“About?”
“About whether you’re really in crisis or not.” Because according to Nina, crisis was a matter of fucking opinion and just because you liked a raw T-bone, it didn’t necessarily qualify you for an induction into Werewolf U.
She breathed into the phone, long and shaky. “Oh. Of course. Fine. Ask away. It’s not like I’m going anywhere. Maybe ever from the looks of things.”
Sloan smoothed out the crumpled paper questionnaire the women had so carefully designed to determine if they were really talking to someone who’d been accidentally turned or a crackpot fuckwit, as Nina called them, who was just messing with them because they thought it was LOL funny to ask Marty if she would eat their algebra teachers. “First, do you have any bite marks on your neck or anywhere on your person, for that matter?” Experience with Nina’s sister Phoebe had taught him neck bites weren’t the only way to create a vampire.
There was a stirring on the other end of the line and then she replied, “Hang on. I’m digging out my compact because the mirror in here is cracked. Oh, it’s so disgusting and dirty here. Thank God I had my purse with me when this happened.”
Silence prevailed, broken only by the sound of what he thought might be beer cans crashing together. He was very familiar with that melodic tone. Very. “Okay. I’m looking and no. No bite marks on my neck or anywhere.”
Sloan checked off no in the “Signs You Might Be a Vampire” section. “How about sudden and excessive hair growth?”
“I’m not sure how to answer that because it’s pretty personal in nature, don’t you think?”
Sloan dragged a hand through his hair, gritting his teeth. “Look. I’m just doing my job, and what I mean by excessive and sudden hair growth is like the hair on your legs.”
“No. No sudden and excessive anything, for which you’d hear me express my undying gratitude, but I’m not sure if what I’m experiencing is the lesser of two evils. Whatever that evil happens to be.”
Sloan flicked the pen top in impatience, hoping to get this over with quickly. Where the hell did those women go to shop? Sri Lanka? “Moving right along. Horns?”
“Like the kind on a bike? You know—toot-toot? Or the kind in a symphony orchestra?”
“No. No bikes. No orchestras. No toot-toot. I mean the kind on your head. Like the devil. You know, evil-evil?”
This time, whoever she was, she let out a small gasp of unmistakable horror. “No! No horns. What the heck kinds of questions are these, anyway?”
“The paranormal kind. Next up, any burning in the tips of your fingers or the urge to eat rodents?”
She choked out a cough, her next words angry and clipped. “Clearly, I’ve made a mistake. I thought you helped people in paranormal crisis? Is this some kind of joke? Because if I’m wasting my cell battery on some joke, I have to warn you, I have a bit of a temper, and I have a black belt in karate. If we ever meet in person, you’ll regret being so cruel when I’m in so much trouble!”
She’d begun to sound a little frantic, for which he realized he was responsible. Sloan tried to add a nurturing tone to his voice. The tone Wanda said was very important to the newly turned. “Again, I’m just doing my job. Please remain calm. If I don’t determine whether you’re pranking me or not, my sister-in-law will see my head roll. I’m in enough trouble with my pack already. I don’t need her adding to it. If you knew what Marty, that’s my sister-in-law, was like, a steamroller disguised in designer shoes I can’t pronounce the makers of, you’d understand where I’m coming from. So how about we determine what exactly the issue is with you so I can go back to my Cheetos and you can extend the life of your cell battery?”
“Your pack? Did you say pack?” Disbelief littered her words.
“You bet’cha. I meant my werewolf pack. I’m part of a pack.” Not that this woman would believe what he said. The girls had warned him proof might be necessary. Which blew if he was going to have to shift. He didn’t have a spare set of clothes.
“I think you’re one smoke short of a pack, mister. Listen, is there someone else I can speak with?”
“For the moment, I’m all you’ve got, lady.”
“Damn.”
“Ditto.”
She sighed in crystal-clear irritation. “Fine. Ask away.”
Sloan’s lips thinned, his nurturing tone all but drying up. “So no burning in your fingertips?”
“Not unless you count the itch to kill the man who did this to me. No. No burning.”
“No desire to eat small animals or their larger counterparts—like maybe a moose?”
