“Hello,” said a beautiful woman who seemed to have materialized right in front of her. Her dark brown hair was slicked into a low ponytail, and huge sunglasses covered her eyes. She wore a navy-blue polka-dot swimsuit.
“I saw your rescue from the ocean. It’s lucky that this young man is such a good swimmer,” she said, nodding toward Tyler.
He eyed her skeptically.
“I couldn’t help but notice that gorgeous bracelet you’re wearing,” the woman said. “Can I see it?”
Eden’s heart drummed with suspicion.
“Please?” the woman asked. “Just a look.”
Slowly Eden held out her wrist in front of her. Quick as lightning, the woman pulled out a cell phone and pressed a button that made an electronic click.
Had she taken a photo? Eden jerked her wrist away.
“That looks like a very special bracelet. Where did you get it?”
Eden squinted at the woman. Did something about her look familiar? But that was impossible. She didn’t know anyone on Earth.
“It’s a family heirloom.”
“Fascinating.” The woman adjusted her sunglasses. “I wonder if I could take you for a bite to eat. We can chat about that bracelet, and other things.”
“Actually, she’s coming with us,” Tyler interjected. “Right?” He widened his eyes at Eden. “Want to come have a burrito?”
Her heart nearly leaped out of her chest. “I love burritos!”
“They have burritos in Sweden?” Sasha asked doubtfully.
The woman seemed perturbed. “Maybe we’ll see each other again,” she said, though Eden couldn’t imagine why they would. “What was your name?”
“Eden.”
“Eden.” The woman broke into a smile, showing perfect white teeth. “I do hope we’ll meet again.”
“What was that all about?” Sasha asked as they walked away.
Eden shrugged, trying to forget the weird interaction. She was glad to leave the woman behind. But she couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that she’d seen her before—or the suspicion that she’d see her again.
Violet’s phone buzzed. Her boss hadn’t stopped texting since she’d sent her the photo of the girl who’d been rescued from the ocean: the girl whose face she and her colleagues had memorized nearly two years earlier. They’d gotten the image from a stolen parchment-paper message.
Now that she’d captured a close-up of the bracelet, there was no question. That bracelet could only mean one thing.
This time it was a call. Sighing, Violet answered.
“What’s happening?” demanded the voice on the other end.
“They’re walking to a burrito shack down the road. I’m following.”
“You couldn’t get her away?”
“She wouldn’t come.”
“Is she still with the boy who saved her?”
“Yes, and another boy, and a girl. His sister, I think.”
“Violet, you don’t have long. Whichever of those kids is her wisher will make those wishes faster than you can say ‘paradise.’”
“I know. I’m doing the best I can.”
Her boss was silent. Violet could picture her in the back of her black limo, speeding through Paris to the airport where her private jet would be waiting. She’d be white-knuckled, stilettos tapping like mad. Thinking of a way to get what they all wanted, obsessed over, lived for.
“You still haven’t seen the lamp?”
“No.”
“You’ve got to find out where it is. It can’t be far.”
“I know.”
“And you’ve got to get her away from those mortals.”
Violet glanced at the row of kids walking fifty feet ahead. “I know.”
“He could make those wishes at any moment. And once he does, the lamp will be out of our reach again. In a new randomly selected spot, anywhere on Earth.”
“I know. I know how the lamp works as well as you do. Remember?”
“Right.” Violet’s boss took a deep breath. “Violet, I trust you.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mess up.” The line went dead.
Violet rolled her eyes. Her boss was such a micromanager. But Violet knew she was excited, too. It was a huge coup that she’d spotted the girl: Electra’s first genie sighting in over fifty years. And where the genie was, the lamp couldn’t be far.
Naturally, it had happened when Violet was supposed to be on vacation. As if that really existed for the women who were part of Electra—or, as they’d come to be known, the Electric. Their work was their passion and their purpose. It had been that way for centuries. Violet’s boss, the founder, was a woman whose devotion to the cause was unsurpassed.
