Of course it was calm out there. Who would come to disturb the peace on Hasan’s homestead? This was his land, and although Jordan still didn’t know how all this worked, it sounded as though the djinn were fairly territorial and tended to keep away from one another.
She didn’t think anyone would be coming after her…unless Hasan had a change of heart and reported her presence here to this Danya person, the one whose land had been inadvertently trespassed upon. For some reason, though, Jordan thought he would keep his word.
Still….
With a lift of the shoulders, she climbed onto the bed, then hugged her knees up to herself. He had left her alone…for now. She knew she should be inspecting the window, trying to see if there was some way to pry it open, although she had a feeling it was as locked down as the door.
What did Hasan want from her?
And would she ever be able to get away from here without his consent?
Chapter Five
His tale of “business” had been a lie, of course. Hasan had nothing to occupy himself. If she were not here, he would have gone out hunting, or fishing, or perhaps even finally embarked on his project to redo the house, starting with the grounds, but he did not quite dare to leave her alone here, even though he knew she had no way of escaping the room he’d provided for her. The charms would hold on the door and the windows until he released them. Still….
He did go out to the porch to survey the yard and the woods surrounding the house. All was serene, as he had expected it to be. Perhaps at the back of his mind he had feared that whoever had destroyed the settlement at Pagosa Springs might have tracked Jordan here, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Whatever her other human faults, she did seem to be quite good at eluding pursuit. How many mortals had the determination, talent, and luck to evade a djinn not once, but twice over?
As he stood there, letting the fresh morning breeze tug at his loose hair, Hasan wondered if he had done the right thing by banishing her to her room. Loath as he was to admit such a thing to himself, he realized he enjoyed speaking with her. A weakness, he thought. It was only that he had spent so many days alone, even the company of a human felt better than no one at all. She was uneasy around him, though. Most likely, she could not stop wondering what in the world he was up to, why he hadn’t dispatched her when it would have been his right.
Good question. He still wasn’t quite sure, either, except that his own limited scruples wouldn’t allow him to kill a woman, even if she also happened to be a human who’d tried to put a bullet in his heart.
The day passed slowly. He wrestled with whether he should let Jordan out to share luncheon with him, but decided against it. Better to be somewhat unpredictable, so she wouldn’t know what to expect. Instead, he summoned a meal of soup and bread, and sent it straight to her room. All was silent within, so he had no idea how the food was received. However, when he blinked the tray back into the kitchen, the bowl of soup was empty, as was the plate that had held a roll and butter.
And when dinnertime rolled around, he felt even more compelled to have her come down to share the meal with him…a compulsion he made himself ignore. She was a human, and his prisoner. He needed to resist this ridiculous desire for her company. At the back of his mind, he acknowledged the truth that he must decide at some point what he was to do with her, that he could not keep her a captive forever, but he also didn’t want to choose between two equally unappealing options. Either he could send her on her way, and wash his hands of her forever, or he could let the other djinn know she was here. They would not scruple at killing a woman, that was for certain.
The roast elk he’d just eaten seemed to turn over in his stomach. Hasan had opened a bottle of cabernet to go with the meal and the wine bottle was now empty, but he knew he wanted more. He tapped a finger against the side of his wine glass, and at once it refilled itself. That was better. Another glass of wine, some breaths of night air before he retired for the evening. Perhaps the oblivion of the nighttime hours would allow him to clear his head, and decide what he wished to do about Jordan.
He went to the front door and opened it, then stepped out onto the porch. The night wind was fine and cool, catching at his hair and fluttering in the silken robes he wore. Quite dark, with such a thin moon, but that was all right, since it gave him a better look at the stars, shimmering in the blackness. As he gazed up at them, however, he didn’t see Orion’s belt or the Big Dipper, but instead the graceful oval of Jordan’s face, the rosy fullness of her lips, the clear blue of her eyes.
If only she was a djinn….
Better to push that thought away. He raised his glass of wine to his lips and sipped, then wondered if perhaps he should have summoned a drink more appropriate for the hour, some sauterne or muscat or possibly even port, rather than the red wine that currently filled the glass. No, this wine was sufficient. Anything sweet would have been too much, would have overpowered the memory of the elegant meal he’d just consumed.
This was better. He must have been more tense than he’d thought, because he could feel his muscles begin to relax as he continued to drink and watch the great wheel of the stars above his head, now in subtly different positions than the ones they’d occupied when he’d first been born, more than a thousand years earlier. At some point he would have to make a decision about Jordan, but that could wait a day or so. If nothing else, she needed some time to get her strength back, to sleep under a roof for a few nights. Even though she hadn’t told him where she’d been headed, he could guess well enough. Only Los Alamos could possibly offer her the refuge she desired.
A blight on the landscape, as far as he was concerned, a citadel of those who shouldn’t have survived and yet, against all odds, were still there more than two years after the Dying had scoured the earth of their kind. He and his other compatriots who’d settled in this region had discussed the problem many times, hoping they could discover some way to circumvent the devices the humans in Los Alamos had deployed to keep away the djinn, but there didn’t seem to be any answer. To come within the field of effect of those machines was to become weak and ineffectual, one’s powers stripped away, the very strength within one’s muscles and sinews sapped to the point where it was an effort to simply put a single foot in front of the other. No successful attack could be mounted under those conditions.
