“Sacrifice?” Aldair repeated, brows lifting. “I am sure that within a day or so, once she has enjoyed my touch, she will have forgotten all about Jasreel.”
Jace surged forward then, eyes blazing, but Zahrias caught him by the arm. “No, Jasreel. The oath has been made. She is not yours anymore.”
The look of despair that crossed Jace’s features in that moment might as well have been a punch to my gut. I felt it there, as if someone had hit me hard enough to knock all the air out of me. Oh, God, what had I done?
Saved them, my mind told me. It’s what you had to do.
Cold comfort, when weighed against the agony in the face of the man I loved. At last tears began to run down my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Jace. I’m so sorry. I love you. I’ll always love you.”
All he could do was stand there and stare at me, features contorting, hands clenched into fists at his side.
Apparently ignoring our shared torment, Khalim told Zahrias, “You have two days. After that….”
He didn’t complete the sentence. He didn’t need to. If all the djinn and their Chosen weren’t gone from Taos within the allotted time, then no doubt Khalim would return with his followers to remove them. He would be able to do so with impunity, since at that point Zahrias would have broken the strictures of his own oath.
“We will be gone tomorrow,” he said coldly.
Another of those lazy smiles. I’d already begun to hate them. Then Khalim looked out into the crowd, his gaze stopping as he seemed to spot Lilias, an enraged-looking Aidan next to her. “Would you like to come with me, Lilias?” the djinn asked. “For surely by now you have tired of looking at that scarred monster beside you.”
Her dark eyes flashed. “I left the only monster I knew long ago.”
Khalim’s smile faded slightly, and then he shrugged. “As you will. You always were a woman of odd notions.” After shifting back toward Aldair, he went on, “We are done here, I think. Claim your prize, and let us be gone.”
Before I could move or react, Aldair came forward and took me by the arm, pulling me toward him. At the same time, Jace lunged in my direction. Zahrias caught him just before his hand closed on my wrist.
“No, Jasreel,” Zahrias said sadly. “You must let her go.”
“I can’t!”
Then I was pulled against Aldair’s bare chest, his arms encircling me like bands of steel. “Rage all you want, Jasreel,” he said. “She is mine now.”
It was as if every wind on the planet swirled up and around us, howling in my ears. The last thing I saw was Jace reaching out to me, hand outstretched, negation in every feature.
And then he was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
It probably would have been better if I could have passed out. Unfortunately, I was awake and aware when we came to rest…someplace. I was also aware that Aldair’s arms were still wrapped around me. Shuddering, I pushed myself away, and to my surprise, he actually let me go.
“Welcome home,” he said. “Or at least home for the next few days. Then I shall take you back to Taos.”
He was practically gloating as he spoke. But at least he wasn’t touching me, so that was a start.
“Where are we?” I asked, surveying the space. I didn’t know exactly what I’d been expecting — something out of the Arabian Nights, maybe, with a touch of Disney — but this place looked like typical New Mexico architecture, with heavy white stucco walls and a ceiling of dark wood vigas, or beams. A variety of mismatched couches lined the wall, and a close-weave beige carpet covered the floor.
“A place your people called Ghost Ranch,” Aldair said. “Its remoteness suited our purposes, but we would prefer something slightly more comfortable for any long-term use.”
I’d vaguely heard of the Ghost Ranch; Georgia O’Keeffe used to paint around here, and the facility had been set up for artist retreats and that sort of thing. Just another place my family had talked about visiting but had never actually made it to. If it had been used for retreats and such back before the Dying, then I supposed it would have sufficient space for the rogue djinn contingent to hang out in, so to speak.
Crossing my arms, I remarked, “I’m surprised you bothered with a base of operations here at all. I mean, can’t you just pop in and out of this plane of existence without any problem? What’s the point of staying here?”
Aldair smiled. I’d thought Richard Margolis had the market cornered on flesh-crawling smiles, but this djinn was doing a pretty good job of making my skin feel like it very much wanted to creep away someplace else, out of sight of his smug face.
