Chapter 17

He had thought this moment would never come, had believed he would forever be able to conceal himself from Sarah Wolfe. Never mind that all sorts of accidents lurked out there, just waiting to ruin everything.

Which, he thought with some irony, was exactly what had happened.

Now she sat on the sofa in the living room, huddled into one corner, although he had to admit her expression was not one of fear, or of disgust. Then again, the hood now safely hid his face once more, so she was not being immediately confronted by the hideous ruin of his features.

However, she looked more confused than anything else, as though she was trying to make what she had just seen mesh with everything she knew about the djinn.

And when she spoke, that was her first question.

"I thought — "she paused there, then seemed to gather the words as best she could. "I thought that djinn always healed no matter what happened to them."

Well, at least she had not come right out and demanded to know how he could have been made so hideously ugly.

"Djinn do," he said. "Or at least, they always recover from their wounds if those injuries are not so grievous as to kill them. But you see, I am not precisely a djinn."

She sat up a little straighter then, brows pulling together. Once again, he had the sense of someone trying to come to grips with a difficult situation, and not of her trying her best to get away from the monster who had held her here at Ghost Ranch for more than a week.

"But…." The word trailed off, and she tilted her head, considering him as he stood a few paces away from her, far too tense to sit or do anything except remain there, hands clenched into fists at his side. "But your powers are like a djinn's."

"They are," he conceded. "Or rather, they are more than a djinn's, for I can command all the four elements rather than a single one."

Her eyes widened slightly. Today she had dressed in plain, simple clothes, jeans and a loose shirt, obviously in preparation for their time in the garden. However, her still, solemn expression only made her that much more beautiful when contrasted with the ordinary garb she wore, like a queen in disguise.

"Are you an elder?" she asked, and now her voice was hushed, as though she had suddenly realized she had much more reason to fear him than she'd originally thought.

Perhaps she did.

But no — as angry and shocked as he'd been in that moment when he realized her stumble had led to her unmasking him, he knew it had been an accident and nothing more.

Whatever happened, he knew he could never hurt her, not the woman who had brought so much beauty and joy into his life.

"Not precisely," he said. Now it was his turn to hesitate, as he wondered how much he should tell her, how much he should reveal.

Then again, she had already seen his ravaged face. What were his other secrets, compared to that?

Even the very worst of all, the one he had never thought he would confess to another living soul.

"Then who are you?"

"I am Abdul," he said simply. "I have no family name, for there is no one who came before me. Or rather, the elders were here, and I was intended to be something between them and the djinn, not quite one or the other. But the One who created me made a rare mistake, and you see how I turned out. In His mercy, I was not cast aside like some botched experiment and instead allowed to live. You may make your own judgment as to whether that was such a mercy after all, considering I was forever other, forever apart from mortal and djinn and elder."

Was that the glitter of sympathetic tears in her eyes?

"I am so sorry," she murmured, and he made an impatient gesture.

He did not want her sympathy…and he knew he did not deserve it.

"It is what happened," he said, knowing his tone sounded far too harsh.

Should he leave it there? She must have felt something for him, or otherwise, he doubted she would have been so ready to offer her compassion, the gift of her generous soul.

He could remain silent, and perhaps that empathy might grow into something more, something that would forever bind her to him.

But as terrible as he knew he was, he also understood he could not do that to her. He would not allow her to remain here under false pretenses, believing he was the wounded party and innocent beyond doing whatever he must to protect his isolation.

"There is more," he said, and now he knew his voice was a rasp, shards of glass and steel ripping at the words. "There is much more."

She stared at him, but he noticed how she did not flinch, even now that she knew what his hood concealed. Perhaps he should have left it down, now that he no longer had anything to hide, and yet he could not quite allow himself to do that, to abandon the shield that had protected him from the world for so many millennia.

Before she could reply, he went on, "Do you know, Sarah Wolfe, how the Heat came to be let loose on the world?"

Something of the color in her face left her cheeks then, as if she had somehow begun to guess where this conversation was going, but her voice was steady enough as she replied, "A group of djinn released it. No one knows exactly how it all worked, but that's what we've heard from the elementals in Santa Fe."

