Page 32 of Mistaken

A quick touch-up of her face, and she brushed her hair to get all the tangles out. On the ride, she’d pulled it back into a ponytail so it wouldn’t be in the way, but it still needed some work to get it nice and shiny again.

Too bad Abdul hadn’t provided any bobby pins or clips or anything she could have used to pull it up and out of the way. Sarah supposed it was all right to leave her hair loose and simple like this, and yet the dress was just fancy enough that it seemed to call for a little extra effort.

Well, she didn’t have any jewelry, either, except the silver earrings she’d worn this whole time. Back at her townhouse in Los Alamos, she had the antique bohemian garnet ring she’d been wearing when she fled Albuquerque all those years ago, but she rarely put it on these days. It was a family heirloom and had supposedly belonged to her great-grandmother on her mom’s side. Sarah couldn’t know for sure, since that ancestor had been long gone by the time she came along, and she hadn’t been old enough when her mother had died to have gotten the whole story.

She didn’t want to think about that, though. That tragedy was far back in the past and didn’t have any bearing on her life now.

Whatever that life would turn out to be, considering how Abdul hadn’t said a single word about letting her leave and she still hadn’t come up with anything remotely resembling a decent plan for getting out of here.

When she emerged from her bedroom, the main part of the house was filled with amazing smells, delicious aromas that made her stomach want to growl even though she thought she’d had a decent enough lunch. The table was set as well, with simple, heavy stoneware in a soft sage green that went well with the other natural tones in the house.

Candles flickered on the tabletop, set in unadorned iron holders, and they also shone from the heavy mantel of twisted juniper that adorned the fireplace.

Was Abdul trying to impress her, or did he only think that a meal like this deserved a little extra effort?

Probably the latter. Sarah couldn’t come up with a single reason why he should care at all what she thought.

Just as soon as she entered the living room, lightning flashed, illuminating the dark valley below. A few seconds later, thunder rumbled, strong enough that she thought she could hear the sconces rattling on the wall.

“That was close,” she remarked.

Abdul had been standing at the kitchen counter, tossing some greens in a large wooden bowl, but he paused then and glanced over at her. “Yes, it was,” he said. “Strong enough that it might have disrupted the power here if we still needed to worry about such things. Luckily, we do not.”

Because his djinn energy was keeping the lights going and powering the gas stove. For all she knew, this house might have had solar panels on the roof, but solar wouldn’t do anything to make the gas oven work.

“Dinner is almost ready,” he went on. “Perhaps you would like to choose some music to listen to?”

“‘Music’?” she repeated. As far as she’d been able to tell, there didn’t seem to be any kind of sound system here.

Maybe he smiled under the hood. “There are speakers concealed in those shelves over there,” he said, pointing toward the built-ins that surrounded a truly enormous TV attached to the wall. “And there is also a unit that will allow you to hook up your iPad to it.”

Perfect. Since Abdul had already provided enormous libraries of music on the tablet he’d given her, there must be something on there that would work as a good background for their dinner.

“Got it,” she told him, and headed back into her bedroom so she could fetch the iPad. Soon enough, she had it hooked up to the Bose system that was so cleverly concealed inside the built-in, with a sort of wicker covering on the cupboards that held the speakers so you couldn’t see them but sound could easily escape.

Now all she had to do was figure out what to listen to. With all her focus on musical theater — with a foray into opera one summer when she was trying to decide on the best use of her voice — she had never paid much attention to what was popular. Anyway, playing Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter or Billie Eilish didn’t seem like the right thing to do, not on a stormy evening when she was sitting down to dinner with a djinn.

Among the literally hundreds of playlists on the iPad, she found one that appeared to be a mix of Russian composers, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff. She started that one going, making sure the volume wasn’t turned up too high so she wouldn’t have to worry about getting blasted out of her seat if it launched into the1812 Overtureor something similarly bombastic.

Luckily, the first song sounded as if it was from Rimsky-Korsakoff’sScheherazade,lush and lovely…and maybe a little too on point for a meal she’d be sharing with a djinn, but she couldn’t worry about that now. Instead, she headed over to the long table in the dining area and hovered there for a moment, not sure whether she should offer to help with anything.

“Dinner will be on the table soon,” Abdul told her, effectively forestalling any inquiries along those lines. “You may go ahead and sit down.”

Well, at least that would stop her from standing here awkwardly, not sure what to do. She pulled out a chair and seated herself, and placed the heavy cream-colored linen napkin from her place setting on her lap. A basket covered with an identical napkin and with a plate of butter next to it seemed to signal the rolls were already on the table, so all Abdul had to do was bring over the bowl of salad and the heavy enamel-over-iron Dutch oven full of the stew he’d made, and then he sat down as well.

“I assumed you would like some wine,” he went on. “If not, I will summon something else for you to drink.”

Maybe some people would have counseled her to stay completely sober, but oddly, Sarah thought she was safe enough with Abdul. If he’d had any designs on her, he’d had plenty of opportunities during the time she’d been with him for him to do whatever he wanted. Getting just the mildest of buzzes sounded like as good a way as any to end the day.

Besides, although she hadn’t been anything close to an expert on wine, she knew enough that a meal like this probably deserved something more than a glass of water.

“Wine would be great,” she told him.

Without comment, he reached for the bottle and laid a finger against the neck. At once, the cork pulled itself out, far more quickly and smoothly than it probably would have emerged if he’d used an ordinary bottle opener.

Sarah couldn’t help grinning. “Nice trick.”

“Sometimes it is better for us to use our powers,” he said as he poured an inch or so of dark wine into her glass.

---