Page 30 of Mistaken

Sarah supposed it was possible.After all, it had been years and years since she’d heard a properly functioning icemaker. No one used them in Los Alamos, not when they required so much energy and water. People had learned to have “iced” tea that was only cooled in the refrigerator, and although an exception was made around the Fourth of July so everyone could have ice cream, all the ice was made in kitchens with newer and better freezers than the one in her townhouse’s kitchen.

Still….

She went over to the fridge and opened the freezer compartment, then peered in. Yes, there were definitely cubes in the icemaker, and she supposed a batch of them could have dropped just as she was starting to lose herself in the book she’d been reading.

And after all, why would Abdul have any reason to lie to her about something so innocuous?

Absolutely none. Besides, they’d had such a pleasant day so far that she didn’t want to walk back outside and start giving him the third degree about the odd noise that had disrupted her reading time. Better to let it go.

She picked up her iPad, but instead of returning to her room, she sat down on the couch in the great room so she could see the landscape outside and enjoy the soft breezes blowing through the space. The walls of the house were so thick that they acted as an excellent insulator, which meant she doubted the place would need any real air conditioning except on the very hottest of summer days…and those had been fewer and farther in between in the world after the Dying, when the climate slipped back into a more normal weather pattern.

Abdul didn’t seem ready to make an appearance, though, and she wondered what he was up to. If he were a regular human, she might have said he was busy carrying the saddles down to the stable, which she thought was located on the other side of the low promontory where the house was situated. But a djinn could just blink all the horses’ tack wherever he wished, so she doubted he would waste his energy on such a simple chore.

Or maybe he wasn’t coming back inside because she’d decided to plant herself here rather than in her room, and he was avoiding her.

Sarah wasn’t sure she liked that possibility, especially after they’d spent such a pleasant couple of hours together.

Wait…was she actually annoyed at the thought that Abdul might not be completely entranced by having her around?

That was just nuts. All right, he hadn’t thrown her in a dungeon and shackled her to a wall or anything, but she needed to hang on to the simple fact that she wouldn’t be in this house at all if he hadn’t compelled her to stay here.

The front door opened then, and she blinked and immediately forced her attention back to the iPad in her lap. If asked, she couldn’t have responded with a single coherent detail about the page she was supposed to be reading, but Abdul didn’t have to know that.

“You are enjoying your book?”

Again, all politeness. She wondered if he was being deliberately pleasant to lure her into some kind of Stockholm syndrome situation.

Or maybe he’d decided there was no point in acting like a jerk.

“Yes,” she lied. “I hope you don’t mind me sitting out here. I just figured since you said I had the run of the property — ”

“It is fine,” he said hastily. “I can see why you would want to be out here, since the view is so pleasant.”

That it was. Actually, as the afternoon had worn on, thunderheads had begun to build up, so near that she thought this time, they might get a real light show instead of a few clouds that dissipated after sunset. Sitting here, she’d have her best chance of seeing something fun.

“But I also wanted to ask if you had any preference for our evening meal,” he went on. “I think I would like to make something from scratch.”

Sarah blinked again, then set her iPad on the coffee table. “You cook? I thought — ”

“Many djinn simply conjure their food, it is true,” he said. “But there are those among us who like to do it the old-fashioned way, to use a human phrase. It can be a pleasant occupation to pass the time.”

She’d never been too much into cooking, mostly because with school and running to auditions and squeezing in rehearsals and everything else, she barely had time to order takeout. And her father had never seemed to mind, mostly because he worked such long hours and was rarely even home when dinnertime rolled around.

However, she thought she could see why some djinn might want to take up cooking. They were so long-lived that they had a hell of a lot of hours to fill.

And she had a feeling that putting together a favorite recipe would be much more fun for them, partly because they could easily conjure up any missing ingredients or have the garlic chop itself, or whatever.

While it might have been amusing to ask for something really complicated, like beef Wellington or Julia Child’s bourguignon recipe, Sarah thought that might be a little petty.

“You can choose something,” she said. “I’m not super picky. About the only thing I won’t eat is snails.”

Was that a glint of dark eyes within his hood?

Probably not; the thing did a remarkably good job of hiding his face, so much so that she wondered if he’d cast some sort of enchantment on it to prevent any observers from seeing even a hit of the features within.

“I think we can avoid snails,” he replied, and there was no missing the flicker of amusement in his voice. “But I will ponder this for a while.”

After making that comment, he headed down the hallway that, she assumed, led to the main suite and whatever other rooms were located in that wing of the house. She hadn’t ventured there yet, mainly because she already felt as though she was skating on thin ice and didn’t want to annoy him and be banished to her room once again.

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