"No," Abdul said. The time had come, and he knew he had to say this as plainly as he could. "There was no group of djinn. There was only me."

Now she was dead white, her dark brows and deep sea-green eyes looking like black holes in her paper-hued face. "That isn't possible."

"Oh, it is," he returned. In a way, it felt almost good to speak to her now, to relieve himself of the burden he'd been carrying for so many years. The elders knew the truth of the matter, but no one else. "I will admit the destruction of mankind was not my idea, but rather a conversation held among the djinn for many generations. Then, when it became clear that this world would end in ruin if we did not step in, I realized I had the power to stop humanity. I had the skills required to create a disease that would eliminate the threat forever. And so I went to the elders with the plan, and they spoke to the rest of the djinn, and it was determined that they would go forward with this thing — and that those who objected would be able to save someone from among those who were immune. Because you see, I knew there would be a few survivors, no matter how effective the disease might be. The djinn never knew that only one person was responsible — if asked, they would say some group among them had created the disease and disseminated it among the human population — but none of them would ever be able to identify a single person who had been among that supposed group."

Time seemed to stretch as Sarah sat there on the couch, staring at him. Her expression was still not one of horror, but rather of utter disbelief, as if her mind would not allow itself to grasp what he was saying.

He supposed that wasn't so strange. When confronted with such great evil, the natural inclination was to refuse to recognize it, for otherwise, a human's mind might begin to shatter.

They were so very weak, after all.

Sarah's fingers tightened on the knees of her jeans. "You hated us so much?"

The question startled him. He hadn't been sure she'd be able to speak at all, after being confronted by so many terrible truths, but he had assumed the first thing out of her mouth would have been condemnation.

He had earned it.

"I hated no one," he said calmly, which was also true.

"But…you killed billions of people."

Again true.

However, he did not mind being slightly pedantic in his response.

"The disease killed billions of people," he said. "I only created it. But I did so because there was no other way to save this world. You were rushing headlong into disaster with every passing year, and the few solutions you came up with to stop the destruction were half-measures at best and would have changed very little. We djinn had to step in, or there would have been nothing left for us to inherit."

Her mouth opened, as though to offer some sort of response, but then she shut it again. Perhaps she had realized that any argument she made would have been a foolish one, because only a fool would have disputed what he had just said. Distasteful, of course, to cause so many deaths, and yet he certainly had not thought of another way out, and neither had the elders, or surely they would have arrived at a different solution to their problem.

Instead, Sarah pushed herself up from the couch, said in a small, calm voice, "I think I need to go to my room now," and then walked away from him and toward the suite he had provided.

He did not try to stop her.

For a moment, Sarah paused at the entrance to the en suite bathroom, feeling her stomach churn and wondering if she was about to throw up. But then it seemed to subside, although she still knew she was queasy and off-balance, wishing with every atom of her being that she hadn't just heard Abdul's horrendous revelations.

He was the one who'd done it. There hadn't been some secret lab filled with djinn scientists, part of the mythology of their new world that she and her fellow residents in Los Alamos had bandied about, but only one man.

Or whatever he was. Not djinn, not elder, some kind of strange being with nearly godlike powers and the devil's face.

No, that wasn't exactly right. One side of his visage had been ravaged beyond recognition, but the other showed how handsome he could have been if something hadn't gone terribly wrong during his creation.

As if that mattered. He could have had the face of an angel, but that wouldn't change the terrible reality that it was his mind that had concocted the disease that had destroyed humanity…or that his hands had been the ones to release it.

Her stomach churned again, but since she could tell she wasn't going to actually vomit, Sarah made herself sit down in the comfortable chair by the window. The outside was just as bright and clear as though nothing momentous had happened in her world, and she found herself frowning, wishing that more storm clouds would converge on the house so the world outside could better match the agony in her soul.

