by Judi Fennell
Vana had forgotten about the church window. Shortly after Peter had brought her here, he’d wished for a rose window for the church, so she’d conjured one for him. Never having been to Paris to see the one he’d wanted it modeled after, she’d fashioned one made from pink glass. And that was it. Square instead of the circular one he’d been expecting, there’d been no design, no stained-glass effect, nothing. Just a block of pink glass.
Poor, unsuspecting Peter hadn’t been prepared for the giant gasp that had gone up when he’d removed the covering with grand fanfare at the church’s dedication, and, afterward, there’d been no way to fix her gaffe, short of destroying it. She and Peter had discussed that possibility, planning an accidental lightning strike during a bad storm, but Peter had died before a suitable storm had shown up. The window was probably still on that church, a giant billboard to her incompetency and yet another blight on Peter’s name.
“So you want to make a public spectacle of my great-grandfather’s eccentricities to bring in tourists?”
“A spectacle?” Gary unknowingly mimicked Merlin’s “moi?” pose. “Zane, please, you wound me with your assumptions. There will be no spectacle. We want to honor Peter. Make this place a museum. His legend will bring people in to see the wonderful place he’s built and revitalize the town.”
“No way, Gary. I want no part of this, and if you even try, I’ll sue you.”
Vana wanted to applaud. For all that she liked the idea of honoring Peter, she didn’t want him to be remembered for her mistakes. He deserved better than that.
“Zane, Zane.” Politician mode was back in full swing. So was the leering when she looked out the back door, which really bugged her. “Just think about it. I’m sure we can come to a mutually satisfactory agreement.”
Zane opened the screen door, his back to Gary. “Trust me, Gar, what I have in mind you wouldn’t find satisfactory at all.”
She, however, got great satisfaction from the dozen or so beetles that followed Gary into his car.
18
Zane had slammed the kitchen door on his way back in, apologizing to Vana for both breaking the hinge and Gary’s asinine ogling, but the anger hadn’t stopped clawing at him.
The guy still knew which buttons to push, and Zane was royally pissed off for letting himself get pulled back into that shit by reacting while Gary had played him. Twenty years ago, he hadn’t had the life experience or self-confidence to handle Gary, but he was a grown man now with a good career, not the scrawny, meek kid that prick used to torment.
Needing to diffuse his anger, he spent the next few hours working up a hellacious sweat removing the sheets from the furniture and giving the pieces a thorough vacuuming. Then he headed up to the attic to clean that out, too. He was getting the house ready for sale by next week’s appointment with Cameron if it killed him.
When he lifted a rug in the attic, it almost did.
Pain seared his shoulder. Christ. He didn’t need to tear his rotator cuff on top of everything else.
He backed up and leaned against an old armoire, willing the shoulder to stop throbbing. Hell. He was only thirty-two, not seventy-two. Too young to be thinking of his body failing him, but as a professional athlete, he knew it was one of the hazards of the job. But he wasn’t that old; others had played longer than him. Look at Rice. Owens. Stallworth. They’d played for years.
The genie could allow you to play as long as you like.
The thought had him checking his other shoulder to make sure there wasn’t a little devil sitting there because, with Vana around, anything could happen.
He could think of a lot of things he’d like to have happen with Vana.
He repositioned the rug on his shoulder, welcoming the pain to get his mind off her. She’d been occupying it too much lately. He’d been ready to curse the cold shower until he’d pictured her in it with him, and he’d been thrilled to have something other than his hand to cool him off.
He needed to get laid. But since that wasn’t happening until he got the house up for sale and got the hell out of town, manual labor would have to do the trick.
He hoisted the rug again, then stood up, and—son of a bitch!—banged his head on a rafter. Shuffling his feet to keep his balance, Zane angled the bulky rug toward the doorway.
The rug smacked into the doorframe, and pain ricocheted through his shoulder again. Son of a bitch!
