by Judi Fennell
“Come along, everyone.” She summoned her flying kilim, and the dishes slid on. “Let’s get something to eat. Wait until you try the new flavors of ice cream that have come along in the last century!”
Luckily, the gods, Karma, and probably even The Fates were on her side for the next hour. Nothing untoward happened while the children glided in puddles of peppermint, toffee, mint chocolate chip, butter pecan, strawberry, and rootbeer ice cream she’d flawlessly conjured across the table, countertops, and floors looking like exactly what they were: children at play.
It was one of the most perfect afternoons Vana could remember.
Which meant that it was bound to go wrong.
Chapter 22
Zane kicked the brambles from his legs, cursing both the pain of torn flesh and the disasters of the afternoon. First Lynda, then the hurt look he’d put on Vana’s face, and now the wind-chime debacle.
The first round of grunt work hadn’t even taken the edge off his frustration, so he’d gone searching for the bewitched chimes.
They’d had been easy enough to find, but convincing them to relinquish their place on the shepherd’s crook in the middle of a bramble garden had been another thing entirely. Mother Nature, Father Time, and the chimes that Zane now swore were demons (or at the very least, those imps Merlin had described) had conspired to slash his skin to the point where he’d probably shed more of his blood in the muddy earth than he had left in his body. But in the end, he’d persevered and gotten the chimes out of the so-called garden.
That he also had had to remove the shepherd’s crook that’d been cemented into the ground was just an added workout bonus.
Zane propped the heavy chunk of concrete with the crook sticking out of it against the back-porch roof support, but there was no way he was leaving the chimes out here unattended. Amid the brambles, they’d swung out of his reach every time he’d tried to grab them, aiming for his head on the backswing so many times that he’d ended up using a stick to twirl the leather straps they hung from around each other so they didn’t knock him out. They’d struggled the entire walk back but hadn’t managed to get untangled or do any more damage. Well, much. Every so often one of them would get a good enough swing going that it’d smack its metal end into the back of his hand, and son of a bitch, that had hurt.
Grabbing the chimes, Zane pulled a pocket knife from his shorts and flicked the blade out to slice the leather from the crook.
The chimes shrank back in his hand as if he were some sort of ax murderer.
He exhaled. He’d had enough of magical beings today. He raised his hand to slice through the straps and—
“Zane, no!” Vana came flying out the kitchen door (only figuratively, thank God) and would have tackled him if he hadn’t caught her, dropping the knife and the chimes in a discordant jumble against the side of the house in doing so.
“Oh Zane, you can’t,” she said, breathlessly, as she smacked against his chest.
Oh yes he could.
Wait. What was she talking about?
He closed his eyes for a second. She was still there when he opened them. Still plastered against him, his arms still wrapped around her tight little body, her lips right there for the taking.
Time stood still for the space of three heartbeats. He knew because he counted them tolling in his head like a bell.
“I… that is…” She braced her arms against his chest, then looked into his eyes, her silvery ones darkening.
He knew what that meant. Somehow he knew her passion when he saw it. Maybe it was because he was feeling it himself. And, hell, she couldn’t fail to know he was feeling it, too, not with her abdomen where it was.
Apparently, wrestling with bewitched garden accessories hadn’t dampened his frustration as much as he’d thought. One touch. That’s all it’d taken, and he was wound up tighter than the chimes.
“I… I didn’t want you to hurt them.” She made a movement to slip down his body and Zane let her, if only to torture himself.
“Hurt them?”
Vana tucked some hair behind her ear and took a step backward. “The chimes. You can’t cut their straps. Those are literally their life lines.”
“I don’t understand.” So many things.
“The chimes need to be attached to the shepherd’s crook to be able to make music. If they’re not, they turn into inanimate objects.”
Of course they did. “Vana, I want them to be inanimate objects. I can’t have people seeing them like this.” He waved his hand their way and the chimes shrank back as if he was going to strangle them—which actually wouldn’t be a bad option if she wouldn’t let him cut the straps.
“Look, Vana, just do something with them so they won’t be a danger to me or the sale of this house.” He picked up the knife and shoved it into his pocket, then raked a hand through his hair. A couple small bumps had sprouted where the chimes had hit. “I need a beer. I’m going into town. “
“Can I come with you?”
Her words stopped him mid-step onto the porch. He spun around, the word “no” on the tip of his tongue, but she stood there, looking utterly delectable and utterly hopeful, and well, it was that kitten-kicking thing again.
He was insane to even consider it. But then, given what he’d learned in the past twenty-four hours, insanity was the natural progression. “Fine, but remember: no funny business. I don’t need any more stories to add to the rumor mill.”
She cocked her head, and her lips puckered up in a sexy way he was sure she hadn’t intended but that looked sexy as hell nonetheless.
“I’m not trying to be funny, Zane.” Her eyes flashed with specks of steel as she crossed her arms. “And it’s very insulting for you to say so. I haven’t done anything wrong on purpose, you know. Haven’t you ever tried to do something that didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped?”
“Yeah, the entire last twenty-four hours.”
Her arms fell by her sides, and the flash in her eyes fizzled out. Shit. Apparently he hadn’t finished kicking kittens.
