Shadows lengthened across the land. The Midwestern air felt heavy and full of water, like it was pregnant with some kind of storm. From his position on the roof he could see the Ohio River that bordered the western edge of the property. One of the great rivers of the North American continent, the water captured the sunlight along its surface until it seemed to shine with its own light.
He listened to the sounds from within the house, small domestic things like the clink of cutlery against dishes, the baby’s infectious giggle and Chloe’s light voice. The child chattered about anything that took her fancy, and when she wasn’t talking, she sang. She asked questions unceasingly. Despite the temper Grace had displayed to him, she always answered Chloe’s questions with patience.
They were like a small nest of birds. Khalil grinned when he thought of it. Chirp chirp chirp. Then there was the sound of water running and much flapping of wings. The chirping grew louder. Giggling was punctuated with Chloe’s tra-la-ing and Max’s cheerful yodel. The noisiness moved from the kitchen to another part of the house. Grace was putting the children to bed. She lavished love on those babies. While he did not approve of her and he was almost certain he didn’t like her, he would have to give the human female credit for that much.
He thought back to a time long ago, when his own child, Phaedra, would have made such light, happy sounds. All forms of children were rare to the Elder Races, as if nature were compensating for giving the Elder Races such long lives.
Djinn children were not born like humans or other embodied creatures, but were occasionally formed as two Djinn mingled energies. Their children also did not require as much intensive caretaking as the creatures of other species. They came into existence with their personalities well formed, and they inherited quite a bit of knowledge from both parents. Still, Djinn children were innocent, new to the world and filled with a mischievous lightness of being.
Phaedra’s mother, Lethe, had been even more Powerful than Khalil, a first-generation Djinn who remembered the dawn of the Earth. Over time he and Lethe had become enemies, and to hurt him, Lethe took their child and tortured her. Khalil, along with a select few allies that included Carling, had rescued Phaedra and torn Lethe to shreds.
His daughter lived but didn’t laugh any longer, not like these bright, innocent humans. Occasionally Djinn sustained so much damage they became malformed. Phaedra was like that, her energy jagged and twisted. She shunned contact with others, and she was quick to lash out and cause damage. He did not know how to help her. He had never known how to help her.
At last Grace left Max and Chloe’s bedroom. He heard her move back to the kitchen. She ran more water, and there were more sounds of dishes clinking and splashing. Then she moved to another room, the left room in the downstairs. That would be the office area. She was silent for a while, and then she went into the living room. He noticed how her gait changed at times. She would start walking at a smooth pace, but she quickly slowed down, and her footsteps became arrhythmic, ungraceful. It was another oddity.
She turned on the television, and that was when he slipped silent as the summer breeze through the open window into the children’s bedroom.
The toys had been picked up. The floor was clear, and the room tidy. The bedroom was not quite dark because the door was open, and indirect light shone from the living room down the hall. The two beds were at opposite sides of the room. Colorful posters adorned the walls. A cheerful green frog hung over Max’s crib, and a pink pig wearing a blonde wig and pearls hung over Chloe’s small bed.
Khalil added the pig in the blonde wig to the growing list of things he did not understand. He hated to admit it, but the human female might have had a point.
Khalil moved silently over to check Max’s still form. The baby smelled clean and was fast asleep again, his round cheeks flushed. Khalil picked up Max’s hand and studied it curiously. It was even smaller and more delicate than Chloe’s, a soft little starfish of flesh. These humans were such odd creatures.
When he moved over to Chloe’s bed, he saw that she lay on her stomach, sucking her thumb. She smelled clean too, and her shining curls were combed. Then he saw the shadowed sparkle of her eyes, and he realized she was awake and watching him as he watched her.
He crouched to look at her. She smiled at him around her thumb. He whispered, “Do you know that I am the doggie-cat?”
She nodded.
“Clever girl.” He thought a minute, trying to come up with words she might understand. It was surprisingly difficult to try to think like a small, new human might. “Do you know that I am not really a doggie or a cat?”
