Djinn Quotes

Magnus sighed. "Alexander, I've been alive for hundreds of years. I've been with men, been with women - with faeries and warlocks and vampires, and even a djinn or two." He looked sideways at Maryse, who looked mildly horrified. "Too much information?

When something needs to be said, you look for a man to say it. But when something needs actually to be done, you look for a woman.

That did it. I'd gone through a lot in the past few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans...it made no difference.I'd been summoned, manhandled, shot at, captured, constricted, bossed about and generally taken for granted. And now, to cap it all, this bloke is joining in too, when all I'd been doing was quietly trying to kill him.

Tell me about this Wizard Howl of yours." "He's the best wizard in Ingary or anywhere else. If he'd only had time, he would have defeated that djinn. And he's sly and selfish and vain as a peacock and cowardly, and you can't pin him down to anything." "Indeed? Strange that you should speak so proudly such a list of vices, most loving of ladies." "What do you mean, vices? I was just describing Howl. He comes from another world entirely, you know, called Wales, and I refuse to believe he's dead!

My mother had raised me on a thousand stories of girls who were saved by the Djinn, princesses rescued from towers, peasant girls rescued from poverty. Turned out, stories were just stories. I was on my own.

Tell me of this Wizard Howl of yours". Sophie's teeth chattered but she said proudly, "He's the best wizard in Ingary or anywhere else. If he'd only had time, he would have defeated that djinn. And he's sly and selfish and vain as a peacock and cowardly, and you can't pin him down to anything.

Be careful with this one" said Dina, bending down to greet the cat. "All cats are half jinn, but I think she's three quarters.

Because a lost little girl from Cairo thought she was living in some sort of fairy tale. And because for all her supposed cleverness, she couldn’t see that the dashing hero who saved her was its monster.

He's like a storybook spirit, a little djinn or something, except instead of air or water his element is imagination.

Will you stop eating it,” I growled. “No,” Andrea said. She was sitting on the ground and chewing on some unidentifiable chunk of bull flesh. “It’s a piece of meat from something a djinn summoned.” “You don’t know that.” “Who else would send a bull made of fire to my house after I helped kill a djinn-possessed giant? Stop eating. It might have been a person,” I told her. “I don’t care.” “Andrea! You don’t know what this will do to the baby!” “It will make it nice and strong.

..."I can always stuff you back in the bottle and shove a tampon in the top instead of a stopper, and all the other Djinn will point and laugh-

I wouldn't miss Mrs. Flowers, for she had given me her secret word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all my life: books.

To tell the truth, girls are no longer the way they used to be. They play gangsters, nowadays, just like boys. They organize rackets. They plan holdups and practice karate. They will rape defenseless adolescents. They wear pants... Life has become impossible.

Tell me of this wizard Howl of yours." Sophie's teeth chattered, but she said proudly, "He's the best wizard in Ingary or anywhere else. If he'd only had time, he would have defeated that djinn. And he's sly and selfish and vain as a peacock and cowardly, and you can't pin him down to do anything." "Indded?" asked Abdullah. "Strange that you should speak so proudly such a list of vices, most loving of ladies." "What do you mean, vices?" Sophie asked angrily. "I was just describing Howl!

He looked at Chloe "Come over to the table. Sit with your aunt. I will clear away the mess and....I will achieve pancakes." Grace's lovely, tired face wobbled with looked suspiciously like mirth, but she had been under so much stress he decided his first impression could not be correct. "You'll achieve pancakes?" "I do not see why not" he said "Have you ever achieved them before?" she said "That question is irrelevant," he told her, while his eyes narrowed in suspicion on her tired face. On a Djinn, her expression would definitely be laughter. "I will achieve pancakes now.

Partition was a total catastrophe for Delhi,’ she said. ‘Those who were left behind are in misery. Those who were uprooted are in misery. The Peace of Delhi is gone. Now it is all gone.

