One

Attracting a Djinn’s interest is generally not considered to be a good thing, Grace.

The babysitter Janice’s pointed words kept bouncing around in Grace’s head like a loose football on a field. That football was ten yards away from the end zone, and it had two teams of two-hundred-pound-plus NFL football players scrambling after it with all the intensity of their multimillion-dollar careers being on the line, and if that football could talk, you know it would be whining, “Oh geez this is gonna hurt.”

Which was pretty much how the whole day had felt to Grace, including the sense of impending doom.

So thanks for the snark fest, Janice. It wasn’t like Grace had any choice about the Djinn appearing in her life in the first place. He had been part of the group that had shown up on her doorstep at three thirty in the morning, because they couldn’t wait until a goddamn decent time to talk to her.

She should probably stop calling him “the Djinn.” He did, after all, have a name. He was Khalil somebody. According to one of his companions, he was Khalil Somebody Important.

Grace wasn’t sure, but she thought his name might be Khalil Bane of Her Existence, but she didn’t want to call him that to his…well, his face, when he chose to wear a face…because she didn’t want to provoke him any more than she already had, and she was really, really just hoping he might get bored and go away now that all the excitement had died down.

All the excitement was dying down now, wasn’t it?

The killing.

She had never seen anybody killed before that morning.

She shoved the memory aside. Right now she had her niece and nephew to look after, dammit. She didn’t have time to react any more to what had happened. It would have to f**king wait until Chloe and Max were in bed.

Maybe the Djinn would be gone when she and the kids got home from getting groceries. Grace could hope. She could hope for a lot of things. There was always the possibility that the grocery store was giving out free steaks today and that a herd of pigs might file a flight plan with air traffic control at the Louisville International Airport.

Actually, she had the suspicion that he had followed them to the store. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense his smoky presence at the edge of her mind ever since she packed Max and Chloe in the car and drove to Super Saver. The awareness of his acrid psychic scent jangled her nerves, like the feeling she got when fire trucks roared down a street with all sirens screaming.

It didn’t matter if you couldn’t see the fire. You still knew something catastrophic loomed nearby.

She managed to get a parking space by one of the cart stations. The humid, ninety-five-degree June day slapped her in the face when she climbed out of the car. In a matter of moments her T-shirt clung to her back, and she wanted nothing more than to tear off her shabby flannel pants above the knees, except she didn’t wear shorts anymore, not even around the house, since she couldn’t stand the sight of her scarred legs after the car accident.

Grace grabbed a shopping cart from the station and turned back to where the children waited. In the process she caught a glimpse of herself in the car window. She was an average height, with a lean waist and legs, and curving br**sts and hips. If family genetics were anything to go by, she would have to take care when she hit middle age, or those curves of hers would become too generous.

Her short, fine strawberry blonde hair was sticking up in tufts because she kept running her fingers through it. Her hazel eyes were dull, and her skin pallid from lack of sleep. She touched her reflection in the window, noting the dark circles under her eyes.

I used to be pretty, she thought. Then she felt angry that it mattered to her.

Screw pretty. I’d rather be strong. Pretty fades over time. Strength gets you through the bad shit. And that matters, because sometimes there’s a lot of bad shit.

She lifted Chloe into the cart. Then she transferred Max over into his baby carrier. Chloe sat in the shopping cart, folding her delicate four-year-old body into a tiny package. She was singing softly to her miniature Lala Whoopsie doll, or whatever the hell the doll was called, and making it dance along the rim of the cart.

Chloe’s pale blonde hair was fine and silky. It was a lot like how Grace’s and her sister Petra’s had been when they were small. Both Grace’s and Petra’s hair had darkened as they grew older. There was a good chance Chloe’s hair would deepen into the same shade of strawberry blonde, while Max had inherited his father’s Mediterranean-style, dark good looks.

