Magic Gone Wild (39 page)

He’d spent most of that night cursing her, Peter, Gary, himself, Merlin. He would’ve left if he hadn’t already driven too many hours that day. By the next morning, he’d cooled down enough to make arrangements for a donation to the charity benefit, then he’d left the mess in Peter’s house behind locked doors.

But today was the picnic he’d donated and he had to go a few rounds of head-butting with Henry and Eirik, pack the children up for the trip to his condo, and round up the gargoyles before anyone else saw them.

“I saw you walk down the stairs, Henry. I know you can go back up them, so move.”

Henry slammed his doors shut.

“I’m not above getting a lit match, you know.” Or a flame thrower if that’s what it took to get the big hunk of wood out of here.

But the armoire still didn’t move.

Zane cursed. The past three weeks in Philly had been so normal, and now this.

Normal
but
lonely.

He ignored the voice in his head that had only made an appearance once he’d pulled into the driveway. He’d barely thought about her during the past twenty-one days.

Barely
was
right.

He rubbed his eyes to get rid of the image.

That only etched it into his brain all the more. Not that his brain needed any help. Vana hadn’t been far from it. Through the surprise contract talks with a team he’d never thought would be interested in him as a starting player and the equally interesting call from the school superintendent here, to the possibility of a commentating job and dealing with the press about the upcoming picnic, Zane would have thought he wouldn’t have time to remember every single detail about her: how tall she wasn’t, how tiny she was, how her hair fell to perfect breasts, how her lips had trembled beneath his, the look in her eyes when she was happy, the nervous way she fiddled with her fingers. The compassion she had for this lug of an armoire and the children and Fatima…

He’d tried not to think about her. Or he’d tried to focus on what she’d done, and usually he’d succeeded—until it was just him and his thoughts: driving in the car, waiting for a meeting, standing in line at the grocery-store checkout, or coming home to his empty condo.

That had been the worst. That and those minutes before he’d fallen asleep when he’d lain there staring into the darkness. Then he couldn’t
not
think about her. About why she’d done it—and it wasn’t because of love. If she’d loved him, really loved him, she would never have taken something so precious from him—his say over his own life and the memory of their first time.

Zane put his shoulder into Henry and shoved. The armoire moved about two inches. Which Henry promptly backpedaled over, erasing six inches of progress.

“Come on, Henry. I can’t risk anyone seeing you. I’m not going to be here to cover it up.”

Damned armoire took
another
step back.

“Fine. Be that way. I’ll just take Eirik up to the attic and hang him from the rafters unless you follow me.” The two of them had done nothing but huddle in the corner of the living room since he’d gotten here, concocting something or cursing him; Zane didn’t give a damn.

But he had no guarantees they wouldn’t pull this shit with witnesses and the press around. That he
did
give a damn about, so they
were
going to do what he said. This was, after all, still his house and they were still pieces of furniture.

“So…” Gold sparks sprinkled down from the chandelier in the foyer. “The prodigal has returned.”

And Merlin was still a pain in the ass.

“Don’t you have anything better to do, Merlin?”

“Obviously I can’t ask you that.” The bird floated onto the sofa and lay on his back, crossing his—oh, for chrissakes—
purple
sequined
feet
over each other and pulling matching sunglasses down over his eyes. “Because apparently you
have
had better things to do in the past twenty-one days.”

Zane pulled the pillow out from under the phoenix’s head. “Leave it alone, bird.”

Merlin waved a wing. “Isn’t that your line? I mean, we figured when you raced your fancy-schmancy import down the driveway—in some pretty slick moves, by the by—that we’d seen the end of you.”

“That was the plan.” And right after the picnic he’d be gone again. This time for good. Let someone else deal with all of this. He shoved Henry again. Who wouldn’t budge. Again. “You need to get out of here, Merlin. The Ladies Auxiliary will be here any minute to start setting up, and while I can bolt Henry to the floor and tie his doors shut, I can’t explain you.”

Merlin rolled onto his feet, the red mohawk on his head making him look like a rooster. “Hang on, hold your unicorns. Ladies’ Auxiliary? Please tell me they’re a dance troupe.”

Zane gripped the back of the sofa. It was either that or Merlin’s neck, and he didn’t want to find out what the karmic retribution was for wringing a mythological bird’s neck. “Of course they’re not a dance troupe. They’re part of the firehouse.”

“I don’t see any smoke. Or did those wind chimes get into the compost pile? I told them if they rubbed together enough they’d cause friction, but I hadn’t meant in the literal sense.”

The bird had a one-track mind. “The women are coming to set up for the picnic I auctioned off before I left.”

“Vana came up with a good idea, didn’t she?” asked the bird.

“Can we just leave Vana out of this, please?”

“Well, duh… She
is
out of this. You did a pretty good job of that. I guess congratulations are in order, but I’m not so sure you want them.”

“Look, Merlin, just drop the Vana talk. She’s gone and that’s over.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Apparently it is. She disappeared in a puff of pink smoke and I haven’t seen her since. And good riddance.”

“Good riddance? Good
riddance
?” Merlin started hacking, and Zane, against his better judgment, whacked him on the back.

“Don’t expect me to thank you for that,” said the ungrateful bird. “If you hadn’t put on such an asinine production in the first place, I wouldn’t have been gasping for my last breath there. Do you have
any
idea of what Vana did for you?”

“Of course I do, Merlin. She erased my memory and screwed with my life.” Something he’d reminded himself of every time he’d woken up imagining her in bed next to him.

