Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) (7 page)

“I’ll survive,” Fay said, dryly.

Mr. Jekyll still stood by the doorway, and she nodded to him. “It was nice to meet you.”
Really, what did you say to a lover’s critical grandfather?

“We will see you on your return.”

Fay couldn’t interpret the tone. Mr. Jekyll was a talented diplomat.

Mrs. Jekyll was merely herself. “Do hurry up, girl. Someone will need to find Faroud.”

Maintaining a prudent distance from each other, the two women exited to a wide corridor where three people could walk comfortably side by side. A last glance back at Steve showed that his frown had returned. Fay smiled at him. He might worry, but there was no need. She’d faced hostility before, and in a way, his grandmother’s overt dislike was easier to endure than a false show of acceptance.

A middle-aged woman walked towards them, wearing the nondescript black clothing that could be a maid’s uniform, but wasn’t. The woman moved with the wary readiness of a fighter and her dark brown eyes assessed Fay as she would an opponent. She flexed her fingers.

“Lilith,” Mrs. Jekyll said peremptorily, stopping and commanding the other woman to do likewise. “Find Faroud, please. Ms. Olwen requires use of our portal.” She walked on.

Fay paused a second, curious as to Lilith’s reaction.

The woman held Fay’s gaze as she drew a phone out of her pocket.

Fay resumed walking. Even straining her ears, she barely heard the relayed order.

“Send Faroud to the portal, now.”

Mrs. Jekyll couldn’t take a half-trained teenager in a fight, but she had power in the Suzerain’s fort. Her orders were obeyed. Would that hold true when she was no longer partner to the Suzerain, but merely the new Suzerain’s grandmother? How important was her status to her? What would she sacrifice to protect it?

Fay’s Collegium guardian training was part of her. She couldn’t help but calculate threats.

The corridor turned at right angles, heading towards the rear of the fort. One door stood ajar, showing a light-filled room open to an inner courtyard. The furniture was casual and over-sized. Three people lounged on it in the quick glimpse Fay caught. On the other side of the corridor, where the rooms faced out, the doors were all closed. From behind one came the murmur of voices. The corridor had the air of an office space, impersonal. They were probably walking through the administrative headquarters of the Suzerainty.

Mrs. Jekyll stopped at an elevator. She pushed the
down
button.

In a building this ancient, Fay had expected stairs. Portals were always at ground, or slightly below ground, level. She grimaced, wondering if the appropriate name for the chamber she was going to would be “dungeon”.

The elevator doors opened. Mrs. Jekyll stepped in.

The elevator had wood paneling, no mirrors, and no apparent surveillance equipment. Then again, by this point, the fort’s security staff would know who was inside.

Fay entered and the doors closed, silently.

Descending to the portal wouldn’t take long. Mrs. Jekyll knew that better than Fay. The doors had barely closed, the elevator just easing into movement, when she spoke. “Don’t break my grandson’s heart. He’s risking more than you know.”

It wasn’t the gambit Fay had anticipated. She stared at the elderly were.

Mrs. Jekyll stared back, mouth compressed. Conversation over.
The elevator doors opened and she walked out.

I hate politics.
Fay hated the games people played. Her dad had used her emotions against her for years. He’d exploited her loyalty to further his power. Would Mrs. Jekyll use Fay’s love for Steve against Fay, or could the warning that Steve was risking more than Fay understood be true?

A subtle searching spell told her no one else was present below ground, but technology watched her. In front of her was a vast space, lit sporadically, so that light and darkness interplayed. In the distance, a circle of light delineated the portal. Beyond it, fading into shadow, was the entrance to a stone staircase set into the wall.

In only a few paces, she passed Mrs. Jekyll as the woman tip-tapped along on her high heels. The portal made a clear goal, one that Fay could move towards confidently, broadcasting to unseen watchers both purpose and independence. Now was not the time to doubt herself or let Mrs. Jekyll’s words  distract her.

Fay concentrated on what she did know, on the strengths she had that the weres wouldn’t suspect.

