by Marie Hall
Jinni reclined on the bed as she pulled the small wooden box full of her ‘treasures’ out. Bits of things he’d scrounged up when given time away from his duty to the king. It was difficult for Jinni to ever get away and the few times he did, he always made side errands to seek out new articles for her chest.
She had a vial of sand from the Never Sea, a mummified seahorse, and now her starfish. Running back, a breathless smile on her face, bare feet barely heard above the rustle of her nightdress, she held the box out for his inspection. She’d laid her treasures reverently upon a turquoise silk scarf.
“Thank you, Jinni, thank you!”
He was getting ready to say “you’re welcome” when he heard the unmistakable swish of a woman’s skirt move away from the door. Aria’s eyes grew wide and she swallowed hard. “Oh, Jinni, you should go. You should…”
He shook his head and jumped to his feet. “No, princess.”
“But if you’re caught, they could kill your body and then you’ll be gone from me forever.”
Tweaking the tip of her nose, he moved toward the door. “Get in bed now, Aria.”
He didn’t look back to see if she’d listened, instead he opened her door gently. Heart in his throat, not fear for himself, but for Aria if he’d been discovered in her chambers. Jinni would never dream of harming the girl, or of even entertaining the idea of mating her, she was but a child. But the law was law and in this realm, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth still ruled. Not only would he be executed, but the princess’ reputation would be soiled. Child or no.
Quietly he exited, glancing both ways, he spotted the bulky shadow half hidden behind a large potted fern.
There was only one way to ensure Aria’s reputation stay intact. Jinni withdrew his hooked cutlass.
“I will not tell.”
Jinni sucked in a harsh breath, the voice reminded him of velvet-- all soft and luxurious, and so tantalizingly familiar. He narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”
Then she stepped out of the shadow and his eyes widened.
She was beautiful.
As any Queen would be.
Her hair gleamed like rich oil in moonlight, her skin was a dusky hue and bronzed golden by the fierce sun. Piercing green eyes held his and fire burned a hot trail down his spine.
“Queen Nala,” his voice came out choked as he quickly thrust the cutlass back in its sheath. Jinni bowed low. “Forgive me, Queen.”
“Arise, Jinni. There is no need for formality around me. Not now.” Her words were soft and coaxing, but the shiver that raced across his skin and the heat that burned in his gut was anything but soft.
His gaze roamed slowly up her bare feet, along the peek-a-boo bit of ankle and then up the long expanse of legs and waist. To the ripe fullness of her breasts (and here he swallowed harder), before he finally came to rest on the beauty of her face.
King Abdullah’s newest acquisition held a whisper of a smile on her lips. Younger than the King by a good decade, if not more, she was the epitome of sensuality and verve. Married only two weeks ago, the Queen had kept to herself.
Until now.
“I came to see the girl, though I see,” she cocked her head, “she was not alone.”
The husky tenor of her voice rocked through Jinni’s core and made his legs tremble. “I should not have gone to her. But she is lonely and considers me--”
“A friend?” She stepped forward, her emerald green robes crinkling slightly with her movement.
The rich scent of nightshade and sage perfumed the air between them as she lifted up on tiptoe. Then her finger was pressed against his mouth and he knew he was drowning in her kohl-rimmed gaze.
“She needs a friend,” she whispered, “we all do.”
Then she turned on her heels and walked away. Jinni stood by, as if deaf and dumb, watching long after her shadow had fled.
***
Paz lowered her arms, and her gaze hooked his.
“You loved her,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. But Paz didn’t sound angry, or sad. Merely, stating a plain truth.
“It was forbidden.”
Her look was tender as she glanced over her shoulder at their newest painting. Him, in the traditional garb of genie, and Nala slightly disheveled, hair mussed (as if she’d just woken up), and a secret smile playing on her luscious lips.
But Paz had painted Nala too perfect. He walked up to the picture and with a swipe of his hand altered the scene, put a tiny cleft in her chin, and small gap between her two front teeth. He brushed her hair back (the Queen had never looked mussed), though the bare feet and ankles peeking out from below the gown were exactly right.
