Magic Gone Wild (25 page)

Like the tackle from the… coat rack that dropped him to the floor.

Or maybe it was because the armoire
tripped
him.

Gary smacked his forehead on the floor and twisted, the bag with the genie bottle skittering away. But he had bigger problems: that coat rack could throw a punch. He was trying to dodge the wildly swinging arms, kicking it in what he hoped were its nuts, while he crab-walked away from the armoire that was stomping across the floor like a giant.

This was Fucked Up.

So was the rug that started undulating beneath him.

Fighting with the fringe that was wrapping around his fingers, Gary scrambled out from beneath the psychotic hunk of wood, scooped the bag, yanked the genie bottle out, and brandished it in front of him. “Get back or I’ll melt this. Then where will your genie be? Where will
you
be?”

Either they couldn’t hear, or they didn’t get the concept of smelting; they kept coming. And the armoire’s doors were flapping. That would hurt more than the spindly arms of the coat rack if it caught him, and, man, these guys could move.

And then something small, shiny, and metallic flew across the room, just missing his nose and clacking like a bad set of chattering teeth. What the fuck?

Gary headed toward the kitchen since the coat rack stood shoulder to shoulder (figuratively speaking) with the armoire, blocking his escape route.

And then he stumbled into the kitchen to find… dishes. Standing on their edges. Lined up like a field of linebackers—with their ruffled edges fluttering in the breeze. Except there was no breeze. And these were
dishes
. Inanimate objects.

Or were they?

Oh ho; this was his lucky day. Enchanted dishes. Things he could easily transport. The genie would definitely want her magical, dancing dishware back. Women always liked this kind of stupid shit.

Then one of the dishes went whizzing by his head like a Frisbee. Followed by another—and another—forcing him toward the back door.

He was not leaving without one of them.

When another dish went sailing through the air toward him, Gary grabbed it. Its edges whirred around like a circular saw but luckily were too smooth to do any damage. He, however, could do a lot of damage to it.

He shoved the bag with the lantern under his arm and held the dish out in front of him with both hands. “One more step and I snap it in half.”

Every inanimate animated object in the room stopped moving. The chattering-teeth thing stopped clacking. Thank God.

“That’s it, big guy,” he said to the armoire. “Back it up. Right into the living room where you belong. You, too, Ichabod.” He could swear the coat rack shivered.

“You.” He nodded at all the dishes who’d landed on the dish towel on the drainboard. “Wrap yourselves up in that towel. One layer each.” He grabbed another towel from the cabinet knob and tossed it to those on the table. “The rest of you, too. Hurry up. One flex of my wrist and this guy’s history if you don’t.”

The dishes drooped their edges as they worked themselves into a stack, each one divided by a layer of towel. He grabbed a pair of grocery bags and stuffed the bundles inside, tying the ends securely, then shoved them inside the box on the counter, just squeezing them in. Good. They wouldn’t be able to move at all.

Then he shoved the box inside another couple of bags and tied each one tightly, trussing them up enough that they wouldn’t be able to alert Zane or the genie while he got away. He’d like to take them all, but that would alert Zane immediately that someone knew his secret. Gary wanted some time to plan how to use this to his best advantage.

Now to see to the thugs in the living room.

He shoved the remaining dish into his supply bag with the bottle, picked up the package of dishes, then walked back into the living room.

The furniture was having a powwow, leaning against each other as if they were planning something.

“I’m not kidding, you two.” He held up the box of dishes. “Separate or I start breaking these one by one until you do.”

He could almost feel the animosity emanating from them, but who the hell cared? He just needed some way to stop Zane from finding out what he’d been up to. Since kidnapping an armoire was out of the question, the next best thing would be to knock them out… Hmmm.

Before the coat rack had a chance to realize what he was going to do, Gary grabbed it and swung it at the top of the armoire with all his might. Luckily, the thing didn’t break as it made contact, but he felt the reverberations all the way up his arms.

He also felt the coat rack go slack. And saw the armoire’s door fall open.

Aha!

Gary grabbed the fishing line he’d packed and made quick work of tying their legs together in a crisscross pattern. He did the same thing with the armoire’s door latches after shoving the box of dishes inside. That shit was stronger than twine and had the added benefit of being nearly invisible. Zane and the genie wouldn’t be able to see the binding unless they were looking for it, buying him more time.

The rug was a little tougher, but a couple of thick nails from Zane’s toolbox—ah, the irony—nailed it to the floor and some tape on the fringe kept it immobile. The little clacking compact, though easy to transport, was too vicious to risk it getting free in his home, so Gary taped it shut and stuffed it between the sofa cushions after it came at him one more time. Hopefully no one would find it for a long time.

Gary picked up his bag and saw the lone dish trying to escape. He gave it a nasty flick and it flinched. Good. It needed to know who was boss.

He made sure the bottle was still in there, smiling as he imagined the cash he’d have the genie zap all over him with his first wish. He’d roll around in it. Bathe in it. Sleep in it. And then he’d spend it. Every freaking dime, and have her conjure more. Gold the next time. Jewels. A Ferrari—no, a Bugatti. No. A Bugatti
and
a Ferrari. And a Porsche, too. Or three.

One quick glance around the room showed that everything looked the way it had before. He ran across the living room, climbed back out the window, put the screen in place, and hightailed it back to his car.

Like taking candy from a baby.

26

In spite of everything, Vana was excited to head back into town to Watson’s Diner. Peter had loaned the original owners money to get it started, and she hadn’t been in since the ribbon cutting.

