by K. J. Emrick
Roxy’s engine purrs, and I could almost imagine my car was smiling.
A not-so-great day at work, and then my crazy neighbor to deal with when I got home. A missing woman who might be in great physical danger, or who might be off on a joyride across the country, or who might be dead for all I knew. No leads. Just theories. I felt like I was overdue for some good news.
Up in my building again, up on my floor, I smell something cooking. Something that smells really good. Usually the best aromas you can hope for in this place are microwave popcorn and delivery pizza. This was not that. It’s aromatic, and mouthwatering.
And it’s coming from my apartment.
I didn’t waste any time getting in there. “Harry? What are you cooking in here that smells so wonderful?”
He was at the stove, shaking a skillet back and forth with one hand, stirring a thick liquid in a pot with his other. Steam rose from the pot. In the skillet, meatballs the size of billiard balls rolled and sizzled. My apartment had never smelled this good.
“This,” he says with obvious pride in his cooking skills, “is Kofta. It is a traditional meat dish made from minced lamb, herbs and spices, layered with fresh onion. The sauce is a pomegranate reduction that will go over the meatballs once they’re on a bed of brown rice. I want to hear all about how things went, my lady, but please allow me to finish this first. It is almost done.”
From somewhere, Harry has found himself a white apron with big black lettering that says “Kiss The Cook.” It wasn’t anything of mine. He must be indulging himself with a little bit of magic. He’s humming a tune I don’t recognize, and I have to admit, he looks damned good there in front of the stove. Some men just have this look when they’re in the kitchen. Like they were comfortable with their creative side. It’s downright sexy.
I watch him for a few minutes while the food finishes cooking and I wonder what it would have been like to know Harry all those thousands of years ago, before he made that fateful wish that turned him into a genie. If I understood him correctly, he had served his community as sort of a police officer. One of the good guys. He was smart, and he was funny… and he cooked. If he was still human, he’d be every woman’s dream man. Plus, he wasn’t hard to look at. That vest he wore didn’t exactly do anything to hide those muscles and that smooth, dark skin.
His appearance in my life had been an unexpected twist, but I was glad he was here.
“Almost ready,” he tells me again, breaking into my wandering thoughts. Taking the meatballs off the burner, he sets them aside. “The sauce needs just a little bit more time.”
There were already two plates set on the kitchen table, and bottle of wine next to two empty glasses. The glasses were mine, just a couple of the small tumblers from the back of my cabinet. The wine was definitely not something of mine. “Geez, Harry, add some candles and this is a regular date night you’ve got going on here.”
He laughs at that, but not his usual booming laugh, like I would have expected.
It does look amazing, though. “Hey, didn’t you say there was rice being served with this? I’m not seeing any rice.”
Without looking back at me, he lifts his free hand, and snaps his fingers.
In the middle of the table, a wooden bowl heaped with a brown rice pilaf appears, dropping into place with a thump. I heard him chuckle softly at my gasp of surprise. With my future-sense out of commission around him, he just might be the only man in the world who could still bring a little surprise into my life.
“Sit,” he offers. “Pour yourself a glass of wine, my lady. I shall serve you as soon as… ah! It is ready.”
I did sit, because right now the idea of having someone wait on me sounded like just what I needed. I know I’m supposed to be all modern independent girl and insist on doing everything for myself, but come on. Every woman in the world knows it’s nice to have a guy wait on you every now and then.
“So the snapping…” I do a couple with my own fingers to demonstrate. “That’s how the magic works? You just snap your fingers and you can make whatever you want happen, make things appear out of thin air, or whatever?”
“Hmm.” He steps over to the table and spoons out a layer of rice over my plate before adding two meatballs and a generous drenching of the sauce. My stomach growls at me to hurry up and try it already. “Yes, and no,” he says.
“Well, that clears it up.”