“Because your kind can’t exist in the djinns’ world.”
“My kind?”
“Come.” He reached out a hand, and I drew back. I couldn’t help it. Yes, I’d agreed to come with him, but the very thought of feeling his skin touching mine was enough to make me sick all over again.
Those dagger-sharp eyes seemed to bore into me. “Would you break your oath so soon?”
I swallowed. Obviously, my cooperation was key to the continued survival of my friends and loved ones back in Taos. Footsteps dragging, I went back over to Aldair.
His hand closed around mine. Like all djinn, his flesh was warm, almost uncomfortably so, and I had to force myself not to flinch, to let my fingers rest lightly in his palm. I’d thought maybe he was going to blink us out of the room where we stood, but he only led me out of the building and onto a narrow path that wound its way between a series of cottages. Or at least they looked like cottages. I guessed they were the rooms formerly used by guests at the ranch.
We came to a larger structure, probably some sort of common area. Still holding my hand, Aldair led me inside. The space was clearly a library — or at least used to be, as stacks of books still lined the walls. However, it seemed as if these djinn were using it more as a social space, since I saw several of them standing there, holding heavy blown-glass goblets of wine and talking and laughing.
Among them was Khalim. He had his arm around a slender dark-haired girl — not a djinn — who leaned into him, her head snugged up against his shoulder. As he bent to pick up a wine bottle sitting on a table near him and refill his glass, she turned slightly, and I could finally see her face.
It was Martine Leroux, the girl who’d been stolen from the hunting party.
I stared at her in consternation. It wasn’t that I knew her well — we’d maybe exchanged twenty words the whole time I was in Taos before she was taken — but my memory told me that she’d been a strong, outdoorsy type, tough, able to hold her own with the guys despite her porcelain-doll prettiness. Now, though, she only stood there placidly, a vacant smile on her face as Khalim poured her some wine as well. And I didn’t think she was drunk. She looked more like she’d been drugged.
“What have you done to her?” I asked in a fierce whisper.
Aldair appeared supremely unconcerned. “My dear, we’ve done nothing. Doesn’t she look happy?”
“She looks like she’s high on E or something.”
“‘E’?” he echoed, one eyebrow arching.
“Drugs.”
“I assure you, she has been given no drugs. Unless you would call wine a drug.”
Well, no, I normally wouldn’t. But there was no denying that Martine did not look like herself.
As I searched for a suitable reply, he went on,
“Khalim claimed her. She is quite happy here, I assure you.”
Yeah, like the way someone in a cult is brain-washed into being happy, I thought.
Aldair continued, “Martine is not the only one of your kind with us. See, there are several more. You should all be friends, I think.”
I looked toward the far side of the room, where he’d gestured. Standing there were two young women around my age, both beautiful, one with rich chestnut-brown hair and the other probably Native American, with her shining jet-black tresses and high cheekbones. With the girls were two more djinn, arms draped around their companions.
“Where did they come from?” I asked, ignoring his remark about being friends. None of those girls looked lucid enough to make their own decisions about who they would or wouldn’t be friends with.
“They were in the group that went to Los Alamos, attempting to ferret out its secrets,” Aldair replied.
Well, that was one suspicion confirmed. But then I recalled how Zahrias had told me that Aldair’s Chosen was one of the girls who’d disappeared, and I frowned. “Which one is your Chosen?” I asked, hoping my question would arouse even the tiniest bit of guilt in him.
Unfortunately, he just gave me another of those greasy smiles. “Katelyn? She was never truly my Chosen. I took her so I could still be a part of Zahrias’ community, learn more of what they were doing. She is with Qadim now.”
The cavalier note in his voice sent a shiver down my spine. He must have been intimate with that girl, maybe even told her that he loved her, and now he spoke of her the way a child might talk about a toy he’d played with once or twice, then discarded. I wished I could do something to help her, but I had no idea if I could even help myself.
