Page 22 of Rub

A thick fist of ink-black smoke smashes into Japher’s chin, flinging him off me. He hits the wall so hard I think the entire building rattles.

“Wh-what…” He slumps to the floor, and his glazed eyes bounce around. “How did you—” His focus snaps to the spacebehind my right shoulder, and his eyes bulge. “Itisyou,” he snarls. “I knew you were here. You’re mine, djinn! I bought you.”

Twisting, I see Kaami towering up behind me, purple smoke swirling around him like furious thunderclouds. His eyes glow, and there’s a darkness cracking the very air he inhabits. He’s the stuff of ancient nightmares, terrifying and powerful and beyond human.

“You will suffer, Elon Japher,” his voice booms around my living room as threatening as the angry broiling smoke, “for what you’ve dared to do to my master.”

Japher scrambles into a wobbly crouch. “You’re mine, djinn,” he rasps, flailing his arms around at his side.

What the hell is he doing? It’s like he’s searching for a weapon or a?—

Triumph twists his face into a smug sneer, and he jolts to his feet with Kaami’s jar in his hand. His lips glisten with spit, and his teeth are bared as he rubs the side of the jar. “Time to obey your true master, djinn. Me.”

“No!” I scream.

Japher throws back his shoulders and levels a grotesque sneer at me. “Djinn, I wish for Aliana Barker to fall to her knees at my feet.”

I…don’t.

Instead, I feel a gentle hand brush the side of my neck over my pulse. I know that touch. I love that touch.

Behind me, Kaami chuckles, and a warmth rushes through me. I know that chuckle as well. That chuckle already lives in my heart.

“What… I don’t understand.” Japher scowls, rubbing the side of the jar once more, hand almost a blur. “My first wish is for Aliana Barker to?—”

“Shush,” Kaami orders, resting one arm across the back of my shoulders, the firm heat of his body pressing to my back.“Did you not hear what I said, Japher?” he asks, returning to his still-towering human size. There’s a dangerous mirth in his voice I know I shouldn’t find sexy, but I do. Oh my God, I do.

“Obey me, djinn!” Japher screeches, rubbing the side of the jar. “I am your master. Obey me!” His eyes bulge even more, and yep, there it is—fear. He’s petrified. Incensed, sure, but also petrified.

Good. He should be.

“Nope.” Kaami chuckles again, and I want to spin on my heel and kiss the hell out of him. “Rub it all you want, human. It won’t work.”

Japher chokes back a whimper. Or maybe a sob. “Why?” he wails.

Moving like smoke, Kaami steps from behind me and plucks the jar from Japher’s trembling fingers.

“No,” Japher protests, a whiny rasp of air. He doesn’t try to snatch the jar back, however. Probably because Kaami looms over him, muscles coiled, calm confidence radiating from him like a tangible force.

Kaami holds up the jar—his lamp, his prison. He studies it in my living room’s light and then turns and tosses it to me.

“No,” Japher whimpers as I catch it.

It’s cool in my hands. And yet it feels like it’s thrumming with an energy beyond understanding.

“Why?” Japher croaks, arms falling limply at his side as Kaami turns back to him. “How?”

A stillness falls over Kaami, and he tilts his head a fraction, casting me a quick smile over his shoulder. “Aliana’s second wish.”

I blink. My second wish? I haven’t made a second wish. I?—

Canyoube my second wish?

The words I’d uttered before taking off with Jackson Maine whisper through my memory, and a rush of relief fills me. Technically not a wish, but yeah, I wished for Kaami.

“I am hers,” he said, white glowing gaze locked on me. “Until she wishes otherwise.”

And just like that, my breath turns to ice in my throat.

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