“Handy. So why didn’t the djinn back in Taos do the same thing?”
“You would have to ask Zahrias that. He is a great lover of order.” A curl of the lip, and Aldair added, “Perhaps he thought the practice too chaotic.”
I supposed I could see that. With everyone magicking into existence whatever they wanted at the time, it might have gotten a little crazy. But maybe that was why, at least at the beginning, Zahrias hadn’t been too concerned about using up their stores of food. Why would he, when he and the other djinn could quietly zap a few sides of beef into the resort’s freezers whenever things were getting low?
As logistically interesting as all that might have been, it didn’t do much to solve my current predicament. I picked up my goblet and allowed myself a sip. Maybe it was drugged…and maybe it wasn’t. For some reason, I got the impression that Aldair wanted me awake and aware for all this.
The wine was good. Faintly spicy, which made me think it was probably a shiraz. I supposed if you were going to blink in wine from nowhere, you might as well make it a decent vintage.
Aldair drank as well, still watching me. Feeling sort of like a butterfly pinned on a pad, I asked, “Are you going to tell me why now?”
One eyebrow went up. “Why what?”
I doubted he was being deliberately obtuse. No, this was just more of his toying with me. “Why me? I’m no one in particular. There were plenty of girls there in Taos prettier than I am, if all you wanted to do was deprive some djinn of his Chosen.”
He didn’t answer at once. Instead, he drank some wine, then sat back in his chair, goblet in his hand as he languidly swirled the liquid within. “It’s true. I didn’t want you because of you. I wanted you because Jasreel wanted you.”
Some women might have found such a statement insulting. Since I didn’t give a good crap what Aldair thought of me, it was almost a relief to know that he hadn’t chased after me because of some insane otherworldly lust. I leaned forward and set down my goblet. “Why do you hate him so much?”
I honestly wanted to know the answer. Jace was one of the warmest, most generous people I’d ever met, human or djinn. What he possibly could have done — real or imagined — to have engendered such animosity in Aldair, I couldn’t begin to imagine.
A single blink. Then he said, “You are a direct little thing, aren’t you?”
It was my turn to lift an eyebrow. At five foot eight and a bit, I really wasn’t used to being referred to as a “little thing.” “I don’t see the point in beating around the bush. So again…why?”
“He’s my brother.”
If I’d had a mouth full of wine, I probably would have spat it out. As it was, I still felt as if someone had just kicked me right in the stomach. “Your…what?”
“Half-brother, actually.” Aldair sat up straighter and then set down his goblet. Tone off-hand, he said, “You should have some of this. It’s going to get cold.”
He picked up a bone-handled carving knife and two-pronged meat fork, then began working away at the goose. A large chunk of breast meat landed on my plate, and he then put more or less the same amount on the plate in front of him.
Whether he was delaying the conversation on purpose, I didn’t know, but I supposed he was right about one thing — this was some beautiful food in front of me, and I really should eat some of it, if for no other reason than to keep up my strength. And while it was quite possible that I shouldn’t be feeling overly relieved — for all I knew, Aldair still planned on taking me to bed out of spite if not actual desire — I found I couldn’t quite prevent myself from relaxing a little. It didn’t seem as if he intended to drag me over to the bed by my hair, which I feared was more or less exactly what had happened with Martine and Khalim.
I ate a few bites of goose, which was rich and strange and delicious, followed by some wonderful rice dish spiced with cinnamon and accented with nuts and golden raisins. Figuring that should satisfy Aldair for the moment, I asked, “Half-brother? Same mother?”
“Hardly.” He poured himself more wine. From what I could tell, the djinn had a far greater capacity for alcohol than us weak humans, but even so, I worried what he would be like if he kept drinking at that pace. “Same father.”
At the time, I’d been so frightened and distracted that I hadn’t been paying much attention, but now I recalled the words of the oath that Zahrias had made Khalim swear. In that oath, he’d called out the names of the interested parties, and Jace and Aldair had seemed to have the same surname. Maybe I’d brushed it off, thinking “al-Ankara” was the djinn equivalent of “Smith” or something.
Aldair continued, his tone so studiously casual that I knew it was anything but, “His mother was a mortal.”
Good thing I’d just set down my fork, or I might have dropped it right in my lap. “He’s half human?”
“Yes.” The cruel smile was back, just before he swallowed some more wine. “Ah, it appears he neglected to mention that particular detail to you.”
He sure had. All I could do was sit there, mind spinning. And then I remembered that conversation I had overheard in the courtyard, when Rafi and the two other djinn who wanted to make a break for it had confronted Zahrias. When referring to Jace, Rafi had said that he was “not precisely one of us.” At the time, the remark had mystified me, and then so many other things had happened immediately afterward that it had completely slipped my mind.
But now I understood. Jace was other because he was half human.
As I stared at Aldair, not sure what to say, he went on, “But that is our Jasreel, isn’t it? He withholds information as he deems fit. It seems he even lied to you, his Chosen, the woman he has sworn that he loves above all others. Surely you can see that he isn’t quite the paragon you believe him to be.”
That remark was enough to spur me to speech. “Not telling someone something isn’t the same as lying to them.”
