Exquisite Captive (35 page)

For a moment, those long, cozy nights at Habibi and Leilan’s attempts to make Nalia more human swam between them. Shopping trips in Beverly Hills. Standing in line to try Pink’s famous hot dogs. Manifesting their own tickets to the Oscars.

“Nalia.” Leilan’s voice was tight and uneven. “You’re talking as if we’re never going to see each other again.”

Nalia looked past Leilan, to where the waves battered the shore. She could almost feel their power bearing down on her, as if she were the sand the crests fell upon.

“Is this about Malek? Did he threaten you, or—”

Nalia shook her head. “No. He’s . . . no.” She looked into her friend’s wide blue eyes, usually so full of laughter. They looked darker when she was serious or sad. Just now, they had taken on the color of the sea before a storm. “I can’t explain, Lei. I wish I could, but it’s too dangerous right now. I’m sorry.”

Nalia took a paisley silk scarf from her purse and pressed it into Leilan’s hand. “Thanks for everything.”

“You’re joining the revolution. With Raif Djan’Urbi, right?”

Nalia hadn’t expected this to be easy. Leilan would never have just let her walk off without some kind of explanation.

“Sort of. It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“So Malek made his third wish?”

Nalia hugged her arms. “No.” Leilan looked like she was about to ask another question and Nalia raised her hand. “Lei, I can’t.”

A gust blew through the boardwalk and on it Nalia caught the scent of raw sewage: dead animals, rotting food, and a vinegary tang that turned her stomach.

“Gods,” Lei said. “What
is
that?”

A tourist came up to the stall and Nalia stood back while Leilan showed off her paintings.

The scent lingered, vaguely familiar. It seemed to nuzzle her, as though the scent itself were a conscious, living thing. But as soon as Nalia began to scan the crowd, it disappeared. She shook her head—she didn’t have time to worry about putrid drafts of wind, not with Haran hunting her. Nalia’s eyes drifted toward the glimmering ocean. The sun was inching toward the horizon, bathing the sea in tangerine light.

It was time to go.

The tourist took the painting away—it was one of Nalia’s favorites, a rendition of the water temple of Lathor with paints that made the liquid walls glisten, much as they did on the real temple. It felt wrong that Nalia might get to actually go there while Leilan was stuck on Earth, having to paint it from memory.

Nalia opened her mouth to say something, but surprised herself by reaching out and pulling her friend into a tight hug. She’d always been so careful to avoid close contact for fear of Leilan guessing that Nalia was more than the Shaitan she pretended to be. Leilan’s body went still as Nalia’s
chiaan
flowed into her skin. Nalia could feel Leilan’s
chiaan
, as well, and it was just as her friend seemed to be: a heady, vivacious energy that held the restlessness of the sea.

After a few moments, Nalia pulled away. Leilan stared at her, understanding slowly dawning in her eyes.

“No,” Leilan breathed. “They all died.”

Nalia shook her head. “Not all of them.” She stepped away. “Good-bye, Leilan.”

She turned around and practically fled down the boardwalk. Even when she was far away, she didn’t look back.

By the time Nalia arrived at the mansion, shadows clustered in the corners of her bedroom, draping the furniture and covering the walls.
Another day,
she thought.
Another day wasted.
But not entirely. She carried her determination to end the caravan inside her like a treasured secret. To have a
point
, to have a
purpose
, was its own kind of freedom.

She’d left her window open that morning and now the acrid stench of fire slithered inside. Nalia looked out the window and wrinkled her nose at the charred scent. The sky had turned a brownish purple and dark plumes of smoke rose to the west. She’d have to keep an eye on the fires—Malek would be furious if the house burned down.

The fierce Santa Ana winds had blown the smoke across the sky, covering the entire city with an ominous black cloud. At first, Nalia hadn’t thought much of the tainted air. Every year, Los Angeles burned. The fires started for different reasons—drought, a cigarette thrown into a bush, the hazards of a desert climate. They were at their worst when the Santa Anas blew through LA’s concrete jungle, but this was unlike anything she’d ever seen. The flames were moving at an incredible speed and, as she looked closer, Nalia noticed something she hadn’t before: the flames were in the shape of giant writhing cobras that devoured the earth, cutting into it with needle-sharp, poisonous teeth.

