The Accidental Genie

by Dakota Cassidy

  A soft knock at the door had her hopping over the pile of them and rushing to grab the handle before they woke.

  Wanda peered into the room, her eyes tired, but her appearance otherwise immaculate.

  “Please say Marty’s back,” Jeannie pleaded in a whisper, the rush of fear returning.

  Wanda wiggled her finger to indicate Jeannie should come outside the door. Jeannie obliged, pulling the door shut behind her and fighting the invisible tug that let her know she was moving out of the acceptable range of Sloan. “Nothing?”

  Wanda shook her head, the deep chestnut of her hair gleaming. “No, but we did find an obscure book about genies online. We called several libraries to locate it before we finally did, and they have it in. It’s some big book of genie with curses and spells aplenty. Fictional, I suppose, but then there’s you, chock-full of every fictional scenario out there, so we don’t want to discount any possible clues. We need you and Sloan to go check it out while we wait here for Darnell and Casey. Casey has a friend who might be able to help. Some old college buddy who’s well versed in the djinn.”

  Jeannie blanched. Darnell’s name wrought images of fire and Satan and sins, of which she had many. He’d see right through her ruse and drag her back to hell where she belonged. Her voice trembled when she asked, “Darnell the demon?”

  Wanda must’ve caught the fear in her eyes. She reached out a hand to reassure her by cupping Jeannie’s chin. “Yes. Darnell and Casey are demons, but it’s not what you think. Neither of them would harm a hair on your head. They aren’t the kind of demons who make soul-stealing pacts. Well, Darnell did—sell his soul, that is, but he didn’t do it for fame and fortune or a great pair of boobs and a rich husband. His reasons were much more altruistic. As long as he lays low under the radar of hell, minds his business, he’s okay. He does bear the burden of eternal life, much like all of us. That alone, losing everyone around you year after year, is a hell all its own. As for Casey, she’s just another victim of paranormal circumstance—an accident. Promise you’re safe with them.” She held up a Boy Scouts’ honor gesture.

  “And Nina? Did she finally get some sleep?”

  “She fucking did not, and I’m a pissier bitch than usual because of it,” Nina called from the living room. “So tell Sloan the Slacker in there to get his ass up because the library opens in an hour. If I ain’t sleepin’, he sure ain’t, either.”

  Jeannie leaned into Wanda and whispered, “She’s not going to catch fire is she? Her bio in the pamphlet was pretty graphic, and I definitely remember the words fry like so much bacon.”

  Nina came up behind Wanda and tugged on Jeannie’s hair, a white strip of zinc on her nose, sunglasses in place. “No. She’s not going to catch fire because she has a barrel’s worth of sunscreen on, but she will set you on fire if you don’t get to rollin’.”

  Wanda rolled her eyes at her friend. “Nina’s built up a certain amount of tolerance to daylight and avoiding vampire sleep, but as you can see, she’s also a foulmouthed beast as a result. Don’t fret about Nina. Let’s worry about you and finding Marty.”

  “Marty. That’s the most important issue,” Jeannie replied, running a hand over her sleep-mussed hair. “I mean, the only issue I have is I’m attached to Sloan. I’m not in any danger. So please, let’s just focus on Marty. The rest we’ll figure out.” She turned to go, but Wanda stopped her while Nina’s eyes searched hers, their coal depths swirling.

  “You’re important, too, Jeannie. Yes, finding Marty is important, but helping you adjust to this life that’s been thrust upon you, and finding someone to help you do it, is just as important.”

  Wanda’s words were so intense they made Jeannie stiffen. She didn’t know how to respond, so instead she nodded. “I’ll go wake up Sleeping Beauty, and we’ll get to the library.”

  She slipped behind the bedroom door and let it close with a hush. Before waking Sloan, she said a silent prayer that this book would have an answer about where Marty was.

  Because she just couldn’t live with herself if another life was lost due to her.

  * * *

  SLOAN blocked the sharp wind by sheltering Jeannie with his body as they came down the steps of the library and said good-bye to Lollipop. The ever-darkening skies only served to make Lollipop’s blonde hair blonder, if that were at all possible.