Voice hard, I asked, “What happened to the men who were with them?”
A negligent lift of the shoulders. “We had no need of them, so they were disposed of.”
“Killed, you mean.”
“Semantics. Now, come along.”
He didn’t quite drag me over to the group that included Khalim and Martine. I supposed I should have been glad that he hadn’t immediately taken me to whichever cabin was his and assaulted me right away, but I couldn’t help getting the impression that he was dragging all this out so as to torture me a bit more. To tell the truth, I didn’t mind. I preferred that the evil moment be postponed for as long as possible.
“Aldair!” Khalim called out as we approached. “So good to see that you’re introducing Jessica to our retreat here.”
Funny choice of words. I sort of doubted the people who used to run Ghost Ranch would have appreciated the term “retreat” being applied to a group of rampaging djinn and the women they’d decided to ravish.
I resolved to ignore Khalim and instead focused my attention on Martine. She was smiling at me in a sort of watery way, as if she halfway recognized me but couldn’t exactly figure out how.
“Hi, Martine,” I said.
She nodded, then sent an inquiring glance up at Khalim.
“Martine, this is Jessica. Remember her? From Taos?”
“Oh, hey,” she said vaguely. “So you’re here now? Cool.”
Girl be trippin’, I thought. Or something. I wanted to grab her and shake her, see if I could snap her out of her current languid state, which was completely unlike the Martine Leroux I’d known back in Taos. That Martine had fished and gone hunting with the guys. This Martine looked like someone who’d spent her entire high school career on the little knoll that we’d affectionately referred to at my school as “Stoners’ Hill.”
But I had Aldair standing uncomfortably close to me, and Khalim just on the other side — not to mention a couple of heavies whose names I hadn’t yet caught — and I knew if I did anything out of line, I’d be stopped immediately.
And punished.
A shiver went through me, and Aldair said, “Cold? Some wine should warm you up.” From nowhere a glass appeared in his hand, and the wine bottle lifted of its own accord to fill the glass halfway.
“Showing off again, I see,” remarked one of the other djinn, a burly man with black hair in a ponytail and arms roughly the size of tree trunks.
Aldair sent him a foul look, then gave me the glass.
I had to take it, of course. But was there any way to avoid drinking that wine? Sure, he’d said Martine wasn’t drugged. On the other hand, I trusted Aldair not even as much as I could throw him, which wasn’t very far.
He must have noticed my hesitation, because he gave me an oily smile, then said, “Nothing to fear, my dear,” before lifting the glass to his lips and taking a healthy swallow. Then he handed the wine to me.
With the other djinn looking on, their eyes dancing with cruel amusement, there wasn’t much else I could do. I drank as well, as small a sip as I could manage without it being too obvious. It tasted fine, of course. Then again, if they really were drugging their wine, I doubted they’d use anything that could be easily detected.
“Very good,” Aldair said, his voice almost a purr. He was enjoying this immensely, I could tell. A veritable cat toying with a mouse.
Well, mice have claws, too, I thought, even if their claws might not be as big as yours.
“So, Martine,” I said, ignoring Aldair for the moment. “How do you like it here?”
She glanced up at Khalim again, as if for reassurance. When he nodded, she replied, “Oh, it’s great. There are horses, and we go riding, and the food’s wonderful, and…other things.”
Judging by the way Khalim’s mouth turned up at that last pronouncement, I had a good idea what she meant by those “other things.” My mouth tasted sour, the wine turning to vinegar on my tongue.
Still, I managed to keep my tone bright as I asked, “And you don’t miss Samhal?” Samhal, or “Sam,” was her partner back in Taos. An earth elemental, he’d taken her disappearance in stoic silence, but you could tell from the way you’d find him staring into space, or not answering right away when spoken to, that he missed her very much.
“Who?” she asked, dark brows drawing together.
Khalim frowned at the same time as well, although probably in irritation, rather than confusion. His black gaze passed over my head and focused on Aldair. “And so you were saying you would be dining alone with Jessica this evening?”
