“We went to war against Lethe.” His expression turned savage. “Our last battle tore down a mountain range and destroyed a crossover passageway. The last was unintentional. It is the one thing I regret. Whoever or whatever lived in that Other land is now cut off from the rest of Earth forever.”
She put a hand on his arm. It seemed like a useless gesture, when everything had happened so long ago, probably as useless as her hug had been, but she couldn’t help herself. “You said your daughter survived?”
He looked down at her hand as if it were a strange phenomenon he didn’t understand. Then he covered it with his own. “She did,” he said. “We trapped Lethe and destroyed her, and we freed Phaedra, but she was damaged. Now she is the pariah. She will not make associations with any Djinn House, and she attacks if I—if any of us—come too close. So far we have had no evidence that she has caused harm to others.” When he spoke next, it was so quietly she had to lean closer and strain to hear his words. “I very much hope I never have to hunt her down and destroy her too.”
“I’m so sorry,” Grace said as gently as she could.
“As I said, this happened a long time ago,” he said. “You are so spirited I forget sometimes how recently you suffered your own loss.”
“We all lost,” Grace said. “Me, Chloe and Max, Petra and Niko.”
“Yes,” Khalil said. “But you have to shoulder the burden for all the rest.” He raised her hand to kiss her fingers. “I will come again tomorrow, with your consent.”
She smiled. “That would be terrifi—no wait, that won’t work. I won’t have the children tomorrow. Remember, I mentioned Saturday was a work day? Katherine is taking Chloe and Max tomorrow. They’re spending the night at her house.”
He frowned at her. He was silent for so long, she fell silent too and began to wonder what she might have said.
“Grace,” said Khalil, and her name had never been spoken so purely before in her life. He gave it an unearthly, haunting beauty. Just listening to it made her want to be better, more worthy of being called something so wonderful. If he ever sang, she thought, the song would be so unbearably gorgeous, it would soar over spires of stone and steel, and pierce the hearts of humans and other creatures, and he could rule the world.
If he ever sang to her, she would go anywhere with him, anywhere at all.
He had paused. “Why do you look so stricken?”
“Never mind,” she whispered. “Go on.”
“I no longer come just to see the children, you know,” he said. “When do your people leave tomorrow?”
“I—I don’t know, around five, maybe, or six,” she stammered.
“You will call me when they leave,” he said. His gaze was intent.
The thought of them alone in the house caused a slow, sensuous heat to spread over her body. He knew it, damn him, and the smile that spread over his ivory features was just as slow and sensuous, and unbelievably wicked.
She was sliding dangerously fast down a slippery slope, if she went from “no kissing” and “we’ll see” to him coming over when the children were gone. She cast around in her mind for something, anything, to stop her headlong plunge.
She blurted out, “Do Djinn date?”
He blinked. “That is not something to which I have given much thought,” he said. “Perhaps some Djinn might date some…creatures…some…times. Dating has not previously been a habit of mine.”
She nodded, too rapidly, and forced herself to stop. “I just wondered.”
“Humans like to date,” Khalil said thoughtfully. Then he turned decisive. “That is what we will do tomorrow. We will go on a date.”
Suddenly she was dying. She didn’t know from what exactly: repressed laughter or mortification or perhaps a combination of both. She managed to articulate, “You don’t dictate a date.”
“I do not see why not,” said Khalil, his energy caressing hers with lazy amusement. He tapped her nose. “Humans require air. Breathe now.”
She did, and a snicker escaped. “If you order a date to happen, it’s no longer a date. It becomes, I don’t know, a meeting or kidnapping or something.”
“What is the proper procedure?” he asked. “For a date.”
His low tone was sultry. It brought to mind all kinds of heated images for the concept of procedures and dates. Now he was definitely teasing her. She said firmly, “If you are interested in spending time with someone, you ask them. You don’t tell them.”
“Will you go on a date with me?” he asked promptly.
She did want to see him, and it shouldn’t be alone, in the house. It just shouldn’t. “Sure,” she said. “What will we do?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “You are the dating expert. I am sure you will figure it out.”
She, a dating expert? She shook her head. This conversation was surreal. “I’ll come up with something,” she told him. What on earth would it be? “It won’t be fancy. You might want to dress casual.”
He nodded. “Call me when you are ready.” He vanished.
A date. She stared at the empty place where he had been a moment before as his presence faded. “I am never going to see Damascus, am I?” she whispered to herself. “Not in this lifetime.”
Then his presence returned, and he curled around her caressingly.
“I forgot to say good-bye,” he murmured in her ear.
Instinctively she held up her hands, fingers questing through the air, but his physical form did not reappear.
Not quite.
Instead invisible fingers trailed down her face, stroked her throat, traced the edge of her T-shirt’s neckline. She couldn’t see him, touch him. She felt hungry, bewildered and blind.
So she reached for him the only way she could, psychically, and felt herself align with his presence again. Power to Power, spirit to spirit. Feminine to masculine.
Astonishment and heat roared out of him. She felt it as a sheet of flame washing through her. Her breasts felt hypersensitive, nipples distended, and sexual hunger speared between her legs, sharper and harder than anything she’d ever known. Her head fell back against the office chair.
