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 heads 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.
&n
bsp; “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.”
He frowned. “This is also why you use a cane.”
She looked down at her leg, nodding. Suddenly he was crouched in front of her chair. She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Don’t do that!”
But his attention was on her leg. He was still frowning. “I want you to show me.”
She almost lashed out at him, physically as well as verbally, but his fascination was so alien, so outside normal human boundaries of behavior, it caught her own attention. Slowly she unbuckled the straps on the brace and pulled it off. Her slender leg was bare from the ragged edge of the cutoff shorts to her naked foot.
Khalil took hold of her, one huge hand at her ankle and the other slipping underneath her knee, and he pulled her leg out straight. His hands were quite careful and inhumanly hot, as if his physical form contained an inferno of energy. While he studied the mass of red scars, she studied him by the indirect light of the computer screen. Her stomach clenched again as he probed her knee with a light tendril of Power, but she let him explore the injury in silence.
He wasn’t exactly compassionate. If he had been, she would have shoved him away. No, his impartial attitude had a strange effect on her. She found herself relaxing and studying her own knee with dispassion, as if it belonged to someone else. It was the first time since the accident that she had been able to do so.
“This has been cut open,” he said. He sounded shocked.
“I had to have a couple of surgeries,” she said. His quick diamond gaze met hers, and she shrugged. “I’m lucky to be alive, but that doesn’t stop me from complaining.”
“Your flesh is so fragile,” he murmured. “And even though you are still healing, it is too late to repair your knee by Powerful means.”
She said drily, “Even in the witches’ demesne, doctors with that kind of Power are rare. I didn’t have health insurance or the money to pay for that kind of treatment. I guess the concept of permanent physical damage must seem pretty foreign to you.”
He shot her a quick, upward glance from under frowning brows. “I understand permanent damage,” he said. “I have struck down my enemies before, both those bound in flesh and those who are folk of the air. Djinn can be damaged. My daughter is.”
Surprise pulsed. She said, “I’m sorry.”
Instead of replying, he took the brace and fitted it around her leg again. She took over to strap it into place. Her voice was a little hoarse as she said, “It’s my turn to ask you a question.”
“Yes,” he said. He sat back on his heels. His expression had turned inscrutable.
It was her turn to fall silent. Somehow asking him about dates, mates, sex and TV seemed too childish given the turn in their conversation. She studied him, considering questions and casting each one aside. Either one of them could put an end to the truth game after she asked him her question and this round ended. She wanted to make sure she asked something as useful as possible.
His expression turned irritable. “Are you going to ask me something or pay the forfeit?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t try to rush me. We didn’t negotiate a time limit on asking our questions.”
“Very good, human,” said Khalil. He sounded surprised and somewhat amused. “You might learn to be an effective bargainer, given enough practice.”
“The more you talk and distract me, the more time I might need to think,” Grace warned.
He laughed as he stood. The laughter was real, and it danced through his energy along with a physical ripple in his low, pure voice. She shivered, and a sprinkle of goose bumps rose along her skin. She’d had no idea that a Djinn could be so fascinating.
She shoved that thought aside as she spun her chair in another circle, more slowly this time. Then she caught sight of her computer screen. The saved-as-draft notification still showed on her e-mail program, reminding her of why she had called Khalil in the first place.
She turned back to face him. She needed to phrase this carefully so she didn’t waste an opportunity. Making sure that she said a statement and didn’t frame it as a question, she said, “When the Vampyres were here, we spoke of someone who was killed on the property earlier today.”
He gave her a thoughtful look. “Yes. I have since learned the details of the incident.”
She gripped the arms of her chair until her knuckles whitened. “What happened was an excellent example of how meaningless the law of sanctuary can be.”
“I cannot argue with that.”
Grace licked her lips. “The Oracle’s Power doesn’t work like other witches’ Power, and I don’t have offensive spells. I would like to…hire you, I guess, for lack of a better term. Do I have anything you might value enough that I can bargain with you for continuing protection for me and the children?”
Khalil’s expression shuttered. “Yes,” he said.
5
Khalil watched with interest as Grace’s expression fell. Usually he enjoyed that look of disappointment on humans’ faces. He wondered why he didn’t this time.
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