You dated a vampire? A girl vampire?" (Simon) "It was a hundred and thirty years ago," (Magnus) "I haven't seen her since." (Magnus) "Why didn't you tell me?" (Alec) "Alexander, I've been alive for hundred of years. I've been with men, been with women -- with faeries and warlocks and vampires, and even a djinn or two." (Magnus) He looked sideways at Maryse, who looked mildly horrified. "Too much information?" (Magnus)

Judging from the screams of the mob, Nahri suspected animating winged lions that breathed flames was not a regular occurrence to the djinn world.

People do not thrive under tyrants, Alizayd; they do not come up with innovations when they're busy trying to stay alive, or offer creative ideas when error is punished by the hooves of a karkadann.

How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the djinn when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story.

Mr William, he said, in my life six times have I crashed, and on not one occasion have I ever been killed.( Bevinda Singh taxi driver from City of Djinns

Do Djinn even like sex?" "With the right person, we enjoy sex very much." "We enjoy it in a leisurely fashion, and we devote all of our attention to it. And our lovers crave it.

[R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which was also on the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from its original source of energy. We did not know that micro-organisms were so powerful and lived in our digestive systems in order to enable us to live, as well as mounting lethal attacks on us as parasites. We did not know of our close kinship with other animals. We believed that sprites, imps, demons, and djinns were hovering in the air about us. We imagined that thunder and lightning were portentous. It has taken us a long time to shrug off this heavy coat of ignorance and fear, and every time we do there are self-interested forces who want to compel us to put it back on again.

That faeries have forgotten the Tapestry; that is the greatest tragedy of all. It's the fabric of all creation and it's woven of dreams, the dreams of the Djinn. Dreams are real, Magpie. They're seed and water and sun. They're everything.

(Djinn are essentially vapor.) "I blew him away.

Djinn were cursed with a terminal curiosity. It was often their worst weakness, and sometimes it was their downfall. Khalil was no exception. If a door was open, he peeked through it. If it was closed, it made the peeking so much better. If the door was locked, well. There was a natural progression to this sort of thing.

And her father always said if people were going to stare, you should give them a show.

Par le bois du Djinn où s’entasse de l’effroi Parle ! Bois du gin ou cent tasses de lait froid

You are a born storyteller," said the old lady. "You had the sense to see you were caught in a story, and the sense to see that you could change it to another one.

Keanu Reeves?" she asks in amazement. I nod. "What did he wish for?" "Isn't it obvious?" I say, waving a hand at the screen. "Fame." "That's why he's famous? Because of a wish?" "Have you seen his movies? Surely you didn't think he made it on his acting skills?" I grant wishes; I don't work miracles. Viola looks back at the screen, eyes screwed up in awe. "I guess that makes sense," she says faintly as my former master delivers a line poorly. "Wow.

Whoever has built a new city in Delhi has always lost it: the Pandava brethren, Prithviraj Chauhan, Feroz Shah Tughluk, Shah Jehan ... They all built new cities and they all lost them. We were no exception.

Rich people always have enemies. Usually, that’s how they became rich.

Oh, calm down, Sheikh." Zaynab shivered. "It's cold up here." "Cold? We're djinn! You are literally created from fire.

Sorry, is my new Djinn name Mushroom ? Because I don’t like being kept in the dark and fed bullshit, David. Just so you know.

Slowly and gently, Augustus Brine explained to the king of the Djinn about the illusion created by motion pictures. When he finished, he felt like he had just raped the tooth fairy in front of a class of kindergartners.

We all knew the stories. Djinn who fell in love with worthy princesses and gave them all of their hearts’ wishes. Pretty girls who lured Nightmares straight onto men’s blades. Brave merchants’ daughters who caught Buraqi and rode them to the ends of the earth. They were drawn to us, but also vulnerable to us. We could turn them into flesh and blood.

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options – neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there's cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I'm easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I'll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome drugs.