Chloe’s curls were now floating around her head, except, Grace noticed with embarrassment, for a tangled knot at the back. She had forgotten to comb Chloe’s hair before they went out. Well hell, she’d forgotten to comb her own hair too. That’s what she got for trying to stagger through her day in a half coma. She tried finger-combing first Chloe’s hair then her own, with limited success.

Nine-month-old Max was sound asleep and snoring in his carrier, his little rosebud mouth open. After being so sick through the night, the poor baby boy was exhausted.

Pushing the cart with the children loaded into it, Grace limped into the grocery store. Super Saver was a no-frills discount grocery store, with goods stacked in the aisles in cardboard boxes, but they had a refrigerated and freezer section, and the store was air-conditioned. Grace sighed with relief as cool air licked her skin, even as the change in temperature made her exhausted head spin.

She gritted her teeth. All she had to do was get the groceries home and put away the stuff that needed refrigeration. She could put everything else away later. Maybe she could coax Chloe into watching a Dora the Explorer DVD while Grace stretched out on the couch and napped. Sometime that day she had to figure out which of the red-inked bills she could pay, but that could wait until she had at least part of her brain back in working order.

She frowned at the stack of boxes in front of her. Should she get two cans of tuna or three? They were down to the last of their food stamps for the month, and every small decision mattered.

Once, neither Grace nor anyone else in her family would have dreamed of going on food stamps. Her lineage was a very old, proud one with its roots in ancient Greece. The Andreas family had a unique Power among human witches, the Power of the Oracle that was passed down from female to female over countless generations.

Once the Oracle had been located in a sacred temple complex at Delphi. Kings and queens, Roman senators and emperors, humans and all sorts of creatures from the Elder Races came as supplicants to petition for her prophecies. In return they laid a fortune in gold and jewels at her feet. It was all part of an ancient social contract that almost nobody remembered to honor any longer.

The Oracle spoke for the people, and the people were to support her. Petitioners were to give offerings to the Oracle. The Oracle could not ask for or demand money. If she did, she would be charging for her services, and legend had it, the moment she did that, she would lose her Power of prophecy.

Other family members could speak on the Oracle’s behalf, but unfortunately the family had gone through several generations of financial decline, ill-health and just plain bad luck. Grace’s parents had died when she was a small child. Her grandmother raised her and Petra, and taught them the old traditions. Five years ago, when Grace was nineteen and Petra twenty-six and newly married, their grandmother died of cancer. Niko had been Petra’s champion when the Power had passed on to her. Niko’d had no problem reminding petitioners of their obligations to his wife. Then earlier this year, Petra and her husband, Niko, had been killed, and the Power moved on to Grace.

Now there was only Grace and the children, and Grace was only twenty-three. She was facing something she should never have had to face alone, and she had her niece and nephew to feed, two small children for whom she would do anything. Hell yes, she applied for food stamps. Just as soon as she was able to leave the hospital, she had applied for everything they were eligible to apply for.

As far as her holding on to the Oracle’s traditions went, that decision was touch and go. When she was in the hospital recovering, Grace had promised herself she would not make any long-term decisions or commitments to anything or anyone other than Chloe and Max. If anything else became intolerable, she would drop it.

For now it was one foot in front of the other, one day at a time. She gently touched the back of Chloe’s tangled, shining head.

Chloe looked up and smiled.

“Gracie, did we have company when I was sleeping?” Chloe asked.

“Yes, baby girl,” Grace said.

“Why didn’t you wake me up? I like company. Did they miss me?”

“I’m sure they would have if they had known about you,” Grace said. “But this was adult company. This was not Chloe company.”

“I’m a big girl,” Chloe scolded. “I’m very big now.”

“I know you are,” Grace said. She chose two cans of tuna and put them in the cart by Chloe’s tiny feet. “I can’t believe how big you’ve gotten. Pretty soon you’re going to push the grocery cart, and I’m going to ride inside it.” Chloe giggled. “But this was Oracle-adult-business company. It wasn’t Chloe-big-girl company. That’s why Janice came over to stay with you and feed you breakfast until I got back.”

