Fire Weaver (Fall of the Fey #1)

Chapter 8

Carmel snuck away from the room at dawn managing not to wake Zereth as she did so. She tiptoed to the stairs that led down to the bar, remembering that Deadly had said to come down when they woke up. At the thought of the strange man, she shook her head and smiled. He was so gentlemanly, it was hard to believe he was the same person who lost his temper at Gillian. Her eyes widened when she rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs and saw Faux lying on the bar, throwing a ball up and down and catching it just before it hit his face.

She jumped when he spoke to her because she didn't realise he had seen her, 'morning.'

'Good morning,' she responded more out of habit than anything else. She sat on the barstool closest to his face. 'Do you sleep?' She blushed when she asked the question, she didn't want to seem rude, but she was curious.

'Yeah, occasionally; I don't need it the same way humans do. The Djinn sleep to conserve energy between meals.' He hadn't once paused with his ball throwing, but he paused now and his usual smirk fell from his face revealing a serious side that Carmel didn't think he showed many people. 'I suppose now you want to know what we eat.' His brown eyes were so light that you could see flecks of green in them, which was a complete change from the black eyes he had last night. She nodded at him thinking that she would ask about his eyes later. 'We eat souls, or human energy, however you want to think about it.'

Carmel frowned and asked, 'is that what happened last night?'

'No, vampires don't have souls, I was just doing him a favour. I wasn't going to get trapped into a bargain with a vampire.' He said resuming his ball throwing.

'What do you mean 'bargain?''

'Djinn give wishes for your soul. Granted there are things we leave out of the explanation when we tell people.' He made his eyebrows jump as he grinned at her, 'as soon as the first wish is made the bargain can't be broken. Vampires nullify that contract since we Djinn get nothing out of the deal. That is why he could wish for death and I gave it to him freely.'

'So if I wished for something, would I get more wishes? What happens after? Do I get to live out the rest of my life or do I die as soon as the contract has been filled?'

'It's different for everyone. No matter how many wishes a Djinn give you, you become a human without your life-force. Sometimes the effects of that don't show up for a long time, sometimes it starts the next day. Then there are the Djinn who only feed off people who seek revenge and the human doesn't loose their soul until the revenge is completed.' He sat up as he finished, 'I give as many wishes as I like and I only take from those stupid enough to ask for it or people who are better off being dead anyway, not all Djinn are like this though.'

'Deadly comes from the same place as demons.' Carmel started and watched Faux tense from the corner of her eye.

'Yes.'

'But he isn't one?'

He instantly relaxed and laughed, 'of course not! For starters he doesn't need to feed off of people to live. No, he's something else. He won't tell me what, but you could always ask him and see if he'll tell.'

'So what's it like there?'

'It's like a ruined city of sand and bricks and metal. It's hot and dry and you can hear the creatures around you, but you can't see because the sand is stinging your eyes. It's hell.' He told her, he was looking at the bar as he said this. As though lost in a memory.

'Do you believe in hell?'

He looked at her for a long moment before responding. 'Heaven, Hell, God. It's all relative. I believe my homeland is hell, therefore it is. It doesn't mean it's the hell from human legends. In relation to my lands this place is a heaven. It's all about perspective.'