Exquisite Captive (22 page)

“If he’s already that close to me, we have bigger problems to worry about than my birthmark. Besides, the gods have enough reason to be displeased with me. I won’t give them another one.”

“But—”

Nalia evanesced before she heard the rest of his sentence.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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NALIA HAD ONLY BEEN ASLEEP FOR A FEW HOURS WHEN
a soft knock sounded at her bedroom door. She turned over and mumbled a sleepy “come in,” expecting it to be one of the maids with a breakfast tray. There were always three or so in the house, ghosts that flitted from room to room, working their domestic magic.

She heard the door open, then felt the mattress slant as someone sat on her bed. She opened her eyes, blinking against the late-morning sun. Malek was looking down at her, his eyes full of concern. He was impeccably dressed, as usual. He made money in his sleep, but even so, he rose early every morning to begin his endless wheeling and dealing.

“Are you ill?” he asked.

He ran a finger across her jaw and she endured his touch with the patient suffering of a martyr.

She shook her head. “Just tired.”

His eyes traveled across her face and she forced a smile. “What?” she said.

“I want to make last night up to you. There’s a benefit at the Getty this evening. Will you allow me to escort you? I promise I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

The Getty was one of the city’s most popular museums, high in the hills on the west side. She’d gone to benefits with Malek before, and they were all the same: rich people who clung to him while Nalia stayed by his side, a plastic smile glued to her face. But she couldn’t refuse him. Maybe she’d even have the bottle by the end of the night.

She nodded. “That sounds nice.”

His answering smile disappeared as he caught sight of her bruised wrists. He stared at them for a long moment.

“I’m a monster,” he whispered.

“Yes, you are.”

Too late, she remembered she was supposed to be seducing him. But instead of snapping at her, like she expected, Malek didn’t do anything. Just stared at her skin with a horrified expression on his face. Nalia sat up and brought her lips to his ear. She caught a faint whiff of his aftershave, a sweet pine scent, so undeniably masculine. Nalia was suddenly aware that they were alone in her room, on her bed.

Bashil.
She chanted her brother’s name like a prayer to the gods
. Bashil.

“But I forgive you,” she whispered, placing one hand on his thigh.

His breath caught at her touch—she could feel how much he wanted to believe that she could forgive him. That she could
want
him, after everything he’d done to her. Malek turned his face so that their noses were touching. His heat burned into her skin until all she could focus on was the closing distance between his lips and hers.

He pulled away. “Where were you last night?”

This, she realized, was how Malek tempered his feelings for her. How he stayed in control. Getting the bottle from him would require her being in control without him ever realizing it.

“I had to be away from you for a little while,” she said.

She needed to stick as close to the truth as possible. Malek was an expert liar—it was how he wheedled the wealth out of Earth’s CEOs and royal families, its heiresses and the crème de la crème of the criminal underworld. If she went too far with her pretty falsehoods, he’d know right away.

“At the theater everything was so intense,” she continued. “And I’ve been trying to figure out what it means—what
we
mean—and I just needed to breathe a little.”

His eyes fell to the necklace at her throat. He touched it with the tips of his fingers and she reached up and clasped them.

“And now?” he said.

She smiled. “And now I have to figure out what to wear tonight.”

He leaned in and brushed his lips against her cheek. “I’ll leave you to it.”

The place where his lips had touched burned long after he’d left her room.

After ten minutes of searching in vain for a parking spot, Nalia finally leaned across the seat of her Maserati and flung her hand at the sidewalk. Instantly, the concrete lengthened a few extra inches and she pulled the car alongside the curb. It would have been easier to evanesce, but she couldn’t risk it in broad daylight, at one of the city’s prime tourist destinations. She had to be back in Hollywood in a few hours to start getting ready for the benefit, but she’d needed to get out of the confines of the mansion, where Malek’s presence seeped into the very walls. She’d decided to go to the Venice boardwalk. The sea air would do her good, as always, and she owed Leilan’s stall a visit. She was driving herself crazy about the bottle. If she didn’t get away from Malek, she’d throw herself at him, too impatient and terrified of failing to wait another second. All that would do is arouse his suspicions, and if he thought she was planning another getaway, Nalia would be inside the bottle before sunset. Her hope was that if she played her part well tonight, her master would be too taken with her—and too drunk—to remember why it was so important to keep the bottle around his neck. By the time he figured out what had happened, she’d be free.

That, at least, was the plan.

Nalia stepped out of the car and closed her eyes, filling her lungs with clean ocean air. For just a second, she could pretend she was standing before the Arjinnan Sea, where the Marid jinn calmed tempests, walked on water, and battled the monsters who lived in its great depths. She’d often gone there to visit the temple of Lathor, a sprawling structure situated half a mile beyond the shore, made entirely of water. At sunset, its undulating spires and domes turned tangerine, glowing with an otherworldly light.

Nalia opened her eyes: sometimes Earth wasn’t a bad substitute. It was a perfect California day with bright blue sky, puffy white clouds, and sun sun sun. The cool breeze carried laughter and carefree hope on its back, and when she opened her mouth, she could taste salt and new beginnings. Some of Nalia’s dread lifted out of her chest and for just a moment, she could imagine what it might be like to live without the threat of an executioner around every corner.

She left the car’s top down and strolled up the sidewalk, past tiny houses that were scrunched together like old friends. Bright rainbow flags hung above doorways, flapping over unruly gardens, and the scent of pot hung in the air like temple incense. Here, humans walked around barefoot, carrying surfboards and coolers and long, thick towels. It felt as though Venice were abstaining from the rest of the city, like it orbited a different sun with days measured in passed joints and lovemaking. She didn’t belong here, but Nalia wasn’t sure if there was anywhere on Earth or Arjinna that she could ever call home. She’d become a nomad, lost among the sands of her past, in permanent exile from the land of her ancestors.