A long rasp of a sigh came before she answered, “No. I don’t want to eat big game.”
Sloan squinted at the questionnaire. Well. That was that. She didn’t fit any of the profiles the girls had laid out. Their time here was done. “All right, then, seems you’re not anything we’ve ever heard of. You don’t fit any of the profiles I have listed on my form. Looks like you’re cleared for takeoff. No crisis. Have a great, non-paranormal day.” Good luck. Later. He prepared to hang up, but her desperate cry stopped him cold.
“Wait!” she screeched into his ear.
Fuck. “For?”
“Even though I don’t have any of the issues you listed, I do so have a crisis!” she cried in exasperation.
Sloan pictured a woman stomping her feet in a childish rage and fought a devilish grin. “Well, you don’t have any of the issues we have experience with. That means you’re not a vampire, werewolf, demon, or a cougar, or any derivative thereof. Seriously, lady. If you’re not any of those things, what else is there?”
“You can really turn into one of those . . . those things?” she squeaked.
“Or a combination of them. We’re called shapeshifters, among other things.” Many other things.
“Shut the front door,” she muttered. “Do you mean you shift like those creatures on that show Supernatural? That’s disgusting! They’re all so horrible and—and gooey!”
Sloan sighed. Yes, those creatures on TV were disgusting, and they’d given all paranormals a bad name. Thank you, Sam and Dean Winchester. “What you’ve seen on TV isn’t exactly an accurate or fair depiction of who we are. In fact, it’s a little overblown. We’re not all bloodthirsty human hunters. As a matter of fact, you didn’t even know we existed until I told you we did because we keep a low profile and live peacefully amongst you. No gooey. No disgusting.”
She was sarcastically contrite when she replied, “Oh. Of course. I’m sorry. It was incredibly insensitive of me to think you’d be remotely like those vicious savages on a TV show. Where are my paranormal manners?”
Sloan clenched his teeth, fighting to keep his professional hat on. The one Casey said he’d better not let slip because Nina had done enough of that to last them all their eternal lifetimes combined. “Anyway, that still brings us back to square one. You don’t have any of the outlined symptoms we specialize in. So I don’t think OOPS can help.” And the Cowboys and the Giants were playing. There was a six-pack and some beef jerky to buy. Gotta go.
Her gasp was of outrage mingled with the static that kept coming and going over the connection. “You’re just going to blow me off? Well, I’m sorry I’m not hairy enough to meet your stringent criteria for a paranormal emergency. What kind of outfit are you running here? I thought this was supposed to be a help line for people in crisis?”
Sloan reached for his coat from the back of the chair. “It is. Apparently, you have the wrong crisis for this help line.”
“You’re not really telling me being stuck in a bottle doesn’t qualify as a paranormal crisis, are you?” she shouted.
“Have you been drinking?” Sloan winced, peering over his shoulder. If the girls heard him say something like that to a possible client, there’d be no end to their torment about his insensitivity.
“No, you nominee for most unhelpful customer service rep ever, I haven’t been drinking!”
“Well, you mentioned the bottle. Not me, lady,” he offered dryly, convinced she’d been slamming a few back.
“I said I was stuck in a bottle. In-in-in! I’m not on the bottle! I swear on my dead Uncle Orvis’s grave! Just listen to me. Please. I’m a caterer. I was catering this swank over-the-top party when I opened what looked like a very old bottle of gin. At least I think it was old. I’ve never heard of old gin, but it was really dusty, and it said gin on it. So what do I know? I don’t drink—though that could change at any given time. Anyway, I was just replenishing the gin for the bar. And I did . . . Er, replenish. Oh, boy, I did. I opened the bottle and . . . Anyway, the next thing I know, this guy, dressed a lot like someone from my assistant’s niece’s favorite movie, Aladdin, like poofy pants and all and a T-shirt that said, ‘Sorry About What Happens Later,’ pops out of the bottle in a puff of some nasty, green smoke, smelling like a week-old CSI crime scene and starts dancing around like he’d just won a harem of women.”
“An Aladdin guy . . .”
