The dog angled its mandibles to my neck, moving in an insanely fast blur. The hulking mass of muscles loomed above. My arms moved to cover my exposed neck, as my own scream joined everyone else’s. I shut my eyes. Wide paws crushed my chest, all happening with no time for the tiniest regret.
Then there was a collective gasp. No more cries, no more growls.
“I got you,” Faris said breathlessly, lifting me. He had an arm around my back and was picking me up from the ground. “I got you,” he whispered in my ear. He cradled me against his strong body and carried me away, crushing me between trembling arms. Burying his face in my hair, he let out a desperate breath. “You’re safe. You’re safe.”
People around us started to murmur and point in awe. I wrapped trembling arms around his neck and dared to look around, wondering what had happened. The dog lay on the ground, motionless. Its owner watched, face wrought with confusion, relief, and fear, all at once. His mouth opened and closed. His hand held the limp leash.
“What the . . . ?” This from Abby. She rushed to my side. “Elle, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. “I’m okay,” I said, feeling my panic morph into something dark and fierce. I pushed away from Faris. He set me down reluctantly. I shrugged one shoulder and cleaned my face with my shirt sleeve.
“Are you sure you’re fine?” Abby again.
“Yes.” The dog wasn’t moving. Fury clamped around my chest. Zet had used the poor animal! Was the dog . . . ? Had Faris had to . . . ?
Maven took short steps forward, face ghostly, blue eyes mostly pupil. He looked from the unmoving dog to me, an incongruous, electric-green snow cone in his hand.
The owner slowly knelt by his dog. “He’d never . . . he would never . . .” He stretched quivering fingers, afraid to touch the stillness of his pet.
I put a hand to my throat, imagining how those huge teeth would have felt. “Is he . . . dead?” I asked in a whisper so low that I doubted Abby or Faris would hear it.
“No,” Faris said at the same time that the owner put a hand on Spartan’s head and the dog stuck out a long tongue and licked him.
A nervous and relieved laugh escaped the man. “Spartan,” he said and hugged the animal’s neck as it got up on all fours. “Spartan! My boy,” the man exclaimed, hugging him.
“That dog is a menace,” the woman drenched in red snow cone said, pointing a finger at the innocent creature.
The owner’s face filled with panic, surely imagining a cold metal table and a lethal injection for his beloved pet.
“No,” I said, taking a weak step forward.
Faris placed a hand on my shoulder and stopped me. He gave me a reassuring nod, walked to the woman and told her something in a tone so low no one else heard. Her heavily hair-sprayed locks bounced up and down as she nodded, then she walked away, saying no more.
Walking back, Faris took my hand and led me away. “We should go.”
As we walked by, Spartan’s owner got to his feet. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened to him. He’s never . . . he’s the sweetest dog. He—”
“It’s okay,” I said, looking at the man straight in the eye and trying to conjure as much sincerity as possible. “I’m fine and . . .” I looked at the panting dog, “. . . he’s fine. Just forget it.”
Maven and Abby didn’t move for a few beats. They just stood there in shock, possibly wondering if it was right to leave after what had happened. In the end, they followed, dragging their feet and looking back.
“Well, that sucks. I didn’t get my snow cone,” I said, laughing nervously, hoping to lighten the mood.
Maven handed his over. I took it, even though I really wasn’t in the mood. After the first bite, though, I thanked the heavens for liquid, colored sugar.
“How the hell did you do that?” Abby asked Faris, looking at him as one might look at a guardian angel. Besides awe, however, there was also suspicion in her voice.
“Magic,” Faris said with a crooked smile. “A nerve in the back of the neck that will put even a lion to sleep if rightly plucked.”
“If rightly plucked,” Abby echoed. “Where did you say you’re from?”
Maven made eye contact with me, an expression of deep concern etched on his forehead. “Are you okay?” He didn’t seem mad anymore. At least some good had come out of the ordeal.
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he whispered. I leaned in to hear him better. “I really need to talk to you. Can I come by your house sometime?”