Nalia came to Venice because it was the opposite of Malek’s ordered world, with its butlers and business calls from Tokyo. Like Habibi, it made her forget, if only for a few hours, that she was a slave on the dark caravan. Nalia could smell the boardwalk before she reached it: grease that made her stomach rumble, patchouli from the incense sellers’ stalls, and the tang of the sea, briny and fresh. She turned left, inserting herself into the stream of humans that crowded the oceanside walkway day and night. To her right, a long line of stalls and blankets had been set out where artists, political organizers, and random hippies hawked their wares and ideas. Beyond them lay a wide expanse of white sand that separated land from sea. To her left was a collection of restaurants and stores, where tourists rested and watched the vagabonds and freaks who ruled the boardwalk.

Bob Marley’s greatest hits streamed out of the stores that sold crude T-shirts and made-in-China key chains, where sour-faced elderly people stood behind their registers with crossed arms and suspicious eyes. Tiny dogs yapped at the end of leashes held by sun-baked girls wearing nothing more than bikini tops and cut-off jean shorts. Their bright yellow hair swirled in the constant wind and their sandals made soft slapping sounds against the pavement as they walked by. Young humans with spiky black hair or long, thick braids sat on the cement, barefoot and playing guitars. They were dirty and loud, and when Nalia passed, one of them asked her for change. A black man garbed in white robes and a matching turban rode up and down the boardwalk on his roller skates, strumming an electric guitar with red and white swirls, his smile never leaving his face. He was always there, posing for pictures with tourists and chatting with the locals. Though the strangeness of the place had become familiar to her, Nalia felt just as much wonder and curiosity as the human tourists. It was so unlike Arjinna, an incomprehensible mix of personalities and lives. Here, it seemed as if there were no lines drawn between the races. If you were weird, you belonged.

Leilan always set up the paintings she sold across from the Venice Beach Freakshow, a carnival of strange where humans ate fire and displayed their anatomic anomalies. For five dollars, visitors could enter through its doors, though Nalia had never been tempted. Before she reached Leilan’s stall, Nalia stepped into a little hole-in-the-wall place that sold fries, burgers, and shakes. She bought two malts and two orders of fries, then made her way over to the easels that displayed Leilan’s art. Nalia hung back for a moment while a few tourists gazed in awe at her friend’s work. They assumed Leilan painted from an extremely vivid imagination, but Nalia knew better: they were real illustrations of daily life in Arjinna. Some showed jinn evanescing, which Leilan said gave her booth an exotic flair, but most of them were landscapes or renditions of unicorns, gryphons, dragons, and the occasional phoenix that populated their realm. Her paintings were lovely, rich in color, and so real that the subjects practically jumped off the canvas—which they did in glimmering 3-D for the jinn who bought them.

Nalia gazed at the paintings, her heart thudding against her chest as it dawned on her that she might be back in that world sooner than she thought. She didn’t know how long it would take to get the sigil. Was it possible she could be back in Arjinna within a few weeks? It seemed unreal that after all those endless nights locked away in a foreign land, she could feel Arjinna’s sweet air on her skin or drink from the Infinite Lake’s crystal waters. The hope of it crushed her so that she could hardly breathe, hardly think.

The tourists were moving on. Nalia walked up to the stall and hoped Leilan wouldn’t pick up on the waves of anxiety rolling through her. Her friend looked completely at home on the boardwalk, every inch of her perfectly playing the part of the Venice Beach artist. She wore a pair of red harem pants, a beaded tank top that showed off her jeweled belly-button ring, and her thick red hair was held back with a paisley scarf that offset the bright Marid blue of her eyes. Bangles covered the scars on her wrists and her feather earrings shivered in the sea breeze.

“There you are!” Leilan said as she caught sight of Nalia. “I thought you ran off with the revolution and I’d never see you again.”

Nalia rolled her eyes and handed Leilan her food. “I don’t think the resistance recruits Shaitan.”

“Could have fooled me.” Leilan took a sip of her malt and groaned with pleasure. “Don’t get me wrong, I miss Arjinna, but
godsdamn
do I love human food.”

Nalia laughed and sat beside Leilan on the cinderblock wall behind her easels full of paintings.

Leilan pushed up her sunglasses and gave Nalia an appraising glance. “Did you go home with him last night?”

Nalia had been expecting the question, of course, but she stalled when it came.

“Who?”

Leilan picked up a joint that sat in an ashtray beside her coffee can full of money and gestured to Nalia with it. “You know
exactly
who I’m talking about. But let me jog your memory: the realm’s sexiest bachelor who just so happened to have his hands all over you for half the night.”

“We were dancing!”

Leilan’s full, glossy lips curled into a mischievous grin. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

She held the joint between her thumb and index finger, then flicked her lighter. The flame swayed toward Nalia and Leilan cursed. Nalia directed the flame back toward her friend with a surreptitious flick of her palm.

“Ugh,”
Nalia grunted. “No, I did not go home with him. I have an extremely jealous master, or have you forgotten?”

Another lie, this time hidden inside the truth. She could still feel Raif’s
chiaan
as they made their vow to one another on his roof, the exhilaration of the ritual, and the warmth of his hand gripping hers.

Leilan puffed on the joint then held it out to Nalia, who shook her head and sipped on her malt. Haran was out there somewhere and she had to steal her bottle. The last thing she needed was a cloudy mind.

Leilan took another hit, then stubbed it out. “Well, you made pretty much every jinni at Habibi green with envy. After you left, everyone was asking me about it.”