Free Burn With Me by R. G. Alexander Page A

had every time he was nearby. Did he feel it too? Despite his obvious disgust, despite their strange introduction, he was there. Watching her again. Still.
    Brandon.
    She turned on her heel and headed for the full glass of cognac on the coffee table. “Drink,” she muttered, wishing she could forget the last few days and go back to fulfilling her now harmless-looking bucket list. She plopped down on the couch, her body heavy with shock. “I need that drink.”
    “I need a bat. Maybe a gun,” Greg snarled, glaring at the man on the sidewalk, his hands balled into fists. “Definitely a restraining order.”
    Penn moved slowly toward Aziza, hugging herself protectively. “I could use a bit of therapy,” she joked weakly. “Aziza, what he said—are you going to listen? Do you actually intend to meet him tonight?”
    Aziza swallowed a mouthful of the strong, foul liquid and gasped as it burned her throat and warmed her chest. “Once I figure out where I’m supposed to go, I think I have to. If I don’t, what’s to stop him from coming back here? Taking one of you over again?” She leaned back on the couch and stared sightlessly at the ceiling. “Jesus, that sounds insane, doesn’t it? I think he did this to me. He must have. Changed me somehow. He knew it would happen. Kept telling me it would happen. Was Mom right, Penn? Do demons really exist?”
    “She called them Jinn,” Penn whispered, causing Aziza to lift her head at the same time Greg turned away from the window.
    “ Arabian Nights Jinn? I Dream of Jeannie Jinn? Is that what we’re talking about? The wish-granting, puffy-pants-wearing, desert-dwelling kind? Here? In London? ” Greg was incredulous.
    Penn shook her head, staring at Aziza as if she were a lifeline. “I’m not certain. No story came close, she said. The truth was stranger. More sinister. She told me they were your father’s curse and she left him—put an ocean between you—to protect you and your brothers.”
    Penn rubbed her temples and ran her hands through her curls, pushing them behind her ears as she continued to speak. “Particularly Joseph. She said you, Tarik and Adam had already been touched by it, by them, but she wanted to leave before Joseph was born. Wanted to keep him pure, she said. Her words exactly. She was so distraught I thought Zayid must have beaten her.”
    She caught Aziza’s eye with an apology in hers. “We all did. We thought he was abusing the lot of you, and she made up some mad story to escape. We didn’t argue when she took you to America because we assumed she’d come home when she was ready. Tell us when she’d had a chance to heal.”
    Her aunt was on the verge of sobbing. “Oh, Aziza. I didn’t believe her. And now he…now I…”
    “Shh, it’s okay.” Aziza pulled her aunt into her arms, pushing her own desire to break into a thousand pieces aside at the sight of her aunt falling apart. “How could you know? She never told us anything at all. Tarik was seven and I was only two years old when we left. I don’t remember our life before Dallas. Don’t even remember my father’s face.”
    A lie she’d repeated often to avoid pitying looks. She remembered him perfectly. His smile. His laugh. How it felt to sit in his lap and play with his beard as he read her stories. Remembered stretching her two-year-old body to open the enclosed door of their garden for the beautiful visitors who held her hand and told her stories until her father would shout at them, demanding they leave. The only time he’d ever raise his voice.
    She even remembered the last day. Her mother crying hysterically as she picked Aziza up in her arms and ran.
    This was about her father. Ram had said as much. So her mother hadn’t been completely crazy. At least, she hadn’t been wrong.
    Greg swore. “You aren’t going.”
    “I told you, I think I have to.”
    “If you take one step out that door—” He stopped mid-threat and she heard his frustrated growl. “