He’d been saying that a lot lately. Maybe he ought to ask Vana for help. Just with the bulky items, like the rug. And that armoire. He had no idea how he was going to get that thing downstairs.
No, he’d said no magic and that’s what he had to stick to. This might be the tortuous route, but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about the armoire magically sprouting wings and flying out the window.
He glanced uneasily at the armoire, then chided himself for being ridiculous. Of course the thing couldn’t fly. He was going to have to find a neighbor to ask for help.
Yeah, and then watch Merlin show up, or Vana would make the coat rack dance, sending said neighbor screaming from the property. Zane sighed and hiked the rug back into place. He was on his own with this.
Four steps from the doorway, the rug hit the doorframe again and bent in half across it.
What the—? Zane backed up, hiked the rug again, and aimed it forward.
This time, the rug angled down, slid out of his hold, hit the floor, and flipped over and sideways, ending up lying perpendicular to the threshold.
“Zane? Are you okay up there?”
“Yes.” No.
What the hell was going on with the rug? He yanked it around. The thing was as cumbersome as a blocking sled on the practice field.
“You sure?” Vana’s voice sounded a little closer now.
“Fine.”
He pushed the rug toward the doorway.
It didn’t budge.
“I can help, you know.” She poked her head around the doorframe. “Without… um… magic.”
She couldn’t help even with magic.
Zane didn’t answer, just walked to the far end of the rug, sat behind it, braced himself against an old steamer trunk, put his feet on the rolled end, and shoved.
The rug moved, unfurling just enough to catch on the doorframe.
“Help? Is that what you call that?” Zane pointed to the rug fringe that was gripping the doorframe like… like… like fingers. “I thought we agreed. No more magic.”
Vana took her sweet time looking at the fringe. Then she looked at the rug lodged in the doorway. Then she looked at him and climbed over the rug into the attic.
“I’m not doing that, but I guess I should have warned you.”
“You think?” Warned him? Oh, Jesus. Did he really want to know?
“I’d forgotten about her.”
“You’d forgotten.” He didn’t bother making it a question; he wasn’t asking one. Because he was afraid of what the answer would be.
Vana nodded and knelt beside the rug. She tapped it in the middle. The damn thing rolled up like a cartoon scroll. All that was needed to complete the mockery it’d made of him were slot machine-like bells and whistles.
“I’d honestly forgotten, Zane. Peter brought her here only a short while before he put me back in my bottle, so it’s not like she was on my radar.”
“How does one forget a magical rug—oh god, please tell me it doesn’t fly.”
Vana shook her head. “If she did, I highly doubt she’d still be up here.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s doing a damn good impersonation of something that doesn’t want to leave.”
“I think that’s because she thought you were going to throw her in the trash and she didn’t want to go.”
“Hold on.” Zane pulled himself off the floor and onto an old ottoman. “You’re anthropomorphizing this thing? Giving it feelings and a brain? Logic?” Although… Vana kept calling the rug a she, so logic was questionable.
Vana stroked a hand across the rug. “She�
�s actually not a rug.”
“She’s not.” Again, he didn’t make it a question. Because, again, he was scared of the answer.
“No.” Vana leaned a little closer. “She’s someone who annoyed Faruq.”
“Faruq?” Shit. He’d asked.
“The High Master’s vizier.”
“I see.” No, he didn’t. He didn’t see one damn thing. Who and what was a vizier? What could possibly annoy him or her to the point of turning someone into a rug? Who was the rug? And why was he not freaking out at that question, let alone the entire idea of someone being turned into one in the first place?
Jesus. Why couldn’t this just be a normal clearing out of a house? He’d expected odds and ends. The occasional nest of spiders and a bunch of mice. But genies and cross-dressing phoenixes and enchanted rugs?
“Faruq is in command of Djinn Compliance. Or, rather, he was before he was put on lantern arrest.” Vana sat back and intertwined her hands in her lap.
