Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)

Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)
Thea Harrison


One

Attracting a Djinn’s interest is generally not considered to be a good thing, Grace.

The babysitter Janice’s pointed words kept bouncing around in Grace’s head like a loose football on a field. That football was ten yards away from the end zone, and it had two teams of two-hundred-pound-plus NFL football players scrambling after it with all the intensity of their multimillion-dollar careers being on the line, and if that football could talk, you know it would be whining, “Oh geez this is gonna hurt.”

Which was pretty much how the whole day had felt to Grace, including the sense of impending doom.

So thanks for the snark fest, Janice. It wasn’t like Grace had any choice about the Djinn appearing in her life in the first place. He had been part of the group that had shown up on her doorstep at three thirty in the morning, because they couldn’t wait until a goddamn decent time to talk to her.

She should probably stop calling him “the Djinn.” He did, after all, have a name. He was Khalil somebody. According to one of his companions, he was Khalil Somebody Important.

Grace wasn’t sure, but she thought his name might be Khalil Bane of Her Existence, but she didn’t want to call him that to his…well, his face, when he chose to wear a face…because she didn’t want to provoke him any more than she already had, and she was really, really just hoping he might get bored and go away now that all the excitement had died down.

All the excitement was dying down now, wasn’t it?

The killing.

She had never seen anybody killed before that morning.

She shoved the memory aside. Right now she had her niece and nephew to look after, dammit. She didn’t have time to react any more to what had happened. It would have to f**king wait until Chloe and Max were in bed.

Maybe the Djinn would be gone when she and the kids got home from getting groceries. Grace could hope. She could hope for a lot of things. There was always the possibility that the grocery store was giving out free steaks today and that a herd of pigs might file a flight plan with air traffic control at the Louisville International Airport.

Actually, she had the suspicion that he had followed them to the store. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense his smoky presence at the edge of her mind ever since she packed Max and Chloe in the car and drove to Super Saver. The awareness of his acrid psychic scent jangled her nerves, like the feeling she got when fire trucks roared down a street with all sirens screaming.

It didn’t matter if you couldn’t see the fire. You still knew something catastrophic loomed nearby.

She managed to get a parking space by one of the cart stations. The humid, ninety-five-degree June day slapped her in the face when she climbed out of the car. In a matter of moments her T-shirt clung to her back, and she wanted nothing more than to tear off her shabby flannel pants above the knees, except she didn’t wear shorts anymore, not even around the house, since she couldn’t stand the sight of her scarred legs after the car accident.

Grace grabbed a shopping cart from the station and turned back to where the children waited. In the process she caught a glimpse of herself in the car window. She was an average height, with a lean waist and legs, and curving br**sts and hips. If family genetics were anything to go by, she would have to take care when she hit middle age, or those curves of hers would become too generous.

Her short, fine strawberry blonde hair was sticking up in tufts because she kept running her fingers through it. Her hazel eyes were dull, and her skin pallid from lack of sleep. She touched her reflection in the window, noting the dark circles under her eyes.

I used to be pretty, she thought. Then she felt angry that it mattered to her.

Screw pretty. I’d rather be strong. Pretty fades over time. Strength gets you through the bad shit. And that matters, because sometimes there’s a lot of bad shit.

She lifted Chloe into the cart. Then she transferred Max over into his baby carrier. Chloe sat in the shopping cart, folding her delicate four-year-old body into a tiny package. She was singing softly to her miniature Lala Whoopsie doll, or whatever the hell the doll was called, and making it dance along the rim of the cart.

Chloe’s pale blonde hair was fine and silky. It was a lot like how Grace’s and her sister Petra’s had been when they were small. Both Grace’s and Petra’s hair had darkened as they grew older. There was a good chance Chloe’s hair would deepen into the same shade of strawberry blonde, while Max had inherited his father’s Mediterranean-style, dark good looks.

Chloe’s curls were now floating around her head, except, Grace noticed with embarrassment, for a tangled knot at the back. She had forgotten to comb Chloe’s hair before they went out. Well hell, she’d forgotten to comb her own hair too. That’s what she got for trying to stagger through her day in a half coma. She tried finger-combing first Chloe’s hair then her own, with limited success.

Nine-month-old Max was sound asleep and snoring in his carrier, his little rosebud mouth open. After being so sick through the night, the poor baby boy was exhausted.

Pushing the cart with the children loaded into it, Grace limped into the grocery store. Super Saver was a no-frills discount grocery store, with goods stacked in the aisles in cardboard boxes, but they had a refrigerated and freezer section, and the store was air-conditioned. Grace sighed with relief as cool air licked her skin, even as the change in temperature made her exhausted head spin.