Haran had arrived; she closed the window against the encroaching blaze, a deranged calling card left just for her.

Nalia stood in the middle of her room, caught between her desire to comb the streets of LA for Haran and wheedle the bottle off Malek’s body. But she knew there wasn’t really a choice. With her shackles muting her power, Nalia knew a fight with Haran could easily end up with her dead. She had to get that bottle. She looked at the wine Zanari had given her. All she needed were two glasses and a moment to slip the powder into one of them.

Nalia’s phone buzzed and she flipped it open.

“Yes?”

“Nalia, it’s Zanari.”

“The fires—”

“I know. He’s in the city. I don’t know where exactly.”

“What did you see?”

“I didn’t see him, but I saw a female jinni setting fire to a mountainside, which makes no sense—maybe he has an accomplice? I sensed him near, though, so she must have been doing it under his orders. I’m guessing he wants you to know he’s arrived,” Zanari said.

“I figured as much. But that’s so stupid. I could just run away.”

“Yes, but it’s
Haran
. In Arjinna, he always toyed with his victims. Never a quick death. Not,” Zanari rushed to say, “that he’s going to kill you. Or do it slowly. Um. It’s just that I’ve seen what he does.”

“Thanks, Zanari, that’s really helpful,” Nalia snapped.

“Maybe he hasn’t figured out where you live yet.” Zanari’s voice was hopeful. “He means to smoke you out—maybe literally. He might think you’ll go to him so that he doesn’t burn the whole city down.”

“Dammit,” Nalia muttered. The last thing she needed to deal with was an Ifrit pyromaniac. She wondered if Calar was sitting on the throne in Arjinna, waiting with bated breath for Arjinna’s true leader to go up in flames.

“What else did you see?” she asked.

“Those things that humans use as wagons—”

“Cars?”

“Yes.”

Great,
she thought,
that certainly narrows it down in
Los Angeles.

“I smelled sea air, too.”

“Gods, Zanari, you can’t get any more specific?” Nalia growled. “There are hundreds of miles of coastline in California! That’s like saying you can smell a tree in the Forest of Sighs.” There was silence on the other end of the line. “Sorry. It’s just—”

“If you have a better way of finding Haran, I’m more than happy to hear it,” Zanari said, her voice cold.

Nalia sighed. “Of course I don’t. I said I was sorry, all right?”

“Fine. As I was about to say, in my last vision, he was walking on a white road with yellow lines. It seemed like he was in a crowd.”

“White road with yellow lines? Not black?”

“No, white.”

A sidewalk? Nalia tried to think of where Haran could be. There were plenty of outdoor places filled with crowds—the Hollywood & Highland mall, the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, the farmer’s market near The Grove.
A white road could be a sidewalk, okay, but yellow lines?

“A bike path!” she shouted.

“A what?”

“On this white road, did you see, um, humans riding small machines, like metal horses? They have two wheels . . .”

Zanari was quiet for a moment. “No. But I saw a human with
shoes
that had wheels.”

It was common to see people roller-skating on the bike paths, too.

“He’s at one of the beaches,” Nalia said. “That has to be it. There’s a bike path along the coast that starts in the Palisades, but it’s
twenty-two
miles long—gods, where
is
he?”

“Raif says to stay at Malek’s. You’ve got the
bisahm
and it doesn’t seem like Haran knows where you live yet. Or, if he does, he’s hoping to get you away from the house. Don’t fall into his trap, Nalia, he doesn’t play nice.”

“Don’t I know it.”

It annoyed Nalia that Raif was ordering her around through his sister, but he had a point: it’d be foolish to be out in the city, exposed. Haran could be anywhere.

Nalia looked at the antique clock beside her bed. “I’m going to start working on Malek. I’ll call you as soon as I get the bottle.”

“Jahal’alund,”
Zanari said.

It wasn’t just the usual pleasantry. Nalia could sense that Zanari truly meant it:
gods be with you.

“Jahal’alund,”
she said.

