by Kelly Meding
The small flare of hope in his eyes dimmed and that sucked. Including Tennyson, I’ve only been bound four other times in my life, and all of those were unwillingly. As a half djinn, I wasn’t summoned the normal ways djinn showed themselves to human wishers. Unsummoned djinn can only be bound if someone knows what we are, and also knows the binding words, which no djinn can speak out loud. Those words are highly guarded in the magic community and sold for huge sums.
A bound djinn in the wrong hands can do a lot of damage. But in the right hands . . .
Before Tennyson and his telepathy, I’d never had a way to utilize my djinn magic to help our team. I’d relied on my intelligence, physical training, and ability to take a beating. Now, though, what Tennyson was suggesting made more and more sense.
“Can’t you just write the words down?” Jaxon asked. “His voice in my head hurts.”
“No way,” Mom said. “Once those words are on paper, you cannot guarantee they’ll never be seen by another’s eyes. Not even if you burn the ashes and bury them in a field.”
“Why not?”
“Because words carry power, and few words carry as great a power as the ability to bind a djinn to three wishes. The right magic user knows how to source these things, and I will not allow that to happen. The more people who know what Shiloh can do, the greater danger she’s in.”
“Agreed,” Tennyson said. “The words are not many, and your headache will subside.”
Tennyson’s subtle way of saying, Man up.
“You sure you want to do this?” Jaxon asked me. He shouldered past Novak to stand in front of me, then put his hands on my shoulders. Fixed those wide, worried hazel eyes on me, and a warm feeling swooped through my belly. Warm and sweet and it was all him. His kind, caring and protective self. No wonder I fell for him once before.
It made it easy to forget I had a maybe-boyfriend out there somewhere, who refused to return my call.
It’s been days. Focus on the mission.
“I need to do this,” I said. “But we also need to plan out exactly what those wishes will be for, because rule number two says the power expenditure of wishes two and three can’t go over that of wish one.”
“Got it. Smart rule, actually.”
“It is. My dad’s told me some stories about wishers who don’t believe what he is, so their first wish is super-lame, like turning an armchair into a toilet. Then it limits the other two wishes to party tricks.”
“Sucks to be that idiot.”
“Well, when the world is led to believe the whole genie-in-a-bottle myth, when a good-looking guy-next-door says he’s a djinn, a lot of people are skeptical.”
“Some of us need access to the clinic without being detected,” Chandra said. “That absolutely needs to be a wish. Is that something you can do?”
“Yes, we just have to word it right and specify a period of time for the wish, so we aren’t, you know, invisible forever.”
“Yeah, that would suck,” Novak said.
“Would I be able to wish for the twenty-eight werewolves to be teleported here?” Jaxon asked.
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “It would certainly make all this easier, but there’s already magic at play here, and I can’t be sure my powers will override theirs.”
“It’s no fun if it’s not a challenge, right?”
“For once, I’d love no fun and a lot more easy.”
“Me too,” Novak said. He flexed both hands into fists. “But I’m ready for some not-easy, as long as it gets the job done.”
“Okay, so we know one of the wishes is to get inside and not be seen.” I really wanted a whiteboard to write all this out, but the office was pretty bare. I did, however, find a notepad and pencil in one of the desk drawers, so score. “Thoughts on the other two wishes?”
“What about being able to see past the glamour they’ve cast on the building?” Jaxon asked. “Show us what’s really there and not what they want us to see?”
I scribbled that down. “Possible. It’s dangerous to try and break the glamour completely, because we don’t want these people to retaliate against this town. Likewise, we don’t want to scare people by a brand-new building or whatever appearing out of the blue.”
“Good point. We just need to be able to see what we’re dealing with, not blow their whole cover right away.”
“You’ve been plotting, I see,” Kathleen said as she strode back into the office.
“Staring at each other in silence got boring,” I replied. “What’s your boss offering?”
