He wore a dark crimson tunic and trousers, his raven hair pulled ruthlessly back from that elegant, inhuman face. His ivory skin was luminous against the rich red, and his diamond eyes shone brighter than the backlit computer screen, casting the shadowed office into even deeper darkness.
Yeow. He seemed bigger when he was angry.
He snarled, “You dare?”
Well, that experiment went well. She raised her eyebrows and pinched her lower lip again. “Would you rather give me a cell phone number that I can call?”
He gave her an incredulous glare. “How did you know to do that?!”
“I’m good at what I do?” she offered. What exactly had she done? She patted the air, found the thread of connection and gave it another small, experimental tug. Sulfurous anger boiled the air. Okay. Whatever it is, it must be like pulling the tail on a cat.
He bared his teeth and hissed at her. “Stop doing that!”
She muttered, “Also? Apparently sometimes I can be kind of stupid.”
Maybe he had been, well, having sex with his date. Mate. Mates. How inopportune was that.
If Djinn had sex. If they didn’t, it might explain his perpetual bad mood. Driven by a compulsion she couldn’t control, she asked, “Do you ever watch TV?”
Suddenly he was across the room and bending over her, huge hands clenched on the arms of her chair. “What do you want, human?”
She frowned, starting to get angry herself. “First you butt in where you don’t belong. You trespass and visit with my kids without permission. Now you yell at me simply because I want to have a talk with you? You are an inconsistent, irascible son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
He cocked his head, his eyes narrowed, and growled, “Baiting me is more than kind of stupid.”
She threw up her hands. “I’m not baiting you! I called but you didn’t answer! If you didn’t want to be interrupted, why did you leave that thread? I had no idea Djinn were so fragile. I certainly didn’t mean to hurt you when I yanked your chain.” She shrugged and made a mea culpa gesture. “Okay, maybe that bit was baiting.”
Somewhere in the house, one of the ghosts chuckled. Khalil didn’t seem to notice either the ghost’s presence or Grace’s digs. Instead he lifted his head and stared in the direction of the hall. “Are the children all right?”
Her angry sense of mischief melted into a confused twist of emotion. This glorious, strange entity really cared about the welfare of her kids. She said quickly, “They’re fine.”
Those fierce diamond eyes came back around to her. “You will now tell me why you summoned me,” he said in that low, pure voice of his that held not a hint of softness, “or I will make you sorry.”
She lost her breath. She felt as if a five-hundred-pound Bengal tiger had padded up to growl in her face. In a way, it had. Her gaze turned wary as she searched his hard ivory face. “I…summoned you? I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing.”
Khalil’s penetrating eyes searched her expression. “You have no idea what you did,” he said, his tone suspicious.
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Are you telling me you have no truthsense?” she said. “Because if you are, I’m going to ask you to pull the other one.”
“Pull the other what?” he said, his face going blank.
“Pull the other leg?” He still looked mystified. She shook her head. “It’s a human saying, never mind.”
“I can tell you are telling the truth,” he said. “I just find it hard to believe. Humans are conniving and always on the search for greater Power.”
“Wow, that’s pretty bigoted,” she said, taken aback. He had made no secret of his dislike for her, but she’d had no idea that dislike might be part of a bigger picture. “If you think that badly of the human race, why did you promise to keep the children safe?”
“They have not yet been corrupted,” he said with a scowl. “They are innocent.”
Grace’s neck was beginning to ache from tilting her head so far back, but she didn’t want to look away for fear Khalil would take that as a sign of deception. She needed to remember what she was supposed to be eating here, and serve herself a big, delicious helping of humble pie. “Yes, they are, and I’m grateful for what you did when you promised to keep them safe,” she said. “Both this morning and this evening when the Vampyres came.”
Somehow what she said made him angry again. He scowled. “There is no need to thank me. You paid with a favor, and you still owe me.”
She frowned. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful too—because I am. Maybe the Nightkind King and del Torro really didn’t intend any harm, but I couldn’t risk that. Chloe and Max are so vulnerable. They can’t defend themselves.” Bending over her chair as he was brought him too close, and his energy surrounded her. She felt like she sat in the middle of a pure argent flame. The sensation was exhilarating and uncomfortable. She broke down and put a hand to his broad, too-perfect chest and pushed lightly. “Do you mind? I could use a little space.”
He frowned but straightened and backed away from her chair. It didn’t help much. His physical form was the smallest part of him, like the visible tip of an iceberg. At least she could sit up in her chair and ease the pressure on her neck. Still working on swallowing that piece of pie, she said gravely, “Thank you.”
He threw her a narrow-eyed glance, and a lightbulb winked on.
Oh-ho. He didn’t like to be thanked? She watched him carefully as she said, “I really appreciate it.”
He threw her a glare and started to pace, and she had to suck on her cheeks to keep from letting a grin break over her face. He definitely didn’t like to be thanked. There had to be a reason for that. And she was more than a little stupid, if she could enjoy teasing such an irascible, Powerful creature. That might put her in the unforgiveable range of TSTL—Too Stupid To Live.