As soon as she hung up, Nalia fell to her knees before the altar in her room. It was nothing like Jordif’s grand affair—just a candle, a neat pile of sand, a small bottle filled with sea air, and a shallow bowl of water. She bowed low, her forehead pressed to the floor, whispering her prayers. She didn’t want to play the part of the lovesick girl tonight. More than ever, she wanted to make Malek hurt. Make him pay for thinking he could own her for a billion pieces of paper with pictures of dead Americans on them. These past few days, she’d almost believed that he had come to care for her. She hadn’t realized she was starving for kindness and affection and the feel of someone else’s skin on her own until Malek started giving her these things. It had awakened a hunger in her that Nalia hadn’t realized she’d had.

But how could she have let herself think he was more than the monster her very core had always known him to be? Malek didn’t love her, she knew that now—if he held even a sliver of real feeling for her, he would have set her free. And if he was worth one ounce of her affection, he never would have bought her in the first place. His recent attention had begun to lower the wall she had built between them, brick by brick. But knowing the price he had paid made the wall even higher than before. Stronger. As disgusted as she was by what needed to happen tonight, she tried to hold on to that wall. She would think of it every time his lips landed on hers, every time his hands traveled over her body.

Nalia was just about to change into something Malek would like—something alluring and irresistible—when she noticed the roses on her bed. Tucked inside the red blossoms was a thick, cream-colored card. Nalia opened it and after she read the message Malek had written in his elegant script, the expensive paper fell to the floor.

             
Hayati—

             
I have to go away on business for a few days. Delson will take care of anything you need. I’m sorry to miss our dinner—I promise I’ll make it up to you when I get home. I’ll call you after my plane lands.

             
M.

Nalia flew down the stairs. “Delson!” she shouted. “Delson!”

A few
days
,
she thought.
I’ll be dead by the time he returns.
A paralyzing terror swept through her, threatening to pull her under its leaden current.

“Delson!” Her voice was a frenzied shriek. It reverberated off the marble walls and floors of the main room, the clang of a warning bell, furiously ringing.

Malek’s assistant came hurrying through the dining room’s double doors, an alarmed expression on his usually composed face.

“What is it? Are you hurt?” he wheezed. “Is it the fires?”

“When did Malek leave?”

“Forty-five minutes ago.”

“Is he on his jet?”

If he wasn’t in the air yet, Nalia would be able to evanesce to him, since she’d been inside Malek’s private jet several times. It was risky, with Haran in the city, but it would be the fastest way to get to her master.

“No. His pilot was unavailable, so he rented another jet.”

Nalia gripped the banister, her nails digging into the polished wood. “He’s at the airport still?”

Delson nodded. “Yes. But he’ll be leaving for Beirut quite soon.”

“What time is he scheduled to leave?”

“In half an hour.”

It was six o’clock—normally, rush hour would be in full swing, but it was a Saturday. She just might be able to make it.

“Call Malek and tell him to wait.”

“Oh, dear. I was afraid something like this would happen.” Delson slipped a hand into his pocket and held up Malek’s cell phone. “It was sitting on the dining-room table.”

Nalia stared. “Are you saying there’s no way to get in touch with him?”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

“Fire and blood!”

Delson jumped back as Nalia pushed past him, toward the garage.

“Miss Nalia, the fires!” Delson called. “What am I to do if—”

She waved him away. “That’s what the fire department’s for.”

She had to get to the airport, and she couldn’t evanesce because she had no idea where Malek was. The airport was huge—she could spend hours looking for him. Evanescing without a specific place in mind was too great a risk: she was more likely to evanesce in front of a plane full of passengers than in a deserted corner. Making humans aware that jinn existed could put all the expatriate jinn in the city—in the
world
—at risk. Besides, she didn’t know what kind of dark magic Haran had at his disposal. For all she knew, he could capture her midflight. The magic of dreams was unknown territory for her. If he’d only seen her, she could have evaded him as long as necessary. But he’d marked her, cutting into her skin with his sharp nails until she bled. She wasn’t sure if her dream the night before had provided Haran with enough information to track her exact location, but there was really only one way to find out.

If Malek’s plane left before she intercepted him, her only choice was to hide like a cockroach until her master returned, unless Nalia could convince Malek to summon her once he’d landed. But again, she’d risk Haran picking up the trail of her
chiaan
. Like a hunting dog with a scent, Haran could find Nalia before she had a chance to steal her bottle. She longed to fight him, but she was hoping to do it
after
her shackles had fallen off.