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  Raves for Master of None by Sonya Bateman

  “Sonya Bateman’s prose will keep you captivated from page one.”

  —Jennifer Armintrout, USA Today bestselling author of the Blood Ties series

  “If Reservoir Dogs and Aladdin had a baby with Alice in Wonderland, it would look something like Master of None. …”

  —Bitten by Books

  “First in an exciting new series, this book brings a refreshingly different twist to urban fantasy. … Plenty of action and memorable characters add up to an entertaining read that’s tough to put down.”

  —Romantic Times (4 1/2 stars)

  “The hostile Ian, his beloved wife, Akila, and their djinn friends and foes provide a refreshing change from [urban fantasy’s] habitual hordes of vampires, werewolves, and fairies.”

  —Fantasy Magazine

  “A book that will take you on a surprising journey. You will laugh, cheer, and root along with these vibrant characters.”

  —Smexy Books

  “Fun, touching, and exciting. … I couldn’t put [it] down.”

  —Debuts & Reviews

  “Tongue in cheek … loaded with action … a likeable antihero.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  Also by Sonya Bateman

  Master of None

  Pocket Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Sonya Bateman

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Pocket Books paperback edition April 2011

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Interior designed by Jacquelynne Hudson.

  Cover design by Lisa Litwack.

  Illustration by Craig White.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6085-5

  ISBN 978-1-4391-1207-3 (ebook)

  To my core unit at home, with much love.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are so many people that I’m grateful for when it comes to my writing, I hardly know where to start—or when to stop. But here I go, trying to thank you all.

  My love and eternal gratitude to my family, every last one of them, including Lori and Eileen, whose names I left out last time (I’m sorry!), and all my lost friends from high school who resurfaced on Facebook. My family is huge, crazy, and the best on Earth.

  My agent, Cameron McClure, and my editor, Jennifer Heddle: thank you for saving me from lame jokes, underdeveloped scenes, and plot holes the size of Texas. And for all the other awesome stuff you do. I’d be lost without you.

  My writer friends, who keep me sane: Aaron, Kim, Marta, Val, Nichola, everybody at the League of Reluctant Adults. Bronwyn, Mia, Brynn, Kris, Jen, Selena, Diana, Kathy, Connie, Stella, Jim, Froggy, and everyone I met at Authors After Dark. And more I’m probably forgetting. Please don’t kill me in your next book.

  My coworkers and friends at Bradley Communications and the National Publicity Summit. I hug you. I hug you long time.

  All the reviewers and bloggers who were so enthusiastic about Master of None: Jackie Uhrmacher at Bitten By Books, Stella at Ex Libris, Tia Nevitt at Debuts & Reviews, Tori and Mandi at Smexy Books, Vicki Browning, whose blog name escapes me, Derek Tatum at Mondo Vampire, Natasha at Wicked Lil Pixie, and the anonymous ten-year-old reviewer at Flamingnet Book Reviews. You guys rule! Also, everyone who took the time to read the book and write a review, even a bad one—thank you so much.

  And, of course, all the readers. Everyone who’s written me a note, or talked about my books to friends, or read Master of None and remembered me long enough to pick up this book, or who’s never heard of me and my djinn, but is reading this right now … thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

  CHAPTER 1

  They tell me flying is safer than driving. Every day, millions of people take to the skies and fail to crash and die. Maybe that’s true when flying involves spending hours being delayed in an airport, eating bad airline food, and hoping the person who bought the seat next to yours has showered sometime in the past week. Maybe it’s safer being surrounded by an experienced, professional pilot and crew, a bunch of life-saving devices, and decades of engineering precision.

  But when flying means riding piggyback on an airborne djinn who isn’t very good at it, and who might be cranky enough not to notice—or care—if you fall off and drop a thousand feet to your death, it’s safer to swim in a pool full of hungry sharks. When I fly, nobody offers me peanuts or a watered-down drink. I don’t even get a lousy seat belt.

  Lucky me.

  “Ian, we’ve been up here an hour,” I shouted. “Where’s this damned cave?”

  “Close.”

  “You said that the last three times I asked.”

  “Then stop asking, thief.”

  “You’re lost, aren’t you?”

  I felt him tense beneath me. “I am not lost.”

  “Bullshit.” We were definitely lost. And even if we weren’t both guys, we couldn’t exactly ask for directions. There wasn’t anyone else flying around the open skies above the Appalachians in Virginia right now. I didn’t bother opening my eyes to see if I could help. Every damned mountain looked the same to me. “You sure this is the right area?”

  “Yes. Now be silent. I am attempting to scry.”

  “Great,” I muttered. Scrying was basically remote viewing, a mental camera that could travel anywhere and focus on anything magical. A nice trick to know—and yet another type of magic Ian wasn’t good at, and I couldn’t do at all. Ian’s wife, Akila, usually did the scrying for us to find our targets, since it was one of her clan’s strengths. We were never going to find the thing on our own. “Maybe we should land before you try that.”

  “Donatti.”