His energy rippled with something like a physical shudder. He hissed, “Good night.”
Then he was truly gone, and all she could do was whisper, “Holy fuck.”
And all she could think was: we really do have to get out of the house tomorrow.
Caught in the last moments before Khalil had left, Grace had a difficult time going to sleep. The warm humid summer night pressed against her skin. She kept reliving the rush of heat that had roared out from him, flashing over her psyche. It altered her understanding of pleasure and desire. She did not think she would ever be able to respond to a mere physical embrace again.
Would he climax during lovemaking, as humans did? Her body throbbed. She kicked off her sheet, curled on her side and slid a hand between her legs, pressing against the hungry, empty ache. When she finally slept, she dreamed of his huge, invisible hands sliding down the contours of her body, easing her own hand away. Long, clever fingers dipped under-neath the shorts and panties she wore and caressed along the folded lips of her labia, at the edge of her clitoris.
Her hunger spiked, reverberated back and forth between the physical and the psychic, the one intensifying the other. She needed to climax so badly. It had been so long since she had felt pleasure, and she had never experienced anything like this before, but she needed his physical form too, needed him sliding into her, filling that empty ache, moving with the kind of rhythm her body craved…
She plunged awake before completion and struggled with disorientation. For one heart-pounding moment, she balanced between a frenzied hope that Khalil was really there and a shocked need for him to not be present, to not have taken his lack of human sensibilities to that extreme.
She cast out her awareness, searching for him—and he wasn’t there. The quiet, darkened house was serene, and she was quite alone. Her dream had just been a dream. That left
her to settle into disconcerted disappointment. She didn’t want him present, but she still ached with emptiness and wanted his touch. She tossed and turned for the rest of the night.
Early Saturday morning, when the children woke, she started another long, full day feeling disgruntled.
The temperature had already reached eighty-six by the time she drove Chloe and Max over to Katherine’s at eight o’clock. Katherine gave Grace the phone number of someone who had a twin bed and was interested in exchanging it for Chloe’s toddler bed. Grace also took all the serving plates with the lids, along with the set of four heavy linen napkins, to give to Katherine, who was overjoyed.
Katherine was also intensely curious, and Grace’s explanation for how she had gotten them took a good twenty minutes. By the time she returned home, it was a quarter to nine.
Brandon was the first to arrive. He was a stocky man with pale blue eyes that seemed to weigh everything. Grace didn’t especially care for the sensation. It left her feeling like he was judging her and found her lacking. That feeling intensified in their first conversation that morning.
“We only have twelve people coming from a smattering of local covens,” Brandon said. “Not the eighteen we’d originally thought. Apparently there’s a rumor going around that you’ve had a Djinn hanging around.” He studied her coolly. “He isn’t here now, is he?”
Taken aback, Grace muttered, “Not that it’s any of your business, but no, he’s not. I can’t believe six people canceled because of that.”
Brandon shot her a sidelong glance. “Djinn are Powerful and unpredictable. They make folks nervous.”
“Folks need to get over it,” she snapped.
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Her ready temper flared, but before she could say something she might possibly regret later, Brandon asked her for a list of projects. Since he was about to spend the day working on her property, she decided it was probably best to just let the subject drop. For now.
It was the height of summer, and everything was overgrown. She hadn’t had the time or the energy to keep up the fenced-in backyard. As a result, the yard was too unkempt to take the children out to play. The main issues, she told Brandon, were mowing the property (not an insignificant task, since it took a good ten hours for a single person to sweep through the open areas on a riding mower), moving a dresser downstairs to the office, and getting the backyard in shape so she could take the children out to play.
She said, “We used to keep more of the property mown, but right now I’ll be grateful to have the area around the house, the main path to the back, and the grass by the driveway cut down.”
He nodded as he listened. He had turned his attention to studying the house. “A couple of the guys are bringing their riding mowers,” he said. “We can get the whole property done this time around.” He pointed at the roof. “Got some tiles missing. That roof won’t make it through the winter.”
Her shoulders sagged. “I know.”
That earned her another assessing glance. “Well,” Brandon said after a moment. “Winter’s several months away yet.”
Then a couple of cars turned into the driveway, and the work day began.
It was a sticky, sweltering, tiring and sometimes strained day. Several of the witches would barely speak to her. One or two others treated her with a smooth, smiling courtesy that seemed even worse. Her Power bristled, as it had when she had explored trying to sell part of the riverfront, but just as it did not pay the monthly bills, it also didn’t mow the lawn, so she shoved it aside irritably. For some reason the ghosts in the house were agitated too, which added to the undercurrent of tension, although Grace was fairly certain she was the only one who could sense them.
She was grateful to see someone she really liked, a quiet witch in her thirties named Olivia, who worked as a reference librarian for the Ex Libris Library in Louisville. Ex Libris was the major repository in the United States for resource materials on or about humankind’s witchcraft, Power and magic systems. The library also had one of the largest collections worldwide. Olivia belonged to a coven of professional academics, teachers, professors and other librarians.
Olivia gave Grace a genuine smile in greeting. Grace found herself gravitating toward the librarian as the day went on.
