by Judi Fennell
With good reason. Zane could just imagine the thing getting clogged with rose petals.
What was it with him and rose petals? That damn image of her on a sheet surrounded by them rolled like a movie through his mind.
The one he was losing.
Vana picked up a dish towel and the rose from earlier rolled off, its petals cascading over the counter. That had to be what had gotten him thinking about rose petals.
“But, Zane, I don’t have any idea what happened in here.”
“Never mind, Vana. It doesn’t matter. Just… can you clean it up? Get rid of the birds?” And the dish towel.
“Oh, sure.” Merlin flew into the room and landed on the open door of the old-fashioned iron oven. “Blame it all on the birds. Surely it can’t be the genie’s fault. That ‘bird-brained’ term hurts, you know. And you know who came up with that? Obo. A cat. Tossed that into the lexicon centuries ago, and it stuck. And now you’re playing right to the stereotype, Tarzan. Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, we birds are victims of circumstance and not the instigators you and Hitchcock are so ready to brand us as? Besides”—he nodded at the pigeons—“do they really look capable of attempting something this grandiose, let alone actually pulling it off?”
“Vana, I wish the phoenix would be quiet.”
“Oh, no, you di-in’t.” Merlin was in the middle of a head waggle when Vana kissed the air, and his swagger turned into mimed sputtering.
Zane enjoyed watching the bird’s head undulate back and forth in direct counterpoint to the wing feather he was waving in Zane’s face.
“I’m sorry, Zane.” Vana spun around, her long hair fanning out behind her and brushing over his skin in one long sensuous movement that brought those rose petals and silk sheets and scented candles to mind again, this time with her hair no longer fanned out behind her but trailing down over his chest, his abs… lower…
God, he could almost feel it. Her lips, too. He swore he could taste them. Feel them against his. Feel them tracing down his neck and over his chest in delicious torture.
Zane scratched his chest for a second, then his head. What was wrong with him? Maybe he had taken one too many hard hits on the gridiron. Hanging out on the bench half the season might be a good thing.
Okay, now he really was going nuts.
He grabbed a set of steak knives from where they’d imbedded in the wall and dropped them into the closest open drawer. “Let’s just get this place cleaned up.” That was his focus. Not the woman in the clingy, pink tank top.
He sucked in a breath when she bent over to sweep up the rose petals.
Clingy pink shorts, too.
He blew out that breath and looked for something to straighten. There. The basket of apples that had overturned on the floor. When had he gotten apples?
Beneath the apples he found raisins. Thousands of them scattered on the floor like ants.
Which were also all over the floor.
This was going to take forever.
Merlin hopped off the oven door and onto the drainboard, knocking all the pots onto the floor in a loud mess, the only good byproduct of which was that it startled most of the pigeons into making a beeline out the open screen door.
The phoenix then started tapping his beak against the window, the staccato pings damaging to not only the glass, but also Zane’s eardrums. And then Merlin began sweeping his wings together like a giant bellows, sending the flour swirling in a mini tornado.
Zane sighed. Heavily. “Fine. Okay. Vana, I wish for Merlin to have his voice back. But one more nasty word,” he pointed to the bird, “and it’s the meat smoker for you.”
Merlin stuck his tongue out as he landed back on the oven door. Zane hadn’t even known birds had tongues.
Vana opened her hands, freeing a pigeon into the backyard. “I don’t understand what could have brought this on. All I’d wanted to do was get the foyer finished before you came home. I said nothing about the kitchen.”
“The whirlwind part of your wish might have had something to do with it, Van,” said Merlin, working his beak as if he’d been punched. Zane could only hope... “’Cause it sure looks like one came through here.”
“I’ll, uh, get to work on cleaning this up.” She scooped a pigeon out of a drawer. Holy smokes. This one had laid an egg. She released the bird outside, wishing she could take flight as easily. She had used the term “whirlwind” in hopes that what had happened in the kitchen would have happened in the foyer, swirling all the dust outside and making clean-up easier. She wished she knew why her magic was so haphazard; she’d thought she’d had it all figured out.
Then Zane bent over and Vana realized she didn’t have anything figured out. Including last night.
Especially last night.
Gods, if only he could remember it…
Yes, that was completely irrational, given that she’d done what she’d done specifically so he wouldn’t remember. And there were no if-onlys for genies.
Zane stood up and his T-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders and tapered to his waist, slipping beneath the band down to his—
Vana tucked that if-only away and walked further into the kitchen, accidentally banging her knee on an open cabinet door she should have been looking out for instead of remembering what was beneath Zane’s waistband.
The slamming door startled Merlin into lurching backward on the countertop, his talons scattering the flatware behind him, and he smacked into the open sack of flour, which went cascading over the edge in a cloud of white. Then he stumbled onto a pair of onions, backpedaling atop them like a circus performer, barely managing to take flight as the onions rolled off the counter and smashed all over the floor, the splattering juice causing Vana’s eyes to tear up.
“Holy smokes.” The onion was so not the reason her eyes were teary.
“Vana, don’t get upset,” Zane said, his voice all soft and concerned. Which only made her screw-up worse. He shouldn’t be nice to her; he should be cursing her. Locking her back up in her bottle like Peter had.
