Forbidden (The Djinn Wars Book 6) Read online

  She didn’t quite sigh, but he noticed how she let out a small breath. A quick backward glance over her shoulder at the book she had left lying on the bed, and she nodded. “You’re probably right. My dog Alfie wasn’t bothered by thunder, but I know a lot of dogs are.”

  Aldair nodded. “Then let us go downstairs.”

  He led her to the dining room. All those candles created a warm glow in the space, gleaming on the smooth glaze of the stoneware and reflecting warmly from the knives and forks and spoons. The curtains were closed, but a bright flash of lightning glowed behind them, followed by another rumble of thunder not long afterward. From overhead, the rain pounded on the metal roof, a dull roar muted somewhat by it being two stories above them.

  “It’s lovely,” Jillian said, although she slanted him a half-suspicious glance, as if attempting to determine the real motivation behind such a spread.

  Not a seduction, I assure you, he thought, although he could see why she might have that impression. Surely a woman as lovely as she had to have been on the receiving end of more than one attempt to get her into bed. However, the only thing he intended to seduce from her was more information.

  “Please sit,” he told her, indicating the chair to the right of the one at the head of the table. Hearing their voices, Patches entered the room. He did not appear terribly discomfited by the storm, but he did curl up in a corner and watch them expectantly, as if waiting for the main event to begin.

  Again one of those hesitations, before she shrugged slightly and took the seat Aldair had indicated. The sequins on her skirt reflected some of the candlelight as she arranged the fabric so it would drape gracefully to either side, and the candles’ soft glow woke warm shimmers of gold in her brown hair.

  Realizing he should not pay any attention to those distracting details, Aldair sat as well, then reached for the bottle of wine so he could fill Jillian’s glass. He had opened the bottle nearly a half hour earlier so it would have plenty of time to breathe. She watched him still with that quizzical expression on her face, as if she was attempting to decide exactly what his motivations for all this show might be.

  “I thought we got off rather on the wrong foot,” he said as he poured an equal amount of merlot into his own wine glass. “It was not my intention to make you feel uncomfortable, but I have my own reasons for needing to stay hidden.”

  “So you said.” She wrapped her fingers around the stem of her glass, but she didn’t lift it to take a drink. “But I still think I should be able to go back to Los Alamos. I promise I won’t tell anyone about you.”

  Perhaps she wouldn’t…or at least she wouldn’t intend to. But he could not trust her to keep her mouth shut indefinitely. “So what would you tell them?”

  “Basically what actually did happen…except I’d leave out the part about the outer circles, and meeting you. Only that the device malfunctioned, and that I found myself transported miles and miles away and had to find my way back to Los Alamos.”

  “And they would believe this?”

  “Probably.” Now she did lift the glass to her lips so she might take a sip. Her eyes shut briefly, and she nodded, as if in approval of the quality of the wine. “Why wouldn’t they believe me? As far as they’re concerned, I would have no reason to lie. And they couldn’t get many details out of me, because I’m not a scientist. Even Miles wouldn’t expect me to be able to explain what happened.”

  “Miles,” Aldair repeated. He already knew Miles Odekirk was the scientist who had created those fiendish djinn-repelling boxes, but of course Jillian could not know that.

  “He was a scientist at the Los Alamos Laboratory…before. Anyway, the devices are his invention.”

  “So why were you working on one of them, if you are not a scientist?”

  She sent him a sideways glance, but it wasn’t precisely suspicious. More…embarrassed, for some strange reason. “Because I’m good with my hands. That is, I’m good at detail work, and that’s what they had me doing — assembling things. I didn’t know what I was doing, not really. Miles would give me a diagram, and I’d follow it.” She stopped there, wine glass still in her hand, and a corner of her mouth twitched. “Did you actually intend to have dinner, or was this just an excuse to get me down here and fill me with wine?”

  “My pardon,” he said immediately. For he had been so intent on opening the conversation with her that he nearly had forgotten about the food. “You must be famished.”

  He waved his hand, and the dinner he had imagined appeared in front of them, the chicken a warm golden-brown and studded with rosemary, steam rising from the bowls of rice and vegetables. A basket sat off to one side, folded white cloth revealing just a hint of the fresh-baked rolls beneath.

  A startled flicker from Jillian’s storm-colored eyes, and then she grinned. “I should have known it would be no problem for you. This looks amazing.”

  “I hope you find it so.” He turned toward the chicken on its platter and cut off a piece, balancing it on the end of the large serving fork. “Your plate, if you would?”

  She set down her wine glass so she could pick up her dinner plate and extend it toward him. He deposited the large chunk of breast to one side, and she busied herself with filling the rest of the plate with rice and vegetables, and finally a roll.

  While she was occupied, he cut off a rather larger piece for himself, and then set down the serving fork and carving knife. And after she was done with the side dishes, he took a portion of each of them as well.

  “Better?” he asked, once both their plates were filled.

  She had been just about to take a bite of chicken; she popped it in her mouth, chewed, and then nodded. “Much better.”

  “Good.”

