The Accidental Genie (10 page)

His hands fumbled with the bottle at her command, and he winced when he considered he’d probably shaken her up. Steadying the bottle, he rubbed it between his palms like he had before. The low vibration he’d felt in his feet the last time accompanied the action again.

In seconds, Jeannie’s silhouette was encased in the familiar lavender smoke along with something he couldn’t quite make out. He heard her stumble and hit the floor with a grunt. Rushing to her side, Sloan squinted through the thick cloud until he got a closer glimpse.

Holy shit
.

“Look, knight in shining armor, grease up your white steed and ready yourself for battle,” Jeannie demanded dryly, plucking at, for all intents and purposes, what appeared to be a worn, faded, blue and green throw rug plastered to her as though it had a suction grip. She blew a puff of air out, making the frayed fringe tickling her nose lift upward. “And be wary, fierce warrior, he’s a feisty one.”

The rug lifted ever so slightly from Jeannie’s lithe frame while dust flew upward in clouds of gray. “Better come wit yer A-game, too, hard body. I’m ready to fight to the death for this dame,” it said with a gravelly, determined crunch to its tone.

Damn.

A talking carpet.

He’d have much rather had the flat screen.

CHAPTER

5

Sloan knelt down, placing his palms in front of him, and pressed his cheek to the floor so he was eye level with Jeannie. It was an obvious move on his part to get a handle on what he was seeing.

His jaw fairly unhinged; the full view of his white teeth almost made her laugh. “Unfuckingbelieveable,” he muttered, wide-eyed. “Excuse my bad language.”

Jeannie gave him
the look
with as much of her left eyeball as she could move. In fact, it was the only thing on her body that was capable of movement, the carpet had her so tightly in its grip. Also to be noted, her housekeeper was clearly a slacker, if the dust balls under her couch were any indication. Good to know.

“I can’t believe this,” Sloan said again, his beautiful face masked in disbelief.

“You know, I find that statement very unsettling coming from a
werewolf
,” she admonished, then coughed from the lingering particles of dust falling around her.

The rug flattened again, then rose up to fold its ends together and stroke Jeannie’s cheek. It purred when she tried to move out from under it, pinning her harder to the floor.

Purred.

Jesus Christ.

“You talk . . .” Sloan muttered, his eyes glassy.

“So do you,” the carpet shot back with an intentionally sarcastic surprise to its tone.

“Sloan,” Jeannie hissed, her fists tight next to her torso. “Help. Me,” she mouthed, forcing her body to lay prone so as not to incite suffocation.

Suffocation by throw rug. Irony. She had it.

Sloan ran a hand through his hair, his face still so full of awe it was clearly leaving him immobile. “Who—what . . .
How
?”

The edge of the rug lifted again, its fringe ruffling. The sigh it let loose was long and beleaguered, as though he’d told the how of it a million times before. “Magic carpet, ya know? Blah-blah, blah.”

Jeannie wrinkled her nose as more dust fell on her. “Might I make a minor suggestion?”

“You can make anything you want with me, dollface.
Anything
.”

“Consider RugDoctor. STAT.”

The carpet chuckled husky and deep with the tone of a thousand cigarettes smoked. “Whatever you say, pretty lady.”

She cleared her throat. “I’m Jeannie Carlyle, by the way. Yes, I’m a genie named Jeannie. Ironic, I know.”

Jeannie felt rather than saw the carpet’s confusion. “I don’t get it,” he groused.

“Never mind. And you are?”

“You’ll laugh.”

Hah!
“Don’t count on it. I’m all laughed out for tonight. Maybe even forever. So hit me.”

“Mat.”

A giggle bubbled in her throat. “Say again?”

“Mat.”

“Like welcome?”

“One and the same.”

“So M-A-T?”

“I love a smart broad.”

The heavy press of the carpet wasn’t enough to keep her chest from heaving upward. The snort rippled from her throat and turned into a fit of loud giggles she had to gasp for breath to contain.

The sound of which must have alerted Wanda and Nina, whose feet thumped down her hall and entered the living room in a skid of slippers.

“Jeannie?” Wanda said on a surprised gasp, almost slipping and falling on top of Sloan. She rebalanced herself and threw a hand to her mouth.

“No fucking way, yo,” Nina said with a whisper, kneeling beside Jeannie to examine the carpet, her eyes wide.

Jeannie sighed. “I find it amusing that you three, of all the Are You Kidding Me in Are-you-kidding-me-ville, are so shocked and dismayed by this, yo.” Though, it was just a little funny to see a woman who had fangs and could fly in such a state of disbelief.

Nina poked the carpet only to have it growl and snap at her. She backed off immediately and murmured, “Dude, it’s not . . . Is that a . . . ?”

Jeannie attempted to nod, lifting her chin when she did to avoid another mouthful of musty fringe. “Dude, it so totally is.”