I swallowed and tried not to seem hesitant. It would probably be a tough conversation, but one I shouldn’t put off.
“Sure.”
Faris was eying Maven with a frown. Caught unawares, he blinked and gave me a weak excuse of a smile. The fringe of his dark lashes curtained his eyes. He stared at the ground, looking infinitely sad.
My face flushed when I realized I hadn’t thanked him for saving my neck (literally), as if what he’d done was some sort of job. True, if he had let me die, it would have meant being imprisoned again. But something in the sorrowful quality of his expression told me this hadn’t even crossed his mind. Or maybe that was just what I wanted to believe.
24
I sat at the kitchen table, nursing a hot cup of tea close to my mouth, inhaling its pleasant aroma. Faris had made it appear, assuring me that it would calm my nerves. Dad wasn’t home and I was glad for it. I wouldn’t have been in any shape to face him without giving away my anxiety. The tea was definitely helping.
“Thank you,” I said, looking Faris in the eye, thanking him for far more than the hot beverage.
“You’re welcome,” he said, understanding my meaning.
When I finished the tea, I placed the cup in the sink. “I should go to bed.”
Alone in my room, I opened the closet and looked for a pair of clean pajamas. Staring blankly at the clothes, I put a hand over my forehead and swayed a bit. Out of nowhere, a strong set of hands wrapped around my waist, steadying me. I should have been startled, but I wasn’t. It was Faris again—his masculine touch making me feel safe right away.
Fearful, frustrated, angry, I whirled and flung my arms around his neck.
I don’t know what I thinking. I shouldn’t have been hugging him. This closeness was wrong and . . . delicious. He held me tight and pressed a kiss to my hair.
“I won’t let anybody hurt you,” he whispered.
A jumble of feelings knotted inside my chest. More fear. More frustration. More anger. But there was also . . . hope, a hint of trust and something else. God, I was so confused, and he was so close and reassuring. He stroked my hair and murmured something unintelligible in my ear. An incantation, no doubt, because I immediately felt my body melt under his touch. My skin ignited and I felt breathless.
I cursed inwardly, turning toward the closet and staring at the clothes again. Strong emotions continued to wash over me, battering me like huge, eroding waves, as if I was made out of rock. Well, I wasn’t. I was flesh and bone. Nothing else. And I was crumbling.
“What does he want?” I asked.
“It’s all my fault,” Faris said in a low murmur.
“What’s going to happen? What if next time you’re too late?”
“I won’t be.” He sounded as certain as the sun would be about its brilliance.
“Is there a way out?”
No certainty now. Just silence.
Facing Faris and feeling my own surge of conviction, I said, “We need to know what he wants. Only a coward would act the way we’ve been acting.”
He shook his head in alarm and signaled me to stop. “Don’t.”
But I was tired of this battering, of the erosion of my sanity by Zet’s evil acts. It was enough. “Zet, you need to show your face and tell me what you want.” I issued the challenge and only later wondered if it had been wise.
***
The next day, at the nursery, I found Dad and Javier relaxing by the cash register
after I visited a provider on the outskirts of St. Tammany Parish.
“Working hard?” I asked them.
“We’ve had a good day. I think you’d be proud of us. It’s a bit slow now,” Dad said.
I looked at my watch. “Yeah, ‘bout that time of day.”
“How did it go?”
“Good. I ordered a few new items that I think might sell. I got this huge list, too.” I held a pamphlet the supplier had given me. “There might be a few more things we could try to see if customers like them. I want to go over them. I’ll be in the back if you need me.”
“Go ahead, kiddo. We have this under control.” Dad smiled and gave me two thumbs up. I had to admit, it was becoming nice having him around.
I pulled out a pen from my bag and headed for the oak tree. When I got there, the sight of two dangling feet startled me. I clutched the pen like a weapon.
“You have to stop doing that!” I said when I spied Faris looking down at me.
“How do you know it’s me?” he asked.
