Page 58 of Mistaken

He was the one who’d done it. There hadn’t been some secret lab filled with djinn scientists, part of the mythology of their new world that she and her fellow residents in Los Alamos had bandied about, but only one man.

Or whatever he was. Not djinn, not elder, some kind of strange being with nearly godlike powers and the devil’s face.

No, that wasn’t exactly right. One side of his visage had been ravaged beyond recognition, but the other showed how handsome he could have been if something hadn’t gone terribly wrong during his creation.

As if that mattered. He could have had the face of an angel, but that wouldn’t change the terrible reality that it was his mind that had concocted the disease that had destroyed humanity…or that his hands had been the ones to release it.

Her stomach churned again, but since she could tell she wasn’t going to actually vomit, Sarah made herself sit down in the comfortable chair by the window. The outside was just as bright and clear as though nothing momentous had happened in her world, and she found herself frowning, wishing that more storm clouds would converge on the house so the world outside could better match the agony in her soul.

Lying on the side table next to the chair was the iPad Abdul had given her. She stared down at it, wondering how someone who could be responsible for so much suffering and death had thought to give her a tablet loaded with music and books and movies, all the things she might need to be more comfortable here. And how could such a monstrous being have taught himself the piano just so she would have someone to accompany her as she practiced her music?

It didn’t make any sense at all.

Stranger than you dreamt it,passed through her mind, and she shook her head. Having random lyrics fromPhantomrattling around in her head wasn’t going to solve anything.

She didn’t know how they could fix this. To think she’d honestly believed she was developing feelings for Abdul, even while she’d acknowledged that any kind of a relationship with him would have been impossible.

Oh, it was impossible, all right. She just hadn’t knownhowimpossible.

She pulled in a breath, then another. Doing so might have helped with her queasiness, but she still had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do now.

It had been one thing to accept her captivity here…and she knew she had mostly accepted it, had been almost glad that she could stay here and regain her voice and live a life of ease…when she thought Abdul was just a garden-variety djinn with an odd fetish about keeping his face hidden from her. Now she knew the secret of his deformity was nothing compared to the real secrets he’d been hiding, that without him, the Dying would never have happened at all.

And he’d been so calm about it, as though he thought if he just explained his reasoning, then she could somehow find the strength within herself to forgive him!

That was…crazy. How could you forgive a person for killing eight billion people?

She knew this was an inner battle many Chosen must also have fought, but Sarah had to believe their situations were entirely different. None of those djinn had actively killed humans…well, all right, except for reaver djinn like the al-Qadir brothers…although they’d been complicit in those deaths. Yes, supposedly the djinn of the One Thousand had protested such extreme measures, and yet they hadn’t done anything to stop it.

Could they have?

Probably not, she guessed. They were only a thousand people, far outnumbered by the rest of the elemental population, which she’d heard was around twenty thousand, give or take.

But just standing by and watching a bus go over a cliff wasn’t the same thing as cutting the brake lines.

Okay,she told herself,you need to be logical about this. You’ve been here for eight days, and Abdul hasn’t done a single thing to harm you. If he’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead already. So now you need to figure out what to do next.

Could she act as though his revelations hadn’t had any huge impact on her, pretend that she thought she could go on pretty much as they’d been for the past week-plus?

She was a good actress…but she doubted she was that good.

All right, maybe she should come out of her room and get in his face, let her anger fly and then subside. That seemed a little more realistic, although she still didn’t know how she could even allow herself to be in the same room with him without recoiling in disgust.

Not because of his face, but because of what he’d done to the human race.

This was an impossible situation. And she knew part of what roiled within her now was the realization that she really had begun to care for him — the small kindnesses he showed her, the way he somehow understood when she preferred to be quiet and didn’t bother her with idle chitchat.

How he’d gotten her to sing again,reallysing, in a way she honestly thought she never would.

All while hiding the blackest secret a person could possibly conceal.

Was that tight sensation in her throat unshed tears…or just her doing her best to hold down the bile?

Horribly, she thought it might be a little of both.

Utter silence from within Sarah’s room, which he supposed was better than wailing and screaming and objects being thrown in a rage.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

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