Three Wishes (2 page)

Freedom!

Even limited freedom was exhilarating after six decades stuck in the bottle.

Cali swirled through David’s bedroom. What a fool the mortal was. At least the illegitimate son of a camel who’d given David her bottle had known to fear her. She’d laughed at Agrib’s care to keep a layer of cloth or paper between his skin and her bottle. He’d feared waking the djinni.

And so he should.
Cali stretched exultantly.
So he should.

She sat on a window seat with her back to the sea and smiled at David. He couldn’t see her. She’d switched the bathroom light back on, but until she chose to appear, she was invisible to humans.

“A hitch in the power supply,” David muttered. He flicked the bathroom lights off then on again.

Cali laughed. She’d let him cling to his rational, physical world a while longer. Besides, men who didn’t believe in her made the most interesting wishes. It was delightful to turn their experimenting against them.

Revenge was sweet and had proved addictive. She had earned the title of Bringer of Death.

She clapped her hands. Time to start the play. If David replaced the stopper before they began, she’d be returned once more to the bottle. No, she had to entice him into foolishness.

She waved her hand and the gold bangles chimed. She loved the freedom of modern dress—jeans and a white silk shirt tied with a red scarf at her waist—but old habits died hard. You wore your treasures, and Cali loved her bangles. Their soft chime was the signature of her magic.

David’s head jerked. He glanced to where she sat, but seeing nothing, shook his head.

“Whisper your dreams, o master.” Cali pitched her voice on the edge of hearing, letting it deepen into husky invitation. “Anything you wish.”

She watched his hand tighten on the bottle and delighted in his embarrassed, searching look. She wet her lips. “Anything.”

“It wouldn’t have to be poison.” David stared at the bottle. He wiped a finger across the rim. “It could be a drug to send me tripping.” He crossed over to the door and locked it.

Cali smiled.
So, the mortal didn’t want an audience?
This would be fun.

She stood and drifted to the corner of his vision. She clicked her fingers and for a second was visible to human eyes.

David’s eyes widened. His head snapped around.

“Dreams and wishes. Test me, master, if you don’t believe.”

“I don’t believe,” David said loudly.

“But you want to.”

“I do not.” He stopped and wiped a hand over his face. “All right. I’ll prove you’re a figment of my drug-addled mind. I want my first wish. See that castle over there.” He gestured to the southern window. “I want it restored and modernized, as comfortable and complete as a five-star hotel.”

“A perfect wish, master.” Cali laughed. Finally, a man with an imagination and giving her a fantastic opportunity.

Her mind buzzed with a thousand and one interior-design ideas. Hollywood had nothing on the opulent unreality of palaces she’d lived in through the centuries. When money was no object, every fantasy could be attempted. Indoor gardens complete with waterfalls and glimmering fish. Peacocks on the lawns. Silk-draped canopies over orgy-sized beds. Bathrooms that offered champagne showers, plunge pools and lotus spas. Great halls designed for dancing and dining. Her fingers tingled with magic.

She flew to the castle and stood in its shadow. The ruins showed what it had been, a minor fortification. But this wasn’t about restoring it to withstand a siege. David’s wish was about fantasy: a five-star hotel built on the memory of violence.

“So be it.”

The castle sprang into completeness. The stonework gleamed silver in the starlight, freshly cut, weather and time having yet to age it. Silk and lace curtains billowed from the new windows that replaced the original arrow slits, opening up the dark interior and taking advantage of the sea and land views. Inside, marble floors were covered with thick rugs or polished to lethal slipperiness. Elaborately inlaid furniture recalled the harems of earlier centuries, as did the privacy screens that broke the second great hall into dining alcoves.

It was a romantic nonsense of a castle, finished with a courtyard fountain that scented the air with orange-blossom water and turned all the colors of the rainbow as the underwater lighting switched on.

“As perfect as a dream,” Cali murmured. She reappeared beside David in his bedroom.

His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. He swallowed, then croaked like a frog.

How very slithery and damp of him.
Cali smiled. “Are you pleased, master?” Her bangles rattled smugly.

