Read Online Djinn Rummy by Tom Holt - Free Book Online

which had once shown a fierce, jealous, enigmatic God piercing the veil of shadows to lob in the lightning-bolt of Life took form again to reveal the loving, all-compassionate Father of Mankind. Not bad, Kiss had to concede, but the first one was better.
    â€˜That’s more like it,’ Jane called up. ‘Much more friendly. The other effort gave me the creeps.’
    Gave you the creeps? You silly mare, that was God, it was meant to give you the creeps. I should know, remember. ‘Oh, good,’ Kiss mumbled through the brush gripped between his teeth. ‘Your last chance for a few pink rabbits,’ he added. ‘Then I’m going to slap on the varnish.’
    â€˜No, that’ll do fine.’ Jane yawned. ‘And as soon as you’ve done that, we can choose the carpets.’
    â€˜Carpets.’ Carpets weren’t what he’d had in mind. What he’d had in mind was eight hundred tons of mirror-polished Carrara marble, whirlpools of dancing white figures that would make you think you were walking on clouds. ‘Anything you say,’ he grunted. Women, he thought.
    â€˜If I said,’ he suggested, floating back to ground level and dunking his brushes in a jam-jar of turps, ‘that what you’re forcing me to do violates my artistic integrity so much that even looking at it makes me feel like I was walking bare-footed over red-hot coals, would it make any difference?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Fair enough. Now, when you say carpet, obviously what you have in mind is a collection of masterpieces from the golden age of Persian carpet-weaving, featuring works by such immortal masters as -’
    â€˜Beige,’ Jane interrupted, ‘so as not to show spilt tea.
And it’s got to be hard-wearing, because I don’t want little bits of fluff getting everywhere. Ready?’
    Let there be carpet, said Kiss. And there was carpet.
    â€˜That’s fine,’ Jane said, as the rolls of beige Wilton unfurled of their own accord and slid smoothly into position. ‘Just what I wanted.’ Carpet tacks materialised in a bee-like swarm, buzzed angrily for a moment, and flew with devastating velocity to bury themselves in the floor. ‘I know it’s not what you’d have liked . . .’ she added, with a hint of remorse.
    Kiss looked up from air-traffic-controlling the tacks. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘if it was my place we were doing up, it’d be lino. But you said you wanted it to look nice, and I do try to be conscientious. I have trouble, though, with conflicting signals.’
    â€˜Nice,’ Jane replied, ‘as in what I think is nice. Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear.’
    â€˜Got you,’ Kiss muttered. ‘You may not know much about art but you know what you like. That sort of thing?’
    â€˜That’s the general idea.’
    Kiss nodded despondently and, out of residual malice, materialised pink curtains, a pile of lacy cushions and a four-foot teddy bear.
    â€˜Yes,’ Jane said, nodding. ‘Yes, I like that. ‘
    â€˜Fine. I think I was better off inside the bottle.’
    â€˜Maybe you were. Let’s have some lunch, shall we?’
    Kiss nodded, and instantaneously there was a table. It was covered with cloth of gold and laden with dishes of honeydew and jugs of milk of paradise. ‘Or would you,’ he asked, ‘prefer scrambled eggs?’
    â€˜No, this looks fine. ‘
    â€˜You’re sure?’
    â€˜I’m sure. I like yogurt.’

    Conversation was slow over lunch; there was still a thin, oil-like smear of resentment over the surface of Kiss’s mind, and Jane had her head buried in a furniture catalogue. This didn’t do much to improve Kiss’s temper ( Formica anything you like, dear God, but not formica ) and, being dutiful, he resolved to snap himself out of it by being affable.
    â€˜Funny bit of gossip going the rounds at the moment,’