Fortunately, his anger seemed to be directed at my guest rather than at me.
“I should have known!” he snarled, without so much as a nod to acknowledge my presence. “I should have checked here first as soon as I found out you were gone.”
It occurred to me that, as little as I knew about Djins, that it could be markedly unhealthy to have one upset with you. Realizing that magik, like a knife, could be used both benevolently or destructively, my first instinct probably would have been to try to calm him down quickly . . . or to vacate the premises.
To my surprise, however, the Djeanie spun around and leveled what seemed to be an equal amount of anger back at him.
“Oh, I see,” she spat back. “It’s all right for you to disappear for years at a time, but as soon as I step out the door, you’ve got to come looking for me!”
The interest I had been feeling in Daphnie came to a screeching halt. In the space of a few seconds her personality had changed from a flirtatious coquette to a shrill shrew. Then, too, there seemed to be more to her relationship with Kalvin than just an “acquaintance” as she had billed it.
“That was business,” the Djin was saying, still nose to nose with my visitor. “You know, the stuff that puts food on the table for our whole dimension? Besides, if you were just going out to kick up your heels a bit I wouldn’t care. What I DO mind is your sneaking off to check up on me.”
“So what? It shouldn’t bother you . . . unless you haven’t been telling me everything, that is.”
“What bothers me is that you can’t bring yourself to believe me,” Kalvin shot back. “Why do you even bother asking me anything if you aren’t going to believe I’m telling you the truth?”