Zane took a deep breath, acknowledged the futility of trying to turn her down, then held out his hand. “You’re right and I’m sorry. Sure, come with me.”
“Can the children come? They’re so longing to get out.”
That’s what worried him. “Vana, I don’t know—”
“Oh, please, Zane. I promise they won’t be any trouble. It’s just that they’ve been cooped up so long and they’ve never ridden in a car. They’ll love it. And just think of how good the fresh air will be for them. I promise you they won’t be any trouble.”
Famous last words.
But when she smiled at him like that, so full of hope and happiness, he just couldn’t say no to her.
He just hoped he didn’t come to regret it.
***
Gary checked the balance in Marshall’s college account. Both sets of grandparents had been more than generous to their only grandchild; there was enough there to put a serious offer on Zane’s house. But how long would it be before Lynda noticed the money missing?
If he got the genie out of this, that wouldn’t matter.
A genie. Zane had a fucking genie. No wonder the guy seemed to live a charmed life; he actually did. The son of a bitch.
Well, the jig was up. Gary ripped the withdrawal slip from the back of the checkbook and shoved it into his pocket. That fund had been set up to secure Marshall’s future; no one could argue that having a genie wouldn’t do that.
Not that he was going to tell them. Oh, no. This—she—would be his little secret. And so was this money. After all, once the genie was his, she could make the paper trail disappear.
Make Zane and Lynda disappear, too.
Chapter 23
Zane regretted his decision the minute they’d pulled onto the main road.
Vana had introduced him to the children—and the fact that they fluttered their edges like sea anemones, the pattern and direction changing like some sort of Morse code th
at Vana understood, freaked him out no end.
She’d introduced him to each one, and he had no idea how she could tell them apart. Well, except for the one with the chip missing. Anthony? Or was it Benjamin? Zane couldn’t—and didn’t want to—remember, because as long as the children and the armoire and the phoenix and Vana existed, his life would never be the same.
They’d made it to the first stop sign before the dishes proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were children: power plays to see who could be in the middle of the back window, who could sit on the front dashboard, who got to sit on Vana’s lap, who tried to climb onto his arms and drive the car—that one was Colin. Children were children, no matter what their form, but unfortunately they couldn’t use seat belts in this one.
“Vana, they need to go back in their box. It’s too dangerous for me to drive with them jumping all over the car. If they were”—he’d almost said “normal,” but, really, what could be more normal than a bunch of kids bouncing around the backseat?—“That is, if they want to go for a ride, they have to behave themselves or I’ll have no option but to put them away.”
It was almost comical how they responded with military precision, and it spoke to the premium they placed on being out of the box, as all eight of them lined up across the back window and didn’t move one rippled edge for the rest of the ride into town.
But when they got there, Zane decided he didn’t want to take any chances because all he needed was one round of “he’s touching me” or “she’s looking at me” and the insanity would be right there in his back window for the entire town to see. So, foregoing the desire to hang out in a bar, Zane grabbed a couple of six-packs to go.
It turned out to be a good decision because he’d no sooner gotten back into the car when something—not a dish—popped up in the backseat.
“Hey, guys!”
“Damn it, Merlin. What the hell are you doing here?” Zane yanked his seatbelt on and looked in the rearview mirror. The dishes hadn’t moved, thank God. “Anyone could see you.”
“They wouldn’t know what they were looking at.”
“Until some scientists got hold of you and took you apart feather by feather.” Bright orange feather by cherry red feather. “Is that really what you want?”
“Plucking? Really?” The bird shuddered. “Barbaric.”
“Why are you here, Merlin?”
The bird shuddered again—and started molting red and orange all over the backseat. Frickin’ perfect.
“You’ve got company. And if you think I scared you, you’re going to be totally freaked out when we get back to your place.”
“Hell.” Zane’s stomach twisted as he tried to remember if he’d left anything magical lying around.
Just a set of dishes in his backseat…
He should have gotten a case of beer. A keg, even. All for himself. He had a feeling he was going to need it.
“Oh, yeah.” Merlin shook his head—and a slew of beaded braids whipped around his head like a lasso. “It’s a real party back there. A couple, their real-estate agent, and a pair of hot tamales. Quite a scene going on, and not in a good way.”
Fifteen minutes later, Zane pulled the car into his drive to find people everywhere: the front lawn, the porch, heading toward his car…
“I thought you said there were only five people here.” Zane gritted his teeth as he had to slow down to drive through the news vans stationed along his driveway.
“There were when I left,” Merlin mumbled from beneath the seat where Zane had banished him.
Cameras surrounded the car when Zane parked it. “Vana, put the children in the box while I do the talking. Merlin, you stay here until it’s safe for you to leave.”
“No arguments there,” said Merlin. “Any chance you want to leave the AC on?”
“That’d look a little funny, wouldn’t it?” Zane turned off the car and undid his seat belt.
“Wait until you see what I look like after fifteen minutes in this heat. That won’t be so funny.”
“I’ll leave the window open enough for you to get out. Give me five minutes to get everyone away from the car.”
“Leave me a beer and you can have ten.”
