And was Grace really going to look that gift horse in the mouth? She decided not to this time, especially since she had eaten and enjoyed so much of the evidence.

Apparently she also now owned several gleaming metal serving platters, complete with lids, along with four heavy linen napkins. Once the serving platters were clean, she stacked them and set them aside on the counter until she could figure out what to do with them. Maybe she could sell them or give them to somebody. Katherine would enjoy having them, but Grace wasn’t sure she wanted to explain how she got them in the first place.

Then she paused to assess the area. Damn, she could have sworn she still felt Khalil’s presence. Pretending to more confidence than she really had, she said telepathically, I know you’re here.

Did somebody just sigh in her ear? Khalil replied, I still wish to discuss your vision, but not in front of the children.

She hunched her shoulders. She didn’t want to think of what happened earlier or remember the voice from her vision. She would rather pick a fight with him and pretend everything was fine. Reluctantly, she said, Come back when they’re asleep.

Yes, said Khalil. His presence faded.

Grace expanded her awareness. She felt nothing unusual, either in the house or on the property, just the faded edges of the occasional ghost. This time she really was alone, except for the children. It had become just another normal summer morning.

She told herself she was all right with that as she listened to the silence.

Seven

Figuring out which bills to pay was a bit of a joke.

Grace put Max down for a morning nap, started a load of the never-ending pile of laundry and built Chloe a “castle” in the living room with a sheet spread over the back of the armchair and across one of the straight-backed chairs she brought in from the kitchen.

While Chloe played happily in her castle with Lala Whoopsie and several stuffed animals, Grace looked through the bills twice. She came up with the same answer both times. Keep the water, electric and phone bills paid. All the medical bills got stacked on top of a neat, growing pile. She put student loan deferment notices in another pile. Each one was like the ticking of a time bomb that would eventually blow up in her face. Then, her stomach in a clench, she spent a half hour calling around to bankruptcy lawyers. Fun times.

She folded laundry, looked through her unfinished senior history project and set it down again, fed the children lunch and found the note in her purse about calling Katherine to set up a time when Joey and Rachel could come over for a playdate. Feeling guilty about asking Katherine to babysit yet again, Grace picked up the phone and stepped into the kitchen so Chloe couldn’t hear the conversation. No point in getting Chloe excited if Katherine couldn’t take them. She hit Katherine’s number on speed dial.

Katherine picked up on the third ring. “Gotta love caller ID,” she said. “Hi, Grace, how are you doing?”

Grace could hear the cheerful shouts of children in the background. She said, “Hi, Katherine, we’re doing all right. I know you’re working, so I want to keep this brief. Is there any chance you could take Chloe and Max on Saturday? The second quarterly work day is coming up, and last time I had a hard time keeping track of them while I dealt with everybody’s questions about what needed to be done.”

“Of course,” said Katherine immediately. “You know how much I love them. Why don’t they spend the night as well? That way you can just crash when everybody leaves.”

Grace felt a rush of love for the older woman. Katherine had grieved almost as hard as she had at Petra’s death. Katherine was always willing to help out in any way she could, while Grace’s friends had drifted away after the accident. Grace tried not to take it personally. Her friends were as young as she was, and when Grace had taken on the children, she had been catapulted into a completely different reality from theirs. Still, the lack of connection with her old friends felt like an abandonment.

“That’s so good of you,” Grace said to Katherine, her voice thick with emotion. She would pack up the serving platters and give them to Katherine as a thank-you, and if Grace had to explain how she got them, so be it. “I wanted to ask you about something else too. I’m looking to trade Chloe’s toddler bed to someone for a twin-sized one. Would you be willing to tell the parents of your daycare kids, to see if any of them might be interested?”

“Be delighted to,” said Katherine. “I’m sure we’ll find someone who’ll be happy to trade.”

“Great, thanks so much,” Grace said. “Can I bring the kids over at eight? The work day is supposed to start at nine, and that will give me time to get ready.”

“You bet.”

Grace ended the call quickly and turned her attention to other things. She washed the lunch dishes. Their stack of library books were due in a few days. She bagged and set them by the front door. Then she put the kids down for an afternoon nap. That sent Chloe into another meltdown, and when things finally quieted down, Grace did her physical therapy exercises. After that she worked on her resume. She had two versions going. One of them listed her actual college credits. The other was a resume built on hope and included the bachelor’s degree she had not yet earned. Louisville was still hurting from the long recession. Jobs were hard to find, and she had to make her resumes look as good as she could.

Something had to give, somehow, sometime. The law of averages said it had to. Meanwhile, Grace felt like she had been locked in a pressure cooker and set on a burner that was turned on high. It wasn’t going to be a pretty sight when that pressure cooker exploded.

She hit another wall, staggered to the couch, and a black hole sucked her down again. She slept hard, and when she woke a half hour later, the house was still silent. When she checked on the children, she found both still sleeping.

My goodness. Could she actually grab some time for herself?

She went to the kitchen and used the leftover coffee from that morning to make herself a glass of iced coffee, then she sat to stare blankly at the clean table.

She wondered what her high school friend Jacqui was doing this summer. The last time they had talked, Grace had just gotten home from the hospital. Jacqui had stopped by the house to say hi. The visit was awkward. Grace watched as Jacqui looked everywhere in the living room except at Chloe and Max, who were playing on the floor. Jacqui said she couldn’t stay long because she had to study for a test the next day, then she looked stricken. After that, they had exchanged a couple of e-mails. Then silence. Grace wondered if Jacqui was even still in the area or if she had gotten a job somewhere else after graduation.

The ghosts were silent. Nothing moved, either in the house or outside. The summer heat blanketed the land like a lover.

She didn’t want to have quiet time to herself. She didn’t want to think about that terrible vision, not when she was alone. She closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around herself and huddled in her chair.

