Tales of the Djinn: The Guardian (4 page)

“Yes.” Joseph rubbed his palms together. “She
seemed sad about the loss. I sensed no other inhabitants in her
home, no aunts or sisters. I’m sure she is lonely and
vulnerable.”

This
was
convenient, considering.
Arcadius tried not to feel uneasy.

“Her home is nice,” Joseph added. “Not like
this bloodless place. I suspect her late husband wasn’t compatible
with her.”

The logical trail he’d followed to this
conclusion was unclear, but Arcadius let that pass. Joseph was
probably right. The manservant was a good judge of character.

“Do you suppose the husband died violently?”
he asked. “Could his death be the one whose energy you drew
on?”

Joseph’s triumphant grin faltered. “Perhaps
it was. Forgive me, master. I should have thought of that
myself.”

“You can’t think of everything, or what would
I use my brain for?”

“Seducing her?” Joseph suggested more bawdily
than he would have a week before. Arcadius’s character wasn’t the
only one in danger of changing under their new conditions. He
didn’t scold the servant. They’d known each other too long and had
no one else to count on their exile.

“I shall close my eyes and think of England,”
he promised.

“She isn’t that bad,” Joseph said fairly.

Elyse’s soft pink mouth rose into his mind.
No, she wasn’t that bad. In truth, a tiny part of him was looking
forward to wooing her.

~

Given that she’d told her guests to return in
half an hour, Elyse had to make a choice. She could do something
with her face and hair, or she could set the table. For various
reasons, the table won. If her guests were gay, fussing with her
appearance might make them nervous they’d have to set her straight.
If they weren’t, well, she wasn’t ready for a new man—assuming she
had the wherewithal to catch one.

No one could compare to David anyway. He’d
been one in a million.

Pushing her familiar sadness down, she
settled for smoothing back the crazier wisps of hair that had
sprung up while she was at the stove. Her place smelled good at
least. The wine was breathing and she’d tossed a nice salad. She’d
gotten the impression her guests didn’t cook at all. She might not
possess her father’s bonhomie, but she wasn’t the worst hostess
either. Her as-good-as-it-gets hospitality was probably good
enough.

The knock that straightened her from the
finished table wasn’t Joseph’s. This solid rap was noticeably
bolder.

Arcadius
, she thought, going to answer
it.

To her dismay, her palm was tingling as she
turned the old glass doorknob.

The taller of her two renters stood right in
front of her. His sheer size caught her unprepared. This close, she
could tell he topped six feet by a couple inches—and that he
radiated authority. She barely noticed his friend behind him.
Arcadius’s presence was too intense, his chiseled face too
dramatic. His fine-edged mouth could have been carved from stone.
She’d forgotten how serious his expression was, as if his dark
brows were thunderclouds. Beneath their shadow, the gemlike clarity
of his eyes flat out transfixed her. They reminded her of
chalcedony, a luminous mix of blue and gray. The way her body
tightened as she stared into them alarmed her.

Joseph calling him
master
abruptly
made perfect sense. The natural order of the universe demanded
people obey him.

Considering the battle being fought inside
her, she couldn’t wonder she took too long pulling herself
together.

“Elyse,” came a querulous voice from across
the hall in 6B. “Is everything all right? I heard loud
footsteps.”

Elyse smiled in spite of her embarrassing
hormone storm. Her floor had two units. Only one person could be
speaking.

“That’s my neighbor,” she informed her guests
in an undertone. “Could you wait a sec? I’ll let her know who you
are.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Goldberg,” she called
loudly. “We have new tenants for the basement unit. Why don’t you
come out and meet them?”

There was a pause. “The news is on,” Mrs.
Goldberg objected.

“It’ll only take a moment,” Elyse
promised.

The old lady’s protest had been empty. Mrs.
Goldberg was already poised behind her door. The hinges creaked
open, and she thumped out with an aluminum walker in her housecoat.
Behind her thick glasses, her eyes goggled like a fish. She looked
the newcomers up and down.

“Men,” she said darkly, giving the tennis
balls on the feet of her walker an extra
thunk
.

“Good evening,” Arcadius responded in his
rich dark voice. He offered Elyse’s neighbor a courtly bow. “I am
Arcadius and this is my friend Joseph. We’re honored to make your
acquaintance.”