“Forget it.” That was all he needed: a drunk, Liberace-wannabe mythical bird meeting the press. He’d never be able to show his face in any locker room anywhere ever again. And while he might not be thrilled to be playing backup, it beat not playing at all.
Zane put his hand on the door handle. “Okay, here we go. Wish me luck.”
Vana stopped him with a mere touch of her hand.
She blew him out of the water with a kiss on the cheek.
“Luck,” she whispered as she climbed out of the car, but “luck” was not the four-letter L word he was feeling.
***
Vana wasn’t sure if she’d actually managed to conjure some luck for Zane or if The Fates were on her side (they must not have gotten a report on her time travel escapades yet), but it took only five minutes to get rid of the real-estate agent and her clients, and another ten to field the reporters’ questions.
But unfortunately, it took a half hour and two beers for Zane to wrestle his temper under control after they’d opened the door to find Eirik, Henry, and Lucia plastered against it, eavesdropping. Vana had had to round them all up and march them into Peter’s study to help ease Zane’s ire. Then she made herself scarce as well, heading out to the front porch to paint the spindles she hadn’t gotten to earlier, using a brush to paint them the mortal way because there was only so much magic Zane could be expected to take in one day and his quota was pretty much filled.
Which was why when Merlin showed up—his feathers now looking like a bad ‘70s lime-green shag rug—Vana asked him to leave.
“You can’t be serious,” he said. “You want me to leave you sitting out here all alone doing manual labor? Oh, and by the by? There’s a reason it’s called that. You should get him out here to do it. That way you could kill two gremlins with one stone: get the porch painted and get your hooks into him. You’re going to have to put a little effort into it if you want him, Van. No one’s going to drop him in your lap.”
“I told you, Merlin. I don’t want him. I can’t.”
“Yeah, that’s what Juliet Capulet said.”
“And look how well that turned out.”
“Oh. Good point.” Merlin sniffed the paint can. “But seriously, Van. I can’t leave. Who’s going to be your voice of reason if I do?” He stuck his beak into the paint and came up sputtering. “Blech! What is this stuff? I thought it was a batch of piña coladas.”
“It’s paint, Merlin.” She slid the can away and held up a drop cloth while he shook his head, sending paint spatters everywhere. “And now you really do need to leave.”
“Not without you.”
She sighed and finished painting the spindle. “Give it a rest, Merlin. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t.”
“Because you’re the only one who can paint the porch?”
“No. Because Zane needs me to stay.”
“Really.” Merlin swiped his feathers across a row of spindles so that they ended up looking like barber poles. “The only reason a mortal would need a genie is to have his wishes granted. How many has he asked of you? Besides fixing the legs you broke, I mean.”
Ouch. Vana dipped her brush in the can and took her time wiping the excess paint off. It didn’t matter that Zane hadn’t done the typical thousand-and-one wishes most new masters spouted off. He needed her to stay, and so did Peter.
“See? You don’t even have an argument. You say you don’t want him, so that must mean you’re staying for you and a dead guy. Seriously, Van, I think you might have conked yourself on the head getting out of your bottle.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Merlin. Besides, it’s my life.”
“Exactly. It is your life. And you’re just hanging out here wasting it. What’ll you do if he just ups and asks you to leave, hmmm? All
this time wasted. And he doesn’t even know about last night. When he does…” The bird whistled. “He’s gonna order you out of the house.”
“No, he won’t.”
Merlin flung his wings again. “What—find out about last night or ask you to leave?”
“Both.” She grabbed the phoenix’s beak and clamped it shut. “You’re getting paint on the floor.” She was not having a life discussion with Merlin. Merlin had zillions of lives, being reborn whenever he upped and flamed himself into a pile of ash, and while hers was an immortal one, it was the only one she had. He couldn’t relate. “And you’re not going to tell him, either.”
Merlin shook his head until his beak was free. “Oh, don’t worry. I was done interfering in mortals’ lives with the whole Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot debacle. Learned my lesson on that one.”
“Good.” She started painting the next spindle. Four down, seventy-six to go.
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t advise you on yours.”
And she thought The Fates were on her side? They were probably laughing their collective patooties off on Mount Damavand right now that she was held captive by a determined phoenix. Why didn’t he just poof himself up in a ball of flame and go bug someone else?
“Just because you’re immortal, Van, doesn’t mean every day isn’t precious. It is. And you need to remember that, instead of hanging out here hoping for some—I don’t know… romance, maybe?—from Studly in there instead of focusing on your magic and freeing the children and everyone else. Isn’t that what you say you’ve been trying to do for a hundred years?”
She threw her brush at the bird. And didn’t care that it left a two-inch-wide streak on not only his back, but the porch, too. “Merlin, you know nothing about it. I am trying to free them, but it’s not as easy as you or my parents or my sister or half the djinn world think it is. These are children. Flesh and blood. Who are only immortal because of the enchantment. I can’t go magicking them back until I’m absolutely certain I can do it. Otherwise I could end up killing them. And whether you understand this or not, I owe Peter. I caused him enough trouble, and this is my chance to fix it. So don’t go thinking you know anything about me or my life until you’ve lived in my bottle for a while.”