“Yes!” she shouted. “So, I scream. He screams back. We both scream together, he mutters some gibberish in a Joe Pesci kind of way, does this crazy fun house laugh, and the next thing I know, I’m in this bottle. A gin bottle. I know it’s the same gin bottle because I can read the letters G-I-N on it. Only it’s backward because, you know, I’m on the inside looking out—of a bottle! A bottle. A. Bottle. Aaaa bottle!”
“Got it. A bottle.” Sloan yawned, covering his mouth with his knuckles.
“And, God, it reeks in here. And it’s a filthy mess. There are beer cans all over the place, cigarette butts stacked in artful pyramids, sweat socks that look like someone mud wrestled in them, and if you can believe it, a velvet wall hanging of Elvis from his jumpsuit days. Which to me says somebody had way too much time on their hands. Is that good enough for you, Sloan the Werewolf? Is that enough crisis?” She hissed the words. “And lastly, put that in your not-a-paranormal-crisis-that-fits-your-stupid-profile pipe and smoke it!”
Sloan blinked when her increasingly hysterical rant ended. If she was a crank call, she was a damn good actress. To be safe, and keep him from the wrath of Nina, he decided to trust she wasn’t bullshitting him. He gave the form he had in front of him another swift glance.
Nope.
Not a single mention about being trapped in a bottle. Time warp? Yes. Bottle? No. So what did that accidentally make her? Wait. Bottle plus Aladdin-like guy plus poufy pants equaled . . . A genie? Shit and piss. He knew as much about the djinn as he did feminine protection. Though, somewhere he remembered hearing they could be nasty little bastards when provoked. But then, there was a lot of false information floating around on the Internet about werewolves, too.
Goddamn it. Why couldn’t she just be something simple like a werewolf? Or a hedgehog? He knew jack shit about anything other than being a werewolf.
When he got his hands on Marty, he was going to kill her for leaving him here alone under the guise of “Oh, Sloan, stop being such a baby. Hardly anyone ever calls on a Sunday afternoon.” He grabbed his phone and texted Marty a 911 and waited.
Nothing. That was just fucking terrific.
“Hey, werewolf? Are you still there? Or did you hang up because this is just too outlandish to believe, you being a werewolf and all,” she said with a scoff. “Did you hear a word I said? I’m trapped in a bottle! Oh, my God, a bottle!”
Sloan winced, his eyes moving as quickly as they could over the counselor trainee pamphlet Marty had left him with. There it was. At all costs, keep the client calm. “I heard you. But it says here I have to try to keep you calm while we figure this out.” He couldn’t tell her what he suspected or she’d lose it all together—then he’d never find her. And, yes, he’d go looking for her, because he liked his living environment to be ball buster–free.
“Calm? Calm?” she screeched. “I’m trapped in a bottle! You be the calm. I, on the other hand, am going to be the whirlwind of flipped completely out!”
And then the tears started. Huge gulping, snot-riddled sobs that, according to the How to Comfort Your New Client When in Paranormal Crisis pamphlet, was expected and supposed to be handled with the utmost compassion.
And tissues.
Not one of his stronger suits. Though, he hated to see a woman cry—or in this case, hear it. It turned him to so much mush, and he’d promise almost anything to stop it. Christ, he hated a woman’s tears. “Shhhh—shh-shh. I’ll help you, I promise. Now do you know where you are? Are you still at the party you catered?”
There was a long, shuddering breath and then, “No. Not exactly.”
“Meaning?”
“It’s absolutely humiliating. I don’t know if I can tell you.”
He was growing impatient with her again. Though, if he was honest, he kinda wanted to see a chick in a bottle. For curiosity purposes only. “Lady, do you want me to come get you or not? Because if not, I have a game I wanna catch.”
“You’ll come get me? Really?” She sniffled the words.
He looked at his cell phone again. No text from Marty. Shit. “I’ll come get you,” he soothed with a solemn tone. If he didn’t, Keegan would give him hell for days for upsetting Marty. Not on his list of favorite things.
“I’m in the garbage can at the end of my client’s driveway.”