Zane scraped a hand over his face and blew out a breath. He was going to go with the question most relevant to his situation. Forget whoever the rug was or what lantern arrest was and why Faruq was on it. “So what am I supposed to do with it now?”
“Well, I—”
The rug stroked its fringe along her arm.
“What’s it want?” he asked, marveling that he could ask that question so nonchalantly.
“You have to understand about this rug, Zane.” She brushed the fringe off her arm as softly as it had stroked her. “Faruq wanted Fatima as part of his harem, but when he caught her in the arms of one of his head guardsmen, well, he wanted everyone to walk all over her as he’d felt she’d walked all over him.”
“Uh, okay. Understandable.” If one were a genie.
“But, the thing is, Fatima wasn’t cheating on him. She’d fallen into the river and couldn’t swim. Ghazi saw her flailing around and rescued her. Faruq, however, saw what he wanted to see and had her imprisoned in the threads of this rug.”
Zane didn’t ask what Faruq had done to Ghazi. He had a feeling he didn’t want to know.
“So now Fatima has to wait for a thousand and one people to walk over her—”
“A thousand and one? As in The Arabian Nights? Are you kidding me?” Zane mentally kicked himself. He needed to stop asking irrelevant questions and just be on a need-to-know basis so he could know what he needed to do to remove this craziness from his life. It was a wonder Peter had actually been sane.
“Of course I’m not kidding. That number is very auspicious in djinn culture.” She cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders—which drew his eyes to her breasts.
Christ. He really did need to get laid if he was thinking about breasts while dealing with rug people and screwy genies… though the images he’d been having of Vana and him in bed together were as real as if it were last night.
But that was ridiculous. Of course they weren’t. He’d spent last night awake and aching on the uncomfortable couch, hearing every tap of the branches of the old oak against the house. It didn’t matter how hard he’d knocked his head on that rafter, he definitely wouldn’t have forgotten having sex with Vana. His libido, imagination, and ego were quite certain of that.
“Fine. Okay. Whatever.” He scratched both hands through his hair. “So what am I supposed to do with the rug, Vana?”
“Well, you could put her downstairs so she can fulfill her sentence. She’s already had 748 people walk on her.”
“You want me to put a magical rug, one that’s capable of moving itself, where she can pop up in a cloud of pink smoke and a harem costume when she reaches the magic number? What if it’s in the middle of a walk-through?”
“Fatima’s smoke is green.”
He’d had to ask.
“But of course she won’t, Zane. Fatima will be able to transform at any time once that number is reached, so she’ll wait until the coast is clear. And you’ll even get to keep the rug once she’s back to normal.”
Such a bonus.
“Please, Zane. She’s been locked up here for such a long time.” Vana’s voice was soft.
And the rug was sitting up with one unrolled edge wagging like a dog begging for a bone.
Kittens and puppies. Hell. He was toast.
“Fine.” He put his hands on his knees and pushed up to standing, managing yet again to knock his head on a rafter. You’d think at some point some sense would be knocked in with the bumps and bruises, but apparently not. “But no funny business while there are mortals around. Understood?”
The rug shook the fringed end—Fatima’s head?
Zane shied away from any kind of thought like that. If he started imagining a woman’s body being woven into the threads of a rug…
Vana jumped to her feet and clasped her hands. “Oh, Zane, thank you! Thank you! Fatima won’t be any trouble. You’ll see. You won’t even remember she’s there.”
Zane wouldn’t bet on it.
He hefted the rug again and started walking toward the door. “Fine. Let’s get her downstairs. I’ve had enough magical beings in the attic for one day.”
And then the armoire tripped him.
19
After waking from that conk on the head when he’d hit the floor, Zane learned that he was the—um, proud?—owner of not only a personified rug, but a haunted armoire, a bewitched coat rack, an enchanted lady’s compact, and several stacks of animated dishes, making this a worse cartoon than the earlier Fantasia debacle.
Zane gawked at Vana while she rattled off the list beside him.
