“I’ll see you soon,” he said through the phone. “It’ll be all right, Lo. I promise you.”
They said their goodbyes and Thorin sprinted from the house.
He would fix this, he vowed.
Somehow.
Someway.
Even if it started another war.
Chapter 16
LOLA
When Thorin showed up at her loft, Lola slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses and kept her eyes on the floor as she opened the door to him.
“Hey,” he said. He was breathing heavily like he’d run all the way up the three flights of stairs.
“Hi.”
God was she relieved he was here. Thorin would know what to do and once he fixed her, she’d let him send down a barrage of I told you so’s and she’d be totally cool with it. She’d take it like a champ.
She just wanted things to go back to normal.
When he walked past her into the loft, he brought with him his musky, wild smell.
When Lola first met him, she’d thought he must spend a lot of time outdoors. He smelled like a morning in the woods or a cool winter night by the fire. It was both sweet and wild, like raw vanilla and dark night and soft leather rubbed between your fingers.
It was a scent no one could have ever bottled.
And one she couldn’t get out of her nose even after he left her side. Not that she was complaining.
His scent made her feel safe and secure and somehow also like…well, like she was home.
Which didn’t make any sense at all.
Lola’s childhood home had never been particularly cozy or comfortable. She’d grown up in a seven-bedroom mansion in the coastal town of Silvercove. She used to go days in that house without seeing a single soul.
Her dad had always been away working or traveling for work and her mom was always on the cusp of a self-induced mental breakdown. “I need a deep tissue massage,” she used to say. “Or I will literally die.”
“How are you?” Thorin said, his voice low and hoarse, teetering on the edge of grumbling.
Lola turned her back on him and went to the L-shaped emerald green sofa in the living room. It was already a struggle not to look at him.
“I’m okay,” she said.
Lie.
“Tell me what you saw.” Thorin followed her to the sofa and sat several cushions away. From her guarded position, she could see only his legs clad in his worn jeans.
“I went to get coffee,” she started and then filled in the rest. The red cloud around the barista. The shadow-eyed man.
“I wished to see men exactly as they are, but this? This isn’t what I had in mind! How did my wish turn into this?”
Thorin was quiet for a minute and then, “You’ve heard the story of Dorian Gray?”
Lola curled into the sofa’s corner and wrapped her arms around her bent knees. “Sure. He’s immortal and the painting of him shows his age and sins.”
“It could be something like that. You’re seeing the essence of a person and how it manifests as energy.”
“Great. Is that why that guy had shadow eyes? Because he’s pure evil on the inside?”
“Possibly.”
Lola was suddenly hot all over.
“Oh God. Ohhhh God.” She went to the wall of windows and popped one open. Cooler air swept in and Lola turned her face to it, eyes closed.
This was exactly what she’d wanted but she hadn’t taken the time to consider the full repercussions of it.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
She should have stayed with Thorin last night. She should have swallowed her pride and had a few drinks and got a little tipsy with him and Ashley and Dae. Because at least with them, she would have been safe.
Face still stuck out the window, Lola said, “So how do I undo it?”
“This is the part you won’t like.”
Lola propped her elbows on the windowsill and leaned into the wind. “Just…just tell me my options.”
“You could use your second wish to try to undo your first, but if Rose twisted your first wish, she’ll twist your second.”
“Is there no such thing as a mulligan in djinn law or whatever?”
“No do overs.”
“Is there some other kind of magic that can fix this? Do I have a fairy godmother? Can I summon her with a well-placed quartz crystal and burn some incense and then, BOOM cured?”
“There is no other magic in the world that can undo what djinn magic does,” Thorin admitted.
Lola turned away from the window, sunk into the wall and then slipped down it to the floor. She buried her face in her hands.
This was not happening.
“On the phone you said we would fix this,” she pointed out. “What did you mean by that if we can’t undo it?”
“I meant I’d help you get out of the deal without making things worse. Because that’s the best you can hope for.”
Ouch. He didn’t even sugar coat it for her. “Great. I will never be able to look at another man again.”
“Not all men are bad.”
“I was in a coffee shop. At nine A.M. At nine in the morning, I came face to face with a man whose eyes were gone and—”
Thorin stared at her.
She stared at Thorin.
She hadn’t realized she’d looked up.
“Oh God,” she said.
Thorin lurched to his feet. Worry pinched at the space between his eyes. “What do you see?”
Slowly, using the wall for support, Lola got to her feet. “It’s…you’re…kinda…I don’t know…golden. Like…” Lola giggled hysterically. “Like you’re an angel! Oh thank God. Thank you sweet baby Jesus!!”
Thorin’s shoulders sunk as he let out a breath. “That’s it? You see nothing else?” He turned around. “What about my back? Anything shadowy? Melting? Grotesque? Scarred? Broken?”
The giggling went on. She was so relieved. But was she surprised? This was Thorin she was talking about. The kindest, sweetest man she’d ever met.
