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.

Five

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.

She said, “I didn’t phrase the question right, and you answered me.” She rubbed the back of her neck and slumped in her seat.

For a moment, all the young human’s spitfire was doused. She looked so weary and discouraged, Khalil felt moved to…something.

He was not moved to point out that she was asking for something he had already granted her, nor did he see any reason to inform her that she’d already thrown away one favor. That went against every Djinn instinct he had. She needed to learn to pay better attention. Bargaining and negotiation were skills that every youngling Djinn had to work to acquire, and there was no better way to learn that than practicing in real life.

He might not have recognized “pull the other one” but despite how he had baited her earlier, he had in fact associated amicably with quite a few humans throughout his long existence, and he knew some slang and colloquialisms. He believed there was an appropriate saying for a time such as this. It was called learning from the school of hard knocks.

No, he felt moved to something else, something strange that he poked at curiously. He pointed out, “You are too tired to continue this conversation properly.”

She lifted a shoulder in a desultory shrug, her gaze unfocused. “I suppose you’re right. It’s been a hard day, and a rare one. I’ve never seen anybody killed before.”

That jolted him. Was she really that young and innocent herself?

She continued, drily, “Even though it was justified, I’m still rattled, although I doubt a troop of rabid monkeys is going to escape from the zoo and attack in the next few hours. I will try to come up with a bargain that interests you another time.”

What would it be like to watch someone else get killed for the first time and to know you did not have the Power to prevent something like that from happening again? His own Power roused and twisted upon itself at the thought. He would not like it. He would not like it at all. That was when he realized she had been so angry and contentious throughout the day because she had been frightened.

Perhaps this human was not quite so awful after all. He wouldn’t go so far as to admit he liked her. But even though the damage she had sustained clearly pained her, her lack of self-pity was respectable enough. And her cheeky attitude was unexpectedly amusing.

Then there were the children to consider.

He crossed his arms and sighed. “You will let me visit with the children anytime I wish.”

Her gaze shot up to his. She looked startled and suddenly very alert, and a touch of fire came back into her energy. Ah, that was better, Khalil decided. He had to admit: he did like her fire.

“No,” she said.

He lifted an eyebrow. “You’re the one who wanted to bargain with me,” he pointed out. “I am merely presenting a term that would be acceptable to me.”

She watched him with the kind of wariness with which one might watch a poisonous snake. “You can visit with Chloe and Max anytime you like,” she said, “but only when I’m present. I don’t want to see anything else happen like this talking cat nonsense.”

“That was not merely nonsense, as you say,” he said irritably. “I did have a reason for doing it.” Really, he was not usually so irascible. This female had a talent for bringing that out in him.

Grace’s slender eyebrows rose. She said, “I hardly dare to ask.”

His mouth tightened. He was not inconsistent either, and stating a reason for the purposes of making an argument was not the same thing as acting defensive. He said, “I merely wished to develop a rapport with the children, so that I would not frighten them whenever I might show up.”

Small indentations appeared on either side of her shapely mouth. What were those indentations called again? Ah, yes. Dimples. She said, “Aw, you wanted to make friends with them. You wanted them to like you. You were bribing them.”

“I was not bribing them.” He glared.