Jinn and Juice (32 page)

“So?” Grizzie growled, her smoky voice already furious.

“So, he said that he didn’t think I’d be a good influence. On his girls.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous,” Grizzie snarled, just as Tracy made a series of inarticulate chittering noises behind us. She was normally the sedate, equable half of her and Grizzie’s partnership, but Tracy had nearly blown a gasket when I’d called her crying after Mark bailed on me. I think she would have torn off his head, but then we wouldn’t have gotten our inventory anymore.

I lowered my head and shrugged. Grizzie moved forward, having realized that Tracy already had the anger market cornered.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said, wrapping her long arms around me. “That’s… such a shame.”

And it was a shame. My friends wanted me to move on, my dad wanted me to move on. Hell, except for that tiny sliver of me that was still frozen in guilt,
I
wanted to move on. But the rest of Rockabill, it seems, didn’t agree.

Grizzie brushed the bangs back from my eyes, and when she saw tears glittering she intervened, Grizelda-style. Dipping me like a tango dancer, she growled sexily, “Baby, I’m gonna butter yo’ bread…” before burying her face in my exposed belly and giving me a resounding zerbert.

That did just the trick. I was laughing again, thanking my stars for about the zillionth time that they had brought Grizzie and Tracy back to Rockabill because I didn’t know what I would have done without them. I gave Tracy her own hug for the present, and then took it to the back room with my stuff. I opened the box to give the red satin one last parting caress, and then closed it with a contented sigh.

It would look absolutely gorgeous in my dirty drawer.

We only had a few things to do to get the store ready for opening, which left much time for chitchat. About a half hour of intense gossip later, we had pretty much exhausted “what happened when you were gone” as a subject of conversation and had started in on plans for the coming week, when the little bell above the door tinkled. My heart sank when I saw it was Linda Allen, self-selected female delegate for my own personal persecution squad. She wasn’t quite as bad as Stuart Gray, who hated me even more than Linda did, but she did her best to keep up with him.

Speaking of the rest of Rockabill
, I thought, as Linda headed toward romance.

She didn’t bother to speak to me, of course. She just gave me one of her loaded looks that she could fire off like a World War II gunship. The looks always said the same things. They spoke of the fact that I was the girl whose crazy mother had shown up in the center of town out of nowhere,
naked
, in the middle of a storm. The fact that she’d
stolen
one of the most eligible Rockabill bachelors and
ruined him for life
. The fact that she’d
given birth to a baby
without being married
. The fact that I insisted on being
that child
and upping the ante by being
just as weird as my mother
. That was only the tip of the vituperative iceberg that Linda hauled into my presence whenever she had the chance.

Unfortunately, Linda read nearly as compulsively as I did, so I saw her at least twice a month when she’d come in for a new stack of romance novels. She liked a very particular kind of plot: the sort where the pirate kidnaps some virgin damsel, rapes her into loving him, and then dispatches lots of seamen while she polishes his cutlass. Or where the Highland clan leader kidnaps some virginal English Rose, rapes her into loving him, and then kills entire armies of Sassenachs while she stuffs his haggis. Or where the Native American warrior kidnaps a virginal white settler, rapes her into loving him, and then kills a bunch of colonists while she whets his tomahawk. I hated to get Freudian on Linda, but her reading patterns suggested some interesting insights into why she was such a complete bitch.

Tracy had received a phone call while Linda was picking out her books, and Grizelda was sitting on a stool far behind the counter in a way that clearly said “I’m not actually working, thanks.” But Linda pointedly ignored the fact that I was free to help her, choosing, instead, to stand in front of Tracy. Tracy gave that little eye gesture where she looked at Linda, then looked at me, as if to say, “She can help you,” but Linda insisted on being oblivious to my presence. Tracy sighed and cut her telephone conversation short. I knew that Tracy would love to tell Linda to stick her attitude where the sun don’t shine, but Read It and Weep couldn’t afford to lose a customer who was as good at buying books as she was at being a snarky snake face. So Tracy rang up Linda’s purchases and bagged them for
her as politely as one can without actually being friendly and handed the bag over to Linda.

Who, right on cue, gave me her parting shot, the look I knew was coming but was never quite able to deflect.

The look that said,
There’s the freak who killed her own boyfriend
.

She was wrong, of course. I hadn’t actually killed Jason. I was just the reason he was dead.

If you enjoyed

JINN AND JUICE

look out for

HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN

Book One of the Crescent City series

by Kristen Painter

New Orleans, 2068

A
ugustine trailed his fingers over the silky shoulder of one of his mocha-skinned bedmates. He dare not wake her, or her sister sleeping on the other side of him, or he feared he’d never get home in time for lunch with his dear Olivia. He felt a twinge of guilt that he’d spent his first night back in New Orleans in the company of “strange” women, as Olivia would call them, but only a twinge. A man had needs, after all.

The woman sighed contentedly at his touch, causing him to do the same. Last night had been just the right amount of fun to welcome him home. He eased onto his back and folded his arms behind his head, a satisfied smile firmly in place. The Santiago sisters from Mobile, Alabama, had earned their sleep.

