The Accidental Genie (13 page)

“I’m not sure I could handle a revelation so profound, but why not let me guess?” She cleared her throat and raised one eyebrow. “The clap?”

“I don’t have to worry about the clap. I’m a werewolf. We don’t get or transmit diseases.”

How convenient. That made being a womanizer too damn easy. “Oh, I know! Is it that redheads are the new blondes?”

“Nope.”

She let her hands drop with a slap beside her in a gesture of helplessness. “Then I’m all out of guesses. I can’t possibly see why you’d wean yourself off a steady diet of hot women—especially ones like Lollipop. Oh, my God. They’re not fattening, are they?”

Sloan’s responding chuckle was muted by a loud crack and a flash of silver Jeannie didn’t identify until it was too late.

Sloan keeled over in the blink of an eye, hitting the ground like a tree falling to its fate after being chopped own. Before she had the chance to even consider what had just happened, she heard a familiar sound, one she’d come to despise—it was the press of someone’s tongue to their back teeth, one that created a sucking noise.

Jeannie whipped around, a gust of chilled air hitting her square in her eyes, making them water for the sting.

And there she stood. Face-to-face with her past.

*   *   *

M
AT
grumbled beneath Nina’s feet, raising up to nudge her work boot. “Hey, dollface?”

She peered over her laptop at him. “Yeah, Swiffer meat?”

“Somethin’ ain’t right with Jeannie.”

Nina clucked her tongue. “Damn right somethin’ ain’t right. Dude, she’s granting wishes telepathically, and she has a talking carpet that smells like mildew for a sidekick. That’s a whole lot wrong in my book, pardner.”

“No, no. I mean, I can feel somethin’ ain’t right. It’s like I can tell she’s scared. Real scared.” He coughed hard.

Nina sat upright, slamming her computer top shut. “Is feeling Jeannie’s emotions part of the magic carpet gig?”

“I got no idea. Remember me? The throw rug that ain’t never been outta the bottle who was left to rot like some damn corpse?”

Nina sat forward with a jolt. “Jesus. So you don’t even know what kind of powers you have?”

Mat trembled. “Got no clue. I just know, Jeannie’s in some kinda trouble and she’s scared.
Right now
.”

Nina looked to Wanda across the room. Wanda frowned back at her.

“Shit,” she muttered, jumping to her feet to stalk toward the door.

Wanda was instantly on her feet, too, grabbing her coat and gloves. She leaned down and stroked Mat’s fringe. “Hang tight. We’ll find her. Promise.”

Mat hacked a phlegm-filled cough in response as the two women flew out the door.

*   *   *

J
EANNIE
fought to catch her breath, the chilled air coming from her lips in rapid white puffs. Her heart screamed inside her chest when a pair of steel-like arms wrapped around her neck from behind.

He’d found her. Jesus God, he’d found her.

He ran his tongue along the shell of her ear in a sloppy swipe, moaning a low feral sound. “Look who I found. And after all this time. You’d almost make a man think you were hiding from him. That’s not what you’ve been doing, is it?
Hiding?
Because it would break my itty-bitty heart.”

Jeannie instantly froze. Her stomach plummeted, her pulse thrashing violently in her ears. The breath drained from her lungs when his voice slithered in a hot puff along her neck. “So how’s it goin’, petunia? Long time, no play.”

Jeannie’s throat closed up, keeping her from screaming at Sloan to rouse him. His body lay prone after the whack he’d taken to the head while blood oozed crimson tears from an ugly gash in his forehead.

Panic clawed its way into her throat and stuck there. The wind howled, screeching the coming storm. Carelessly discarded wrappers from the base of a Dumpster rose up in cyclonic cones, swirling above Sloan’s head. And still he lay crumpled, his limbs at an odd angle sprawled across the alleyway.

You’re on your own, sunshine. But isn’t something like this what all that karate and therapy was about, Jeannie? Have you forgotten all the nights you spent reliving that horror, planning this prick’s death, only to now turn into a chicken-shit?

Jeannie closed her eyes, but she didn’t exhale in order to relieve the pressure in her chest. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how terrified she was. “Get off me,” she demanded, with little authority and far more weak-kneed terror than she’d have liked.

“But I like being near you,” he crooned, jamming his tongue in her ear again. “You always smelled so good. Besides, we have a shitload of catching up to do. For instance, what made you choose the big city? You were such a country girl.”