Once tasks were allocated, people dispersed and got busy, and the underlying tensions dissolved somewhat. Grace was constantly being pulled from one question to another. Which dresser did she want brought downstairs? Where did she want it put in the office? Did she want all the clothes that were in the dresser brought down too, or did she want them left upstairs? Did she care if the rosebushes out front were trimmed, and would she like them watered? Did she know there was a hole in the backyard fence? The hole would need to be repaired before she took the children out to play again. Would she like that done today?
Then late morning, as Grace and Olivia arranged the lunch on the table, the house phone rang. Grace picked it up.
The caller was Brandon on his cell phone, from the back meadow. Cell phones didn’t work on the property very well, so their connection was spotty, but he managed to ask Grace to come to the back to give the men some advice. “If it isn’t too much trouble,” he said through the crackle. “We were hoping you and Olivia might bring some iced tea too.”
“Sure,” she said, looking at the full, heavy pitcher and glasses with resignation. She hung up and told Olivia, “I’ve got to go to the back meadow. Would you mind helping me carry drinks back for the guys?”
“Of course,” Olivia said. She surveyed the table. “We’re done here anyway. People can help themselves to lunch whenever they’re hungry.”
They collected everything. Olivia grabbed the full gallon of iced tea before Grace could. She didn’t say anything, just picked up the glasses, and they headed out. “I have to admit,” Grace said. “I’m relieved to get away from everybody else for a few minutes.”
“They’re a charming lot this morning, aren’t they?” Olivia said, snorting with scorn.
Grace darted a glance at her. The librarian’s short chestnut hair gleamed with honey highlights in the sun, and her gray eyes were vivid with intelligence. Olivia had a quiet Power that ran deep; she worked daily with books and resources of Power, so she must be proficient at her craft. Usually witch librarians were symbologists who could read, control and infuse words and images with Power.
Grace said, hesitantly, “I didn’t expect how people are acting today. Everybody except you, I mean. There are people from several different covens here. I thought they would be more, I don’t know, talkative and happy to get to know each other. The last work day was a lot noisier.”
Olivia raised her eyebrows. “I keep forgetting, you’re not part of a coven, are you?”
“No.”
“Well, covens are like professional guilds with networking opportunities and regular continuing education in various magical disciplines,” Olivia said. “A witch might not necessarily have any close friends in her coven. People can have stronger ties to their bowling leagues, their churches, their reading groups or any political party they belong to.”
Grace frowned. “Okay, that’s a good point, and it’s not something that would have occurred to me. How does that apply to people here today?”
“When I look around at who is here today, I don’t see people who are silent because they don’t know each other,” Olivia said. “To me, they look like they’re not talking because they know each other very well.”
Grace stopped walking. “What are you saying?”
The librarian shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. I’ve seen some exchanged glances and raised eyebrows, like there was an unspoken conversation going on. I thought people were acting standoffish because of me. Early this morning I got a phone call from Brandon who said they had more than enough people showing up, so they didn’t need me. It seemed a little too high school for me, like I was disinvited to a party, so I decided to come anyway, because I wanted t
o see how you were doing and to say hi.”
Grace said slowly, “That doesn’t make any sense. First Jaydon called Thursday and said eighteen people were going to show up today. Then Brandon arrived this morning, and he said—at least I thought he said…” Under Olivia’s intelligent, attentive gray eyes her voice trailed away, and she scowled as she tried to remember. “Okay, maybe he didn’t actually say what I thought he said. He said twelve people were coming, not eighteen, and then he asked me about a rumor of a Djinn hanging around. I just thought the two things were connected and that people were backing out of the work day because of Khalil.”
Olivia’s eyebrows rose. “You have a Djinn hanging around?”
“Yeah.” Grace stiffened. “What of it?”
Olivia grinned. “Nothing, just cool. I’ve met exactly one Djinn in my life, and she was pretty freaking spectacular.”
Grace looked at her sidelong. She could feel the skin in her face start to burn. “We’re going on a date tonight.”
“You’re dating a Djinn? That’s even better.” The older woman laughed. “I’ve heard stories of—never mind.”
“I have to say, your attitude is refreshing,” Grace muttered. “Most of the people I’ve been talking to have been pretty negative.”
“You’ve been talking to the wrong people,” Olivia told her. “Pay no attention to what Brandon says or tries to imply. He’s one of the biggest bigots I know. You do know he was one of Jaydon’s strongest supporters, when Jaydon ran against Isalynn LeFevre in the demesne elections, don’t you?”
“No, I didn’t make the connection,” Grace said. She shrugged, somewhat impatiently. “I’m not really into politics.”
Olivia started walking again, and Grace did too. “Isalynn’s a conservative about some things,” Olivia said. “That’s part of her long-standing appeal. She’s an advocate for less government. But she’s a moderate when it comes to dealing with the Elder Races demesnes. Jaydon has argued for a stronger federal government and less sovereignty for the seven demesnes. He has a strong support base of people who are anti–Elder Races entirely. It doesn’t matter what race—Vampyre, Wyr, Djinn, Light or Dark Fae, whatever. The group wants the Elder Races out of Kentucky and out of the federal government.”