Nahri couldn’t take her eyes off the waterskin. “Why do you care? Are you married?” she shot back, annoyed. He glared. “Fine. I’m not married. I live alone. I work in an apothecary . . . as an assistant of sorts.”
“Last night you mentioned lock picking.”
Damn, he was observant. “Sometimes I take . . . alternative . . . assignments to supplement my income.”
The djinn—no, the daeva, she corrected herself—narrowed his eyes. “You’re some kind of thief, then?”
“That’s a very narrow-minded way of looking at it. I prefer to think of myself as a merchant of delicate tasks.”
“That doesn’t make you any less a criminal.”
“Ah, and yet there’s a fine difference between djinn and daeva?”
He glowered, the hem of his robe turning to smoke, and Nahri quickly changed the subject. “I do other things. Make amulets, provide some healing . . .”
He blinked, his eyes growing brighter, more intense. “So you can heal others?” His voice turned hollow. “How?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can usually sense sickness better than I can heal it. Something will smell wrong, or there’ll be a shadow over the body part.” She paused, trying to find the right words. “It’s difficult to explain. I can deliver babies well enough because I can sense their position. And when I lay my hands on people . . . I sort of wish them well . . . think about the parts fixing themselves; sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
His face grew stormier as she spoke. He crossed his arms; the outline of well-muscled limbs pressed against the smoky fabric. “And those you can’t heal . . . I assume you reimburse them?”
She started to laugh and then realized he was serious. “Sure.”
“This is impossible,” he declared. He rose to his feet, pacing away with a grace that belied his true nature. “The Nahids would never . . . not with a human.”
Taking advantage of his distraction, Nahri snatched the waterskin off the ground and ripped out the plug. The water was delicious, crisp and sweet, like nothing she’d ever tasted.
The daeva turned back to her. “So you just live quietly with these powers?” he demanded. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you have them? Suleiman’s eye . . . you could be overthrowing governments, and instead you steal from peasants!”
His words enraged her. She dropped the skin. “I do not steal from peasants,” she snapped. “And you know nothing of my world, so don’t judge me. You try living on the streets when you’re five and speak a language no one understands. When you get thrown out of every orphanage after predicting which child will die next of consumption and telling the mistress that she has a shadow growing in her head.” She seethed, briefly overcome by her memories. “I do what I need to survive.”
“And calling me?” he asked, no apology in his voice. “Did you do that to survive?”
“No, I did that as part of some foolish ceremony.” She paused. Not so foolish after all; Yaqub had been right about the dangers of interfering with traditions that weren’t her own. “I sang one of the songs in Divasti—I had no idea what would happen.” Saying it aloud did little to alleviate the guilt she felt about Baseema, but she pressed on. “Aside from what I can do, I’ve never seen anything else strange. Nothing magical, certainly nothing like you. I didn’t think such things existed.”
“Well, that was idiotic.” She glared at him, but he only shrugged. “Were your own abilities not evidence enough?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.” He couldn’t. He hadn’t lived her life, the constant rush of business she had to bring in to keep herself afloat, her bribes paid. There wasn’t time for anything else. All that mattered were the coins in her hand, the only true power she had.
And speaking of which . . . Nahri looked around. “The basket I was carrying—where is it?” At his blank look, she panicked. “Don’t tell me you left it behind!” She jumped to her feet to search but saw nothing besides the rug spread out in the shade of a large tree.
“We were fleeing for our lives,” he said sarcastically. “Did you expect me to waste time accounting for your belongings?”
Her hands flew to her temples. She’d lost a small fortune in a night. And she had even more to lose stashed in her stall back home. Nahri’s heart quickened; she needed to return to Cairo. Between whatever rumors would undoubtedly fly around after the zar and her absence, it wouldn’t be long before her landlord sacked the place.
“I need to get back,” she said. “Please. I didn’t mean to call you. And I’m grateful you saved me from the ghouls,” she added, figuring a little appreciation couldn’t hurt. “But I just want to go home.”
A dark look crossed his face. “Oh, you’re going home, I suspect. But it won’t be to Cairo.”
“Excuse me?”
He was already walking away. “You can’t go back to the human world.” He sat heavily on the carpet under the shade of a tree and pulled off his boots. He seemed to have aged during their brief conversation, his face shadowed by exhaustion. “It’s against our law, and the ifrit are likely already tracking you. You wouldn’t last a day.”
“That’s not your problem!”
“It is.” He lay down, crossing his arms behind his head. “As are you, unfortunately.”
A chill went down Nahri’s back. The pointed questions about her family, the barely concealed disappointment when he learned of her abilities. “What do you know about me? Do you know why I can do these things?”
He shrugged. “I have my suspicions.”
“Which are?” she prodded when he fell silent. “Tell me.”
“Will you stop pestering me if I do?”
No. She nodded. “Yes.”
“I think you’re a shafit.”
He had called her that in the cemetery too. But the word remained unfamiliar. “What’s a shafit?”
“It’s what we call someone with mixed blood. It’s what happens when my race gets a bit . . . indulgent around humans.”
“Indulgent?” She gasped, the meaning of his words becoming clear. “You think I have daeva blood? That I’m like you?”
“Believe me when I say I find such a thing equally distressing.” He clucked his tongue in disapproval. “I never would have thought a Nahid capable of such a transgression.”
Nahri was growing more confused by the minute. “What’s a Nahid? Baseema called me something like that too, didn’t she?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw, and she caught a flicker of emotion in his eyes. It was brief, but it was there. He cleared his throat. “It’s a family name,” he finally answered. “The Nahids are a family of daeva healers.”
Daeva healers? Nahri gaped, but before she could respond, he waved her off.
“No. I told you what I think, and you promised to leave me alone. I need to rest. I did a lot of magic last night and I want to be ready should the ifrit come sniffing for you again.”
Nahri shuddered, her hand instinctively going to her throat. “What do you mean to do with me?”