  “Fine. Shutting up.” I’d give it a few more minutes before I complained again. My arms ached from the awkward grip across Ian’s chest, and my cramped body begged for a stretch. At least we hadn’t flown all the way here from upstate New York. We had a hotel room in some little village farther down the mountain, and when we finished this, we’d use the mirror there to get home the same way we’d come down.

  If we finished this at all.

  My gut clenched, and not from airsickness this time. We’d dragged ourselves here to kill another Morai. For the past year, I’d been helping Ian hunt down and destroy the snake clan, the djinn responsible for wiping out the Dehbei, his clan. Well, our clan, I guess, since technically he was my great-great-great-you-get-the-idea-grandfather. But I was mostly human, and there were at least ten generations between Ian and me.

  I didn’t like killing. I assumed the Morai didn’t like being killed. But they were vicious bastards, and Ian’s revenge became mine when their clan leader, Lenka, had tried to take out him, Akila, me, and my woman and son. We’d destroyed Lenka, and had been tracking the rest ever since.

  Ian assured me that after this one, we had only seventy-eight or
so more left. At the rate we were going, I figured I’d probably be ancient and drooling in my oatmeal when we caught the last one. If I lived that long.

  “There you are, snake.” Ian spoke softly, but I heard him just fine. The venom in his voice would’ve transcended a tornado. Louder, he said, “We are landing now. Hold tight.”

  “Like I’m not doing that already.” Still, I shifted and locked my hands together. I felt him slowing, losing height, and finally we landed with a dull thud. I opened my eyes to make sure there was ground beneath us, then let go and stumbled back a few steps while my legs remembered how to stand. “There’s gotta be a better way to travel,” I said. “Any suggestions?”

  He ignored me. I would’ve been insulted, but I was used to that from him.

  I let out a sigh and scanned the area. This was just about the summit of the mountain. In front of us, a jagged opening in the rock face revealed a deep cavern, dappled with sunlight that streamed through what I assumed were holes in the ceiling, and fading to black beyond. Cool, dank air wafted from the mouth of the cave like an ancient breath. Anything could be hiding in that patchwork of light and shadow.

  With my luck, it’d be something with teeth.

  It actually took me a few seconds to find Ian again. Nature wasn’t my element, but he blended right in. As always, his clothing was earth toned, dirt brown everything—boots, pants, vest, no shirt. He hated shirts. The leather duster he always wore, no matter the temperature, had rumpled a bit during the flight. Standing perfectly still, staring into the cave with coiled bloodlust in his eyes, he looked every inch the predator he was. A wolf ready to strike.

  I cleared my throat. “Maybe we should wait awhile before we go in there.”

  Ian’s black-ringed eyes narrowed, and his lean features drew into a scowl. “Are you afraid, thief ?”

  “Ex-thief,” I said automatically. “I’m retired, remember? And no, I’m not scared. Unless there’s bears. But my point is, you’ve been flying forever, and you scryed too. You can’t have much juice left.” Djinn magic drained when they used it in the human realm, and it took time to recharge. “I won’t be able to save us if things go wrong.”

  Ian snorted. “This one is still sealed inside his tether. Nothing will go wrong.”

  “Those sound suspiciously like famous last words to me.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” I shook my head. Once he decided on something, that was what’d better happen. We were going in. The great Ian had spoken. I frowned and said, “Look, when we’re through here, do you think you could show me a couple of useful spells? I can do the invisible thing, and turn knives into different knives. I’ve got mirror bridges and tether destruction down. But that’s it. I can’t defend myself against these guys, and I’m human. Unlike you, I’ll die.”

  Something that resembled surprise eased over his face during my rant. “I have told you, he is sealed. And djinn cannot kill humans.”

  “No, but they can cause death to happen. And they aren’t all going to be sealed.”

  Ian frowned. “We will discuss this later.”

  “Yeah. Sure we will.” I knew a dismissal when I heard it. With a scowl of my own, I crossed my arms and nodded toward the cave. “Confident assholes first.”

  He looked like he’d say something else. Instead, he shrugged carefully and walked inside.

  I gave it a few seconds and followed. Wasn’t quite as pissed as I made out, but I was getting a little tired of feeling like a fourth-rate lackey. We’d gone into some nasty fights with the Morai over the past year, and my little handful of pathetic tricks never prevented me from coming out banged up and bloody. Ian or Akila always healed me afterward, but there had to be a way to avoid the pain in the first place.

  A quick glance around revealed rocks and more rocks. “Remind me what we’re looking for again,” I said.

  “It is a bracelet.” Ian stirred a pile of stones with a foot and avoided looking at me. “Thick, tapered. Likely gold.”

  “Got it.” I moved toward the left-hand wall, where the most light came in. Ian had the senses of a wolf, and could see in the dark. I couldn’t. The thought strengthened my resolve to push the issue of learning more magic after we killed this guy.

  Snake, I told myself. Not guy. I had to think of them as snakes pretending to be humanish—it was the only way I could go through with destroying them. I didn’t believe in murder. At least if Ian was right, this time would be a little easier. I’d only see the tether.

  Tethers were important to the djinn. They were personal objects, usually small and made of metal, that bound them to the human realm when they crossed over. And since the djinn were basically immortal, the only way to kill them was to destroy their tethers with a blood spell.