David didn’t answer. He ran for the door, unlocked it and bolted down his private stairs.

Cali followed his swift and surprisingly quiet progress. It seemed unlikely he’d wake anyone, but just in case, she wrapped a mist around the castle. Her dealings with David would be private.

It was the one rule Cali lived by. Never hurt the bystanders.

Her hate was for the men who controlled her bottle, and over the centuries she’d learned the art of revenge.

The Bringer of Death waited for David at the castle entrance. She rather liked the touch of romance provided by red roses planted in halved wine barrels. It was precisely the clichéd decoration a hotel would use. David ran right past them.

He was in good training, she noticed. Not even breathing hard.

It was a shame training wouldn’t save him.

She looked up at the stone balanced high on the walls. For centuries she’d heard the complaint “Builders are so careless.” Tsk. And there she’d left a boulder balanced precariously over the entrance. Why, the first person through would undoubtedly dislodge it when opening the door and then,
splat.

A crude ending, and she really didn’t like satisfying Agrib’s desire for David’s death, but a vow was a vow. Not one of her masters would live to enjoy the wishes she was forced by Solomon’s curse to grant.

David put his hand to the door.

Cali leaned forward. “See how well I have served you, o master.”

He turned the handle, pushed and—

The rock fell, silent and deadly, a full three feet from where David stood. It landed an inch from Cali. A chip of stone flew up and cut her hand.

“What the hell?” David ducked through the doorway and slammed the massive door behind him.

“A miscalculation,” Cali muttered. She sucked the slight cut and narrowed her eyes, looking up at the ramparts. She’d balanced the rock carefully, calculating trajectories as well as initiating actions. David ought to be dead. “I can’t believe I missed.”

“You didn’t.” A scowling soldier materialized in front of her. His fingers flexed by his sides as he loomed over her. “You’d have killed David if I hadn’t intervened.”

“Who asked you to?” Cali regretted the instinctive step back she’d taken. She was not intimidated.

The stranger folded his arms across a burly chest. He wore the combat fatigues of a modern soldier, but he wasn’t human. He radiated power.

“Don’t tell me you’re a damned guardian angel.”

“
I’m
not damned.”

She grimaced at the inference that she was the one going to perdition. What did Soldier Boy know? She already lived in her personal hell and had done for centuries.

“Forgive me, o mighty guardian, member of the Heavenly Host,” she mocked him. “I tremble before your anger.”

His folded arms tensed. “David is my charge.”

“Aren’t you the lucky one?”

“You will not kill him.”

“I wouldn’t bet your wings on it, Soldier Boy.”

“Smart-mouthed djinni.”

He grabbed her before her bangles could rattle out a protective charm. The world tilted as he slung her over his shoulder like a sack of grain or a moth-eaten carpet. Cali felt the insult keenly.

“Son of a she-camel.” She slammed her fist into his lower back.

His arm tightened around her thighs. His free hand gave her bottom a stinging slap.

“Bastard.” She wriggled and kicked and found herself suddenly free.

He’s thrown me over the friggin’
—

Splash!

—
cliff.
She spit saltwater, too shocked and outraged to remember to dematerialize. Her boots waterlogged fast and dragged her down. She splashed with demonic intensity, churning the water into foam.

“Curse you.” She couldn’t stand interference. “May fire ants bite your—”

The same hard hands gripped her shoulders and pulled her from the whirlpool.

She landed on the rocky beach, furious and streaming water. Her hair had come loose from the braid and wound clammily around her like black seaweed. Her silk shirt and jeans clung to her body. She touched the dagger tucked into the red sash at her waist.

The angel stood a few feet from her, infuriatingly dry, warm and in command. He had a broad, square face as uncompromising as his low voice and massive body.

She took a deep breath, then another, and let her hand drop from the dagger.

Interesting
. Soldier Boy might be an angel, but he was also male. He’d noticed her nipples’ response to the cold water. She smiled inside, once more in control.

She could be devious if it got her what she wanted. And she wanted David dead. She didn’t trade her body, but the angel didn’t know that—not if he already considered her damned. All she needed to do was distract him.

