Thea Harrison - Oracle's Moon

Grace considered the problem of the unwelcome Djinn, while the matronly ghosts murmured to each other and she cleaned up the kitchen.

The babysitting roster wasn’t the only assistance Grace received from the witches. Jaydon Guthrie, the head of one of the oldest covens in Louisville, had arranged for a quarterly community work day to help her with basic maintenance on the property. As Jaydon said, the work days would benefit more than just Grace. They would also provide a way for witches to volunteer several hours at a time, which would help those who were behind on their community service tithe. Grace had been too desperate to consider turning the offer down.

On the first work day, she had used their help to arrange things so that she and the children were mostly using the ground floor. The kitchen was spacious and had a dining nook with a table, a high chair and four chairs, so they didn’t need a separate dining area. When Petra and Niko had decided to have children, they had installed a stacked washer and dryer in the kitchen so that Petra wouldn’t have to go into the basement very often. The ground floor also had a half bath.

Grace had the large dining table and chairs stored in the garage, the downstairs office moved into the dining room and Chloe and Max’s bedroom set up in what had once been the office. She slept on a futon in the office/dining room. That meant she only had to climb the stairs when it was bath time or when she needed to get a change of clothes. The downstairs was cooler in the summer, and it was easier on her leg, so the solution worked for now. Gradually her clothes were coming down the stairs and not making it back up again. She had started storing things in a filing cabinet in one corner of the office.

Saturday was the next work day. Maybe she could get someone to move a dresser downstairs. Simple things like that could make a hard situation a lot more bearable. She put the wet load of clothes from the washer into the dryer. Then she washed up at the kitchen sink, sticking her head under the faucet and soaping her fine, short hair with the baby shampoo she had used on the kids.

Even with two fans running downstairs, the house was too hot. She gave in and went into the office to dig through the filing cabinet for lighter clothes, slipping on a tank top and cutoff shorts made from a pair of old, soft sweatpants. After all, she wasn’t expecting company, and she didn’t have to look at herself if she didn’t want to.

Anyway, it was time she got used to how her body had changed. Maybe she shouldn’t ignore how she looked. Maybe she should look at herself until the scars didn’t matter anymore. They would fade over time and become less noticeable. At the moment they were still an angry, raw-looking red.

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.

The female news anchor was speaking. “So far no one has released an official explanation for why so many Elder Races dignitaries have gathered in Louisville, other than Councillor Archer Harrow’s secretary, Tara Huston, who spoke to the press this afternoon. Reading from a prepared statement, Huston said the gathering involved a private matter and had nothing to do with the sometimes tense interactions between the demesnes. However, what could that private matter be, Todd? Why would it necessitate Dragos Cuelebre’s sudden presence, along with his mysterious escort who, inside sources inform us, is his new mate?” The woman’s blonde hair was lacquered with so much hairspray that when she turned to face her coanchor, her entire head of hair, like a helmet, turned with her.

Todd gave the camera a practiced smile. “Good question, Joanne. Cuelebre has been under a great deal of pressure recently. Like the rest of the world stock market, Cuelebre Enterprises has taken some serious financial hits lately, although no doubt the corporation will remain in Fortune ’s top fifty for the year. There has also been increased tension between the Wyr and the Elven demesnes. In one of the most surprising announcements of the year, Cuelebre has also lost one of his seven sentinels, Tiago Black Eagle, who resigned from his position to work for the new Dark Fae Queen, Niniane Lorelle. Cuelebre’s seven sentinels are the lynchpins in Wyr governance, so not only is Cuelebre facing financial challenges and border strife, he is also critically short-staffed. Whatever the ‘private matter’ is here in Louisville, it must be something urgent for him to be called away from New York on short notice.…”