Sitting down across from me, he makes a plate up for himself, as he tries to describe it further. “I haven’t tried to explain this in a very long time, but the snap is… to help me focus, I suppose. Really, I can snap my fingers or tug my earring or click my heels together if I choose. Whatever I feel like in the moment. The magic is within me. Every genie has their own way of bringing the magic to life. I use many different ways, but I suppose I prefer the snap. It just sounds like magic to me.”
Listening to the way he said that, it kind of makes sense to me. In a weird way, I guess. His magic might have limits but it was still a very big part of who he is. Like his strong arms. Or those beautiful gold-flecked eyes of his.
But there were limits, weren’t there?
I cut off a bite of one of the meatballs. The fork slips right through it, smooth as butter. “Harry… are you sure you can’t just wish me up Katarina’s whereabouts?”
His frown is deeply apologetic. “No, my lady. I am sorry, but I can’t tell you anything I don’t know. You may as well ask me to tell you the combination to the vaults in Fort Knox where your country keeps its gold reserves. I don’t know it, therefore I can not give it to you.”
“I get it.” I did. I really did, it just sucked because I was at a loss as far as what to do next. The bite of meatball, dripping with the pomegranate sauce, went into my mouth and I chewed it as I thought about the case. And then I wasn’t thinking about the case anymore. “Oh, dear God, Harry. This is fantastic. This is delicious. This might be better than your coffee. What did you call this?”
“Kofta. I’m so pleased you like it.” He takes several bites of it himself, but his eyes were on me, watching me enjoy his creation.
“Wow,” I say, because words failed me. It was delicately spiced, but there was some heat in there and the pomegranate was sweet and if I had ever had a moment’s pause about eating food that was just ‘poofed’ into existence, then I was quickly getting over it. “This might be the best moment of my day, right here.”
That one eyebrow of his quirks up with a question. “While I appreciate the compliment on my cooking skills, now I am worried. Did your plan to catch Carol not go well?”
I grimace and swallow another bite of Kofta before answering. “Oh no, the plan went fine. I found Carol, just like I wanted, and we had a long conversation about everything. Only, it turns out Carol is a guy and he’s the one who got Katarina pregnant and he didn’t even know she was gone. He thought she wasn’t talking to him because she was mad about the whole pregnancy thing. So he’s out as a suspect.”
“Hmm. I see.” His own plate of food was already half gone, rice and all. Now he pushes pieces of the huge meatballs around with his fork. “Well. Perhaps we should reconsider Barlow Michaelson, then?”
“No,” I say right away, but then I had to reconsider my own answer. “I mean, I don’t think Barlow did it, but I can’t deny it’s looking more and more like he’s a good suspect. Jealousy will make people do all sorts of stupid things.”
Harry’s eyes drop to his wrist cuffs. “Yes. I believe I know what you mean.”
I sigh, only half listening to whatever he’d just said. “Plus, Katarina claimed Barlow was abusing her. At least, that’s what she told Carol. I wonder if there’s any truth to that… I just wish I could know if she was all right, you know? If she ran off on her own that’s one thing, because I know she’s safe. But if she was forced into this by whoever that woman in the bank video was, then she could be in real danger. She could be dead. That changes the whole focus of the investigation if that’s the case.”
<
br /> The food was still delicious, and the wine was a soft red that was a great compliment, but I was quickly losing my appetite. Maybe I should call Christian down at the Detroit PD and have him step into this now. Maybe it was time to involve the police, even if Katarina is an immigrant and there was a risk she’d be deported for stealing all that money…
With another sigh, I begin swirling the wine in my glass, watching the way the light reflected off its languid surface. If there were answers in there, I wasn’t finding them. I guess it wasn’t like it was with coffee grinds. “I just wish I knew if she was all right. But, since you’ve got no way to do that for me I guess I’ll just have to figure out another way.”
Harry laid his fork down on his plate. “Uh. Well…”
In my hand, the wine stops spinning so suddenly that a little of it sloshes up and over the side. “What do you mean, uh, well?”
