The Accidental Genie (18 page)

“So this all leads back to Burt. Which means you’d better get to doin’ whatever it is you genies do when you got a shitty djinn on the lamb, and fucking fix this,” Nina demanded. “So find Burt. Find him fast, frilly pants, or I’m gonna take your ass out.”

Jeannie found her voice again and asked, “What if we can’t find Burt? Is it really true that, in order for me to get out of the bottle for good, I have to curse someone else to it?”

“Without Burt, yes, madam, that would be the answer.”

Nina shook her head. “But what does that do to the rest of this shit? Like her wishes gone wild? Sloan stuck to the midget like she’s one of those beds in a sleazy hotel with the coin operated massage machines is one thing. Her sending people to hell just because someone wished it out of the GD blue from five hundred feet away is a whole other ball of wax.”

“You are truly made up of all parts distasteful.” Nekaar turned his nose up at Nina.

“And you’re truly going to be the limbs I gnaw on from my plate at genie lunchtime if you don’t shut the hell up. Quit dickin’ us around and help find Burt,” Nina growled.

“As you wish, madam,” Nekaar replied with unusual obedience. He snapped his fingers, and out of a thin air, a cell phone appeared. His fingers flew over the face of the phone, his smooth brow wrinkled.

Nina patted Jeannie on her trembling back then stepped from behind her and tugged on a strand of her hair. “So, it’s gonna be okay, right, shawty? Dude will find Burt, and we’ll get you unhitched, and then you can go on your genie way. Yeah, you might still be a genie, but you can work with that shit. If I can be a vampire, you can be a genie. Good news all round, right, kiddo?”

“Do you think finding Burt is going to help with the wish thing?” Jeannie’s eyes pierced Nina’s. If she could count on anyone to tell her the God’s honest truth, it was Nina, simply because she didn’t really care if it upset you.

Noting her shiver, Nina buttoned her sweater like she was a child needing tending, tucking the lapels under Jeannie’s chin. “Yep. It’s gonna be fucking awesome. And if Burt gives us a hard time—I’ll show him the way of the vampire.” She flashed her fangs.

And then another thought occurred to her. How did one go about living their life as a genie? If you couldn’t grant wishes for the greater good unless you were freed from a bottle, what did genies do all day?

“Don’t let that imagination get the better of you, Jeannie,” Sloan warned, cupping her chin so their eyes met.

“My imagination has officially been bested by real life. I keep asking myself, what next?”

“Look. I’m here to tell you that, even if we never find Burt, it’ll be okay. We’ll just figure something out.”

Her glance was filled with skeptical disbelief. “Do you think your leggy blonde dates are going to feel that way? You know, when I’m unwillingly pressed up against the door that just beyond holds your Lair of Love?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not called the Lair of Love. It’s called the Haven of Heat. Lairs are for sissies,” he teased, squeezing her jaw. “I know I keep saying this, but it bears repeating. It’s going to be okay.”

“Dreadful news,” Nekaar muttered, his head low when he held up the phone for Jeannie to see.

Her eyes scanned what appeared to be a Facebook page. She squinted at the avatar in the upper-left-hand corner—a picture of the Robin Williams–voiced character of Genie from
Aladdin
. Live out loud, right? The banner flying across Genie’s jovial face read B
OTTLE
B
ABES
.

Jeannie shook her head in disbelief. “The djinn have a Facebook page?”

Nekaar’s chuckle was oddly watery. “Hide in plain sight, yes, madam? Nary a soul believes it is real. We allow the outside realm the belief that we are all, um . . . ‘cracked-out wannabes’ is what I believe the most crude of social networking have labeled us.”

Nina cackled her understanding. “We get that shit all the time.”

Jeannie’s gasp interrupted Nina. Sloan came instantly to her side, placing an arm around her shoulder to lean in and read Nekaar’s phone from over her shoulder. Instead of fearing Sloan’s comfort, Jeannie leaned into it this time without a second thought. “Well, shit,” he spat.

“Fuck, now what?” Nina demanded. “Did they run out of little genie pants in your size, Aladdin?”

Oh, look. Omar made harem pants now. Buy one get one free. Jeannie shook her head. “No. They have plenty of harem pants,” she responded, now even more familiar with defeat. “Pants aren’t the problem. This is.” She cleared her throat and read the post dated yesterday—the very day she’d been cursed to Burt’s bottle. “It is with sadness that we bid fellow djinn Burt safe passage to the Realm of New Beginnings.” Then she lowered her voice out of respect. “And four hundred and eighty-two people like this.” It appeared Burt didn’t have a whole lot of love, the genie community.