In the last month, she’d learned more of portals than most non-porters ever did. Her mother’s partner, Jim, was a porter. Now that she was no longer estranged from her mom, Fay had learned from Jim that the items with which a porter surrounded their portal were tokens, objects that acquired power from the portal and were attuned to their home portal. Porters could navigate the in-between by themselves. Non-porters travelling between portals had to be handed from porter to porter, and in that way, travelled within seconds and weren’t lost to the in-between. Lacking a porter, a non-porter could still enter the in-between if they had a token. Tokens allowed them to access any portal and to return to the token’s home portal. Without a token tugging them to a portal, non-porters would be lost. Sometimes porters would go after the lost. Other times, non-porters died in the in-between.

Fay hated the thought of being lost in the swirling chaos of the in-between. Jim knew it and he’d given her a token that would always return her to his portal and her mom’s home in Fremantle, Australia. She’d slipped the shell into a pocket of her trousers when she dressed this morning. Knowing that she and Steve were to meet his grandparents and a djinn in Alexandria, where there was also a portal, it had seemed only sensible. Now she was glad to have the backup that meant, despite anything Mrs. Jekyll or the other weres believed to the contrary, Fay wasn’t dependent on their porter.

However, the fact she didn’t feel secure in the Suzerain’s fort threatened her and Steve’s future, and that made her angry.

Their relationship, the romantic element of it, was so new, and for her it was wondrous. He was her first lover. Intimacy remained scary and dazzling. She hated that this special time was being crushed by outside forces. Her and Steve’s relationship wasn’t casual, but they’d both been willing to put off discussion of the future. She guessed he’d been giving her breathing space to adjust to all the other changes in her life—only Uncle had interrupted their time alone. Stolen it from them.

She was Steve’s mate, and he hadn’t had time to tell her what that meant. She could guess at the depth of the commitment, but she needed the words. She needed, too, to know what the implications of the bond were. Could it be destroyed?

She kept her face expressionless, aware of surveillance, but internally grimaced. She’d spent her whole life proving herself to her dad and the Collegium. Nothing she’d done had ever won her acceptance. She refused to waste the rest of her life proving herself to judgmental weres. She resented being back in the same position, just with a different setting: surrounded by hostile forces—not threatened, but unable to relax.

Had Steve anticipated her reaction to the Suzerain’s fort and its inhabitants? Did it explain why he’d been so intent on showing her his beautiful villa and insisting she view it as her home, too? So many questions. They needed to talk—away from the fort, his family and the djinn. Maybe he’d presented his villa simply as a promise that they could build a beautiful life together? But what would she bring to that life? He was offering her everything.

A wry grin kicked up the corners of Fay’s mouth. Everything, including the sort of problem she was qualified to deal with: a rogue mage.

There probably wasn’t a better way to build her reputation with the weres.

Ironic, unless…was Uncle actually trying to be helpful? Fay almost stumbled at the thought. If he was, then Mrs. Jekyll’s warning that Steve risked more than Fay knew seemed more like an attempt to overset her than the truth. But the woman was genuinely fond of Steve. There’d been real emotion between grandmother and grandson.

Mystery upon mystery, and Fay loathed not knowing the rules of the were world. She and Steve had both assumed she’d be able to ease into it. She should have known life would never be that simple for her.

As she reached the portal, Fay dismissed her musings and concentrated. She heard the echo of Mrs. Jekyll’s heels striking the stone floor, coming closer. Fay skirted the portal so that it lay between them.

Lights fixed to the vaulted ceiling illuminated the portal and gave its surface the shimmering appearance of mercury. Around it were set woven cords.

Cords were a disappointingly commonplace item to use as tokens. Cynthia, the porter Fay hoped would receive her in New York—a freelancer not registered with the Collegium—used fluffy toys as tokens. On the other hand, Fay couldn’t see Steve willingly carrying a fluffy toy around with him. Cords were practical. Tied in a loop, a were could wear one no matter the form in which they entered the portal. A leopard didn’t have pockets.

