Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)(10)

His daughter lived but didn’t laugh any longer, not like these bright, innocent humans. Occasionally Djinn sustained so much damage they became malformed. Phaedra was like that, her energy jagged and twisted. She shunned contact with others, and she was quick to lash out and cause damage. He did not know how to help her. He had never known how to help her.

At last Grace left Max and Chloe’s bedroom. He heard her move back to the kitchen. She ran more water, and there were more sounds of dishes clinking and splashing. Then she moved to another room, the left room in the downstairs. That would be the office area. She was silent for a while, and then she went into the living room. He noticed how her gait changed at times. She would start walking at a smooth pace, but she quickly slowed down, and her footsteps became arrhythmic, ungraceful. It was another oddity.

She turned on the television, and that was when he slipped silent as the summer breeze through the open window into the children’s bedroom.

The toys had been picked up. The floor was clear, and the room tidy. The bedroom was not quite dark because the door was open, and indirect light shone from the living room down the hall. The two beds were at opposite sides of the room. Colorful posters adorned the walls. A cheerful green frog hung over Max’s crib, and a pink pig wearing a blonde wig and pearls hung over Chloe’s small bed.

Khalil added the pig in the blonde wig to the growing list of things he did not understand. He hated to admit it, but the human female might have had a point.

Khalil moved silently over to check Max’s still form. The baby smelled clean and was fast asleep again, his round cheeks flushed. Khalil picked up Max’s hand and studied it curiously. It was even smaller and more delicate than Chloe’s, a soft little starfish of flesh. These humans were such odd creatures.

When he moved over to Chloe’s bed, he saw that she lay on her stomach, sucking her thumb. She smelled clean too, and her shining curls were combed. Then he saw the shadowed sparkle of her eyes, and he realized she was awake and watching him as he watched her.

He crouched to look at her. She smiled at him around her thumb. He whispered, “Do you know that I am the doggie-cat?”

She nodded.

“Clever girl.” He thought a minute, trying to come up with words she might understand. It was surprisingly difficult to try to think like a small, new human might. “Do you know that I am not really a doggie or a cat?”

She nodded again.

Good. That was good. He patted her back. She felt warm and soft and a little lumpy under a light summer blanket. “Do you know that you should not pull a real doggie’s tail or a real cat’s tail either? And you should not poke them in the eye?”

She popped her thumb out of her mouth and whispered, “Indeed?”

He frowned, suspicious. “Do you understand what that word means?”

She shook her head.

He sighed. “I see we have things to work on.”

She asked, “Can you be a horsie too?”

Ah. Small, noisy and remarkably tenacious. He was learning a great deal about new humans.

“I don’t think we should be having this conversation right now,” Khalil whispered. He wanted to pick her up and hug her but restrained himself.

She snickered sleepily. “Indeed.”

He patted her back again.

Indeed.

The Bane of Her Existence might have disappeared from sight, but he still hadn’t left. Grace could still sense his presence hanging in the air, like the aftermath of a bonfire.

Why hadn’t he gone? What attracted him, and how could she change it, so that he would lose interest and leave for good?

Grace considered the problem of the unwelcome Djinn, while the matronly ghosts murmured to each other and she cleaned up the kitchen.

The babysitting roster wasn’t the only assistance Grace received from the witches. Jaydon Guthrie, the head of one of the oldest covens in Louisville, had arranged for a quarterly community work day to help her with basic maintenance on the property. As Jaydon said, the work days would benefit more than just Grace. They would also provide a way for witches to volunteer several hours at a time, which would help those who were behind on their community service tithe. Grace had been too desperate to consider turning the offer down.

On the first work day, she had used their help to arrange things so that she and the children were mostly using the ground floor. The kitchen was spacious and had a dining nook with a table, a high chair and four chairs, so they didn’t need a separate dining area. When Petra and Niko had decided to have children, they had installed a stacked washer and dryer in the kitchen so that Petra wouldn’t have to go into the basement very often. The ground floor also had a half bath.

Grace had the large dining table and chairs stored in the garage, the downstairs office moved into the dining room and Chloe and Max’s bedroom set up in what had once been the office. She slept on a futon in the office/dining room. That meant she only had to climb the stairs when it was bath time or when she needed to get a change of clothes. The downstairs was cooler in the summer, and it was easier on her leg, so the solution worked for now. Gradually her clothes were coming down the stairs and not making it back up again. She had started storing things in a filing cabinet in one corner of the office.

Saturday was the next work day. Maybe she could get someone to move a dresser downstairs. Simple things like that could make a hard situation a lot more bearable. She put the wet load of clothes from the washer into the dryer. Then she washed up at the kitchen sink, sticking her head under the faucet and soaping her fine, short hair with the baby shampoo she had used on the kids.