“Hello, boys,” David said, went down on one knee, and petted the two ferocious attack beasts. They licked his face and rolled over to have their tummies patted. “See? It’s fine.”
“It would be fine if you’d let me know when you were going to show up. By the way, you’re ruining my guard dogs,” said a voice from the grand marble sweep of the stairs leading up to the house. Lights blazed on, bright enough to land aircraft, and I squinted against the glare. A man came down the steps, moving lightly despite the fact he was past his athletic days. In his fifties, with a pleasant, interesting face and secretive dark eyes, he was dressed in blue jeans and a comfortable old T-shirt that had DON’T PANIC, along with the little green guy from Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker series as a graphic.
The jeans were expensive. So were the deck shoes. I couldn’t decide if he was a well-paid caretaker or a slumming owner.
“Good to see you, too, Ortega,” David said, and gestured toward me. “Joanne Baldwin.”
There was something about Ortega that felt just slightly off to me . . . not the clothes, not the way he looked, not the smile he gave me. I couldn’t define it, not immediately, and then I realized that the feeling was familiar. It was the indefinable sense that I’d had around David, when I’d first met him—a vibration that I’d grown used to now.
I nodded to Ortega. “How exactly does a Djinn come to own a place like this?” I asked. He laughed, and his eyes flashed lime green, then faded back to plain brown.
“Very good,” he said. “But then, I expected no less. So, this is the one causing all the trouble? The one you intend to marry?”
David nodded. Ortega gave me a benevolent sort of smile.
“Charming,” he said. “And dangerous. But I suppose you know we’re attracted to that. Well, then, how may I be of service to my lord and master?”
Ortega was New Djinn, thank God, but then again, that had pretty much been a given; I couldn’t picture any of the Old Djinn reading Douglas Adams, much less wearing any kind of a T-shirt with a graphic. Well, maybe Venna, but it’d be a unicorn or a rainbow.
“Need a place to stay,” David said. “Guesthouse?” Ortega bowed his head slightly, and in the gesture I got a sense of antique gentility. It went oddly with the jeans and T-shirt. “As always, what I have is yours. Just let me move the cartons. I haven’t gotten around to sorting through things quite yet.”
“Thank you.” David gave the adoring Rottweilers one last pat and stood up to take my arm. “We’re not here, by the way.”
Ortega smiled. “You never are.” My Mustang faded out. “I put your car in the garage. Slot five, next to the Harley. Seemed appropriate.”
I looked at David, baffled. He shrugged. “Ortega collects things,” he said. “You’ll see.”
I knew that some of the Djinn lived among humans, but I hadn’t known it could be so public. . . . Ortega owned some of the biggest, splashiest real estate in a big, splashy, highly visible community. Granted, the rich were different, but I was willing to bet his neighbors had never guessed just how different. It worked in his favor that the exceptionally well-off tended to isolate themselves in these luxurious fortresses, and only moved in their own particular social circles.
David took my arm and walked me down the wide, flawless drive toward what I could only assume was the guesthouse—big enough to qualify as multifamily housing, and fancy enough to satisfy even the pickiest of pampered Hollywood stars looking to slum it. He must have seen from the bemusement of my expression what I was thinking, because he laughed softly. “We’re safe here,” he said. “Ortega’s known as a recluse—it’s not just as a disguise for humans; it’s true among his fellow Djinn as well. The few of us he allows to visit here are carefully chosen.”
“He’s . . . not what I would have expected.” The Djinn had always had a touch of the eldritch about them, but Ortega seemed . . . normal. His eccentricities were more like what you’d expect from a dot-com genius who’d cashed out of the Internet game early and sailed away on his golden parachute.
The door to the guesthouse swung silently open for us as we walked up the steps. Night-blooming flowers poured perfume out into the air, and I stopped to drink it all in. The cool ocean breeze. The clear night air. Rolling surf.
David, gilded silver by the moonlight.
“What are you thinking?” he asked me, and stepped close. Our hands entwined, and I crossed the small, aching distance between us. Our bodies fit together, curves and planes. He let out a slow breath and closed his eyes. “Oh. That’s what you’re thinking.”
I put my arms around his neck. “I’d be crazy if I wasn’t,” I said. “Look, it’s been driven home to me today that we’re living in a bubble. If it’s not the damn reporters sneaking hidden-camera footage, it’s the Sentinels trying to wipe us out. If we have even a second of safety and solitude, I don’t think we should waste it.”
“I’ve been wanting to get you out of that dress all day.” His voice dropped low and quiet, barely a murmur in my ear. I felt my pulse jump and my skin heat in response. “Jo, I don’t want to go on like this. I can’t stand knowing that at any moment they could come for you again. If I lose you—” His hands moved through my hair, urgent and possessive. “If I lose you—” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
We both knew that he was going to lose me, in the end. But it was the fullness of time, the richness of time, from now until then that would make that pain of parting something worth bearing.
“I love you,” I said, and his mouth found mine. He tasted of tears, but I saw no trace of them in his eyes or on his face. “No more mourning. I’m here. While I’m here, we’re together.”
“Yes.” Another soul-deep kiss that left my knees weak and every nerve tingling. “We’d better go inside. Security cameras. Wouldn’t want to shock the guards.”
“Mmmmmm.” He’d destroyed my ability to form words that didn’t include adjectives, such as faster and more.
David picked me up and carried me across the threshold . . . and stopped. He had no choice. The entire room was filled with cartons, floor to ceiling, rows and rows and rows of them.
And each one was neatly labeled MISC.
“Ortega!” he bellowed, and let me down. “Dammit—”
The other Djinn popped in with an audible displacement of air, standing outside the door. He looked past us, at the makeshift warehouse, and seemed a little embarrassed. Just a little. “Well,” he said, “I did warn you that I needed to clean up.”
That wasn’t messy; it was obsessive-compulsive. I’d met a Djinn with a behavioral disorder. Now that was new.
Ortega did something I couldn’t quite follow, and two columns of boxes disappeared—probably moved into the mansion, I guessed. He gave David a questioninglook, then sighed and repeated the maneuver with all the boxes in view.
“Any other rooms?” he asked.
“Bedroom,” David and I said together. Ortega’s eyebrows rose. “Please,” I added. “Umm—bathroom. And kitchen.”
“Done.”
And it was. The areas I could see, at least; I had no doubt that if I opened up a closet (or for that matter, a drawer) I’d see more of Ortega’s collecting fetish, but right now, the only things that mattered to me were open space and privacy.
Ortega was waiting for something, watching David, and once again I caught a hint of something otherworldly in him, something not quite in sync with the harmless human exterior he projected. “I have what you asked me to find,” he said. “When you’re ready to see it.”
David had been looking at me, but now his gaze cut sharply toward the other Djinn. “You have it? Here?”
“In the main house. It’s warded. I can’t open it myself.”
“What is it?” I asked. If I’d only left it alone, we might have been able to ignore the tempting, dangling bait and go on to a fevered night of fulfilling every delicious, decadent fantasy, but noooooo. I just had to ask.