by Judi Fennell
The blond flipped his cell phone closed and slipped it into his pocket. “Gurney’s on its way.” He looked at her. “Miss, if you wouldn’t mind holding that gate open when they get here?”
“When did they put a gate on this side, Kirk?” asked the dark-haired one, shoving his stethoscope into his jacket pocket. The name “Corsey” was stitched above the breast pocket.
“Beats me, Hal. I’ve been off duty for a few days. Things can change in the blink of an eye around here.”
Or the purse of her lips.
“Yeah, they say things happen when Old Man Harrison’s ghost walks through town. And with Grandma losing an arm over there, the rumors are going to go haywire.” Hal glanced at the statue and then looked at her. “Sorry if I offended you, miss. It’s just that now that there’s a Harrison back in town, well, you’re going to hear the old stories. Best be prepared. Old Man Harrison was crazy enough for this town to keep telling stories into the next generation.”
Considering three generations had passed since Peter, that was a lot of stories.
The orderlies showed up with the gurney and transferred her master onto it with minimal moaning while she stood back and watched. One hour out of her bottle—not even—and she was already back to her old tricks.
5
Vana sat in the waiting room, twiddling her fingers so fast and furious, she might actually be able to knit enough of the dust glinting in the sunlight into sweaters for everyone in the room. But then she’d have to explain it to them.
She sighed and tucked a hand under each thigh. Bad enough everyone was gossiping about the damage to the statue; she didn’t need to give them anything more to talk about. Zane had been whisked through the double doors to the inner sanctum of examining rooms, and they’d been casting glances at her ever since.
“You one of Old Man Harrison’s relatives, too?” the elderly man beside her asked.
“Me? Oh, no.”
He tilted his fedora back and peered at her. “Good thing. I hear the apple don’t fall too far from the tree, ya know? I mean, who wears a sweater in the middle of July? And two legs.” He nodded toward the doors Zane had been wheeled through. “The stories my grandfather used to tell me about Crazy Old Man Harrison…”
He was one to talk about crazy. A fedora and a pair of stained overalls. Vana’s lips twitched, and not with laughter. She so wanted to magick that hat into a toupee, but she wasn’t about to feed the rumor mill.
Peter had been a great man. He’d tried to do so much for the town and its people; she was the one who’d goofed it all up… including his actual mill.
Vana winced. That gristmill was a sore spot for her, and if everyone was going to rehash Peter’s “blunders,” that fiasco was sure to come up. Best to steer clear of it.
If only she’d been able to steer the mill’s waterwheel…
Vana sighed and plopped her chin into her palm. Nothing like having unintentionally created a haunted landmark. Peter had gotten a good chuckle out of it, but she… She’d wanted to crawl under a rock.
A rock popped into existence beneath the table behind Mr. Stained Overalls. Holy smokes! That wouldn’t take long to discover.
Concentrating, Vana focused all her energy beneath that table to send the rock back to the quarry on the outskirts of town.
A table skirt poofed onto the table.
Well… at least no one could see the rock.
Vana buried her face in her hands. She needed to stop thinking.
Why wouldn’t her magic work right? That question had been plaguing her ever since she’d gone to school. Before that, when she’d been experimenting with her magic just for herself, she’d done okay, but the minute she’d had to study theories and mechanics, things had gone awry. Performance anxiety, DeeDee had called it, which was as good an explanation as any Vana had come up with. But even now, when she wasn’t being graded, she still couldn’t get the hang of it. Broken legs, disfigured statue, snow… She was batting oh-for-ten.
A bat appeared, propped against her chair. Luckily, it was the baseball kind and not the winged kind. Vana slid it beneath the table with the rock.
“Miss? If you could come to the desk, please?” The clerk at the front counter waved a piece of paper at her. “HIPAA prevents us from shouting patient information across the room.”
Hippo? Vana clamped a hand over her mouth as she headed to the counter. She was not going to conjure a hippo.
“Patient’s name?” asked the woman.
“Zane Harrison.”
“Date of birth?”
Vana twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “I don’t know.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Address?”
That was an easy one. She’d lived there longer than he had.
“Any allergies?”
“I don’t know.”
“Insurance?”
“I don’t know.”
“Next of kin?”
“I don’t—is he dying?” Thank the stars for the counter because Vana grabbed onto it when her knees buckled. “I have to see him.” She turned to the right. Or maybe that was the left. No, it was the right. She was sure of that. But that was pretty much all she was sure of.
Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, she couldn’t have killed him. For Pete’s—and Peter’s—sakes, she couldn’t have killed Zane. She’d never be able to live with herself if she’d taken a life.
“Where is he? Please. I have to see him.”
The woman stood and put a hand on Vana’s arm. “But, miss—”
Vana twisted away. She had to see him. Had to fix him. Okay, genies couldn’t bring mortals back to life, but maybe the woman was wrong. Maybe there was something she could do—
“Miss?” A man stood behind her.
“Zane?” She spun around.
It wasn’t Zane.
“No. Gary Huss. Harrisonville city councilman.” The guy stuck out his hand.
