“You’re such a sap,” she said, throwing a light punch at my shoulder.
With the fire out and the area secured, Harry left.
“I’m going to slip back to the bar and make sure Chaos isn’t reigning on Bogie’s watch,” Desmond said before slipping away into the darkness.
“Well, come on then,” Seth said holding Nai’s boot out to her. “I’ll walk you both home before heading back to the bar.”
“Wait, I’ll be right there,” Nai said, swinging her backpack off of her back and rummaging through until she found a marker.
“Nai, where are you going?” I called out, but she disappeared through the thicket. I really didn’t want to go back in there, but a moment later, she returned with a devious smile on her face. “Oh no…” I said as I remembered the students who were still suspended in a magical slumber.
“Oh yes,” Nai said and showed me a picture she had taken with her phone. She had used the marker to draw a crude picture of a penis on Emma’s forehead. “Just because I don’t have to be the evil twin doesn’t mean that I can’t be the evil twin.”
“I guess… I guess she deserved that,” I said, earning me a high five from Nai and a frown of disapproval from Seth.
* * *
“What are you doing?”
“Going to bed?”
After Seth left, I planned to get a good night’s sleep and not think about Discordant or possessed teachers until the morning. Nai, apparently had other plans.
“It’s not even midnight,” she scoffed as she followed me up the stairs.
“Okay, sure, but you weren’t the one who almost got turned into a portal and I’m pretty sure my nose is broken.”
“Yeah, it might be a little crooked,” she said as I inspected it in the mirror. “But whatever. Just clean it up and put on a new shirt.”
“Nai,” I sighed. “If you even think I want to go chasing Discordant after what happened tonight…”
“I’m not!” she argued. “I just thought we might go down to Louie’s. You know, in case Seth needs to send a lost soul our way. I mean, it’s going to be a lot easier to be Guardians now, right?”
Her shrug was casual, but almost too casual and I smirked.
“Seth said we had the night off,” I reminded her. “But if you want to go flirt with a certain waiter, why do you want me to go along?”
“I… what are you…?” she sputtered.
“Oh wow!” I exclaimed. My jaw dropped as a red flush crept over my sister’s cheeks. “You’re blushing, Nai! You’re actually blushing!”
“I am not! Just… shut up!”
“Oh come on! This is good,” I taunted. “First you save my life, and then you get embarrassed over a crush. Nai, there’s hope for you yet!”
I might have pushed my taunting too far because the next thing I knew, Nai lunged at me, grabbing my collar as she pushed me into the wall.
“Jem, I swear on the Cycle that if you tell anyone that I saved your life, I’m going to kill you my-”
There was a crash and the sound of glass breaking as Nai shoved me into the bookshelf.
“Um…”
From the pile of broken glass that used to be the blue mystery bottle that I got from the antique mall, a pillar of smoke began to form, twisting into a mini tornado that spun about the room. With a pop, the smoke dissipated and a tall, thin man with black hair, pointy ears, and purple skin bowed low before us.
“What is your heart’s desire, master?”
“Uh, Nai?” I looked over at my sister in a silent plea for help, but as she turned from the purple man to me, her face twisted from surprise to amusement and she backed out of the room. “Where are you going, Nai?”
“Oh me? I’m just going out to get the popcorn,” she said, shaking her head.
“Popcorn?”
“That’s right. Because eventually, Desmond will come home and you will have to explain why there’s a genie in your room.”
“Um… On second thought, maybe I do want to go to Louie’s.”
Rise of the Discordant
Book #3
You Wish
Chapter 1
Chaos Unbottled
I’m not a violent man, but if I lay eyes on that numbskull nephew of mine ever again, he better run. I don’t know what he was thinking, but it sure weren’t nothing about my wellbeing. I knew I shoulda known better than to go along with his hair-brained scheme in the first place. Ain’t no good ever come from listening to folks what says they have a plan that puts all the inconveniencing on me and not them. I didn’t work my way up from lesser demon to imp by being a knucklehead. But it seems I ain’t immune to knucklehead-itis ‘cuz going along with that buffoon was what got me stuck in a pretty blue bottle with no way of communicating the particulars of the highly inconvenient situational I found myself in. Meaning, we was up doggie doodle creek.