Lying on the side table next to the chair was the iPad Abdul had given her. She stared down at it, wondering how someone who could be responsible for so much suffering and death had thought to give her a tablet loaded with music and books and movies, all the things she might need to be more comfortable here. And how could such a monstrous being have taught himself the piano just so she would have someone to accompany her as she practiced her music?

It didn't make any sense at all.

Stranger than you dreamt it, passed through her mind, and she shook her head. Having random lyrics from Phantom rattling around in her head wasn't going to solve anything.

She didn't know how they could fix this. To think she'd honestly believed she was developing feelings for Abdul, even while she'd acknowledged that any kind of a relationship with him would have been impossible.

Oh, it was impossible, all right. She just hadn't known how impossible.

She pulled in a breath, then another. Doing so might have helped with her queasiness, but she still had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do now.

It had been one thing to accept her captivity here…and she knew she had mostly accepted it, had been almost glad that she could stay here and regain her voice and live a life of ease…when she thought Abdul was just a garden-variety djinn with an odd fetish about keeping his face hidden from her. Now she knew the secret of his deformity was nothing compared to the real secrets he'd been hiding, that without him, the Dying would never have happened at all.

And he'd been so calm about it, as though he thought if he just explained his reasoning, then she could somehow find the strength within herself to forgive him!

That was…crazy. How could you forgive a person for killing eight billion people?

She knew this was an inner battle many Chosen must also have fought, but Sarah had to believe their situations were entirely different. None of those djinn had actively killed humans…well, all right, except for reaver djinn like the al-Qadir brothers…although they'd been complicit in those deaths. Yes, supposedly the djinn of the One Thousand had protested such extreme measures, and yet they hadn't done anything to stop it.

Could they have?

Probably not, she guessed. They were only a thousand people, far outnumbered by the rest of the elemental population, which she'd heard was around twenty thousand, give or take.

But just standing by and watching a bus go over a cliff wasn't the same thing as cutting the brake lines.

Okay, she told herself, you need to be logical about this. You've been here for eight days, and Abdul hasn't done a single thing to harm you. If he'd wanted you dead, you'd be dead already. So now you need to figure out what to do next.

Could she act as though his revelations hadn't had any huge impact on her, pretend that she thought she could go on pretty much as they'd been for the past week-plus?

She was a good actress…but she doubted she was that good.

All right, maybe she should come out of her room and get in his face, let her anger fly and then subside. That seemed a little more realistic, although she still didn't know how she could even allow herself to be in the same room with him without recoiling in disgust.

Not because of his face, but because of what he'd done to the human race.

This was an impossible situation. And she knew part of what roiled within her now was the realization that she really had begun to care for him — the small kindnesses he showed her, the way he somehow understood when she preferred to be quiet and didn't bother her with idle chitchat.

How he'd gotten her to sing again, really sing, in a way she honestly thought she never would.

All while hiding the blackest secret a person could possibly conceal.

Was that tight sensation in her throat unshed tears…or just her doing her best to hold down the bile?

Horribly, she thought it might be a little of both.

Utter silence from within Sarah's room, which he supposed was better than wailing and screaming and objects being thrown in a rage.

Or maybe it wasn't.

However, he had to admit she did not seem the type of woman to show her emotions in such an unseemly way. Everything about her was a little controlled, a discipline he guessed she had gained during all those years of intense vocal training, all those hours of practice.

Unfortunate that she hadn't been somewhat more controlled when she lost her balance in the garden.

But no, that was unfair. He had known deep within that this day, this moment, would come sooner or later. What he hadn't known was how she would react to it…and how he would react to her reaction.

Some part of him wanted to knock on the door, to go to her and try to explain. However, he guessed such a gesture would be futile. He had given his explanations, such as they were, and there was little else he could do.

For while he had his reasons, he knew there was no excuse for his acts. Not really.

Only the survival of this world, he thought, but he couldn't say for sure whether even that was enough.

Lacking anything else to do, he went back outside to the garden and made his way to the row where Sarah had suffered her fateful stumble. The basket she'd been carrying lay on the ground, with the lettuce and grape tomatoes it had been holding now scattered here and there, and he bent to retrieve all of it, then went ahead and selected one of the eggplants as well before he added it to the other vegetables in the basket.

