Magic Gone Wild (36 page)

Oh gods, did he remember?

“If nothing’s wrong, why are you shrinking from me?”

“I’m not. You’re imagining it.”

Oh no, he wasn’t. Vana squeezed her eyes shut. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for him to remember. They’d ended up here together anyway. And he’d wanted to, so he couldn’t accuse her of taking advantage of him—

Except that’s exactly what she’d done by manipulating time for her own benefit, and Merlin was right. Mortals didn’t like people playing with their minds, figuratively
or
literally.

“I’m not imagining it, Vana.” He tugged her close. “Why is talking about protection freaking you out now? You were fine when you told me about it. Practically purred when… I…”

Had
brushed
a
rose
petal
over
her
lips.

There were no rose petals on this bed. Not this time.

“There were rose petals.”

Oh gods, he
was
remembering.

“Where are the rose petals, Vana?”

She squeezed her eyes shut even more.

“We were on pink satin sheets.”

Oh gods.

“In your…”

She knew the minute he remembered all of it. His body turned to stone, and his arm fell lax against her waist.

“Vana, why am I remembering rose petals and pink satin sheets in your bottle?”

She opened her eyes, then blinked away the tears. There would be no more kissing them away. Not once he found out.

“Because…” She cleared her throat. “Because we did this before.”

To his credit, he didn’t yell at her.

To hers, she’d rendered him speechless.

“Holy shit.”

Well, for all of about two seconds.

“What did you do?” He dragged his arm out from under her and propped himself on it.

Vana looked at the ceiling, unable to face him. “I… We… did this, and then… while you were sleeping, I…” She swiped a tear from her cheek and took a deep breath. Best to get this out in one long rush. “I took us back to earlier in the evening so it was as if it had never happened.”

“But it did.”

She nodded, not sure if he was asking a question or making a statement, but either way, the answer was the same.

“But
why
?”

Because she’d been so close to falling in love with him then and had been terrified of ruining everything she’d been working toward all these years by blurting it out.

And yet here she was,
definitely
in love with him and incapable of blurting anything out.

“Vana.” It wasn’t a question, but it—he—deserved an answer.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t give him one. Because if she did, it would negate the reason she’d done it in the first place and she’d lose him twice. “I… I can’t tell you.”

“You play with my mind, yet you can’t tell me why you did it? I remember every moment, each gasp, groan, and scent there was that night. Why now? Why let me in on the big secret now?” He got off the bed and grabbed his pants from the floor. “Is this some genie way of getting your kicks? Mess with the mortals’ minds and bodies? Use me?”

She struggled up onto her elbows. “I didn’t use you, Zane. You wanted me as much as I wanted you. Both times.” He wasn’t going to deny that.

He stormed across the room and grabbed his shirt off the floor lamp where it’d landed. “So… what? You always sweep your regrets under the magical rug?”

“I didn’t regret it. I… made a mistake.” She pulled the sheet around her, feeling exposed in so many ways.

“A mistake.” He shoved his legs into his pants. “
I
made the mistake. Tonight was a mistake. From start to finish. Hell, these past few days have been a mistake. What was I thinking? I should have put you back in that bottle the minute you made the vacuum cleaner dance. I never should have let you talk me into bringing Fatima and Henry and everyone else downstairs.

“I should have just left you there for the next owner to deal with and grabbed a few things, signed the listing papers, and gotten the hell out of this town and gone back to my life. But no, you gave me a glimpse of something I thought I’d missed out on. Something I thought I might want. But it was all concocted by your magic. Is this how you treat all your masters? Or just the ones you sleep with?”

She sat up, still clutching the sheet. “That’s not fair—”

“You’re talking to me about fair?” He raked a hand through his hair and started pacing. “Do
not
talk to me about fair, Vana. I know all about what’s fair and what’s not. My life being decided for me by others isn’t fair. Peter, Gary, the coaching staff, my fucking knee. Then I come here, trying to forget what’s going on, only to have
you
make decisions for me about what I can and can’t remember. How many times, Vana? How many times did you do this?”

He stopped and stared at her.

“Just… just the one night.”

“That’s one too many.” He started pacing again. “Isn’t there some rule in that book about doing this to your master? What about all the wish-granting—that I didn’t take advantage of, by the way. I was considerate enough not to use you. You could have afforded me the same generosity. Or is it okay to treat your masters like shit just because we’re mortal?”

“It wasn’t… I had a good reason.”

“What on earth could possibly be a good enough reason for you to tamper with my life and my memory? I want answers, Vana.”

Oh gods, this was the moment of truth she’d been dreading. It’d seemed like such a small matter when she’d done it. He wouldn’t remember and no one would be the wiser. Just a few hours that meant the world to her but could mean nothing to him.

And now it’d blown up in her face.

“Vana? I’m waiting. As your master, I demand—no, I
wish
—you’d tell me why you did it.”

“But you aren’t my master.”

Zane stopped moving. Everything: his legs, his arms, his head… his breathing. Everything except a tic in his jaw. “What. Do. You. Mean. I’m. Not. Your. Master.?”

“I… well… It’s complicated.”

His silence said so much more than any words would have.

