by Judi Fennell
“My cross to bear.”
“Oh, don’t say that.” She rested her hand on his arm. “Peter was a wonderful man. Maybe not like other people would have liked him to be, but he was wonderful to me.”
“Hold on. What do you mean my great-grandfather was good to you? You can’t be more than thir—uh, twenty-nine.”
She couldn’t help the chuckle. It was a good thing he was already sitting down. “Actually, it’s eight-hundred twenty-nine, but thanks for the compliment.”
“Eight… hundred?”
She nodded. “And twenty-nine. As of two weeks ago.” DeeDee and the High Master had been the only ones who’d sent her any sort of acknowledgment. Mother and Father were still too embarrassed by her “little indiscretion” to even acknowledge publicly that they had another daughter.
Not that she minded. Well, not too much. But it worked for her because if the parental units weren’t around to express their disdain, then she didn’t have to remember that she was the cause of it. It helped alleviate some of the guilt she felt about smoking into that bottle way back when she shouldn’t have. The day she’d played hooky and ended up in The Service without being qualified to do so had changed so many lives.
Not the least of which was Peter’s great-grandson’s. The guy was shaking his head again and pinching the bridge of his nose with the hand that had held the scimitar. Oh, good; he’d forgotten about it. Now if she could manage to zap it back to its scabbard…
A loud bam! and the sword shattered.
Zane jumped up, the momentum enough to free his feet.
Yay. One good thing to come from her screwy magic…
“Do you mind telling me what that was?” Peter’s great-grandson asked, twisting around. “And where the snow came from? And what the hell you meant by genie? And… and—Jesus—a flying carpet?”
Vana took a deep breath and stood. Right; there was protocol to this. And after all these years of not having done it, she was doing it wrong.
Pretty much like everything else.
But that was going to change. She’d finally swallowed her visceral aversion to all things academic and had opened the famed Djinnoire her sister had written, the most comprehensive collection of djinn history, protocol, herbology, and magic since Maimun’s mishap at the library at Alexandria. Luckily, Vana had had no part in that debacle—hadn’t even been born yet—and none of her gaffes quite measured up to it, so she was gratified in knowing she wasn’t the most inept genie that had ever lived. Merely the second most inept.
She was always second best.
Vana shook off the self-pity (for the most part), clasped her hands together, and bowed. “Salam wa aleikum. I am Nirvana, the genie of the bottle. What is your wish, master?”
She hoped he wished for her bottle to be unsealed.
A pop! like a champagne cork reverberated through the bottle and the ceiling opened up.
She heard the stopper hit the ceiling of the attic where her bottle had lain all these years and then thwump off a wall.
And then something crashed.
Sigh.
She didn’t know how her wish had come to be granted (or she would have done it ages ago), and she didn’t know why. But she did know that this was her chance, so Vana jumped at it—straight out of the bottle, dragging Zane along with her.
3
Coming back to the family homestead had been a bad idea. Worst he’d ever had. He’d thought using the off-season to clean out the remnants of his past would be a good way to keep his mind off the mess going on with his career. But that past was not only catching up to him; it was overtaking him.
Zane rolled off the dress form he’d landed on, and a shaft of pain spiked from his right ankle to his knee. “Son of a bitch!”
“What does a dog have to do with anything?”
Zane looked up. Her question almost sounded serious.
He shook his head and tried to get to his feet. Damn it, that hurt. He hoped to God his leg wasn’t broken. The coaching staff would crucify him. Or, after the torn ACL he’d just finished rehabbing, rescind his second-team contract altogether. Bad enough he wasn’t going to start, but not get a contract at all? That could not happen. Jerry Rice had played for seven years after his injury; Zane was planning for two, maybe three more. But to do so, he needed to be in the best shape of his life to prove to the staff that he still had what it took.
He leaned on a sheet-covered old dresser and tested his weight. No way; he couldn’t stand on it.
Zane gritted his teeth and worked himself into a different angle. Fire shot through his shin and sucked the air out of his lungs. Dammit. He needed to get to a hospital right away to have even a prayer of having a career left.
He shifted his weight, pain searing through the leg and radiating up through his entire body while he checked his pockets for his cell phone. He’d injured his right leg, so he wasn’t going to be able to drive himself, and he’d rather not risk his Mercedes to this woman’s next delusion.
But what about the snow? The pink smoke? Were they delusions?
Zane didn’t know what they were and, frankly, didn’t give a damn at the moment. The leg hurt like a son of a bitch, and preventing the end of his career because of some stupid accident in his great-grandfather’s attic needed to be his first priority.
The cell phone had no service, damn it. And the house didn’t have a landline, which meant he was SOL on an ambulance unless he could make it down the stairs, somehow manage to trek a good half mile or so down the god-awful long driveway to the closest house, and hope someone was home.
Or he could rely on her.
He had to be out of his mind with pain. No way was he going to rely on her. Nirvana Aphrodite.
Though she did look fairly goddess-like in that harem outfit. Or, more to the point, the genie that she claimed to be.
Wait. What happened to the fencing garb?