She nodded again.
Good. That was good. He patted her back. She felt warm and soft and a little lumpy under a light summer blanket. “Do you know that you should not pull a real doggie’s tail or a real cat’s tail either? And you should not poke them in the eye?”
She popped her thumb out of her mouth and whispered, “Indeed?”
He frowned, suspicious. “Do you understand what that word means?”
She shook her head.
He sighed. “I see we have things to work on.”
She asked, “Can you be a horsie too?”
Ah. Small, noisy and remarkably tenacious. He was learning a great deal about new humans.
“I don’t think we should be having this conversation right now,” Khalil whispered. He wanted to pick her up and hug her but restrained himself.
She snickered sleepily. “Indeed.”
He patted her back again.
Indeed.
The Bane of Her Existence might have disappeared from sight, but he still hadn’t left. Grace could still sense his presence hanging in the air, like the aftermath of a bonfire.
Why hadn’t he gone? What attracted him, and how could she change it, so that he would lose interest and leave for good?
Grace considered the problem of the unwelcome Djinn, while the matronly ghosts murmured to each other and she cleaned up the kitchen.
The babysitting roster wasn’t the only assistance Grace received from the witches. Jaydon Guthrie, the head of one of the oldest covens in Louisville, had arranged for a quarterly community work day to help her with basic maintenance on the property. As Jaydon said, the work days would benefit more than just Grace. They would also provide a way for witches to volunteer several hours at a time, which would help those who were behind on their community service tithe. Grace had been too desperate to consider turning the offer down.
On the first work day, she had used their help to arrange things so that she and the children were mostly using the ground floor. The kitchen was spacious and had a dining nook with a table, a high chair and four chairs, so they didn’t need a separate dining area. When Petra and Niko had decided to have children, they had installed a stacked washer and dryer in the kitchen so that Petra wouldn’t have to go into the basement very often. The ground floor also had a half bath.
Grace had the large dining table and chairs stored in the garage, the downstairs office moved into the dining room and Chloe and Max’s bedroom set up in what had once been the office. She slept on a futon in the office/dining room. That meant she only had to climb the stairs when it was bath time or when she needed to get a change of clothes. The downstairs was cooler in the summer, and it was easier on her leg, so the solution worked for now. Gradually her clothes were coming down the stairs and not making it back up again. She had started storing things in a filing cabinet in one corner of the office.
Saturday was the next work day. Maybe she could get someone to move a dresser downstairs. Simple things like that could make a hard situation a lot more bearable. She put the wet load of clothes from the washer into the dryer. Then she washed up at the kitchen sink, sticking her head under the faucet and soaping her fine, short hair with the baby shampoo she had used on the kids.
Even with two fans running downstairs, the house was too hot. She gave in and went into the office to dig through the filing cabinet for lighter clo
thes, slipping on a tank top and cutoff shorts made from a pair of old, soft sweatpants. After all, she wasn’t expecting company, and she didn’t have to look at herself if she didn’t want to.
Anyway, it was time she got used to how her body had changed. Maybe she shouldn’t ignore how she looked. Maybe she should look at herself until the scars didn’t matter anymore. They would fade over time and become less noticeable. At the moment they were still an angry, raw-looking red.
Grace had been riding in the backseat of the car at the time of the accident. That had saved her life. The head-on collision had driven the front seat back into her. She had scars on both legs, but the real damage was to her right leg, where she had suffered extensive tearing in the cartilage of her knee. The surgeon had done what she could to repair the damage, but Grace, who had once run track in high school and had considered training for Louisville’s half marathon, would never run again. The surgeon had also warned she might still have to have a knee replacement at some time in the future.
A knee-replacement surgery could cost as much as $35,000, if not more. Yeah, that wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. Grace did her physical therapy exercises religiously, and when she had to, she wore her knee brace. When all else failed, she used a cane. The fall from earlier was still bothering her, so she strapped on the brace and felt relief from the extra support immediately.
