by Judi Fennell
And now it’d blown up in her face.
“Vana? I’m waiting. As your master, I demand—no, I wish—you’d tell me why you did it.”
“But you aren’t my master.”
Zane stopped moving. Everything: his legs, his arms, his head… his breathing. Everything except a tic in his jaw. “What. Do. You. Mean. I’m. Not. Your. Master.?”
“I… well… It’s complicated.”
His silence said so much more than any words would have.
She clutched the sheet tighter to her chest with both hands. “You see, according to the Djinnoire, the genie-master relationship happens when a genie materializes in front of a master. But I never did that with you. You somehow ended up in my bottle and then I led you back to your plane. So, technically, you aren’t my master.”
“So you used me twice.”
“It wasn’t like that, Zane.”
“No? What was it like? How do you explain manipulating me like that? Lying to me like that?”
“I didn’t lie. I did think you were my master. It wasn’t until after… well, until after…”
“After we had sex?”
She flinched at the brutal honesty of that question, because that was exactly what they’d done. She’d been the one to make more of it than what it’d been.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat and willed the tears not to fall. Which was about as possible as asking The Fates not to cut someone’s Life Thread.
“The sex that I only just now remember.”
“Yes.” Her throat got clogged all over again.
“Is there anything else I don’t remember?”
She shook her head. “Zane, I’m so sorry—”
He inhaled long and deep, his eyes boring into hers, his anger palpable. “Did you do this to Peter? Is that why he sealed you in the bottle? Why me, Vana? Why me?”
She flinched and shook her head. They were all honest questions, but they belittled the reason she’d done this in the first place. If she hadn’t manipulated Time that night, they would have continued sleeping together and she would have gotten to this point—feeling this way about him—so much sooner, which meant she would have had to leave to protect her magic. And if she’d done that, Zane wouldn’t have had the incentive to stay and come to think of this as home as much as she did, and he’d still be trying to find where he belonged.
If only she could show him the good her magic had done—
Nice try, Nirvana, but don’t sugarcoat it.
She could almost hear her mother’s voice, but it wasn’t Mother; it was her subconscious. And it wasn’t about to be denied.
This whole debacle is your fault. You couldn’t accept your failings and were trying to justify your existence as a djinni in The Service. Trying to be something you’re not. That’s why you jumped into that bottle all those years ago; if you’d failed, you’d be able to blame it on that. You weren’t ready to enter The Service eight hundred years ago, and you’re not ready now.
You aren’t DeeDee and you never will be, and as soon as you finally own it and demand that your parents see you for who you are instead of wanting you to be an exact replica of your sister, you and everyone around you will be a lot safer. And happier. Face the truth, Nirvana, and stand up for yourself. Or at the very least, stand up for the man you say you love.
She hated her subconscious. Almost as much as she hated the fact that it was right.
“Then why, Vana? Why did you do this? To me?”
She sniffed and took a shaky breath, then rolled her shoulders back and lifted her chin just a smidge.
Zane—and her subconscious—were absolutely right and everyone, including herself, would just have to deal with it.
“I did it, Zane, because… I love you.”
And then she disappeared.
Chapter 36
“Cut!”
“Wrong!”
“Are you kidding me?”
Vana blinked when the world around her slowed its spinning, but the cackling voices kept harping.
“You’ve really done it now.”
“I told you she couldn’t do anything right.”
“This is going to be a nightmare to clean up.”
Vana put out a hand to steady herself. Her fingers encountered a rock.
A rock?
She looked up in surprise—and got an even bigger one.
Three old crones were staring at her. And not just any old crones, but… Holy smokes! The Fates.
“Do you realize what you just did?” asked one, using their shared eyeball to glare at her. Lachesis.
“And now we have to fix it. Again,” grumbled Clotho, the hunched one.
Atropos was sharpening her scissors on a strap, flashes of lightning glinting off the blades.
It was a dark and stormy night on Mount Damavand, portentous weather for being summoned by the three sisters.
Not that there was ever a good time to be summoned by the Fates.
Lachesis thwacked her staff on her palm like a metronome, and lightning punctuated each downbeat. A clap of thunder struck the air. “Would you care to tell me what made you do what you just did? You’re not normally a stupid girl.”
“Sure could have fooled me.” Clotho leaned on her cane. Her knitting needles hung from a chain around her neck. A woven chain, as befitted the Weaver of the Threads of Life.
Atropos, the one who cut those Threads, kept sharpening her strap. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”
“You shouldn’t have pulled me out of there. I need to explain it to him. Tell him why I did what I did.”
“Look here, missy.” Clotho grabbed the eye from Lachesis, popped it into her socket, blinked twice, then glared at Vana. “You have been nothing but a stitch in my side for the past four days.” She stabbed the space between them with one of her needles. “First, I have better things to do with my time than unravel and reweave the Threads you’re flinging all over the place as if it were bargain day at the mall.” Stab, stab.
