I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to sleep sitting up in the front seat—the djinni’s knees left no room to lean the chair back—but my concern proved unfounded. I slept for nearly eight straight hours, only waking when my bladder demanded a rest stop.
Cale stopped at a gas station off I95 south, and Xaphan trailed me through the store, snatching snack foods from the shelf at random as he walked. By the time we got to the refrigerated rear wall, his arms were full and his satisfied grin ridiculously wide. His sweet tooth, I’d discovered, rivaled my own, and his taste for salty snacks could not be appeased.
At the back of the store, I pushed open the bathroom door, and to myutteraggravation, the djinni followed me right into the bloody restroom.
“Out!” I ordered, pointing stiff-armed to the main room of the store.
Xaphan ripped open a bag of Chex Mix and tossed several pieces into his mouth. “Why?” he asked around the first mouthful.
“First of all, you can’t bring merchandise into the restroom. They’ll think you’re stealing it. In the second place, you can’t eat the food untilafteryou pay for it. Those are the rules in the human world, and when in Rome…” I faded into silence, assuming he could finish the cliché for himself.
I was wrong.
“The Romans didn’t have… ‘Chex Mix,’” he said, peering at the words on the front of the bag. I had no idea when he’d learned to speak and read English. Maybe djinnis had some kind of universal language omniscience.
“Not the point. You have to pay for it before you can eat it. And you cannotcome into the ladies’ restroom!”
“Why not?”
I was all for uni-sex bathrooms, but this wasn’t one, and I wanted justtwominutes without Xaphan standing close enough for me to smell his breath. “Because you’re not a lady!” I hissed in a loud whisper.
“Neither are you. Ladies wear corsets, not sidearms.”
I rolled my eyes. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, asshole.” I spun him around by his shoulders and shoved him out the door, surprised all over again that his skin was very, very warm, even through his clothes. Just like the box had been. And the Oak Island pit. I frowned, unnerved by the reminder that beneath the djinni’s childish fascination with the modern world, there lay more power than any one being should have—and not so much as a spark of self-control or moral influence. “I’ll be out in a minute. Wait here if you must, but donotcome back in.” With that, I closed the door in his face, cutting off his reply.
Minutes later, I emerged to find Xaphan waiting exactly where I’d left him, a Cheeto in one hand, orange powder coating his fingers and lips. He even had clumps of it stuck in the reddish stubble now peppering his broad chin. I started to laugh, until I noticed that three empty snack bags lay at his feet. “You can’t just go around stealing food,” I snapped, bending to pick up the wrappers. “You’re going to get us all arrested.” And whilehemight be able to “poof” himself out of incarceration,Icould not.
Xaphan shook his head, crunching into the Cheeto. “There will be no trouble. I’ve taken care of the clerk.”
“What?” My pulse spiked. “What did you do?”
The djinni shrugged, a gesture he’d picked up from Cale at some point during the last eight hours. “He was threatening to summon the local authorities.”
Panic pounded deep inside my chest. My arms suddenly felt heavy, and my hands curled into fists. I took off at a run, weaving between the isles of chips, motor oil, and two-liter bottles of soda. As I slid around the last curve, my boots barely finding purchase on the mopped-slick floor, I froze in place, staring in horror at the clerk who sat behind the counter. Or rather, at what was left of him.
When I’d entered the convenience store, the clerk been balanced cross-legged on a tall stool behind the register, flipping through a graphic novel. That novel now lay at my feet, in front of the counter. Which was just as well, because the clerk would have no further use for it. Ever.
Xaphan had toasted him alive. Instantly, evidently, because the scorched young man looked exactly as he should have, down to the part in his hair, the high-school class ring on one finger, and the phone still in his hand. Only now, instead of that too-pale pallor, his skin had the inky tone and crispy texture of a scorched marshmallow.
My breaths came in quick, hoarse pants, my chest heaving at the bottom of my vision. Nausea settled into the pit of my stomach, churning the contents mercilessly, and I held back vomit out of sheer will and the knowledge that throwing up all over the floor would leave evidence of my presence at what was now the scene of aninexplicablecrime.
“Xaphan, what the hell were you thinking?!” I shouted, whirling to face the djinni in aisle two, where he stood beside a display of chocolate-covered peanuts, licking cheese-stained fingers.
He shrugged again, and I wanted to beat the nonchalance right out of him. If I were sure my fists wouldn’t go straight through him, I might have tried. “I was thinking that the local authorities would present quite an inconvenience. Foryou.”
“Well, hell, why stop with the clerk?” I demanded, my arms spread to take in the entire store. “Why didn’t you burn the whole damn building down?” I was closer to hysteria than I’d ever been in my life. Or my afterlife.
The djinni shrugged. “It seemed a shame to waste all the food.”
“It seemed…Fuck!” I closed my eyes, mentally counting to ten. Cale was right. Xaphan couldnotbe unleashed on the world—no matter what. He had infinite potential for death and chaos, and no concept of right or wrong. He was like a toddler armed with a pistol: clueless and deadly. And I had let him out of his box.
I counted to ten again, and when that didn’t work, I went on to twenty, breathing slowly in and out. Then I rushed to the front of the store and waved frantically to Cale through the broad window; by some miracle, he was the only person in the parking lot. He shrugged with his palms up, posing a silent, “What?”
With a frustrated huff, I waved him toward the building with large, exaggerated movements. When he started toward me, I flipped the sign in the door so that it readclosed, then froze in place as my gaze snagged on the only other vehicle in sight. It was a silver sedan parked at the last pump on the lot, a gas nozzle still protruding from its tank.
“Fuck!” Someone else was in the store.
I took off down the main aisle, looking for the owner of the sedan. The main room was empty, and by the time Cale pushed through the front door, I’d checked both the stockroom and the office and had found no sign of the missing customer.