She sat at the desk and turned on the computer to scroll through the database on the Elder Races that Niko had created based on the journals and books written by previous Oracles. Ah, she knew there was an entry on the Djinn. She clicked on the subject to open it up and read through it quickly.
In the Demonkind demesne, the Djinn social structure was made up of five Houses—the Shaytan, the Gul, the Ifrit, the Jann and the most Powerful of them all, the House Marid. The Houses were based on relationships, much like humans conceived of clans or extended family groups. Large decisions that affected an entire House were made through consensus, with the older, more Powerful Djinn having the final say.
Djinn were creatures of magic and fire, and almost un-imaginable Power. They did not value physical things or money, but traded in favors. To the Djinn, a bargain was a sacred thing, and to break a bargain was a serious crime. They were not known as forgiving creatures. Many human legends told of Djinns’ malicious or mischievous behavior toward anyone who was foolish enough to make a bargain with them and then break it.
She hadn’t expected to find the information quite so absorbing, but interesting though it was, the article didn’t say anything about how to get rid of a Djinn that insisted on hanging around.
Thanks to her grandmother’s teachings, Grace knew the steps she would take to get rid of an unwelcome ghost or a dark spirit, but a Djinn was an entirely different class of creature. Most ghosts were little more than a dead person’s memories, and they tended to fade away on their own. Dark spirits like poltergeists were rudimentary things. They were residual energy from a particularly strong, malicious ghost, and while they could create physical chaos and cause harm, there was relatively little personality left with which to reason. As actual living creatures, the Djinn were much more sophisticated and Powerful. Sighing, she switched off the computer and moved to the living room.
She turned on the television to catch the tail end of the local news while she straightened up the room, picked up toys and folded laundry. When she heard the current news segment, she turned to stare at the screen. The two anchors, a man and a woman, speculated on the sudden appearance of several Elder Councillors in Louisville, but the main focus of the segment was on Dragos Cuelebre, Lord of the Wyr, and his new mate as they checked into the luxurious downtown Brown Hotel.
Cuelebre was a massive black-haired male who stood head and shoulders above almost everyone else around him. He had turned his rough-hewn face away from the camera. His arm was around a tall, slender woman with pale blonde hair. Grace recognized her from the confrontation in the meadow earlier that morning. In the aired segment she wore sunglasses that covered half of her triangular face. The woman said something to Cuelebre as they entered the hotel, and he nodded in response. They both ignored the cluster of reporters and camera crews surrounding them.
The female news anchor was speaking. “So far no one has released an official explanation for why so many Elder Races dignitaries have gathered in Louisville, other than Councillor Archer Harrow’s secretary, Tara Huston, who spoke to the press this afternoon. Reading from a prepared statement, Huston said the gathering involved a private matter and had nothing to do with the sometimes tense interactions between the demesnes. However, what could that private matter be, Todd? Why would it necessitate Dragos Cuelebre’s sudden presence, along with his mysterious escort who, inside sources inform us, is his new mate?” The woman’s blonde hair was lacquered with so much hairspray that when she turned to face her coanchor, her entire head of hair, like a helmet, turned with her.
Todd gave the camera a practiced smile. “Good question, Joanne. Cuelebre has been under a great deal of pressure recently. Like the rest of the world stock market, Cuelebre Enterprises has taken some serious financial hits lately, although no doubt the corporation will remain in Fortune’s top fifty for the year. There has also been increased tension between the Wyr and the Elven demesnes. In one of the most surprising announcements of the year, Cuelebre has also lost one of his seven sentinels, Tiago Black Eagle, who resigned from his position to work for the new Dark Fae Queen, Niniane Lorelle. Cuelebre’s seven sentinels are the lynchpins in Wyr governance, so not only is Cuelebre facing financial challenges and border strife, he is also critically short-staffed. Whatever the ‘private matter’ is here in Louisville, it must be something urgent for him to be called away from New York on short notice.…”
As she listened, Grace realized that the news channel didn’t know anything of what had really happened earlier. They didn’t mention the gathering at her property, and they stated that Cuelebre had lost only one sentinel, not two. Apparently Rune’s resignation as Cuelebre’s First sentinel had not yet been made public. The segment was really a gossip piece that focused on Cuelebre because he was one of the media’s favorite subjects.
