“I would have this exchange balanced,” he said tersely.
She was bewildered. She didn’t understand why the concept of a balanced exchange was so important to him. Maybe it had something to do with control? Then she remembered what he had said before, about wishing for information and not wanting to be beholden to her for it. Her expression tightened.
Well, it wasn’t as if she had anything real to lose. She folded her arms and said, “No. We’re done with the truth game. Ask me what you want to ask me, and I’ll answer or not if I like. I’ll ask you anything I want, and you’ll answer or not if you like. No forfeit, no control, no balance. No more favors or deals or measuring shit. We’ll either have a real, messy conversation, or you can get the hell out.”
He grew angry. She could feel it shifting through his energy, slow and sulfurous like slow-moving lava.
She liked it. His anger felt satisfying. It meant he wasn’t indifferent to her. So she pushed him harder. “Go on, go.”
Ever since he had kissed her, Khalil had felt wrapped in invisible chains.
He had attended to his various duties with a surly attitude, snarling at anyone unfortunate enough to get in his way or to look at him strangely. He sat in on a Demonkind legislative committee hearing because it was his responsibility and he must, but he didn’t listen or participate. The committee chair put the subject to a vote, and Khalil looked around at the people with whom he most often shared a common point of view. He raised his hand when they did. Nobody remarked upon it, so he must not have voted for anything too out of character.
He left the legislature and let go of his physical form as soon as he was able to. Then he took to the winds. Releasing his physical form wasn’t as satisfying as he had thought it would be. Nothing he did that day was.
He could not seem to put enough distance between himself and thinking about Grace and the children. He wondered what they were doing that day. Finally, in exasperation, he chose to leave Earth altogether. He materialized into his physical form on the moon.
There was no sound, because the moon had no atmosphere. There was no wind, no air. The sun was a piercing roar of flame. The sun’s reflected light off the moon’s surface was silver white; fragile, unshielded human eyes would have been blinded by the radiance. It did not discomfort Khalil in any way, because his form was a focus. He did not need to breathe. He crossed his arms, staring at the milky green, blue and white ball that was Earth, while he soaked up the blast of inexhaustible energy from the sun.
The moon was as far as the Djinn could travel from Earth without traversing one of the many crossover passages that led to Other lands in other dimensions. Many theories had been put forth about the Other lands, but Khalil thought that the lands were, in the end, either shadows or mirrors, reflections or folds, of the Earth itself.
Around noon, he wondered what Grace and the children were eating for lunch. It would be cheerful, simple and tasty enough to tempt a picky child’s appetite.
Bah. He was back to thinking about them again. With a silent hiss he flicked his fingers angrily in the direction of the blue-white orb. Then he dematerialized and went to the far side of the moon. That side permanently faced away from Earth. It was much more suited to his brooding mood. The surface was battered and densely cratered. The moon was halfway through its lunar cycle, so part of the far side was in darkness.
Here light and dark were knifelike. There were no soft, colorful shadows of dusk, as there had been at Grace’s house last evening. He chose the darkness and rematerialized to lean back against a boulder and stare at the sharp, bright stars. Away from the Earth’s atmosphere, they seemed closer, but they weren’t.
He pushed away from the boulder and strode along the moon’s surface restlessly. The invisible chains were inside of him. It did not matter where he chose to go. His own thoughts were his cage.
Tasty.
Last night, Grace’s mouth had been tasty, succulent with surprise and a kind of honeyed innocence that had nothing to do with virginity and everything to do with the breathless pleasure of new exploration. Her energy had bloomed with arousal.
She was not all sweetness and light. She had thorns, prickly edges and that quick temper he loved to bait into flaring, but the thing that sent him spearing into the night after kissing her was how the darkness of her pain called to his.