Djinn: Cursed Read Online Free Page B

timidly to stroke the top of my left wing.  It sent shivers down my wing and spine to my toes.  It felt sinfully good as she absently said, “Everyone just calls me Mouse.”
    She had such a look of fascination on her face, and it seemed to chase away that haunted look that shadowed her dark eyes.  I blushed again and extended my left wing a bit letting her look at it, and I shivered again as she brushed the feathers lightly in wonder.
    Then she inhaled sharply, stepped back and shut her eyes tightly and then asked a question that took me by surprise.  “You're real?  I can feel you. You're not like the others.”  She motioned her chin to the empty space beside her.
    Then I got it.  She was hallucinating.  I narrowed my eyes and took her in the best I could in the poor lighting.  She didn't have any telltale signs of drug abuse.  The poor woman must have some form of manic schizophrenia and was hearing voices.
    She was looking confused and almost disappointed as she asked, “You're not an angel?”
    I shook my head, and she stared at the wings on my back, and I could see despair and horror widen her eyes.  I knew she thought she was imagining my wings and that she had dropped deeper into her mental prison.
    I quickly reached out on instinct, wrapping my left wing around her, to comfort her.  I said with conviction, “They are real.  You aren't seeing things.  I don't know how but I have wings, and there are men trying to kill me.  You saved me Mouse.”
    She closed her eyes and took three quick breaths then seemed to snuggle into my wing and opened her eyes.  It broke my heart when a tear ran down her cheek, and she nodded to me.  I was a little distracted as she ran a hand along the leading edge of the foreign appendage as she asked, “How?”
    She accepted the wings easier than I had.  But I'm sure she was used to hovering somewhere between sanity and a madness nobody else could imagine.  It was all new to me.  I opened my mouth then remembered Stacy and Billie.  I blurted, “I'll tell you, but I need to get to my friends.  I think... I think they're dead.”
    I started up the stairs and paused, looking at my wings as Mouse held onto the wingtip and walked beside me.  I hissed a profanity and then looked up to her.  “How do I hide these things?  I'm a freak.”
    She smiled at me with nothing but pure mirth painting her features, making her look even younger and even prettier.  She chuckled out, “You're actually asking a mad woman how to hide your wings?”
    She snorted, and I couldn't stop my smile as she started chortling.  I laughed with her then calmed myself.  I pulled my wing to me, dragging her along since she seemed unwilling to let go of the tip.
    I pulled her in front of me and said in a suddenly serious tone,  “You're not mad.  You hear me?  It is a disease, it can be treated.  Do you understand me?”  I realized I was angry at her for being so flippant about her affliction.  It wasn't her fault, and it wasn't something to joke about.
    Even in her current mental state, she helped a complete stranger, I don't think she even realized it yet.  That told me all I needed to know about the core of the person behind the haunted eyes.  I asked softly, “What's your name Mouse?”
    She let go of my wing and hugged her arms to her chest as she looked down.  Her voice was small, like the mouse she took as her street name, as she said, “Dorian.”
    I exhaled and then asked in a tone that sounded just as lost as I felt, “Can you help me, Dorian?  I need to see my... friends.”  My voice choked on the last word.
    She nodded, and I folded a wing around her and squinted through my migraine.  She smiled warmly and held my wing to herself like a blanket, then said, “Come on, I think I know what to do.”
    I had to chuckle when she added almost cutely, “I'm still calling you Angel.”
    I nodded and acquiesced, “Fair enough.”  It was my name after all.
    Then she was