Read Online Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) by Jenny Schwartz - Free Book Online

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