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David could help, at least for now He wasn’t et to Bad Bob andoff of me
Or kill hih I had to adht I put hied my bra strap back in place and turned to face et used to that Husband We’d had the wedding ceremony, kind of It had been interrupted by various attacks, but I thought ere married, anyway I just didn’t feel "
"Busy," he said, which was uninforo His shoulders lifted and fell, as if he knehat I was thinking "Djinn business" Whichwith?"
"Soht as well as yours He has Rahel prisoner
Even Ashan agrees that we can’t let this go without an answer" Just as David was in charge of the New Djinn, the ones who traced their origins to human ancestry, Ashan was the Mack Daddy of the Old Djinn who liked to refer to the, because if half the Djinn are "true," then the other half must be, well, "false" It’s the equivalent of racial prejudice, as
Most Djinn I’ve ever ht percent altruism, and two percent coant Djinn I’d ever met, and he maxed out on compassion That made him incredibly hot to me, but it also made him vulnerable Ashan buried the needle on the other end; he didn’t know theof altruisance, all the ti about as well as you’d expect, when they were actually talking at all
"And is the great Ashan going to grace us with his presence?" I asked I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it
"He’ll be around," David answered, which was a typically Djinn sort of evasion Around could ation of four of his own, though"
" Four?He did get the er, et cetera?"
"Four of his most powerful," David clarified "One of theht, then; Venna, I trusted For an Old Djinn, she was a-okay; she even displayed an interest in regular folks, in the way a kid develops a fascination with an ant farht ere kind of cool in a science-lab sort of way
She liked to walk around in the guise of a child, but in no way could you classify Venna as vulnerable Terrifying, yes Frail, no
David looked over aze There at the other end of the hallway stood Venna, with three other, much taller Djinn The expressions on the faces of the other three Djinn, whom I didn’t knoere identical: pricelessly annoyed Not here by choice, I gathered Their s-bad scowls could have shattered titanium
Venna, however, waved cheerfully She was dressed in child-sized pants and a cute little pink top with a sparkly rainbow She’d largely given up her predilection for dressing as Alice fro blond hair and innocent blue eyes
I waved back Venna said so to her fellow Old Djinn, and the four of thee Heading for their own quarters, I assus
"I’ve brought ten of the New Djinn," David said
"In case so happens, I’ve also left someone at Jonathan’s house who can take over as Conduit, at least temporarily"
David, in other words, had ements in the event of his own death Jonathan’s house - Jonathan had been his friend, and the leader of the Djinn for thousands of years -
existed in a kind of pocket universe, apart from both the human world and the other planes of reality where the Djinn could travel It was the equivalent of a defensive bunker
If David thought this was dire enough to name a successor and stash his were really not at all good
"David - " I didn’t knohat I wanted to say, except that I wanted it to all be okay For once
His fingers squeezed htly "I know," he said "But we’re in this together For life Whatever may happen"
He meant it
My husband
I blinked back a sudden irrational flood of tears and hugged him, hard, until the impulse to weep passed "Okay," I said, and cleared e "Want to help us out with so really, really trivial?"
"Always"
"In the first-class lounge, you’ll find a couple of stewards, a couple of security guards, and a bunch of very rich jerks who don’t want to take orders and are probably giving the staff a very hard tideclined"
"You want me to intimidate them?"
"You betcha, buster"
David smiled, and this time his shtening - even to me His skin darkened and took on a lowed like storerous and oh ht you’d never ask," he said "Point me"