I wish," said Dr Perholt to the djinn, "I wish you would love me." "You honor me," said the djinn, "and maybe you have wasted your wish, for it may well be that love would have happened anyway, since we are together, and sharing our life stories, as lovers do.

You’re just a figment of my imagination. A fantasy?” “Yes.” He didn’t dare move. “Then why are you still wearing clothes?

All English stories get bogged down in whether or not the furniture is socially and aesthetically acceptable.

On the road, as in many other aspects of Indian life, Might is Right.

Why is everyone so slavish to texts written thousands of years ago?” he snapped. “Gods can change. Grow apart. Try new things. Besides, Set was a jerk.

You! You can’t just walk in here! This is a crime scene!” “That would explain the dead bodies, then,” she replied. He blinked dumbly, and she sighed. Wasting good sarcasm was annoying.

I was imprisoned, and no-one freed me. I cried for help, and no-one freed me. Eventually, I shook off my chains and I returned. They said, 'Why do you no longer love us?' I said, 'I realized that you have always been my chains.

The joining of humans and Djinni in marriage is still practiced in some parts of the world, and the Queen of Sheba was rumoured - by both the Jews and the Arabs - to be part Djinn.

She asked me when I had started feeling a need to grant people’s wishes, and whether I felt a desperate need to please. She asked about my mother, and I told her that she could not judge me as she would judge mortals, for I was a djinn, powerful and wise, magical and mysterious.

Should she slam his head into the bar or toss her beer on him? Damn shame to waste good beer.

Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.

He spoke often on the harm that enslavement does to the souls of those bound by the chain, and the souls of those who wield it.

Let's be sensible, shall we? Let's not make an enemy of the whackadoodle Djinn. - Olivia

The judge like a great ponderous djinn stepped through the fire and the flames delivered him up as if he were in some way native to their element.

Djinn,” she said. “We go to review the troops. Clothe me as befits a queen.” “Silks and satins?” he asked, eyes sparkling like sapphires. “White brocade?” “Armor,” she said. “And flame.

When I set out from the boy's attic window, my head was so full of competing plans and complex stratagems that I didn't look where I was going and flew straight into a chimney. Something symbolic in that. It's what fake freedom does for you.

I don’t have sad tales to tell you. I’m not some tragic character from a story, lost between two worlds. I revel in who I am. What I am.

And how many Daeva children died when your people invaded? Far more than the Geziri children who will be lost tonight." Muntadhir stared at him in shock. "Do you hear yourself? What sort of man plots that calculus?" Hate filled his gray eyes. "God, I hope it's her in the end. I hope Nahri puts a goddamned knife through whatever passes for your heart.

No one who lives here is stupid or gullible. They’re just tired of the exploitation. Tired of being ignored. Desperate ears will listen to anyone offering up others to blame.

He crossed the floor to start rifling through one of the supply chests, pulling free a small silver bottle and ripping open the top. "Is this liquor? Because I want to be completely intoxicated when Abba gets wind that his children are plotting a coup in a fucking closet." "That's weapons polish," Ali said quickly

From time to time, too, and for the space of two or three paces, an image or an echo would rise up from the recesses of time: in the little streets of the beaters of silver and gold, for instance, there was a clear, unhurried tinkling, as if a djinn with a thousand arms was absent-mindedly practising on a xylophone.

A new, rather grisly lesson in Daevabad's history." Nahri made a face. "Just once, I'd like to learn of an event that was nothing but our ancestors conjuring rainbows and dancing in the street together.

There’s nothing bad about reincarnation per se, it’s basically a very good system, cost-effective and ecologically friendly.

I feel hollow. And skinless." "That's the feeling of childhood falling away.

The circle that they drew was laid with fresh petals from the cherry tree on a bed of salt...

For all its faults we love this city.’ Then, after a pause, she added: ‘After all, we built it.