“Forbidden doesn’t mean you didn’t love her. It just means it ended tragically.”
Jinni stilled his hand, letting her words sink in. She didn’t know the rest of the story, and yet she didn’t have to. He turned on his heels, putting his back to Nala and all that she represented.
“Wise words for one so young,” he said.
She shrugged and glided toward the golem on the bed. Jinni had nearly forgotten where they’d been, retelling his story felt so real. So alive, and seeing her paint the pictures in front of his eyes, made the reality of the hospital seem dreamlike and ephemeral.
“Who is he?” she asked, switching subjects.
“Just a man,” he said, eyeing the piece of formed clay lying prone on the bed. If he didn’t know better, if he didn’t know the magic at work within that shell, he’d never suspect it to be anything other than human. It breathed, it grew hair and nails, it seemed so human. Except for its lack of a soul.
“But you know him?” she continued, tracing her pale blue fingers along the length of the golem’s hairy forearm.
“It is just a body, Paz.”
She stopped rubbing his arm and shook her head. “No, it’s more than that. He’s more than that. He saved my life on that plane.”
Jinni clenched his jaw. “It is not alive, it is a golem.”
“A golem?” She frowned and slowly pulled her hand back. “What is that?”
“Have you not wondered why he sleeps, and yet looks perfect? Why he is not connected to a life support machine, but refuses to wake?”
She blinked. “I don’t understand. He talked to me on the plane. He called me by name.”
Her last words were wistful and full of longing, the sound of it made him ache. Being around Paz, made him remember what it felt like to feel. To want and need. To see her reaching out to an inanimate object made his fingers twitch with anger.
“When your plane was crashing…”
How could he tell her this so that she would believe him? Paz hadn’t had a difficult time believing in ghosts, obviously, since she was one now. But would she believe in fairies and fairy tales? In creatures beyond this realm, fantastical beings that lived and breathed and required no soul to do it? He didn’t want to scare her.
“Yes?” she asked.
“My… friend,” he swallowed the lie that stuck in his throat like gall, “spoke those words to you, through its mouth.” He jerked his head in the direction of the golem.
“What?” Paz glanced at the golem, disbelief gleaming in her eyes. “No. No,” she laughed, “I don’t believe you. He called me by name, he was my Todd.”
Jinni didn’t know who Todd was, but he did not like the sound of it. Irritated, he flicked his wrist. “It is as I say, Paz. That thing is little more than animated clay. Without a soul to breathe life into it, there it will remain. Never rotting, never living, never moving.”
She hugged her arms to her chest and instantly Jinni wanted to apologize. He hadn’t meant to sound so curt, but to see her looking at that thing that way, it made his form buzz with anger.
He clamped down hard on his teeth as he watched her slowly turn aside and make her way out the room. Sadness clung to her like a parasite, filling the walls, the room with a soul sucking void of loneliness.
Her negative energy was gaining strengt
h. She seemed to be happy when he was around, which helped to keep her grounded to this world and this reality.
“Wait, Paz, wait!” He chased after her, his fingers brushing through her shoulder blades.
She shuddered and stopped. “Go away, Jinni. That’s what you want to do anyway, right?”
He floated in front of her, soul clenching at the sight of her perfect teardrop tears tracking down either side of her face.
“I am sorry,” he admitted. “I do not know how to befriend others well. I did once. Or so I thought, but I am mindless and cruel at times. Please forgive me.”
She nibbled on the corner of her blue lips and his heart clenched.
Though Jinni wasn’t much more than molecules of vapor, he felt her. Being around her, seeing her smiles, she made him feel alive. He needed her as much as she needed him.
“Don’t go to the light, peace.”
Her lashes fluttered and a soft chuckle dropped from her lips. “My mother used to call me that.”
He smiled. “Then maybe it’s your turn to tell me a story.”
