Forbidden (27 page)

“Oh!” Docia giggled as the male took offense to being fondled and clambered up the young girl’s arm and under the flounce of thick blond corkscrew curls.

“I’m seriously considering adding a joint in this thing’s wings if you don’t get it off me real soon,” Vincent groused, shaking his arm in hopes of dislodging
the beast. No such luck. And he could appreciate that Docia was making far faster ground than he had been able to manage thus far, so he didn’t want to do anything the blond Djynn might consider a threatening act. Still … that didn’t mean he was above verbal warnings.

“SutSut!” the Djynn called, snapping her fingers. The dragonlet disconnected itself from Vincent, and to prove it wasn’t impressed by his threats, it blew a fork-tongued raspberry at him before flying off with what could only be labeled a flounce, its tail so high in the air that Vincent could see parts of its anatomy he could happily have gone through life without seeing. “But don’t think you can try anything,” the Djynn warned. “I’ll break every window in this house and leave you to freeze while I go spend the day in my canteen.”

“I’m not going to— Canteen? You’re a Djynn attached to a canteen?”

“Well, sure.” She pointed to the metal canteen with its wide, flat bottom and large circumference. “It can’t break, unlike bottles and such. And it’s really hard to rip that sucker open.”

“You’re a Djynn?” Docia asked, sounding fascinated. “Like … a genie?”

“If you make an
I Dream of Jeannie
reference, I’ll turn your skin blue for a week. And don’t think I can’t do it,” the Djynn warned hotly. Although Vincent didn’t find her very threatening now that he got a good look at her. It might be the Hello Kitty pajamas, but he was pretty sure the Cookie Monster slippers with their googly eyes robbed her of all her street cred.

“No. Of course not. I just … I never met a Djynn before. Hell, I only found out there was such a thing less than an hour ago,” she admitted.

“I’m surprised you’re meeting one now,” Vincent said dryly as he looked around the entryway, great room, and kitchen combination carefully, assessing the cabin
for any further threats. “Djynn don’t usually live in houses.”

“Please.” The Djynn rolled her eyes. “What generation are
you
living in, anyway?” She turned away and went scrounging behind one of the couches for something, and the three dragonlets made a game of hide-and-seek in her hair. She came up with the fourth dragonlet, who was moaning a bit dramatically, a wing draped over one of its eyes. “Poor MutMut,” she cooed at it, giving it kisses of comfort on its head.

“What’s your name? Or … can’t you tell me?” Docia frowned. “I heard a story once where a genie loses its power if its name is given up.”

“Djynn. Not genie!” She huffed out a breath. “And that’d make it hard, wouldn’t it? Going around calling each other ‘Hey, you!’ all the time.”

“I suppose it would,” Docia agreed.

“Docia, would you please sit down,” Vincent said, moving cautiously toward the kitchen. The minute he moved, however, all four dragonlets perked to attention and glared at him. They even gave off spitting little growls. He held up his hands in submission. “Her feet are bleeding. I’m just going to get something to clean them up a little.”

“My name is SingSing,” the Djynn said, frowning at Docia. “And you really should sit. Just don’t get blood on my furniture. You have no idea how hard it is to get blood out of piled silk.”

Docia sat down and Vincent could tell she was trying not to find something funny. Honestly, the girl had a face like an open book. She didn’t have the slightest idea how to mask what she was thinking.

“SingSing, couldn’t you use magic to … I don’t know … fix something like that?”

“Oh, right,” SingSing snorted. “Like I’m going to
waste my precious magic on getting a stain out of the sofa.”

“You say that like magic is finite,” Docia noted.

Clever girl,
Vincent thought. He was beginning to see why she had been chosen for a Blending of such import. It was also a shame about the whole Menes thing. She was starting to grow on him. In more ways than one.

He fetched some paper towels from the roll, then ran some water into a bowl, making sure it was just warm enough but not too hot to shock her frozen feet.

“Djynn magic
is
finite,” he told her. “Actually, a lot of it is attached to certain things. Like the dragonlets. She probably gets a lot of magical store from them. Most Djynn have some kind of mascot.”

