The Accidental Genie (29 page)

If he did, who the hell knew what was in store on the other end of the line. Next he’d be shackled to a mermaid . . .

It was probably just a crank call.
Right, Flaherty. Wasn’t that how this all began with Jeannie?
Okay, so he hoped it was a crank.

Sloan glanced at the phone. “Okay. This is me raising my hands like white flags in defeat,” he said to the room. He snatched up the phone. “Thank you for calling OOPS. We’re here to serve all your paranormal crisis needs. This is Sloan Flaherty—werewolf at large. How can I help you?”

“Sloan?” Jeannie’s voice hissed through the phone, panicked and hushed.

But he figured it was just because she hadn’t been able to touch base with him all day. “Jeannie? Jesus, woman! Where have you been all day? I’ve texted you at least twenty times in the last six hours. Is this what our relationship is going to be like, Ms. Carlyle? Will I always be waiting for you to call me back?” he teased, that ridiculous lump in his chest throbbing at the sound of her voice.

“If you don’t shut up and listen to me, I’m never going to call you back again. Unless it’s from the afterlife.” She choked on the words.

Sloan’s nose flared, and his chest tightened. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Nothing. I was joking. You know me, always with the funny? Anyway, I just got your texts. Wow. You really meant it when you said you were into me, huh?”

His chuckle was warm, fluid, but his ear was finely tuned to something that wasn’t sitting right with him. “And you’re just as into me. You know it. So do I.”

Her sigh was breathy for a moment and then she was all business. “Right. So this is me, the chick who’s super into you, calling you to tell you, the guy who’s just as super into me, that I need a little space tonight. The plans you texted are awesome. Like otherworldly. In fact, I bet you cooking in the kitchen is so hot, it’s like watching molten lava with an apron on. But I need some girl time. Okay? So let’s do this dinner date tomorrow night. You know, when my face feels less like it was put in a grinder and my ribs don’t feel like a vise grip is squeezing the life out of them. That work?”

Sloan frowned, tapping the desk with his forefinger. “But I was going to put more ointment on your face, maybe rub your back . . .”

“And all while you cooked me a meal. God, the nerve of some people calling you a jerk. If they only knew the Sloan Flaherty I’ve come to know. Anyway, gotta go. A hot bath awaits me and bubbles. Lots and lots of bubbles. Call me tomorrow, m’kay? Byeeee.”

She clicked the phone off before Sloan had the chance to protest.

His nostrils flared again.

Something wasn’t right. Not the tone of Jeannie’s voice, or her ridiculous request for girl time. She wasn’t just blowing him off—she was warning him off.

Shit. What now?

He dug his cell out of his pocket and texted Nina, Wanda, Marty, and Darnell while his jaw clenched tight and the animal inside him itched to make an appearance.

Making sure he covered all the bases, he tweeted them, too.
2Furry4U @OOPS 911 @Jeannie’s!

*   *   *

J
EANNIE,
chained by her feet to what had once been her bedroom wall and now was some monstrosity of brick and stone, moaned. Shit and shit! Pleading for her brain to calm, she turned to her right. “Did that phone call to Sloan sound convincing enough? Or too much?”

Nekaar, chained alongside her, raised one regal eyebrow in her direction. “If I laughed at you, madam, would thou be offended?”

She shook her head, tucking the cell phone back behind her. “Thou would not. Okay, fine. Nobody ever said I was winning any awards for my acting, but I had to keep Sloan away somehow, right?”

“Oh, indeed, madam. I’m certain your thespian performance, delivered with a great flair for overexaggeration, I might add, was on point. I expect you shall never see him again.”

Perfect. No way was she risking Sloan’s life. According to master djinn Nekaar, werewolf and vampire were trumped by genie magic. Which meant their lives weren’t so eternal while she was holding court. Her heart ached to see Sloan one last time. After she’d read his texts about a surprise, not only had guilt eaten her up, but also the idea that she might never see him again. Or any of the people she’d come to care about and trust these last few days, for that matter.

No. This time, she was handling this on her own.

She turned to the stranger who was tied up beside she and Nekaar. “Can you chill for just a few minutes while I straighten some things out and then we’ll talk?”

There was an affirmative nod from the latest addition to this newest hell she found herself stuck in, and it was all Jeannie needed to move forward.