Fay resisted the temptation to touch Jim’s shell token in her pocket. No need to indicate to anyone its presence or her unsettled feeling. Fay looked across a quarter arc of the portal as a single set of footsteps pattered down the stone staircase.

There was a casual, practiced rhythm to the steps. The person descending was accustomed to entering the dungeon.

“Good afternoon.” The eager voice matched the jaunty figure that launched itself into the room. The man appeared to be in his sixties, which would make him an experienced porter. He had white hair tied back in a skinny ponytail, and wore jeans and a cotton shirt with a drawstring neckline and flapping sleeves. His feet were bare. He was part hippie, part just himself.

“I am Faroud.” Faded blue eyes stared expectantly at Fay.

“I’m Fay Olwen.”

“I saw you enter the café with Steve.”

A whole lot of weres had, but Faroud couldn’t be one of them. Oh, he might have been in the café and seen her with Steve, but being a porter required magic, which the were didn’t have. Ergo, Faroud wasn’t a were, and without were senses, he wouldn’t know she was Steve’s mate—unless gossip told him so.

Judging by the avidity with which Faroud studied her, gossip had exploded like a firestorm.

Fay decided to ignore it. Neither confirm nor deny. “I need to travel to New York.”

“
Now
, Faroud,” Mrs. Jekyll prompted.

The porter flashed Mrs. Jekyll a sly grin, a look that lingered and took in the older woman’s disapproval and simmering rage.

It seemed Mrs. Jekyll had also guessed the extent of the gossip. Her spine was rigid, her lips pinched in a thin line. The light reflecting off the portal gave a gray shade to her complexion. Gossip could turn on a person. Mrs. Jekyll had ruled here by virtue of her husband’s position. The weres couldn’t know yet that Steve was being tested—Uncle’s bubble of silence within the Court had seen to that—but there would still be speculation and debate as to changing fortunes and opportunities, given that the heir to the Suzerainty had brought a non-were mate to the fort.

“I’ll contact Paul O’Halloran.” Faroud extended his arm, touching the air above the shimmering circle.

“No, not Paul,” Fay said hurriedly. That was what happened when she let herself speculate when she should be focused.

Paul O’Halloran was the Collegium’s recognized porter. It was rare for two portals to exist so closely as they did in New York—or so Fay believed—but she might as well use the fact. Announcing her arrival via Paul removed the very slight advantage she’d have if she caught the Collegium unprepared. “Cynthia knows me.”

“Oh?” Faroud’s white eyebrows rose in interrogation.

Fay hadn’t learned all the secrets of the non-Collegium-registered porters’ network. It was enough that she knew it existed, and had limited access to it, thanks to her stepfather.

For Faroud, her knowledge of it visibly gave her an added layer of mystery. He stared at her as he contacted Cynthia.

Behind him, Mrs. Jekyll hovered. Standing in her high heels on the stone floor couldn’t be comfortable, yet she stayed. She could have crashed Steve and Mr. Jekyll’s conversation. Did she worry what Fay or Faroud might say in her absence?

The porter sat on the ground, nearer Fay than Mrs. Jekyll, his gaze sliding between them, while his fingers moved nimbly, weaving green thread into a cord.

Fay shut down the temptation to speculate, either about the situation at the fort, the rogue mage or what she might encounter at the Collegium. She centered her attention on the magic inside her and its readiness for action.

They waited in silence for Cynthia’s response. It wasn’t as if porters had to be available twenty four seven, so Fay decided to allow thirty minutes. After that, she’d reluctantly request Faroud to contact Paul O’Halloran.

After twelve minutes, Cynthia’s voice echoed through the portal. “You called?”

“Cynthia, a Fay Olwen requests travel to New York,” Faroud said.

“Yolanthe’s girl?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Fay said, deciding etiquette allowed her to answer a question at Faroud’s portal. . Yolanthe was her mom.

“Oh, very well. Send her through.” Cynthia had a snippy attitude.