For all that had been lost because of him, a spike of anger replaced Jeannie’s sheer terror. “I didn’t get a choice, and you know that, you asshole.”

The arm around her neck tightened, restricting her breathing. The same tattoo on his forearm that had once intrigued her now taunted her. Right under her nose, a coiled snake ready to attack writhed beneath his forearm’s muscles as if it had come to life.

The stench of an obviously long night in some dark, filthy bar, where collectively an entire set of teeth couldn’t be found, rose in her nostrils, suffocating her.

Whiskey. He liked his booze hard.

And still she didn’t scream.

Couldn’t scream.

Wouldn’t
scream.

Because screaming meant someone would get hurt.
No, Jeannie, it meant they’d die
. Die
.

No, God. Please don’t let anyone get hurt. No more hurt.

“So who’s the pretty boy?” he growled low and slurred, widening his stance.

Alarm bells sounded in her brain while her skin crawled. Instantly, she went limp, so limp, he had to hold her up.
Relax into it, Jeannie. Show submission.
Jeannie shrugged.
“I don’t know. You hit an innocent man.”

“I’ve been watching you, sweet lips. You know exactly who he is. You sleepin’ with him?”

Don’t tell, Jeannie. Pretend you don’t know him. Don’t tell or he’ll die, too
. Could werewolves die? She couldn’t remember, but she damn well wasn’t taking any chances.

Her lips, stiff from the cold, stuck together, but she managed a frigid reply. “I said I don’t know who he is. I ran into him while I was looking for coffee. He was giving me directions to a coffee shop.”

His hand shot up to the base of her skull, and he wormed his thick fingers into her hair before she knew it had happened. He yanked her head back so that her neck arched painfully, pulling at the tense tendons. “You lie. Who is he, sweet lips?”

“I don’t know!” she shouted, forcing herself to compartmentalize her fear. Vermin like him smelled fear. Lived for it. Thrived on it. Fear would weaken her response, dull it. No fear.
Focus, Jeannie. Let go
. “Now get off me.” Her ears noted the calm she conveyed, and she gave herself a mental pat on the back.
Focus.

“Or you’ll what, petunia? Beat me up with your fancy karate chops?”

He knew. How long had he known? How long had he been watching her? Terror resurfaced for a moment, and she couldn’t think from one karate move to the next. But then she heard her teacher in her head.
Make it count, Jeannie. Make it clean and make it count. Always measure your response for the best result—then strike!

But more fear rose, swallowing her, swallowing her whole until her fingers were icy, useless sticks and her feet were cement blocks. She fought the shudder in her breath and made herself demand, not request. “I said
let me go
.”

He tightened his hold with a heartless laugh, spreading his fingers across the width of her belly and grinding his chest against her spine. “And I said no. You weren’t easy to come by, you know that? I’ve been looking for you forever. But I still have some of my old contacts, and they finally came through. You thought you could hide from me, didn’t you? You’ve changed. But I’d know my baby anywhere.”

Stall, Jeannie.
Stall until you win this internal round of chicken-shit and can focus long enough to take the bastard out. “That was sort of the point. No one was supposed to find me.” Oh, God. How had he found her?

He drew a finger up and down her cheek, digging into her flesh. “You ruined everything, you know. I lost millions of dollars because of you and your stupidity. And my brothers. They’re
dead
. Dead, dead,
dead
,” he hissed slow and harsh. “I can’t forgive that.”

Jeannie’s eyes narrowed as she found a focal point. “You ruined lives. I can’t forgive that.”

“Oh, c’mon now,” he protested in jest, his laughter a mockery in her burning ears. “I made their lives better. Because of me, their families had food on the table—and good medical care. I helped them, buttercup.
Helped
.”

Jeannie’s fear took a slight turn at his egotistical view of what he’d done. It bubbled into a tiny seed of rage that, when watered by the insidious visuals in her mind of that day so long ago, began to grow. “You tainted them, Victor,” she spat, keeping her body still but throwing all the angry vehemence she could into her statement.
“You ruined them.”
You vile, filthy, horrible animal.

Yanking her hair hard, Victor whirled her around to face him, his black eyes glassy and full of rage, his greasy hair in a matted ponytail. “I saved them!” he roared at her, the lean chiseled lines of his face pulsing and rippling with his anger.

