Page 12 of Mistaken

Maybe this house hadn’t been intended for guests at all. Sarah supposed this might have been where Ghost Ranch’s director had lived, or someone else high up in the organization. It had been so long since she’d been here that she couldn’t even begin to guess.

A peek inside the refrigerator showed that it was empty, although it was definitely on, the interior cool and ready to accommodate whatever food needed to be stored there.

And that was also weird. Yes, the place probably had solar panels to keep things going, but still, if the house had been empty all this time, you’d think there would be long-spoiled food remaining inside the fridge.

None of this made any sense.

She turned away from the refrigerator and let out a shocked gasp. Standing a few feet away was a tall man, his face and form completely hidden by the long robe he wore, which had a hood so deep that it concealed everything within it. The getup looked like something a medieval monk might have worn, and she couldn’t help gaping at the apparition.

Despite the way the hood fell forward and shadowed his face, she fancied she saw a glitter of eyes from inside the hood as he demanded, “What are you doing in my house?”

Chapter5

At first,Abdul hadn’t intended to confront the woman. He’d held himself back as he watched her enter the house, then seem to hesitate as she glanced around the living room.

But when she opened the refrigerator door, he’d had enough. It wasn’t as though there was anything to see in there — he hadn’t yet gotten around to stocking the thing, and only summoned the raw ingredients he needed when it came time to prepare his meals — but something about the casual way she’d looked inside the refrigerator angered him, as though she thought she had every right to poke around as she liked.

And so he’d removed the veil of invisibility he’d wrapped around himself, and asked her to tell him what she was doing.

Her face immediately paled under its light golden tan, but although he could see the way she swallowed, she didn’t turn and flee. Instead, she stared directly back at him and said, “Who are you?”

“I am the one who owns this house,” he replied. “A house where you are trespassing, I might add.”

Now she looked almost guilty, her gaze moving away from him to somewhere nearer the floor. In the late afternoon light streaming through the kitchen window, her eyes looked almost golden, although he guessed they would be more of a greenish blue in illumination that wasn’t quite so warm.

“I didn’t know anyone lived here,” she said. Her voice as she spoke was as clear and as pure as the singing he’d heard earlier, although pitched slightly lower. “I thought Ghost Ranch was just as deserted as the rest of this part of New Mexico.” She stopped there, and now her eyes came back up again to meet his. “Are you — are you a djinn?”

The easiest way to answer her was to say yes, and that this place had been granted to him by the elders and therefore was nowhere she should be.

But that would not have been precisely the truth. Also, while he might have wished fervently that she had come nowhere near here, now that she had seen him, matters were a bit more complicated than they had been a few moments earlier.

“That does not matter,” he said. “What matters is that you have come to my home, unbidden, and seen what you should not have seen.”

Now one of her well-arched brows lifted slightly. This close, Abdul could see that his earlier estimation of her had been accurate, that her features were regular and well-shaped, her skin smooth and without blemish. And although she did not seem to wear any cosmetics — wise, he supposed, for someone who clearly had spent the day walking — both her cheeks and her lips were rosy with color.

“Considering that robe you’re wearing, I haven’t seen a whole lot,” she remarked. Her lips parted again — perhaps to inquire why he covered himself in such a fashion — but then she seemed to think better of the question, for she only said, “I’m really sorry that I barged in here like this. If I’d known the place was occupied, I would have left it alone. So I guess all I can do is offer my apologies and get on the road.”

She did sound genuinely contrite…but also troubled. Was it fear over how he might respond, or simple worry about heading back to the highway with nightfall so near?

Not that it mattered. She had seen him, and that meant he could only respond in one way if he wished to preserve the safe, quiet world he’d created for himself here.

“I’m afraid it isn’t quite so simple,” he said, and her brows drew together. Before she could say anything in response to his comment, however, he went on, “For now that you have seen me, I cannot allow you to leave this place.”

A horrible second or two passed while Sarah stared back at the man…djinn…whatever he was. Was this some kind of a horrible joke?

What did he mean? He couldn’t actually be saying that he planned to keep hertrappedhere, could he?

Apparently so, because he seemed to interpret her horrified silence and continued. “You see, this house — all of Ghost Ranch, really — is my sanctuary. I assume you must have come here to explore, to gather information. But I cannot let you take the knowledge of my presence here back to your people.”

The way he phrased those words made it pretty clear to her that he must be a djinn. Why he was covered up in that hooded robe, though, she had no idea. Although she’d never seen a djinn in person — she’d managed to evade them during her escape from Albuquerque, and she’d never gone on one of her town’s expeditions to Santa Fe where the conscientious objector djinn lived with their human partners — she’d always heard that the immortal elementals were supposed to be almost supernaturally good-looking.

If the weather had been colder, she might have told herself he was merely trying to stay warm, but since the weather had been utterly beautiful lately, with highs floating in the upper seventies, she didn’t see any reason why he’d need to bundle up.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said quickly. “Really. Besides, we know to stay away from djinn houses unless we’ve been given an actual invitation. No one is going to bother you here.”

“No one is going to bother me because they will not know I am here at all,” the djinn said, his tone almost mild…but implacable nonetheless. “Tell me, why did you come to Ghost Ranch in the first place?”

Sarah wanted to lie, to give him an explanation that seemed utterly harmless. Problem was, she had a feeling he’d be able to figure it out right away if she told him anything less than the truth. And even though she didn’t know his name or anything about him, something about the quiet strength of his tall, lean body, the dark glimmer of eyes within the hood, seemed to signal he was not the sort of person to put up with that sort of prevarication.

---