“Nope. Nothing else. Just like a weird shimmery-ness? Or something. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like your edges are fuzzy and golden.”
“It could be—” he started and then cut himself off. “No. Never mind.” He sat back down and readjusted his beanie. “I thought for sure you’d see something hideous when you looked at me.”
“And yet you still came,” she pointed out.
“That’s what friends are for, isn’t it?”
She smiled over at him. “Yes. You’re right.” Her chest was warm and bubbly. “Thank you for helping me even though you told me this would happen.”
“I should have been more straightforward with you. That’s my mistake.” He spread one of his long arms over the back of the sofa and was quiet for a minute, and then, “Why did you choose that wish anyway?”
Oh God. She hadn’t considered this when she’d asked for his help. Obviously he’d want to know. She’d want to know if she were in his shoes.
“That’s a complicated question,” she said and came back to the sofa to join him. When she sat, Thorin angled his body toward her. She’d always liked that about him, how regardless of where they were or who they were with, he seemed magnetized by her, always turning toward her like a flower toward the sun. It made her feel…well, special.
“So…my rules, right? I don’t sleep with men who I like?” she said and he nodded.
“I remember well,” he said. “It’s why we’re such great friends.”
She laughed. “Right. It’s not that I have anything against love, it’s just that I come from a long line of women who are incapable of picking good men. All of my aunts picked assholes or douchebags. For a while, it seemed like my mom had escaped that curse with my dad. They were together up until I turned sixteen. And we had everything we wanted and needed and then some.
“My dad was a successful defense attorney. We lived in a beach house with a live-in maid, a pool, and a tennis court. My mom ne
ver worked a day in her life. And then one day my dad decided to leave her. And me. Just like that. And as an attorney, he knew how to get around paying alimony or child support. My mom went from never having to think about money to being at poverty level. So what did she do? She did the only thing she knew how—look for a man who could take care of her. And all of them were the wrong man.
“She went through so many boyfriends that I stopped learning their names.”
Lola propped her elbow on the back of the sofa and looked out the window. One of the reasons she choose her loft was that it reminded her of the one time in her teenage years when she’d actually been happy. And that was when her mom moved in, briefly, with her best guy friend from her own high school days. His name had been Kent. He was an artist, too, who specialized in ceramics of all things.
He’d lived in a converted warehouse in Alcona City’s Ripley Packing District.
Lola and her mom had been there for nearly five blissful months.
And then Samantha started sleeping with Kent and everything went to shit. By the following year, they were out on their asses again and Kent was a distant memory.
He’d left an indelible mark on Lola though.
For one, don’t sleep with your friends.
And two, he’d taught Lola that if you were serious enough about your art, and you dedicated yourself to it, you could make it into a living.
And maybe…maybe that was why she’d been failing lately. She was no longer creating for the love of creating. She was just going through the motions.
She was always looking for easy, quick fixes, which was exactly the reason she was in this predicament now.
When Lola was quiet for too long lost in her own memories, Thorin said, “What about your da? Whatever happened to him?”
“My dad?” she said with a smile.
Lola didn’t know the Blackwells that well, but she could gather that just by their very nature and their age, they had to remain guarded in everything they did, which meant they rarely portrayed their true selves to those on the outside.
Thorin was different. He was the realest of the Blackwells, but he still had to hide certain aspects about himself in order to fit into modern society and escape notice.
So when something like this popped up, a piece of him from his long ago past, when he said da instead of dad, Lola wanted to hold on to it.
“Your da, yes,” he said with a wry smile. “Your father.”
“Right.” She grinned at him. “My dad pretended to care about me for the first year or so after my parents divorced, but once he remarried, he pretty much forgot about me.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that he and I had ever had a close relationship. Even when we lived in the same house, he barely spoke to me.”
Thorin frowned again and set his mouth in a grim line. She didn’t like talking about this stuff because she didn’t want pity. Everyone had their own shit to deal with. But with Thorin she knew his sympathy was genuine.
“Anyway,” she said, trying to lighten the mood, “I made the wish because maybe someday I do want to have a family and I guess I thought that if I had a way to cheat to a happily-ever-after, why not take it? I should have known better. There are no cheat codes for life.”
“Cheat codes?” Thorin asked.
“Like with video games? You know, up-down-right-left you get invincibility?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never played a video game.”
She widened her eyes. “No way! Seriously?”
“I am extremely serious.”
“We should change that someday. I’m really good at Mario Kart.”
“I don’t know what that is, but I don’t doubt it.”
She regarded him across the two sections of sofa that lay between them. The late morning sunlight stealing in through the windows highlighted whatever that weird fogginess around him was making him look like some divine creature come to life.
Right now Thorin looked like he could easily fit in with the gods that walked among them.
If she broke her rule for anyone, she would want it to be Thorin.
Not that he’d ever break his rules for her.
Though his rules were a little more vague.
He didn’t do relationships. Period. Full stop. End of story.
Did his reasons have to do with Rose? Maybe that was the complicated part Rose had alluded to?