“Aerial support. She will have two Chinook helicopters waiting just outside town limits, prepared to help us remove the werewolves quickly and efficiently. They will be in position within two hours.”
Okay, that was kind of impressive, considering Chinooks were military-grade helicopters. So far, we hadn’t considered how we were getting the werewolves home, and this solved that problem.
“Not bad,” Jaxon said.
Kathleen quirked an eyebrow at him. I filled her in on the wish thing and what we’d come up with so far. “You are brave to bind yourself again,” she said.
“Yeah, well, it may be the only way we get a look inside this facility. Mom, what’s your impression of this glamour? More powerful than making a few of us invisible?”
“Definitely.” She cut her eyes at the closed blinds. “Even from this distance, its power crawls over my skin like insects. I don’t like you going anywhere near it again, but I understand this is your calling, and I won’t try to stop you.”
“Can’t we start with the first two wishes and go from there?” Novak asked. “We might need it as backup once we get inside and see what we’re really dealing with.”
Everyone looked at me. I shrugged. “I’m okay with that, but can we start after lunch? I’m starving.”
The town didn’t have fast food, but they did have a diner. Mom and Jaxon walked down there together, and after they called me with a menu in front of them, we all ordered food. Well, everyone except Tennyson, but he looked strong and not in need of blood.
And it didn’t occur to me I’d ordered eggs with a rare steak until Jaxon handed me the foam carton. I glanced at Tennyson, who was watching me intently, as always. But I didn’t find his stare as creepy as I had in the past. He reminded me a teacher puzzling over a student he wasn’t sure how to reach.
While we ate, we discussed who was going to go invisible and break in with me and Jaxon. Mom was staying here, obviously. Chandra had to go, because she was in contact with the werewolves via her powers. One more person to snoop made sense, but we also needed people to stay here in case anything happened.
“Question,” I said to Tennyson. “For your gazelock to work, does the person have to see your eyes, or can you do it simply by looking into theirs?”
Tennyson tilted his head as he considered my query. “As long as I can maintain contact with their eyes and mind, they do not necessarily have to see mine.”
“Then I vote you come with us.” Jaxon groaned, and I held up a hand. “Hear me out. If we have questions, he can be useful in getting others to talk to us. Plus he’s got vampire senses and he’s fast.”
“As am I,” Kathleen said.
“But you can’t gazelock. Plus, I need you and Novak to guard my mother.”
Novak grunted. “I don’t like you going off with the vampire.”
“Duly noted, but this is our plan. Understood?”
He nodded his assent, but didn’t look happy about it.
“I agree with the plan,” Chandra said. “We four go in, establish what is truly happening here, and we look for potential escape routes if the werewolves are not allowed to leave freely.”
“All right,” Jaxon replied. “You ready to do this, Shi?”
“As I’ll ever be. Um, do you guys mind giving the three of us space? I’d rather you didn’t all hear the binding words.”
“Of course,” Mom replied. She left with Chandra, Kathleen and Novak. While I
trusted everyone except Kathleen to hear to the words and not use them against me, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Kicking them all out was easier.
“I’ll whisper,” Jaxon said with a wink.
“Thank you.” Even with a wall and door between us, Kathleen had good ears.
“Are we prepared?” Tennyson asked, mostly to Jaxon.
“Let’s do this,” he said.
We stood in a circle near the desk. Jaxon flinched and clenched his hands while Tennyson fed him the words, and then Jaxon spoke in the softest whisper possible. “Shiloh Harrison, child of Iblis, I bind thy magic as my servant three times over, and bind myself according to thy terms.”
A tremor tingled down my spine and spread goose bumps across my shoulders and ribs. Warmth filled my chest as magic tingled between us like bolts of static electricity. Those bolts materialized into the impression of a rope, thin as a toothpick and made of glimmering gold. It ran from my mind to Jaxon’s, an invisible rope I couldn’t actually see, but sensed. The tether binding my magic to Jaxon’s wishes.
