Read Online Kissed by Smoke by Shéa MacLeod - Free Book Online Page B

place is not a place for us. It cannot sustain us. We will
die here, despite your meddling. I should kill you for that
alone.”
    Fire danced at his fingertips and the wind kicked
up, swirling around us until my heavy silk robe flapped around my
frame. It snapped so hard, I would no doubt have welts
afterward.
    I swallowed. The Marid were the most powerful of the
djinn. Even on our homeworld they were difficult to control. Here
…
    “ Listen carefully, Marid, there is a
way.”
    “ Impossible,” he snarled. “Half my village has
already perished. What can you do, Priest?”
    I smiled at that. Despite his hatred of me, he was
still afraid. In this instance, fear was good.
    “ Give me what I want, and I vow by all the gods
your people will survive.”
    The giant man pondered for a moment. “You fail me
and I will destroy you, Priest.”
    He could try. But I kept silent and let him have the
last word. “So shall it be.”
    ***
    I woke with my face smooshed into my pillow
and Inigo’s arm wrapped around my waist. At some point in the night
I’d turned and we’d ended up spooning. My favorite.
    The dream came back to me in bits and
pieces. I’d been the High Priest again. Freaking fantastic. Well,
at least I hadn’t gone crazy and murdered anybody this time.
    I frowned. Something had woken me. I just
couldn’t …
    The first few perky bars of Caro Emerald’s
“That Man” filled the room. Phone. I squinted at the clock. 4am.
Somebody better be dead.
    “‘Lo?”
    “Morgan, it’s Trevor.”
    I sat up in bed. Inigo grunted in his sleep
and tried to pull me closer. Men.
    “Trevor, what’s wrong?” I could hear it in
his voice. All was very definitely not well.
    “I’m in the hospital. In Bend.”
    Bend was about an hour’s drive from Madras
and the closest hospital to the small town. I didn’t like the sound
of that. “What happened? Are you okay?” I must have sounded half
hysterical, because that woke Inigo up quick.
    “I will be.” My brother’s voice was a little
huskier than usual, but he didn’t sound too bad.
    “What do you mean, you will be?”
    “Morgan, I’ll be fine.”
    “Trevor.” I couldn’t help if I sounded a
little testy. The man was trying my patience.
    “I was attacked last night. In my hotel
room. Fortunately somebody called the cops and the attackers ran
off, but they gave me a pretty good ass-kicking. I’ve got a cracked
rib, some contusions, and they’re insisting on keeping me for
observation. It’s no big deal.”
    “You’ve got a concussion, don’t you?” Why
else would they keep him for “observation?”
    He sighed. “Yeah. A little bit.”
    “Dammit, Trev.”
    “Morgan, I’m fine.”
    “Were they human?”
    “I think so. They seemed human. But … ” his
voice trailed off.
    “But you think somebody else was pulling
their strings.”
    “Yeah, I’m sure of it. One of them said
something about not getting paid if they didn’t finish it.”
    Another hit. It wasn’t just me, they were
after my brother, too. What the fuck was going on?
    As if sensing my distress, Inigo wrapped his
arms around me, pressing his chest against my back and rubbing his
cheek against my hair. It felt good. And a little distracting. I
probably should have shoved him off so I could concentrate, but I
liked his touch, and I think he needed to touch me as much as I
needed him to.
    “Okay, Trevor, you stay in the hospital and
do what the doctors tell you. No being macho, okay?”
    There was laughter in his voice. “Okay. What
will you be doing?”
    My own voice was grim. “Finding out who did
this to you, and ripping them limb from limb.”
    ***
    Okay, maybe I went a little overboard, but I
get a little pissy when one of my people is threatened. And Trevor
Daly was very definitely one of my people. He wasn’t just my half
brother, he’d helped me save Inigo’s life. That meant
something.
    We were headed back over the mountains
toward Madras and Trevor’s hotel room. I was