She lost interest in the talking heads and switched off the TV. Sweat trickled between her breasts. She limped to the floor fan to position it in front of the screen door so it would pull in the cooler air from outside.
As she did, she glanced out at the deepening dusk.
Two tall figures wearing cloaks were walking up the gravel driveway to her house. The taller, broader figure glanced at the setting sun and pushed back his hood to reveal strong, aquiline features and dark hair sprinkled with flecks of white at the temples. It was Julian Regillus, the Vampyre Nightkind King. The second figure pushed back his hood as well. That man had shoulder-length, nut brown hair and a pleasant, nondescript face, and he was one of the most feared hunters in all the Elder Races. Julian’s right-hand man, the Vampyre Xavier del Torro.
Vampyres were walking up her driveway.
She had met Vampyres before. Not often, but she had. Those she had met seemed like perfectly pleasant people.
The two Vampyres approaching her house were not perfectly pleasant people. They were two of the most Powerful Vampyres in the world. And their companion had been the one to pull a sword in a place that inter-demesne law had decreed a sanctuary for all races and people.
Laws were a lot like locks; they were only as effective as the people who chose to allow them to work.
Adrenaline roared along her veins as if shot from a rocket launcher. She shifted the floor fan out of the way, closed the front door and, ridiculously, locked it. An invisible vise squeezed her ribs, and she couldn’t breathe. Stupidly, she thought of Niko’s old shotgun, which was unloaded and stored at the top of the kitchen pantry. She knew how to use the shotgun, but even if she had time to retrieve and load it, the only thing she would accomplish by waving it around would be to piss the Vampyres off. It couldn’t cause them
any real damage.
Her gaze fell. She hadn’t had time to vacuum before putting the children to bed, and the floor was still sprinkled with crushed pretzels. The crumbs outlined a shoeprint the size of Chloe’s foot.
Vampyres are coming to my house, she thought. And there’s no one here but me, two little children and assorted ghosts.
Along with one arrogant, child-loving Djinn.
Khalil is one of the oldest and strongest of the Demonkind, Carling had said to her earlier that morning. If he promises to keep your children safe, he will keep them safe.
“Um, hello?” she said to the silent, empty-seeming house. Her voice was shaking as much as her hands. “Can we talk for a minute?”
The silence acquired a listening attitude. Khalil, however, did not appear.
“There isn’t much time, and I know you can hear me,” she whispered. “Please.”
Black smoke drifted across the living room floor. A tendril of it lifted in front of her and formed in the semblance of Khalil’s face. The face regarded her with about as much friendliness as the black cat had earlier.
She clenched her hands into fists. The article might not have told her much about Djinn, but it had said they loved to bargain. Material things meant little to them. What they traded in were favors. She said in a low voice, “We may not like each other much, but we both care about my niece and nephew, don’t we?”
Khalil raised a dusky, elegant eyebrow.
A firm knock sounded at the door. She startled violently. She switched to telepathy and spoke fast. I would like to offer you a bargain. If you protect me and the kids from the Vampyres, I’ll owe you a favor.
The smoky Khalil-face cocked to one side as he considered the human female’s words. She really was a foolish creature, he thought. He had said he offered her a gift beyond price that she did not value. Now he realized she truly did not understand what he had meant. He had already promised he would look after the babies, and he had not put a time limit on that offer. And part of looking after the babies meant ensuring the safety of their caregiver, whom they loved and depended upon so much.