Magic Gone Wild

by Judi Fennell

  Oh, right. She was 829 years old. The poor delusional woman—and that was the reason he should forget how beautiful she was, regardless of whether or not they were related. He pulled his hand from hers. “Well, thanks for coming by, but you don’t really need to stay.”

  Her fingers trailed over his skin as she removed her hand and sat back down. “I don’t mind. You might need some help.”

  From her. The woman in the genie costume. Right. He was not the one in the room who needed help.

  He should have just hired someone to clean out the house. An antiques dealer probably, because for all his eccentricity (or because of it), Peter had acquired a lot of interesting pieces in his travels before he’d founded the town and then promptly gone insane.

  Zane struggled to sit up. Shit, his leg hurt.

  Legs.

  “What happened to my legs?”

  Vana pulled a handful of silky hair over her shoulder and started to braid it. “They’re broken.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Question is, how?” This was just fucking great. He was a wide receiver; he needed his legs in perfect shape. He’d spent months—intensive, pain-filled months—rehabbing the ACL. How the hell was he supposed to rehab two legs when they were both out of commission?

  “Well, um, technically, you didn’t break them.”

  “Then why are they in casts?”

  “Oh no, they are broken. It’s just that you didn’t do it.”

  Which made about as much sense as the rest of this nightmare. “I’m not following you.”

  She grabbed another chunk of hair and started braiding that one. “Well, I kind of, you see…”

  No he didn’t see. And he had a sinking feeling he didn’t want to.

  “I broke them.”

  Of course she did. Because she was a genie.

  Jesus.

  Zane looked around, half expecting mankind’s Savior to appear in the room—or someone who thought he was the Lord and Savior, and you know? Zane wouldn’t complain about that right now. He needed someone to save him. And his sanity.

  “Vana, it’s okay. Whatever you think you did, you didn’t. Look, I really appreciate you coming here and everything you did at the house”—because she had to have been the one to call the ambulance, right?—“but you’ve done your good deed. I’m a big boy. I can take it from here.”

  “But if you’re in pain, I could try—”

  “Don’t try anything.” The words shot out of his mouth before he’d even thought them.

  Unfortunately he couldn’t take them back before she heard them.

  She dropped the braid.

  Man, he really felt as if he’d kicked a kitten.

  Hmmm… He’d thought that exact thing in the attic. When he’d been standing on his feet. The ones that were now in casts.

  His gaze slid over her. Over the gauzy transparent pants. The bangles at her hips. The flare of her hips and the slope of her waist up to the full breasts tucked into a tiny half shirt and vest… She looked like Barbara Eden’s dark-haired cousin in full-on genie garb, and it wasn’t anywhere close to being Halloween.

  “Tell me again why you think you’re a genie.”

  “I don’t think; I know. I am a genie and I was in Service to Peter, your great-grandfather. I’ve been locked in my bottle in the attic since he died, waiting for a new master to open it.”

  “New master? Me?” He’d opened that bottle. Had landed inside of it, too.

  That was ridiculous. No one ended up inside a bottle. At least not literally. Figuratively? Hell yeah. He’d been there a few times. October 16, to be exact. The day he’d torn the ACL and put an end to his season. Possibly his career.

  “Yes, you. You became my master when you opened my bottle. I’m not sure how you fell inside it, though. I need to check the Djinnoire for that.”

  Whatever a “djinnoire” was… He flung his forearm over his eyes. “I wish I could start today over.”

  “Oh, you can! Well, actually I can do that for you. Time travel is one thing I’ve never had any problem with. Well, once I perfected it.”

  Now why didn’t that reassure him? Oh, maybe because she was going H. G. Wells on him.

  He lifted his arm. “You know what? That’s okay. I’m good. No big deal. Don’t tax yourself.”

  “Really, it’s no trouble. At least let me take you back to the attic. Before you, I mean, I broke your legs.”

  “God, if only you could.”

  “Which one?”

  “Which one what?”

  “Which god are you talking to? Is there one here in the room? I don’t see any, and I’ve never heard of one who’s invisible to the djinn.”

  He hiked himself up on the bed, his head swimming. And he didn’t think it was because of the pain meds. “Vana, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He meant in the general sense, but when she went with the specific, he went along for the ride.

  It was quite a ride with Vana.

  Wait. Ride. Hadn’t she been riding a—

  “I’m just wondering which god you’re talking to and wondering what he or she is doing here. Usually they don’t interfere in djinn business.”

  He gave up. He probably didn’t even want to know what she was talking about. All he wanted was his life back. “I really wish you could fix my legs and end this nightmare.”

  “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I can.” She fiddled with his IV tubing. “By taking you back to before it began.”

  “Before what began? Time?” There had to be mold spores or something in that house that made crazy contagious. Instead of selling the place, he ought to burn it to the ground and save everyone from perpetuating this insanity. Starting with poor Vana.

  “No, time travel.” She shrugged her shoulders, and scads of gorgeous hair cascaded over them.

  “Like Back to the Future?”