He clears his throat behind a fist, as if he was almost embarrassed to explain himself. “What I mean, to go back to my earlier example, is that maybe I can’t give you the combination to the vaults in Fort Knox, but if you wished for yourself to be inside Fort Knox, I could do that. If you wished for it, I mean.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “Are you telling me that if I wished to be right where Katarina is, right this minute, you could do that?”
“Exactly! You do understand, then. Good. I was afraid I would have to go into some long explanation of how this would—”
More wine slops out of my glass as I slam it down on the table. “Harry!”
He honestly looks surprised at my outburst. It’s almost funny. “What?”
“What? What? Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“My lady, you did not ask.”
Is he serious right now? “Well, I’m asking now! You told me all these rules and all these things you can’t do, and you forget to tell me something like that?” I couldn’t believe it. All this time and he could have just poofed me over to where Katarina was and this whole thing would have been done. I couldn’t believe it. “Fine. I’m asking now. Harry, I wish for you to send me—”
“Stop!”
That single word is less a command than it is a word of caution. I could hear the anxiety in his voice, though. Whatever was up with the wish I was about to make, it really had him worried.
“What’s the matter? Didn’t you just say I could wish for this?”
“Er, yes,” he says, rubbing at his chin as he purses his lips. “Just one problem.”
“Which is…?”
“If you wish yourself there, you can’t wish yourself back. I won’t be there for you to make a wish. I’ll be here.” He points over in the corner where I had rolled up his rug and put it aside this morning, so it would be out of the way and wouldn’t get ruined. “I can’t go very far from the rug. Once you wish yourself to wherever Katarina is, then you’ll be stuck there without me.”
The fact that I would be there, on my own, without his help, seemed to really concern him. “I was in the Marines, you know. I was a soldier for my country for six years. I think I can take care of myself.” Then with a shrug, I add, “I’ll just call an Uber to drive me back.”
His lips twist around that word, repeating it back to me. “Oo-burr. I know not what this ‘ooburr’ is, but if you’re sure it will bring you back safely, then I suppose I will have no choice but to grant your wish. You are my master, after all.”
I could tell he still wasn’t happy over the idea of being so far away from me, but he wasn’t going to stop me from doing my job, either. Maybe partly because he couldn’t, with the whole genie-master relationship going on, but I had the sense it was more than that. He might not agree with my decision, but he was going to trust me, because we were friends. At least, we were getting there.
It was nice to think about.
“Very well, Sidney Stone,” he says, standing up from his chair and lifting one hand, thumb poised against his middle finger. “Make your wish.”
I stand up as well. I doubt it made any difference if I was sitting or standing for this, but it felt right to be up and on my feet, ready for whatever I was going to find. “Harry, I wish that you would send me—oh. Wait.”
I stop midsentence again, the wish still unfinished. This time it was me who was having second thoughts.
What if… what if Katarina really was dead? I was hoping to find her kicking back on a beach around Lake Michigan somewhere, or in the worst-case scenario to find her tied up in the back room of some maniac’s house, but what if she was dead and buried? I had no desire to find myself poofed into some makeshift grave alongside a corpse with no way to get myself out.
Yeah. That did not appeal to me one little bit.
“What if instead,” I say, thinking out loud, “I wish for you to send me there, but only for five minutes, and then back here again. All one wish. Send me there, leave me there for five minutes, and then pull me back here. Is that allowed? No rules against that one, is there?”
I figured five minutes would be plenty of time to look around and find Katarina wherever she might be, and if it happened to be a grave then I’d only have to count to three hundred before Harry would be yanking me back here, safe and sound. Kind of a tradeoff to hedge my bets either way.
Yeah. I mean, what could go wrong?
When I look up at him now, I see he’s grinning from ear to ear. “My lady, that is the most reasonable wish I have heard in a very long time. There and back again after five minutes. Ha! I love it! I knew there was a reason I was sent to you, Sidney Stone. Now. Say the words, and I shall make it so.”