I froze, looked back toward the shack, panic tickling the pit of my stomach. He jumped off the high branch and landed like a large, stealthy cat. A panther, I thought with a chill. I looked into his eyes. My lips tingled.
“It is you.” I sat, back to the tree trunk, and opened the pamphlet. “Don’t let my dad see you.” A bitter edge laced my voice as I remembered Dad’s words. “That’s the same man who claimed to be Dad’s friend and then tried to seduce my wife.” I felt the accusation like a huge wedge, the only thing keeping me from fully trusting Faris.
He sat by my side and sighed. “Marielle,” my name spoken like a preamble to some epic battle. “I’ve been thinking and there’s something I want to tell you.” His tone suggested I might regret hearing him out.
Pretending to mark items on the list, I doodled something that started to look suspiciously like a heart. Quickly, I changed it into a cartoon cannonball, fuse and all. “What do you want to tell me?”
“It’s about Arthur’s last wish and . . . your mother.”
I colored the cannonball in black ink and drew a small star at the fuse’s tip. “Yeah? I thought you wanted me to wait until I was ready for my last wish.”
“Well, things have changed and I want to be as honest with you as I possibly can.”
“Things have changed, haven’t they? It doesn’t look like I’ll ever be able to make that third wish. Unless I want a kitten or something to rip out my jugular next time.” I laughed without humor.
“It’s not just that.”
I stopped coloring and looked at him sideways. His gaze was fixed on a pile of gravel out on the dumping field. I waited as his eyes narrowed in concentration.
“What else, then?” I finally asked.
“Honesty is very important when you . . . when you . . .” he shook his head. “I can’t.” He turned to face me. My attention snapped back to the cannonball. The pen slid between my sweaty fingers. “Can’t you guess what I’m trying to say?” he whispered.
My doodle might have exploded at that moment if it had been fueled by my thumping heart. I slowly shook my head from side to side. Not in answer to his question, though, but in surprise at the tightness in my chest.
“So what about Grandpa’s wish?” I managed.
Faris’s disappointment at my change of subject was palpable, like Braille to a blind man’s fingers. When he spoke, however, his tone was smooth and even.
“You must allow me to explain about your mother first. And about Robert.”
I swallowed.
“You see,” he continued, “when I met them, your parents were having . . . marital problems. They argued a lot. After their fights, sometimes Robert would drink, which—as you can imagine—caused further arguments.
“Rachel had no one to talk to, so she started confiding in me. There was never anything between us but friendship. She loved your father. I think you know that. She would have never . . . and neither would I. Still, your father was jealous and wanted someone to blame. He jumped to conclusions.” He paused and scrutinized my face for a reaction.
I set the pamphlet and pen on my lap and faced him. “So what were they fighting about?”
Inhaling deeply, Faris looked like he was trying to gather strength from the air. For an instant, he appeared vulnerable, scared. But after a moment, he looked resigned.
“Your parents had been married for over six years. They both wanted children very much,” he said.
A cold sweat made my back stiffen. Faris’s words grew firmer as if he knew the awful ringing starting in my ears might get in the way.
“For years, they tried everything, but Rachel just couldn’t . . . She didn’t want to accept it. Robert thought that if they just adopted, it would be the same as if they’d had their own child. But she wanted to experience motherhood. So they fought.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “So, I’m . . . adopted?” A stupid guess, since I looked just like Robert. A surrogate mother, then?!
Faris ignored my question. “Your grandparents didn’t know the reasons for all those fights and your father’s drinking. When Robert went to talk to your grandfather and told him I was trying to seduce Rachel, Arthur got very upset and decided it was time for me to go. I told him then what his last wish ought to be.”
Holding my breath, I waited, a hand pressed to my breastbone.
“He wished for you, Marielle. For a grandchild. For Rachel to conceive.”
“W-what?” As the words sunk in, my initial dread morphed slowly into a strange numbness. “What are you saying? That I’m some sort of . . . Djinn spawn?” I stood. The pamphlet fell off my lap, sending the pen tumbling several feet away.