Zane stifled a groan. He knew things wouldn’t have changed all that much in the twenty years since he’d been here, but he hadn’t foreseen finding a cousin who thought she was Barbara Eden. Oh God, if the press got wind of this…
He tried again to get to the doorway, grimacing when a loose floorboard clipped the side of his foot. This time the groan wouldn’t be stifled.
“Are you hurt?” Vana took a few steps closer. Snow fell off the bangles on the low-riding belt on her hips.
Snow.
Pink smoke.
A harem outfit.
The utterly inexplicable fact that they’d been… somewhere… and now they were in the attic.
And that flying rug.
“You’re… you’re really a genie?”
She put her hands on her hips, which were curvy and naked enough to make him hope she was a very distant cousin. By marriage.
“Of course I am. That’s what I said.”
Blackness encroached, hovering just beyond his peripheral vision, and Zane was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt if she’d just get him to the hospital. “Please tell me you know how to drive.”
“Drive what?”
He’d worry about that question later because not only was necessity the mother of invention, but pain was also the ignorer of bad options.
“Um, look.” He squinted against the light of the lone light bulb and tried to keep from blacking out. “I think my leg might be broken, and I need to get to the hospital. Can you take me?”
She was nibbling her bottom lip again, and since that hadn’t boded well for him in the short time he’d known her, he left off the part about maybe going into shock.
A good choice when she covered her mouth with her hands and uttered the now-infamous, “Holy smokes!”
He could swear he smelled smoke.
She made some more kissing noises and waved her hands in front of her face, her cough as adorable as she was.
He definitely was going into shock to be thinking like that at a time like this.
“Look, all I need is to get downstair
s and then you can drive me to the hospital. My car’s outside. You can drive a stick, right?”
“Only witches can do that.”
She could be going into shock, too.
Zane leaned on his hands and worked his way through the attic among the forgotten minutiae of a hundred years’ worth of stuff he had yet to sort through, maneuvering himself toward the staircase where coolness, his car, and—please God—some semblance of sanity remained.
“I could, um, fix that for you, if you want.”
Her words stopped him. “Fix what?”
“Your leg.” She nibbled on her bottom lip again.
Zane wiped his forehead on his T-shirt and, against his better judgment, asked, “You can fix a broken leg?”
She nodded and the bangles on her belt jingled. “Sure. Bones knit together easily.”
He was out of his mind to even consider anything she said. And possibly even more insane to allow her to drive him.
“You know what? That’s okay. I’ll get myself to the hospital, and you can stay here and relax. Have a glass of wine or something. It’s got to be five o’clock somewhere.” He’d down an entire bottle of Jack if it’d take the pain away, but pain meds worked better.
Her shoulders slumped, and she started nibbling her lip again. Why did that make him feel as if he’d kicked a kitten?
Then his foot did kick something and he yowled.
“Oh, please. Let me help. I know I can.”
Zane was trying to catch his breath and keep from passing out. He needed help. “Sure,” he panted. “Fine. Whatever.” He waved his hand, beckoning her over. If he could lean on her, he could cross the last five feet to the attic door. Why did this have to be the only spot in the attic where someone had moved all the furniture and knickknacks out of reach?
“Okay. Here goes. One knit bone coming up.”
He opened his mouth to say “No,” but what emerged was one long howl.
Right before he passed out.
4
“Holy smokes.”
Vana’s heart was pounding like marching drums, drowning out the commands she was mentally screaming at her body, “Move!” being the primary one.
It took a good three seconds—not that there was anything good in them—for her feet to get a clue and rush over to him.
“Master?” She dropped to her knees beside his prone form where he’d crumpled to the dusty attic floor and shook his shoulder—the one now covered in a knitted sweater.
She nudged him again, then her fingers scrambled beneath the neckline to find a pulse.
There. Beneath the scratchy wool, his pulse throbbed. A little faster than necessary, but given the fact that he had a broken leg, that was understandable.
She didn’t think he’d understand about the sweater, though.
“Oh dear. Now what do I do?”
Duh. Fix his leg. Just like he asked.
Oh, right. He’d asked, so she could. That’s the way the genie-master relationship worked, and if he hadn’t quite said “I wish,” surely it was implied. She might want to reread Chapter Six, though.
But she’d give it a shot. The beginning of DeeDee’s Djinnoire assured even the most novice of djinn that magic could be corralled—and she was not the most novice of djinn. (No matter what her magical ability said about her.)
She shook out her hands, then rolled her shoulders and neck to loosen them up. She could do this. Rule Number Two of Chapter One (right behind: “First, do no harm”) was: “Gather your confidence before gathering your magic.”
She could do that. She just wouldn’t use words like “knit” this time.
She pursed her lips, but this time in thought, not magic. Maybe she ought to leave the mending to the professionals. Transportation was more her forte. She could magick him to Peter’s hospital.
Yes, better to err on the side of caution.
A cushion flew across the room.
Erring was definitely a good idea.
She scooted closer to Zane, leaned over, gingerly wrapped her arms around him, pictured Peter’s hospital, then kissed the air.