  “No. Not the future. Only The Fates know what will happen then, and I’ve heard those sisters guard that information with thunder and lightning and a pair of nasty knitting needles.”

  Fates with knitting needles. God, it was such a shame the woman was delusional. But he was lying here listening to her, so what did that make him?

  “… one of the easier aspects of magic, going from place to place. That’s because the locations are concrete. I know where I am and where I’m going. I just picture it in my mind’s eye, and off we go. All you have to do is wish it, and your legs will be good as new in no time. And I think I can even make it so you’ll remember, if you want.” She looked at him. “Some people would prefer to not know.”

  He couldn’t imagine why. Zane shook his head. The situation just screamed for sarcasm, but the reality was, he really did want her to be telling the truth. He’d love to find some way to get back into the game. “Man, I really wish you could fix this, Vana.”

  The smile that crossed her face almost took his breath away.

  And when she leaned over and kissed him, she completed the job.

  7

  The attic looked the same.

  Zane, however, didn’t.

  He stared at the antique oval mirror in the corner and saw his left leg without a cast. The right one, too.

  He shifted his weight between them.

  No pain.

  No break.

  Son of a bitch.

  He fell onto his ass—atop the same dress form he’d fallen on earlier.

  Holy shit. She was a genie.

  And she was looking pretty damned pleased with herself.

  Now, normally, Zane was as grounded as the next guy. Well, as long as the next guy wasn’t from his immediate family tree. But this… Hell, there’d been a flying carpet at one point, too; he hadn’t imagined it.

  “See? I told you I could do it.”

  He could only nod.

  “I should have thought of this first. Of course fixing a bone would be more difficult than manipulating time. I need to reread that chapter. But I did get the remembering thing right.
”

  Hey, there was a plus. He had no desire to have her go messing with his memory—she’d done enough to his mind as it was.

  Time travel. Genies. Magic.

  The world spun worse than it had after the tackle that had shredded his knee and his season. Zane had a feeling his world would be spinning much longer this time.

  “Do you need a hand up?” She held hers out as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

  Her world maybe.

  “Master?” She shook her hand a little.

  Zane looked at it and tried to process that She Was A Genie.

  “Fine. Sit there then,” she mumbled before bending down to rummage through an old box. “Masters. You all like to do it your way.”

  His way? Was she nuts—er, bad word choice. But seriously… She thought this was his way? Being on the wrong end of a sword, having both legs broken, and being whisked around by magic… Add in the mess with his playing status, and nothing was going his way these days.

  “Aha!” Vana spun around, holding out an old, tarnished lantern.

  “Please don’t tell me there’s another genie in there.”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, silly. Only one genie per master. That’s in Chapter Two. Or maybe it was Three.” She scrunched her face, then shook her head. “No, this belonged to Peter’s grandmother. It’s why Peter was in Turkey in the first place. He was on his way to India because his grandmother used to tell him stories of when she’d lived there under British rule with her family and how she’d searched for a genie lantern in every marketplace. She was sure this was one and kept it by her side until she died. It sparked Peter’s interest in finding a genie.”

  “And he found you in Turkey?”

  “Yes.”

  That was all fine and good, but that past had no bearing on his present. Nor his future either, apparently, since those pesky Fates weren’t into sharing. Which meant he was right back where he’d started from. With two unbroken legs, thank God.

  Zane stood up, amazed again that there wasn’t even a twinge of pain or any aftereffects from the meds. Too bad she hadn’t been around for the ACL tear.

  “Are your legs okay?” She nibbled one side of her bottom lip. Probably because her fingers were wrapped around the lantern so she couldn’t fiddle with them. Which was a good thing since bad things happened when she fiddled with her fingers.

  “About that.” He nodded at his legs. “You want to explain how time travel works?”

  Her gray eyes twinkled. “Um… magic?”

  Yes, he had asked that ridiculous question, and no, he shouldn’t have. But in for a drachma—or whatever they used in Turkey—in for a pound. “Seriously, doesn’t time travel mess with the whole time-space continuum?”

  “The what?”

  Obviously she hadn’t seen that movie. “This… There were doctors and nurses and probably babies being born and people dying, and you just…” He waved one of his hands around. “Just whisked us out of there. Isn’t that going to affect other people?”

  Lord knew, it was affecting him.

  He couldn’t believe he was actually on board with the whole genie thing. But unbroken broken legs and pink smoke and the here-one-minute, there-the-next thing couldn’t be explained away. Not logically, anyhow. Unless he’d inherited Peter’s madness. Frankly, he’d prefer magical genies to that nightmare.

  She tucked some of her hair behind her ear and hopped butt first onto a sheet-draped old dresser behind her, her feet in those ridiculous curly-toed slippers swinging as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Actually, this isn’t all that uncommon,” she said. “If you’ve ever experienced déjà vu, then you’ve already experienced magic because that’s someone else playing around with time. It’s like a thread. You’ve heard of The Fates?” She didn’t wait for his answer, but Greek mythology had been a class he’d enjoyed. “Three sisters as old as time itself, which is why, I guess, they can manipulate it.”

  “But so can you. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here.” And he meant that in the most literal sense.