Still, Jeannie remained almost limp, but her words, long overdue, silenced for so many years, held the agonizing fury she’d never been able to express. “Is that what you call it,
Victor
? You’re a savior now?” she taunted, her eyes connecting with his so he’d see her disgust. “Have you really bought into your God complex? I always thought it was just an act for all of your stoolies, but you really are as stupid as your elementary school education says you are.” She worked the muscles of her throat until she drew a glob of phlegm. Pressing her tongue to her lips, she spat at him, launching it directly at his face.

And that was when she knew she’d touched just the right nerve. Victor lifted his free hand high, slicing it through the air and punching her so hard her head might have flung right off her shoulders if she hadn’t waited so long for this moment. Prepared for it.

As a result, she didn’t flinch.

She welcomed the pain.

For it was an invitation to reciprocate.

In that second, that searing pain-filled second, just as she’d formulated her return plan of attack, Jeannie heard Nina scream her name. It carried to her ears on the wave of the icy, rolling wind.

Victor’s look of sheer surprise at the sound of Nina’s voice and the stomp of her feet from some faraway place would always stay with Jeannie—suspended—memorialized—burned into her brain.

Chaos erupted when Victor launched her against the Dumpster where Sloan lay, still unconscious; the loud crack of metal meeting her spine brought with it more agonizing, bone-crunching pain. Yet she stumbled to her feet, searching with her rapidly swollen eye for any sign of Victor, panting her anguish at a missed opportunity. One she’d waited what seemed a lifetime for.

She bounced from foot to foot frantically, ready to strike if he caught her from behind again. Rage fueled her, keeping her from seeing that only Nina and Wanda were left.

Nina was the first to get to her. Instantly, she lunged at Jeannie, wrapping her arms around her shoulders and engulfing her much smaller frame. “Jeannie! Stop, for fuck’s sake! It’s me. He’s gone. Stop!” she shouted, finally piercing the red haze of Jeannie’s anger with her urgent tone.

Her one good eye scanned the alley, searching for any sign of Victor. Of course he’d run off. It was what all cowards did. When her brain finally absorbed the fact that he was really gone, Jeannie fell limp against Nina’s lithe body to signal her surrender. Nina whipped her around. Her eyes, covered in dark glasses, fell on Jeannie’s face with a yelp of concern. “What the fuck happened?” Her slim fingers went directly to Jeannie’s swollen, throbbing eye. “Jesus, kiddo. Are you okay?”

Jeannie brushed her off, even if doing so left her dizzy. The adrenaline of her fear began to wear off, too, creeping up on her in horrifying realization. But she would not cry. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”
Fine
was suddenly the word of the day. Her breasts were fine. She was fine. Everything was fine.

Nina’s face became a mask of anger not entirely unfamiliar to Jeannie now. “The fuck it’s fine, Jeannie. You’ve got some goddamn shiner there. Now lemme look.”

Jeannie fought to stay still in the confines of Nina’s palms while the oppressive fear of being held captive, even when her captor meant no harm, threatened to overwhelm her. Nina scrutinized her face, running her fingers over Jeannie’s jaw. “Nothing’s broken, but we need to get you back to your place and ice this shit before your eyeball pops outta your head.”

In the meantime, Wanda had yanked Sloan up and over her shoulder like he was a couple of designer frocks fresh from the half-off rack. Even in the midst of chaos, Jeannie was able to recognize how impossible a feat like that was for almost anyone—anyone human, that is. For the first time, she finally got a real glimpse of this thing called paranormal, and it astounded her. Left her speechless.

Wanda trudged over to them, her elegant face shrouded in worry. She hiked Sloan upward and reached out a gloved hand to Jeannie, trailing it down the side of her face with a wince. “God, he slugged you but good. Jeannie, honey? What happened? We caught just a quick glimpse of the bastard, but I’ve got his scent committed to memory now. If I ever see him again, if I get my hands on him, I’ll kill him!” she spat, her eyes scanning the alleyway, her nostrils flaring.

Nina planted her hands on her hips and waited in her typical demanding fashion. “So what the fuck, kiddo?”

Lie, Jeannie. Lie often. Lie well. But don’t put anyone else in danger. At all costs, keep everyone in the dark.
The words slipped off her tongue with far more ease than she’d ever be entirely comfortable with. “Mugger. He hit Sloan from behind and knocked him out, then he cornered me in the alleyway. Told me to give him all my money. When he found out I didn’t have any, he kind of lost it.” She pointed to her swollen eye and gave them a sheepish grin. “I’m okay. Really.”