Placing the back of his hand over his mouth, Sloan muffled his hyena-like laughter and wiped the tears forming at the corner of his eyes on his forearm.
“You’re laughing!” she accused with an outraged tone.
Sloan rocked back and forth, covering his snorts before sitting back up and taking a deep, long breath. “I’m sorry. Sorrysorrysorry. Just give me a second, okay?” he managed to wheeze out, covering the earpiece of the phone and bending at the waist again to still his fits of inappropriate laughter.
Four more deep breaths later, and he was back. He cleared his throat, and rolled his head on his neck. “Okay, do you have an address for the garbage can?”
Garbage can. Hah.
As she ran off her location, Sloan typed it into his phone’s GPS and pulled up directions to a pretty ritzy suburb in Long Island. “It’s gonna take about thirty minutes to get to you with traffic—hang tight, okay? Oh, and what’s your name?” In all this, he’d forgotten to ask her name.
There was a pause and then, “You’ll laugh again, and I’m a little shaky right now. Usually, I can take a joke. But at this stage, your high-pitched, girl-at-a-slumber-party giggle might break me . . .”
He straightened, shrugging his jacket on as he made his way to the door. “Swear I won’t. I’m all laughed out.”
“It’s Jeannie. Jeannie Carlyle.”
Sloan’s eyebrow rose. “As in I Dream of?”
Her answer was reluctant. “Yessss.”
Priceless.
Okay, so he wasn’t all laughed out.
* * *
SLOAN came to a screeching halt precisely in front of the garbage can Jeannie was supposed to be in and jumped out of his car, scoping the dark street to see if anyone was looking. He tucked his chin into the front of his jacket, pulling his knit cap over his head to brace himself against the harsh winter wind.
A quick glance at the mini-mansion with its rounded shrubs and cascading fountains made him wonder if there weren’t security cameras somewhere beyond those wrought iron gates. He tugged his knit cap low over his brow and hunkered into his jacket.
He managed to find the garbage can without trouble, yet he paused and sniffed his surroundings. Well, this was definitely the place. So if this Jeannie was punking him, she’d gone to great lengths to do it. His spidey senses, though, told him she was legit.
With a flip of his wrist, Sloan wasted n
o time popping open the garbage can’s top and using his flashlight to locate the bottle Jeannie said she was in. Her cell phone’s battery had died ten minutes into the trip over from OOPS, making him worry about that fragile state she claimed. If she freaked out and word got back to the girls, he was in for some sensitivity boot camp.
He located the bottle easily enough under some newspapers. Lifting it out, he held it up to the streetlamp. It looked just like any other liquor bottle. He couldn’t see a damned thing but some murky remnants of amber liquid. It sloshed when he shook it.
Tucking it into his jacket, Sloan got back in his car and took off down the winding road, following it until he left the small suburb and found a 7-Eleven. Whipping his car into the parking lot, he threw it into park and pulled the bottle out to hold it up again.
Sloan squinted. Shit. Maybe he’d gotten the wrong bottle? Putting his eye to the open mouth of it, he peered inside. The sting of something sharp to his eyeball made his head snap back.
He put the bottle to his lips, swiping at his watery eye with his thumb. “Jeannie? What the hell was that?” he yelped now putting it to his ear to see if she responded.
“A beer can—which, if you could see this pigsty, would put ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall to shame, and, yes! Yes, it’s me! Oh, thank God you came!” she yelped back, her relief evident.
The bottle gave off a slight humming vibration beneath his hand. Holy. Shit. “I’d hold off on thanking the man upstairs,” he said into the glass rim. “I’m not sure where we go from here because all of the paranormal experts are out designer discount shopping and can’t come to the damn phone right now.” He clenched his jaw. Damn that gaggle of women. “Suggestions?”
“You know what, when this is all over, if these invisible OOPS people give me one of those customer feedback forms to fill out, you’re screwed. You’re the expert here! How should I know what’s next?”
Right, right, right. The expert. Shit. Think, Sloan. Without warning her, he tipped the bottle upside down and gave it a hard shake, watching the opening to see if she did the obvious and fell out.
The Accidental Genie Page 2
