Stifled (Summoned Book 2) Page 14

  After a while, the pain in my ribs subsides but my fingers turn blue and white. I huddle tighter. My teeth start chattering. At first, I can force it back. Then it grows until I can't. So I try to sink even deeper into my jacket, like I can make myself small enough to fit inside it entirely.

  My face grows so cold rubbing it with one hand does nothing. I lower my head to my knees against my chest, trying to keep my attention on the door. Eventually, I set the gun on the ground next to me and bury my face in my arms on my knees.

  My eyes are heavy. I wonder if I will freeze to death or asphyxiate first. Either way should lull me to sleep, so I don't have a preference.

  I consider texting Syd to tell her that, despite all this crap, I really do love her. Actually, it's the only reason I'm here. I told her before she freed me that her wish was my command, regardless of what happened. I meant it too. Here's my proof positive.

  Too tired to move. Probably wouldn't have a signal, anyway.

  As I sink into slumber, I wonder when the police will arrive and what all they will find. I wonder if the female jinn would know why this vase is marked like her knife.

  And I wonder why being free has to hurt so much.

  ***

  I jolt awake. I can't breathe. My body is numb. It takes effort to remember how to move. I force myself forward, then crawl toward the door. It's like my brain is teaching my limbs how to do something they have never done before.

  At the door, I sit back on my knees.

  Now I just need to lift my arm. Just enough to reach the lever. My arm considers it. Then it rises, uncertain if it's doing this right. My fingers are onto the game, though. They try to curl around the lever. They're amateurs, but it's good enough.

  The door swings open. I topple onto the floor outside the refrigerator.

  My veins burn in my fingers, around my arms, and straight down my legs to my toes. Pleasure and pain collide, right there in my body. My lungs take in deep gasps of the warm, humid air. My chest feels like it's going to split open at the sternum.

  The burning in my veins simmers to a tingle. I bring my hands above me and rub them together. Well, as best as I can with the makeshift bandage. My fingers are bright red. In a few moments, they pale to an even pink.

  I push to a sit and touch my face. Everything aches. I'm taking that as a good sign. Frostbite wasn't on my to-do list.

  With all the willpower I can muster, I pull to my feet and stagger back into the refrigerator. I lean down and pick up my gun and the vase.

  My brain kicks into gear. I was being hunted. I don't know how long I was asleep in the refrigerator, but it couldn't have been that long. Not since everything seems to have survived.

  I step out and sweep the hallway. Pain squeezes my ankle. Forgot about that.

  I hold the vase against my side with one hand, arm crossed over my stomach, and raise the gun with the other. If the men are still around, I will need to do some serious Hollywood moves to retaliate without breaking the vase.

  I creep down the hallway to the baking area. No one. I turn to the dish room. It's unoccupied too.

  Back flat to the wall, I slink toward the main area of the cafe. At the doorway, I stop and peer inside. Warm breezes flounce through the broken window. The front door is still closed. So is the side door leading to the pottery shop.

  I cross the cafe and, vase in hand, use my shoulder to push open the door. There is no new damage to the shop, just shards of pottery and the shot out window. The street is empty except my car.

  The moment of truth will be in the back room. My hostage might still be unconscious. His buddy might be hanging around.

  I work my way through the shambles, pottery clinking with each step. When I reach the kiln room, I lower my gun and knock the door open with my elbow. My gun is up again before the door hits the wall.

  The kiln room is empty. No snoozing hostage. I pick up my pace to the office and use my foot to nudge open the unlatched door.

  The air conditioning unit is still on the floor. The window is wide open, revealing the empty lot.

  I lower my gun and let out a pent up breath. I'm afraid to jinx it, but I think they fell for the bloody broken window ploy.

  ***

  I wrap the vase in my jacket and set it on the passenger floorboard. My sliced-open palm smarts, which is an odd choice of words considering how stupid I was to cut my right hand.

  Back at the hotel, I cradle the jacket-wrapped vase with one hand while I let myself into the room.