  Jeannie stuck her hand out toward her and smiled. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Lollipop smiled back with the kind of coquettish, flirty ease Jeannie envied, pulled her into a patchouli-scented hug. “Now you remember what I said about those extensions for your hair and the Booty Pop. It’ll change your life. Promise,” she said on a wink before wrapping her arms around Sloan’s neck and pressing a lingering, wet cherry red kiss to his cheek. “You know where to find me, handsome.”

  Jeannie knew now, too. Lollipop, named as such because she was, according to her, lickable, could be found at Club Grease Your Pole, where she’d offered to teach Jeannie how to rock Sloan’s cradle of love with just three simple moves.

  With a wave, Lollipop swished down the steps in four-inch leopard heels, her platinum blonde hair blowing in the wind like a billowy Pantene commercial.

  After a quick call to check in on Betzi and Charlene, they’d run into Lollipop as they were leaving the library with no success in finding the book. The librarian said they’d just missed the person who’d checked it out, and she refused to reveal the name of the book borrower—even after Sloan had flirted shamelessly with her.

  Jeannie let loose a forlorn sigh as Lollipop’s perfect figure disappeared from sight. “So, she was nice.”

  Sloan looked down at her with a grimace. “Go on and say it.”

  Jeannie began to walk in the hopes of finding a coffee shop. Coffee had soothing properties. Maybe not the kind that would fix her genie dilemma, but surely it would help reduce the throb in her genie head. “Let’s get moving before it starts to snow, and go on and say what?”

  Sloan trailed behind her, the scent of his cologne drifting to her nostrils on the cold morning air. “I’m a pig. You won’t be an original, but at least it’ll all be out in the open.”

  Jeannie shrugged, dipping her chin into her totally unfashionable, puffy gray jacket. “I don’t think you’re a pig at all, and I really did think Lollipop was nice. She gave me some very helpful tips on how to find those breast gel things you put in your bra locally. You know, so my breasts will leave men wanting more.” It was a tip Jeannie would treasure forever and ever.

  His sigh was sharp and followed by a puff of condensation. “Your breasts are fine.”

  She might have blushed, but for the word fine and her breasts linked together in a Sloan sentence. “Well, maybe fine isn’t the word I want associated with my breasts. Who wants fine breasts? Awesome? Sure. Perky? Grand. Voluptuous? Even better. But fine? Boo-hiss,” she mocked indignation.

  “Okay, they’re great.”

  Jeannie snorted, hanging a left to peer down the sidewalk for signs of coffee. “Not when you put them up against Lollipop’s. Hers are stupendous. Men write love songs about taters like that.”

  “Hers aren’t really hers. She bought them, Jeannie. They’re fake.”

  “Oh, contraire, mon frere. If she signed the check, that makes them hers.”

  “Are we really having this conversation?”

  Jeannie nodded with a smile, jamming her hands into her jacket. Even in gloves, they were frigid. “We absolutely are. Oh, and I don’t think you’re a pig at all. You’re a little like my hero. I admire your ability to express your sexuality freely while you hop from one bed to another, Sloan. I don’t hold it against you at all.”

  “I don’t hop. Men don’t hop,” he replied, a hint of disgust in his gravelly voice.

  “Use whatever verb sounds most manly to your ears. The point is, clearly, if L
ollipop is any indication, you’re uninhibited about your needs, and you don’t allow others to dictate to you what’s supposedly socially acceptable. It means you’re free. I know you run the risk of all kinds of disease and the potential for your man-bits to fall off in chunks of rotting flesh, but at least you lived while you did it.”

  He popped his temptingly sinful lips. “Interesting perspective.”

  She nudged his side as they rounded another corner and came to a desolate dead end that led to a deserted alleyway with no coffee.

  Stopping to face him, Jeannie looked up at his amused expression with a serious gaze of her own. “Look, do me a favor. Don’t apologize if we run into any more of your many conquests. According to Nina, you’ve done a lot of chicks all over the tristate. So it’s bound to happen simply by law of averages. Instead of sweating it, wear it like your badge of honor. You know, the ‘Yeah. That’s right. I did her. Isn’t she hot?’ T-shirt.”

