Chapter 15
“Good Lord. All this fainting, it’s worse than a Victorian novel.”
Katja huffed as she ran back over to Caspar’s body. Malek was still too shocked by the news to do much of anything. Even now, as he watched Katja take Caspar’s pulse and check his vitals again, Malek could only stare.
Caspar was a djinn. It seemed impossible, but the signs stared Malek in the face.
The strange way his parents had died. Their secretiveness and lack of any immediate family in the area.
The ammonia. The shimmering. God, even the strange, almost instant connection and pull he felt toward Caspar could be explained away by this one subtle fact: They were both the same type of supernatural.
But how did Caspar not know? Malek held the box in his hands as the four shimmering diamonds stared back at him. Caspar should have known. If the box was in the house, that had to mean—
“Malek,” Katja called. Her face was red, and dust coated her clothing. “A little help over here.”
She gestured toward Caspar’s limp body. She had been trying to move him, but when she failed to lift him, she had attempted to drag him, leaving lines in the dust. Even with her heels, she was a foot under Malek’s height. There was no way that she could move him safely without help.
“Sorry, sorry. I’m here. Hold this.” With only a second-long pause, he handed off the box to Katja. She clutched it tightly to her chest, understanding its value.
“Is he okay?” Malek asked as he lifted Caspar over his shoulder again.
“Yeah, yeah. He’s fine. Just in shock, I think. Or in pain. I can’t imagine what his body is going through, being so close to these jewels.”
“Shouldn’t he be happy to be around them, though? Even when I touch them, though they’re not my enchanted objects, I feel calm.”
“But you know what they are. I really don’t think he does. So maybe they make him sick.”
Malek nodded, understanding only a little. “Should we hide them again, then? Will he get better?”
“No, hiding them is not the best idea. Makes him vulnerable. I can’t imagine how they lasted so long under the floorboards without falling into the wrong hands.”
“Yeah, I know.” Malek sent a silent thank you to Natasha in his mind.
He was going to have to track her down and actually thank her properly, because she’d done them a huge favour, and she might not have even been aware.
Malek placed his large palm on Caspar’s back, soothing him as he stirred and mumbled random words.
This was how he’d carried him all the way to the diamond, but now, he was out of places to go.
“I think I can get someone to put a protection spell on the box,” Katja said. “Mine won’t last too long without someone else’s help. You know Twigs, right? Maybe she can help? She knows a higher level of magic than I do.”
“Yeah. She may be good. We could do that. But first we need to find a place to go. Maybe wake him up.”
“I don’t think waking him up is a good idea. I thought he was dreaming before, but now I know he’s going through his ancestral memory, being so close to the stones.”
“So we have to wait until he’s done?”
“Maybe. But it might be dangerous.”
“But it might not be, right?” When Katja only made a face, Malek shook his head. “No, no. I’m not going through this ordeal like Weekend at Bernie’s. We’re waking Caspar up. It’s already bad enough I’ve carted him halfway around Scarborough.”
Katja still worried her lip, but she nodded this time.
“Chaz and I had plans to go to a diner close by. We were going to go through the house this afternoon, actually, to see what we could find and if it could help our report.” She laughed.
“We were really stuck on the ammonia detail you gave us, and figured the house would help us out. Now, though, you may have found the last piece of the puzzle.”
“Or made it ten times as complicated.”
“Yeah, that too.”
Malek’s mind rushed with a million other questions about Caspar’s djinn heritage, his patriarch, and what exactly his parents were doing when they were searching for the Canadian dream. He had to push them all aside and focus on the here and now. “You and Chaz still have a car, Kat?”
“Yeah,” she said, glancing up from her phone. “Just around the corner.”
“Good. Because I’m really getting tired of carrying this guy.”