with sympathy as she passed him, heading for the SUV in the driveway.
Charlie nudged by him without a word, clearly taking Ari’s advice to heart.
Ari’s quiet understanding on a day when she’d just buried her dad made Jai feel like the biggest asshole. The burn inside him cooled a little, and he took a deep breath. It wasn’t her fault his family was screwed up. Now was not the time to lose it. He wasn’t fourteen anymore. He was a grown man and he needed to act like it. Feeling a little calmer, Jai pulled the house door shut and locked it magically. When he turned around, Ari still hadn’t gotten into the car. She gazed at the house, her eyes glistening with tears. This might be the last time she ever saw it. Feeling even more of an asshole, Jai strolled to her side. “Have you got everything you need from in there?”
She nodded. “If I remember something, I can just conjure it, right?”
“Right.”
“And Ms. Maggie’s already in the car.”
“What?” Charlie squawked from inside the SUV, glancing around for signs of the invisible ifrit. Charlie’s comical frantic freakout pulled an unexpected chuckle out of Jai and his chest tightened at the sight of Ari’s reluctant smile.
“You don’t mind Ms. Maggie tagging along, do you?”
It wasn’t the greatest thing having a jinn hiding around in the cloak where he couldn’t see her. When he’d first attempted to get into Ari’s house using the cloak, he’d stumbled into the invisible ifrit. Both were surprised to find another jinn in the home. The ifrit had screamed at him telepathically to get out. She was a shrew and she’d kept up a constant telepathic rant until he’d decided it best to wait outside until the Red King said it was alright to reveal himself to Ari. The ifrit had seemed pretty protective of Ari and the Red King seemed certain of her, and despite Jai’s curiosity about who the ifrit was and why she was so attached to Ari, he’d let it slide since the jinn female made Ari feel safe. “Not if you need her.”
Their gazes held and that connection, that hold, that pull stretched between them for a moment too long. Clearing his throat, Jai opened the passenger door for her, breaking their gaze. He thought he heard her sigh in disappointment as she slid into the car and Jai wished like hell Ari wasn’t such an open book. This would be so much easier if she didn’t care. And somehow, knowing she no longer wanted Charlie romantically made it even harder to ignore whatever this was between them.
Psyching himself up, Jai jumped into the driver's seat of the SUV. This was going to be interesting, to say the least.
Chapter
Twelve
A BITTER BITAR WILL BREAK YOUR HEART
It was impossible to believe all that had happened in a day. Had she really buried her dad only hours ago? Had she really been attacked by humans working for some dark sorcerer who was distantly related to her? Ari felt ripped apart. The plane ride to LA hadn’t helped. After calling his mom to pawn her off with a lie about how Ari really needed him and they’d decided to go on a road trip together to get away for a while, Charlie had grown quiet and wouldn’t even look at her. Ari didn’t know if he felt bad about lying to Mrs. Creagh (Ari sure did), but there was really nothing his mom could do about them taking off since they were both eighteen. He promised his mom he’d check in with her, but by the look on his face when he got off the phone, Mrs. Creagh was not happy. As for the other guy left in Ari’s life, Jai was obviously anxious about bringing Ari home to meet his family, and from what little he’d told her, she could understand that worry. His family treated him terribly. Too much had happened and now here she was standing on a black-and-white checkered entrance hall floor in a huge Spanish-style mansion in the Palisades looking at an attractive man in his early fifties and wondering how the hell life had brought her here. The only comfort she had right now was the familiar hum of energy next to her that told her Ms. Maggie was beside her.