Sarah could remain in her room for as long as she wanted, but sooner or later, she would need to eat.

At some point, she'd picked up the iPad and returned to her book, since she didn't know what else to do. The clock on the table told her that lunchtime had come and gone, and even though the world stayed light for a long while at this time of the year, she knew dinner was approaching as well.

Earlier this morning, she would have thought she could never eat again, but now she knew she was hungry. There had been a pitcher of water and a glass in her room, so she hadn't been too thirsty, and yet she found herself wondering if Abdul intended to let her sit in here without food as a sort of punishment for walking away from him.

That didn't seem like something he would do, though. Even though he'd committed the worst crime that anyone could possibly commit, she still couldn't quite believe that he was all right with letting her starve.

Then a soft knock came at the door, and she heard his voice.

"Sarah? I was hoping you might come out and have something to eat."

Well, the invitation settled that question. The one that immediately followed, though, was whether she had the strength to sit down at a table with him, knowing what she knew. From the way he'd just spoken, it seemed obvious enough that he didn't intend to bring a tray to her bedroom.

And although she knew she'd survive tonight without eating anything — and for quite a while longer than that, as long as she had water — she also knew she couldn't hide in here forever.

"Just a minute," she replied, relieved to hear that her voice sounded quite steady.

"I will meet you in the dining room."

Just like that. But she had to admit she was glad he wasn't going to loiter outside, waiting for her to appear.

That would have been a little creepy.

She went into the bathroom and brushed her hair, then put on some lip gloss. Mostly, she told herself, because she still looked way too pale, and she didn't want to let him know how much his revelation had devastated her.

Oh, who was she kidding? He already knew, because otherwise, she would have emerged from her room long before this.

Still, that minor bit of primping gave her some much-needed courage, and she thought she looked composed enough as she opened her bedroom door and made her way to the dining room. The table was already set, with a green salad studded with tomatoes waiting there, along with a basket of luscious little crusty rolls and a bottle of chianti already opened and ready to go.

Did he really think she was going to drink with him after what had happened earlier today?

Then again, a little wine might be just what the doctor ordered.

Luckily, his back was to her, since he'd been bending to remove something from the oven when she arrived. She took advantage of his distraction to seat herself right away, and when he turned back toward the table, face once again concealed by his hood and a heavy casserole dish in his hands, she already had her napkin in her lap and had done her best to steel herself for the meal ahead.

"Sarah," he said as he came over to the table. "I'm so glad you felt able to join me."

"I was hungry," she said shortly, lest he get the idea she'd emerged for dinner because she wanted the pleasure of his company.

"Not so surprising, since you did not have any lunch. I did not wish to disturb you then, but I thought it better for you to have something for your evening meal."

He set down the casserole dish, which, as she'd already guessed, contained the eggplant parmesan they'd discussed making earlier, in a time that now felt as though it had been a century ago.

Sarah had to admit the parmesan looked delicious, bubbling with cheese and with a layer of tomato sauce covering the breaded slices of eggplant.

The real question was whether she'd be able to keep it down, despite her current hunger.

However, she maintained her silence as Abdul poured some wine into her glass, then into his. Another moment passed while he dished up eggplant parmesan for both of them, and afterward, she placed some salad on her plate before handing the bowl over to him.

He took it from her with a brief nod, then helped himself to some and set the bowl back down a ways away from his plate. With that settled, he reached for his glass, lifted it, and paused.

"I will not propose any kind of toast," he said. "But I will say that I am glad you decided to eat."

About all Sarah could do was nod. Because she hadn't eaten since breakfast, though, she decided to ignore her own glass of wine for a few minutes and instead have some salad and a few bites of eggplant first.

The salad was crisp and fresh, the tomatoes like little bursts of summer when she bit down. And the eggplant parmesan had to be the best she'd ever eaten, the eggplant itself rich and mellow, its crumb coating baked to perfection, with cheese melting over it and tomato sauce so tasty she knew Abdul must have made it from scratch.