“With a snap?” I tease him.
“With the loudest snap I have ever snapped.”
There was a moment when the full crazy of all this hit me, but in the very best way possible. I was going to be sent exactly where Katarina was. A few minutes ago, I hadn’t had any hope of finishing this case and now I was going to be able to solve it in just a few words.
I think having a genie for a partner is going to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
This time I take a deep breath and say the whole thing in a rush. “Harry, I wish to be sent to where Katarina Borishev is for just five minutes and then be back here again.”
With a twist of his wrist, Harry’s fingers go SNAP.
And suddenly the room around me went dark.
Chapter Nine
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. A sour taste of panic rose and fell in the back of my throat when for just a couple of seconds I was sure my fears had been realized and I was in a grave, and Katarina was dead, and I might suffocate before my five minutes was up.
Only, I wasn’t lying down in the dirt somewhere. I was standing on my own two feet and there was light here, if just a little, coming in around the edges of the heavy curtains on the window behind me. It wasn’t pitch black in here, just pretty close to it.
I wasn’t in my kitchen anymore, that’s for sure. Harry’s magic had worked, at least in part, because I was somewhere else. This is a room in what looks like someone’s house. The ceiling above me is rising up at a slant as if it’s the underside of a roof. There’s a single door opposite me, and now that I could see around me, I saw that the room was empty. No furniture. No shelves on the walls. The closet door was open to show nothing in there but empty space.
When you live in an apartment you don’t have empty rooms like this. There’s always too much stuff in your life for the space you’re living in. Even if you have an extra room like this, you end up using it for storage. Cardboard boxes. Your bicycle. That treadmill you bought and never use. There’s no such thing as an empty room in an apartment. No. This was definitely a house.
So where was the house?
I went to the window and pulled back the curtain. I figured, looking outside, that I could get an idea of where I am. No such luck. I’d been right about being in a house. This was a second-floor window but there still wasn’t much to see. Just a yard out
back with a swing set eaten away with rust. One of the swings had fallen off completely and its chains are pooled around themselves on the ground. The grass and weeds have grown into a tangle threatening to overtake everything. All around the border of the property are trees.
I couldn’t see anything that identifies the area. Nothing that gives me a location.
I can figure that part out later. Right now, I need to find Katarina.
It would have been nice if Harry had put me right at her side. I guess I’ll have to make my next wish a lot more specific.
Outside of the room I find myself in a short hallway. There’s a stairway leading down to the first floor on the other side. It was brighter out here, thanks to a bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling. There are three other doors up here. Two of the doors are open, and I could just see the inside of a bathroom and a closet. The fourth door is on my right, and it’s closed.
I seriously wish I’d remembered to bring a flashlight. Next time I wish to go somewhere, that’s definitely going on my list.
Moving slowly, making sure the floorboards under me wouldn’t creak with every step, I move over to that last door and try the handle. I knew before my hand touches it that it’s locked, but I tried it anyway. Sometimes you have to prove things to yourself. Even the things that your future-sense tells you are true.
Believe it or not, a locked door is promising. People don’t usually lock doors in their own homes unless they have something to hide.
But unlike most doors, this one has the little twisty thing to unlock it on this side of the doorknob. That meant it wasn’t meant to keep people out. It was meant to keep someone in.
Bingo.
I turn the lock, and then the knob, grateful when it doesn’t squeal. The hinges are equally silent when I push the door open. This must be the good luck I was overdue for.
There was light here in the room, enough that it hurts my eyes after just getting them used to the dark. In here was bright and almost… cheery. Flowered curtains are pulled closed over the window. There is a bed with pink sheets and wallpaper with butterflies, of all things. A washbasin with water and a stack of folded facecloths sits on the dresser next to an untouched tray of cookies and milk. It was a surreal image.