  Ian never brought his tether along on our hunts. For obvious reasons.

  I reached the wall without seeing anything shiny. From here, I could see about four feet in any direction before darkness bled into the light. Looked like a standard cave to me—not that I’d been in many caves.

  Only there was something on the wall that wasn’t standard. Marks not made by weather and water and time. Curves, squiggles, dots, and hash marks arranged in slanting rows, drawn with something dark and maroon tinged that was probably blood. I couldn’t make sense of it, but Ian could.

  It was djinn writing.

  “Ian, get over here.” I spoke low, knowing he’d hear me and hoping there wasn’t anyone else around to listen. A tingling sensation prickled the back of my neck, and I backed away from the wall. The marks weren’t recent—but they shouldn’t have been there at all.

  I blinked, and he was next to me. He noticed before I had to tell him. Cursing in djinn, he reached out and brushed fingertips across the nearest line. “Ward spells,” he said. “They are no longer active. And here …” His hand trailed down a few lines. “A warning.”

  “About what?”

  “It says, ‘Beware the deceiver.’ I cannot make out the rest.”

  “Terrific. Who wrote it?”

  Ian gave me a dry look. “How should I know?”

  “Make a guess, then.” The tingling on my neck crawled down my spine, and a breeze whispered over me. A warm breeze. From the back of the cave. I turned and squinted into the blackness, saw shadows painted on shadows.

  One of them moved. Something flashed briefly, a yellow glint in the dark.

  Likely gold.

  “Oh, shit,” I breathed. “Ian. I found it.”

  A figure oozed silently from the shadows. The bracelet wasn’t lying around the cave—it was on the wrist of the Morai who owned it.

  Like all the other Morai I’d seen, this one was bald, with pale white, almost scaly skin. His eyes were yellow, reptilian, with slitted pupils. But there, the resemblance ended. At least the rest had looked half alive.

  Filthy rags hung loosely around a gaunt, wasted body only a few steps up from skeletal. He was barefoot, the nails on his toes and fingers way too long and gnarled into thick, yellowed curls. His lips and the sunken pockets under his eyes were an ugly bluish-purple, and the eyes themselves bulged from his head, glittering madly.

  He grinned around blackened, pointed teeth and rasped, “Gahiji-an.”

  When a djinn knew Ian’s real name, it was never good news.

  His burning gaze shifted to me. “Lo an riisal,” he said.

  Panic flooded me while I tried to figure out what spell he’d just cast, and how much it’d hurt. I couldn’t speak djinn too well, but I was starting to understand it better—through instinct, not because Ian had taught me any of it. Except the spells I needed to help him out. Finally, my mind plucked out a rough translation: and the apprentice. I stared back.

  The Morai hadn’t moved. He was still grinning.

  If he knew who Ian was, why the hell hadn’t he attacked? They all did, usually right before we found them. But this one had apparently been standing there watching us, and then revealed himself completely without so much as a t
hreat. Maybe he was insane. I’d seen the same wild-eyed stare from people who lived in alleys and talked to shopping carts.

  The Morai shifted his gaze back to Ian. “Rayan. Ken-an ni—”

  Ian snarled something, too fast for me to understand, and definitely a spell. A tremor passed through the cave, and the Morai’s feet sank into the ground. The rocky surface closed around his ankles. He blinked, glanced down, looked at Ian. The grin slid away.

  My brain worked out what the Morai had started to say. Prince, do you not know … Not know what?

  I had actually started to ask when Ian interrupted. “Donatti. Kill him.”

  “Christ, Ian. He didn’t do anything.”

  “He is Morai!”

  Before I could respond, a harsh cry tore from the trapped djinn. Eyes narrowed, teeth bared, he cast a hand out toward Ian and shouted something that was unpleasantly familiar. Ian dropped with a scream and writhed on the ground. I understood what had happened seconds before the Morai sent the same spell at me.

  Crud. Why did all the evil djinn have to use flame curses?

  I had no way to stop it. The magic hit, and burning pain surged through me and drove me to my knees. I dragged myself back across the floor of the cave, inch by painful inch, hoping this one wouldn’t last long. My flesh had so far failed to erupt in fire, but it sure as hell felt like I’d drunk kerosene and swallowed a match. I could practically smell charbroiled Donatti.

  As I attempted to crawl into a shadow, hoping snakes didn’t have night vision, the Morai yanked free of the cave floor. He steadied himself, cried, “Ela na’ar!” and gestured in Ian’s direction. I couldn’t see Ian, but I heard him shout in pain.

  My own situation forced my focus back to the sensations consuming me. I blinked against imaginary smoke and tried to forget that flame curses could actually kill if you believed in them enough. Screaming nerves, boiling blood, the faint crackle of fire … it was all in my head.

  Yeah, right.

  I heard one of them mutter something in the djinn tongue and really hoped it was Ian. An instant later, the false fire consuming me vanished. I gasped in relief and twisted semiupright to see the Morai doubled over and coughing up viscous black fluid. Ian had cast a soul drain on him. I’d seen him do it once—but unfortunately, it hadn’t taken the djinn he’d thrown it at long to shake loose.