This time when Khalil appeared, he did so gently. His presence curled into the kitchen like a tendril of soft breeze. Her heart leaped, but not from irritation. She opened her eyes and turned in her chair and tried not to show how glad she was that he had come.

Khalil wore black, and once again his long raven hair was pulled back. The afternoon sun slanting through the kitchen window touched his ivory features with gold. His regal face was grave, contemplative. For a moment he looked like a sculpture created by one of the masters, his impossibly graceful form freed forever from priceless marble by Michelangelo’s genius.

She cleared her throat. “I thought you were coming tonight.”

He walked toward her, pulled out a chair and sat down. “You said to come when the children were asleep. They are. You have also rested.”

Just as before, he filled the entire house with his presence. She took a deep breath and let go of the tension that had built up between her shoulder blades throughout the day. She asked, “How did you know I rested?”

“I checked in earlier. You were asleep on the couch.” His too-keen diamond gaze focused on her face.

She nodded and looked away, feeling awkward under his scrutiny. She could waste time feeling strange about him looking in the house when she was asleep, but that seemed like a little too much, too late, when he’d already shown he didn’t have human sensibilities or boundaries.

What should she say or do now? Her social skills were not the most refined at the best of times, and she had no idea how to behave with him if they weren’t sniping at each other. She noticed her glass of iced coffee, sweating rivulets of moisture in the heat of the day, and she started to rise to her feet. “I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?”

His hand came around her bicep. She looked sideways at the long ivory fingers curled around her arm as he eased her back down into her chair. “I do not require refreshment,” he said. “We must discuss what happened this morning.”

She nodded again. He had not removed his hand from her arm, and she decided not to remind him of that. His grip felt heavy and reassuring. She noticed again how hot his touch was, as if his presence was a fire his skin barely contained. With her free hand, she touched her cold, sweating glass then took a quick swallow.

She said, “I’m scared to look at it too closely.”

“Do not be frightened,” Khalil said quietly. “You and the children will be safe. I have said so.”

At that, she turned to face him and met his crystalline gaze.

Those ageless, inhuman eyes held such piercing clarity, when she looked into them she felt as if she fell into forever. She couldn’t look away, and he didn’t. With the whole of her attention on him, she felt her own energy settle into alignment with his, and it was an entirely new experience that felt right somehow, comforting and good. It held a completeness she had never known before, his maleness to her femaleness, his Power touching the Oracle’s Power that resided inside her, along with her own, unique Power of the spirit. She felt enfolded, warmed, almost as if he had physically reached out to put his arms around her. A strange expression flickered across his face. He frowned slightly, tilting his head as he stared at her.

Up this close, the shining flame of his own Power was fierce and inexhaustible, a pure, unceasing roar that was…

It was sexy. Not just a little sexy. Awesome, kick-in-the-head sexy.

For the first time in months, she felt a pulse of arousal.

What?

Shocked and disconcerted, she pulled away. His hand fell from her arm. Breathing unevenly, she sat in a rigid, upright position and stared straight ahead. She could feel the blood rush to her cheeks.

His fiercely male presence filled the house, just as it had last night.

And he was no longer entirely indifferent to her.

“Now you have interested me,” murmured Khalil.

“I have no idea what you are talking”—she could barely squeeze enough air out of her lungs to get the words out—“about.”

He chuckled, and the husky sound was even more dangerous than that from the night before. It shivered along her exposed nerve endings with as much sensuality as if he had trailed his fingers along her bare skin. “I think I might like it when you lie,” he said. “It makes my truthsense feel so superior.”

She tried to glare at him but was afraid she might have just ended up looking panicked and confused. Outrage, where was her outrage when she needed it? “Of course superiority would matter to you.” Her attempt at scoffing came out more like a squeak, and she had a sudden impulse to get her sheet from the futon and pull it over her head.

She never saw him move. Suddenly he was bending over her from behind. He whispered in her ear, “You know, our truth game is still open, and it’s my turn to ask a question.”

She started shaking her head then her whole body decided to join in, as she shivered. They were supposed to be talking about something scary, but there were so many scary things in her life right now, she had lost track. What were they supposed to be talking about again?

“We’re on a new round of questions,” she whispered back, unsteadily. “So it’s only your turn if I don’t end the game.”

“Are you going to end it?” Tiny puffs of air from his words tickled her ear.

She shivered harder. Smart. Dumb. Oh, Damascus. “I–I don’t know.”

He cupped her shoulders. “Are you cold?”

She looked over her shoulder at him, wide-eyed. His eyes shone, and his expression was heavy lidded, languorous and wickedly knowledgeable. This time she didn’t even try to verbalize, but instead shook her head again. She felt as if she had lost contact with gravity and was floating in midair.

Khalil gave her a slow, keen smile. “What are you, then? You’re shivering.”

She fought to get some grounding, to push back. “You’ve just asked three questions, and I’ve answered two of them. No matter how you look at it, it’s my turn now.”

His smile widened into a grin. The look was stunning with his elegant features. He was not just prince of his House. He was also prince of mischief. “I concede,” he said. “It is indeed your turn.”

“I won’t be rushed,” she warned. This time she would be sure to make her question count, if she had to sit down at the computer and write drafts until she got it right.

“Take your time,” he purred. The pure sound licked over her skin. “I am in no hurry.”

Where had the irascible, antagonistic Djinn gone? He had been replaced by one who oozed sensuality and sin. She heard herself blurt out, “Do Djinn even like sex?”

Oh, God, she didn’t just ask him that. Why did she always have to take the dumb route? She squirmed and felt herself flush, not just on her face but all over, so that she could actually feel heat pulsing off her body. She would give anything to hide under her sheet.