With her next breath she popped loose two buttons on her shirt. “Did you have to dunk me?”

“Cooling you off cooled me off. I was mad.”

“And now?” She combed her hair back, knowing the movement brought her breasts into greater prominence.

“I’m still mad.”

“So am I.” But she made her confession husky and inviting.
Take the bait, Soldier Boy. I have a nose ring just your size.

“Are you thinking to seduce me?” he asked bluntly.

“Would you like me to?” She toyed with the final button holding her shirt together.

“I don’t play games.”

“Which isn’t an answer.”

“I’m David’s guardian angel. I’m here to stop you killing him.”

“That’s your duty.” She strolled forward, running her hands from her breasts to her hips. Ugh. It would be easier to feel seductive if her clothes weren’t clammy. Still, the heat in the angel’s eyes sparked its own fire, no matter what his words disclaimed. “What’s your name, Soldier Boy?”

“Andrew.” He stood firm as her breasts nudged him. “Enough, Cali. I spanked you once. I can do it again.”

“I’m sure you can. Did it make you hard?” She reached down to discover for herself, ignoring the shiver of fear that he knew her name. Knowing her name meant he’d researched her, and she preferred to keep her secrets.

He caught her hand. “No games.”

“I’m a djinni. Games are my specialty. If you don’t want to play, David and I will play judge and executioner.”

“With you in both roles?”

“Yes.” She brought his hand to her hip. His fingers curved naturally and she swayed into the heat of his body. After the cold of the sea, the warmth felt good.

Why not try him with the truth?
The thought tempted her. How much easier life would be if she didn’t have to fight the angel, if he were on her side.

“Andrew.” She tasted his name, colored with his power. “You know David Saqr deserves to die. He trades in weapons and mercenaries. Thousands of people die because of him.”

“You will not kill him.”

Cali scowled. She might just as well talk to the rocky shore as to this flint-faced soldier. Still, she pressed her own face into the curve of his throat and inhaled his scent.
How long since I’ve wanted a man?

Her life had been a deadly dance, filled with lethal games as her masters sought power and she sought to kill them. Seventy years ago a Nazi spy had stolen her bottle from a merchant. He’d wished for the ability to understand all languages, to hear every secret, and she’d given it to him. His mind broke within the hour, overwhelmed by the avalanche of voices human and animal from every corner of the globe. She brought them to him on radio waves until he leaped from the roof of the Turkish merchant’s home. The merchant’s son found the body and, understanding who had killed his father, dropped the corpse in the sea to feed the fishes. Then he sold Cali’s bottle to a rich man who wished for sex slaves and perverted pleasures. Auto-asphyxiation killed him, and his widow placed Cali’s bottle in a safe and left her there. Agrib had bought the bottle from her grandson’s estate.

“I will kill David. He owns my bottle. He’s commanded my wishes.”

“David has a chance of redemption. You will not steal it from him.” Andrew gripped her hips, holding her in place, neither closer nor farther. Just far enough that she couldn’t judge his arousal.

She leaned forward, putting her arms around him and luxuriating in his warmth and strength. “David is a monster. A dealer in death. I know. I study the men who would possess my bottle. They are cockroaches.”

“He may yet become a man.”

“Ha.” She snorted her disbelief.

It was always greedy men who gained possession of her bottle and the power of three wishes. She had witnessed cruelty so raw it made her vomit—and her masters laugh and applaud. Their wishes had compelled her to destroy people, families and, in a final abomination, an entire city. Never would she be used like that again.

God, she’d been so naive.

When Solomon first bound the djinn, she’d believed his curse would soon be broken. All it would take to do so was one human holding the djinni bottle and using one of the three wishes to wish the constrained djinni free.

But no human had been willing to surrender the power of controlling a djinni. Instead, attracted like flies to a carcass, the evil men killed to possess the djinni bottles and then wreaked havoc.

Never again.

Cali hauled herself out of the pit of memories and the echo of screams. She stepped back from Andrew. “I will kill David.”

“I won’t let you.” He released her hips slowly. “And I won’t let
him
hurt
you.
”