Jesse
The hum of my father's magic had changed.
For weeks, if I trusted the way time felt in here—and I didn't, or Ryan and I would be dead by now—the walls around us had squeezed against my skin like a fist. A cage built by a hand that wanted us just alive enough to suffer.
That hand was still there. I could feel the shape of it around the plane, the weave of my father's power holding us suspended in nothing. But his grip had loosened.
Something outside of us had pulled my father's attention.
I rested my fingers against the cool metal of the armrest and listened.
Djinn magic doesn't hum the way witch magic hums. It's a vibration in your skull.
A taste at the back of the throat. An itch in your veins.
And all three had been thinning for hours.
Softer, fainter, dulling down until that itch could almost pass for my own pulse.
But I wasn't ready to call that hope.
Four hours out of SeaTac airport, the sky outside the window had gone gray. Not a normal gray from overcast skies, but a strange mix of colors not normally seen in our world.
We were above the clouds, and we flew at night, of course, to protect my Shea and my sister's mate. But something was off.
A few seconds after that particular thought, the instruments in the cockpit went off in a muted chorus through the cabin door, and under that — quieter than any human ear would have caught — the sharp hitch of breath before one of the pilots swore violently.
That was when I tasted it.
Shea's head had come off my shoulder as the pilots began to scramble to get the plane under control.
Ignoring the strangeness outside the window, her beautiful green eyes had locked onto my face.
I hadn't said a word or showed any visible signs that something was wrong, but I knew she'd felt the change in me, anyway.
"Jesse?"
"It's him."
I hadn't needed to say who.
There was no turbulence or any other sign that anything had changed.
The engines had kept their drone. The plane had not pitched.
But the world outside the glass had become something new, my father's hand closing around us as the two men in the cockpit shouted at instruments that could no longer tell them anything true.
I'd let my book fall shut on my thigh and I'd laced my fingers through Shea's.
We were in a hand-woven cage. Meant to hold, not to crush.
Which meant he wanted us alive.
Which meant we had time.
Cruthú shifted on the headrest in front of us and croaked softly, the way she did when she wanted me to notice her and wasn't above saying so.
I reached up and the raven hopped onto my wrist, then I transferred her to my shoulder.
She was lighter than she should have been, and as I gently ran the tips of my fingers through the feathers on her head, pure fury burned through me that she suffered as we did.
She was a ridiculous creature. But she was my best friend.
My only friend until I'd met my vampire.
I was glad she loved Shea as I did, since I wouldn't give either of them up.
"You look worse than I do," I told her.
She clicked her beak and turned her head away, going silent as one black eye took in the eerie stillness outside the window. Fluffing her feathers, she made a deep sound of displeasure and settled in against the side of my neck.
From the front of the plane came another muffled burst of panic.
The pilots had been doing this on a loop for what my body insisted was the second week.
They would go quiet for a stretch, unable to accept what was happening and yet unable to prove differently, and then one of them would crack and the commotion would start again as they tried the radios and the controls.
The first time they'd come crashing into the main cabin, I'd sealed them in the cockpit. As I listened to them now, I wondered for the thousandth time if I should just put them out of their misery.
"Jesse."
Shea's voice was quiet but firm.
"I know," I said, and forcefully pulled my eyes from the door the pilots were now banging on.
"They're just scared."
"So am I." My mate was the only one I'd ever admit this to. "But you don't see me banging my head off the side of the plane."
Her eyes moved over me, the stunning sea-green of her irises muted with hunger and bruised at the corners from the strain of holding herself together.
She was paler than she'd been yesterday.
I could see the bones of her wrist where they crossed into her hand.
She was slowly fading away before my eyes.
"You do a very bad impression of a man who's in control," she said.
"I do an excellent impression. It's what keeps you from panicking."
"Do I look like I'm panicking?"
"No." I studied her. "You look like you're starving."
Her mouth opened, then closed again. There was no denying what I could see with my own eyes. I probably looked no better.
I stood.
Shea's fingers slid from my arm as she tried to stop me. But I'd had enough.
The younger pilot was now sobbing loudly, and it was grating on my very last nerve.
The only thing that kept me from eating them was the fact that we would need them if we ever broke out of this place.
