Of Wish and Fury (Seven Kings of Jinn)

Ari was sitting with the women in the kitchen for a while before she needed some solitude. Everyone was a lot more at ease with her, and Ari had used the time to take her mind off Charlie. As Bryleigh had cooked dinner, Megan, Susan, and Ailidh had sat around the breakfast table chatting about this and that. Ari had found a break in the conversation to ask, “So when do you think we’ll get word about Dalí?”

“Soon.” Megan had smiled at her sympathetically, seeming to understand Ari’s impatience and need for action. “I know it can get boring waiting around for new leads, but we take turns working in groups of three or four. Minimizes the boredom.”

“I think the rat bastard has definitely moved on,” Susan had added, swinging a carrot stick around to punctuate her words. “There’s no trace of him here. I was out yesterday with the twins, and Aidan, Brechin, and Anabeth are out today. They called in to say nada. Again.”

“Well, if he’s upped his game from robbery to kidnapping and possibly murder, I don’t see why we should be left alone to deal with that?” Ailidh had glowered, clearly uneasy at the thought.

Confused, Ari had asked, “What do you mean?”

Megan had explained. “Like all jinn, we have different levels of power within our guild. We categorize our targets so we can send the appropriate guild hunter after it. With nasty, dangerous jinn like ghulahs, labartus, nisnas, marids, shaitans etc, we keep tabs on them once they cross our radar. We have hunters follow them, trying to prevent them, as much as possible, from inflicting damage on the human world. We can’t kill them without reprisal, so we just keep tracking them. When they flee the country, the hunter follows them until the next country is alerted and can take over the hunt with one of their own guild. With sorcerers, it’s different. They’re more elusive because, like us, they’re part human, so their energy is diluted. Since we can kill them without reprisal from the jinn courts, we hunt them and when we find them we kill them. Again, if it’s a brutish son-of-a-bitch we make sure the team hunting them has among them our most powerful.”

“And you guys don’t have that person here?” Ari had asked, surprised.

Bryleigh had shaken her head as she’d rolled out pastry for the pies she was baking. “Fallon’s father is the most powerful among our guild. He usually deals with murderers, etc. Fallon will be almost as strong as him one day, but she’s still very young.”

“I don’t get it. You knew Dalí was the son of a king, right? So why didn’t you send Fallon’s dad after him?”

“We didn’t know Dalí was the son of a king,” Megan had disagreed with a frown. “It was just rumor. And considering every sorcerer on the planet claims to be related to the sultan or a jinn king, we didn’t really believe the rumors. But it doesn’t matter, because we do have powerful hunters with us. Jacob.” Megan had nodded in assurance. “And my Gerard, and Jacob’s nephew, Brechin. Plus… we have a ginnaye among us now. A full-blood. Jai’s more powerful than two of us put together.”

That had seemed to be the end of the discussion as Susan started chatting about her cousin Fallon’s obvious crush on Charlie. Rolling her eyes, Ari had quietly slipped from the room and had slumped down in an armchair at the fireplace, the sound of the twins playing the game console soothing to her over-anxious ears.

“Did you hear about that Scottish guild member?” Callum asked quietly, the hushed tone of his voice catching Ari’s attention.

Matt shook his head, frowning at the game. “No. What guild member?”

“I heard Scott and Gerard talking about it. Michael called this morning to say they discovered information related to those kidnappings and would call back later when they had the info confirmed. He also told Gerard that some important guild hunter in Scotland was just sentenced to death by the jinn courts.”

Ari’s eyes widened, and totally appalled, she leaned in further to listen.

Matt stilled too. “What happened?”

“He killed a ghulah. The thing was munching on one of his guild, and he just lost it and killed it. They took him to court, but apparently his defense wasn’t strong enough and there wasn’t a full-blooded jinn to speak for him, so they sentenced him to death.”

“Shit.” Matt shook his head now. “If it had been someone like Jai, he would have gotten off with a slap on the wrist or a castration or something like that. But no, the tiniest bit of human blood and there's no chance of a fair trial.”

“Yup.” Callum battered his control with his fingers. “There’s no escaping fate in the jinn world.”

His words pounded into Ari like bullets, propelling her back in her chair with a muffled gasp. Her chest constricted and she felt a panic attack come on for the first time in weeks. Her brain grew fuzzy and her breathing labored. There was no escaping fate. There was no escaping her own fate. Her future was hopeless. She knew that. She’d always known it. But today she couldn’t cope with it. Not wanting the guys to see her meltdown, Ari hurried from the main sitting room into the study, her feet coming to a halt when she saw Jai sitting at the desk, staring out the window. He twisted around to look at her, and his eyes narrowed at her expression.