  Aldair decided it would seem more natural if he allowed her to eat quietly for a few moments before he asked any more questions. After she had had a few mouthfuls of everything on her plate, and washed them down with wine, he said, “You had done that sort of work before? Assembling machinery, I mean.”

  “God, no.” She offered him a rueful little smile. “I’m good at needlework. My grandmother — my mother’s mother — taught me. Sewing, of course, but what I really preferred was needlepoint and petit point. I even won a blue ribbon at the state fair once. I suppose it seems like a silly, old-fashioned thing to do, but I enjoyed it. Anyway, because I was used to working on very detailed pieces in small spaces, and because I had very good eyesight, Miles thought I would be a good person to assist him in the lab. That’s all. But that’s also why he wouldn’t be able to get any technical details about the accident from me. I wouldn’t know what to begin to tell him.”

  This explanation did seem plausible enough. Still, Aldair could have no way of knowing that Miles wouldn’t continue to press Jillian for more information, and that eventually she would not blurt out something she knew, even if she did not do so out of malice.

  He simply could not take that risk. “I suppose not,” he said carefully. “Was there anyone else who could do similar work?”

  “Lindsay helped, but she wasn’t as good at it as I was.”

  “Lindsay?” The name also sounded somewhat familiar, although Aldair could not recall exactly who she was.

  “Lindsay Adarian. Or I guess Lindsay Odekirk now, although she and Miles aren’t officially married. But still, she’s started going by that because they’re going to have a baby in a few months.”

  This revelation was enough to make Aldair’s head spin. Now he recalled where he had heard Lindsay’s name. She had been one of the Chosen in Taos. Her djinn partner was Rafi, who had been killed by some of Khalim’s men when he attempted to escape to the djinn otherworld in search of help. Yes, that death would have left Lindsay alone in the world, without a djinn mate, but never in all his long lifetime would Aldair have thought that she would turn from a magnificent specimen like Rafi to that spindling scientist, Miles Odekirk. He was the sort of man who could be broken in half by a djinn. But Lindsay had transferred her a
ffections to him, was having a child with him?

  Clearly, a great deal had occurred during those months when Aldair was trapped in the outer circles.

  “I see,” he said, although he still couldn’t quite understand what could have attracted a beautiful woman like Lindsay Adarian to someone such as Miles Odekirk. “Do you have many children in Los Alamos?”

  “A few.” Jillian swallowed some more wine, her gaze turned inward, as if the question had upset her somehow. “There were nine of them among the survivors who first came there, but now people have started having babies, too.” Her mouth tightened, and she drank again, so much that Aldair felt compelled to pour another measure of wine into her glass.

  Ah, a sore subject. Had she also lost a child when she’d lost her husband? But she had made no mention of such a tragedy touching her, and Aldair rather thought she would have said something. He paused, wondering if he should probe at the wound, then decided he might as well ask.

  “Are any of those children yours?”

  She startled at the question, then shook her head. “No. I — Jack and I didn’t have any children. We tried, but….”

  So she was barren? Unfortunate…or perhaps not, given how uncertain the world was these days. Aldair could not help marveling at the human survivors who would take the risk of having children, when none of them could know for certain that the shield Miles Odekirk had devised would actually continue to keep them safe.

  Aldair was not certain of the expression that crossed his face, but Jillian must have guessed something of what he was thinking, because she said, “No, it wasn’t me. The doctors checked us both out. It was Jack. We were trying to decide what to do next. Adoption was way too expensive. Jack wanted to use a donor, but I didn’t know if I really wanted to go that route. Then the Heat took that decision right out of our hands.”

  For a moment, Aldair didn’t say anything. Her confession surprised him, but then, she had had a good deal of wine with not much food. And also, he had to stop and decipher what she had just told him, since infertility was not an issue with djinn. A man and a woman of his people would decide together when to have children. Such things did not happen by accident, but they also occurred on schedule, with no worry that the outcome would be other than what they expected, once they had decided they wanted to conceive. He’d heard that for humans the process could be far more difficult, however. And a donor? He had to puzzle that one out as well, and then realized she must have meant a surrogate to provide the father’s genetic material, since her former husband had apparently not been up to the task.

  Would she believe him if he murmured any words of sympathy? Probably not. Even now she sat there wearing a troubled, closed-off expression, as though she realized that she had just said far more than she should.

  “That is…unfortunate,” he allowed at last. “But perhaps a blessing in the end. Immunity from the Heat was not genetic. But at least the disease also erased itself from the world once it had done its job.”

  “We guessed as much,” she said, still appearing far too stony and cold. She did not look at him as she added, “That is, it seemed logical to us, considering no families survived together, and yet the children born afterward were healthy enough.” A brief hesitation, and then she said, “Could I have some more chicken, please?”

  He cut off more of the breast and deposited it on her plate, then watched as she ate silently, her gaze still obviously averted from him. Had he angered her somehow, or had his questions brought up memories she would rather have avoided?

  “Sorry,” she said after an uncomfortable few minutes had passed. “I’ve tried really hard not to think about any of that.”