The massive form he chose to wear made short work of the office floor space. She wondered if he wore the dark crimson because he enjoyed the color or if there was some other reason. It suited him, turning his tall figure into a tower of flame that matched his true, invisible presence.
She rubbed the back of her sore neck and tried to focus.
Khalil said, “You were right not to take chances with the little ones’ lives.”
She took a quick breath. “Do you know something I don’t?”
He shook his head and said, “I know nothing more than you do about the Nightkind King’s intentions, good or otherwise.” His sparkling gaze moving restlessly over the chaos he had created in the room. He waved a hand impatiently. She flinched back as all the scattered papers flew through the air to land in a haphazard pile on her desk. “But you should not take risks with the children.”
“Of course not,” she said, looking sideways at the pile of papers. The paper on top of the pile was an upside-down electric bill. She pinched her nose and sighed. With one thing and another, she had forgotten to pay bills earlier. She had better work on that first thing in the morning.
Khalil lifted a finger. “I propose another bargain, of sorts,” he said.
Her attention snapped back to him. His words echoed so closely the reasons why she had called him, she was taken aback. “You do?”
“Yes,” he said. “You will ask me a question, and I will answer. Then I will ask you a question, and you will answer. The conversation is balanced. At the end, we both walk away without owing each other anything.”
“You want to play a truth game?” She stared. “But that’s a silly college game.” The version she had seen at parties was a variation on a truth-or-dare game. Usually it involved drinking beer when one didn’t want to answer.
Khalil wandered around the office. He stopped to pick up a plastic container of blank CDs from the top of the filing cabinet and examined it curiously. “Versions of that silly college game, as you call it, were played at the crossroads on the ancient passageways that led to Damascus. Men played for the chance to win riches, and they lost their head
s if they dared try to lie.”
She blinked rapidly several times and cleared her throat. “That brings up a good point,” she said, her voice strangled. “What would be the forfeit?”
He turned to face her and bared his teeth. It was not really a smile. “Why, are you thinking of trying to cheat?”
“No, I just—I think that if we decide to do this exchange, a forfeit should be named, that’s all.” Was she actually considering playing a truth game with a Djinn who so obviously disliked her? She needed her head examined. Like, right now.
Those diamond eyes studied her. It was like being pinned by twin laser beams. Khalil said, “If either one of us refuses to answer, the other one will be owed a favor.”
She scratched her fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp as she considered. She could see that road to Damascus in her mind’s eye. The signpost had an arrow pointing one way that said SMART ROUTE and another arrow pointing the opposite way that said DUMB ROUTE. Hmm, which way to go?
In her imagination the signpost morphed into a coin flipping in the air. Smart route. Dumb route. Smart. Dumb.
She could tell by the look on his face that Khalil thought she would be too afraid to enter into the bargain. He would almost be right about that. Clearing her throat again, she said, “The children need me. I can’t enter into any agreements that would jeopardize my own safety. That goes for the other favor I owe you as well.”
Sleek dark eyebrows lowered. Clearly she had surprised him. After a moment, he said, “No bargain we enter into will cause jeopardy to the children. But one can only stop when both of us have asked a question and a round is complete.”
She tugged at her lower lip, considering him. She didn’t really have any secrets. As the Oracle, she wasn’t actually a head of state or a real Power broker in the Elder demesnes. She probably would have told him anything he chose to ask anyway, not that he necessarily needed to know that.
When else would she ever get the chance to ask a Djinn questions of her own, about dating and mating and sex and TV?
How could she ever justify this later to anyone else, much less herself? It was late, she had poor impulse control, and he was interesting. That sentence probably encapsulated every mistake every female had made throughout the history of relationships.
Even though she wasn’t Catholic, she wondered if she should find a confessional booth somewhere and sit in it for a while, just for the principle of the thing. Maybe she should lock herself in the booth and throw out the key.
In a last-ditch effort to grasp hold of her sanity, she asked, “Why do you want to do this?”
He crossed his arms. “I wish information, and I will not be beholden to you for it. Enough prevaricating, human. You will either enter into the bargain or not. Choose.”
Information was a valuable commodity, especially to one who was not interested in material things.
Smart. Dumb.
The coin landed.
“Okay?” she said. She hadn’t meant to sound so uncertain. “Who goes first?”
“I offered the bargain,” he said. He placed the plastic container of CDs back on the filing cabinet. “I ask first.”
She shrugged and waited. Her idiotic heart picked up its tempo as he studied her, and the silence stretched taut between them. All the ghosts were quiet, as if waiting and watching. She felt like she was standing in a combat arena, and the audience was watching closely to see if blood might spill on the sand.
“What exactly do you know about summoning?” he asked. His laser-sharp gaze dissected every inch of her expression.
She opened her mouth and closed it again. Of course he would ask that.
She said, “I’ve seen summoning rituals in movies and read about them in novels, of course, but those tend to be silly, like portraying witches’ covens as child-sacrificing Satanists. There are a couple of spells that witches can use to summon a boost in Power, but they don’t make other creatures show up in a pentagram or compel them to obey. One calls upon the five elements—fire, wood, water, metal, earth. The other one is a spell that a witch can use to call on her own Power. I’ve heard that one is like calling up a rush of adrenaline. The problem with those is that they give a temporary boost, but they also drain the witch, so they can be dangerous to use, especially if the witch isn’t in a safe environment to recover afterward. When I’m petitioned, I call on the Oracle’s Power. I guess that’s a kind of summoning too.”