Now the real trick would be keeping it all down.

Her stomach seemed fairly quiescent, though, telling her that everything seemed to have mostly settled now she'd had more time to absorb Abdul's hideous revelations from earlier today. Somewhat more encouraged, she broke apart one of the rolls and spread a little butter on it, and after a few bites, she thought it might be safe to finally drink some wine.

It was rich and fruity but not sweet, a good accompaniment to the food they were eating. For the first time, she realized he'd put music on in the background, quiet classical guitar that kept the room from being dead silent but wasn't at all intrusive.

He seemed to understand she didn't want to talk at first, so at least five minutes or so passed before he ventured to speak again.

"I did not wish to hurt you."

Sarah set down her fork, then shifted so she was forced to look at him.

Then again, what was the point, since that stupid hood hid his face from her and she couldn't begin to see what he might be thinking?

"Take off the hood."

His entire body went rigid. "I do not see the point of that."

"I do," she retorted. "I want to see your face. What are you hiding from? The secret's out, isn't it?"

One long, hideous moment, during which he only sat there, unmoving. The only way to tell he was even alive was the subtle rise and fall of his chest under the heavy black cloak.

Then…at last…he reached up and dropped the hood. Dark eyes glittered at her under straight, angry bars of brows.

"Are you satisfied now?"

"I am," she said, and realized she was telling the truth. Yes, those scars weren't so pretty, but they couldn't hide the long, strong nose or the high cheekbones or the determined chin with its scruff of black beard.

Then again, what difference did it make that he would have been drop-dead gorgeous if it weren't for those scars? He was a monster, right?

He blinked. Yes, his eyes were brown, but in the light from the dimmed chandelier overhead and the flicker of the candles on the table, they also reminded her of a fine amber beer.

"Then I am glad I could accommodate your request."

Without looking at her, he picked up his glass of wine and took a large swallow, followed by another. This might have been alarming to Sarah — the last thing she wanted was to be forced to deal with him if he got drunk — except she knew djinn weren't generally affected by alcohol. They could get a little elevated if they drank enough, but it would take a lot more than a single glass of wine, or even two or three or four.

Whereas she knew she could be affected, which was why she also drank some of her chianti. It was barely enough to blur the edges, but she still thought it helped.

A little.

"So…what now?" she asked, and he glanced over at her, clearly surprised by the question.

"I do not know what you mean."

"I think it's obvious enough," she said. "You told me what you did, but you've also made it clear that you won't allow me to leave. So, what…did you think we were going to go back to the way things were before this morning? It's kind of hard to forget something like that."

His jaw tensed. As far as she could tell, he didn't seem to be doing much to conceal his reactions…but then she realized he might not even know how. After all, he'd spent a very long life hiding behind that hood. He wouldn't have the same defense mechanisms that most people did.

And as much as she hated to admit such a thing to herself, she couldn't help experiencing just the slightest twinge of pity for him right then. He'd never had anything close to a normal life. Unlike the regular djinn, he didn't have a family. He'd never known anything except hiding away from everyone and everything. Although he hadn't gone into a lot of detail — and although it was still a little hard for Sarah to grasp that the djinn thought of God as a real person Who had had real effects on their lives — it sounded clear enough to her that Abdul had come along after the elders but before the djinn or humanity, and God had suffered him to live rather than cast him aside and start over.

It was kind of a lot to deal with, even for an immortal being with near-godlike powers.

No wonder he hadn't seen anything wrong with wiping humankind off the map.

That wasn't entirely correct, though, was it? When Abdul told her what he had done, he had tried to explain why it had been necessary. She didn't agree with him, not one single bit, but if he'd truly thought he had nothing to apologize for, then she doubted he would have wasted any time on explanations.

"I am not asking you to forget," he said. Although she knew it would have been easier for him to look away, he didn't. No, he kept his gaze fixed on her as he went on, "I am not asking you to understand. I only realized I did not want to keep hiding such a terrible truth from you."