  “It is all right,” he replied, more to reassure her than because the words were actually true.

  “Is it?” She set down her fork and finally looked over at him — truly looked at him, her gaze meeting his. “I should forget about it. Jack’s gone. I can’t change anything about what might have been.” She reached for her wine glass but didn’t drink, instead held it cradled in the palm of her hand. “So why don’t we talk about you for a while?”

  “I am afraid that would be a very dull topic.”

  One eyebrow lifted slightly. “I find that hard to believe. Tell you what, Aldair,” she added, leaning toward him just a little. “You tell me something about yourself, and I won’t bother you about letting me go back to Los Alamos for…well, let’s say a day. Deal?”

  He didn’t like the sound of that. “Only a day?”

  “Two days?”

  It was his turn to raise an eyebrow.

  “Three,” she conceded. “I think that’s being pretty generous.”

  He regarded her carefully for a moment. She gazed back at him, expression guileless, although he did not know how much he could really trust her. Still, three days was a good span of time. Given the three days she had just offered, he should be able to devise a way to free himself of this place, especially if he did not have to suffer Jillian’s incessant demands for him to let her go.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “What did you want to know?”

  Chapter Eight

  She really hadn’t thought he would go for it. And maybe allowing him three days was too much. Right then, though, she was feeling a bit reckless. Possibly she’d had too much wine, or possibly she was just doing her best to push back the inner turmoil those memories of Jack’s infertility had evoked. She’d been so sure they would have a family together, that they’d be able to have that special physical embodiment of their love. Because Jack wanted a family as much as she did, they’d started looking into alternatives. Even the most no-frills adoption would have cost them nearly twenty-five thousand dollars. They didn’t have that kind of money saved up. Not even a quarter that. And no one in either of their families had those sorts of disposable funds…even if Jillian or her husband could have swallowed their pride enough to ask for a loan.

  So Jack had tentatively suggested a sperm donor. At least that way the child would be hers genetically, and they could choose someone with his physical traits and ethnic background in the hope that the child would look as if he or she could be the product of their union. But something in Jillian had balked at the idea. She didn’t want another man’s child. She wanted Jack’s baby. Barring that, better a child who needed a home, rather than trying to create one who might fool their friends and neighbors into thinking the child had been conceived naturally. In her mind, adoption would have been better…if they’d only had the money.

  Anyway, she wasn’t sure what had made her blurt out such a confession to Aldair, of all people, but she couldn’t take it back now. Neither could she take back the bargain she’d just made with him…if she even wanted to. After all, he’d been extremely close-mouthed this entire time, and she definitely wanted to learn more about him.

  “You said the djinn in Santa Fe know who you are,” she ventured, and he nodded.

  “I lived among them for a time, but not in Santa Fe. They first settled in Taos, and then moved to your capital city after our elders told them they could not remain in Taos after all.”

  “Why couldn’t they stay there?”

  Aldair’s gaze slid away from hers. “Let us just say that a certain power exists in that region, a power which comes from the land. It is the sort of power that could give a group of djinn an unfair advantage, should they decide to explore its secrets. The elders decided it was better that no djinn could dwell there at all, and so the group moved to Santa Fe.”

  “And you went with them?”

  “No.” The muscles in his jaw tightened, but he answered evenly enough, “By then I had already been sent into exile.”

  Jillian allowed herself to digest his statement for a moment. It was clear enough to her that Aldair hadn’t much liked divulging that one little detail — but, as far as she could tell, he had told her the truth. So he was doing something to hold up his end of the bargain.

  All right, so he’d been in Taos with th
e members of the group there. But from what she’d heard, all those djinn were paired off with humans, their Chosen. Did that mean Aldair had a partner back there? What happened to her when he was sent to the outer circles?

  “You were with the djinn in Taos,” she said slowly as she tried to decide on the best way to phrase the question. “So that means you must have been another conscientious objector.”

  “One of the One Thousand, yes.” Again with the clenched jaw. Yes, he was giving her the answers she wanted, but she could tell he didn’t like it much at all.

  “And you had a Chosen.”

  He let out a breath, then picked up his wine glass and drank, swallowing so much that he almost emptied the vessel. Not that the glass remained empty for very long, since he reached for the wine bottle and replaced what he had just consumed. The candlelight didn’t reveal everything, softened the edges of the room and lent a magical glow to the space, but Jillian could tell that they’d almost finished off the bottle.

  She had a feeling he’d summon another one as soon as that occurred.

  “Yes,” he said at last, the one syllable so grudging she was somewhat surprised he’d uttered it at all.

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. I was in no position to know anything of what was occurring here on your plane after I was banished to the outer circles.”

  Which brought them to the question she wanted to ask the most. “So…why exactly were you banished?”

  The fingers of his free hand drummed on the tabletop. “I find I weary of this game. I think what I have told you is worth at least two days free of your importuning. We should leave it here, I think.”

  Jillian crossed her arms and shot him an irritated look. “Are you serious? We had a deal.”