Mrs. Goldberg pursed her wrinkled lips more
tightly.

“This is Mrs. Goldberg,” Elyse said
officially. “She’s our most experienced tenant. She watches over
everything.”

“
Everything
,” Mrs. Goldberg agreed,
pointing her gnarled finger at both males.

“The building is fortunate,” Arcadius said,
“to have such a guardian.”

He was all respect, not cracking the
slightest smile. Accustomed to her longtime tenant’s crotchety
ways, Elyse was unprepared for her retort.

“You know it, sonny!” she cackled. “No
handsome galoot like you can slip anything by me!”

Chuckling at her own wit, she turned in her
bedroom slippers, shuffling relatively quickly back into her
apartment.

Arcadius seemed startled by the reception
he’d inspired, but Joseph grinned broadly.

“You’re a galoot,” he said, clearly tickled
by the word.

Arcadius shook himself from his daze.
“Apparently, I’m a handsome one.”

“Don’t mind her,” Elyse said, stepping aside
to make room for them to enter. “She’s our resident Mrs.
Kravitz.”

The men looked at her blankly. “I thought you
called her Mrs. Goldberg,” Arcadius said. “Oh . . .” An odd
expression flicked through his eyes, like he was searching an
invisible data bank. “You refer to the nosy neighbor from the TV
show
Bewitched
.” He laughed. “That’s very amusing.”

Okay
, Elyse thought, wondering if she
should have been so quick to discard the weirdo label. “Right,” she
said. “She’s been here forever. My dad told me she was living in
that apartment back when his father bought the building. These
days, her rent is so low it makes my accountant cry.”

Arcadius nodded politely but not like he
understood. Either the sight of her apartment distracted him, or he
didn’t know about rent control.

“Do you like wine?” she asked. “I opened a
bottle.”

She’d opened one of David’s. His taste had
been more sophisticated than hers.

Arcadius didn’t seem to hear her. He’d
stopped short in her living room, atop the antique Azerbaijan
carpet with the beautiful Tree of Paradise pattern. His gaze
traveled along the shelves much like his friend’s before him,
drinking up everything.

“This
is
nice,” he said as if it
surprised him.

“My personal curio shop.” She knew so many
colorful foreign trinkets overwhelmed some people. “A lot of the
books were my granddad’s. He was an antiquarian bookseller.”

Arcadius wasn’t overwhelmed by the
collection. When he turned back to her, his handsome face beamed
with approval.

“I wouldn’t change one thing,” he declared.
“This place is perfect.”

His words stirred a shiver she could have
done without. All he needed to match David’s bygone romantic
declaration was to say she was perfect too.

One in a million shouldn’t be that easy to
duplicate.

~

For a moment, after Elyse opened the door to
them, Arcadius thought seducing her would be smooth sailing.
Finally, she was reacting like other women, who frequently threw
themselves at him even before they knew his rank. As she’d stared
up into his eyes, her pulse had elevated and her cheeks had flushed
with arousal. Her pupils had expanded in her peridot irises. The
signs of her excitement touched off similar responses inside of
him. His cock had stiffened with his new body’s first erection, the
brush of it rising in his foreign clothes interesting. The heat and
hardening felt good, as if more than one kind of potency were
waking up in him.

Would sex feel different in this body? Would
he like having it with her?

He’d wanted to think about those questions,
not soothe her odd neighbor. Regardless, he did what politeness and
strategy required. Freed then, he followed Elyse inside. As Joseph
predicted, her home pleased him. It
was
a curio shop, full
of interesting items. Throws and pillows softened her furniture,
her genuine aged wood floors enlivened by not one but a number of
beautiful area rugs. Pompeii red walls peeked between crowded
bookcases and mounted fragments of Greek buildings. The lamps alone
were worth investigating, coming as they did from many human
countries and traditions. Arcadius spied an Indian elephant in full
regalia and then an Aladdin-style oil burner. The latter had him
fighting a laugh.

If Elyse rubbed the tarnished brass, would
someone he knew emerge?

When he’d told her the place was perfect, the
compliment was heartfelt. He had no idea why it caused her guards
to snap up again.

