Gale Force

Ortega smiled. “You never are.” My Mustang faded out. “I put your car in the garage. Slot five, next to the Harley. Seemed appropriate.”

I looked at David, baffled. He shrugged. “Ortega collects things,” he said. “You’ll see.”

I knew that some of the Djinn lived among humans, but I hadn’t known it could be so public. . . . Ortega owned some of the biggest, splashiest real estate in a big, splashy, highly visible community. Granted, the rich were different, but I was willing to bet his neighbors had never guessed just how different. It worked in his favor that the exceptionally well-off tended to isolate themselves in these luxurious fortresses, and only moved in their own particular social circles.

David took my arm and walked me down the wide, flawless drive toward what I could only assume was the guesthouse—big enough to qualify as multifamily housing, and fancy enough to satisfy even the pickiest of pampered Hollywood stars looking to slum it. He must have seen from the bemusement of my expression what I was thinking, because he laughed softly. “We’re safe here,” he said. “Ortega’s known as a recluse—it’s not just as a disguise for humans; it’s true among his fellow Djinn as well. The few of us he allows to visit here are carefully chosen.”

“He’s . . . not what I would have expected.” The Djinn had always had a touch of the eldritch about them, but Ortega seemed . . . normal. His eccentricities were more like what you’d expect from a dot-com genius who’d cashed out of the Internet game early and sailed away on his golden parachute.

The door to the guesthouse swung silently open for us as we walked up the steps. Night-blooming flowers poured perfume out into the air, and I stopped to drink it all in. The cool ocean breeze. The clear night air. Rolling surf.

David, gilded silver by the moonlight.

“What are you thinking?” he asked me, and stepped close. Our hands entwined, and I crossed the small, aching distance between us. Our bodies fit together, curves and planes. He let out a slow breath and closed his eyes. “Oh. That’s what you’re thinking.”

I put my arms around his neck. “I’d be crazy if I wasn’t,” I said. “Look, it’s been driven home to me today that we’re living in a bubble. If it’s not the damn reporters sneaking hidden-camera footage, it’s the Sentinels trying to wipe us out. If we have even a second of safety and solitude, I don’t think we should waste it.”

“I’ve been wanting to get you out of that dress all day.” His voice dropped low and quiet, barely a murmur in my ear. I felt my pulse jump and my skin heat in response. “Jo, I don’t want to go on like this. I can’t stand knowing that at any moment they could come for you again. If I lose you—” His hands moved through my hair, urgent and possessive. “If I lose you—” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

We both knew that he was going to lose me, in the end. But it was the fullness of time, the richness of time, from now until then that would make that pain of parting something worth bearing.

“I love you,” I said, and his mouth found mine. He tasted of tears, but I saw no trace of them in his eyes or on his face. “No more mourning. I’m here. While I’m here, we’re together.”

“Yes.” Another soul-deep kiss that left my knees weak and every nerve tingling. “We’d better go inside. Security cameras. Wouldn’t want to shock the guards.”

“Mmmmmm.” He’d destroyed my ability to form words that didn’t include adjectives, such as faster and more.

David picked me up and carried me across the threshold . . . and stopped. He had no choice. The entire room was filled with cartons, floor to ceiling, rows and rows and rows of them.

And each one was neatly labeled MISC.

“Ortega!” he bellowed, and let me down. “Dammit—”

The other Djinn popped in with an audible displacement of air, standing outside the door. He looked past us, at the makeshift warehouse, and seemed a little embarrassed. Just a little. “Well,” he said, “I did warn you that I needed to clean up.”

That wasn’t messy; it was obsessive-compulsive. I’d met a Djinn with a behavioral disorder. Now that was new.

Ortega did something I couldn’t quite follow, and two columns of boxes disappeared—probably moved into the mansion, I guessed. He gave David a questioninglook, then sighed and repeated the maneuver with all the boxes in view.

“Any other rooms?” he asked.

“Bedroom,” David and I said together. Ortega’s eyebrows rose. “Please,” I added. “Umm—bathroom. And kitchen.”

“Done.”

And it was. The areas I could see, at least; I had no doubt that if I opened up a closet (or for that matter, a drawer) I’d see more of Ortega’s collecting fetish, but right now, the only things that mattered to me were open space and privacy.

Ortega was waiting for something, watching David, and once again I caught a hint of something otherworldly in him, something not quite in sync with the harmless human exterior he projected. “I have what you asked me to find,” he said. “When you’re ready to see it.”

David had been looking at me, but now his gaze cut sharply toward the other Djinn. “You have it? Here?”

“In the main house. It’s warded. I can’t open it myself.”

“What is it?” I asked. If I’d only left it alone, we might have been able to ignore the tempting, dangling bait and go on to a fevered night of fulfilling every delicious, decadent fantasy, but noooooo. I just had to ask.

Ortega’s face brightened. “The Ancestor Scriptures. ”

David went very still. I sensed whatever chance we had to forget all this and hit the sheets vanishing like mist in sunlight. “You persuaded the Air Oracle to give it up?”

“No.” The Djinn’s smile widened, inviting us to join him, but David didn’t, and I had no idea what we were smiling about. “I persuaded the Air Oracle to let me make a copy. You have no idea what I had to give up for that.”

I’d met the Air Oracle once; it wasn’t one of my most treasured memories. I’d had lots of scary encounters, but the Air Oracle had been one of the strangest, most remote, most malevolent creatures I’d ever met.

The fact that Ortega had charmed something out of him/her was fairly damn impressive.

David glanced at me, and I saw the frustrated apology in his expression before he said, “I have to take a look. This could be important.”

My hormones were not understanding, but my brain tried to be. “I know. Mind if I look, too?”

“I want you with me,” David said, and he meant it on a whole lot of levels. I smiled, and he turned his attention back to Ortega, who was waiting with a polite, attentive smile. “Main house, you said?”

Ortega nodded and blipped out, then almost immediately blipped back, looking chagrined. “You can’t travel so quickly, can you?” he said to me. “I do apologize. We’ll walk.”

The stroll back to the main house was just as lovely as the first time, only with less anticipation of fun to come. Still, the destination was certainly interesting; when Ortega led us through the front door, I was struck once again by the incredible scale of the place. The massive chandelier overhead, loaded down with an entire year’s production of Swarovski crystals, glittered like a captured galaxy. The ceiling was as tall as any respectable opera house lobby, and the foyer was just about big enough to stage a road-show production of Aida, complete with elephants. There was a sweeping grand staircase, of course, with all the usual marble and mahogany features.

What didn’t quite fit in this oh-so-upscale setting was the clutter. Boxes piled randomly against walls, paintings (nice ones, at that, to my relatively untutoredeye) leaning against the boxes, knickknacks, and gadgets strewn over every flat surface. It was like walking into one of those clutter stores, crammed with bargains and cool finds, if only you can contain your sense of claustrophobia long enough to find them. My eyes couldn’t focus for long on any one thing.

If every room was like the foyer . . .

“Sorry.” Ortega shrugged. “There’s never enough room. This way. Watch your step.”

There were boxes on the staircases, too, all labeled, unilluminatingly, MISC. I wondered if they were the ones he’d banished from the guesthouse, but I was more afraid they weren’t, actually. At the top of the stairs he took a