So first up, their imprisonment. She held up her ankle in Nekaar’s direction, wincing when her ribs screamed in protest. “What is this and why does it take our genie powers away again?”

“It is cursed silver, madam. Cursed with the power to strip us of our magic. No one can remove the curse and release us but another djinn.”

“Have any djinn friends available?” Jeannie asked with hope, knowing the answer before Nekaar had the chance to say anything.

“Only the genie who placed the curse on these cuffs—”

“Can break it,”
she mimicked
. Beautiful.
Jeannie rolled her eyes. Well, Marty would be happy to know she’d found their kryptonite. Cursed silver—a common, yet mostly unused curse.

Yay.

But that wasn’t the worst of it, according to Nekaar. There was also some ancient curse only one djinn in all of Genie-ville knew about.

Burt.

She was all on the edge of her seat just waiting to hear what this curse entailed.

“So hang on,” Jeannie hissed in his ear as Burt and Victor rooted around in her kitchen for whatever they needed to perform this ritual she was still unclear of. “You mean to tell me that Burt, the genie who, according to you, can’t remember one curse from another—the genie who bonded me to Sloan but didn’t really mean to—was the one who managed to whip up the macdaddy curse of them all from the afterlife? You said he was dead!”

Nekaar nodded his head. “It is so. Burt clearly put his sentence in that bottle to good use, for this curse is so ancient, not even I knew of its existence.”

Jeannie’s head hung low as she tried to free even just one ankle from the super-duper, magical, mystical ankle cuffs. She grimaced when her ribs began to ache from leaning forward. “And you don’t have a rad curse to sling back at him? Oh, Nekaar . . . tsk-tsk.”

His regal face hardened. “I hear your disappointment and return it with a renewed sense of frustration, madam.”

She was stunned with disbelief. “How could you, the better student of the two of you, not know about a curse like this?”

He sucked in his lean cheeks in righteous indignation. “Because I, madam, do not seek such devices as an outlet for my magic. I am the good cop. Burt is the bad. Like on the
SVU
TV show.”

Jeannie clucked her tongue. She’d heard that before. “Right, right. Genies are mostly peace loving, hang ten, love thy neighbor, yada, yada, yada. All I know is, since I met you crazy bunch of djinn, I’ve been trapped in a bottle, forced to call a man master, tethered to said man, sent a dozen or so people to hell, and managed to get a store full of women pregnant. Oh, plus a man. So I hope you won’t be offended if I don’t buy this genies-love-lollipops-and-sunshine rhetoric.”

Nekaar cleared his throat, and putting his hands in his lap, he remained silently admonished.

She gave him a poke in his bulging bicep. “And another thing, you know, before we get to this curse, Mr. Clean, why, why, why would you let Victor out of the bottle?”

He lifted his strong jaw in clear discomfort. “I was not made aware he was in the bottle, madam. Clearly, I was left out of the loop, as your people say. I was seeking
you
, madam. As you recall, we had lessons this evening. Upon my arrival, I could not find you. Thusly, I checked your bottle, which is your home away from home, is it not? I mean, there was talk of throw pillows and the hanging of pictures. I believed you had grown comfortable with the idea and had chosen it as your me-time destination.”

Apparently, she’d been in the bathtub with her iPod blaring “Footloose” when Nekaar had arrived. “All I wanted to do was get out of the stupid thing, why would I choose to get back in it?” she asked, dumbfounded by his reasoning.

“I do not know, madam. It seemed as likely a place as any. I knew you could not go far. The pale woman informed me you had injuries via Twitter. Injuries I planned to teach you how to heal in our first exercise tonight.”

Jeannie made a face at him. “Well, surprise.”

He nodded sagely. “Indeed. Surprise, madam.”

“We put Victor in the bottle because he’s a maniac. Now he’s a maniac with genie powers. I fear we won’t fare well in this battle, my fine djinn friend.”

“Had I only known, madam.” He shrugged his wide shoulders with nonchalance, making his vest gape at his chest. “But alas”—he paused, clenching his perfect white teeth together and jamming his face into hers—“
no one informed me
of this Victor,” he hissed back.

She let her head fall back on the wall. “Fine. Guilty. But it all happened so fast, you know. The idea to put him in the bottle struck me, and blamo, I looked up how to do it in the big book of genies, and there you have it.”

“Oh, we’ll have it, madam. We shall have it and then some.”