After all, this was no normal business. The Electric had committed their lives to acquiring the lamp.
Violet rubbed the place on her right wrist where she used to wear her own genie bracelet. She’d taken it off centuries ago. Her boss forbade them, teaching that they signified the tyranny they’d all lived under at one point. Removing the bracelet showed you were free.
Up ahead, she watched the brother and sister lean their surfboards against the stucco exterior of a Mexican restaurant; then the four kids went inside. Violet sat at a discreet table outside the café next door.
She had a good feeling about this. At last, here was a chance to prove her worth—to her boss, and to the others. She wouldn’t let it pass her by.
There was no way the mortals could have imagined the momentousness of lunch at Manny’s Mexican Cocina. Xavier and Goldie were the only people Eden had ever eaten a meal with. Come to think of it, she’d never had a real conversation with anyone else.
She was still shaken by what had happened in the ocean. On the one hand, she was annoyed with herself for panicking. Her predecessors had survived blazing fires and catastrophic car crashes because their duties were not yet complete. Drowning was impossible for her. Still, for the first time she’d glimpsed what it was like to be mortal, and the terror of it was astonishing. How could mortals bear to face each day with death as a constant threat?
But there was no point dwelling on that. She was on Earth, feasting on Mexican food with mortals. She was free. And so far, freedom was delicious.
“This is great!” she said. She beamed at the faces around her and took another giant bite. Including Eden, seven of them sat around the blue-tiled table—Tyler, Sasha, the redheaded boy, and three other friends who’d met them there. She’d never seen so many young people at once. And the best part was, they all thought she was a mortal like them.
Chewing happily, she soaked in the restaurant’s atmosphere. Though she’d never been to Mexico, she gathered that the décor, like the food, was of Mexican influence. The walls were yellow, with brightly colored tiles outlining the doorways and sombreros tacked up here and there. Lively music Eden recognized from music lessons as mariachi rolled jovially from the speakers and through the air.
“So you’re from Sweden?” the boy with red hair asked. He’d introduced himself as Devin.
The other boy, Cameron, was contagiously good-natured. His friendly face was framed by shoulder-length jet-black hair. “Isn’t it, like, way cold there?” he asked.
Luckily Xavier had just finished a unit on Sweden. It was probably why she’d used it as her alibi. “The north is really cold,” she said, “but the south, where I’m from, is temperate. Winter temperatures generally range from minus four to two degrees Celsius, or”—she thought fast—“twenty-five to thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit. In the summer, temperatures rise to around sixty-eight to seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit. Not cold, but definitely not as hot as it is here.” She smiled and sipped her water.
The faces around the table went as blank as erased blackboards. Tension hung in the air like a bad smell. She sensed she’d misspoken, but she wasn’t sure how.
“Is something wrong with this sauce?” she asked, to break the silence. “It’s supposed to be extra spicy, but I can’t taste
a thing.”
“Dude,” Devin said in awe, “this is the hottest sauce north of the border. What do they feed you over there?”
Eden felt her cheeks flush. Thanks a lot, Xavier, she thought. She pushed up her sleeves and fanned her face.
One of the girls at the table squinted at Eden. Her name was Skye, and her hair was frosted silvery blond. “Who are you again, and why are you here?”
“She almost drowned!” Devin said. “Tyler rescued her.” He scraped the last bit of guacamole from a bowl in the middle of the table onto a tortilla chip.
“Tyler rescued her?” Skye looked at him disbelievingly. “Isn’t that the lifeguards’ job?”
“The lifeguards were totally MIA,” Sasha said. “Seriously, if it wasn’t for him, she would have died.”
Not exactly, Eden thought—but they didn’t need to know that.
“Why don’t you know how to swim?” asked the other girl, Claire. When she started talking, Eden had to hide her surprise at the metal mechanism in her mouth. A square post was affixed to the middle of each tooth, and the posts were connected by thin silver wires. Eden was mystified. Was this something mortals wore for decoration, like makeup or jewelry?