Outside the Hotel Monteleone, the city was just waking up.
Delivery trucks rumbled through the Quarter’s narrow streets, shopkeepers washed their sidewalks clean of last night’s revelries and the bitter scent of chicory coffee filled the air with a seductive, smoky darkness. Day or night, there was no mistaking the magic of New Orleans. And damn, he’d missed it.

His smile widened. He wasn’t much for traveling and that’s all he’d done these past few months. Things had gotten hot after he’d given his estranged brother’s
human
friend entrance to the fae plane. Ditching town was the only way to keep the Elektos off his back. The damn fae high council had never liked him much. Violating such a sacred rule as allowing a mortal access to the fae plane had shot him to the top of their blacklist.

Smile fading, he sighed. If two and a half months away wasn’t enough, then he’d have to figure something else out. He didn’t like being away from Livie for so long. He could imagine the size of her smile when he strolled in this afternoon. She’d been more of a mother to him than his own had, not a feat that required much effort, but Olivia had saved him from the streets. From himself.

There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for her.

With that thought, he extricated himself from the bedcovers and his sleeping partners and began the hunt for his clothing. When he’d dressed, he stood before the vanity mirror and finger-combed his hair around his recently grown-out horns. They followed the curve of his skull, starting near his forehead, then arching around to end with sharp points near his cheekbones. He preferred them ground down, but growing them out had helped him blend with the rest of the fae population. Most fae also added ornate silver bands and capped the tips in filigree, but he wasn’t into that.

His jeans, black T-shirt and motorcycle boots weren’t much
to look at, but the horns were all it took for most mortal women to go positively weak. Standard fae-wear typically included a lot of magically enhanced leather, which was perfect for a city like NOLA, where being a little theatrical was almost expected, but you had to have plastic for spendy gear like that.

Satisfied, he walked back to the women who’d been his unsuspecting welcome-home party and stood quietly at the side of the bed.

Pressing his fingertips together, he worked the magic that ran in his veins, power born of the melding of his smokesinger and shadeux fae bloodlines, power that had blossomed when he’d finally opened himself up to it. Power he’d learned to use through trial and error and the help of a good friend.

He smiled. It would be great to see Dulcinea again, too.

Slowly, he drew his fingers apart and threads of smoke spun out between them. The strands twisted and curled between his fingers until the nebulous creation took the shape of a rose.

Gentle heat built in the bones of his hands and arms, a pleasurable sensation that gave him great satisfaction.

The form solidified further, then Augustine flicked one wrist to break the connection. With that free hand, he grasped the stem. The moment he touched it, the stem went green and royal purple filled the flower’s petals. He lifted it to his nose, inhaling its heady perfume. Fae magic never ceased to amaze him. He tucked the flower behind his ear and quickly spun another, then laid the blooms on the sisters’ pillows.

Pleased with his work, he picked up his bag, pulled a black compact from the pocket of his jeans and flipped it open to reveal a mirror. The mirror was nothing special, just a piece of silver-backed glass, but that was all any fae needed to travel from one place to another.

“Thanks for a wonderful evening, ladies,” he whispered.
Focusing on his reflection, he imagined himself back at Livie’s. The familiar swirl of vertigo tugged at him as the magic drew him through.

A second later, when he glanced away from his reflection, he was home.

Harlow Goodwin held paper documents so rarely that if the stark white, unrecycled stock in her hands were anything else than the death knell to her freedom, she’d be caressing it with her bare fingers, willing to risk any residual emotions left from the person who’d last touched it—it wasn’t like she could read objects the way she could people or computers, but every once in a while, if the thing had been touched by someone else recently, something leaked through. In this case, she kept her gloves on. This wasn’t any old paper; this was the judgment that was about to bring an abrupt and miserable end to life as she knew it.

They couldn’t even have the decency to wait to deliver it until after she’d had her morning coffee. For once, she wished it had been another of her mother’s missives pleading with her to come for a visit.

She read the sum again. Eight hundred fifty thousand dollars. Eight five zero zero zero zero. She’d heard it in court when the judge had pronounced her sentence, but seeing it in black-and-white, in letters that couldn’t be backspaced over and deleted, made the hollowness inside her gape that much wider.

How in the hell was she going to pay off eight hundred and fifty freaking thousand dollars? Might as well have been a million. Or a hundred million. She couldn’t pay it, even if she wanted to. That queasy feeling came over her again, like she
might hurl the ramen noodles she’d choked down for dinner. Moments like this, not having a father cut through her more sharply than ever. She knew that if her mother had allowed him into her life, he’d be here, taking care of her. He’d know what to do, how to handle it. That’s what fathers did, wasn’t it?

At least that’s what Harlow’s father did in her fantasies. And fantasies were all she had, because Olivia Goodwin hadn’t only kept that secret from the paparazzi; she’d also kept it from her daughter.

Oh, Harlow had tried to find him. She’d searched every possibility she could think of, traced her mother’s path during the month of her conception, but her mother had been on tour for a movie premiere. Thirty-eight cities in twelve different countries. The number of men she could have come in contact with was staggering.