Paz flicked at her thumbnail with her finger and nodded shyly. “I will. But only if you promise to finish yours.”
“I will tell you everything. But some of it is hard. Give me a moment to smile.”
“And how is telling my story going to make you smile?”
“Because it is about you.”
She inhaled sharply.
“But first,” he held up finger, “are you hungry?”
“Hungry?” She laughed and the sound reminded him of the silvery twinkles of starlight. “But we’re ghosts. I don’t get hungry. I don’t think.” She frowned. “Should I?”
Her innocence and naiveté amused him. The smile on his face would become permanent around her, of that he was certain. He’d never felt like this with Nala. With the Queen it had always been passion and sparks, fire and fury.
But with Paz, it was a gentle brook burbling through a quiet meadow. And he was hungry for more.
“No, little dove,” the endearment slipped easily from his tongue, “we do not get hungry. But we do get abysmally bored. So,” he gestured with his hand, “lead me to the food area, I’ll teach you how to eat, while you tell me all about Paz.”
“My life was pretty boring.”
He placed a hand on her back, shoving what little bit of energy he had left to him into it and for a split second he felt the cool shivers of her energy roll along his. He trembled and she purred.
Jinni couldn’t sustain the power long, but it’d been enough. He stared at his hand as she walked toward the dining area, sure he’d see a mark upon it. Something tangible to mark the beauty of the moment.
But there was only a faint blue hand staring back at him, curling his hand into a fist he pressed it against his chest. She stopped and turned to look at him, all innocence and sweetness.
“Are you coming?”
Forever. Endlessly. Eternally. “Always.”
Chapter 8
Paz glanced shyly from out the corner of her eye as he laughed at her. His laugh was rich, like dark chocolate cocoa. It warmed her and made her feel like she glowed.
Maybe she did glow. She stared at her arms.
“Shove it out, Paz,” he instructed again. “Push all that energy you feel rolling deep, deep below the surface, shove it up to the surface. Force it into your hand, your feet. You’re a fresh ghost, you can probably maintain it for a while.”
“I keep trying, but it’s not easy. You’ve had how many years of practice?” She huffed, and narrowed her eyes, concentrating on that stiff ball of crackling energy he’d talked about. She felt it like a witch’s brew bubbling and fizzing just beneath the surface of her chest bone.
There was no one else in the cafeteria, which really didn’t surprise her. It was past four in the morning last time she checked, not that it mattered.
It was one thing to flick aside a sheet, quite another to try and lift a cup of coffee, let alone drink said cup of coffee.
Visualizing the energy like a hard steel ball, she mentally imagined herself pushing it up to her collarbone and then rolling it one hard turn at a time down her arm. Her entire frame shook and rattled, silverware at the end of the long white table began to make a buzzing noise as it softly bounced upon the hard top.
“Seven hundred years,” he said, and she snapped her eyes wide, losing the ball and her concentration.
“What?! You’re seven hundred years old?”
He laughed. “No.”
She snorted and shook her head, rolling her shoulder, feeling an ache at her shoulder joint. The same type she used to feel after a hard workout. Paz rubbed her arm, reveling in the ache that made her feel more alive and real than she had in days. “Good, because for a second there I was about to totally wig out--”
“I’m infinitely older.”
The words died on her tongue. Did ghosts lie? Were they capable of it?
Even though she was a ghost now, Paz had no idea what it really meant to be one.
“Wow, that’s…”
His molten brown eyes sparkled and she giggled.
“Yeah, ancient. You’re ancient. So genies don’t fade into the light like we do?”
Paz eyed the cup of lukewarm coffee before her. Jinni had brought it to her hours ago, it’d steamed then. The scent rich and bitter and so mouthwateringly tempting she’d been sure she’d have learned the trick long ago. If only because her desire for the cup of java had been so strong. But no beans (pun intended).
She’d abracadabra’d, open sesame’d, and counted to three, none of which had worked. The coffee had gotten colder and colder and Jinni had laughed harder and harder.