Well, I was up the creek, for sure. Part of me had to wonder if the kid weren’t intentionally trying to pull one over on me what with the money he owed me and whatnot. I shoulda known when he had me take the fall with that lil’ blue-skinned beauty instead of offering to hop in her bottle himself that he were up to no good. Oh sure, he argued that I was the one trying to get back to the realm, not him, which was true. But when he dumped my hiney in a donation bin in some backwater burg, I couldn’t help but wonder if the nitwit weren’t growing a pair.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, which weren’t no good neither. As it was, I didn’t have a whole lot of wiggle room and blowing off steam in a sealed environmental such as a cursed vessel just made for an uncomfortable experience what with the rise in pressure and all. It was a good thing I didn’t have that fear of the tight spaces. Whatever that’s called again. Yeah, good thing I didn’t have that else I’d be trying to find a way to whack myself. Still, it weren’t like I was finding my zen or nothing. A cramped bottle with no escape sure as hell ain’t the most ideal of circumstantials. Who knows what I mighta done if I was forced to stay in there much longer.
When the bottle finally did broke, my first thoughts weren’t to give no rat’s patooty about where I was or what happened. The why-hows didn’t matter. I was free and that was all that mattered. I stretched all the kinks outta my limbs and was able to take a few spins around the room to limber up, savoring the sweet freshness of freedom. Of course, that only lasted a couple three seconds before the contractualities of my latest curse kicked in and I was forced to come to a stop.
“What is your heart’s desire, my master?”
The words came outta my mouth, they was in my voice, but they weren’t no words of mine. Ain’t no one ever been the master of me. Not even that blowhard Ajhe. He may be the big bad demon in charge of my sector of the realm, but that don’t mean diddlysquat. Howard G. Willachers ain’t never had to answer to nobody but himself. Needless to say, I weren’t too happy about bowing and scraping. I weren’t even sure what the scraping part meant.
But when I saw who it was that broke the seal and bound my tushie to this earthly paradise, I breathed a sigh of relief. A couple of kids stood staring at me. Kids wasn’t built with the same rational thought filters that most adults have. I didn’t pay much notice to the girl as she made some snide comment and left the room. Under normalstances, I mighta given her a dose of something unpleasant for her disrespectfulness, but I didn’t need no mirror to know these weren’t no normalstances.
The boy though, he were the one I was gonna need to pander to if I was gonna get myself outta this mess. Alls I had to do was get him hooked on the power trip what came with having all of one’s dreams come true. But instead of getting excited about the prospecticals of fame and fortune, this kid actually looked kinda scared, like he weren’t sure whether to run or toss his cookies.
“Um…” he stammered, backing away from me until he kneecapped himself on the edge of his bed. “I uh… what? Who are… Uh… I mean… what are…?”
Scared and a little slow on the uptake, appar
ently.
“Look kid, it’s best we don’t play games here, okay? You seen the movies, right? Then you gotta know what I is and what I can do for ya.”
“Um… Eurgh…”
Oh goodie. I had to get one who couldn’t string two syllables together.
“Listen, I ain’t got all day here, so I’ll lay it out for you. By smashing up my bottle, You freed me from a rather uncomfortable situational. To show my immense gratitude,” I said, kinda laying it on thick, “I humbly submit myself to your debt. All you desire is yours. All you gots to do, is ask. Meaning, you got a wish or what?”
“Uh…”
Yeesh, this were beginning to feel like work and work were a four letter word I made an art form out of avoiding.
A wish? Yeah I got a wish. I wish I’d never bought that stupid bottle.
Okay, so he could think. That was a good start, even if I didn’t appreciate his line of thinking.
“Yeah, but no,” I informed him. “You can’t go creating paradoxicals.”
“Pair of what?”