God, she hoped not. She didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of whatever this was.
Because the twisted wish proved that she was already in over her head.
“How do I get out of this deal?” she asked. “As cleanly as possible.”
Thorin looked away, but Lola could see the wrinkle that appeared between his brows.
“Just give it to me straight,” she said. “It can’t get much worse than this, can it?”
“You can’t get out of a deal. You need to go through it. Like Hell. The quickest way is through.”
“Is Hell a real place?” Apparently, things could get so much worse.
“Beside the point, Lo,” he said. “You have two wishes left and you’re going to throw them away on wishes that don’t matter.”
“Okay. So how do I do that?”
“To start, Rose can’t know I helped you. Do not mention me when you make your wishes. She might suspect you had help, but as long as you don’t confirm it, she will have nothing to back it up.”
“Is there a reason you can’t be here? Like some kind of magical rule?”
“Something like that.”
He was being vague again.
She decided to leave him to his secrets, since he was helping her. She couldn’t very well look a gift horse in the mouth.
“I won’t mention you at all. I swear it.”
Thorin nodded and got up from the sofa. His tallness and broad shoulders seemed to swallow up the room, like a bear standing on its back legs, rising to its full, incredible height.
He looked around the loft, at the TV directly across from them and the small studio set up in the far corner. Mind made up on something, he went to the floating shelves to the left of the TV and grabbed two vintage books Lola had bought at a thrift store. She’d never read them. They were for aesthetics only, which, yeah, was totally lame, but whatever.
Both books looked like matchbooks in Thorin’s massive hands. He came back to the sofa and set the books on the coffee table.
“When you make your wishes,” he said and pointed at the book with a green cover, “you will say, ‘I wish for the cover of this book to be brown.’ And for your last wish,” he pointed at the black leather-bound book, “you will say, ‘I wish for the cover of this book to be purple.’”
Lola raised a brow. “It’s that easy? She can’t twist the wishes?”
“I’m hard pressed to come up with a way she could. Even the magic without Rose guiding it would have a hard time interpreting the language into anything other than what it is. But use those words exactly. Do not deviate.”
Lola raked her teeth over her bottom lip. “She’s gonna be pissed, isn’t she?”
“Likely. But she knew what she was doing when she decided to deal with you.”
“Okay.” Lola nodded to herself, trying to talk herself into going through with it, even though she knew it was going to cause more problems for Thorin somewhere down the line.
She never should have made a deal with Rose!
Thorin had warned her and like a brat, she hadn’t listened, even though he was djinn and therefore knew way more about this whole thing than she did.
Sometimes she was self-aware enough to realize she was getting in her own way. Her rules, to never depend on a man, had made her neglect what was right in front of her face. She would never make that mistake again.
“When should I make the wishes?” she asked.
Thorin started to answer when the air popped beside them and Rose appeared between a blink and a breath. When she caught sight of Thorin, her expression and her body reacted like the s
hifting sands of a desert. One minute, soft and still, and the next hard-edged and furious.
“What are you doing here?” She crossed her arms over her chest, which made her breasts swell in the deep V cut of her t-shirt. Lola knew from experience that Rose often used her ample assets to get what she wanted and now Lola couldn’t help but wonder if what she wanted was Thorin.
It wasn’t like Lola had any claim over him, though.
But yet…she wanted to protect him.
“Are you getting in the middle of my deal?” Rose said.
Thorin shot to his feet. “You twisted her wish. What would you have me do? Leave her to your mercy?”
Teeth gritted, Rose said, “It’s against djinn law to school another’s mark. I thought you knew better than that.” She clucked her tongue.
Lola stood up next to Thorin and almost on instinct he moved in front of her, shielding her body from Rose. Without thinking, Lola put a hand on his arm as if to say let’s face this together.
But Rose noticed. She noticed Thorin protecting Lola and she noticed Lola reaching out.
A flash of fury glittered in her eyes.
She unfolded her arms and curled her hands around her hips and said, “You meddle with my deal, Thorin, and you will regret it.”
No.
Lola leveled her shoulders.
Rose wasn’t going to come into her house and threaten her friend.
“He wasn’t getting in the middle of it,” Lola said and Rose’s gaze shifted to her. “I thought we were friends, Rose. Turns out I was wrong. I accept the blame for that. But the wish, my wish that you twisted, really freaked me out and so I called the only person I knew who might understand what had gone wrong. Unlike you, Thorin was being a good friend.”
The corner of Rose’s mouth twitched.
Thorin’s arm tensed beneath Lola’s hand as if he were gearing up for a fight.
“I only gave you what you asked for,” Rose said.
“There were about a million other ways to do it.” Lola took one step away from Thorin. “If you were any kind of friend, you would have granted the wish to help me, not scare the living shit out of me.”
A barely there wrinkle appeared between Rose’s razor sharp brows. Did she not know how the wish manifested?
One Mark: Steamy Friends to Lovers Paranormal Romance (Blackwell Djinn) Page 8