The Accidental Genie (32 page)

Jeannie’s giggle bordered hysterical. “So I let Victor slit my throat for nothing?”

“Nay! Nothing you have done tonight was in vain, madam. Who could have guessed the pale, angry one would show up with your pretty male? You died for the cause, madam!” Nekaar said fiercely.

“Yeah, about that. You dying
. Explain,
” Sloan insisted, his gaze intense as he brushed the hair from her eyes. “Because I’m still a little lost about why you had to die for this all to work. And it better never happen again. I don’t think I’ll live through it.”

“According to the book, I had to die and experience a rebirth by way of the spell, the sort of final phase of me becoming ruler. I was only three quarters of the way there all this time because Burt screwed up originally, which explains why my magic was so haywire. I just needed the other quarter of it to complete me. Under normal circumstances, according to this book, this ritual would have been a happy occasion, and once I was reborn, there would have been celebrations and all sorts of jazz. But the magic I had can also be stolen upon my death—if you know how to do it, that is. So my half-assed magic, plus this spell no one seemed to know about but Burt, equals the most powerful genie ever.”

Nina’s eyes narrowed. “So that dicknuckle Burt only spewed half the spell when he got out of the bottle?”

Jeannie winced when she ran her hand over the back of her head. “That’s basically what it boils down to, MWA. He found pieces of the spell on the Internet, but the entirety of it was in that book. A book I fully intend to burn as new ruler. Can you even believe just anyone can repeat it? You don’t have to be djinn to cast it. That worked to our advantage, too, because Najim was powerless at that point.”

Sloan shook his head. “So why didn’t Najim take the spell and use it for himself, so he could continue to rule the djinn?”

Najim smiled at Sloan. “Because Najim is tired after a buttload of centuries as ruler. And remember, in order for someone to accumulate all of the power, your Jeannie would have had to die for me to steal it.”

Sloan slapped him on the back with a smile. “You made the right choice, my friend. Because if you’d harmed a hair on her head, no genie magic would have saved you.”

Jeannie smiled impishly up at him, her eyes warm.

Najim gave Sloan a sheepish glance. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more help. My magic was a little neglected during my week of captivity, and as you grew stronger, I grew weaker.”

Jeannie ran a hand over his arm and smiled. “You were still pretty awesome.”

Nina shook her head, her dark hair now beginning to grow back before Jeannie’s eyes. “So you actually let that fuck put a knife to your throat and slit it?”

Jeannie nodded, forcing the utter terror of that decision from her mind. “A knife dipped in some kind of genie magic. What they didn’t count on was what a brilliant spy Mat turned out to be. He saved us.”

“Jesus Christ and a pair of Hanes, you are one righteous broad, midget. Gimme the knuck,” Nina encouraged, her fist facing forward.

Jeannie bumped fists with her and grinned, though she ached from head to toe.

Marty and Wanda began to squeak from beneath Mat, sending Nina off to help them.

Sloan’s jaw clenched and a vein in his forehead pulsed. Always a sure sign he was bent out of shape.

She put her hands on his chest and glanced up at him with hangdog eyes. “So you’re mad.”

He held up a hand. “Pretty people have feelings, too.”

She walked her fingers up his arm and batted her eyelashes—even though the batting hurt like hell. “Would it help if I said I’m über-sorry, and I was just trying to keep you out of harm’s way like you all did for me?”

He shrugged his shoulder and sighed comically. “Maybe.”

Throwing her arms around him, she clung to his middle. “I’m sooorrry. So, so desperately, dreadfully, incredibly sorry.”

Sloan scooped her up and met her gaze, his filled with fire. “Don’t ever, ever, so long as your little genie life lasts, ever do that again, young lady. I think I lost a good fifty years off my eternity.”

Her heart clenched tight and her arms tightened around him. “Promise. I think. I hope.”

“You’re one brave warrior, Jeannie Carlyle.”

As the reality of what she’d done began to sink in, she found herself beginning to wobble.

Sloan put his lips to hers, kissing her soundly before pulling away to ask, “So, about that dinner date . . . We might have to reschedule due to the remodel your kitchen’s going to need. We can’t play
Top Chef
like this.” He waved his hand around at the total annihilation of her brownstone.