  Syd is asleep on top of the bed covers. The door bangs closed behind me. She stirs.

  “Sorry, babe,” I say, resting the wadded up jacket on the nightstand.

  She rolls over and looks at me with heavy eyes. “Did you find it?”

  “Of course.” I smile, because she was my thought when I believed it to be my last. That has to count for something, even if I will probably never let her know. I settle on the bed next to her. “Why don't you go back to sleep?”

  She rubs her face with her hand. “I made dinner, but I'm not sure how good it turned out.”

  “I would eat charcoal bricks right now.”

  “Might be a better alternative,” she says.

  I lean down and leave a soft kiss on her lips. She whimpers, just under her breath. I break away to look at her.

  “Hmm, so dinner turned out bad, huh?” My hair falls into my eyes, and I grin. “Then I'll be expecting dessert.”

  “You know what they say. Life's short, so eat dessert first.”

  “Mm, sage advice.” I kiss her again, a series of gentle pecks on her lips and the side of her mouth. Anything deeper, more meaningful, will be too much right now. Escaping death is my gig in life, but I haven't quite come to terms with the fact I love the person putting me in those situations. I climb to my feet. “I really am starving, so let's eat. I gotta doctor this thing up first, I guess.”

  I raise my injured hand.

  She sits upright, blankets in her lap. “Good God, can you not damage yourself just once?”

  “That's how these things work,” I say, heading for the vanity.

  I peel off the bandage, which has stayed in place so long only because it's pasted on with blood. The cut starts trickling again. I clean it up and disinfect it, then wrap my hand with a proper gauze bandage.

  “The vase is in the jacket,”' I call back to her. “The lid is in the pocket. Just be careful.”

  “Got it, captain,” she says. Then a moment later, she gasps. “Oh, my god.”

  Either she saw the writing, or she's doing things I want to be involved in. I step around the corner.

  She turns the vase over in her hands. “Dim, this thing is. . .old. Seriously old.”

  “Don't get your hopes up. It belongs to Lyle.”

  “I know.” She frowns, then tosses my empty jacket onto the bed and places the vase on the nightstand. “Do you think he's stealing items jinn are bonded to?”

  I lean against the wall. “Well, that's a pretty neat trick to bond a jinn to a laptop.”

  She halts, and then tips her head back and laughs. “Could you imagine? What if it blue screens during a summoning?”

  I grin, shaking my head. Then the day's events catch up with me again, and the humor fades away.

  I make my way to the table, muscles resisting, and take a seat. Syd has laid out to plates with seasoned rice and breaded chicken patties. I can only assume it's all cold and rubbery by now. My stomach doesn't care.

  She sits across from me. “Hard to cook on a single electric burner. Sorry.”

  “All good.” I pick up my plastic fork, then look at her. “Syd, those guys showed up again. I overheard them talking. They're looking for jinn.”

  “Are they looking for jinn, or are they looking for you?”

  I hesitate. “I don't think there's much of a difference.”

  “You're not a jinn.”

  My gaze travels down to the plate of food, so I don't have to make eye contact with her. “You
're the only one making that distinction.”

  She goes quiet. After a minute, I start eating. She follows suit. The food is all I anticipated, but I'm thankful it's ready and I don't have to go anywhere. After this, I'm taking a long shower and then sleeping like Napoleon during a battle.

  At length, Syd breaks the silence. “What do you think he wants the vase for?”

  “I don't know,” I shrug, gathering my silverware into my empty plate, “but I doubt it's to take it on to Antiques Roadshow.”

  I push back the chair and cross the room to the vase. I hold it up under the light. Syd might think it's old, but it looks like any other piece of pottery in that shop to me. Except for the sigil, anyway.

  Syd throws away our dishes and starts straightening up the place. “I've been going through the documents you got off the private server, but there's just not a lot of useful information there.”

  “Do you have any idea where the female jinn might show up next?” I put the vase back on the nightstand and turn to Syd. “If we can convince her to talk, I'm sure she can clear up a lot of the mysteries.”

