He chuckled, and that was the most dangerous sound he had made thus far. “You wish, human.”
Attempting to mimic his regal, preemptory attitude, she rotated her hand in a get on with it already gesture, and he grinned again. He sobered and said, “I made the connection with your house when I said I would protect you and the children. Older Djinn who owe and own many favors have connections all over the world. You startled me when you pulled on it. Summoning a Djinn is calling upon any obligation they may have or favor they may owe to you. You do not compel a Djinn when you summon them, but you do…shall we say…call upon their honor. A Djinn who refuses to answer a summoning should have an overriding reason, such as answering a prior commitment, or they will be seen to have no honor, in which case no other Djinn will have anything to do with them. An honorless Djinn has no House and becomes a pariah. Since you apparently know so little about Djinn, to the point where it could be hazardous for your health, I offer you this advice for free: do not have anything to do with a pariah. Our Houses are built on our associations, and our associations are built on our word. The pariahs go against this fundamental truth. They are very dangerous. They are also, thankfully, rare.”
She frowned. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I could feel the thread, and I pulled on it to get your attention.”
“Well,” he said drily, “you did that. You pulled quite hard.”
She frowned. “I’m sorry. It didn’t hurt, did it?”
“No, it did not hurt. It was more like you suddenly shouted in my ear. Very disruptive and annoying.”
As they talked, he appeared to relax. Or at least he was less menacing. He might be indifferent to her, but she wasn’t indifferent to him. She wished she didn’t enjoy the sense of being immersed in his intensely male presence, but she had to admit she did. To be honest, she wanted to roll around in the sensation like it was catnip.
Instead she sighed, tugged her lip and spun the chair. She said, “That’s why you were Mr. Grumpy Guts when you showed up.”
“Mr.…” He shook his head and snorted. “Stop doing that.”
“Stop doing what, spinning the chair?” Feeling childish, she put a bare toe to the floor and deliberately shoved the chair into another rotation.
“Stop pulling at your lip,” he ordered. “It is time for a new round of questions, and it is my turn to ask you something.”
She sighed and stopped pulling at her lip. Inwardly, she was rather pleased with how the whole truth game had gone so far. Not only was she learning something, but Khalil was unexpectedly entertaining…in an entirely rude and insufferable sort of way. It wasn’t as though she liked him. But conversing with him beat lying sleepless on the futon and freaking herself out at every stray nighttime noise. And frankly, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this long of a conversation with another adult. She would pay for it in the morning when the children woke up at the crack of dawn, but she would have paid for her sleepless night one way or another.
She said, “So ask.”
Khalil regarded her with a heavy-lidded gaze. He took so long, she stopped her chair and scowled at him. That was when she noticed he was looking at her brace, his expression curious. He asked, “Why do you wear that black contraption on your leg?”
Her gut clenched. His question was as artless as a child’s, but it still hurt. She breathed evenly through pinched nostrils until she could unclench enough to answer. She said shortly, “I was in the car accident that killed my sister and her husband. My knee is damaged, so sometimes I have to wear a brace.”
He frowned. “This is also why you use a cane.”
She looked down at her leg, nodding. Suddenly he was crouched in front of her chair. She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Don’t do that!”
But his attention was on her leg. He was still frowning. “I want you to show me.”
She almost lashed out at him, physically as well as verbally, but his fascination was so alien, so outside normal human boundaries of behavior, it caught her own attention. Slowly she unbuckled the straps on the brace and pulled it off. Her slender leg was bare from the ragged edge of the cutoff shorts to her naked foot.
Khalil took hold of her, one huge hand at her ankle and the other slipping underneath her knee, and he pulled her leg out straight. His hands were quite careful and inhumanly hot, as if his physical form contained an inferno of energy. While he studied the mass of red scars, she studied him by the indirect light of the computer screen. Her stomach clenched again as he probed her knee with a light tendril of Power, but she let him explore the injury in silence.