Joseph noticed the change as well. “We
brought a guest gift,” he said, handing a box to her.

He used the world
we
loosely. Arcadius
didn’t know what the present was: some item from their magic
briefcase, presumably. Elyse’s face lit up as she accepted it,
causing him an unexpected prick of annoyance.

He should have remembered to bring her a gift
himself.

“Turkish delight!” she exclaimed, her fingers
stroking the printed box. “My father used to bring me this whenever
he visited Istanbul. Is that where you two are from?”

“We come from the . . . general area,” Joseph
conceded.

“That’s wonderful,” she said. “I’d love to
hear all about it. Were you born there? Your English is
fabulous.”

It wasn’t so fabulous she hadn’t realized
they’d been born elsewhere. Not that it mattered. The truth of
their origins was beyond her power to guess.

As if the treats were precious, she carefully
placed the box on her kitchen island, next to a bottle of uncorked
wine from which emanated a faint but delicious aroma.

“Oh,” she said, covering her rose petal mouth
as she spun back toward the living room. “Should I have brought out
alcohol? Do either of you drink?”

Perhaps it was childish, but Arcadius
appreciated that she was asking him and not Joseph. “We aren’t
Muslims,” he said. “The city we come from has many faiths. Whatever
you serve, we’ll be grateful to partake.”

She laughed. “Hopefully you’ll think so after
you’ve eaten my cooking.”

Humor made her more than pretty. With
amusement lighting her face and eyes, she was beautiful. Arcadius
breath caught halfway into his throat, his pulse skipping in a
manner he wasn’t accustomed to. Evidently, his new body was
susceptible to simpler charms. In an instant, it throbbed with lust
for her. He wanted to tear off her unfeminine clothes, to shove
himself deep inside her softness and make her laugh again.

She must have seen the urge in his
expression. Her manner grew more skittish than before.

“Your father travels?” he asked, hoping to
calm her.

“He . . . did,” she said. “He died two years
ago on a trip.” She lifted her hands. “Please don’t apologize for
asking. All my memories of him are good.”

Perhaps they were, but her sense of loss was
clear in her eyes. He dared not ask about a mother or siblings. He
saw what Joseph meant about her being vulnerable.

“It is a blessing to have good memories,” he
said gruffly.

She smiled with a hint of wryness, seeming to
comprehend his conflict. Thankfully, reassuring him had caused her
to relax. “Will you sit?” she asked, gesturing to a rustic round
table that filled a sort of transition zone between the kitchen and
living room. “Everything is ready. If you’re hungry, I’ll start
serving.”

He was hungry for more than food but pushed
that from his mind. He and Joseph sat, probably equally aware
they’d never navigated social territory like this before. They’d
broken bread together at stranger’s homes, but those strangers had
been male. A female lover
might
serve a meal to Arcadius
with Joseph in the room, but the servant wouldn’t sit at the table
as an equal. If the lover knew Joseph was a eunuch, she might not
bother with a veil. Since this was a circumstance Joseph preferred
not to broadcast, his experience of women was limited. His position
as Arcadius’s aide put him above lower class females—who’d probably
have been happy to flirt with him. What Elyse’s class would
translate to neither of them could guess.

At least she was a widow, not an unmarried
girl.

He suspected that didn’t mean to her what it
did to him.

She was dishing salad greens into majolica
bowls from Italy. The array of crisp leaves intrigued him. He
didn’t recognize all of them.

“I kept the dressing on the side,” she said.
“I wasn’t sure if you—” She broke off and turned as a knock sounded
on the door.

“Elyse,” a female voice called through the
barrier. “I’ve brought sushi from Matsuri. Get off your little
fanny and let me in.”

Complicated emotions raced across Elyse’s
face. Whatever they were, they were strong enough that she took a
moment to recover.

“That’s my cousin Cara,” she said, setting
the salad tongs back in the serving bowl. “I have to answer
her.”

Have to
, Arcadius repeated to himself.
That suggested some reason for reluctance. His line of sight to the
apartment door was clear. He and Joseph watched Elyse walk to it.
Arcadius was surprised to discover he liked the look of her in the
black jeans. Maybe little fannies
were
to his taste.
Certainly, trousers for women were turning out to be.