  Syd frowns. “Yeah, that would be great, but I don't.”

  I look up and open my mouth to comment, but halt. Syd's face is set with a deep scowl, and it takes me a full minute to realize she's having dark thoughts.

  “Uh. . .Syd?”

  “There are a lot of them.” She raises her eyes to me. “I think you should find one.”

  “One what?”

  “A jinn.” She straightens. “I think you should find a female jinn. To be with.”

  I'm taken back. Is this her attempt to get rid of me? Are the shared secrets not enough glue anymore? Or does she really think I want to replace her with a genie?

  “I don't want to be with a jinn,” I say. My heart chokes trying to understand she could even think this.

  “That's who you identify with,” she says, voice even. “You would be happy with a jinn.”

  Something inside me snaps.

  “You know what? Fine. I'll be with a jinn.” I stalk closer to her then halt. “You wanted to track that female jinn down, so I did. You wanted to join JiNet, so I did. You wanted me to do these stupid tasks, so I did. Tell me what I want to be happy too. Tell me who I love. Just go pick a jinn—tell me which one, Syd—and I'll go be with her.”

  Syd opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off.

  “You should have kept the fuckin' master bond.” I yank my jacket off the bed and storm toward the exit. “It would have been easier for both of us.”

  I slam the door shut behind me.

  ***

  I throw all of the tools in the backseat of the Jetta into the trunk, then stretch out. It is far from curling up in a soft bed with a warm body as anticipated, but I've dealt with worse.

  I refuse to give Syd the satisfaction of returning inside tonight. She needs to realize what she is doing. Even Karl didn't insist he understood my thoughts. He just ignored them. I would rather the latter.

  After she figures out why this is wrong, she will either straighten up or I'm done. I had no choice with Karl. Besides the genie bond tying me to him, he also owned everything: the money, the vehicles, the houses. I didn't have control over anything.

  Despair sinks deep into my chest.

  Nothing has changed.

  ***

  I wake to my phone vibrating in my pants pocket. My neck and shoulders are stiff. My ankle and hand are throbbing.

  I grimace as I pull out the phone and answer it, groggily. “Hello.”

  “Lyle called,” Syd says. “He wants the vase.”

  I forgot I wasn't speaking to her. Guess it couldn't go on forever.

  “Good for him. Meet me at the car.”

  I hang up, then work myself out of the backseat. I stretch out the tightness in my back until Syd approaches from the hotel. She looks put together, as usual. I slide in behind the steering wheel, blink away the murk in my brain, and start the engine.

  She settles into the passenger seat, the vase in hand.

  We exchange sneers like we would rather travel with a crate full of rotting tuna than each other. Then we set off for Lyle's house, and we don't speak until we pull up to his estate.

  Syd turns to me and says curtly, “Please don't attack him this time.”

  “Oh, I didn't attack him.” I cut the engine and pull out the key. “If I had, this would be a trip to his funeral.”

  She shoulders her purse and steps out of the car without another word. I follow her up the walkway. Lyle answers the door, instead of the maid.

  Syd hands him the vase.

  Judging by the wide expression on his face, he recognizes it as something more than a piece of local art. I would be intrigued, but any interest has fizzled away.

  He looks at Syd. “No problems this time?”

  “None,” she says with a pleasant smile.

  I grind my teeth.

  “Fantastic.” Lyle is like a giddy little boy who can't wait to show off his new baseball card to his pals. He passes under the glass archway and places the vase on the coffee table, then turns back to Syd. “The quarterly gathering is next week in Phoenix. We would love you to come out, you and your jinn.”

  Relief spreads across Syd's entire body. “We'd love to.”

  “Fantastic! We just have this one last test.”

  I grind my teeth harder.

  Syd goes rigid again. “Another one?”

  “Well, we have three houses, as I explained.” Lyle gestures for us to sit, and we all take our places. “Normally a new jinn would test out for each house and then be placed. But even though he fits into the house we were hoping to fill, it's only fair he has as many tests.”