As far as Hasan knew, there were no other human survivors on the continent beyond the Chosen and those who sheltered in Los Alamos, and a few stragglers here and there like Jordan, who’d somehow managed to escape notice. But those isolated few were not enough to worry about. It was the very existence of that former citadel of science that rankled so much, which cast back in their faces every day that Hasan and his djinn fellows had not quite succeeded in making the former territory of New Mexico as free of humans as it was supposed to be.
There was nowhere else for Jordan to go. And if he let her leave, then he would only be contributing to the very thorn that had been piercing his side for the past two years.
Scowling, he drained the rest of the wine in his glass, then turned to go inside. In that moment, however, a strange scuffling sound met his ears, followed by a high-pitched scream that sounded almost as if it had come from a woman’s throat.
Jordan? he thought for a second, until he realized that the cry had come from the edge of the property, where the lawn met the trees, and not from within the house. He could still sense her presence there, and so he knew she was safe.
All the same, he set down his glass on the porch railing and hurried out into the darkness, intent on discovering the source of the sound. As he approached the stand of aspens, he saw a pale blur, a blur that now made piteous bleating noises.
One of the goats that sometimes wandered onto his lands, the young one with the mottled coat. The animals did him the service of cropping his grass, and so he’d never tried to keep them away. Now, though, the goat kicked out with its hooves, striking at a dark shape that was trying to get at its throat.
/> A wolf, Hasan realized. He had heard their howls in the night, but they did not usually venture down from the hills. With mankind gone, and the land gradually returning to its wild state, the predators had grown bolder, had increased in number. Recognizing that a predator more dangerous than they lived in the house here, they had stayed away. But perhaps the goat was too much of a temptation, and the hungry wolf had finally decided to take a chance.
He raised a hand, even as he heard a shocked cry from somewhere off to his left. Pausing for the barest trace of a second, he glanced over one shoulder, saw Jordan running toward him. How had she gotten out of the house?
Because you were careless during dinner and forgot to refresh the ward on the door, he thought in disgust, and wanted to shake his head at himself. No time for that, however.
The air was his element, and so he had no trouble making it his servant. With his right hand he made a pushing motion, and immediately a gust of wind swept out and caught the wolf, shoving it away from its prey. The wolf let out a yipe but regained its balance and began to move toward the goat once again, clearly undeterred.
Well, if gentle persuasion was not enough —
Hasan raised both his hands. Winds swirled around him, coalescing into a dark funnel that moved toward the wolf. Its eyes glared at him, baleful yellow, just before the tornado engulfed the animal and lifted it away. He still didn’t wish any harm to the wolf, however, and made the tornado move a good quarter-mile away before it deposited the predator on the ground and disappeared. Clearly defeated, the wolf loped off into the darkness, limping a little.
Just as Hasan lowered his arms, Jordan approached, panting from her haste. She wore some of the human garments he had provided for her, but she obviously hadn’t stopped to put on any shoes; her feet were bare against the faintly yellowed grass.
Her mouth opened, as though she intended to ask him a question, but then she let out a sound of dismay and darted past him, went to where the wounded goat had fallen to the ground. Ignoring the blood that dripped from the bites in its throat, she put her arms around the animal, holding it close. “He’s still alive,” she cried out. “You have to help him!”
Hasan had already intended to do that very thing, although she’d forestalled him. Mouth set, he went to where Jordan sat on the grass, the injured goat cradled in her arms. Blood streaked the pale blue of the shirt she wore, and her worried eyes met his as he approached.
“Let me see,” he said, crouching down next to her.
She lifted her arms slightly. Yes, there was a series of bites and claw marks on the goat’s brindled coat, although none of them appeared mortal. Still, the animal needed to be tended to.
“We’ll have to bring him inside,” Hasan told her. “Let me pick him up.”
Teeth clamped worriedly on her lower lip, she nodded and then got to her feet. She watched without speaking as he bent and took the goat in his arms. It should have struggled, but Hasan could tell the animal was too weak for that. Instead, it allowed its head to loll against his chest as he headed back toward the house, Jordan only a few paces behind him.
Because of his inborn djinn strength, the animal’s weight was not an issue, although Hasan was all too aware of the way its blood was now also streaked across the breast of the robe he wore. Ah, well. It could join the one that had been ruined when Jordan took that shot at him. Luckily, new clothes were easy enough to summon.
However, because he didn’t want to drip blood all the way across the living room, he headed for the back door to the house, the one that entered through the now unused laundry room. Once inside, he took the injured goat into the kitchen, where he laid it down on the floor. A snap of his fingers, and thick blankets appeared on the tile next to it. Seeing what he was doing, Jordan hurried forward and leaned down next to the animal, then tucked the blankets in around it. The wounded goat leaned its head against her arm, as if it could tell it was in the presence of a sympathetic soul.
“Here,” Hasan said, handing her a damp cloth that he had also summoned. “Use this to clean its wounds.”