He shook his head. “No, we don’t fade like that. But we do fade. Gradually.”
Giving the coffee up as a lost cause, she settled her chin on her fist and shrugged. “So you don’t fade, but you do. Trippy,” she teased.
When he laughed again, she sighed. That smile of his made her belly squeeze and her body tingle. “You have such a nice smile.”
The laughter died on Jinni’s tongue and Paz froze the moment she realized she’d said it out loud.
“What I meant to say was--”
He held up a hand. “No need to apologize. There was a time in my life once when I enjoyed laughter. Medicine for the soul Aria had called it.”
“You miss her?”
The flicker and buzz of the fluorescent lighting suddenly dimmed, leaving them in near darkness. But his glow was so bright, Paz had no problem making him out. He reminded her of a movie she’d seen once long ago, a corny stupid movie Richard had made her watch…
“You’ve a smile in your eyes. What are you remembering?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s silly.”
“Stories go both ways, Paz, and I do recall you saying you would share yours with me.”
She flicked her wrist. “Just when I was ten, my brother was really into aliens and space crafts, you know, U.F.O. nonsense. Which is probably why he’s working on his astronomy doctorate.”
Jinni nodded, and it felt so easy to talk to him. Memories she hadn’t thought of in days assailed her, but not only the memories, also the warm feelings associated with them.
“Aliens do exist, but continue,” he said with a regal nod.
Her jaw dropped. “Really? You’re yanking my leg.”
A twinkle danced in his dark eyes. “As much as I would love to yank your leg,” his voice reminded her of the slow burn of whiskey sliding down her throat, “I do not jest. He is correct. I am one, in the human sense I suppose.”
She frowned. “But I thought you said you came from Kingdom?”
“And Kingdom is another planet, ergo…” he lifted his brow, a smug look on his face.
Snorting with laughter, she shrugged. “I guess you’re right.”
“Anyway, you were saying?”
“Oh, the movie. Yeah. Well, he wanted to watch some stupid movie about an alien coming to our earth.
And the only thing I can really remember about that movie was that the aliens glowed blue at night and how pretty I thought that was, and you reminded me of that movie. You glow too.”
Neither spoke, each one letting the words settle in, maturate and root. If she could have blushed, she might have. But it seemed pointless to pretend something she didn’t feel, they were both semi-dead after all.
“Have you ever been in love, Paz?” Jinni asked, so quietly she’d barely heard it.
“I thought so. Once. I even got engaged. But I broke it off two weeks before the wedding.”
“Why?”
She rolled her eyes, fingering the table, attempting to push some of her energy into the tip. Just so she could feel it, but apart from the brief shock of static, she felt nothing. The “touch” sensation was fading rapidly. The first day she’d felt the world around her still, now… it was getting harder to even remember what “touch” felt like.
“It would be so much easier to say he cheated on me. Or he was a jerk and I was naïve and the injured party. But Harrison was a good guy. He and Todd, my brother’s partner, work together in the same chiropractor clinic. He was really nice.”
Saying it only made her feel worse, she couldn’t look Jinni in the eye. Didn’t want to see his scorn or anger. Richard and Todd, bless them, had been two of the few people to stay on her side after the messy break-up.
“You left him?”
Nodding slowly, she said, “Yes. He was so nice, but…” finally she looked at him, and didn’t see the judgment so many others had cast her way.
“He was not the one,” he said softly. Not a question, just a statement of fact.
“No, he wasn’t. And I didn’t think it would be fair to him to marry him. He deserved someone to be as madly in love with him as he’d been with me.”
“Do you ever regret it?”
Paz stood, and paced in front of the table. “Sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if he was the one and I was just expecting too much.”
She stopped then and looked at Jinni. A perfect stranger. His large brown eyes made her feel slightly dizzy and breathless. He might be blue, but she’d painted him as he’d been. Dark and olive toned, with a proud nose and sensual lips. Her body pulsed, literally beginning to glow brighter. She frowned.
