Magic Gone Wild

by Judi Fennell

  Vana curled her fingers into fists to keep from scratching those eyes out.

  “Thanks, Lyn, but I have to pass. Too much to do.”

  “Why don’t you just have your assistant take care of it? Isn’t that what assistants are for?”

  “My what?”

  “I heard you were bringing someone to the dinner on Saturday. I assumed she was your assistant.” A peekaboo toe shoe worked its way into the doorway. “If she’s not here yet, I’d be willing to help with whatever you need.”

  Vana just bet she would.

  “If you don’t want my home cooking, we could order pizza while we do whatever it is that needs to be done around here. Paint the porch, air out the bedrooms… whatever.” Her blonde head was next in the door.

  Zane didn’t budge.

  Vana, standing inches beside him, didn’t either. His assistant? Couldn’t the woman come up with anything else? Talk about no subtlety…

  Vana had a good mind to give the woman a piece of her mind. Except she was invisible, and suddenly materializing where she was would only create problems. Materializing from the kitchen, on the other hand…

  Vana kissed herself into the kitchen, brought her body back to the visible plane, whipped up an apron and an apple pie out of thin air (literally), and headed back toward the foyer.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Merlin showed up in a shower of silver sparkles and matching feathers, and plastered his wingspan across the opening. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “She thinks I’m his assistant.”

  “So you want her to think you’re the housekeeper? Why not just give the tart a leather teddy and concede defeat?” Merlin looked her over.

  “Oh.” Vana set the pie on the table. “I see what you mean.”

  “Come on, Van. You want him, you gotta fight for him.”

  She yanked the apron off her head. “I don’t want him, Merlin.”

  “Yeah, and Arthur pulled the sword out all by himself.” Merlin rolled his eyes. “Look, Van, it is what it is. And you got first dibs. So whip yourself up something femme fatale and show that man-killer out there that you’re anything but Zane’s assistant.”

  21

  Lynda wasn’t the only one who could wear red, and Vana intended to let her to know it.

  And rue it.

  “Zane, what do you think of this dress for our dinner date?” Vana walked down the front stairs in a killer red evening gown. “Too revealing?”

  She reached the bottom stair and twirled around, giving both Zane and Lynda the full show. A spaghetti-strap bodice with a full scarf sleeve over one arm, the fabric swirling with splashes of gold and orange that wrapped around and gathered at her waist, the flowing jumble of chiffon allowing one leg to peek through, ankle to thigh.

  Zane’s mouth fell open.

  Lynda’s became a thin, tight line that smeared lipstick just above her lip.

  “Oh, hello.” Vana stuck out her hand oh-so-innocently. “And you are?”

  Furiously angry, but Vana wouldn’t expect the woman to admit it.

  “Lynda Hus—er, Wattrell.” Lynda played the game well. If Vana hadn’t been privy to their earlier conversation, she would have thought the tight voice Lynda used was her natural one. Or maybe it was and the baby-doll breathlessness was fake. “Zane and I, uh, well, we go back a ways.”

  Oh, the woman had innuendo down, too, but, again, Vana knew how old Zane had been when he’d left here. Twelve-year-olds’ crushes—if he’d even had one on the girl this woman had once been—were nothing compared to what she and Zane had shared.

  Too bad he didn’t remember it.

  Vana kept the smile plastered to her face and took the teeniest step closer to Zane. “Isn’t that nice, Zane? All of your old”—that word stressed, of course—“school chums are stopping by. I guess they couldn’t wait until we went to the dinner to see you. You and your husband will be there, won’t you, Lynda?”

  She put just the right amount of inflection on the “we” and just the right amount of sincerity in her smile. After being around mortals for eight hundred years, out-innuendoing Lynda was a piece of cake. Preferably of the Marie Antoinette kind because she’d like to lop off this chick’s head.

  Especially when Lynda turned a slyly calculating gaze toward Zane. “I’m assuming he’ll be there, but Gary and I are divorced.”