“Henry Fitzsimmons wished to hide himself inside his lover’s armoire when her husband came home, but his genie, Eirik, had been imbibing a little too much absinthe and, well, now Eirik’s the coat rack over there.”
The piece of furniture in question leaned out from where it was partially hidden behind a pile of boxes and waved an upper limb just slightly enough that Zane could have imagined it but, sadly, hadn’t.
“Since Eirik’s Way of doing magic is to cross his arms, you can see why he’s unable to change either of them back.” This time there was no imagining the heaving sigh the coat rack gave.
Vana pointed to the compact on an old vanity. “Lucia’s genie didn’t speak Italian, so he didn’t understand her wish to have a mirror that reflected her inner beauty to the world instead of being a beauty in the mirror.”
A burst of sparks blinded Zane for a few seconds. Oh, joy. Merlin had shown up to complete the fun.
“Yeah, that one still has me scratching my feathers,” said the phoenix—who was wearing leopard. Someone needed to have a serious talk with the bird about his fashion sense. “No offense to Lucia, but a beauty she wasn’t, so I don’t get the mirror thing.”
The mirror rattled on the tarnished silver tray.
“That’s why she made her wish, Merlin,” said Vana. “She might not have been beautiful on the outside, but she was on the inside, and she thought that if people could only see that part of her, they would find her delightful and charming, and she’d then be able to find her Prince Charming.”
“Stupid Grimm brothers,” said Merlin. “All a ploy for more tail. Those guys were dogs, let me tell you. They’d go around spouting sappy, happy stories of true love, prince charmings, and happily ever afters, and end up with women falling at their feet. Thank the gods a genie fixed that.” He brushed his feathers together.
“One of the brothers decided to hit on the wrong guy’s wife. The king, of all men. And being the ultimate in treasure hunters and hoarders that all successful kings are, His Majesty just so happened to have had a genie. One wish. That’s all it took to kill two lovebirds with one big downer of an alteration to their stories and ruin the guys’ MO. What a day it was for the rest of us, I’ll tell you.”
Zane didn’t want to know. He didn’t care what the Grimm brothers did or who they did it with or what had turned their happily ever afters into the dark, depressing stories they were known for. He just wante
d to get out of this attic with his sanity and body parts intact.
Unfortunately, neither looked promising. Zane sighed and shook his head—and son of a bitch! It hurt.
“So what about the dishes?” He had to ask. Sometimes not knowing was worse than knowing—though he’d reserve judgment in this instance until he heard their story.
“A group of children,” said Vana sadly, caressing the box she’d taken from the armoire.
Henry. Sheesh.
“Would you like to meet them? They’re cute little imps.”
“Not real imps,” interjected Merlin. “Just saying. If they were real imps, there’s no way they would’ve stayed nice and quiet in that cupboard this long. Real imps would have broken themselves all over the place the minute the doors had closed. And good riddance I would have said. Imps are royal pains in the tail, let me tell you.”
“Vana.” Zane directed the conversation back to her because there was only so much insanity he could take.
“The children were visiting the home of a dowager countess as part of her charity work,” said Vana. “Peter had heard about them during our trip through Hampstead when all the locals were talking about loony Lady Lockshaven. They laughed at her talk of dancing dishes, but Peter always paid attention to those kinds of stories.”
“How did they come to end up as dishes?” Cheating adults and non-multilingual genies were one thing, but Zane was concerned about the transformation of a half dozen or so children who were now under his care.
“One of them had broken a piece of her china, and she cursed them, wishing they knew what it was like to be so delicate. Her husband, a fellow explorer associate of Peter’s, had just given her the genie he’d found. It ended up being her first and last wish. She was so distraught over what she’d done that she threw the lantern—and the genie—into the fire.
“Now, we djinn normally live forever, but we can be killed, and fire is a nasty way to go. The woman was doubly horrified by that, so when Peter showed up, her husband begged him to take the children with him, hoping I’d be able to turn them back someday.”
