Thea Harrison - Oracle's Moon

She handed Max over to Khalil, sticky banana-coated hair, bottle and all. Max grinned, kicked his legs and burbled conversationally. Khalil held the baby straight out in both hands, staring at him. Now that he actually had hold of Max, he seemed frozen and unsure about what to do.

Grace covered her mouth to hide her smile. She suggested, “Set him on your lap.”

Khalil’s gaze shifted to hers. He settled the baby on his lap. Max leaned back against his arm, tilted his bottle up and waved a foot in the air as if drinking his bottle while hanging out with a Djinn was an everyday occurrence. Grace patted the baby’s shoulder. She might be biased, but she thought her nephew was one pretty-cool guy.

“Do you think he likes me?” Khalil asked, his black brows drawn together.

His uncertainty was so unexpectedly endearing, Grace bit her lip. She opened her mouth to reply, but her niece beat her to it.

“Sure,” said Chloe as she chewed on the end of a sausage. “I like you too. But I’d like you better as a horsie.”

Khalil grinned, and Grace murmured warningly, “Chloe.”

“What?” Chloe said, wide-eyed again. “Was that bad?”

Grace noticed that Chloe wasn’t really eating the sausage, just chewing on the end of it. “Are you done eating?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then stop chewing on that. It’s time for you to have that bath.” She stared at all the food on the table. It could wait for fifteen minutes. She would put it away after she got the kids clean. She turned to Khalil. “Thank you so much for breakfast.”

He looked resigned. “You are welcome.”

She gave him an evil grin as she nudged Chloe. “Come on, honey. Say thank you to Khalil for the pancakes.”

Chloe knew how to turn on the charm. She gave Khalil a high-watt beam worthy of a beauty-pageant queen. “Thank you!”

Khalil held Grace’s gaze as he returned her smile, his own laced with a grudging amusement. Then he turned his attention to Chloe. He said to the little girl, “You are welcome. Did you enjoy them?”

“Yes!”

“I’m glad.”

Grace held out her arms for Max, and Khalil handed the baby over to her. “Well,” she said, somewhat awkwardly. What now? Should she tell him to go, only much more nicely than she had before? “I really appreciate you coming when I called.”

He gave her an exasperated glare. “Shut up.”

She hadn’t actually meant to tease that time, so she burst out laughing. Sobering quickly, she said to Chloe, “It’s not okay to tell someone to shut up. It’s very rude, especially if they’re only trying to be nice.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Even I know that.”

A clean kitchen floor, and an excess of caffeine and carbohydrates, must have gone to Grace’s head. Feeling giddy with her own mischief, she turned back to Khalil and told him, “So you should actually apologize to me.”

His eyes widened. He looked from Grace to Chloe’s upturned, expectant expression, then back to Grace again. She thought for the first time since they had become ac-quainted, real respect entered his expression. “I apologize for telling you to shut up,” he said gravely, while his gaze promised her some kind of retribution for her impudence.

But he would not do anything to hurt either her or the children. He had said so, and his associations and his word meant everything to him. No wonder Djinn considered information to be so valuable they would trade for it. Grace blinked at him with a creamy, innocent smile and once again chose the dumb route to Damascus.

“Why don’t you make yourself useful and clean up the kitchen while I bathe the kids?” she said to the Djinn prince of the House Marid.

Retribution? He could bring it.

She took the children to their bedroom to gear up for the bath. Chloe could carry her own summer outfit, shorts and a daisy-patterned T-shirt, along with Max’s diaper and a shirt that read: BAD TO THE BONE. They would be getting another wash in the kitchen sink.

She wanted to find a way to make the upstairs more accessible. Some of that would come as her leg strengthened, which was a good thing since Max got bigger and heavier every day. She grabbed baby shampoo, a washcloth and a towel from the cabinet in their room that she used as a linen closet.

The safety gate at the bottom of the stairs had a frame that could be left pinned in place while part of it opened like a real gate. When she had the funds, she could get a second gate to put at the top of the stairs. Then they both could stay fastened in place, and she wouldn’t have to keep hauling one gate up and down the stairs. She added a second gate to her wish list, along with getting Chloe a twin bed, although moving a dresser downstairs on Saturday topped the list.

Chloe scampered ahead of her and rounded the corner to the kitchen. With Max on her hip, Grace paused to tuck Cuelebre’s card carefully in her spiral-bound phone book in the living room then joined Chloe. Of course the kitchen was still a mess, and Khalil was nowhere in sight.

That surprised Grace. Not the mess—she had expected that he would ignore her cheeky order to clean up the kitchen, but she could have sworn she still sensed Khalil’s presence, and she had been geared up to continue their argument.

Frowning, she bathed the children with swift efficiency. She set Max on the clean floor afterward while Chloe skipped off to play in the living room.

Then she turned her attention to the kitchen table. There was quite a bit of food left over, and a lot of it would freeze well. She put it away, enjoying the thought of a few easy, delicious meals.

Had Ismat paid for all this food, or had she simply whisked into the restaurant and taken whatever dish she fancied? If Djinn went around stealing things all the time, they would be prosecuted like any other thief—but the trick would be to catch them.

And was Grace really going to look that gift horse in the mouth? She decided not to this time, especially since she had eaten and enjoyed so much of the evidence.

Apparently she also now owned several gleaming metal serving platters, complete with lids, along with four heavy linen napkins. Once the serving platters were clean, she stacked them and set them aside on the counter until she could figure out what to do with them. Maybe she could sell them or give them to somebody. Katherine would enjoy having them, but Grace wasn’t sure she wanted to explain how she got them in the first place.

Then she paused to assess the area. Damn, she could have sworn she still felt Khalil’s presence. Pretending to more confidence than she really had, she said telepathically, I know you’re here .

Did somebody just sigh in her ear? Khalil replied, I still wish to discuss your vision, but not in front of the children .

She hunched her shoulders. She didn’t want to think of what happened earlier or remember the voice from her vision. She would rather pick a fight with him and pretend everything was fine. Reluctantly, she said, Come back when they’re asleep .

Yes , said Khalil. His presence faded.

Grace expanded her awareness. She felt nothing unusual, either in the house or on the property, just the faded edges of the occasional ghost. This time she really was alone, except for the children. It had become just another normal summer morning.

She told herself she was all right with that as she listened to the silence.

Figuring out which bills to pay was a bit of a joke.

Grace put Max down for a morning nap, started a load of the never-ending pile of laundry and built Chloe a “castle” in the living room with a sheet spread over the back of the armchair and across one of the straight-backed chairs she brought in from the kitchen.