Jeannie giggled against his lips and sighed. “I get to be Padma,” she teased. She didn’t care that her brownstone was ruined. She didn’t care that her body felt like it had been run over by a 747. The only thing that mattered was Sloan was here with her and safe.

“All right you two, leave the lip-lock for later, huh?” Nina razzed them as Wanda and Marty followed behind her, both wrapped in one sheet. Nina held up Mat and gave him a shake.

Tears stung Jeannie’s eyes when she took him from Nina. She cradled him close to her chest. “You are the best guardian ever.”

He coughed, blowing more Sheetrock dust up in a white cloud. “Invisible,” he reminded her.

Jeannie laughed. “Like totally. I’m so proud of you.”

“Aw,” he grumbled. “It’s the least I could do for ya, dollface.”

She held him up, struggling to hold his heavy weight. “You know, there’s something else I can do for you if what Nekaar says is true.”

He shuddered, making his fibers ripple. “Dyson?”

Jeannie shook her head. “Way more awesome. I can lift your curse . . . You could be human again, Mat. I’d miss you as my guardian, but all you have to do is wish . . .”

Mat held perfectly still for a moment as though paused in thought. “Can I think on it, doll? I dunno if I can handle bein’ human again. I’m so used to bein’ just some throw rug.”

She pulled him back to her chest and squeezed him hard. “You’re not just some throw rug. You’re my throw rug, and you take all the time you need.” Dropping a kiss on his fringe that made him purr, she set him down on the floor. Mat slid off over the chunks of her brownstone and disappeared under the bathroom door where Boris and Benito barked wildly and scratched at the door.

Jeannie turned to Wanda and Marty, more tears stinging her eyes. “Thank you. I never could have done this without you—all of you.”

Marty blew a strand of her mussed hair from her face and enveloped Jeannie in a hug. “Please. You were a force, kiddo. Way to take a sonofabitch out, honey,” she cooed.

Wanda bobbed her head, tugging at a piece of wood stuck in her shoulder before examining Jeannie’s head, which was still crusted with blood. She wrapped her arm around Jeannie’s neck, squeezing it before clucking her tongue. “What a disaster. Nina, get the DustBuster. Wait. Scratch that. See if Darnell can hire a bulldozer. Marty? See if we can find some rubber gloves. You know how my hands chafe when they’re submerged in water.”

And they were off, unaware that Jeannie could simply snap her fingers and restore everything to its former disorganized mess.

She was about to reveal that when Sloan took her by the hand and pulled her aside. “Before you do the hocus-pocus and make everything all better, give me a second.”

“For?”

“For this,” he murmured before swooping down and covering her lips with his.

And in the midst of Wanda barking orders, and Marty carrying on about how itchy Jeannie’s sheets were, and Nina complaining that Marty was a diva-whiner, Jeannie sighed against Sloan’s mouth.

This was what magic was made of.

*   *   *

J
EANNIE
and Nina sat side by side on her bed once more while Sloan was at the store picking up more antibiotic cream to tend to the wounds he promised he’d care for when they were alone if he could just get rid of all the yakking women who seemed to think he was incapable of nurturing her properly. She didn’t bother to tell him that the next spell on her list to learn was that of self-healing. She needed a moment alone with Nina.

Sloan had insisted she wait here and rest under Nina’s watchful eye.

Jeannie nudged Nina’s shoulder. “Can I ask you something, MWA?”

Nina eyed her. “Is it gonna require a long, touchy-feely talk? Gotta tell ya, after tonight, I’m just not up to a bunch of therapeutic, girlie-talk bullshit. I’m all girl’d out.”

Jeannie giggled, letting her legs dangle from the bed. “Nope.”

“Then ask and make it quick. I need to go home and see my man the minute the ass sniffer gets back from the store.”

She gave Nina a tentative look. “If I had been your genie—”

“If you’d been mine, I’d have stuffed your midget ass back in that bottle and sealed that shit tighter than a virgin’s chastity belt and none of this would have gone down. End of.”

Jeannie chuckled again, knowing full well Nina would have rescued her like she had so many others. “Just listen to the question.” She paused and waited for Nina to nod her head in consent. “If I’d been your genie, what would you have wished for? Would you have even wished at all?”

Nina made a face at her. “Is this some kind of fucking test? Like that Rorschach thing with all the pictures that are supposed to mean something? ’Cus I can tell you for sure, they don’t look like cuddly puppies and rainbows to me. Just looks like carnage and innards.”