“Oh, it isn’t?” At last Aldair speared some goose on his fork and ate a hearty mouthful, staring at me the whole time.
I supposed I should be glad he was sending some food down to soak up the wine he’d drunk, but right then I was too flaring with righteous indignation to bother. “No, it’s not. I’m sure he would have told me when the time was right. We had very little time together after I learned he was a djinn, because the Los Alamos people came along with their stupid device. And even once he’d been rescued, we had so many things to deal with — ”
“You are very good at defending him, Jessica,” Aldair cut in. To my dismay, he poured himself yet more wine. So far he wasn’t showing any signs of being particularly intoxicated, but, as they say, the night was still young.
“I’m not defending him,” I began, then stopped myself. Actually, I was. To me, the reasons why Jace might not have revealed that particular tidbit about his past may have sounded valid enough. Aldair, on the other hand, was a much tougher crowd. At any rate, I didn’t see the point in arguing that one particular detail. I wanted to know more of why such animosity existed between the two brothers.
Blue eyes gleamed knowingly, but he didn’t speak. It seemed obvious enough that he thought he’d scored a point there.
Maybe he had. I wasn’t about to waste my energy on playing games. I wanted the truth, or at least Aldair’s version of it.
“So Jace’s mother was a mortal,” I said. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re out to get him. What, did your father dump your mother for a human?”
His dark brows drew together. Right then, although otherwise they didn’t look at all alike, I thought I could see the faintest hint of a resemblance between Aldair and Jace. Voice hard, Aldair replied, “No. My mother and father had been apart for many years before my father settled his attentions on a mortal woman.”
Some trace of surprise must have showed on my face, because he smiled thinly and said,
“We djinn are not like mortals in this respect. Our lives are so long that we know we won’t spend the entirety of them with any one
partner. My mother and father had their time together, and went their own ways when I was a young man, just into my majority.”
So Aldair was the elder of the two. It would have been hard to tell for certain, as apparently once the djinn reached adulthood, their aging processes were so slow as to be nonexistent. Both Jace and Aldair appeared to be in their late twenties, or early thirties at the very most.
“But then my father must have this mortal woman he spied, and he took her and had a child with her. I had very little to do with any of that, as I was an adult and living my own life.”
“So what was the problem?” I asked as I picked up a piece of bread and broke off a piece. There was no butter, instead a dish of olive oil for dipping. “I mean, if you were off somewhere else, what difference did it make if your father had a child with a new woman?” I didn’t say “wife,” since in none of these revelations had Aldair mentioned wives and husbands. Those conventions seemed to be a bit looser in djinn society.
Aldair’s face darkened with anger, and once again he picked up his goblet and took a large swallow of wine. Of course I couldn’t tell him to slow down. And one would have thought that decanter might be getting low by now, but I had a sinking feeling that it would keep refilling itself at the djinn’s whim.
“Our father,” he said, the “our” dripping with distaste, “took a fancy to his little half-breed. Bestowed property upon him that should have been mine, showed him favor that I’d never had myself. And why? Merely because the brat took after him, whereas I had always favored my mother.”
“Well, that’s hardly Jace’s fault,” I pointed out in a reasonable tone. “Sounds like your beef should be with your father.”
At that remark, Aldair shot me a look of such ill-disguised ire that I shifted backward in my seat. Not that putting a little more space between us would do anything to help me in the long run. I was pretty sure that even if I got up and ran out of the cabin right then, he’d blink himself in front of me before I even had a chance to, well, blink.
“He should never have been born,” he snarled. “And even when such abominations do happen to be conceived, they should be left to rot here in the mortal world, and die without ever knowing their birthright. But because my father cherished his half-breed son, and made sure that his djinn blood and powers came to the forefront, he lived in our society, and took from me that which should have been mine.”
“And so you decided to take something of his from him,” I said slowly.
Eyes glittering like shards of sapphire, Aldair nodded.
“Problem is,” I continued, “I’m not Jace’s. I’m not a piece of property. I’m with him because I love him. I’d love him no matter who or what he was. Because he’s Jace. So even if you think you’ve won…you really haven’t.”
As soon as I’d made the comment, I wished I could take it back. Not because I didn’t believe it with all my heart, but because my words only served to enrage Aldair further. Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet, then took two steps to be by my side. Before I could flinch or pull away, he grasped me by the arm and hauled me upright so my face was only mere inches from his.
“‘Love’?” he rasped. “You may dress it up however you like, but what you feel is not love, but only a glamour he has placed on you. It is entirely false.”
“That’s not true!” I shot back. My world might have teetered on its foundations multiple times over the last six months, but through it all, my love for Jace was the one thing that had never faltered. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, but I do.” Aldair didn’t quite sneer, although a corner of his mouth lifted in something very close to a smirk. At the same time, he loosened his grip on my arm — not enough that I could pull entirely away, but at least enough that I wasn’t directly in his face. “You are no better than Martine or the other girls here with us. Granted, Khalim cast his glamour a little too heavily, and so Martine is not quite herself, but believe me, when a djinn comes to a mortal woman, he is sure to make himself irresistible. Have you never heard of the legend of the incubus?”