“We’ll take care of it. But my way. You have to stop trying so hard to use magic.” He took a deep breath, those blue, blue eyes of his staring into hers with such intensity that she could tell the words were as hard for him to say as they were for her to hear. “It’s too rusty.”
“Not use my magic? But I’m a genie; it’s what we do.” Well, it was what she was supposed to do and why she was working so hard to perfect it. She was a member of one of the foremost djinn families, all of whom were among the most powerful and knowledgeable members of their world. Without her magic, who would she be?
That was a question Vana had shied from for centuries because she had a feeling that, without magic, she’d be an even bigger nobody than she was with it. And in her family of superstars, being mediocre was worse than being dead.
“Her magic is rusty? That’s what you came up with?” Merlin snorted as he shook the flour off his now-eggplant-purple wings. “You go ahead and believe that, Big Daddy, and while you’re at it, why not take a look at a bridge I wouldn’t mind unloading. You interested?”
She could have sworn she heard Zane mutter, “Grilled,” but when she looked at him, he was looking at her, not Merlin.
“We’ll do this together, Vana.”
“Kiss me, Zane.”
“What?” Zane looked as startled as Vana felt.
Oh, gods, she’d said that out loud. “I, uh, well, that is…” Vana took a deep breath. That was the only way to get her magic to work right, and by the gods, work right it would, the consequences of what it’d do to her heart be dammed. “Kiss me.”
“Vana, we agreed. No more magic.”
“But I can fix this. It’s too much of a mess to clean it all up the mortal way, and with one little kiss, it’ll disappear, saving us hours of time and effort.”
She was running a fine line between begging and being logical, although, really, there was no logic involved in asking him to kiss her
. If she were being logical, that would be the last thing she’d want.
Zane wasn’t saying anything. He was looking into her eyes, his fingers tightening on her upper arms. “Fine. But this is the last time, Vana. The magic has to stop.”
That was so not happening when his lips touched hers. Soft yet firm, insistent yet undemanding, Zane’s lips were utterly perfect, and she felt the magic flow through her again in a way it didn’t when he wasn’t involved.
Vana stood there, fighting with herself not to lean into him. Not to wrap her arms around him and let this feeling sweep her away and make the kiss so much bigger than what he thought it was. But to her, this was the world. It was every fantasy she’d ever had, every memory from last night, every wish for things she couldn’t have, all rolled up in one delicious package of the man she’d slept with. One she couldn’t have again.
Right. Vana sighed and broke the connection.
“Go ahead,” he whispered, his lips inches from hers. “Try it.”
It? Try it? What it? So many possibilities were whirling around in her brain that Vana couldn’t do anything.
“Oh swee… tie…” Merlin sang. “You wanna try getting that magic to work?”
Magic. Right. Vana brushed a pair of metaphorical sleeves up her forearms, put her hands on her hips, puckered up, and blew.
The kitchen was clean in an instant.
Zane, however, was a mess. Every particle of flour was on him as if glued there, the flatware stuck to him as if he were a giant magnet, and an onion made the perfect beanie cap on his head.
“Don’t say anything,” he said, the weariness in his voice so like Peter’s. “Just pray the shower is in working order. I’ll take care of this.”
Vana winced with every white-powdered footprint Zane left across the hardwood floor.
“Look at the bright side, Van.” Merlin hopped onto her shoulder and pulled something from her hair. “At least it wasn’t pepper.”
Vana glared at him. “That’s not helping.”
“Yeah, well, you know what else isn’t going to be helpful? The fact that there’s no hot water. Dude’s going to be taking a nice cold shower.”
That, actually, wasn’t a bad idea.
***
Gary could barely contain himself. He’d followed Zane home to try to talk him into donating the house to the town. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected to find the answer to his prayers.
A genie. The woman was a magic-wielding genie.
His great-great-grandfather had known what he was talking about, and who the hell cared about the journals now? A talking bird… a self-vacuuming vacuum… a flying carpet… and the woman who controlled them all.
Oh no, Peter hadn’t been crazy. Well, other than staying in this shitty little town when he’d had the riches of the world at his fingertips.
Gary wouldn’t mind having her at his fingertips. Just think about it: whatever he wished and her at his command. The hell with the journals; he needed to find her lantern or bottle or whatever kept her bound to a master.
He had the momentary thought of rushing in there and grabbing her while Zane was showering, but she could just zap herself out of his grasp and he would’ve tipped his hand. No, he had to take some time to think about this and find a way to make sure she ended up his.
Chapter 17
Vana had just finished whipping up a couple of BLTs—without magic and without the whisks this time—when Zane returned from the shower, his hair slicked back, the hint of stubble he hadn’t shaved giving his face a more defined, masculine look. Not that she really needed him to look more masculine. The green T-shirt, faded jean shorts, and an old pair of running shoes only helped matters. Or didn’t help them, depending on your take on the situation.
“Everything okay in here?” he asked, looking around the perfectly clean kitchen.