Nahri rose to her feet. "We need to retrieve Suleiman's seal," she declared. "It's our only hope of defeating them." She glanced down at Ali, reaching out her hand. "Are you with me?" Ali took a deep breath but then clasped her hand and climbed to his feet. "Until the end.

why are we going to the basement?” “Because that’s where the library is located.” “Right. And we’re going to the library because…?” Fatma fixed her best blank look. “Because it has all the books.

Can we agree to a decent working rapport, here? Because I really don't have time for this, and I can always stuff you back in the bottle and shove a tampon in the top instead of a stopper, and all the other Djinn will point and laugh—

Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they'd heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what? And if the dried and blackened shell of him is found among the sands by travelers to come yet who can discover the engine of his ruin?

That's just it. I'm the first. And if my venture goes well, and I return to record it, many others will follow after me. There will be a new era between djinn and men. I've made some of the notes already, Rekhyt-my book will take pride of place in every library on the Earth. I won't be there to see it-but who knows, perhaps you will.

She'd never shaken off the feeling of being damaged by her ignorance of Love, of what it might be like to be wholly possessed by the archetypal, capitalized djinn, the yearning towards, the blurring of the boundaries of the self, the unbuttoning, until you were open from your adam's-apple to your crotch: just words, because she didn't know the thing.

She imagined kisses on her neck and shoulder. Soft, light kisses; sharp, playful nips. Damn. Her imagination came in high-definition.

Soft woman and hard metal...unexpected & sexy as hell. Had she been real?

His eyes took on a storyteller’s twinkle, and Fatma sighed. This was going to take a while.

It is as though our dreams were watching us and directing our lives with external vigour whilst we simply enact their pleasures passively, in a swoon.

Ask me how many people, right here in Cairo, have blood sugar sickness,” he said. Fatma blinked. “I don’t—” “No, go ahead. Ask me.” “How many people in Cairo have blood sugar sickness?” “Ya Allah! I have no idea! I’m terrible with numbers!

And she was angry because she knew she was capable of many things she couldn't even define to herself, so they seemed like bad dreams - that is what she told me. She told me she was eaten up with unused power and thought she might be a witch - except, she said, if she were a man, these things she thought about would be ordinarily acceptable.

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?

And among His wonders is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the diversity of your tongues and colors. For in this, behold, there are messages indeed for all who are possessed of innate knowledge.

It's an invention, a fairy tale devoid of any sense, like all the legends in which good spirits and fortune tellers fulfill wishes. Stories like that are made up by poor simpletons, who can't even dream of fulfilling their wishes and desires themselves. I'm pleased you're not one of them, Geralt of Rivia. It makes you closer in spirit to me. If I want something, I don't dream of it—I act. And I always get what I want.

During our first month in the flat, however, Mr Puri was on his best behaviour. Apart from twice proposing marriage to my wife, he behaved with perfect decorum.

To the sick man sweet water tastes bitter in the mouth.

He disdains such cowardly acts as looking in wing mirrors or using his indicators.

...you surrounded yourself with people who nodded at you, who protected you, until your own mind gave way under the weight of your own pig-headedness.

The poem wants to know why the moon is sliced in half on some days and why it‘s a circle in other days. The worst thing about the poem is that it doesn‘t answer it‘s own question.

What is a whole life? If you die when you’re still a child, is your life whole or half or zero?

Faeries, like the djinn, preceded humanity as a sentient race that inhabited the earth. In Irish lore, the original fairies were the Tu-atha De Danaan ("the people of the goddess Danu"), said in some accounts to be directly descended from the gods. The fairies took up residency in Ireland, and possessed supernatural and magical powers. Over time, they lost battles to invaders and used their powers to retreat into the earth, into a parallel world where they could remain invisible and undisturbed.

Usually the secrets we keep deep down, ain’t meant to hurt other people,” he said. “Not saying they won’t, but not through intentions. Those deep secrets, we hide away because we’re afraid what other people might think. How they might judge us, if they knew. And nobody’s judgment we scared of more than the one we give our hearts to. Besides, everybody got secrets. Even you, I’m betting.