As soon as Grace said “Oracle,” a darker, knowing look shadowed Chloe’s eyes. Or maybe that was just a product of Grace’s exhaustion. In either case, Chloe simply nodded, bent her head over her doll and fell quiet for a time.

Grace added a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs to the cart. A few steps down the aisle she grabbed a couple of canisters of Max’s formula. He also loved bananas, so she looked at the fresh produce. Super Saver didn’t have a great selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, but the bananas looked nice enough so she put a few in the cart.

“Can we keep the doggie?” Chloe asked.

Grace had difficulty processing the words for a few mo-ments because they were so random and disconnected from anything else that was happening. But that was what talking to a four-year-old was like, and she soon caught up. “What doggie?”

“He says sometimes he can be a cat if I want.”

Grace grinned. “You want to keep a doggie that’s a cat.”

“Uh-huh.” Blonde curls waved in the air as Chloe nodded. “He likes me.”

“Of course the doggie-cat likes you.” Grace moved around the cart to drop a kiss on the girl’s forehead. Chloe looked expectant, so Grace told her, “You’re wonderful and likeable and loveable and very, very big.”

Chloe’s eyes rounded. “I am, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are. And if we ever manage to find a talking doggie-cat, I would love to keep him. But for now, why don’t I see if we can get Joey and Rachel over for a playdate. I’ll make apple juice Popsicles. Would you like that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, sweetie.” She paused to search for a scrap of paper in her purse and scribble a note on it. Joey and Rachel were Petra’s friend Katherine’s children. Katherine had been an immense help since Petra and Niko died, and Grace owed her a good six months’ of regular playdates, but she would never remember to make that call if she didn’t write it down.

Her leg was hurting worse than ever, and she was limping badly by the time she got the children and the groceries out to her battered car.

Instead of using the car insurance money from the accident to buy a new car, Grace had decided to fix up her own 1999 Honda Accord so that it ran more reliably. Then she spent the rest on replacing a leaky water heater. The property was a money pit. The house was not quite falling down around their ears, but a building that was over a hundred and fifty years old had constant issues.

At least Petra and Niko had replaced the old monster of a furnace last year with an energy efficient one, but the roof was in such poor shape, Grace didn’t think it would last another winter, and she honestly didn’t know what she was going to do about it.

The trip home was lost in a fog of exhaustion. She got the children inside first and set Max in his carrier down gently on the floor by the couch. Then she put some pretzels in a small plastic bowl for Chloe, along with milk in a small cup. Chloe was delighted to watch Dora for the ten thousandth time. Grace limped through the house to make sure that the child gate was secured properly at the foot of the stairs and that other doors were shut throughout the ground floor.

She left the door to Chloe and Max’s bedroom open so that Chloe could get to the toys stored in that room if she wanted. Then Grace turned on the floor fan in the living room. Running a fan was cheaper than running any of the three window air-conditioners in the house. After that she carried in the groceries.

There were four steps up to the porch. She thought of all the times she had blithely run up and down those steps, her young, strong body working so smoothly she never gave it a second’s thought. She would never take anything like that for granted again.

She had gone up the steps once with the children. If she stacked all of the grocery bags on the porch first, then she only had to climb up those four steps one more time. She stopped trying to think and let her mind float away on a sea of pain.

She had pushed too hard today. She would have liked to soak in the tub, except the tub was on the second floor. Getting herself and the kids up a full flight of stairs, along with the baby gate, sounded like climbing Mount Everest. She could wait until she put them down for the night and take the baby monitor upstairs with her, but she didn’t think she would last that long. She had a feeling that once she got the kids to bed, she would go out like a light. Thank the gods they were so small she could bathe them in the large, old-fashioned kitchen sink that evening without having to bend over or kneel. As for herself, she would have to wash again at the sink as well.