Page 2 of Mistaken

And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t spent plenty of time in Española, helping with the gleaning operations intended to collect every even slightly useful item from the abandoned houses and businesses in the small town. With a pang, she thought of her friend…well, more like good acquaintance…Isla, who’d also been an enthusiastic gleaner. One of those expeditions had gotten her a lot more than she’d bargained for, since she’d encountered a djinn who’d captured her, but that had all turned out fine in the end. They’d fallen in love, and Isla was now Aamir’s Chosen and living a life of luxury in Santa Fe.

Sarah kind of doubted the same kind of fate awaited her, and yet she had to believe that a few days hiking around Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch would be infinitely preferable to another week of stocking the refrigerated cases at the co-op or scrubbing down tables and pouring beer at Pajarito’s.

Almost of its own volition, her hand shot into the air.

“I’ll go,” she said.

The three djinn elders stood in front of Abdul, none of them looking particularly pleased with him.

“It is time for you to leave,” Ibram, the eldest of them, said.

Abdul crossed his arms. Not for the first time, he was glad of the long black robe he wore, a garment that had done well to shield his face for countless millennia because of the way the hood dropped far forward, casting deep shadows. It did an excellent job of concealing the frown he knew pulled at his brow.

“Why now?” he asked, doing his best to keep his tone mild. “For I see little that has changed between yesterday and today.”

Istar, the only woman among the elders, surprised him by smiling. Like all djinn women, she was strikingly lovely, with red hair that fell to her waist and emerald-hued eyes, but she also had a certain whimsy about her, as if she possessed knowledge that no one else did…and was amused by it.

“Nothing has changed,” she said. “Except perhaps that our patience has finally worn thin. It has been some months since the last of our people abandoned their palaces here in the otherworld. You are the only one remaining.”

“Not precisely true,” he countered. “For I know that Lyanna al-Syan still maintains her palace on this plane.”

Idris and Ibram flickered a glance at one another. Abdul knew they could speak non-vocally, but although he was not precisely the same as all the other djinn, neither was he an elder, and so he had no idea what the two men standing a few paces away had been saying in their thoughts.

“That is not the same, and you know it,” Ibram said. An edge had entered his voice, one that Abdul had heard several times before over the centuries, although it had been a long while since the elder’s irritation had been directed at him. “For Lyanna al-Syan has been sentenced to remain here alone for all eternity, thanks to her crimes against Zahrias al-Harith and his Chosen. You, my friend, have committed no such crimes, and therefore must also remove yourself to a new life on Earth.”

Perhaps he had not engaged in the same crimes as Lyanna, but he knew he had committed countless others. Crimes in service to his people, true, and yet he doubted humans would have the same understanding view of the situation.

“This palace pleases me,” he said, more to use up a bit more time than because he thought he could bend the three elders to his way of thinking.

“And you will find a place on Earth that pleases you as well,” Istar responded easily. “For no palace, no matter how beautiful, can possibly compare to the beauties of Earth.”

Unlike many of the djinn, Abdul had not spent any great amount of time on the mortals’ plane. However, he had been there enough to know that, on the surface, Istar’s assertion was mostly valid. Except….

“There is still a great deal about it that is decidedlynotbeautiful,” he said. “For I know that, even though our people have been busy, it is going to require a great deal of time to rid the place of all the ugly works of men.”

This time, it was Istar and Ibram who exchanged a glance. Idris, on the other hand, appeared annoyed, as if he believed Abdul was wasting their time.

Perhaps. After all, Idris had taken a human woman for a companion, one who was reputed to be quite beautiful, and no doubt he would much rather be spending time in her company than standing here and arguing with an obstinate not-quite djinn reluctant to abandon the only world he had ever known.

“We understand the service you have done for us,” Istar said, the smile she had been wearing a moment earlier gone as if it had never been. “And we also understand that sometimes it is difficult to give up places that are familiar, even beloved. But you will make a new home on Earth, just as the rest of us have.”

Although her expression was serious, it was impossible to ignore the warmth in her voice. It seemed clear enough to Abdul that she was happy in her new home…and she expected him to be as well.

“Surely you must have given it some thought,” Ibram said. “For while we have been patient with you, we all knew that the time must come when even you abandoned the otherworld and joined the rest of us in the place that had been denied us for so long.”

Yes, that had been the dream — to eradicate humankind so the djinn could lay claim to Earth and all its beauties, beauties that should have been theirs countless millennia ago.

Certainly, they would have been much better stewards of the place than humans ever were.

And he would not lie. While he had lingered here far longer than any of the djinn — except, of course, for the hot-headed Lyanna al-Syan, made a prisoner by her own exceedingly bad decisions — Abdul had still known the time would come when he would also have to leave the palace he had constructed for himself over the years, a towering edifice of basalt and obsidian, whose shadowed hallways had served very well to conceal who he was.

What he had done.

No palace for him on Earth, however. He wanted his destination to be someplace remote, a location where he could be certain that no one…human or djinn…would have any reason to stumble across his sanctuary. If that meant he must live humbly — at least at first — then so be it. Let the djinn live in their palaces and mansions, their ocean-front properties that had once been the playgrounds of humanity’s wealthy and notorious. He would take refuge in the natural world and hope its much simpler beauties might help soothe some of the darkness in his soul.

For a moment, though, he was silent. If he uttered the name of his new home aloud, then that would make it real, would tell him that his time in the otherworld and the palace he had built would at last be at an end.

No help for it, unfortunately. Even if he kept his plans to himself, he knew the elders would discover his destination soon enough. That was their way, after all — they saw and understood far more than any ordinary djinn.

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