Surprisingly, the diner hadn’t changed all that much. Well, the technology was different and the sepia photographs on the wall had faded, but the gingham décor and the smell of Catherine Watson’s homemade pies were still the same.

The townspeople, however, had done a complete one-eighty from their predecessors.

Peter had been accustomed to stony silence, but the minute she and Zane took their seats in a booth by the window and ordered two sodas, the chatter started.

“You’re Peter’s great-grandson, aren’t you?” asked an older gentleman who spun around on his stool at the counter to stare at them.

“Of course he is,” the man’s wife chided, spinning her stool around, too. “Who else is going to be living in that house?”

“Who else would
want
to,” muttered the woman on the other side of the counter.

“I remember your parents,” said another woman in the booth behind Vana. “I never understood why anyone cared about those old stories when your parents always did such nice things around town. Like the scholarship your mom created in your father’s name. My son won it his senior year. It really helped with college. I guess she was just carrying on both families’ legacies, huh?”

“She was,” said Zane. “That scholarship was important to her. Thank you for telling me and congratulations to your son.”

Vana cleared her throat after they’d opened their menus. “What did she mean by ‘both families’?”

Zane exhaled and set the menu down as a teenaged waitress put their sodas on the table. After they’d given their orders he answered in a low voice, which, considering she was the only one in the place who didn’t know what the woman was talking about, probably had nothing to do with being overheard.

“Civic duty. It’s on both sides of my family, though Peter was way ahead of my mother’s father on that front. Probably why the old guy busted a gut when Mom decided to marry into the Harrison family. He was a judge in the next county. Old school. You know the type: stern, disapproving, thought he was better than everyone else. Especially Peter Harrison’s grandson. And because of that, I never saw my grandparents. Even after my father died, we didn’t move in with them. Mom took me to a distant cousin in Philly. I was just happy to be away from all the gossip where no one knew anything about Peter or the stories. Thank God the Internet didn’t exist in those days. I wouldn’t have had the same anonymity if it had.”

“Yet you chose a high-profile career.”

“But it was
my
choice. Where
my
accomplishments earned me what I wanted. Where my drive and my talent and my ethics and my hard work allowed me to decide who I wanted to become. If I’d stayed here, I’d have been defined by everyone’s opinion of who I should be. That’s why I have to get rid of the place, Vana. It’s not who I am anymore.”

“But you don’t have to sell it.”

“Look, I appreciate how much you care, but let’s change the subject. How about you tell me about you?”

“Me? I’m a genie. What more is there to know?”

“Well, for starters, you mentioned a sister. Do you have parents?”

She started choking. She never handled talking about her family well.

Zane thrust her soda into her hand, but holy smokes, that fizz burned when it went the wrong way. She coughed it out. “Of course I do. Genies don’t just spring from a fairy ring, you know.”

Zane put up his hands. “Okay. I get it. Backing off.”

Frankincense
. Bad enough she kept sabotaging his house; she didn’t need to bite his head off, too.

The waitress returned then with their meals, giving Vana another couple seconds to get herself under control
and
summon the shell she metaphorically plastered around her shoulders when dealing with anything having to do with her family. “Sorry, and yes, I do have a family. My parents are somewhere in the world when not in Service to anyone—which is most of the time. They’re probably rescuing a ram off the Matterhorn or retrieving a cow out of the Ganges as we speak.”

“They’re genies, too?”

“Of course. We’re a race, not an occupation.” Though her parents had treated djinn life as a vocation. Educated to the nth degree on every subject there was, her parents were experts in every field—and they’d expected the same from their daughters. DeeDee was on her way to fulfilling their wishes, but Vana? She might as well wish for Zane to fall in love with her because she had a better chance of pulling that off than living up to her parents’ expectations.

Hmmm… apparently fairy tales weren’t just for mortals.

“So genies can use magic for whatever they want?”

Her brain had gotten stuck on that little happily-ever-after scenario for a second, and she had to force it back to their conversation. She picked up a French fry, then dropped it onto her plate and licked her fingers. Sucker was hot. They’d always been soggy and cold by the time they’d gone through the necessary channels to make it into her bottle.

“Technically, genies in The Service are only supposed to use magic for their masters’ safety and comfort, unless they’re high enough on the proverbial food chain that the rules don’t apply. My parents are that high.” And she never forgot it.

“What about your sister?”

“DeeDee?” Vana nodded. “She’s that high, too. She’s the complete opposite of me, even though we’re twins. She’s the perfect daughter who can conjure a flawless diamond on the head of a pin with the bat of an eyelash. Granted that
is
her Way of doing magic, but still. Her magic is as flawless as that diamond.” Hers, on the other hand…

“Where are they now? Aren’t they wondering where you’ve been for the past hundred years?”

Vana shrugged and shifted on her seat when the knot that always formed in her belly when she talked about her family started acting up. “They know where I am.” The entire djinn world knew where she was. And why. “We Skype occasionally.”

Very occasionally and only very recently. The iPad they’d given her for her birthday two years ago had made that possible—but it’d also brought on more “life lessons.” And
should
-
do
s and
read-these
and
practice-this
…

She was tired of being treated like a child. Yes, she’d made a boneheaded decision when she was younger by jumping into the bottle before she was ready, but she’d figured it out in the interim. She shouldn’t have to pay for that mistake forever, but even when she’d mentioned that she’d picked up DeeDee’s
Djinnoire
, her parents hadn’t been appeased. She’d hate to think what they’d say about the magic she’d been doing lately.