A voice on the wind, the light desert wind. Too scared to cower in the tent, she stood up, and although she knew he was coming, she jumped when Gabriel appeared from the side. She spun around—no sign, no sense, anymore, of anyone else.
“Who’s here?”
He stopped. She couldn’t see his face. “You.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“You,” he said again.
“No—there’s a woman. Someone. I heard her.”
“No,” he said kindly. “It’s just us.”
The night air was frigid. Her mouth dry as dust.
“The singing sands, they call it.”
“What?”
“It sounds like a voice,” he said. “The wind on the sand.”
That made sense. She caught her breath, dropped to her haunches. “Oh, thank God.”
He walked past her, resuming his trudging.
Thea recoiled into the tent, like a snail into its shell. There was no woman. It was the sands, singing. The only thing now was his voice, the rhythmic muttering. Like chanting. Arabic. He was speaking Arabic. She put her hands over her ears. Christ, Christ, Christ!
To have come to such a place—what had she been thinking? Kim had been right. This was madness. From first sighting, Gabriel had been an unsettling presence and yet she had come away with him, far from all things, alone. What can we know of strangers? What did she think she was doing? Making up for time undone? Adventures lost? Well, here was adventure: Gabriel ranting. She had unleashed his demons, and stood, trapped, between him and them.
Curling up and pulling the sleeping bag about her, Thea willed herself to the safety of her own bed—hers and Alex’s—with the sun pouring in across their deep red quilt, and the cat, like a furry hot-water bottle, at her feet, purring when rays of sunshine slipped past clouds and coated him with warmth. So distant; beyond reach. Out of range. She scrabbled for her phone, pressed a button and allowed its light to brighten the inside of the tent. The tiny screen lit up the canvas dome, but there was no signal, no way to contact . . . anyone.
The only person within reach was Gabriel, and he—barely so.
She should sleep, leave him to it. He would sleep, eventually. Dawn would come.
Or . . . he would come in—into the tent. She had gripped his arm, allowed him to touch her. He might come looking for more.
He could be sleepwalking. That was it. He was sleepwalking. Nothing spookier than that. But he might sleepwalk clear out of the camp and disappear over the dunes, in which case—her thoughts stepped carefully from one scenario to another, like feet through a minefield—she would get into the jeep and go for help at first light.
Unless, in his dream delirium, he took the jeep.
A cold flush flooded through her. Where were the keys?
No, she wouldn’t need them. He wouldn’t go anywhere. Any minute now he’d calm down. Go to sleep.
He kept the keys in his hip pocket.
She peeked through the flap, but could only follow his voice. His pace was no slower, no less rhythmic. He would walk her into a trance with his chanting. This was how they had spoken of jinn—crazy stuff, loss of reason, normalcy yanked away. Love and possession. Perhaps his jinn lover, threatened, had come back to take ownership. Perhaps now she meant business. That must have been what he’d been alluding to when he’d talked of competition—talked at her because to him they were interchangeable, she and Prudence. But humans were stronger, Abid had said. Jinn prey only on the weak. Thea let out an involuntary groan. Gabriel was weak, at his core, and weakened further by a new infatuation. His steadiness, the even keel on which he forced himself to live, had made him unsusceptible until this night and its double darkness. Now perhaps the jinn would have their way with him, and so he babbled. Thea listened again, and thought it must be the verses he had recited in Bahla—the ones from the Quran to repulse jinn—that he was reciting again now.
Dry riverbeds. Deserted spots. Exorcisms and potions. Thea believed in it all. The man pacing past the canvas was not familiar. He was neither predictable nor reasonable. He could be made to do anything—like driving off.
If he did, she would die. Eight liters of water per day, or delusion and death.
She needed those keys.
Her legs barely held her. She stepped out onto the sand and stood grasping one of the flaps, thinking of Alex, willing him to her side, though he was sound asleep three thousand miles away. He had no idea that his wife was alone in the Empty Quarter with an unhinged man and vengeful spirits.
Gabriel didn’t see her.
“Gabriel.”
And around he went again, reciting, invoking Allah.
Thea too prayed, to her own neglected God. Belief fluctuates. When a shot of cold shook her, she called “Gabriel,” just as she remembered that it was dangerous to wake sleepwalkers. It had to be done gently; they had to be guided back to bed. . . .
His bed was on top of the jeep.
He came around again. “Please stop,” she said.
His step faltered marginally; he stopped talking and the desert near-silence fell around them. She was aware of his shape, some feet away. Her eyes watered. She wanted out. She wanted to run. “You’re freaking me out.”
“Why?”
“This . . . you’re . . . the chanting.”
“Who?”
“What are you doing? Have you been drinking?”
“The thing is,” he said, his voice normal and his tone