“You think it’s easy, keeping everyone’s lives running smoothly? You think it’s a walk in the park to make sure I’m not doubling back on something that’s already happened in someone’s life because you got it into your pretty head to time travel an hour or two every few days?” Now she waved the needle around like a wand.
“Do you know how much people’s lives are affected by choices other people make? Do you have any idea that those six steps to Kevin Bacon mortals laugh about are no laughing matter?” And now she was back to stabbing. “Weave and reweave, knit one, pearl sixty thousand. I’ve got enough on my plate without you acting as if Time were your own personal plaything, and I”—stab—“for one”—stab—“am damn sick and tired of having to clean up your messes.
“And as if playing with Fate and Time weren’t enough—” She leveled the needle in front of her like a jousting lance. “Now you go and do something that not one of us decided for you. Hauling off and tossing an ‘I love you’ onto the playing field? That is so far beyond a foul, you’re lucky we’re not throwing you out of the entire game.”
“Then why did you put him in my bottle?”
“What? Are you out of your mind? We would never do something like that, and don’t you dare try to palm this off on us, you ungrateful wretch.” Clotho went back to stabbing. “You are on my last nerve, Vana, and, with us Fates, that is not a good place to be.”
Atropos caught that needle with her scissors. “Chill, Clotho.” She plucked the needle from her sister’s fingers and stowed it safely in her box of knives.
Which didn’t make Vana feel any safer.
“Vana. Dear.” Atropos tucked the scissors into the pocket on her cloak, then snapped her fingers and Vana found herself dressed in a chiton. The Fates did like to stand on ceremony, and white Grecian robes were about as formal as you could get. “What my sister was saying in that roundabout way of hers is that you are a member of the djinn and, as such, must adhere to certain protocol. Tellin
g a mortal you love him? Big mistake. Huge.
“You are not destined to be mortal, Vana. It’s only by the grace of us that we managed to pull you from that plane before the High Master sucked your powers dry. We all have a lot invested in you. Your parents, us, the High Master… you cannot continue to let us down. Your sister is on track to become the first female vizier in the cosmos’s history. We cannot have her sister become… mortal.”
Atropos’s tone seared through Vana as if she were sixteen again and jumping into bottles she shouldn’t. She’d paid for that sin for years, but loving Zane wasn’t a sin. It was the first time—okay, second, counting the other night—that she felt as if she belonged. For these past few days, she’d found somewhere she fit. And if it meant she had to be mortal, so be it. It wasn’t as if losing her magic would be any great calamity. And as for everyone’s expectations, well, she was used to not living up to those.
“But I love him. Why is it so wrong to want to be with him?”
“Because you are a member of the djinn,” said Lachesis. “You don’t get to choose your destiny.”
“I disagree.” Vana clamped her hand over her mouth. One did not disagree with The Fates and live to tell the tale.
But her decision had been the right one. Giving up her magic and immortality was nothing compared to what giving up Zane would mean to her, and if he knew what it cost her to love him, he would understand. She needed the chance to tell him, and if that meant challenging The Fates, well, she’d already lost everything of consequence.
“You disagree?” The eyeball fell out of Clotho’s socket when her mouth dropped open.
Vana removed her hand. “Someone wanted me to be with him, otherwise we would have met in the normal genie-master way.” She was not going to back down. Not about this. Zane was too important.
Lachesis, however, grabbed the eye, then aimed her staff at Vana, and a bolt of magic knocked Vana off her feet. “Sit!” A stone chair shoved into the backs of her knees, catching her before she fell.
“This is unacceptable.” Lachesis enunciated each syllable as her sisters joined her on the mountain’s peak. “I don’t care what theory you spout, you will return to the mortal and you will not say those words. This will be the last time we will ever manipulate Time for you, and I will inform the High Master that he must strike that ability from your genie card. Get your magic and your heart under control, Nirvana, and accept the role we have chosen for you.”
Vana looked at The Fates, huddled next to each other to share the vision of the eye Lachesis held in the palm of her hand. The sisters’ will was formidable.
But Vana’s love was stronger.
“Fine,” she said with resignation in her voice. “Send me back. I won’t say the words.”
She looked them in the eye.
And lied.
Chapter 37
“You’re talking to me about fair?” Zane raked his hands through his hair—again—as he paced across her bedroom—again—while she sat in the middle of the bed with the sheet clutched to her like the chiton The Fates had put on her. Again.
Vana dropped the sheet.
“Do not talk to me about fair, Vana. I know all about what’s fair and what’s not. My life being out of my control and decided for me by others isn’t fair. Peter, Gary, the coaching staff, my fucking knee. Then I come here, trying to forget what’s going on, only to have you make decisions for me about what I can and can’t remember. How many times, Vana? How many times did you do this?”
He stopped pacing and stared at her.
She saw the flash of awareness at her nudity. Felt the heat that had been there mere minutes ago—well, to him anyway—flare to life, and it gave her hope.
“It was just the one night, Zane.”
He shook his head and resumed pacing. “That’s one too many.” He stopped at the dresser in front of her bottle and reached out to touch it, but yanked it back as if he’d been burned.