I moved down the short aisle toward the cockpit, Cruthú balanced on my shoulder as she leaned heavily against me, and spared a look at the rest of the cabin as I passed.
Christian had Ryan tucked against him on the divan, her legs across his lap, her head under his chin.
His hand lay flat on her back between her shoulder blades.
He wasn't moving. He hadn't moved in hours, and I recognized that stillness.
My Shea did the same thing when the hunger got too strong, locking herself down, her instinct to feed and her instinct to protect me at war with each other within her.
My sister was asleep, or pretending to be. I didn't know her well enough yet to tell the difference, though I was trying to change that.
Christian's eyes opened, tracking me as I passed. The darkened topaz color of them reminding me of two coins sunk too deep in a wishing well. He didn't ask me where I was going. Didn't ask about the pilots. Didn't ask anything.
I dipped my head at him. He dipped his back.
That was as much conversation as either of us were willing to give the other.
With a wave of my hand, I slid the cockpit door open.
Both men snapped around in their seats. The captain, an older man with a clipped gray goatee, opened his mouth to say something that was going to start with “sir” and probably continue with “we need to try.” Beside him, the first officer was breathing in the shallow staccato that preceded another surge of panic.
But I'd run out of patience with these two four days ago.
I lifted my hand. A small push of djinn magic, nothing showy, just a soft stroke across the skin behind their ears where the vagus nerve ran, and both of them folded forward in their seats like someone had cut their strings.
The noise stopped. The silence after it was louder than their panic.
I stood there a beat longer, listening to make sure they were still breathing. After a moment, I heard it. Shallow, slow, and steady. They'd live, as long as anyone on this plane lived, which was presently not a question I had an answer to.
Shea's voice came from behind me. "That was very restrained of you."
"I'm growing."
She made a small sound that would've been a laugh if she'd had more energy. The sound tore at me, ripping my heart apart.
I took her hand, bringing her fingers to my mouth and pressing a kiss to her knuckles.
"Jesse."
"Come on."
"Where are we going?"
I didn't respond, knowing what her response would be if I told her.
She let me pull her down the aisle, Cruthú riding my shoulder like a judgmental chaperone. As we passed the divan, Christian's topaz eyes followed us over Ryan's head. I saw his jaw work, and then we were past him.
The bathroom was small. Cream paneling, a sink the size of a cereal bowl, a toilet crammed against the far wall, a scuffed mirror over the basin.
I wedged us both inside and pushed the door shut with my heel as Cruthú hopped from my shoulder to the back of the seat just outside the bathroom, and the lock clicked under my thumb.
Shea pressed her back against the door and watched me.
"Jesse," she began in that tone she had that meant she was about to argue with me.
"Shea."
"I know what this is."
"Good. Then we can skip the fight about it."
"No. You haven't eaten in days," she said. "Or is it weeks? We can't do this. I'll long outlive you."
"I've had enough."
"You've had nothing. You've been feeding me and starving yourself. Don't lie to me."
I didn't lie. I never lied to her. That was the line I'd drawn when I first met her. Shea didn't get the manipulations and the redirections and the careful truths I served everyone else. Shea got the real thing, even when the real thing was ugly. Especially then.
"I've had enough," I emphasized. "Which is more than you can say."
"Jesse —"
"Tilt your head back, Shea."
She stared at me with hunger in her eyes. Anger. And underneath both of those, the thing she would not put words to — the terror of watching me starve. I didn't need to listen to her thoughts to know this was her biggest fear.
I turned my wrist up between us and drew a breath of djinn magic across the skin.
It parted in a thin red line. It hadn't hurt the first time I'd done this for her, when I'd used the wreckage of the plane crash as cover to dump out the only blood bag that survived because I couldn't stand for her to get sustenance from anyone or anything but me.
It didn't hurt now. Why she still insisted on bringing those things, I didn't know.
Blood welled to the surface, and Shea's nostrils flared. She couldn't resist the fresh scent of my blood. A fact I knew well.
"Drink."
"Jesse, please —" she begged, her eyes glued to my wrist. "Don't do this."
"Tilt your head back, and drink."
With a helpless sound, she gave in.