Harlow’s father, whoever he was, remained a mystery.

Heart aching with the kind of loss she’d come to think of as normal, she tossed the papers onto her desk, collapsed onto her unmade bed and dropped her head into her hands. The five-monitor computer station on her desk hummed softly, a sound she generally considered soothing, but today it only served to remind her of how royally she’d been duped. Damn it.

The client who’d hired her to test his new security system and retrieve a set of files had actually given her false information. She’d ended up hacking into what she’d belatedly guessed was his rival’s company and accessing their top-secret formula for a new drug protocol. Shady SOB.

She shuddered, thinking what her punishment might have been if she’d actually delivered that drug formula into her client’s hands, but a sixth sense had told her to get out right after she’d accessed the file. Something in her head had tripped her
internal alarms, something she’d be forever grateful for if only it had gone off sooner. She’d ditched the info and hurriedly erased her presence. Almost. Obviously not enough to prevent herself from being caught.

Times like this she cursed the “gift” she’d been born with. Well, the first one, the ability to feel people’s emotions through touch, that one she always cursed. And really it was more than emotion. She saw images, heard sounds, even picked up scents from people. Which all added up to an intense overload—sometimes pleasurable but too often painful—that she preferred not to deal with. The second gift was the way she seemed to be able to read computers. She didn’t know how else to describe it, but they responded to her like she could speak binary code without even trying. Finding her way into a motherboard took no more effort than opening a door. That gift had given her a career. A slightly questionable one at times. But a job was a job. Except when it brought her clients like this last one.

A client who was now in the wind, the twenty large she’d charged him not even a down payment on her fine. She should have known something was up when he’d paid in cash, his courier a shifty-eyed sort who was probably as much fae as he was something else. She shuddered. That cash, tucked away in a backpack under the bed, was the only thing the court hadn’t been able to seize. Everything else was frozen solid until she paid the fine or did her time.

She flopped back on the bed and folded her arms over her eyes. She was about as screwed as a person could get.

Her eyes closed but it didn’t stop her brain from filling her head with the one name she was doing her best not to think about.

The one person capable of helping her. The one person who’d been the greatest source of conflict in her life.

Olivia Goodwin.

Her mother.

Harlow hadn’t
really
spoken to her mother in years. Not since their last big fight and Olivia’s umpteenth refusal to share any information about her biological father. For Harlow, it was difficult to say what hurt worse—not knowing who her father was or her mother not understanding the gaping hole inside Harlow where her father was missing and yet her mother somehow thinking she could still make things okay between them.

The cycle usually started with Olivia barraging Harlow with pleas to move to New Orleans. Harlow ignored them until she finally believed things might be different this time and countered with a request of her own. Her father’s name. Because that’s all she needed. A name. With her computer skills, there was no question she’d be able to find him after that. But without a name… every clue she’d followed had led to a dead end. But that small request was all it took to shut Olivia down and destroy Harlow’s hope. The next few months would pass without them talking at all.

Then Olivia would contact her again.

Harlow
had
made one attempt at reconciliation, but that had dissolved just like the rest of them. After that, their communication became very one-sided. Emails and calls and letters from her mother went unanswered except for an occasional response to let Olivia know she was still alive and still
not
interested in living in New Orleans.

She loved her mother. But the hurt Olivia had caused her was deep.

If her mother was going to help now, the money would come
with strings attached. Namely Harlow agreeing to drop the topic of her father.

The thought widened the hole in her heart a little more. If she agreed to never ask about him again, she’d have to live with the same unbearable sense of not knowing she’d carried all her life. And if she didn’t agree, her mother probably wouldn’t give her the money, which meant Harlow was going to jail. A life lesson, her mother would call it.

A deep sigh fluttered the hair trapped between her cheeks and her forearms. Was she really going to do this? The drive from Boston to New Orleans would take a minimum of twenty-four hours, but flying meant being trapped in a closed space with strangers. It also meant putting herself on the CCU’s radar, and until her fine was paid, she wasn’t supposed to leave the state. At least she had a car. Her little hybrid might be a beater, but it would get her to Louisiana and there’d be no one in the car but her.

Another sigh and she pulled her arms away from her face to stare at the ceiling. If her mother refused her the money, which was a very real possibility, Harlow would be in jail in a month’s time. Her security gone, her freedom gone, forced to live in a cell with another person.

She sat up abruptly. Would they let her keep her gloves in prison? What if her cell mate… touched her? That kind of looming threat made her want to do something rebellious. The kind of thing she’d only done once before at a Comic Con where her costume had given her a sense of anonymity and some protection from skin-to-skin contact.

She wanted one night of basic, bone-deep pleasure of her choosing. One night of the kind of fun that didn’t include sitting in front of her monitors, leveling up one of her Realm
of Zauron characters to major proportions. Not that that kind of fun wasn’t epic. It was basically her life. But she needed something more, the kind of memory that would carry her through her incarceration.

One night of
careful
physical contact with another living, breathing
male
being.