  Ah, touché. Letting Zane—and Vana—know she was available. Good play. Too bad Vana had the ultimate hand—if she told him about last night. Which, of course, she couldn’t.

  Vana’s smile faltered. What was she doing? She wasn’t here to make nice with Peter’s grandson. (Though it had been very nice.) She was here to make Peter’s wish come true by turning the children back, and if Lynda could make Zane happy and keep him in town and living in this house, then maybe Vana had no business trying to outdo the woman. Instead, she should embrace Lynda’s feelings for Zane and step aside to let Nature take its course.

  Except she’d never been too good with that. Patience was not one of her virtues, which was how she’d ended up in her bottle to begin with.

  Vana took a step closer, practically plastering herself against him. Gods, he smelled so good. The tiniest tang of perspiration mixed with his natural scent, along with the same soap Peter had used.

  And it probably was the same soap; she’d conjured up enough to last until Doomsday. Unfortunately, Peter had said “until Tuesday.”

  She shook her head. Why was she thinking about Peter with Zane mere inches away? Peter had been an old man when she’d become his genie and had held no physical attraction whatsoever for her. Zane, on the other hand, was anything but old. Hot, sexy, fun, nice, funny, good with his hands…

  Lynda was checking out those hands. And the rest of him, too.

  Vana wanted to blast a wart onto the woman’s nose. A big hair on her chin. Bags under her eyes. But she’d never had good luck with that magical specialty, and with her luck, she’d…

  On second thought, screwy magic could come in handy.

  She took a little breath. One wart coming up. She puckered her lips and—

  Zane planted a kiss on them. A quick peck, but enough to surprise the magic out of her. And wipe the smile off Lynda’s face.

  “The dress is beautiful, Vana. I think it’ll be fine.” He left a stunned Vana standing there as he worked his own magic, spinning Lynda around and guiding her back to the door. “It’s been great catching up, Lynda. We’ll see you at the dinner. Thanks for stopping by.”

  Just like that, Lynda found herself on the other side of the door.

  And when Zane turned around, Vana found herself in hot water.

  “What was that?”

  “What?” she squeaked.

  “That.” Zane pointed to the door. “I thought we were going to need a referee in here.”

  Vana smiled weakly, still trying to get her hormones under control from that one little kiss. The man pecked, er, packed a mighty wallop. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I thought you didn’t want to kiss me anymore.”

  “Don’t try to distract me from the issue here, Vana. That kiss was the only way I could prevent you from doing whatever you were going to do to her. You might be hundreds of years older than me, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Care to tell me what’s with the attitude toward Lynda?”

  “Her?” Vana swished the dress around her legs. She’d worn her own version of peekaboo-toed red shoes, with ribbon ties around her ankles that made Lynda’s look like something one would wear to the supermarket. “Could you not tell that she had one thing on her mind?”

  “And what the hell’s wrong with that?”

  Okay, wrong answer…

  Vana flung the skirt behind her. How dare he! After all they’d done—

  Oh, right.

  She took a deep breath. “Oh please, Zane. You show up out of the blue, a rich, successful athlete with this inheritance, in this little town that looks as if it’s still stuck in the 1800s,
and she comes over dressed to kill at three in the afternoon, and you’re wondering what I’m up to?”

  “What business is it of yours? Or are genies supposed to monitor their masters’ love lives, too?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that love was not what Lynda had in mind, but then she’d have to address the master thing and her innate sense of self-preservation wouldn’t allow her to go down that route.

  “Look, Vana, do me a favor. Stay as far away from my love life as possible, okay?”

  “Uh… sure.”

  Unfortunately, it was a little late for that.

  ***

  Zane strode into the kitchen. Good God. Vana talking about his love life. She’d walked down those stairs, her bare legs playing hide-and-seek with the silky fabric, and his dick had gone straight to attention. Thank God she’d engaged Lynda in that little pissing match. It’d given him time to get himself under some semblance of control, but holy fuck, a guy could only take so much. Now she wanted to talk about it?