Nina plucked the phone from Jeannie’s trembling hands. “I guess the Realm of New Beginnings isn’t like genie rehab, huh, Gunga Din?”

Nina scrolled some of the comments, making Jeannie bite the inside of her cheek. Oh, genies were mean. How cruel to wish the tread marks of a rabid camel upon Burt’s black soul.

Jeannie gazed at Nekaar’s crumpling face with sympathy, pushing her own worst fears aside. “This Realm of New Beginnings is bad, isn’t it?”

Pressing his fingers to his eyes, Nekaar shook his head up and down hard. He shook it so hard, Jeannie feared it would fall off his neck, and then he collapsed on her couch in a dramatic, gulping sob. His wide shoulders quivered when he buried his face in one of her throw pillows.

The group passed bewildered looks. Jeannie knelt in front of him, putting a tentative hand on his arm. “Nekaar? I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

“Buuuurrrrt,” he cried. “Burt’s dead!”

Yeah. Things just kept getting shinier. Poor Burt. Poor her. Poor Sloan. “And this makes you sad because?”

He took in a huge gulp of air before letting it out into the pillow with a muffled shudder. He lifted his head “This saddens me because Burt, for all his dastardly ways, is my—my—was my . . . Burt was my brother!”

CHAPTER

9

Sloan cracked his neck and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans, uncomfortable with the tears of a man, especially one as big and imposing as Nekaar. This was very obviously bad news. They’d needed Burt to break this curse. If he was dead, that meant he and Jeannie were like the Rick Astley song—together forever. Talk about being Rick-rolled.

Though, as he watched Jeannie comfort Nekaar by cradling his head against her shoulder and patting his broad back, when it was Jeannie who really needed the comfort after having her world turned upside down, Sloan found he wasn’t nearly as pissed as he should be that he and Jeannie had an imposed future together.

It also made him pause. Pause big. He should be all kinds of pissed off that not only had he been dragged into this mess by Marty and the girls, but that he was going to be stuck with a woman he never would have considered was in his wheelhouse.

It wasn’t that Jeannie wasn’t cute as hell. It wasn’t that she wasn’t appealing to his eye on every level. It wasn’t that she didn’t have full lips and rounded hips. It wasn’t that she wasn’t adorable—period.

So what was it?

What was keeping him from beating this Nekaar to within an inch of his life so he’d produce an answer that left him free of Jeannie?

Jeannie was troubled. He felt it—smelled it. What troubled her was a mystery, but it was there. It was there in the way she stiffened when he moved closer to her. It was there when she tripped over herself to keep him and Nina from arguing. Jeannie had no filter when it came to their harsh words. She clearly didn’t understand that while he and Nina gave each other regular hell, it meant nothing. They both just got a kick out of poking each other. No harm, no foul. They’d always done it. But to Jeannie, it was discord. It rattled her need for harmony.

And that need for harmony was bigger than she was. She had more CDs with monks chanting than she had room for in her bedroom closet. There were dream catcher wind chimes hanging outside her bedroom window on the small fire escape, and all sorts of books on relaxation techniques on her nightstand. Muscle relaxers and anxiety reducers littered the lining of her medicine cabinet in her bathroom, and she had about as many soothing candle scents that invoked said harmony as Bath and Body Works did.

Jeannie was easy to figure out. What had created the Jeannie of today was going to take a lesson in patience and more sleuthing.

And there he went again, wondering how he could get inside Jeannie’s head without damaging her tenuous trust. Unheard of from Sloan Flaherty. He didn’t want to get into heads. He wanted to get under miniskirts and, equally so, a set of Egyptian cotton sheets.

Or he’d wanted to as far back as last year. Until everything had changed for him and someone he’d been fond of had died in an accident. Her funeral had been attended by the men she’d slid around on a pole for instead of family and the young women she should have been having lunch with at the mall while they giggled over men their own age.

That moment, that funeral, with its cheap casket and cheaper send-off, had been what everyone called a defining moment. It was when he’d realized that no one should die with a stream of mourners who carried that many dollar bills in their wallets—at least, not someone as young as Sable had been. The girls who’d surrounded her had known the score. They were older—they got the big stripper picture.

But Sable . . .

She’d been too young to die. Too naïve to realize the path she’d taken wasn’t going to lead to some Hollywood agent, but instead a life of catcalls and whistles that slid from between cracked, dry lips in a darkened room where “Pour Some Sugar on Me” thumped in the speakers. She’d made him think of his niece, Hollis, and Casey’s daughter, Naomi. A career like the one she’d chosen to make ends meet after losing her parents was unthinkable for the children in Sloan’s life.