Looking defeated, Faris remained cross-legged on the ground. “I was afraid you would react that way.”
“How else do you want me to react?” I wanted to be rational, but a sickness was turning my stomach. “Is it even natural? How can you even do something like that? Wouldn’t that be like . . . God’s job or something? Do I even get to have a soul?” I’d never worried about my soul before, but now it seemed vital.
He stood then, eyes all pupil, depthless. “I don’t know how I do anything. How I make things happen or endure century after century inside that stone. Your mother had a condition that prevented pregnancy. I cured her. That’s all. Anyway, I don’t see why you should resent me for what I did.”
What he left unsaid, that I wouldn’t be here if not for him, wasn’t lost on me. Yet, it was his tactful choice of words that sent me over the edge.
“What you did?” I said in a measured tone. “What you’ve done? Mess with my head, with my life. Now I can’t even get rid of you because some crazy . . . brother of yours wants me dead. Or maybe you just made him up, so you could stay. Just like you made me up.” I turned away. “I think I need to be alone.”
“I don’t see why you should be mad at me,” he said, raising his voice for the first time since we met. “All I did was cure your mother, the way I cured Mrs. Vance and Samuel. I think you’re just looking for an excuse to be rid of me. Maybe I’m wrong about you. Maybe you’re not who I think you are.”
A jumble of words and feelings swam in my head. I needed time to think, to process all of this. “I need time, Faris. Please leave.”
He didn’t wait to be told again. Without preamble, he disappeared, leaving the imprint of his injured expression in my mind. If I did have a soul, I just hoped it could endure the whirlpool of conflicting emotions raging inside me.
25
“Janet said she can still give me a ride to the AA meetings until we get a new battery for Grandpa’s truck,” Dad said as he drove my Prelude home. We had discovered that Grandpa’s truck battery had completely died when we tried to drive it home from the nursery.
“Good,” I said distractedly.
“Is something the matter?”
I shook my head at the same time that a question blurted out of my mouth. “Why did you and Mom wait so long to
have children?”
Dad looked sideways at me and cleared his throat. “What makes you ask that?”
“I was just thinking how you’re older than my friends’ dads,” I lied, although I’d wondered about that in the past.
“Not that much older, am I?” He chuckled and checked his graying temples in the rearview mirror.
“Well, why did you?”
“We didn’t exactly plan it that way. It just didn’t happen earlier. Rachel . . . your mom . . .” His words were strangled.
“Please be honest with me,” I pleaded.
Honesty is very important when you . . . Faris’s failed words came back to me. When you what? I wanted to fill in the blanks for him, for myself. I wanted to understand what I felt.
Dad rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh . . . I don’t know why you’re worried about that, Marielle. It’s no big deal. Your mother and I wanted children, and we kept trying until we got you. There were fertility treatments for a couple of years, but nothing worked. We decided to take a break from all the doctors, hormone shots, ultrasounds. And then, what do you know? You came along.”
A huge smile stretched the corners of his mouth. He pulled into our driveway, cut off the engine and looked at me without regret for the first time in years.
“You’re one of the best things that ever happened to us. Rachel and I were so happy when you were born. It was a dream come true. Before you came along, we . . . went through a rough patch.” His features grew somber. “I wasn’t the best of husbands, to put it mildly. But everything changed after we had you.”
Dad’s eyes locked on the windshield as if past memories played in its reflection. His green eyes lit up. “You gave us purpose and hope. You fixed our messed up marriage. Well, you fixed me, anyway.” He took my hand. “I wanted to be the best I could be. For you, for my baby girl.” He smiled, sad and proud at the same time. “I never wanted to fail you. I’m ashamed of that, but I’ll make it up to you, kiddo.”
Tears landed on our interlaced hands. Dad reached out and dried my cheek with his thumb, then leaned in and kissed my forehead with tenderness. He fake-punched me in the chin and grinned.
One Wish Away (Djinn Empire Book 1) Page 19