“Not just
any
kind of mascot,” SingSing snapped in his direction. “It’s not a frickin’ football team.” She turned to Docia and smiled warmly, making it clear whom she liked in the room and whom she did not. “And don’t call them familiars, either,” she warned Docia with a stern finger. “They’re called nikkis. The live ones, anyway. If it’s an inanimate magical resource, we call it a niknak. Get it? That’s where the word came from, a long time ago, you know. Niknaks. Only, you spell it differently. I mean, what’s with the ‘k’ thing, anyway? Oh, you know it’s there in the beginning and the end, but you can only hear it in the end and not the beginning. Seriously?” She eyeballed Docia as if she’d have the answer to the American English lexicon. “Anyway, you can call either one, animate or inanimate, a nik and you wouldn’t be wrong. These four little guys are all niks. I have more powerful niknaks, of course.” She glared at Vincent to make sure he got that not-so-subtle message. “But we hide our niknaks all over so no one can find them. It’s kind of like a treasure hunt sometimes between Djynn. We’re always trying to hunt down more and more powerful niks. And once
another Djynn touches the nik, it’s theirs. Kind of sucks. That’s why we don’t usually throw our nikkis at other Djynn.”

Vincent knelt at Docia’s feet, lifting them onto his thighs to rest, then inspecting the left one first.

“Yeah, but you didn’t think twice about throwing them at me,” he pointed out.

“Well, I panicked,” SingSing admitted sheepishly. “It’s been a while since I’ve even seen another Night-walker. Face-to-face like this, anyway. I was so mad when those Templars showed up in the valley, you have no idea. I know I should pack up and go, that it’s the safe thing to do, but this is …” She frowned and her head dropped forward.

“This is your home,” Docia guessed gently, her hand touching the Djynn female with compassion. It made Vincent tense up to see her do it. Djynn were not to be trusted. That was the first rule Ramses had ever taught him about them. Never trust them. Their craving for niks was like a disease; they were obsessed by them, and they just couldn’t help it. They would do anything, screw over anyone they had to, to acquire their next nik. The more powerful the nik, the more willing they were to sacrifice someone else. This Djynn had stopped fighting them only because he had threatened her niks.

“Well, it has been, anyway. And now thanks to you people I have to get the heck out of Dodge. This sucks supremely, I just want you to know that,” she said, pointing angrily at him.

“I have nothing to do with it!” he shot back defensively. “Believe me, if we could rout Odjit out of there, we would. I’d like nothing more than to see her disenfranchised. A lot of us would.”

“Hmm.” SingSing tilted her head. “So, you’re like Djynn, then. Not all the same.”

“Not all the same?” Docia echoed.

“Mm.” SingSing shrugged. “Castes. We come from different castes. Some of us”— she rolled her eyes— “think we’re better than others of us. I guess that’s no different than any other society. But the truth is, some of us are way wickedly more powerful. And that means they are more dangerous. The Marids and the Afreets are the first and second most powerful Djynn. And if you come across a Sheytan …” She shivered, and Docia looked quickly at Vincent.

“They’re pure evil,” he supplied cautiously. “Only the Marids and Afreets can keep them in line.”

“Then there’s lowly little Djinn like me. We’re sort of the suburban middle class of Djynn.”

“And that leaves your poor. Your destitute.”

“The Jann.” She nodded. “Usually servants to other Djynn. They don’t have much skill or power. Oh, stop fondling her feet already, would you?” she huffed at Vincent, pushing him aside. She linked her fingers above Docia’s feet like a web and a sudden burst of green energy popped out of her hands, like a wonky, brilliant flashbulb. Then she stood up and walked away.

“I was getting ready for bed, it being daybreak and all, but I could go for a little nosh. Anyone hungry?”

Docia inspected her feet carefully. They felt warm and, outside of a weird tingling sensation, perfectly healed.

