She drew back a hand to throw a whammy.
Matt chanted quickly.
The whammy hand stayed poised. The slanted eyes narrowed and lost some of their fury. “What nonsense is this you speak?”
“No nonsense at all,” Matt said smoothly. “You are indeed a most fair damsel, of perfect proportion and radiant features, lovely to behold in every way.”
“Of course I know that, but why would you waste breath saying it?” Even so, the whammy hand lowered, and she tossed her head. “Nevertheless, say it again.” Suddenly, she shrank, and when she stepped down to the ground, she was a half-head shorter than Matt. “If you still wish to.”
Matt caught his breath; so did Papa. At normal human size, her proportions seemed even more spectacular, her face even more perfect in its beauty.
Stegoman watched with a cold reptilian eye, his lip curving in silent laughter. He didn’t have to worry about his hormones… it wasn’t a female of his kind.
“Can you not speak, now that I am of your own size?” the spirit demanded. “Do I only appear attractive to you when I am gigantic?”
“Not at all,” Matt said quickly.
The spirit woman’s eyes became slumberous; her lips curved in a sensuous smile. “You have great audacity, mortal, to so address a woman of the djinn.”
“I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know,” Matt pointed out.
“True,” she agreed, “but I enjoy the extravagance of your terms.”
“Surely you must be the most beautiful of genies!”
Her laughter chimed like finger cymbals. “I should think so, for a djinni is a male, and though some may be handsome, none have any great beauty. I am Lakshmi, a djinna, ignorant mortal, and there are many of my kind more beautiful than I.”
“Then your kind must be amazingly attractive indeed,” Matt said, pitching his voice low and throaty.
The djinna tilted her head to the side, considering him. “You are a flatterer,” she decided, “but you may prove all the more amusing for it.” She stepped closer, swiveling her hips and moistening her lips. “Do you frolic as well as you flatter?”
Matt caught his breath; the djinna exuded raw sexuality, her movements so lithe and sensuous as to be a declaration. “No man alive could help but dream of such a frolic with so amazing a female… but if he had a wife, he really shouldn’t do anything more than dream.”
The djinna swayed closer yet, tongue-tip flicking out to pass over her lips. “You have a wife? What a shame! Still, we are here and she is there, and need never know what transpires between us. This companion of yours will surely not tell her.”
“I am his father,” Papa said, almost apologetically.
The djinna stilled, then turned to Papa with a slight frown, as though trying to solve a puzzle. If anything, her sensuality increased. “You should rejoice to see him so bedded.”
“Ah, but I have a grandchild now,” Papa said, “his child.”
“Is this so great a matter among your kind?”
Well, actually, no… it was the marriage that mattered; the baby just made the relationship between Matt and Alisande that much deeper. Somehow, though, he knew he couldn’t say that, especially not to a woman who could cause an earthquake if she thought she was being scorned.
Papa thought so, too. “Among our kind, sweet lady, those who fall in love feel deeply betrayed if their partners sleep with other companions.”
“Have you a wife?” the djinna asked, advancing.
“Yes, and she is my greatest reason for wishing to live,” Papa answered.
“But she, too, need not know.”
“She would.” Papa shook his head, smiling. “Don’t ask me how, but she would. What matters more, though, is that I would know.”
A trace of contempt showed in the djinna’s smile. “Are you so enfeebled by these things you mortals call ’consciences’?”
” ‘Conscience doth make cowards of us all,’ ” Papa quoted.
Matt agreed. “Conscience is part of it, but most of it is that I would be betraying myself.”
The djinna turned, frowning. “I do not understand.”
“I’m not sure I do, myself,” Matt confessed. “I only know it’s true. If I betrayed Alisande, I would betray the strongest, truest impulse inside me, and be maimed in spirit forever after.”
“What strange creatures you are!” the djinna exclaimed, but her smile stayed broad and inviting. “Why should I not try to maim you, though?”
Matt swallowed hard, thinking fast, then said,
A shadow of concern crossed Papa’s face. “That last line… “
“What have you done, mortal?” The djinna’s eyes had misted over. “You have taught my heart to weep!”
Matt breathed silent thanks. Aloud, he said, “It is only growth, fair lady, for if you have never wept, your soul is incomplete.”
“Weeping for myself, I can understand… but to weep for another? And for harms he has not even suffered yet?”
“Ah, but to think of the harm he might suffer because of your actions is to care for him,” Matt said.
Papa looked up with surprised approval.
The djinna frowned, head tilted. “I think that you have infected me with one of these consciences of yours, mortal man.”
“People with consciences do less harm,” Matt told her, “and more good.”
“Why should I care about your puling race, for good or for ill?”
“Why,” Matt said, “because magicians of our feeble kind can enslave and compel you by their spells.”
Lakshmi stilled, eyes narrowing, and Matt could feel her anger rising.
“Who enslaved you,” he asked her softly, “and by what token? I may be able to free you from his compulsions.”
She stared. “Are you a wizard, then?”
“I am,” Matt confessed.
“So that is why your flattery lit the fires of desire within me!”