Jeannie stifled a giggle. “Nope, I was just curious. You don’t have to answer.”

Nina’s pause was long, myriad emotions flitted across her face, and then she shot Jeannie a faraway smile. “Yeah, I would have wished. But not for the shit most people wish for: money, cars, boobs, whatever.”

“Ruler of the universe, right?”

“You’re funny, squirt. Like I’d fucking wanna have to deal with that kind of responsibility. Nah. Nothing that big. Well, not big to some, but big to me because it’s impossible.”

“Aha!” Jeannie shook her finger at her. “The chance to eat chicken wings and Ring Dings again, right?”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t dig a bucket o’ wings and a fucking Ho Hos.”

“So that’s what you’d wish for?”

“Nope.”

“Then what? The suspense, she kills me.”

“Kids.”

Jeannie’s breath caught in her throat. Nina was great with children and animals and anything helpless, but Jeannie’d never considered she’d wanted any of her own. At first encounter, Nina came off very selfish, but Jeannie knew that wasn’t who this vampire really was on the inside. She was loyal, protective—and honest to her core.

She’d given up her eternity to the man she loved when push came to shove and she’d had the choice to become a vampire or let Greg perish.

That kind of devotion, that kind of sacrifice, came from a deeply selfless soul. It came from someone who loved hard and loved forever.

Jeannie slung an arm over Nina’s shoulder. “No shit?”

“No shit. I dig kids. You know that. Never really wanted them until Greg—and even then, I didn’t want ’em until we’d been married a little while. But when I hang with Hollis and my sister Penny, I get this fucked-up feeling in my stomach—like just a little something’s missing. But I gave that shit up when I mated with Greg. He’s enough for me, and I have Hollis and Penny and Katie’s twins from time to time. It’s a good life.”

Jeannie believed that was true—to her core. “I wonder if you had children if they’d live for an eternity, too? I mean, vampire children.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess they would, but it’s never happened to a vampire. So it ain’t shit you need to worry your midget head over.”

But there was this one festering question . . . “Would you want them to live for an eternity, too?”

“Probably fucking selfish of me, but, yeah. I don’t know if I could deal with my kid kickin’ it before me. Ever. That’s more than I think even I got in me. I’m a badass—but I’m a marshmallow when it comes to the little shits.”

“But what about the little one? How would you explain eternity?”

“I guess it would just grow up that way, right? Like Sloan and Keegan, Casey’s kid, Naomi, too. It’s just part of their world. It would meet other vampires or werewolves at paranormal playgroup or some shit. So, yeah. I would have wished for a kid.” She shook her head, a scowl returning to her face. “Look, this is kind of a moot point. Now shut the fuck up and quit talkin’ about crap that ain’t gonna happen and go get with your man. I just heard him pull up with my super vampire hearing. So, shoo-shoo.” She waved her hands at the door.

Jeannie smiled and, on impulse, threw her arms around Nina’s neck and squeezed tight. “You’re the best evah, MWA.
Evah
.”

Nina gave her an awkward pat on the back before saying, “Get the fuck off me. What is it with you and a PDA, dude?”

It was freedom.

The freedom to express your joy—your love for another person—without being afraid it would be taken away.

And now, she decided as she rose and made her way to the door, she was going to go express that freedom with Sloan.

Opening the door, a door that deep down inside Jeannie knew led to her future, she stepped out just in time to see Sloan with a bag from CVS.

He held it up and smiled, wiggling his eyebrows. His handsome face taking her breath away. “Wanna try something kinky with Neosporin?”

Jeannie giggled and wrapped her arms around his waist, burrowing her aching head against his chest. “Oh, yeah. I always wanna try something kinky with Neosporin.”

He scooped her up gently, touching his lips to her forehead. “I’ve got bandages and peroxide, too. Just to keep things fresh and exciting.”

Jeannie let her head fall back on her shoulders when she laughed loud and strong. “I don’t know how I could ever be expected to resist bandages and peroxide. I’m giddy with desire.”

“So you wanna go explore that? You know.” He tilted his jaw toward the door and gave her a lewd smile. “In there?”

Jeannie’s return smile was warm even as tears formed in the corner of her eyes. She cupped his jaw. “Only if I get to play the part of Christopher Columbus.”