  Sloan’s smile was amused even while his eyebrows bunched together. “I have no words.”

  Jeannie cocked her eyebrow at him. “Well, I hear it doesn’t take you many of those words to get you where you want to be anyway. So why indulge in the unnecessary? Efficiency is premium.”

  He barked a laugh at her, rocking back on the cracked pavement. “Mind explaining where this attitude comes from? I think you’re the only woman on the planet who feels like that.”

  Her shoulders lifted. This attitude came from hiding. Hiding from life. Hiding from the potential to be hurt. Hiding from her past. But due to the nature of her past, she couldn’t explain. Let him think she was just one of those women who was super-evolved rather than simply scarred. “Well, not all the women on the planet know what it is to be inhibited.”

  Sloan’s eyes on her made her look away in discomfort. “I don’t want to pry—”

  Her shoulders stiffened along with her spine. He was treading into uncomfortable territory for her. Maybe Sloan really didn’t care that people knew who he was—but she couldn’t afford that luxury. “Then don’t,” she said between thin lips.

  He shook a finger at her, but his smile reappeared in all its yummy goodness. “I call unfair.”

  “Call whomever you want. If we run into any of my conquests and they offer to show you their pole tricks of the trade, then you can pry.”

  “Jeannie . . .” His syrupy tone turned brittle with warning.

  Her eyes fell to the ground. “Look. I just didn’t want you to be uncomfortable about your vast and varied appetite.”

  “I’m not uncomfortable.”

  Jeannie waved an admonishing finger at him. “I beg to differ. Just as she approached us, you whispered in my ear, ‘Oh, look. It’s Lollipop the Librarian.’ That you actually expected me to believe Lollipop was a librarian says to me you feel shame that you’ve seen her on a pole or two in your time. She was gorgeous, Sloan, and while I’m sure there are lots of librarians who’re just as hot, she was no librarian.”

  “I did meet her at the library,” he protested, his handsome face reflecting his supposed innocence.

  Jeannie rolled her eyes. She pulled her hat farther down on her head when the wind nipped at her ears. “Is there a library near Club Grease Your Pole? Wait. Don’t tell me. You met her there while returning Shakespeare’s sonnets, right?”

  He held his two fingers together and grinned, beautiful and perfect. “So close, but not quite. Dr. Seuss, I think, for Hollis. She loves Hop on Pop.”

  Hollis was Marty’s daughter. He read to his niece? Her insides gushed warmth, but she hid it behind her sarcasm. “See my surprise. The point is, don’t lie about who you are, Sloan. Own it in all its sordid, live, loud, and proud way. It might not be what everyone labels correct, especially the women in your life, but at least it’s honest. So don’t insult me by lying. Deal?”

  His face held awe and confusion and then more awe. “You are the strangest woman I’ve ever met.”

  Jeannie curtsied. “Brunettes are like that. Strange. You’ve been buried hip-deep in blondes too long to notice, Sloan Flaherty.”

  “I like you.”

  Jeannie fought the impulse to scream no! He couldn’t possibly like her, and instead she responded with, “Let’s see if you’re still saying that when you have to pass up sleeping with a leggy hottie named Candy Bar because I can’t get far enough away from you to give you your schtuping space.”

  “I dunno,” he drawled and winked, the sweep of his gorgeous eyelashes falling to his cheek. “Maybe I’m tired of schtuping only blondes, and it’s time to branch out.”

  Jeannie cocked her ear to the howling wind. “Maybe I just heard the four horsemen.”

  “Then you’d better duck, because it’s true,” he said on a soft, velvety chuckle.

  She wanted to ask why, but that same old demon inside her, the one that had eaten away her ability to have expectations where anyone was concerned, stopped her. She stood silently beside him instead.

  But Sloan provided the question for her with a nudge of his shoulder to hers. “You wanna know why?”

  “I’m not sure I could handle a revelation so profound, but why not let me guess?” She cleared her throat and raised one eyebrow. “The clap?”

  “I don’t have to worry about the clap. I’m a werewolf. We don’t get or transmit diseases.”