Pink smoke swirled around them, and she braced herself against that rushing feeling she’d gotten the last time she’d traveled in this latitude when she’d tried to make blackberry brandy but, for some reason, had ended up with blueberries instead. That had started a berry battle, and she’d had to intercept the berries before they left the orchards and bombarded Peter’s guests. Before that incident she’d loved to teleport, but not so much after. Blueberries might be tiny, but thousands of them had left her black and blue. Two shades of blue.
The smoke dissipated, her pink Glimmer falling onto a circle of hedges in front of the hospital like a cotton-candy snowfall.
She ducked and looked around. Probably not the best idea to think of snow. While mortals couldn’t see her Glimmer, they could definitely see snow, and since she was out among them, she had to be careful not to create any more havoc that would blacken Peter’s—and now Zane’s—name.
Zane materialized beside her without making a sound. Good, she hadn’t lost her touch when it came to landing. And, thankfully, she hadn’t even thought about not being able to do it right; it would have been just her luck to injure his shoulder or something.
She heard a shout and peeked over the hedge to the hospital’s entrance.
Two men in white coats jumped away from the statue of Peter’s grandmother there as the arm fell off.
Broken at the shoulder.
So much for not creating havoc. It’d been a long time since her magic had been out in the world. As long as she hadn’t been. She was a little rusty.
And now so were the gutters on the roof above the hospital’s entrance as a copper-colored line appeared across it as if a hand of a god were coloring it in.
Vana shook her head. Stress wasn’t good for her magic. She had to get it and herself under control. Peter’s reputation was in her hands, and now, so was her current master’s well-being. She took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap. No good. Her fingers started fiddling with each other.
Maybe she ought to resurrect the ol’ count-the-hummingbird trick she’d used for calming herself as a child. It probably had something to do with the mobile of lifelike hummingbirds Mom had dangled above her crib. DeeDee’s mobile had been of butterflies, but Vana would bet Dee never counted butterflies. Her sister was always in control.
A butterfly landed on Vana’s fingers.
She clamped her eyes shut and imagined the h-u-m-m-i-n-g-d-i-r-b-s, counting twelve jeweled little birds, one for each letter. Gold, green, teal, blue… shimmery bodies and fluttering wings, metaphorically hovering in front of her, their curved bills drawing the anxiety from her, only to whisk it away, taking her troubles with them.
When the last imaginary bird dissolved, she released her breath and opened her eyes. The butterfly was gone, too. That was better.
She looked at the hospital. It didn’t look anything like when she’d last seen it. Now it was big and white and about three times as sprawling as before. The only similarity to what she remembered was the pomegranate tree in the middle of the front garden.
Thank the stars, that magic had worked. Pomegranates wouldn’t grow in this part of the world otherwise.
Peter’s name was above the front door, but in different lettering than before. And a different name. Harrison Memorial instead of Harrison Hospital. He’d be thrilled to see that; Peter had wanted big things for his hospital.
Who knew it’d come in handy a hundred and some years later?
And not a moment too soon. Zane moaned, an uncomfortable sound that dumped a ton of guilt onto her head. If only she hadn’t whisked him out of the bottle with her. Or if she’d held on to him longer. Given him a chance to get his feet under him before she’d let go.
Vana stood up, putting a cork in those thoughts. Second-guessing herself had never worked in the past, so no sense doing it now. She had to get him help.
She waved the two men near the statue over and tried to find a way through the hedge, but there wasn’t one. Vana pursed her lips. Great. Why wasn’t there one?
Thankfully, the two men didn’t see anything wrong with the brand-spankin’-new gate that spanked her in the back of the legs as they approached.
“Miss? Are you okay?” asked the heavier-set one.
“Yes, I am, but my friend…” She looked over her shoulder.
“Whoa!” The two guys rushed to Zane’s side.
“What happened to him?” the black-haired one asked, whisking a stethoscope over his head and into his ears as the blond one did a rudimentary inspection of Zane’s limbs.
Zane groaned when the doctor touched his left foot.
Wait. Hadn’t he been favoring his right one? Gods, it showed how discombobulated she was that she couldn’t tell his left from his right.
“I don’t like the look of this leg. We need an X-ray.”
Zane moaned when the doctor moved on to inspect his other leg.
“The right one, too.” The blond looked over his shoulder at her. “Miss, what happened?”
Two broken legs? “He, um… fell. In the attic. At his grandfather’s home. Peter Harrison. You know…” She thumbed the name above the door.
“He’s a Harrison?” The black-haired guy flicked a small light in Zane’s eyes. “We haven’t had a member of the family here in decades.”
Two of them, to be exact. Vana knew, to the day, how long it’d been since there’d been a Harrison living in that house because she’d kept track of every day since Peter had sent her to her bottle. Every moving day, every party, every slip of noise that had filtered up to the attic—which, sadly, hadn’t been many. At least, until recently.
But she’d never been able to find out what had happened to Peter, had never known why he hadn’t come back for her, until Faruq, the High Master’s vizier, had ordered her a laptop, and she’d had the chance to read a local history book and learn about Peter’s freak accident. One she’d had nothing to do with, thank the stars. Talk about the worst sort of irony.
Although, the fact that she’d had a lot to do with this freak accident negated the irony and just made it plain sad.