To be born of chaos means to be born a lone wanderer in this world full of those who would gladly be food for a corrupted force. It means to walk alone amongst the blind, to be a lone wolf amongst sheep...that wishes to devour the 'Sheppard' who keeps all in line.

But on balance I think you must never take land away from a people. A people’s land has a mystique. You can go and possibly order them about for a bit, perhaps introduce some new ideas, build a few good buildings, but then in the end you must go away and die in Cheltenham.’ Iris sighed. ‘And that, of course, is exactly what we did.

She jotted down the order, then forced herself to meet his gaze. "It's going to be a bit of a wait, we're short-staffed this morning." The following words rushed out of her. "And breakfast's on me." "Normally, I wouldn't protest," he said, leaning closer. "But in public, I'd prefer a plate." An image of Rukh, hair untied, licking whipped cream off her navel flashed through her mind, left her staring.

My father’s retellings could be dramatic and my mother would often chide him, especially before bedtime when she feared he’d give me nightmares. But his stories never frightened me. I was an overly brash child who delighted in believing every stray cat a djinn, every shadow beneath the waves a mermaid. But it went beyond imaginings. I’d grown up feeling terribly unusual, out of place and never at peace with the fate afforded young girls. In a hidden corner of my heart, I nursed embarrassing dreams. That I was not the child of my parents, but the daughter of a tribe of female warriors who flew upon winged horses. Or I was heir to a hidden sea kingdom below the waves, and the whispered sighs I heard from the water when we sailed and the strange lightning in the distance were not natural weather phenomena but magic, my true family calling to me.

Our gods are too busy to hear our prayers, but ghosts - ghosts have nothing to do but wait and wander, wander and wait, and they are always listening to our words because they are bored and that‘s one way to pass the time.

Can we delay bloodshed for at least a few days? I didn't cross a cursed lake in a giant wooden bowl so I could be beheaded for treason before I had a chance to sample some royal cuisine." "That's not the punishment for treason," Ali murmured. "What's the punishment for treason then?" "Being trampled to death by a karkadann." Lubayd paled and this time, Ali knew it wasn't due to seasickness. "Oh," he choked out. "Don't you come from an inventive family?

She was sliding dangerously fast down a slippery slope, if she went from "no kissing" and "we'll see" to him coming over when the children were gone. She cast around in her mind for something, anything, to stop her headlong plunge. She blurted out, "Do Djinn date?" He blinked. "That is not something to which I have given much thought," he said. "Perhaps some Djinn might date some ... creatures ... some ... times. Dating has not previously been a habit of mine." She nodded, too rapidly, and forced herself to stop. "I just wondered." "Humans like to date," Khalil said thoughtfully. Then he turned decisive. "That is what we will do tomorrow. We will go on a date." Suddenly she was dying. She didn't know from what exactly: repressed laughter or mortification or perhaps a combination of both. She managed to articulate, "You don't dictate a date." "I do not see why not," said Khalil, his energy caressing hers with lazy amusement. He tapped her nose. "Humans require air. Breathe now." She did, and a snicker escaped. "If you order a date to happen, it's no longer a date. It becomes, I don't know, a meeting or kidnapping or something.

She looked closer at the object she’d mistaken for a bookmark—a length of metallic silver tinged with hints of bright mandarin. She picked it up, holding it aloft as it glinted in the gas lamps’ glare. Aasim cursed, his voice going hoarse. “Is that what I think it is?” Fatma nodded. It was a metallic feather, as long as her forearm. Along its surface, faint lines of fiery script moved and writhed about as if alive. “Holy tongue,” Aasim breathed. “Holy tongue,” she confirmed. “But that means it belongs to . . .” “An angel, ” Fatma finished for him. Her frown deepened. Now what in the many worlds, she wondered, would a djinn be doing with one of these?

