Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

windows higher up. Encircling the keep was a wide strip of raked sand. Surveillance equipment added a high tech element to the defenses.
    Steve made no sound as he crossed the flagstones.
    Fay’s boots scuffed faintly as she walked beside him. She could feel they were being watched. Did they look like a couple to the watchers? They didn’t touch as they walked, no hand-holding or brush of shoulders. They’d walked like this into other situations before they were lovers. Even before she loved him, she’d trusted him.
    She recalled the demon-haunted camp in a Congolese jungle. Then, she’d taken lead and Steve had backed her up. She’d been the demon expert, the stronger fighter against that evil. It had been the same in the Collegium’s New York headquarters. He’d trusted her judgement.
    Now, he was the expert on his grandparents, the djinn and whatever else they faced. It was up to her to fill the alert, responsive support role. She wouldn’t initiate anything, but she’d be ready to act.
    They walked through the double doors and stopped. She blinked and squinted, trying to adjust her eyes quickly from the bright sunlight outside to the relative dimness within the fort’s walls. She had an impression of shadows and height, of tables and people, a smell of food and the clink of cutlery and china.
    It shocked her. She’d expected a reception area, or perhaps, an old-fashioned great hall to suit the fort’s age. Instead, they’d entered into a café. People of every age sat eating, drinking and chatting.
    Curiosity had one or two of the customers turn at her and Steve’s entrance. They stiffened, shocked at something, and like a wave, that tension pushed through the crowd. Everyone stared at Fay and Steve.
    She stared back, guarded and uncertain. Was it so unusual for a non-were to enter the Suzerain’s fort, or was it that she entered with Steve?
    He waited for the shockwave to crest. “Good afternoon.”
    Seventy faces looked back at him with varying degrees of consternation and calculation.
    Fay recalled what he’d said about weres and reputation. Bringing her here clearly risked some aspect of his power. Given the lack of communication between weres and the Collegium, likely no one here recognized her. And as non-magic users, they couldn’t sense her power, either. Perhaps they wondered if Steve had lost his mind, bringing a non-were to the fort? Did they think she diminished him?
    She smiled, and the tension in the room ratcheted higher. Her smile wasn’t nice. It said, I dare you .
    Most were-natures were predatory. By instinct, magic or no magic, they sensed her confidence to take them all on.
    Steve had also noted her response. He grinned at her. No more than her did he doubt that they could clear the room. “We’d better find Granddad before we start trouble.” He put a hand to her waist and guided her through a side door.
    It hadn’t quite closed before a confusion of question, answer and exclamation exploded behind them.
    “Haven’t they seen a non-were before?” Fay asked ironically, aware that they likely remained under surveillance by someone. She’d taken the cameras outside as a warning.
    Steve carefully closed the door. It must have been soundproof because the noise on the other side ceased. “Not one wearing the scent of being mated to me.”
    “Oh.”
    Mate . By his tone, it meant so much more than lover .
    She’d felt the difference in him that morning in the kitchen when he’d said he was in deep with her, and she’d confessed the same. They belonged.
    Mate . The rightness of it settled something in her.
    But she couldn’t help but be disconcerted at how swiftly and primitively scent had revealed their connection. Life with weres was a new world, one where things were done differently, experienced differently. However, if everyone here now knew her as Steve’s lover, the corollary was also true. Everyone in the cafe also knew Steve was hers.
    She clasped his hand.
    He