Jinn and Juice Read Online Free

leaping up onto the neighboring building and shimmying toward the sky. Trap did the same on Purgatory’srough brick. When they had enough height, they turned as if on cue to drop out of the sky like creepy missiles trained on their target.
    Both bounced off the dome of black Fire with which I automatically shielded the Magi.
    It was Big Bertha who intervened, although she didn’t look happy about it. Half human and half troll, she towered above all of us, her enormously muscled frame clad in her usual dark suit, huge breasts straining at the buttons of her blouse. Like all troll women, she wore her beard long, framing her surprisingly delicate features.
    “Stop it!” she roared.
    Everyone stopped. Bertha rarely had to roar, given her size. So when she did, people listened.
    “You’re too late. She’s Bound,” the troll explained, using her Patient Bouncer voice.
    Yulia, being Yulia, acted like she hadn’t heard and shot a series of wisps at the Magi that my jinni caught. Charlie reached for another knife.
    With a sigh Bertha snagged her boss around the midsection, pinning his arms to his sides. “She has to protect him, sir. You’re just wearing her out.”
    Trip and Trap looked at each other and skittered into the shadows, undoubtedly planning a new form of attack.
    Bertha looked at me. “Get him out of here,” she said. “They’re not going to listen.”
    I nodded gratefully to her, turning to collect my new Master. The Magi who’d Bound me was standing there, staring ahead of him, eyes round as a tarsier’s. In the dim light of the streetlamp, I could see he was a large man—tall and well muscled, dressed in raw denim jeans, wide cuffs light against his solidblack boots. He wore a T-shirt under a thick flannel shirt cut in that slim-fitting hipster interpretation of Western gear. In the hollow of his throat I could see a tattoo—an anchor.
    “Nice ink,” I told him. “Now run.”
    When he only blinked at me, I grabbed his arm and dragged him toward my scruffy black El Camino, throwing up a huge wall of my Fire to protect our progress.
    As I threw my new Master into the passenger seat I used a spark of magic to start the car, since the keys were still in my purse in the dressing room, and another spout of black Fire carried me up and over the car to my own side. As I dove in to drive away I heard my friends shouting and Bertha, above the din, using her outside voice to remind them, over and over, that it was too late. They couldn’t do anything.
    I was Bound.
    Pittsburgh is made up of a series of tiny neighborhoods, and Purgatory, right on the main strip of East Liberty, was only a few minutes away from where I lived in Highland Park. But it felt like the drive took forever.
    Not least because we didn’t say a word to each other. Knowing Magi, he wouldn’t deign to speak to me except to command me to do something. Why he hadn’t commanded anything yet was confusing, but my jinni was determined to get him to safety. And my jinni didn’t take no for an answer.
    While I drove, I kept one eye on my new Master. He peered out the windows with large, unseeing eyes as the buildings went from glass-and-concrete shop fronts to the small row houses at the edge of East Liberty, and then to the much larger houses of once-affluent Highland Park.
    The pack of werewolves that lived on the corner of Highland and Stanton gave me the bird or howled as I drove by, but I didn’t stop for my usual bourbon and chitchat. Not least because they’d probably try to snack on the Magi.
    My jinni breathed a sigh of relief when we pulled up to the former carriage house I shared with Yulia, but I still had to get us inside. Black flames cloaked us as we hustled out of my old El Camino.
    “Where are we?” the Magi asked as I unlocked the bright-purple door that led up to our apartment. He stood on my stoop, peering about, until I grabbed his wrist to pull him inside.
    “My house,” I said, shutting the door firmly behind