One of you needs food,' said the Old Woman, 'and three of you need healing.' So the Princess sat down to good soup, and fresh bread, and fruit tart with clotted cream and a mug of sharp cider, and the Old Woman put the creatures on the table, and healed them in her way. Her way was to make them tell the story of their hurts, and as they told, she applied ointments and drops with tiny feathery brushes and little bone pins ...

Out there, in the open desert, men can walk for days without passing a single house, seeing a well, for the desert is so vast that no one can know it all. Men go out into the desert, and they are like ships at sea; no one knows when they will return. Sometimes there are storms, but nothing like here, terrible storms, and the wind tears up the sand and throws it high into the sky, and the men are lost. They die, drowned in the sand, they die lost like ships in a storm, and the sand retains their bodies. Everything is so different in that land; the sun isn't the same as it is here, it burns hotter, and there are men that come back blinded, their faces burned. Nights, the cold makes men who are lost scream out in pain, the cold breaks their bones. Even the men aren't the same as they are here...they are cruel, they stalk their pray like foxes, drawing silently near. They are black, like the Hartani, dressed in blue, faces veiled. They aren't men, but djinns, children of the devil, and they deal with the devil; they are like sorcerers...

Believe me,' the badshah says, 'today or tomorrow, every one of us will lose someone close to us, someone we love. The lucky ones are those who can grow old pretending they have some control over their lives, but even they will realize at some point that everything is uncertain, bound to disappear forever. We are just specks of dust in this world, glimmering for a moment in the sunlight, and then disappearing into nothing. You have to learn to make your peace with that.

The Nephilim (Aldebaran’s extraterrestrials in Maria’s messages) who survived the great deluge returned to Phoenicia; the Bible made reference to their return. They lived with the Phoenicians for 33 years and 33 days in Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Baalbeck. The number 33.33 represents the period of the Tana-wir or Tanwir, which means enlightenment. The number 33.33 became the most important and the most secret number in Phoenician occultism, architecture, and numerology, because it refers to their place of origin, Jabal Haramoun (Mt. Hermon in Lebanon) which is located exactly at 33.33° East and 33.33° North.)   The number 33 is equally important in the Masonic rite King Hiram created with the assistance of King Solomon. This number is closely related to the compass and square, which were given to the Phoenicians as a gift from the Anunnaki lords. This explains how and why the early Phoenicians excelled in building ships, navigation and land-seas maps making, and surpassed their neighbors in these fields, beyond belief! Worth mentioning here, that the Egyptian Sphinx was built some 11,000 years ago, before the Biblical Great Flood by the early Phoenicians, the Nephilim and an army of Djinns created by the Anunnaki.

Dr Jaffery said that very few people in Delhi now wanted to study classical Persian, the language which, like French in Imperial Russia, had for centuries been the first tongue of every educated Delhi-wallah. 'No one has any interest in the classics today,' he said. 'If they read at all, they read trash from America. They have no idea what they are missing. The jackal thinks he has feasted on the buffalo when in fact he has just eaten the eyes, entrails and testicles rejected by the lion.

Oh heaven and hell, stop with the tears. Given the day Sarah had just had, the tears were logical. But watching her face crumple, hearing the gut-deep harsh sobs, filled Rukh with an irrational need to pull her into his arms, wrap her in a hug. As soon as the urge had gelled into conscious thought, his essence hardened into visibility and his arms slid up around her shivering, wet body. Sarah’s eyes popped open and she staggered back with a yell. His arms tightened around her, steadying her, keeping her close. Well, shit. At least, she’d stopped crying. Fear-bright green eyes stared at him instead. Given he was an assassin, sent to kill her, her response was natural, even intelligent. Yet, bitterness churned in his gut at the thought of her fearing him. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re safe.” “Am I hallucinating?” Her question came out as a croak. “Yes, yes you are.” That seemed a much better answer than the truth. She pinned him with her dark, direct gaze. “You’re just a figment of my imagination. A fantasy?” “Yes.” He didn’t dare move. “Then why are you still wearing clothes?