“Can you let up?” Tyler said. “She’s visiting from Sweden.”
“Oh yeah? For how long?” Skye shot the words at her viciously.
“If you’re foreign, then where’s your accent?” Claire asked, narrowing her eyes.
Eden jammed the very large remaining portion of her burrito in her mouth and held up a finger to buy time.
Fortunately, just then, a waiter cleared the plates and glasses and set a white slip of paper on the table. Skye picked it up and examined it. “Eight bucks each,” she announced. Everyone reached below the table to fumble in their pockets.
For a moment Eden didn’t know what was going on. Then it hit her: they had to pay for the food!
“Tyler, you owe me,” Sasha said.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it,” Tyler sighed, plunking a few bills on the table. He turned to Eden. “Have you gotten your currency exchanged yet?”
Again Eden was lost for words. “I don’t…”
He squinted at her curiously. “I’ll get yours,” he said. “You can pay me back.” He fished another bill out of his battered brown leather wallet and added it to the pile. Eden felt giddy with gratitude.
“Let’s go back to the beach,” Sasha said. “Starting tomorrow, I’ll have no more free afternoons—not with volleyball and babysitting.”
They all started sliding out of the booth.
“I’ve got to bounce,” Cameron said.
“Claire and I are going back-to-school shopping,” said Skye as the group spilled out the door. She batted her mascara-thickened lashes. “Tyler, do you want to come?”
“When I can surf? Are you joking?” he said, pulling his board off the wall outside. The girl’s face deflated like a popped balloon.
“Girl, I’ll go to the mall with you!” Devin said, draping his arm around her.
She rolled her eyes. “That’s okay,” she said, ducking away and linking arms with Claire.
Eden was observing all of this so absorbedly, she almost didn’t notice Tyler watching her. Her eyes darted away when they made contact with his, but when she looked back he smiled.
Maybe her drowning scare hadn’t been such a bad thing after all.
Back at the beach, Eden trailed Tyler and Sasha as they searched for the perfect spot, carrying their surfboards under their arms. As they did, she noticed a sand castle rising from the ground. A chubby little girl with dark pigtails shaped towers and turrets as tall as she was with clumsy hands and colorful toys. Eden’s breath caught in her throat when she spotted a gold oil lamp propped between two of the turrets.
Her lamp.
With a start, she realized the sand castle was right near where she had surfaced. Exactly where the lamp was buried. And in the ground next to it was a deep, wide hole.
“You guys go ahead,” she said. “I’ll find you later.”
Sasha shrugged.
“We’ll be just over here, to the right a little further,” said Tyler. She nodded, and they moved along.
With her eyes on the lamp, Eden moved toward the sand castle. She was just about to pluck it free when a red plastic shovel slapped her hand away.
“MY genie lamp!!” the pigtailed girl screeched, wielding her tiny weapon.
Just then, an extremely large man walked up, dropped the buckets of wet sand he’d just carried from the ocean, and positioned himself menacingly between Eden and the sand castle. Dark illustrations were inked all over his biceps and beefy chest. The most prominent one stretched in a curve under his neck: thick Gothic letters that spelled the word Romeo.
“Why you trying to steal a toy from a kid?” the man growled.
“Actually it’s mine,” Eden said. She tried to reach around him, but his massive arm blocked her. He took the lamp in his bulky fingers, and Eden’s eyes widened—even they were imprinted with letters.
The girl wrapped her arms around his leg. “Why you telling lies to a nice little girl?” One of his front teeth gleamed shiny gold in the sun.
“It’s not a lie!” Eden cried. “I swear it’s mine!”
He shook his head matter-of-factly. “Me and my daughter dug it up out of the sand ourselves.”
“We’re gonna finish this castle, and then we’re gonna rub it and a genie’s gonna come grant my wishes,” the girl said in a singsongy voice.
“But there’s no genie in there!” Eden protested.
The girl’s face crumpled up in indignation. “YES THERE IS!” she insisted.