“Um, hello.” She gave his hand a perfunctory shake. “I… I’m sorry, but I really don’t have time to talk. I have to find my mast—er, Zane.”
“Zane Harrison, right? Peter Harrison’s great-grandson?”
“Yes, that’s him. I need to see him. Excuse me.” She headed toward the double doors to the right (yes, it was the right) of the front counter.
The woman behind it stepped in front of her. “Miss, you can’t go back there. Mr. Harrison is in X-ray.”
“X… You mean he’s not dead?”
“Of course not. I just needed the information for the forms. Standard procedure.”
This time Vana’s knees did give out. Luckily, Gary Whatshisname was there to catch her.
“Whoa. Let’s get you a seat,” he said, ushering her over to a bank of blue plastic chairs against the wall.
“I… uh… thank you.” Vana closed her eyes and counted twenty-four hummingbirds this time. Added a dozen dutterflies just to be safe.
“Feel better?” Gary was beside her with a can of soda in his hands. “Here. Not quite the kick you look like you need, but the fizz is refreshing.”
Now why would he think she’d want a kick when she was already down?
“Thank you.” But she almost spit the soda out when Gary sat next to her.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
She did, but if he was part of the government of Peter’s town, she didn’t want to give anyone any reason to diss Peter’s memory. She couldn’t screw this up.
A screw fell out of the bottom of his chair.
Apparently, she could. “Um, no, of course I don’t mind.”
“Good.”
He slid his arm behind her chair and faced her, effectively blocking her in because she was on the end of the row. Her next move, if she made one, would be onto her posterior, and that was a distinct possibility with wobbly legs.
“So Zane’s back in town, is he? When did he get in? I’ve been wondering how he’s been all these years. We were, ah, chums in school, you know.”
; “No, I didn’t. But how nice for you.”
Just the thought of school made her shudder.
“So, is this just a visit or is Zane planning to retire here now? I never thought he’d pick this place, but stranger things have happened, I guess.”
Oh, she could tell him all about strange.
“What are your plans?”
Her plans were to get her magic working perfectly so she could end the children’s enchantment, Peter’s greatest wish. Unfortunately, today’s events proved she wasn’t yet up to that task.
“I’m not exactly sure what his plans are. You’ll have to ask him.”
“You mean you two aren’t together?”
Was it her imagination or had Gary leaned a little closer?
And then his question registered.
“We’re, uh… acquaintances. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time to bring him here.”
“I see.”
He was seeing a little too much. Vana glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and saw his gaze fixed on her breasts.
Never before had she felt uncomfortable in this outfit, but right now, she felt as if bugs were crawling all over her skin—
Or, actually, his skin.
A beetle peeked over Gary’s shoulder, then crawled down to disappear into his shirt pocket.
She pulled her upper lip between her teeth and tried not to laugh. Or be horrified by what he’d do when he felt the second one on his head.
This probably wasn’t going to end well.
“So do you think you might be interested in having dinner with me some time?”
He was asking her out? She could only imagine the nightmare that would be. “I, um… That is…”
Thankfully, it appeared to be mating season for beetles, and these two decided to choose Gary’s nose for their rendezvous, effectively preventing her from having to answer.
Gary flew out of his chair, swatting his nose and his arms and his breast pocket and his waist and his cheeks and every other body part as if he were dancing La Cucaracha.
Okay, so they weren’t cockroaches, but the image still made her snort.
She put her hand in front of her mouth to muffle it and blew an air kiss, sending the insects onto the pomegranate tree outside. Hopefully.
“See?” said the old man in the overalls. “I told you crazy don’t fall too far from the tree. Yer hangin’ out with a Harrison, yer gonna bring on the crazy.” He thumbed to Gary. “And now it’s spreadin’ to Huss.”
At that, Gary stopped jumping and waving his arms, and straightened his tie. He slicked back his hair, then clasped the man’s shoulder. “Come now, Mr. Donohue. Crazy? It was just a couple of beetles. They startled me. I’m perfectly all right and so is Miss… Miss…”
He looked at her.
“Vana.” She didn’t mention a last name because djinn didn’t have them.
“All’s I’m sayin’ is that if yer worried about yer image for the election, ya might not want to be hangin’ around crazy.” Mr. Donohue tugged his fedora down and shook his newspaper. “Gives folks ideas. And not the kind you want. No one wants a tetched”—he tapped his temple—“mayor.”
Gary stared at Mr. Donohue, then looked at her. “How about if we take a rain check on that dinner invitation? I’ll call you.”
She nodded, making no motion to give him her phone number (mainly because, no way, and also because she didn’t have one). He made no motion to ask for it, either.
Then he turned and walked out of the doors.
Right into a spur-of-the-moment rainstorm.
***
Gary yanked his car door shut and wiped the rain from his face. Contact made. And what sweet contact it was. The woman was gorgeous, but then, of course she would be. Football players had the life: chicks, cash, and a job they loved. Beat the shit out of being a small-town councilman.
Gary gripped the steering wheel. Why’d Zane have to come back before he’d finished searching that house?
He started the car. The clutch protested when he rammed it into first. Yeah, well, the car could get in line with all the other issues in his life. He already had more demands than his limited funds allowed, namely two months of back alimony and the threat of more to come.
