Grace had been riding in the backseat of the car at the time of the accident. That had saved her life. The head-on collision had driven the front seat back into her. She had scars on both legs, but the real damage was to her right leg, where she had suffered extensive tearing in the cartilage of her knee. The surgeon had done what she could to repair the damage, but Grace, who had once run track in high school and had considered training for Louisville’s half marathon, would never run again. The surgeon had also warned she might still have to have a knee replacement at some time in the future.
A knee-replacement surgery could cost as much as $35,000, if not more. Yeah, that wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. Grace did her physical therapy exercises religiously, and when she had to, she wore her knee brace. When all else failed, she used a cane. The fall from earlier was still bothering her, so she strapped on the brace and felt relief from the extra support immediately.
She sat at the desk and turned on the computer to scroll through the database on the Elder Races that Niko had created based on the journals and books written by previous Oracles. Ah, she knew there was an entry on the Djinn. She clicked on the subject to open it up and read through it quickly.
In the Demonkind demesne, the Djinn social structure was made up of five Houses—the Shaytan, the Gul, the Ifrit, the Jann and the most Powerful of them all, the House Marid. The Houses were based on relationships, much like humans conceived of clans or extended family groups. Large decisions that affected an entire House were made through consensus, with the older, more Powerful Djinn having the final say.
Djinn were creatures of magic and fire, and almost un-imaginable Power. They did not value physical things or money, but traded in favors. To the Djinn, a bargain was a sacred thing, and to break a bargain was a serious crime. They were not known as forgiving creatures. Many human legends told of Djinns’ malicious or mischievous behavior toward anyone who was foolish enough to make a bargain with them and then break it.
She hadn’t expected to find the information quite so absorbing, but interesting though it was, the article didn’t say anything about how to get rid of a Djinn that insisted on hanging around.
Thanks to her grandmother’s teachings, Grace knew the steps she would take to get rid of an unwelcome ghost or a dark spirit, but a Djinn was an entirely different class of creature. Most ghosts were little more than a dead person’s memories, and they tended to fade away on their own. Dark spirits like poltergeists were rudimentary things. They were residual energy from a particularly strong, malicious ghost, and while they could create physical chaos and cause harm, there was relatively little personality left with which to reason. As actual living creatures, the Djinn were much more sophisticated and Powerful. Sighing, she switched off the computer and moved to the living room.
She turned on the television to catch the tail end of the local news while she straightened up the room, picked up toys and folded laundry. When she heard the current news segment, she turned to stare at the screen. The two anchors, a man and a woman, speculated on the sudden appearance of several Elder Councillors in Louisville, but the main focus of the segment was on Dragos Cuelebre, Lord of the Wyr, and his new mate as they checked into the luxurious downtown Brown Hotel.
Cuelebre was a massive black-haired male who stood head and shoulders above almost everyone else around him. He had turned his rough-hewn face away from the camera. His arm was around a tall, slender woman with pale blonde hair. Grace recognized her from the confrontation in the meadow earlier that morning. In the aired segment she wore sunglasses that covered half of her triangular face. The woman said something to Cuelebre as they entered the hotel, and he nodded in response. They both ignored the cluster of reporters and camera crews surrounding them.