Good gravy, what was next? She really wouldn’t mind some kind of a handbook to all of this.
Bodywalkers for
Dummies
or something like that.
How to Become a
Nightwalker in One Easy Lesson.

But no such luck. Of course.
But, hey, no one promised you life was going to be easy,
she thought. Or was this technically an afterlife? Never mind. She wasn’t going to dissect that right now. She already had way too much to do trying to keep track of all the information coming at her. To top it all off, she was feeling incredibly sleepy. The darkness of the cabin wasn’t helping; neither was the blessed warmth of it, once their Djynn host was thoughtful enough to shut the door that Vincent had left open. Happily enough, though, there was a huge cobblestone fireplace dead center of the large glass windows that were blacked out now but promised to have a great view of the outdoors. She didn’t blame SingSing for wanting to stay. A secluded cabin in the mountains sounded like a little slice of heaven to her right then.

“Where are we, anyway?” she thought to ask.

“Up near Hunter Mountain. The ski resort’s on the other ridge over across the valley here.” She pointed out the window. “It’s not easy to build over here, so it’s a pretty low population. Nice and quiet. The valley has more people in it. Early Spanish settlements made the town down there. I’m surprised you came up the mountain.”

“That’s why we did it,” Vincent pointed out. “They would have anticipated the easy way, and we’d already be back with the Templars, hanging there like Christmas geese.”

“Well, you’re safe here as long as you behave yourselves,” SingSing said. “No one knows about this place. You need a snowmobile to get to the road … or an ATV if there’s no snow cover.”

“Both of which leave tracks,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but I haven’t been to town since before the last snowfall,” she shot back, sticking her tongue out at him. “So like I said, you’re safe.”

“Until dusk. Then we’ll have to go,” Vincent warned Docia pointedly. “We don’t want to endanger our hostess.”

“Pfft,” SingSing snorted. “I’m not afraid of a bunch of fanatic Templars. They should be afraid of me,” she said, pointing to her puffed-up chest. Docia had to agree with Vincent’s skeptical expression. She really didn’t look all that powerful. SingSing started to whistle and made herself busy in the cozy little kitchen. It had nice conveniences in it, slightly dated in some cases, but of a classic style that would never grow old or obsolete. The entire cabin was quaint, as far as she could see. She could even see a huge loft above the entryway that ran the entire width of the house on that side. Clearly it was SingSing’s sleeping area. There were only two other doors in the place, outside of the front doors and a pair
of sliders on the right side of the chimney. She supposed one was the bathroom and maybe the other was a closet.

“Vincent, I’m so very tired,” she said to him softly, reaching to touch his hand as he paced past her. He’d been doing a frenetic sort of circuit for a while now, as if he were trying to think and needed to be on the move in order to do so.

Vincent came to an immediate halt, concern etching his face as he crouched in front of her. She leaned toward him as he cupped her face between his hands. After a long moment of studying her with those warm golden eyes of his, he nodded.

“I can see that you are,” he said, his thumb brushing over her lips. The touch had an instant revitalizing effect, stirring something inside of her she couldn’t even begin to explain. It was like a kiss in a way, intimate and warm, so very tender.

“And I can see Ram coming back to you,” she said softly.

That made him frown. “Why would you say that? Don’t you think I’m capable of kindness on my own?”

“No. Of course you are.” She sighed, watching as his attention drifted down to the lips he was touching, appreciating the warmth of her breath on the back of his hand. “You start to round out your vowels. The smart-ass in your personality smooths out a little. And when you touch me …” She trailed off, suddenly shy about putting the sensation into words. It was a wholly intimate thing, the deeply felt sensations that something as simple as a touch against her lips was stirring. It made her want to cross her legs in defense of it, to hide it away in case it was embarrassingly obvious to everyone in the room. Especially him.

“And Ram is overly concerned with respect toward me because of who he feels I am,” she added after a moment. “To be honest, I like you a bit more. You’re … you
treat me normally. Like my brother does. Or Leo …” She trailed off, taking a moment to think about those wonderful men in her life who were no doubt beside themselves with worry over her.