“Just fine.” If she didn’t count the burn mark on her palm, a first for her. Sucker had hurt, but the cold water she’d heard Zane cursing in the upstairs bathroom had been a godssend in her case.
“Thanks for making this, Vana. It looks great.” Zane stretched his long legs out to the side of the table she’d set for lunch and took a bite of the sandwich.
“Sure does.” Merlin’s tongue was doing circles around the outside of his beak as he eyed the sandwich.
Vana was trying hard not to eye Zane the strength and power and muscles in those legs she remembered so well from last night as he’d thrust inside of her.
Why was she torturing herself? She’d been doing it the entire time she’d made lunch. Last night was over. Done. Shouldn’t have happened, and she had more important things to think about than what he’d looked like as he’d held her in his arms and taken them both to completion.
She took a big bite of her sandwich, using the concentration required to talk without choking on it to keep from saying what was really on her mind. “So how did your visit in town go?”
Zane tossed a piece of bacon to Merlin. The bird gulped it down without taking his eyes off the rest of the sandwich. “Saw some people I remembered. Gary, that ‘chum’ you mentioned, was there. He’s campaigning to be mayor.”
“Are you going to vote for him?”
“The election is four months away. I don’t plan to be here then. And hopefully the house will be sold so I won’t have any ties to the town.”
“I know you said you don’t want it, Zane, but Peter wanted you to have it. He wanted to leave a legacy for his descendants. That was all he talked about.”
“I’m sure Peter would understand, Vana. We all have our own lives to live.” He tossed Merlin another piece of bacon. That was one way to keep the phoenix quiet.
“No, Zane, you don’t understand. This house, this town, they were what he’d worked so hard for his entire life. He’d been raised by his grandmother, you know. Emeline. That statue by the hospital is in her memory.” Vana winced. The statue she’d broken the arm off. Luckily, by going back in time to fix Zane’s legs she’d also undone everything else, so Emeline was still in one piece.
She cleared her throat. “Peter’s grandmother married against her family’s wishes and when her husband died, leaving her alone with a baby, they wouldn’t welcome her back into their home. She had to struggle to make a life for her daughter.”
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with—”
She held up her hand. “When her daughter, Peter’s mother, died in childbirth, and his father, who hadn’t been much of a father to begin with, took off, there was no one but Emeline to raise him. Peter was forever grateful to her, but his father’s desertion and the resulting poverty and hunger greatly affected him.
“He told me about a time he had to beg for potato peelings. He vowed then that he’d never be poor again. He’d been five at the time. Five. Can you imagine what that must have been like? How scared he must have been? How worried his grandmother was?”
She didn’t give Zane a chance to answer. She’d gotten teary-eyed whenever Peter had told her this story. She must have heard it a hundred times; he’d been so proud that he’d had his fortune and this home to leave after him.
“Peter worked so hard to build his fortune and this town, Zane. He was one of the first people to start a soup kitchen, did you know that? It wasn’t called that back then, but toward the turn of the twentieth century, there’d been some bad harvests and fearsome winters, and Peter opened up the house to families who didn’t have enough food. His cook never stopped grumbling, but she never stopped cooking either, and that was the start of the Sunday parties Peter insisted upon. He was quite the hero.”
Until Vana had tried to get involved. Oh, Peter had wished for her help; the only way he could feed the people once his stores had run out was for her to magick up a larder full of supplies. The proverbial three fishes.
Unfortunately, she’d conjured up pomegranates, tabouli, and baklava. Not exactly normal fare in this part of the world.
Talk had started immediate
ly. But the exotic food hadn’t kept people away. They’d been more than happy to partake of Peter’s generosity, even while talking about him. But Peter hadn’t minded. He’d been happy to be able to help so many people.
Zane pulled his legs in, sat up straighter in his chair, and tossed Merlin the rest of his sandwich. “Vana, I appreciate what my great-grandfather went through. But that was his life. His choices. They’re in the past. This place isn’t my home and I don’t intend it to be. My life is elsewhere. With friends, teammates, a condo… I don’t need this place. You’ve seen how often I’ve come here.”
“But what about making it a vacation home? You could come up every once in a while, right?” He couldn’t sell the house. He just couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right. She couldn’t let him. Peter, who’d been through so much and had done so much good for so many, deserved better.
And she deserved another chance.
Vana swallowed that argument. A woman needed to have some sense of her own dignity, and admitting to Zane that failing Peter was the biggest regret of her life would be too painful. It was too painful admitting it to herself.
But she had to find some way to make things right. Some way to make Peter’s greatest wish come true. And the children. What would become of them? If Zane did sell and she somehow managed to turn them back, she’d have to confine them to her bottle and that was no place to raise children. Especially after they’d been confined for so long as dishes. Children needed to run free.
Speaking of which… She pursed her lips. She needed to let them out of the armoire and un-Invisible them soon. Henry and Eirik and the rest, too.
Of course, that meant she’d have to mention them to Zane.
She blew out a breath. Okay, maybe that could wait—
“Hello? Anyone home?” The back door rattled.
Zane grimaced, Merlin poofed out, and Vana glanced down at the twenty-first century outfit she wore. Other than her slippers, she could pass for mortal.