Day of the Djinn Warriors Read Online Free

while he couldn’t read minds, he was very good at reading what was written on a boy’s face. “It might be a good idea to have you along, just to reinforce our case.”
    “But how?” he asked Nimrod. “We have to stay here, don’t we? Me and Phil. Otherwise Dad’s going to start aging again.”
    “There might be a way,” said Mr. Rakshasas, who, as the author of the
Shorter Baghdad Rules
, was an expert on what djinn could and could not do. “A
Posse Commodata
. That means a loan of power. Most djinn are reluctant to loan their power to another djinn since it requires an uncommon degree of trust. But I’m thinking that shouldn’t be a problem between twins. The binding is only affected by the proximity of djinn power, not your body, John.”
    “All right then,” said John. “How do I do it? How do I give Phil all my power?”
    “Don’t be a goose in a hurry to a fox’s den, young fellow me lad,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “Giving another djinn all your power is not something done lightly. What’s more,
Posse Commodata
is not always to someone’s taste. Before and after. The only way for one djinn to loan power to another is for that djinn to summon all his internal heat and then breathe into that other djinn’s ear.”
    “Breathe into her ear?”
    “For about sixty seconds,” said Mr. Rakshasas.
    John looked at his sister’s ear and grimaced with disgust. “No way. You cannot be serious. I mean, if it was anyone else but her. That’s disgusting.”
    “Believe me, the feeling’s mutual, bro,” Philippa said, coolly. “The thought of having your slobbery mouth on any part of me is totally gross.”
    “What’s gross about it?” asked Mr. Rakshasas.
    “For one thing, she’s my sister,” protested John.
    “And for another, he’s my brother.”
    “It’s just not the sort of thing brothers and sisters do,” said John. “Blow in each other’s ears.”
    “We’re not doing it.”
    Nimrod and Mr. Rakshasas stayed quiet and let the twins make their protestations of revulsion and disgust, knowing, as the children did themselves, that in spite of these spiteful words, they were going to have to do it. And after a while, when John and Philippa had stopped yelling and making faces at each other, they both looked at the two older djinn feeling a little embarrassed at this display of youthful petulance.
    “Sorry for sounding off like that,” said John.
    “Me, too,” said Philippa. “I don’t know what came over me.”
    “As you get older,” said Mr. Rakshasas, “you’ll learn that silence is the fence around the field where the wisdom is stacked.” He smiled calmly. “In life, you must learn to take the little potato with the big potato.”
    “What do I have to do?” John asked, not entirely sure he understood what Mr. Rakshasas was talking about.
    Nimrod directed Philippa to lie down on the floor and then told John to put his fingers around his sister’s ear. “Now then, John, take a deep breath and press your mouth over her whole ear, just as if you were trying to eat it. Then you must breathe deeply into it, until I tell you to stop.”
    “I hope your ears are clean,” said John.
    “Cleaner than yours, I bet,” said Philippa.
    John looked at Nimrod and raised his eyebrows, as if asking him to recognize this latest provocation.
    “Come on, you idiot,” said Philippa, and closed her eyes.
    Holding his sister’s ear, John bent forward.
    “Ugh,” said Philippa. “His breath. It feels really hot.”
    “That’s the whole idea, Philippa,” explained Nimrod.
    As soon as John had finished, Philippa rolled quickly away and wiped her ear with her forearm. “Ugh. That was really horrible. Like having a lamprey attached to my ear.”
    The distaste John felt at having pressed his mouth against his sister’s ear was quite overtaken by a dreadful feeling of mortal ordinariness. It was as if a small part of him had died. He stood up, sat down again almost immediately, and hung his