“No, there’s not!” Eden said. “It’s just a worthless lamp. Look, it’s not even shiny.” Now that she looked at it, the lamp did look pretty dinky from the outside. It was so dull and scuffed up, you wouldn’t even know it was made of solid gold. It was hard to believe the world where she’d grown up was inside.
The man puffed out his chest and pushed back his shoulders. “Hey,” he said. “Why don’t you leave my little angel alone and get out of here?”
But the girl was determined to prove Eden wrong. “I’ll show you!” she said, her chubby cheeks reddening. She pulled the lamp from Romeo’s grip.
Eden was suddenly apprehensive. What if she’d been wrong? What if she could still be summoned even though she was on Earth, and this little monster was about to become her next wisher? “Wait—” she yelled, but the girl was already rubbing like mad.
And rubbing, and rubbing, and rubbing. Eden held her breath and the man looked on with mild interest, but nothing happened.
Eden let out a sigh of relief. She couldn’t be summoned. And the girl would never guess Eden was the genie she wanted so badly. No one would. As long as she didn’t tell anyone the truth, she could keep posing as a mortal and she’d never have to grant a single wish.
Furiously the girl stomped her foot in the sand. “It’s not working!”
“See?” Eden said. “It’s worthless. May as well give it back to me.”
But the girl shook her head defiantly. “No way!”
“If you want it so bad,” the man with the Romeo tattoo said, “you got something to give us for it?”
“Like what?”
“Got any money?”
Money again. She had to figure out how to get some. But then Romeo’s eyes dropped to Eden’s wrist.
“That bracelet,” he said, pointing. “Is it real?”
Eden’s heart started pounding.
“Give me that bracelet,” he said. His gold tooth showed when he smiled. “Then I’ll give you the lamp.”
There was absolutely no way she was giving up the bracelet. She’d ignore all Xavier’s warnings except for that one.
But she couldn’t lose the lamp either. How could she outsmart this mortal and keep both?
All at once, the strangest thing happened. For a split second the bracelet glowed brightly. Eden felt a pulse of po
wer around her wrist, and a weight in her hand. She looked down and saw that, somehow, she was holding the lamp.
“What the heck?” Romeo said. “How’d you do that?”
The girl’s face screwed up, and she started to wail. “She took it from me!”
Eying Eden warily, Romeo picked the girl up in his arms. “Let’s play somewhere else, angel. Somethin’ weird’s going on.”
Eden tightened her grip on the lamp and walked quickly away. She was floored by what had just happened. Even though magic made her world go round, to see it used so fiercely for the protection of her and the lamp was sort of baffling—but also, comforting.
“What do you know! We meet again!” It was the dark-haired woman. As before, she’d popped up directly in Eden’s path. “And you’ve got another treasure.” The lamp had her practically drooling. “What a beauty that one is.”
“Thanks. Look, I’ve got to meet my friends.”
“Can I tell you why you’ve caught my interest?” The woman didn’t wait for an answer. She whipped a small card out of her purse and handed it over.
V
ELECTRA
A FINE AUCTION HOUSE
+33 1 40 76 85 85
“I work for one of the world’s top auction houses. That lamp and your bracelet are both items we’d be very interested in buying.”
Eden looked at the card and shook her head. “They’re not for sale.”
“I don’t think you understand. You can name your price.”
Eden squinted at the woman again. She wished she could figure out why she recognized her. “Like I said,” she said carefully, “I’m not going to sell the lamp, or the bracelet.” She started walking forward, stepping around towels and sunbathers, searching for Sasha’s tropical-print beach bag.
“You don’t have to decide right now!” the woman said, staying alongside her. She was starting to sound desperate. “I can take you to dinner. We’ll discuss your options.”
“No,” Eden said firmly. “Can you leave me alone now? Like I said, I’m going to meet my friends.”
The woman was visibly distressed. “Well,” she said, “keep the card. Think about it. You might change your mind.”
Eden's Wish Page 6