  “True, but genies don’t have the same ability as The Fates. Otherwise, there’d be pure chaos. We’re limited by being able to return you to a place where you could be but aren’t, and as long as I don’t return you to a time where you might run into yourself, your current thread will never cross with the past one and everything will be just fine.”

  “So right now there’s another me living somewhere in an alternate universe with two broken legs?” In this one he had a massive headache.

  “Of course not. When we materialized here, that thread was cut. The Fates then weave this thread into everyone else’s. My sister actually unraveled the how-tos and wherefores of time travel and recorded them in the Djinnoire.”

  “You have a sister?”

  Her smile disappeared. “Um, yes. I do.”

  Zane wasn’t touching those sibling dynamics with a ten-foot pole. And female dynamics at that. No way.

  “So, okay, I’m living in the here and now. What about the people who saw me at the hospital? What about the doctors? Did you have to erase their memories, too?”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t have to do anything to them because, to them, none of this ever happened. Oh, but you know what?” Some of her hair fell forward, and she tossed her head to send it behind her back. A few strands didn’t quite make it, their ends curling on her breasts.

  Zane had a tough time getting that image out of his head. Apparently, while time travel could scramble one’s brain cells, it did nothing to one’s libido.

  “You’re going to want to stop in and see your old school chum. Gary someone. He was at the hospital and very worried about you. Though I guess he won’t be worried now, since it hasn’t happened for him, but he did seem awfully glad to know you were in town.”

  “Gary Huss? That prick? He was no friend of mine. Made my childhood a living hell. He was a bully, always taunted me about my family.” But no one had believed that because good ol’ Gar, teacher’s pet and only son of the school superintendent, had had them all fooled.

  Gary had called Zane “chum” more as a reference to shark bait than to any kind of friendship and had teased him about the dementia that was sure to set in when he got older.

  Zane had never discussed that worry with his father, and since Dad had died in a car accident before showing any signs of mental illness, Zane had no idea if he’d inherited the gene.

  But he had inherited the genie.

  God, the irony. Especially since she was the reason for the stories.

  “Peter wasn’t crazy, was he?”

  “No.”

  It had been her. “Did you ever break his legs?”

  “Of course not,” she answered quickly.

  Too quickly. There was a “but” on the end of that sentence. He could hear it.

  “But there was the incident with a pot and his black eye.”

  He knew that story. “My grandfather told me he saw the pot fly across the room and hit his father in the eye.” No one, of course, had believed either of them.

  She shrugged and looked away. “Yes, well, Peter said something about my sister, and, well…”

  “What’d he say?”

  She set the lantern down and intertwined her fingers in her lap. “It was right after the blackberry incident.”

  He hadn’t heard about a blackberry incident.

  How many incidents had there been that he hadn’t heard about?

  “Peter said he’d wished my sister had been in my bottle instead of me, and well, words were said, and the next thing I knew, ‘pot calling the kettle black’ popped out, and, well, you can guess the rest.”

  He sure could. Which meant those old stories really were true and Peter’s mental incapacity hadn’t been in being delusional, but in thinking that people would believe him.

  Zane had lived the first twelve years of life with that stigma hanging over his head. Crazy old Peter who hadn’t been c
razy.

  “So why didn’t my dad ever know about you? And why are you here now?”

  “Peter put my bottle in that box where you found me. No one’s ever looked.” She gripped the edge of the dresser and leaned forward. “Why did you find me? How did you know where to look? I thought I was going to be stuck there forever.”

  Zane kneaded the back of his neck. “The box was behind that.” He pointed to a painting of Peter. “I wanted to see what he looked like, and when I moved the painting, it knocked the lid from the box and the stopper from your bottle.”

  She smiled. “And the rest is history.”

  No, “the rest” explained history. Unfortunately he couldn’t explain it to anyone else. Not without parading Vana in front of them, and did he really want to do that?

  Marlee, his publicist, always said that there was no such thing as bad publicity, but after what he’d gone through with the media speculating that his injury was career-ending and the big controversy of him not being signed as the starter, he didn’t believe her. Vana hitting the news would be a really bad idea—

  And then a bird—a hot pink bird that looked like a cross between a turkey, a peahen, and a flamingo—popped in out of nowhere like a firecracker, with sparks and flames shooting in all directions, cawing Vana’s name.

  Zane didn’t think that would go over well, either.

  8

  “Vana, you’re never going to believe what happened!” Merlin, the phoenix who’d been keeping her company throughout the past centuries, poofed onto the mirror with his usual burst of sparkly orange fire, though this time he’d paired it with fuchsia feathers, his colors as changeable as his moods. “There’s a Harrison back in town.”

  Merlin did obvious in so many aspects of his life.

  “Yes, Merlin, I know.” She let go of Zane’s arms (reluctantly) and held out her hand as Merlin’s perch. “Master, allow me to introduce you to Merlin Pendragon. Merlin, Zane Harrison.”

  “A talking bird?” Zane’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding, right? And Merlin? I thought merlins were smaller, and as for Pendragon… Delusions of grandeur much?”