“Para-dox-ic-als” I said a little more slowly so as to let him catch up. I took a look around the room. There was a lot of football type paraphernalia. Maybe the poor kid had suffered a head injury. I heard those was rather common. Tragic as that were, I weren’t no brain surgeon and I didn’t have time to deal with no cracked noggins. I just needed this kid to get on with the wish granting and the inevitable entrapment, so as I could go back to looking for the rotten apple in my family tree. “You can’t go around wishing for things that mighta been,” I explained. “Like, ‘I wish you was never born’ or ‘I wish I never laid eyes on you.’ Stuff like that don’t work. You gotta think in the now, got it?”
“Wait, did you just read my mind?” he asked.
“Of course I did!”
Yeesh. Thicker than quality steak sauce, this guy.
“B-b-but that’s… I don’t think…” he stammered, suddenly turning a shade I ain’t never seen before.
“Look, kid, I ain’t reading your every thought, so relax, okay? I can only see when yous wish for stuff, so be careful,” I warned. “I ain’t got no way of telling if you is being serious or not and I can’t get you out of a murder rap, got it? Now, what can I do ya for?”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned murders.
“I um… I’m good,” he managed to choke out between exaggerated gulps of air. “I don’t need anything. I mean… There’s a catch, right?”
Uh oh. Forest Gump here weren’t as behind the short bus as I’d first thought.
“Well, if you want to get into the technicals, sure, but you ain’t got nothing to worry about.”
“Right,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “Like I’m going to trust a Discordant.”
Well now, that was a plot twist I weren’t expecting.
“Wait a minute,” I said and took another look at the kid, really looking this time. “You ain’t no regular type kid, is ya?”
Normally, Agent types have a huge billboard hanging over their heads, screaming what they was in big neon letters, but with this kid, it weren’t like that. It wasn’t even ‘til the gal came back, grumbling something about being out of popcorn, that I had an inkling of what was going on. Still though, they was oddball and I found myself in the position of changing my tacticals on the fly.
“Okay, fine, ya got me,” I said. “Yeesh! Tough break there, ending up working for the Order what with you two being kids and all. Tough break for me too, what with you not falling for my charms and whatnot neither, but we might be able to come to a mutual understanding.”
“So there is a catch,” he said, narrowing his eyes and trying to look all tough. It was kinda cute. The girl, clearly his sister now that I could see ‘em both together, just rolled her eyes like she was the smart one. She mighta been, for all I knew. There was definitely a more cunning vibe coming off of her than her brother.
“Well of course there’s a catch,” I told him with a shake of my noggin. “Look, buddy, I know what you is and you know what I is, so you oughta know that if something seems too good to be true, it’s probably gonna come back to bite you in the keister.”
“So, I don’t suppose you’ll just like, go away or anything, would you?”
“Yeah, as much as I’d like that, it ain’t the way things work,” I said, laughing at the oh so innocent look on this kid’s face. Like he actually believed he could politely ask me to leave. Not only was I stuck in the wrong realm and wrong body, I was now stuck like glue to an agent who didn’t seem like the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. I was, for lack of a more eloquent terminological, royally screwed.
“I don’t know,” said the girl. She had a diabolical glint in her eye that I weren’t liking too much. “There’s a whole box full of ugly-ass bottles up in the attic. I bet we might could find one that fits.”
Before I could explain why her little plan was flawed, the boy started braying like a donkey.
“Oh my gosh, Nai, did you just say might could?”
“I swear, Jem, I am going to murder you and cut out your tongue,” she hissed and lunged at her brother with enough force to make me think her words weren’t no exaggeration.
As amusing as it were to see the two of ‘em having a go at each other, I weren’t too sure the young miss had enough self-restraint to not murder her brother outright. Now, if that were to happen, I’da been more screwed than I already was at the moment. Besides that, there was a distinct aura of mystic magic surrounding her that was odd even for an agent of Order. Come to think of it, they was both more than just a little bit oddball. And what was up with their names? Nai and Jem? I swear, it’s like parents don’t even try these days. Like they just dump a few Scrabble tiles down on the table and call it a done deal.
