Page 13 of Mistaken
“I’m from Los Alamos,” she said, although that should have been obvious. It wasn’t as if there was anyplace else on the planet where humans were allowed to live in peace. “We’re scouting areas north of there to see if they’re viable for expanding our community.”
“I see,” the djinn replied, which didn’t tell her much of anything.
How she wished she could see his face! All her skill at reading people’s expressions was utterly worthless in this particular situation.
However, his tone was studiously neutral, which experience told her was not a good thing. No, he didn’t like the idea of humans coming around here, not at all.
Which she kind of understood. If she’d chosen an isolated spot like this to make her home, only to be faced with the prospect of having it overrun by a bunch of humans trying to find new places to live, she probably wouldn’t have been too thrilled, either.
“But now that we know someone is living at Ghost Ranch, obviously we’ll give it a wide berth,” she said quickly.
His hooded head tilted to one side. “You just said you wouldn’t tell anyone I was here.”
Oh, right. She wanted to berate herself for making such a stupid comment, but she knew she was tired and probably had low blood sugar to boot. If she hadn’t been so tense, she might have also sensed she was hungry and not at her best, even if food was pretty much the farthest thing from her mind right now.
“Of course,” she replied. “I meant, now thatIknow you’re here, I’ll just make up some kind of story about how this place won’t work for us.”
No response at first. But then he said, “No, I fear that is not a good enough solution. I know all too well how driven humans can be when they decide they want something, how they allow very little to stand in their way when they are determined upon a course of action. And that means you must remain here.”
What, did he think he could keep her a prisoner in Ghost Ranch indefinitely? Her brain wanted to laugh at the notion, except she knew that djinn could do pretty much whatever they wanted to do. Yes, the djinn elders appeared to be the elementals’ nominal rulers, but they didn’t seem to step in and lay down the law unless a situation was particularly fraught.
And somehow she couldn’t help thinking that they most likely wouldn’t consider the fate of one lone human to be their problem. No, they’d probably say she’d asked for her current trouble by coming here in the first place and trespassing on land that had been given to one of their kind, and then they would wash their hands of the matter.
The whole situation was so surreal that her brain didn’t want to accept it. There had to be some way to get out of this mess.
“Can’t you, I don’t know, erase my memories of being here or something?” she asked, even though she realized at once how crazy…and desperate…her question must have sounded.
She couldn’t see his face, but she got the impression he smiled under the hood.
“The djinn control many things,” he replied. “But even we are not capable of altering a human’s memories. So you see that it is not safe for me to let you go.”
Impasse. Sarah stared at the djinn, mind flitting from one possibility to the next, wondering if any of those hypothetical options could give her the key she needed to extricate herself from this situation.
Well, when all else failed, it was time to go on pure instinct.
She slipped the heavy pack from her back and slung it at the djinn. It caught him square across the chest, causing him to stumble backward a pace or two.
Would it be enough?
She supposed she’d find out…much sooner than she’d like.
Even as the backpack smashed into her would-be captor, she bolted for the door. She’d heard that some djinn could fly, but not all of them. Her luck had been so spectacularly bad so far that she could only hope it would finally turn, and he would be an elemental of the earth or of water, and therefore would be forced to pursue her on foot.
Looking back would only slow her down, so she resolutely kept her gaze forward as she grabbed the door handle and lifted it, then made a gazelle leap through the front door that would have made her dance instructors proud.
All for nothing, though, as the hooded djinn immediately appeared in front of her, blocking her way.
“That was…not a very good idea,” he said. His words sounded slightly winded, so it seemed her attack with the backpack had had some effect. Djinn could be wounded, she knew that much, although they healed very quickly and were almost impossible to kill.
But she hadn’t hurt him enough to stop him, and now she guessed he was even less disposed to think kindly of her.
“Sorry about that,” she said with a disingenuous smile. “But I had to try.”
“I suppose you did,” he responded. He reached out and grasped her by the arm, fingers like steel around her bicep.
She didn’t wince, though. The last thing she wanted was to let him see he was hurting her.
No other comment, though, and immediately they whirled away through a terrible shifting darkness that lasted for less than a second even though it also felt as though it went on forever. Through it all, the strange djinn maintained his grip on her arm. Sarah knew this was the way the elementals traveled, bending space to get to their destination, although she’d heard that usually, a human traveled with their arms around the djinn’s waist so there was no chance of being separated, or getting lost in that terrible other plane.