Nina slumped down on the floor, crossing her legs to examine the rug, her flawless face full of wonder. She shook her head. “Shut the fuck up.”

Jeannie cocked an eyebrow at her. “Didn’t I read in your swanky OOPS pamphlet that you can fly and read minds, Nina? And doesn’t Stacy or Tracy or whatever her name is have horns or something—shoot fireballs?”

“Casey,” Wanda corrected while she gnawed the tip of her fingernail, her brow furrowed. “Her name is Casey. She’s my sister, and, yes, we all have abilities of some kind or another. But this . . .” She gave Jeannie a sheepish glance before falling back into silence.

“Right. So you all have your paranormal gadgets; I guess now I do, too.” Even if it was a gadget that smelled like one-hundred-year-old mothballs and an opium den. It rather made her feel as though she fit into this new paranormal world that had been thrust upon her.

“Good point, doll,” Mat cooed, then coughed, blowing more dusty air upward.

Sloan finally found his voice and, apparently, his white steed. He leaned over Jeannie, his lips so close to hers she had to close her eyes and exhale a cleansing breath because he smelled so delicious. “Mat?” he growled, low and with a distinct warning.

“Calvin Klein ad?”

Jeannie watched Sloan’s teeth clench when he ordered, “Get off the lady.”

“Oooor what?”

“Oooor I get the damn Dyson.”

Jeannie, finally able to drag a hand out from beneath Mat, held it up under Sloan’s nose with a warning of her own in her eyes. Silly as it would appear, she wasn’t afraid of something as utterly unbelievable as a talking carpet.

The impossible was . . . well . . . not as impossible as it had been yesterday. “Boys—let’s not argue. Though, Mat, I don’t mind telling you, I think, with the kung fu grip you have on me, my kidneys have switched places with my spleen. If you could lighten up, it would be appreciated.”

Instantly, Mat fell almost limp, the suction he’d created lessening until she was able to slip free of him and scurry backward until she was almost pressed up against Sloan’s broad chest. She eyed the carpet with her own disbelief, finally getting a good look at the tattered, unraveling thread and gaping hole of a cigarette burn on his upper-left corner.

Mat slithered up to her feet, staying as close as possible without actually climbing back on top of her. “Sorry, doll. I just wanted ta get the hell outta there. You were my only shot at freedom. Desperate times and all.”

Her nod of an answer was solemn. “I know that feeling well.” She reached out and patted his matted surface, noting more cigarette burns. “So, speaking of desperation—how’d you get in the bottle to begin with?”

“I was in there with Burt,” he replied with gruff ease. As though that was how everyone entered a bottle. With Burt.

Jeannie’s eyebrows furrowed together. “Burt.”

“Yeah. He was the guy in the bottle before you, doll.”

Her stomach fluttered. Finally, a clue and she was going to beat that clue into submission with a good old-fashioned interrogation.

With all the crazy that had occurred tonight, preparing to ask a magic carpet questions about his prior owner should be the icing on her crazy cake. Yet, after all she’d seen—
done
—questioning a throw rug was mere child’s play. “The guy in the bottle before me was named Burt?
Burt?
” A genie named Burt was like a boy named Sue.

Mat caressed her thigh. “Yep. Burt.”

“And how did you and
Burt
become an item?”

His discontent emanated from his worn threads in the way of a shiver. “Me an’ Burt wasn’t never no item. I came with the bottle. When Burt was put in the bottle, I became his. He just couldn’t use me because he couldn’t get out of the bottle. So, there we were, a coupla losers stuck together until you came along. End of story.”

“Which means now Jeannie owns you,” Sloan said, rolling his tongue in his cheek.

“That’s right and all my magical powers, too. So hands off my broad,” Mat sneered, rising up until he was eye to carpet with Sloan. He puffed his top half forward in a Neanderthal gesture before slumping back into a heap on the floor. Then he hacked a phlegm-filled cough, which Jeannie responded to with a pat on his mottled blue and green surface.

Mat rolled against her palm like a contented cat having its back scratched. Jeannie gave him a light poke. “So you’ve always been in the bottle—before even Burt was? Who did you belong to before Burt?”

Mat scoffed and cleared his throat. “I didn’t belong to nobody but the road, sugar. I was cursed and put in the bottle by a bent-outta-shape djinn. Burt, that slimeball slacker, came a long time afterward. It was a lonely go of it.”

“So you were alone in the bottle until Burt? How long was Burt in the bottle with you, and why didn’t you escape with him when he got out of the bottle?”

“Because you’re a whole lot hotter, dollface.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Me and Burt only been together about forty years. But Burt ain’t got nuthin’ to do with me. I can’t ever get outta the bottle unless the palooka that put me there lifts the curse or somebody, like you, gorgeous, takes me with ’em. I was cursed to stay in the bottle. Burt gettin’ trapped in there, too, was just what you all call a victim of circumstance.”

Everyone paused to digest that for a moment until Sloan asked with a rise to his arrogant eyebrow, “Care to explain the curse part and your involvement?”