  He’d known what Lynda was up to the moment he’d heard that singsong way she’d called his name. He’d been around the block with sports-team groupies for years. Had partaken a few times, but there’d never been even the slightest chance that those encounters would lead to anything.

  Same deal now. Especially with Lynda being Gary’s ex. That alone would put her on the Do Not Touch list, regardless of the fact that the crush he’d had on her had fizzled out the day Mom drove them out of town.

  But Vana, on the other hand…

  He glanced at the cuckoo clock and opened the fridge. Too bad it was still two hours until five. Although that didn’t matter anyway since he hadn’t brought beer for this trip—which was turning out to have been a really bad decision. But then, he hadn’t exactly counted on meeting her.

  Swiping the orange-juice carton over his forehead, Zane willed the chill to cool his heated blood. He didn’t understand it; he knew what Vana was, and he still couldn’t get over this attraction he felt toward her. He’d think the fact that she wasn’t a mortal would wipe it away, but apparently hormones only responded to sexy.

  And, God, was she sexy. She’d sashayed down those stairs, her hips swaying, her breasts bouncing, her fingers trailing lightly along the banister, and all Zane could imagine was them trailing over him. Her breasts sliding against his chest, her long, toned legs wrapped around his waist… his shoulders…

  He closed his eyes, almost feeling the sensations. But like a whisper in a dream, they were just beyond reality.

  The tightness in his groin, however, wasn’t.

  He chugged the OJ, then tossed the carton into the trash can on his way out the back door. A cold shower was out of the question with her and that dress between him and the bathroom, and rather than flinging her over his shoulder and going all caveman on her to ease this frustrated ache, Zane opted to head out the back door. Nothing killed a good dose of lust like a ton of grunt work, and the outside had it in spades.

  And if he could keep his mind on the actual work and not what other activities he’d rather consider grunt work, the afternoon could turn out for the better.

  ***

  Well, that hadn’t gone over so well.

  Gee, you think? Vana set the box of dishes on the back of the sofa and kissed her red dress into the closet inside her bottle upstairs. No sense in letting a perfectly good outfit go to waste in the spectrasphere. After all, she’d been trying to conjure that exact Ungaro creation when Zane had shown up there.

  Why had Zane shown up inside her bottle? She had yet to figure that out. She’d never heard of any mortal doing that—though, she had kinda missed out on some genie-training essentials.

  Vana adjusted her lavender T-shirt to lay flat over the matching shorts and pulled her hair into a ponytail. The children were bound to be rowdy when she freed them from the box after spending so much time cooped up.

  “So now what? You want to go after him?” Merlin, wings outstretched, coasted around Vana with a bit of a breeze on his second pass around the parlor.

  “No.” She opened the box lid, the muted blue-and-green-leaf china pattern belying the energy vibrating from the eight children. She’d hated to magick them from the study during the party, but they’d known better than to be out and about when Peter had guests. She was going to have to talk to them about that.

  “You sure you want to unleash them?” Merlin poked his beak into the box. “You do remember why they’re like that, don’t you?”

  “Hush, Merlin. They think you’re serious.” She removed Anthony.

  Merlin’s feathers changed color to the black-and-white-striped pattern of a referee’s shirt. “I am.”

  She flicked his beak away from the children. “No one’s asking you to stay.”

  “Good. Have fun with that. I’m outta here.” He left in a flash of flames that looked like little tongues sticking out at her.

  She shook her head. Merlin always said he didn’t like children, but he obviously liked acting like one.

  She took out Hannah, then Dahlia. Eloise was next. Each one ruffled their fluted edges and Vana could almost hear them inhaling the fresh air, which, of course, wasn’t metabolically possible, but it was the closest approximation for what they couldn’t do in their altered state.