She clutched the sheet tighter to her chest with both hands. “You see, according to the
Djinnoire
, the genie-master relationship happens when a genie materializes in front of a master. But I never did that with you. You somehow ended up in my bottle and then I led you back to your plane. So, technically, you aren’t my master.”

“So you used me twice.”

“It wasn’t like that, Zane.”

“No? What was it like? How do you explain manipulating me like that? Lying to me like that?”

“I didn’t lie. I
did
think you were my master. It wasn’t until after… well, until after…”

“After we had sex?”

She flinched at the brutal honesty of that question, because that was exactly what they’d done. She’d been the one to make more of it than what it’d been.

“Yes.” She cleared her throat and willed the tears not to fall. Which was about as possible as asking The Fates not to cut someone’s Life Thread.

“The sex that I only just now remember.”

“Yes.” Her throat got clogged all over again.

“Is there anything else I don’t remember?”

She shook her head. “Zane, I’m so sorry—”

He inhaled long and deep, his eyes boring into hers, his anger palpable. “Did you do this to Peter? Is that why he sealed you in the bottle? Why me, Vana? Why
me
?”

She flinched and shook her head. They were all honest questions, but they belittled the reason she’d done this in the first place. If she hadn’t manipulated time that night, they would have continued sleeping together and she would have gotten to this point—feeling this way about him—so much sooner, which meant she would have had to leave to protect her magic. And if she’d done that, Zane wouldn’t have had the incentive to stay and come to think of this as home as much as she did, and he’d still be trying to find where he belonged.

If only she could show him the good her magic had done—

Nice
try, Nirvana, but don’t sugarcoat it.

She could almost hear her mother’s voice, but it wasn’t Mother; it was her subconscious. And it wasn’t about to be denied.

This
whole
debacle
is
your
fault. You couldn’t accept your failings and were trying to justify your existence as a djinni in The Service. Trying to be something you’re not. That’s why you jumped into that bottle all those years ago; if you’d failed, you’d be able to blame it on that. You weren’t ready to enter The Service eight hundred years ago, and you’re not ready now.

You
aren’t DeeDee and you never will be, and as soon as you finally own it and demand that your parents see you for who you are instead of wanting you to be an exact replica of your sister, you and everyone around you will be a lot safer. And happier. Face the truth, Nirvana, and stand up for yourself. Or at the very least, stand up for the man you say you love.

She hated her subconscious. Almost as much as she hated the fact that it was right.

“Then why, Vana? Why did you do this? To me?”

She sniffed and took a shaky breath, then rolled her shoulders back and lifted her chin just a smidge.

Zane—and her subconscious—were absolutely right and everyone, including herself, would just have to deal with it.

“I did it, Zane, because… I love you.”

And then she disappeared.

36

“Cut!”

“Wrong!”

“Are you
kidding
me?”

Vana blinked when the world around her slowed its spinning, but the cackling voices kept harping.

“You’ve really done it now.”

“I told you she couldn’t do anything right.”

“This is going to be a nightmare to clean up.”

Vana put out a hand to steady herself. Her fingers encountered a rock.

A
rock
?

She looked up in surprise—and got an even bigger one.

Three old crones were staring at her. And not just any old crones, but… Holy smokes! The
Fates.

“Do you realize what you just did?” asked one, using their shared eyeball to glare at her. Lachesis.

“And now we have to fix it. Again,” grumbled Clotho, the hunched one.

Atropos was sharpening her scissors on a strap, flashes of lightning glinting off the blades.

It was a dark and stormy night on Mount Damavand, portentous weather for being summoned by the three sisters.

Not that there was ever a good time to be summoned by the Fates.

Lachesis
thwacked
her staff on her palm like a metronome, and lightning punctuated each downbeat. A clap of thunder struck the air. “Would you care to tell me what made you do what you just did? You’re not normally a stupid girl.”

“Sure could have fooled me.” Clotho leaned on her cane. Her knitting needles hung from a chain around her neck. A woven chain, as befitted the Weaver of the Threads of Life.

Atropos, the one who cut those Threads, kept sharpening her strap. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

“You shouldn’t have pulled me out of there. I need to explain it to him. Tell him why I did what I did.”

“Look here, missy.” Clotho grabbed the eye from Lachesis, popped it into her socket, blinked twice, then glared at Vana. “You have been nothing but a stitch in my side for the past four days.” She stabbed the space between them with one of her needles. “First, I have better things to do with my time than unravel and reweave the Threads you’re flinging all over the place as if it were bargain day at the mall.” Stab, stab.

“You think it’s easy, keeping everyone’s lives running smoothly? You think it’s a walk in the park to make sure I’m not doubling back on something that’s already happened in someone’s life because you got it into your pretty head to time travel an hour or two every few days?” Now she waved the needle around like a wand.

“Do you know how much people’s lives are affected by choices other people make? Do you have any idea that those six steps to Kevin Bacon mortals laugh about are no laughing matter?” And now she was back to stabbing. “Weave and reweave, knit one, purl sixty thousand. I’ve got enough on my plate without you acting as if time were your own personal plaything, and I”—stab—“for one”—stab—“am damn sick and tired of having to clean up your messes.