I knew they was a split soul pair, so it stood to reason that they was Guardians. I seen a few of them before. But like I said, these two was odd and if I didn’t know any better, I’da sworn the little missy here was a Warrior. Her brother though, he was the one throwing me for a loop. He mighta got all the good guy genes, but his aura weren’t screaming Order. If anything, it was screaming distant cousin, but that didn’t make no sense. If he were Nyx, she woulda been Nyx too.
“Look, kids, hey,” I said, trying to restore some sort of order. Heh, order. Talk about your ironicals. “Maybe you two stop trying to kill each other okay? Maybe we can all work out a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“I highly doubt that,” the girl yapped in a tone that made me wish I knew how to throw a silencing curse, but at least she weren’t pummeling her brother no more.
“What are you talking about?” the kid asked, wary, but willing to listen.
“I’m looking for a Discordant that might be hanging around and causing a ruckus. His name is Hubert and he’s my nephew. Kinda looks like me only shorter and not so handsome.”
“Um, I haven’t seen any other genies in Blackbird, but I can ask Desmond.”
“It’s djinn,” I corrected. No one ever got that part right. “I ain’t no broad. But that don’t matter neither ‘cuz he ain’t one. My nephew’s just a lesser de… wait. Hold up. Did you say Desmond? You ain’t talking about the Warrior Desmond, is you?”
It had to be a coincidence. Desmond weren’t an uncommon name.
“You know Des?” The kid’s eyes went wide.
Or not.
“Ain’t too many of us who don’t know and have a major grudge against that guy,” I groused.
“Hang on,” the girl interrupted. “Hubert? You’re talking about Bogie aren’t you?”
“Oh, so you’ve met the bonehead,” I said with a nod. Yep, that were the Desmond I was afraid he was talking about. He got his jollies by giving us all little nicknames. I had a nickname for him too. It was jerk-face.
“Bogie’s your nephew? Oh my gosh, wait a minute. Are you his great uncle Howie?”
“He said nephew, not grand-nephew,” the girl said, rolling her eyes like she
was feeling superior, but the joke was on her.
“Yeah, on the technical, he’s my great-great-great grand-nephew, but I ain’t got time for that mouthful,” I admitted. “It’s about time we get the formalities outta the way. Howard G. Willachers at your service,” I said and stuck out my hand. “But you can call me Howie.”
“I’m Jem,” the boy replied. “And this is my sister, Nai. We’re twins, get it?”
So they wasn’t Scrabble tile names after all.
“Yeah, I get it,” I said. Of course, bad puns weren’t a whole lot better. Nai looked like she was gonna ralph and I can’t say as I could blame her. I’ll bet that joke were as tired as a mother of triplets cursed with insomnia.
“So ah, you says you know where to find Hubert?”
It was time for a long overdue family reunion.
“He works down at the Five Penny. We can’t get in yet, because we’re minors, but it’s not far from here.”
“Working?” I let out a rumbling guffaw that I couldn’t hold back. “Oh that’s a good one! You’re a real joker, kid. So where’s he really?”
“Huh?”
The confusion on the kid’s face made me do a double take. “Wait, you’re being serious? My nephew has a job?”
“Well, yeah. He’s a bartender.”
“A b-b-bart…” I collapsed into a fit and nearly gave myself a seizure trying to imagine the little twerp tending bar. “Well okay, come on then,” I gasped once I could breathe again. “Lead the way, ‘cuz this I gotta see.”
“Oh me too,” sneered Nai, turning to her brother. “You are seriously going to waltz into the Five Penny and tell Desmond you have a genie.”
“Djinn,” I corrected again, but Sunshine here had a very valid point. I ain’t never run completely afoul with Desmond in the past, but that was mostly because I knew better than to cross the Warrior’s path unless there was absolutely no other place to go.
“Well…” Jem hesitated, squirming on the spot. “I mean… We could just go to the back door and ask Bogie to come out to the alley. Desmond doesn’t have to know.”
Rise of the Discordant: The Complete Five Book Series Page 36
