jinn 02 - inferno Read Online Free

nobody can—and this is the inevitable end. Baker and I will take her out before she kills you or does something stupid. She won’t see it coming.” She didn’t seem aware that she was championing a losing cause.
    “Why are we talking about this again? No one harms Olivia while I’m alive,” he repeated slowly, making sure we understood. “Otherwise the person you’ll be hiding from is me.”
    Femi started to reply, but I squeezed her leg. Holden didn’t intend to outlive Olivia and we’d never change his mind on that. They were a package deal as far as he was concerned.
    Femi brushed my hand away. “You’re the glue, Holden. Not her. I love Olivia and I miss her, but you’re the one who holds us all together. You’re the one the jinn will follow when they’re released. We need you whether or not Olivia can be saved.”
    He blinked a couple times then looked directly at her. “I need her.”
    “That’s another good question,” I said. They looked at me blankly because no one actually asked a question. I shook my head and waited for my mouth to catch up with my brain. “Uriel’s concerned about ‘upsetting the balance.’ Do you think he means freeing the jinn?”
    “Probably,” Holden said, massaging his temples.
    My phone chirped in my pocket. I looked at the text and sighed. The council demanded my presence. I should never have starting poking around, asking questions about the Balit. “Then maybe we shouldn’t do it,” I said. “Do you think that’s why Phoenix was hesitating?” The punk emo jinni wasn’t my favorite person and he needed a haircut, but he didn’t seem stupid. “Maybe he’s heard something that’s put him off going through with this. You think we can stall?”
    Holden shook his head. “They’ll get over it. How did turning the jinn into Hell’s minions not upset the balance when that happened? It’s bullshit. It’s politics. The jinn deserve to be free and our angel is on board. We’re going to do it. It’s the one good thing that might come of all of this.”
    Hm, I wasn’t so sure Olivia would see it that way, but I wasn’t going to argue with him about it either.
    “Yeah, but why?” Femi asked, stretching her arms in front of my face. “She doesn’t need them to fight off Hell and the angel doesn’t agree to anything without reason. So why is she willing to free them now?”
    “Maybe it’s because she knows that’s what Holden agreed to,” I said. It still chapped my ass that he put his soul back on the line after everything we had all been through, but if he wanted to be a palooka, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Asshole.
    Holden shook his head. “She has something planned. She has new tacks on her maps. Whatever her new scheme is though, she isn’t sharing it.”
    My phone buzzed again. The council was a grand pain in my butt. I’d stayed off their radar for the last couple hundred years, but since I reminded them I was alive they suddenly had to speak to me. But we had enough to deal with without their bullshit.
    “Look.” Holden cracked his neck. “I’ll handle Liv. You guys keep doing what you’re doing.”
     
    ****
     
    I did a cursory drive by of the new location. It was quiet and suburban, so I headed toward the address the council texted to me. I could only ignore their requests so long before someone came after me. Right now the angel was the only one who knew much about what I was and I preferred to keep it that way as long as I could. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Holden or Femi. Just knowing, changed the way people looked at me.
    I drove to Joliet to meet with the council. They always chose strange out of the way locations for their meetings. I was on the damn council for a few centuries, before the internal bickering and backstabbing became more annoying than it was worth, and I still didn’t know who chose the spots or why they picked them. The only thing I was certain of was wherever we met would be safe and