Watching the slew of men pay their respects to Sable had done something to him. Did he want to be one of those men someday? Would he attend the funerals of strippers and bartenders because they were the only people he’d allowed in his life other than his family?

It was also when he’d realized if he didn’t start at least living cleaner and respecting himself, if he eventually did kick the bucket, there were going to be maybe four people at his funeral, and they’d only be there because they were obligated to attend—one of them would surely be Nina, who’d remind him in his cold, dead ear that he was a hole-chasing pig.

Just because a werewolf could live for an eternity didn’t mean he would. Did he want to spend the rest of forever sleeping with whoever caught his very short attention span? Or did he want to smile the way Keegan did when he saw Marty and Hollis?

Did he always want to be the dick who showed up at their paranormal picnics with a woman he’d never share any memories with but the vague, booze-riddled scent of their one night together? Or did he want to make some memories of his own? Did he want to have someone to share his meals with, his troubles? Or did he just want to keep pretending he didn’t? Did he want to pretend that the lure of an endless stream of women, whose first names eluded him completely, wasn’t wearing his ass out?

The definitive answer had been no.

He’d left that nondenominational church with its ragtag bunch of mourners and he’d never looked back

He’d straightened up. He’d paid better attention to his duties at Pack. And he hadn’t dated anyone—if that’s what you’d call what he’d been doing—in over a year.

Ah. Now that might be it. He’d fought the ghost of his horn-dog on more than one occasion since he’d laid off the women and lightened up on the booze. He was just needy.

And that perfectly summed up his attraction to Jeannie.

She was everything he wasn’t interested in—and he was just hankering the bed sport.

Except what is that shit that goes on in your stomach every time you look at her swollen eye and want to kill the fucker who hurt her? Why does your heart pound harder when you get a whiff of her after she’s bathed in chamomile and cucumber?

His gut said his fascination with Jeannie couldn’t be dismissed as long overdue lust. There’d been plenty of temptation in the way of women in his path since he’d decided on celibacy. They just hadn’t been Jeannie.

“Sloan?”

Wanda’s voice drew him from his thoughts of Jeannie. “How’s Nekaar?” Sloan had felt the tug of his feet when Jeannie had taken Nekaar to her kitchen to help him freshen up. Every couple of minutes, he could still hear a small whimper from just beyond the doorway.

Her smile was a little forlorn, her eyes full of warmth. “How anyone would be when they realize their brother is dead. Good or bad, he was still Nekaar’s brother, I guess. Sadder still? The awful reality that he was the one who had to curse his brother to a bottle to keep him out of trouble. If only we could do that with Nina.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he said on a laugh.

Wanda squeezed his arm with her hand. “Nekaar and this newest information aside, I’m concerned about you. How are you? I think we all tend to forget that, while Jeannie is the victim here, she has casualties of war.”

Suddenly, Sloan felt like she’d seen right through him. Like Wanda sensed he was having impure thoughts about Jeannie. Straightening, he visualized a hike in his man-panties. “I’m fine, Wanda. No worse for the wear.”

“But eternity, Sloan? I know you well enough to know that, while deep down you’re a good man, and you’ll do the right thing, you do like your playtime . . .”

Yeah. He deserved that. “Are you checking to be sure I won’t do something crazy like find some stray djinn to attempt to break the curse so I can have my blonde supermodel time? Are you making sure I won’t risk Jeannie’s life for a six-pack and some strippers?”

Wanda gave him a sheepish glance before looking down at the sleeves of her silky green shirt to avoid his direct question. “I kinda am . . . I’m sorry, Sloan,” she was quick to back her harsh words up. “It’s just that . . .” She sighed. “Okay, so I’ll just be honest. We all know how much you like women. You always have a new one, and she never lasts for more than half the time of a family event before you’re bored and eyeing the next kill. Do you remember the Not So Barbequed/Champagne Blood party Casey hosted over two summers ago?”

Shit. He remembered. “Yep.”

“Do you also remember that you came to the party with one woman and left with another?”

“Well, to be fair, my date did desert me for Clayton’s vampire friend. Remember? She was all about him when she found out he’d once been a Viking. Personally, I think they’re way overrated, but there you have it. She thought the guy was a god. Who am I to say he wasn’t?” After a couple of beers, she’d been a red-hot she-wolf, but over potato salad the next day, she’d ended up just being like most of the women he surrounded himself with. Ready for the next kill.

“Point. But what I’m saying is, you didn’t exactly have a mourning period over it, either.”

He cracked his jaw. That was because she hadn’t been important enough to mourn. But he was who he was—or had been. “Fair enough.”