Well, I had, but only because of my studies in English lit, and not because I believed there really was such a thing as demons who appeared in the night, merely to have sex with human women. Actually, back before the Dying, there probably had been a number of people who believed such entities were aliens, rather than demons.
But Aldair was saying they were neither. They were djinn.
“Maybe I’ve heard of them,” I said. “And I’ll agree with you that Martine got too big a dose of whatever Khalim was dishing out. But that is not what happened with Jace and me. We didn’t even — ”
I’d been about to say that we hadn’t even slept together until we’d lived under the same roof for more than a month. That information, though, was far more personal than anything I wanted to share.
My discretion didn’t appear to have helped me, though, because Aldair tilted his head slightly, blue eyes bright with malice. “You were not intimate until some time had passed? That does not surprise me. Jasreel was always one for the long game.”
Don’t listen to him, I told myself. He’s more full of shit than an outhouse.
“You can have your opinion,” I said. “My mother used to say everyone was entitled to their own opinion. Then again, my father also liked to say that opinions are like assholes. Everyone has them, and they mostly stink.”
“Pithy,” Aldair returned with a thin smile. “How sad that the world should be deprived of such penetrating insights.”
Right then I wished I could hit him. How dare he sneer at my parents, at people who were dead because of djinn like him? Then I stopped, confused. Aldair had been a member of the original community in Taos, which meant he’d been part of the One Thousand, the conscientious objectors. From what he’d said earlier about Katelyn, his Chosen, that had all been a front. But I wanted to make sure.
“Why Taos?” I asked. “You don’t seem to have much use for us piddly mortals. So why through your lot in with the human-lovers?”
“I should think that would be obvious.”
“Well, it’s not obvious to my puny human brain.”
His fingers tightened on my arm again, and I wanted to wince but wouldn’t. “He cheated his way to you the first time. I had no choice but to select someone who would allow me to stay nearby. I knew the opportunity would come up again at some point, if I were patient enough. But then Jasreel asked Zahrias if he might stay down in Santa Fe, away from the community that had been established in Taos, and I feared I would have to wait for some time. The Immune from Los Alamos took care of that problem, though, in removing Jace from your side. Zahrias even agreed to petition you on my behalf. But you believed yourself in love, and would have nothing of me.”
He pulled me toward him again, his face scant inches from mine. This close, I could smell the wine on his breath, feel the heat radiating from him. In Jace that warmth had always been comforting, but now it seemed oppressive, as if I would soon be buried within it.
Which was probably Aldair’s plan.
Now he held me by both arms, and was pulling me against him, his mouth on mine. I squirmed and turned my head, doing anything I could to keep him away from me, but he was too strong. His tongue forced its way between my lips, and I nearly gagged. Despairingly, I realized it didn’t matter that he only wanted to do this to hurt Jace, and not because of any particular desire for me. He’d still force me into his bed, claim my body.
But not my mind, I thought fiercely. No matter what you do to me, Aldair, my thoughts and my heart and my soul will be mine. And Jace’s.
Even as I struggled in Aldair’s grasp, however, the room flared with light so bright that it seared into my retinas. I blinked and ducked my head, pulling my mouth away from my attacker.
“Aldair al-Ankara!” an unfamiliar voice thundered, and he let go of me, turning to face the intruders.
I did so as well, shocked and breathless from
my unexpected reprieve. Standing between us and the bed were five djinn, three male and two female. Although at first glance they appeared just as ageless as all the djinn I’d encountered so far, something in the gleam of their eyes and the set of their mouths told me they must be older than Aldair, possibly older than any of the Taos contingent.
“You will release this mortal, oath-breaker,” said the djinn in the middle, who actually had a few streaks of gray in his hair, although his face was free of lines, save for around the eyes.
“I am no oath-breaker,” Aldair protested. “I swore a pact with Zahrias al-Harith to leave his people alone, if they would but quit the place they have claimed as their own, and if they would give this woman to me. She is here of her own free will. Are you not, Jessica Monroe?”
Everything in me wanted to lie, to say that he’d forced me to be here, but that wasn’t the truth. I had volunteered to come with him, although only to save the people I cared about back in Taos. And I had a feeling these djinn with their too-old eyes would catch a lie before I was even halfway done speaking it.
I pulled in a breath. “I am here voluntarily. I agreed to this bargain to save the people of Taos from further attack by Aldair and Khalim and their little band of thugs here.”
Improbably, the leader of the strange djinn smiled. “‘Little band of thugs.’ I like that.” His expression grew stern, though, as he stared at Aldair. “But it is not that pact of which I speak. I refer to the original oath we all swore, that those of the One Thousand and their Chosen should be left alone to live as they saw fit. That is the oath you have broken, Aldair al-Ankara, for I have word from Nizar al-Naqda and Alif al-Masur that you participated in an attack on the Taos community. Such an attack directly violates the compact we have all agreed to abide by.”
At first I didn’t recognize those names, and then I realized they must be the two djinn who, along with Rafi, had attempted to flee this plane so they could find help. And they’d been successful.
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