  As logical as his argument is on the surface, it reeks like a beef farm before slaughter.

  “Of course,” Syd says, but her throat is tight.

  Lyle doesn't seem to notice, but I know her better than anyone. I wonder if she realizes that.

  “There's an academy in Santa Clarita,” Lyle says, leaning back in his leather chair. “We just need their tax records. I even have a floor plan. Did you bring the tablet?”

  Syd pulls the tablet from her purse and passes it to him.

  “Fantastic.” He grins. “I'll just load this up, and you can be on your way.”

  I take the passenger seat on the way back from Lyle's house to our hotel. Syd and I don't even acknowledge each other until we're well into the trip.

  Then I speak through clenched teeth. “You know what Lyle needs?”

  “Please don't, Dim.” She sighs, then says, “Let me guess. A bullet in the brain? A crushed windpipe?”

  “A thesaurus.”

  She chokes a laugh. “What?”

  “If he says 'fantastic' one more time, I'm going to cram a thesaurus down his trap.”

  “Yeah. . .” She drifts off into thought.

  I lie back against my seat and stare out the windshield. We only have a few days before the JiNet quarterly party. Syd hasn't said anything yet, but denying her this is like denying her the prom. That means not only do I need to go steal tax records, I have to do it soon or we won't get to RSVP.

  With a sigh, I pick up the tablet from next to the console and start paging through the new information Lyle loaded onto it. The floor plan has the target room marked, but none of the others. Hopefully it's not stuffed full of all the tax records from the last twenty years.

  I try to remember my argument of why I wasn't going to do this anymore. The argument of how I was done. Then I realize I never had one.

  I guess I really do live to serve.

  I go back to reading the tablet and find a nifty little detail about the academy. It's equipped with an alarm system. A good one that cutting the power to the building won't override.

  The answer is both obvious and frustrating: I have to go during the day. That way, the alarm won't be engaged because people will be there.

  I only know two ways to get into a building during hour
s of operation. First, use a fake ID. Karl always handled getting a hold of those, and I wouldn't know where to start.

  Second, create a diversion.

  I do know a lot of ways to create a diversion.

  “Oh, you have that look,” Syd says, interrupting my thoughts.

  As much as I want to drill home I'm pissed off at her, I have to grin. She sounds mortified.

  “Dim, we need to go the store, don't we?”

  I give her a sly smile. “You know it.”

  ***

  We make a marathon trip to the store, and then unload the loot into the hotel room. I sit on the bed to run over the checklist in my brain. I have sugar, candle wax, a package of toilet paper, a scale, a small bowl, another single burner, a few pots, a power strip, a hot glue gun, paper, cardboard, tape, scissors, and food dye.

  I look up at Syd. She is standing by the table, staring at me.

  “Now I just need two other little things,” I say.

  “Glitter and confetti?”

  I grin, realizing I might get a little too excited about making homemade disasters. I push down the thought. “Not glitter and confetti, but close. Potassium nitrate and some visco fuse.”

  “Come again?”

  “Only if you're on top.”

  Apparently, I suck at this being mad thing. Maybe next time.

  She smiles, and her shoulders relax. “Where do we get this nitrate visco whatever?”

  “Well, we could get something with potassium nitrate in it and filter it out,” I say, lying back on the bed, “but that's not very dependable. Doubt there's much for visco fuse around here, either. We need to order them online.”

  “Alright, let's do that.” She turns to the laptop on the table and presses the power button.

  “Can't deliver it to the hotel, Syd,” I say.

  She halts, then shrugs. “I'll setup a post office box tomorrow.”

  “Not here in California. You need proof of residency.” I sit up and watch as she slumps in the chair at the table. She looks like she's the one who has been running these tasks. I continue. “Not to mention, I guarantee at least one of those two things can't be sent to a P.O. box.”

  “So what do we do?” She sounds hopeless.