“Care to stick it up your ass?” Mat choked out before heaving another cough.

Sloan’s brow rose and his blue eyes narrowed. “Care to feel the wrath of a Dyson? I hear they have awesome suction.”

Mat shrank back against Jeannie with a shiver, his bravado gone. “Fine. I wasn’t always a magic carpet.”

Jeannie held up a hand to thwart Sloan and gave Mat an encouraging smile. “Then what were you? A lucky coin, maybe? A rabbit’s foot?”

“Yer a funny broad.”

“I’m a desperate broad who wants answers. So cough them up, please,” she said and batted her eyelashes at him.

“I was a gangster.”

But Sloan wasn’t going to be deterred. “Magic carpets have gangs?”

“No, ya filthy rat,” Mat grumbled with scorn. “Gangsters have gangs. Ya know, speakeasies, tommy guns, prohibition, molls, Capone, the whole kit and caboodle?”

“Hold the fuck on—you were once human?” Nina crowed, now on her feet and pacing the floor in front of Mat.

“Just like you, lady.”

Nina sank back to the floor with the second expression of awe Jeannie had seen on her face tonight. “No shit . . .”

Jeannie was instantly sympathetic. She knew what it was to be trapped and helpless. Not once, but now twice in her life. “Who did this to you?”

“I told ya, dollface. A djinn I pissed off.”

“Pissed off because?” Wanda cajoled, kneeling beside Mat and the others.

“As I recall,” Sloan interjected, “gangsters horned in on legitimate liquor stores and forced the owners to sell their bootleg liquor. Is that what got you into this mess, Mat?”

He blew out a dust-riddled sigh. “Yeah, that’s what got me into this mess, bright eyes. I threatened the wrong liquor storeowner, okay? He said I wasn’t fit to wipe his shoes on. Next thing I know, I’m a welcome mat stuck in a bottle o’ some of the best bootleg gin I had. He told me if I ever got the hell outta the bottle, then everybody’d wipe their feet on me for eternity. He wasn’t shittin’. I thought gettin’ the hell out would break the curse. Obviously, no such luck.”

Jeannie’s heart tightened despite the fact that Mat was, for all intents and purposes and by his own admission, a criminal. “That must have been awful being alone for all these years.”

Mat’s sigh was long and drawn out. “Just me and my regrets until that filthy scum got thrown in there with me.”

Jeannie’s glance was sympathetic. “The scum being Burt?”

“Yeah, Burt. Burt and the filthy socks he left lyin’ all over me, his disgustin’ two-pack-a-day habit, and his crappy music.”

Wanda ran a hand over Mat’s back, giving it a little scratch. A fond smile flitted across her lips. “So who put Burt in the bottle, Mat?”

“I got no idea, good-lookin’. I just know one minute I was lollin’ the day away, dreamin’ about my girl, the next that piece of shit was on top of me screamin’ somethin’ about how he’d get somebody named Nekaar. I think. It was a long time ago. Memory’s not so good.”

Jeannie’s stomach fluttered again. They had a name—one that undoubtedly sounded much more like a genie’s name than Burt. “So, you think Nekaar is the name of the genie who put Burt into the bottle?”

Mat flipped over, offering up his underside for scratching. “That was the name Burt used when he said if he ever got ahold of him, he’d drown him in the piss of a thousand camels. The guy who cursed him to the bottle was another one o’ those crabby, fancy-talkin’ djinns. Not that I can blame the guy. I’d be crabby, too. You seen the pants they gotta wear?”

Jeannie’s giggle was soft. “Firsthand. So in order to get into the bottle you have to be cursed?” That didn’t make sense. No one had cursed her.

Mat draped himself over her lap. “Only a djinn can curse someone. They’re the only ones with the power to do it. The only other way to get in a bottle is to replace someone else. I learned that from Burt and all that yakkin’ he did night after night to himself and some guy whose name he never did say. That’s how you got in the bottle, dollface. You replaced Burt, and I’m damn sure glad ya did. Not only did you bust me out, but you’re much better lookin’ ’n him.”

Jeannie shook her head. Each time one revelation was made, yet another question arose. “I don’t get it. Why wasn’t Burt enslaved to me like I am to Sloan?” She threw a finger over her shoulder at her enslaver.

“I prefer the title
recipient by circumstance
, thank you,” Sloan teased, shooting her a grin that would melt any sane woman’s heart.

“Only thing I can figure is ’cus Burt was a djinn. He cursed you the same way he was cursed, and he did it before you had the chance to figure he was yours for three wishes. If I remember right, didn’t he say somethin’ when you let him out? I remember a lotta screamin’, but it’s kinda fuzzy. I was nappin’, ya know.”

Sloan nodded his head and squeezed her shoulder before removing his hand as quickly as it had landed on her flesh. “I remember you saying he yelled some kind of gibberish,” he reminded her.