Compared to the tether I’d shared with Tennyson, this one was softer, less powerful. Jaxon touched magic in his own way, but he wasn’t as powerful a user as Tennyson, which changed how we connected.
Something else crackled along our tether, though. Not magic or power, but emotion. Strong, positive emotion, rather than negativity or anger. This wasn’t the binding of a magic user seeking to cause harm or make selfish wishes. I’d bound to a man who cared about me and others. And I had complete trust in what he’d wish for.
“Did it work?” Tennyson asked. “I sensed a shift in the room. However—”
“It worked,” Jaxon replied. His eyes never left mine as they filled with wonder. “I can feel you, Shi. Am I supposed to feel you, too?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The tether is usually one-way, but it’s also always been with a stranger. Not someone whose mind I looked into and saw myself.”
“Pardon me?” Tennyson asked.
Oh yeah, I hadn’t shared my newest party trick. “I have a bit of undiscovered telepathy of my own, possibly from my mom and her parents. Back on the road, after I telecommunicated with you, I tried it on Jaxon. I couldn’t hear his thoughts, but I got flashes of memories of us on a beach together. It was what he was thinking about in that moment.”
“Fascinating. You are full of surprises, aren’t you, young djinn?”
“Apparently, and I’d like to keep it on the down-low for now. It might come in handy later.”
“Like if Kathleen flips sides again?” Jaxon whispered.
“Exactly.” I opened the office door. “Coast is clear. The binding worked.”
Mom came inside first and looked me over, as if something had happened in the past five minutes. “You’re going to give me extra gray hairs today, aren’t you?”
“Not on purpose. Okay, so the first thing we need to do is make everyone here immune to the glamour.”
“What about Gideon?” Chandra asked. “He isn’t here with us, but shouldn’t he receive the same ability?”
“Since I don’t know if he’s man or beast, it might not take, but yeah, I can try.”
“I should have asked this sooner,” Jaxon said, “but do I just start with ‘I w-i-s-h’ and go from there?”
“Exactly.” I wrote the best, most precise wording I could manage at short notice, then handed the paper to him. “Go for it.”
Jaxon held up the paper with a slightly trembling hand. “I wish for the following people to be immune to the magic of the Gaelic witch whose wards protect a research facility in this town, Gabriel, Kansas, for the duration of our exposure to it: Shiloh Harrison, Jaxon Dearborn, Chandra Goodfellow, Elspeth Juno, Woodrow Tennyson, Kathleen Allard, the demon Novak, and the California werewolf Gideon. This is my first wish.”
The tether between us snapped taut as power flowed between us, the binding words triggering the magic I carried with me everywhere. Magic only accessible by bound wishers or dark magic users. The air in the room sparkled and seemed to solidify for a split second, before shattering in white glitter no one else seemed to notice. The others blinked and rubbed at their eyes, and I caught on a moment later when my own eyes started to sting.
“Is this normal?” Novak asked. “Fucking heaven.”
“It might be a reaction from the magic you’re opposing,” Mom replied. “Give it a moment. Shiloh’s power should win.”
“Before it burns my corneas?”
My eyes were tearing up from the stinging sensation, and even Tennyson appeared irritated by the reaction. Magic still spilled out of me, possibly battling the strength of the witch’s wards, determined to grant this wish to my wisher.
And then my ears popped, the stinging went away, and I smiled because I knew. “Your wish is granted,” I said.
Chandra pulled down the blinds with one finger. “It worked. Take a look.”
I did the same. Across the street, the two leased offices hadn’t changed in appearance. The third office, which had previously been a single-story brick facade, was now a five-story brick building that had other glittering stones stuck in the bricks on every floor, spaced out in a pattern of some kind.
“Does anyone recognize that?” I asked. It was similar to those on the elevator, but not identical.
“It’s the symbol of the goddess Cailleach,” Mom said. “She protects this place.”