Yet, she was still confused. “How did Victor become a genie again?”

“I’m unclear, but I believe your magic is so powerful and out of control it, in a sense, rubbed off on Victor via your bottle.”

Check. “Okay, so how did Burt find me?”

Nekaar’s chin hung to his broad chest. “Burt followed me here, madam.”

“And why is that again, Nekaar?”

“Because he now knows you are the successor, the great ruler of all djinn.”

Jeannie popped her lips. Yeah. That. “What does that mean. And we know that how?” God. All these rules and curses were a maddening maze of total chaos.

“Via my investigation through the veils, madam. It was one of the many things I’d planned to share with you upon my return this eve. It’s all very exciting, do you not agree?”

Cue majestic music full of excitement.

She didn’t even have time to react to her newest title before she asked, “And Burt found out I’m head genie how, loose lips?”

Nekaar’s head sunk to his chest in obvious shame. “Via, as you dubbed it, my sinking-ships lips. I was not aware, when I sought information on your dilemma throughout the veils, that Burt was still alive, madam. Surely you saw my grief when news of his passing came. When Burt realized that he had, in his utterly moronic shameful luck, indeed not only cursed you to the bottle and enslaved you to Sloan, but in the process gave you a far bigger gift, he sought to find a way to retrieve it.”

“So this, all of this crazy, me being head djinn, was a total accident on Burt’s part?”

Nekaar dipped his head once more. “I did mention he was dreadful academically speaking, did I not? Only Burt, the worst djinn in centuries could make such a blunder as to give you this sort of power when he meant to bestow it upon himself.”

Jeannie sighed, the air escaping her lungs stinging on its way out. She got it now. “So he posted his death on Facebook under a false account to keep suspicion at bay and buy himself some time to find me?”

“Yes, in the effort to distract the attention from himself and his nefarious plan. He is quite aware of his reputation in and amongst the veils. Knowing he’d be the likely suspect when word was out our ruler had been kidnapped, he furthered his ruse.”

“Riiiight. So now, for the moment anyway, I’m the great and powerful Oz.”

Nekaar gulped, his bronzed throat moving up and down with the effort. “He wishes to dethrone you.”

“By dethrone, you don’t suppose he’s just going to ask nicely for the title, perchance?”

Nekaar sighed. “Nay, madam. I fear there shall be bloodshed.”

She clapped him on his broad, tree-trunk-sized thigh. “Thanks for keepin’ it real.”

“I am so dreadfully sorry, madam. I had no idea. I knew your powers were askew. I did not know it was, as is with Mat, a mere matter of fine-tuning them to prepare you for your maiden voyage as our ruler. I also did not know the curse Burt bestowed upon you was only just past half in its completion. Though, with Burt, I should have known,” he said in disgust. “I confess I am mostly blind to the inner workings of our world and its government. I was not aware our ruler could even be dethroned—by anything or anyone, and certainly not Burt. He is, as the pale one says, a moron.”

“Know your government, Nekaar,” she chided.

“Ah,” he groused. “But Burt knew—or found out. I do not know why I find myself astonished that he faked his own death in order to prepare for the kidnapping of our ruler. Nor do I know how he could have possibly found you. I spoke quietly with my interveil connections when I queried this most unusual turn of events. Which means there is a mole among the veils, a despicable informant for Burt, and should we live, which I highly doubt, I shall turn every stone until I find this traitorous genie!”

Leave it to her to become not just any old genie but top genie. “So the only way to usurp yon current ruler is if, say, someone like me, you know, special genie, is by some freak set of circumstances, gifted with rare and unlimited powers that are more rare and more unlimited than our current ruler?”

“Indeed. You have now, according to the universe’s great plan for you, become our ruler, for you are more powerful than any other djinn as a result of Burt’s treachery. Our current ruler has returned to his normal djinn status. Consider yourself a prophet. Did you not impregnate a mass count of women? Your magic is clearly more powerful than our current ruler’s—stronger. How Burt managed this, again I say I do not know. There must have been a glitch . . . The universe is a strange and delightful place, yes?”

“Dee-lightful,” Jeannie agreed with sarcasm tempered with a smile. Because it wasn’t Nekaar’s fault. Well, not really. How was he to know if Burt were freed from his bottle he’d turn into some power-hungry madman? How was he to know Burt would actually spend his imprisonment researching when he’d sucked at all things academic?