What in the world was she supposed to say to that? She'd never had anyone speak to her in such a raw tone, his half-ruined face pleading with her to understand.

In that moment, she realized how much of her life had been spent in shallow interactions — talking about school, talking about work, dancing on top of the surface with absolutely no mention of all the things moving around in the undercurrent. Life might have been more raw and more challenging since the world changed nearly five years ago, but she still didn't think she'd ever had a true heart-to-heart conversation with anyone in Los Alamos.

Not even with Carson, who was supposed to be her boyfriend.

No, especially not Carson.

And when her father was dying, he'd said he was sorry about leaving her alone, but he'd never talked about his fear and his pain, wanting only to wear a brave face to the end.

For all Sarah knew, he'd been glad the end was coming swiftly, since that meant he might finally be reunited with the wife he'd lost so many years before.

This…this right here…this was the most naked interaction she'd ever shared with another living being.

"But I want to understand," she whispered, knowing somehow that she couldn't allow this moment to slip by, that she had to find the strength to meet Abdul's honesty with her own. "Because I don't. At least…I don't understand how you could do such a terrible thing but still play the piano for me. Encourage me. Take me riding, talk to me about birds and wildflowers and cooking. How you could be…kind."

His hand, which had been resting on the tabletop, moved toward her and paused. Without realizing what she was doing, Sarah lifted her own hand from where it rested in her lap and placed it next to his.

In the next moment, his fingers had wrapped around hers, strong, warm, but without applying too much pressure, as if to let her know she could withdraw her touch whenever she wished.

"I had never spoken with a human before," he said, and his voice was also not much more than a whisper, low…pleading. "I had no experience of humans, save the knowledge of what they were doing to this world. When I heard you sing, that day when you came to Ghost Ranch, it was as though I realized for the first time that humanity could be capable of great beauty, even as I also realized that once we had encountered one another, I could not allow you to return to your kind. Later on…." The words trailed off as he wrestled with what he needed to say next, those amber-brown eyes fixed on hers. "Later on, I knew I enjoyed having you here. You brought light into my world that I did not even know I was missing. As the days wore on, I began to realize how terrible my crimes truly were. But even I, with all these supposed gifts I have been granted, cannot undo what has been done. I cannot change the past. The only thing I could possibly do to atone for the great mistake I had made was to be kind to you."

Now at last his fingers tightened, and she could see the way his throat moved as he swallowed.

Sarah knew there was no way her own mind could ever encompass the weight of guilt he must be carrying. It would be easy enough to pull her hand from his and tell him no amount of kindness would ever compensate for the pain and grief he had inflicted on those who had survived the loss of their loved ones…or on all the people who had died, even if their suffering had turned out to be brief, with most unaware of what was even happening to them.

Yes, she supposed it would be easy to meet his obvious pain with cruelty.

But what would be the point in continuing that cycle?

Leaving him to bear his burden alone wouldn't bring those people back, or return the world to what it once had been.

"I won't say it's okay," she said after a long pause, during which she'd done her best to decide on the most fitting way to respond to his words. Abdul's eyes half-closed, and she could almost feel the way his body tensed, bracing itself for the words he thought must come next. "Because it's not. But I can't deny that you've been kind to me. At first, I was chafing to get out of here. As time passed, though, I realized I enjoyed being with you at Ghost Ranch much more than I'd ever enjoyed living in Los Alamos, even though I know I should be grateful to everyone there for the way they've kept us survivors safe."

She stopped there, and she forced herself to meet his gaze. Maybe all this was crazy, but at the same time, the crazy thing would be to ignore the truth that had been staring her in the face for the past couple of days, even if she hadn't wanted to acknowledge it.

A sort of wild hope flickered in his eyes. The Sarah she'd been before she came here might not have recognized it for what it was, but the pressure of his fingers on hers told her the truth.

"I enjoyed being here because of you, Abdul, because of the time we spent together. It's because — "

She had to break off there so she could take a breath. Without it, she might not have had the courage to keep going.

"It's because I'm pretty sure I've fallen in love with you."