God, he hated his ex. She’d been a sweet piece of ass in high school that had turned into just a plain ass once he’d married her. And now the bitch was making his life hell. He needed a serious infusion of cash that even winning the mayoral race wouldn’t cover.
If only he could find out what his great-great-grandfather Calvin had said he’d seen in Old Man Harrison’s study during that last party, he’d have it made. Calvin had gone to his grave swearing that there were things in that house that people wouldn’t believe, and if he could just get his hands on those things, he’d be rich beyond his wildest dreams. And Gramps’s dreams had been pretty wild, with him swearing that there was magic in that house.
Now, Gary wasn’t typically one to believe in magic or hocus-pocus, and he sure as shit didn’t want to lump his great-great-grandfather in the same category as Old Man Harrison, but the bear that had shown up that day had lent credence to his great-great-grandfather’s claim. And God knew, there were enough strange goings-on in town while Harrison was alive to open the door to any possibility.
So Gary had been sneaking into the Harrison house for years, looking for clues. He hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary except for the old man’s journals. He’d swiped one, thinking it would have something useful in it, but other than a bunch of coordinates, weather conditions, and some really boring meeting notes from some really boring meetings between Harrison and his fellow wacko treasure hunters, Gary had come up empty.
And then June Ertel, the woman Zane had hired to clean the place, had discovered that the journal was missing and called the cops. How the hell she’d figured that out, Gary never knew. But it did make him more cautious about sneaking in. After he’d won his first political office, he’d had to curtail his search even more; it wouldn’t do for a town councilman to be caught trespassing.
But he was desperate now. His opponent, Nickelson, was a successful businessman who’d sworn to bring jobs to town even if he had to create them in his own company. Gary had to win; the pay was more than he made now as a mere councilman, plus there’d been a Mayor Huss ever since Calvin’s father had been the first mayor. Gary wasn’t going to be the one to break that streak—unless it was because he was so freaking rich that he didn’t have to work, which was where that old house came in.
His father had considered the story to be Calvin’s teenage need for attention, but Peter had traveled the globe collecting oddities. Treasure, maybe. Who knew what he’d found in the far corners of the earth? There’d been talk of magic and witchcraft.
And Zane’s friend was wearing a genie costume…
Gary turned left out of the hospital parking lot. Now he was being crazy. There were no such things as genies. Magical beings that lived inside lanterns, granting wishes. Zane sure as hell wouldn’t be in a hospital with two broken legs if that chick really was a genie. Probably some hot-sex, role-playing game that got out of hand.
One more reason to hate Zane. As he’d done for years, ever since the bitch he’d made the mistake of marrying had first looked at Zane in second grade. Back then, the hatred was because Lynda preferred Zane. Now it was because Zane hadn’t preferred her, thereby setting Gary up for the torture that had been their marriage.
And now the lucky SOB had a porn star playing fantasy games with him.
Gary restrained himself from flipping off Tom Schmidt as the old guy cut him off at the intersection. Schmidty had seven kids and fifteen grandkids, all registered voters. And Gary needed every vote if he was going to beat Nickelson—unless he found something in that house to fund his early retirement.
Zane just had to come back, didn’t he? Gary gripped the steering wheel. The SOB lived a charmed life, but this was Gary’s shot at fame and fortune
—albeit on a far less grand scale than Zane’s. He was not going to let Zane fuck it up for him.
Or Gary might just have to return the favor.
6
The first thing Zane saw when he opened his eyes was the beautiful brunette sitting beside his bed.
She ought to be in his bed.
The second thing he saw was that this wasn’t his bed. And definitely not his room.
The third was…
A cast.
No, two casts.
Every foul word in the English language ran through his mind. His fucking legs were broken? More rehab. Just what he didn’t need on top of the surgery. If the coaches got wind of this, he could kiss ever playing another game good-bye.
He dropped his head back onto the pillow, the antiseptic smell of the room making his eyes water.
Yeah. That was it.
“I’m really sorry.” The brunette—what was her name? Ah, Vana—whispered, her voice sounding just as watery.
Now why in the hell would that be, and what was she sorry for?
“I thought I could fix it.”
Nothing was making any sense. Least of all why she was sitting beside his bed and why she was apologizing to him. Why both of his legs were broken.
Zane opened one eye, and it all came rushing back. The sword, the snow, the kiss… the genie…
Ah, shit. His delusional cousin.
“Look, Vana. If you don’t mind, I’d rather be alone right now. I’ve got a lot on my mind.” And some kick-ass painkillers fogging it up.
“Oh.” She fiddled with her fingers. “Okay. I’ll just be out in the waiting room if you need me.”
She touched his arm as she stood.
Zane shivered and covered her hand with his. “Wait.”
She paused. “Yes?”
He had to know. If only for his own peace of mind. And considering how unpeaceful it was at the moment… “Are we… that is, are you a Harrison?”
“Me? Oh, no. Peter was my master, not my father.”
Peter was a sick bastard if he was into BDSM with her and—wait. What the hell was he thinking? Peter had been dead for over a hundred years.