  Colin practically leapt out of the box by himself, but then, he’d always been the most exuberant. He was the one who’d broken Lady Lockshaven’s china, though none of them ever reminded him of that. He hadn’t done it on purpose, and if there was one thing Vana totally got, it was the feeling of utter dejection when you did something you hadn’t wanted or planned to do. Especially if it turned out wrong.

  Francesca was next; then Benjamin and Gregory, the twins, rounded out the set.

  “Hello, everyone.” Vana brushed a hand across the line of them along the back of the sofa—everyone liked human contact. Even if they were no longer human.

  Their fluted edges rippled against her skin.

  “No, I’m sorry. I can’t turn you back yet. But I’m working on it. I promise.” She wished genies could make their own wishes come true because she’d gladly give up her magic if only to be able to do this one thing. But that wasn’t an option. The only thing genies could give up their magic for was love. And thinking about Zane in that capacity was out of the question.

  “Come along, everyone.” She summoned her flying kilim, and the dishes slid on. “Let’s get something to eat. Wait until you try the new flavors of ice cream that have come along in the last century!”

  Luckily, the gods, Karma, and probably even The Fates were on her side for the next hour. Nothing untoward happened while the children glided in puddles of peppermint, toffee, mint chocolate chip, butter pecan, strawberry, and root beer ice cream she’d flawlessly conjured across the table, countertops, and floors looking like exactly what they were: children at play.

  It was one of the most perfect afternoons Vana could remember.

  Which meant that it was bound to go wrong.

  22

  Zane kicked the brambles from his legs, cursing both the pain of torn flesh and the disasters of the afternoon. First Lynda, then the hurt look he’d put on Vana’s face, and now the wind chime debacle.

  The first round of grunt work hadn’t even taken the edge off his frustration, so he’d gone searching for the bewitched chimes.

  They’d had been easy enough to find, but convincing them to relinquish their place on the shepherd’s crook in the middle of a bramble garden had been another thing entirely. Mother Nature, Father Time, and the chimes that Zane now swore were demons (or at the very least, those imps Merlin had described) had conspired to slash his skin to the point where he’d probably shed more of his blood in the muddy earth than he had left in his body. But in the end, he’d persevered and gotten the chimes out of the so-called garden.

  That he also had had to remove the shepherd’s crook that’d been cemented into the ground was just an added workout bonus.r />
  Zane propped the heavy chunk of concrete with the crook sticking out of it against the back-porch roof support, but there was no way he was leaving the chimes out here unattended. Amid the brambles, they’d swung out of his reach every time he’d tried to grab them, aiming for his head on the backswing so many times that he’d ended up using a stick to twirl the leather straps they hung from around each other so they didn’t knock him out. They’d struggled the entire walk back but hadn’t managed to get untangled or do any more damage. Well, much. Every so often one of them would get a good enough swing going that it’d smack its metal end into the back of his hand, and son of a bitch, that had hurt.

  Grabbing the chimes, Zane pulled a pocket knife from his shorts and flicked the blade out to slice the leather from the crook.

  The chimes shrank back in his hand as if he were some sort of ax murderer.

  He exhaled. He’d had enough of magical beings today. He raised his hand to slice through the straps and—

  “Zane, no!” Vana came flying out the kitchen door (only figuratively, thank God) and would have tackled him if he hadn’t caught her, dropping the knife and the chimes in a discordant jumble against the side of the house in doing so.

  “Oh Zane, you can’t,” she said, breathlessly, as she smacked against his chest.

  Oh yes he could.

  Wait. What was she talking about?

  He closed his eyes for a second. She was still there when he opened them. Still plastered against him, his arms still wrapped around her tight little body, her lips right there for the taking.

  Time stood still for the space of three heartbeats. He knew because he counted them tolling in his head like a bell.

  “I… that is…” She braced her arms against his chest, then looked into his eyes, her silvery ones darkening.

  He knew what that meant. Somehow he knew her passion when he saw it. Maybe it was because he was feeling it himself. And hell, she couldn’t fail to know he was feeling it, too, not with her abdomen where it was.