“I’m not trying to beat you down, Sloan. Swear it. Your life is your life and you can live it as you see fit. No judgment here. I mean, I am BFFs with Nina. Who am I to judge? But Jeannie’s got something else going on, which, while I can smell it, I can’t pinpoint it. I think for all her jokes and bravado, something else is happening aside from the genie thing. I just don’t know what, but it entails a fragility she reeks of. I want to see that you’re helped, too. You’re just stronger than she is. Period. So I haven’t paid as much attention to you, but I wanted you to know that I get you’re stuck in this unwillingly, too.”

Sloan lifted his chin. “And?”

“And I just don’t want Jeannie to end up hurt until we can find some help. I don’t want you to . . .”

“In the process, you just don’t want me to help myself to Jeannie, right?” He deserved that, too. He’d been a contributor to the Shitty Club for Men. He’d own that.

Wanda sighed, but her eyes were sharp, and he knew she meant it. “Desperate times and all.”

He knew exactly what his sister-in-law and the rest of the women were thinking. He’d sleep with Jeannie simply because she was there. Also a label he deserved. “I’m not desperate, Wanda, and I can assure you, Jeannie’s safe with me—from me.”

Nina came up behind Wanda and made a face at Sloan. “Are we giving him the speech about keeping his desperate dick inside his 501s?”

“Mind your own beeswax, Mighty Mouth,” Wanda snapped, as though reminding Sloan he was a cad made her feel badly.

Nina stuck a finger out at him over Wanda’s shoulder and shook it. “You hurt shawty, and you got me right up your ass, gnawing my way to your spleen.”

“What’s the attachment to Jeannie, Nina? Do you liiike her?” He knew what it was. He knew Nina had a weak spot for the helpless, but he also knew she hated it pointed out to her. And he liked to point it out.

She flipped him the bird. “Oh, fuck you, ass sniffer. She’s just a kid with nobody to look out for her. You’re the Big Bad Wolf with sharp teeth. I don’t want more bullshit drama than we already have. So hands to yourself, freakazoid. Feel me?”

“Felt, Defender of All Things Great and Small.” Instead of making him angry, Nina’s strange and rather sudden attachment to Jeannie comforted him.

He knew, no matter what happened to him, Nina would look out for Jeannie, because Nina was champion of all things needing a champion. For all her mouthy ways, she was badass if she was on your side.

“Good,” she grunted, leaning into them. “So lemme just say this between us three, some shit ain’t right about that dude who clobbered her today. Some shit ain’t right about Jeannie. I know you’ve all been feelin’ it, too. Smellin’ it, whatever.”

Sloan’s antennae went instantly into alert mode. Jesus, his wolfie senses were really off. “What do you mean something isn’t right about the guy who hit her? Of course something’s not right about him. He hit a damn woman for money.” His fists tightened at his sides.

Wanda’s head moved back and forth. “No, she knew his name, Sloan. According to Nina, she said this supposed mugger’s name in the process of the mugging. She claims he told her his name when she tried to reason him out of robbing her. You know, know your enemy, personalize yourself to your attacker sort of thing, so they’ll sympathize with you—connect with you?”

“Bullshit is what I call,” Nina spat, jamming her hands into her hoodie’s pockets. “That dude had a hold on her like he was lookin’ for more than money. I can’t explain it, but it was fucking personal. Maybe even intimate, and I didn’t get it, but it was there. He knows her—or knows something about her. I dunno. But I say we sniff the freak out. I still have his scent in my nostrils. Booze and more booze. Whiskey, to be precise. How many bars can there be in the city?”

Sloan put his hands up. “So the bastard might know her? Ex-boyfriend? Husband? What do we really know about her besides the fact that she owns a catering business?”

“Only what she’s told us,” Wanda said.

“I so wanna dig around in her head. But I can’t do that because of vampire code. If things get worse, or that fuckerly fuck shows back up, heads up, I’ll do it. For now, we focus on the worst. That being she grants wishes like Dr. Beverly Hills 90210 hands out boob jobs. That’s a problem, and somebody needs to be with her twenty-four-seven to try and keep track of it. As to her knowing the sleazy shit who clocked her, I’ll keep watching her to see if she gives me any more suspicious signs. But I can tell you this—she looked me right in the eye and told me she had no idea who he was. If she’s lyin’, she’s fucking aces at it. I was this close to convinced.”

“Ladies!” Darnell called from the living room. “You might wanna come watch this here five o’clock newscast. We got mo’ trouble.”

They piled into Jeannie’s small living room and turned their attention to her TV. The reporter, slender, with her hair sharply pulled back from her face and eyes like hazel razor blades, was standing in front of Forever Bridal. When the camera panned to the store behind her, Sloan swore softly. He didn’t need to hear what had happened. The visual was enough to show him.