Khalil strolled over to the futon. Her pillow was at one end, a sheet crumpled at the other. He flicked the sheet onto the floor, tossed the pillow on top of it, and sat with as much regality as a sovereign assuming his throne. “You talk of witches as though they are different from you,” he remarked.
She looked sourly at her sheet and pillow on the floor. “I don’t hear a question in that,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have to answer if I did, would I?”
“Not for this round,” he said. “Are you finished?”
“Yes,” she snapped.
“Proceed with asking your question,” he commanded. He crossed his arms.
He looked powerful, exotic and oddly beautiful, and his Power filled the house again like it had the last time. It felt very male and altogether indifferent to her. By contrast, she felt sweaty, inelegant in every way and, even though she had bathed just a few hours ago, grubby. Disliking the feeling intensely, she mirrored his action, crossing her own arms, and scowled at him. “What do you know about summoning?”
He raised an elegant, supercilious eyebrow. “I shall assume that you do not want to hear me lecture for a month.”
She could have negotiated sarcasm out of the bargain, except if she had, she would have tied her own hands as well. She spun the office chair in a circle and informed him, “I’m bored now.”
“You must have the attention span of a gnat,” he said.
That surprised her into laughing out loud. He looked startled and grinned. The expression brought a shocking change to his hard face. Even as she hiccupped a little and stared, the grin vanished. He said, “For the purpose of this bargain, I shall try to answer your question in a way that is complete but also with some brevity.”
“I had no idea Djinn were this pedantic,” she said. “It must come from all your preoccupation with bargaining.”
He said between his teeth, “Do you want me to answer or not?”
She gave him a sly, sidelong look. “If you don’t, doesn’t that mean I get a favor? If you owe me a favor, does that cancel out the one I owe you?”
He chuckled, and that was the most dangerous sound he had made thus far. “You wish, human.”
Attempting to mimic his regal, preemptory attitude, she rotated her hand in a get on with it already gesture, and he grinned again. He sobered and said, “I made the connection with your house when I said I would protect you and the children. Older Djinn who owe and own many favors have connections all over the world. You startled me when you pulled on it. Summoning a Djinn is calling upon any obligation they may have or favor they may owe to you. You do not compel a Djinn when you summon them, but you do…shall we say…call upon their honor. A Djinn who refuses to answer a summoning should have an overriding reason, such as answering a prior commitment, or they will be seen to have no honor, in which case no other Djinn will have anything to do with them. An honorless Djinn has no House and becomes a pariah. Since you apparently know so little about Djinn, to the point where it could be hazardous for your health, I offer you this advice for free: do not have anything to do with a pariah. Our Houses are built on our associations, and our associations are built on our word. The pariahs go against this fundamental truth. They are very dangerous. They are also, thankfully, rare.”
She frowned. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I could feel the thread, and I pulled on it to get your attention.”
“Well,” he said drily, “you did that. You pulled quite hard.”
She frowned. “I’m sorry. It didn’t hurt, did it?”
�
��No, it did not hurt. It was more like you suddenly shouted in my ear. Very disruptive and annoying.”
As they talked, he appeared to relax. Or at least he was less menacing. He might be indifferent to her, but she wasn’t indifferent to him. She wished she didn’t enjoy the sense of being immersed in his intensely male presence, but she had to admit she did. To be honest, she wanted to roll around in the sensation like it was catnip.
Instead she sighed, tugged her lip and spun the chair. She said, “That’s why you were Mr. Grumpy Guts when you showed up.”
“Mr.…” He shook his head and snorted. “Stop doing that.”
“Stop doing what, spinning the chair?” Feeling childish, she put a bare toe to the floor and deliberately shoved the chair into another rotation.
“Stop pulling at your lip,” he ordered. “It is time for a new round of questions, and it is my turn to ask you something.”
She sighed and stopped pulling at her lip. Inwardly, she was rather pleased with how the whole truth game had gone so far. Not only was she learning something, but Khalil was unexpectedly entertaining…in an entirely rude and insufferable sort of way. It wasn’t as though she liked him. But conversing with him beat lying sleepless on the futon and freaking herself out at every stray nighttime noise. And frankly, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this long of a conversation with another adult. She would pay for it in the morning when the children woke up at the crack of dawn, but she would have paid for her sleepless night one way or another.
She said, “So ask.”
Khalil regarded her with a heavy-lidded gaze. He took so long, she stopped her chair and scowled at him. That was when she noticed he was looking at her brace, his expression curious. He asked, “Why do you wear that black contraption on your leg?”
Her gut clenched. His question was as artless as a child’s, but it still hurt. She breathed evenly through pinched nostrils until she could unclench enough to answer. She said shortly, “I was in the car accident that killed my sister and her husband. My knee is damaged, so sometimes I have to wear a brace.”
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