The bird spit feathers. “Not
then
, you mortal. The day she
poofed
out of your life. You don’t, do you? You have absolutely no idea what she did and what it cost her.”

“What are you talking about? You weren’t even there. Unless—God, please tell me you weren’t watching.”

“Blech.” Merlin shuddered, more feathers molting all over the carpet—Fatima. Crap. He’d have to get her out of the room, too, and he wasn’t relishing the fight she’d put up.

“Puhleeeeze,” said Merlin. “If you’ve ever seen your kind in the throes of passion… it’s not exactly pretty. I leave bedroom doors closed—it was closed, wasn’t it? You weren’t whooping it up on the stairs or anything, were you?”

Zane glared at him. “Do you have a point?”

Merlin smiled and raised his chin. “Of course I do. Sharpest beak in the West. Or is it the Occidental? I can never remember the PC terms these days.”

Just then the children started banging on the front window. Zane hurriedly gathered them up. He was going to have to find something to wrap them with. He didn’t need clacking from the attic attracting anyone’s attention.

“The kids miss her,” said Merlin. “They need her, too. A lot of people do.”

Zane used doilies from the furniture to muffle the noise. “Leave it alone, bird.”

“I don’t understand what you’re so upset about. It’s not as if she took time from your life, and you certainly got what you were after in the end.”

“
That’s
your argument?” Zane had to remember he was holding children in his hand when he set the plates down on the table so that he didn’t slam them. “She took my memory from me.” And control of his life.

“Technically, she didn’t. She manipulated time, and a piece of your memory got lost in the shuffle—you got it back, didn’t you? And, if you think about it, she
added
hours to your life by repeating a few things, so you actually came out ahead.”

“I am not going to discuss this with you.”

“Well tough, because I’m going to discuss it with you.” Merlin strutted along the back of the sofa like the Liberace version of a rooster. “I haven’t looked after that girl for almost six hundred years for you to get a bug up your butt about a so-called mistake. She didn’t have to stay here, you know.”

“Yeah, I found that out. After she lied about me being her master.”

“I’m not saying her methods were the best, but her heart was in the right place. I mean, she said those three words that every genie dreads.”

“Yeah, I can see how ‘as you wish’ would cramp her style.”

Merlin fell back onto the cushion with a wing over his eyes. “You seriously need a history lesson.” He lifted a feather and glared at Zane. “Here it is in a nutshell. Genies
like
being in The Service. It’s an honor. A privilege. Not every genie is Chosen to be. See the big picture?” He hopped to his ridiculous purple feet. “Let’s put this in your terms. Say, you’re playing in the World Cup—”

“Super Bowl.”

Merlin rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Biggest game of your career, right? Not only do you want to win, but you want to be the superstar. We on the same page here, big guy?”

“Go on.”

“Why, thank you. I think I will.” Merlin ruffled his zebra-striped breast. “To Vana, that’s what Peter’s wish is like. It’s her Olympic Games. She pulls it off, it’ll be like hitting it out of the park. She’ll finally earn the respect no one’s given her. You haven’t seen her parents. Those two make Sophocles and Aristotle look like toddlers. And then there’s her sister… Talk about a superstar. And then comes Vana. Struggling along to live up to the family name.”

Zane didn’t want to hear this about her. Didn’t want to know it because it didn’t matter when it came to
his
life.
His
choices. The ones she took.

“So you come along,” continued the bird. “Big, strapping, nice guy, you. Not hard on the eyes, and well, the girl’s been in that bottle for over a hundred years. Think what
you’d
be like in her situation. So, you turn on the charm and she falls. Hard. But she knows she can’t because if she does, it’s a slippery slope to losing the chance for redemption in the eyes of her family and the djinn world.
That’s
the big deal. Are you following me?”

He
really
didn’t want to know this about her. He’d heard “I love you” so often from so many women that he’d stopped believing them long ago. Actions spoke louder than words, and her actions…

He’d actually liked her. Admired the earnestness she’d put into every task. The unflinching optimism that had kept her trying. She’d made mistakes, owned them, and had tried to learn from them.

But she’d also used him. She could couch it in whatever terms she wanted, but by taking his memory, she’d made his decisions for him.

The familiar anger simmered, and in a move opposing teams had used on him too many times to count, including the one that had torn his ACL, Zane rushed Henry. He caught the armoire by surprise and shoved him two feet toward the foyer. An
armoire
was not going to stand in his way.

“What’s the matter, Zane?” sneered Merlin. “Are you so used to fawning fans and an adoring public that you don’t care what Vana gave up for you?”

“You, bird, are out of line.” Anger gave him the strength to move Henry another foot.

“No, you are. You condemned her without knowing the facts, and you have no idea what’s happened to her since. Do you even care?” Merlin landed on top of Henry. “That woman, that sweet, giving, hurting woman did something so utterly selfless and loving that you should be prostrating yourself before her, begging her forgiveness for the callow way you spoke to her. She didn’t just disappear. Not of her own volition. She was yanked off this plane to face The Fates. You know them, right? Old crones from Greek history?’

“Mythology, you mean.”

“Yeah, as mythological as I am. Good argument.” Merlin clacked his beak and his feathers turned black. With orange bands around his legs. “Vana was summoned to face their wrath for meddling in time—”

“Good. She ought to be held accountable for her actions.”

“But mostly for telling you she loved you. They’re up on their mountain trying to placate The Power That Is and fix this because genies don’t say those words. To any mortal. Ever.”