“Well, shit, that’s not good.”
“We’re going up against a goddess?” Chandra asked. “That’s a bit out of our wheelhouse, isn’t it?”
“Not necessarily against her,” Mom replied, and I swore she looked kind of green. “Her own unending magic fuels that of the witches who serve her. Putting Cailleach’s symbol here is meant not only to shield it from human eyes, but also to act as a warning against anyone who might interfere.”
“Like us?” I said.
“Yes. It’s possible Cailleach has never even touched this mortal plane, so it’s highly unlikely she’ll notice our presence or that the wards have been breached. The witch who set them, on the other hand? She’ll have felt a change to her spell, but she may or may not act on it.”
“If she’s being paid to continue watching this place,” Chandra said, “she may come see what’s gone wrong, but if it was a single casting, she may not.”
“Correct.”
Color me impressed. Mom has a lot more magic knowledge crammed into her head than I ever gave her credit for.
“Time for wish number two?” Jaxon asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “This should be a lot easier, considering how hard I had to fight for wish one.” I wrote this one out for him, too.
“I wish for the following people, in our current physical state, to become invisible to all living eyes, noses, and recording technology for the exact span of two hours before that invisibility returns to normal: Shiloh Harrison, Jaxon Dearborn, Woodrow Tennyson, and Chandra Goodfellow. This is my second wish.”
The tether pulled taut again, and a burst of gold sparkles jumped out, moving in little cyclones to surround the four of us individually. No one else seemed to see this, because they simply stood there. I watched the cyclone expand to completely cover Jaxon’s body—and then he was gone. So was Chandra and Tennyson. Even my wish tether to Jaxon was gone.
I looked down and realized my mistake.
“Guys?” Novak asked.
“Shit on toast,” I said. “Jaxon, can you see me?”
“No,” he said directly in front of me.
“I messed up the fucking wish.”
“How?” Mom asked.
“Because I can’t even see myself, much less my other invisible teammates.”
This was going to be a serious issue.
Chapter 13
“What do you mean, you guys can’t see each other?” Novak asked. “At all?”
“No, bless it all.” I turned and bumped into someone. The swirl of fabric told me Tennyson. “I forg
ot to factor that into the wording of the wish. All living eyes includes our own. Fuck.”
“I can partially see the three of you,” Tennyson said.
“You can?”
“Yes. Do not forget, vampires exist on a plane between life and death. Perhaps this is what gives me partial sight.”
“But no one else can see me, Jaxon, or Chandra, right?” Yes’s went all around the office. “Okay, well, at least that bit worked.”
“Yeah, but how are we gonna move around without crashing into each other?” Jaxon asked. “If we cause a commotion, someone’s gonna get suspicious.”
“You said you’d be invisible in your current physical state,” Mom said. “Would we be able to see something if your physical state changed?”
“Maybe,” I said. “What should I do?”
“Try drawing a big X on your palm. If your hand is closed or against your leg, no one can see it, but if you need to signal each other, you’ll see an X in the air.”
“Worth a shot.” I picked up the pen, noting surprised and amused looks on various visible faces. I couldn’t see my own hands, anyway, so the pen floating in mid-air made me chuckle. “This is so weird.”
Even weirder was the black ink appearing like, well, magic, approximately where my left palm should be.
“Holy cow, that’s creepy,” Chandra said.
“Everyone can see the X?” I turned my hand to face the room; everyone said yes. I closed my palm. “Now?” All no’s. “Okay, it’s weird, but it’ll help us keep visual track of each other.”
“And if someone else sees an X floating in the air,” Jaxon added, “they’ll just think they’re seeing things and disregard it.”
“Hopefully. It’s just so weird not being able to see even myself.”
“I get it.”
“Do not fear,” Tennyson said. “I shall do my best to prevent you three from walking into each other during our mission.”
The word mission from him just sounded weird, like he was being ironic, instead of totally serious.