The analogy was too close for her comfort.
“Isn’t there some rule in that book about doing this to your master?” He looked at her in the mirror above the dresser. “What about all the wish-granting—that I didn’t take advantage of, by the way. I was considerate enough not to use you. You could have afforded me the same generosity. Or is it okay to treat your masters like shit just because we’re mortal?”
She shifted her legs under her. “I had a good reason and if you’ll just let me expl—”
“What on earth could possibly be a good enough reason for you to tamper with my life and my memory? I want answers, Vana.”
Vana got off the bed and walked over to him.
Naked.
Yes, it was a ploy as old as The Fates themselves, but she needed to capture his interest. Whatever else he was feeling for her, he was definitely interested.
But she’d hurt him. Not on purpose, of course, but still. Zane, for all his alpha-macho toughness, was as aching. She shouldn’t use her sexuality to fix this, because, really, it couldn’t. Sex would only cause more problems if she wasn’t completely honest with him. Look at what had happened so far. But she’d needed to get his attention. Now that she had it, she kissed the air, summoning the chiton.
And a couple extra gallons of resolve.
“Zane, I will grant your wish because I owe it to you, not because you’re my master.” She stopped next to him and met his gaze in the mirror. “Because you’re not.”
“I’m… what? You lied to me, too?” He gripped her shoulders. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Isn’t that part of the whole genie mystique? Is this what you did to Peter? Is this why he sealed you in the bottle?”
She clasped her hands in front of her. “No. Peter put me in the bottle because he knew I was upset, and he wanted me to have the chance to calm down and get my magic under control. Peter cared for me. And I cared for him. But not like I care for you, Zane.”
He dropped his hands. “Don’t give me that. You care about one person, and that’s you. You wanted to grant Peter’s wish about the house, even though I’m the one who’s here now. You wanted me not to sell so you could get your happily-ever-after. What about what I want, Vana? This is my life. My only life. I can’t manipulate Time like you do, with instant replays and do-overs. I get one shot. It’s not a warm-up. Where do my wishes come into play?”
Vana flinched. She was trying to do the right thing, but why did it have to hurt so much? He was in real pain… and so was she.
She shook out her fingers. “Zane, I’m sorry. I did the wrong thing for what I thought were the right reasons at the time. I now know that they weren’t, and if I could undo everything, I would. But I can no longer travel through Time to fix this, so all I can do is ask your forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness?” He walked over to the bedroom door and turned the knob. The click had never sounded so loud. “Yeah, sure, Vana. I’ll give you forgiveness.” He opened the door and leaned against the frame. “As soon as you give me back the night of my life that you took.”
If only she could.
She followed him to the door, wanting to touch him, but she didn’t. “I wish I could, Zane. The gods know how much I wish I could, but maybe if I tell you why I did what I did, you’ll understand.”
“There’s nothing that would make me understand how you could have made a decision about my life for me without discussing it with me.”
He spun around and was halfway to the landing when Vana raced after him. “Zane! Wait. If you’d just hear me out, you’d understand.”
He paused.
But he didn’t turn around.
“What is it?”
“This whole thing, I did it because…” It was so much harder to say the words this time. But just as necessary. “Because I love you.”
And once again, Vana disappeared.
Chapter 38
She did it again. Again!” Clotho threw the eyeball off the mountain peak.
Atropos shot out her hand and caught it before it fe
ll past her. Such a pain in the ass to find the damn thing, and Clotho was forever throwing it around. Her sister seriously needed to work on her anger-management issues. Thank the gods—only the major ones, of course—that Lachesis wasn’t there to see it. Clotho’s short temper had been wearing on their sister for the last two millennia. Now, with Vana disobeying orders, there was enough tension in the air to disrupt weather patterns on half the globe.
“She cannot just go around deciding what’s best for everyone. This poor mortal has had his Threads played with so many times they’re practically in knots.” Clotho held up her knitting needles.
Atropos popped the eye in and peered at the numerous Threads Clotho needed to weave into one. Yes, they were all tangled around each other, his pale blue ones wrapped up and around each other and the pink one in the middle…
Atropos leaned over and lifted that one by the end. Zane’s Threads came with it. “Look at this, Clotho.”
Her sister held out her hand for the eye. Atropos gave it to her.
“I told you,” said Clotho. “It’s an utter mess.”
“Look again, sister. When have you ever seen this?”
“A mess like this? Last time I can think of is when that pop singer took up with her back-up dancer, popped out a few kids, then chopped off all her hair and did such a number on her Threads that I wanted to check myself into a spa to have the time to sort through them.”
“No, not the mess.” Atropos raised the pink one higher. The blues came with it. “The fact that his are tangled so tightly around Vana’s. How many times have you unraveled these?”
“Don’t make me count. You know how I hate to count.”
“But that’s my point. Every time you do untangle them, they somehow come to be retangled, and always with hers.”
Clotho popped out the eye, shined it on her cloak, and popped it back in. “So the guy has lousy taste. What of it?”