“‘His,’” Jordan corrected him as she took the cloth and shot a quick glance at the goat’s underside. “He’s a billygoat.”
Male, female…it didn’t really matter one way or another to Hasan, who considered an animal’s sex unimportant. But humans were close to their pets in ways that djinn were not.
He watched as Jordan carefully blotted the blood away from the goat’s wounds. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said. “But we’ll still need something more than water to clean him up. Did this house have any antiseptic — hydrogen peroxide, or betadine, or Neosporin?”
“I have no idea,” Hasan replied. “Djinn have no need of such things.”
Her gaze flickered to his arm, which now bore no trace of the wound she had caused the day before. “No, I suppose you don’t. But this little guy doesn’t have your power of healing. We don’t want these wounds to get infected.”
“I’ll go look in the bathroom.”
“Thanks.”
She went back to attending the wounds on the goat’s neck as Hasan left the kitchen to inspect the one bathroom on the ground floor of the house. He’d never really looked in the medicine cabinet, or under the sink, except when he first took up residence here and wanted to determine that the house didn’t contain any items that might spoil or otherwise cause a problem.
The medicine cabinet was empty except for a small bottle labeled “Zyrtec.” He didn’t know what that was, but he knew it wasn’t any of the things Jordan had asked for. Bending down, he opened the cupboards beneath the sink to see what he might find in there. A bottle of toilet cleaner, and extra toilet paper, and then a long yellow box. Hasan picked it up, saw that it said “Neosporin” in large green letters, and nodded in approval.
Bearing his prize, he returned to the kitchen. Jordan was leaning up against the cabinets, the goat in her lap, its head burrowed against her chest. She was stroking it behind the ears and humming, her voice soft, pretty.
For a second, Hasan could only stare down at her, an odd sensation he couldn’t quite identify stirring in his breast. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen anyone look so gentle and yet fierce, as though she intended to will the goat back to health through sheer force of personality.
He cleared his throat. “I found some of what you called Neosporin.”
She looked up, her expression brightening. “Oh, good. The hydrogen peroxide would have stung like hell, and I know this little guy wouldn’t have liked that at all.”
“Then this should be much better.” He began to open the package and extract the long tube inside, only to have Jordan interrupt him.
“Can you check the expiration date? We’ll have to use it regardless, but it couldn’t hurt to know how old it is.”
“Expiration date?” Hasan inquired, turning the tube over in his hands. He couldn’t see a date anywhere.
“It’s usually stamped on the crimp at the bottom of the tube.”
“Ah.”
No need to squint, when one had djinn eyes. “It says 11/2018.”
She smiled. “Then we’re safe. They must have just bought it when….” The words trailed off there, and she wouldn’t quite meet his eyes.
Hasan could understand her reticence. The owner of this house would have purchased the medication not too long before the Heat tore through the world’s population, rendering such over-the-counter remedies useless for anyone except the few who remained. Deeming it better not to say anything, he quietly handed her the tube.
In silence she took it from him, then unscrewed the cap and squeezed out a thin thread of translucent ointment. Deftly she applied it to the animal’s throat; the goat didn’t struggle, but appeared to take its medicine with some meekness. Or perhaps it didn’t even understand what she was doing, and only thought Jordan was stroking its neck.
“There,” she said, once she was done and had screwed the cap back onto the tube. “Can you get me a
towel or something? I’m all sticky, and I don’t want to use the other cloth you gave me, since it has blood all over it.”
“Of course,” Hasan replied, and went to the drawer where he knew such things were kept. He extracted a cheerful yellow dishtowel and gave it to her, and she used it to wipe the last of the Neosporin off her hands. During all this, the goat remained where it was, its head pillowed on her breast. In that moment, Hasan experienced an odd stab of jealousy.
It would be pleasant, he thought, to be where that goat was right now.
But since he didn’t want to acknowledge such a notion any more than he already had, he cleared his throat and said, “So what do we do with this fellow? This property has a barn, but I haven’t inspected it lately to determine whether it’s solid.”
“Oh, no,” Jordan replied at once. “I’m not putting this little guy out in the barn. Not yet, anyway. He can sleep in here tonight.”
“In the kitchen?” Hasan asked, not sure whether he was more taken aback by her peremptory tone, or the shocking demand she had just made. True, he didn’t actually prepare his meals in the kitchen, only stored the components in the refrigerator and the pantry, but still….
The young woman seemed to understand that little detail as well, for she said, “Do you plan to come in here tomorrow and make bacon and pancakes?”
“Well, no.”
“And can’t you wave your hand and clean up everything once he’s well enough to go stay in the barn?”
“Yes, but — ”
“There you go,” Jordan said, her tone brooking no argument. “We’ll see how he’s doing tomorrow and decide what to do. And we’ll also need to find his friends.”
“Friends?”
“I saw a couple of goats in town yesterday. Lord knows how many of them are wandering around, just waiting to be wolf bait.” Her blue eyes looked very bright under the kitchen’s track lighting. “Do you know how many there are?”
“No. I fear I haven’t paid much attention.”
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