“Yes,” Aldair replied immediately. His own expression was fairly annoyed as well, and I knew I’d stepped way over my boundaries.
Not that anyone had actually told me what those were. Anyway, I wouldn’t have cared, even if they had informed me of what I was and wasn’t allowed to do or say.
He continued, “In fact, I think I’ll take her back to my room now. You’re famished, aren’t you, Jessica?”
Food was pretty much the last thing on my mind. However, the wine was sitting uneasily in my stomach, and it would probably be a good idea to eat something to soak up the alcohol. Assuming the food wasn’t drugged as well.
“Um, sure,” I said.
That lackluster response appeared to be all he needed. This time he did “blink” us away, to a different place from the room where we’d first appeared. When I opened my eyes, I saw that I was in a smallish chamber, but one far more luxuriously furnished than either of the rooms I’d been in so far at the Ghost Ranch. I could still see the “bones” of the space, the wood-beamed ceilings, the white stucco walls, but carved screens stood in the corners, and silks in various shades of blue and green and purple had been draped across the armchairs and the bed as well.
Looking at the bed probably wasn’t a good idea. I turned away from it and toward Aldair, who had just waved his hand, coaxing the glowing coals in the fireplace to more brilliant life. Flames began to lick up along the wood stacked inside, sending the aromatic scent of burning applewood throughout the room.
I’d more or less forced myself not to think about Jace up to that point, since I knew that would destroy my fragile composure more quickly than anything else, but the wood smoke made me think of him, the way his clothes had smelled that first time he’d held me in his arms. Only as a friend back then — and barely that, since we’d only just met — and yet even in that moment, I’d known somehow that he was destined to be much more. What was he doing now? Were Zahrias and Julia doing their best to calm him down? Maybe they were all occupied in gathering their belongings for the move to Santa Fe. Surely it would be easier now that they had their powers back. For all I knew, the djinn would merely blink themselves down to what used to be our state capital and set up house from there. No muss, no fuss.
And would they let Miles go? But then, I doubted he would want to go
back to Los Alamos. Not with Margolis in charge.
I wanted to distract myself with thinking about such things because that way I wouldn’t have to think about why I was here. Who I was with.
But pretending to inspect the furnishings would only last me for so long. Aldair seemed content to stand there and watch me, which in itself was creepy enough. What would happen when he decided he’d had enough of merely watching?
I turned back toward him. Those blue eyes met mine, and it took a physical effort for me not to look away. He had the upper hand here; we both knew it. That didn’t mean I intended to act like a victim.
“Dinner?” he said, still with that half-smile playing around his mouth. A wave of his hand, and the table placed up against the far wall and draped with a dark blue silk cloth was suddenly heaped with food — what looked like a roasted goose, although I’d never had goose before, and bowls of rice and vegetables and a basket of bread. There was also a decanter made of what looked like gold encrusted with lapis and turquoise.
If I’d been sitting down to this meal with Jace, I would have been enchanted. As it was….
“Oh, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble just for little old me,” I said.
His lips pressed together, and I could see his eyes narrow. Then he said, tone almost too even, “It was no trouble. Sit.”
It wasn’t a request. Since I didn’t want the situation to flare into open confrontation this early in the game, I did as he said and pulled out the chair closer to the fire, then sat down. He followed a few seconds later, taking the chair opposite me.
At first I was glad he’d chosen that seat. Better to have him across the table from me than right by my side. On the other hand, now he was able to stare directly into my face.
“So where did all this come from?” I asked. “Do you djinn have some sort of eternal take-out place where you can just blink in anything you need?”
“No.” He picked up the decanter of wine and poured a good deal into the goblet that sat next to my place setting. Like the decanter, that goblet appeared to be gold, with lapis and turquoise inset in the base. I probably could have hocked one of those things and used it to pay for my entire college education. “We imagine what we want, and it simply…manifests itself.”
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