  How convenient. That made being a womanizer too damn easy. “Oh, I know! Is it that redheads are the new blondes?”

  “Nope.”

  She let her hands drop with a slap beside her in a gesture of helplessness. “Then I’m all out of guesses. I can’t possibly see why you’d wean yourself off a steady diet of hot women—especially ones like Lollipop. Oh, my God. They’re not fattening, are they?”

  Sloan’s responding chuckle was muted by a loud crack and a flash of silver Jeannie didn’t identify until it was too late.

  Sloan keeled over in the blink of an eye, hitting the ground like a tree falling to its fate after being chopped own. Before she had the chance to even consider what had just happened, she heard a familiar sound, one she’d come to despise—it was the press of someone’s tongue to their back teeth, one that created a sucking noise.

  Jeannie whipped around, a gust of chilled air hitting her square in her eyes, making them water for the sting.

  And there she stood. Face-to-face with her past.

  * * *

  MAT grumbled beneath Nina’s feet, raising up to nudge her work boot. “Hey, dollface?”

  She peered over her laptop at him. “Yeah, Swiffer meat?”

  “Somethin’ ain’t right with Jeannie.”

  Nina clucked her tongue. “Damn right somethin’ ain’t right. Dude, she’s granting wishes telepathically, and she has a talking carpet that smells like mildew for a sidekick. That’s a whole lot wrong in my book, pardner.”

  “No, no. I mean, I can feel somethin’ ain’t right. It’s like I can tell she’s scared. Real scared.” He coughed hard.

  Nina sat upright, slamming her computer top shut. “Is feeling Jeannie’s emotions part of the magic carpet gig?”

  “I got no idea. Remember me? The throw rug that ain’t never been outta the bottle who was left to rot like some damn corpse?”

  Nina sat forward with a jolt. “Jesus. So you don’t even know what kind of powers you have?”

  Mat trembled. “Got no clue. I just know, Jeannie’s in some kinda trouble and she’s scared. Right now.”

  Nina looked to Wanda across the room. Wanda frowned back at her.

  “Shit,” she muttered, jumping to her feet to stalk toward the door.

  Wanda was instantly on her feet, too, grabbing her coat and gloves. She leaned down and stroked Mat’s fringe. “Hang tight. We’ll find her. Promise.”

  Mat hacked a phlegm-filled cough in response as the two women
flew out the door.

  * * *

  JEANNIE fought to catch her breath, the chilled air coming from her lips in rapid white puffs. Her heart screamed inside her chest when a pair of steel-like arms wrapped around her neck from behind.

  He’d found her. Jesus God, he’d found her.

  He ran his tongue along the shell of her ear in a sloppy swipe, moaning a low feral sound. “Look who I found. And after all this time. You’d almost make a man think you were hiding from him. That’s not what you’ve been doing, is it? Hiding? Because it would break my itty-bitty heart.”

  Jeannie instantly froze. Her stomach plummeted, her pulse thrashing violently in her ears. The breath drained from her lungs when his voice slithered in a hot puff along her neck. “So how’s it goin’, petunia? Long time, no play.”

  Jeannie’s throat closed up, keeping her from screaming at Sloan to rouse him. His body lay prone after the whack he’d taken to the head while blood oozed crimson tears from an ugly gash in his forehead.

  Panic clawed its way into her throat and stuck there. The wind howled, screeching the coming storm. Carelessly discarded wrappers from the base of a Dumpster rose up in cyclonic cones, swirling above Sloan’s head. And still he lay crumpled, his limbs at an odd angle sprawled across the alleyway.

  You’re on your own, sunshine. But isn’t something like this what all that karate and therapy was about, Jeannie? Have you forgotten all the nights you spent reliving that horror, planning this prick’s death, only to now turn into a chicken-shit?

  Jeannie closed her eyes, but she didn’t exhale in order to relieve the pressure in her chest. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how terrified she was. “Get off me,” she demanded, with little authority and far more weak-kneed terror than she’d have liked.

  “But I like being near you,” he crooned, jamming his tongue in her ear again. “You always smelled so good. Besides, we have a shitload of catching up to do. For instance, what made you choose the big city? You were such a country girl.”