Magic Gone Wild

by Judi Fennell

  “It sounds great. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that. One of my previous masters was interested in ancient Egypt and we used to go on expeditions. We did a lot of camping at the base of the pyramids.”

  “Let me guess. He wanted you to find treasure for him?”

  “Sir John? Oh no. You didn’t know him. The only thing he wanted from me was to tell him about what the olden days were like. Unfortunately I wasn’t around during the time of the pharaohs, so it wasn’t much.” And she’d been afraid to try to find out. Conjuring misbehaving gargoyles was one thing; animating a mummy was something else entirely. Those things scared her.

  “You weren’t around during the time of the pharaohs.” Zane shook his head. “Man, sometimes I forget what you are.”

  She wasn’t a what. But the fact that he saw her that way put her in her place as quickly and firmly as Peter had by locking her in her bottle all those years ago.

  “Vana. About earlier. When I kissed you.” Zane leaned in and lowered his voice. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

  Oh gods, her face zoomed to overheated faster than she could say “holy smokes.” “Wrong idea?”

  “I wasn’t coming on to you.”

  “Of course you weren’t.” Because she was a what to him.

  She’d always been a what to everyone: an untrained, capricious child to be managed; a sister to be protected; a rotten student in the shadow of her genius sister. A genie to make everyone’s wishes come true. She’d been Vana the misfit child. Vana the behavior problem. Vana the incompetent. Never just Vana. Loved and wanted for who she was, instead of put up with for what she was.

  “It’s just that you said that your magic works better when we kiss, and I needed the house to stop spinning—”

  “Only the porch was spinning.” That was a very important detail to her; she’d managed to maintain some element of control amid the chaos. In years past, the whole thing would have gone up into a tornadic funnel cloud, so she was making progress and she was all about celebrating the victories. However small.

  “Right. Okay. The porch. The point is, I had to get it to stop somehow, and that was the fastest and easiest way I could think of.”

  So she was fast and easy. Her parents would be so proud.

  She couldn’t even manage to fall in love right.

  “I understand, Zane.” And she did. She didn’t necessarily like it, but she understood.

  She also hurt like hell. The only reason he thought he’d kiss her was to turn off bad magic.

  The image of him sliding his tongue down her torso and dipping into her navel last night poked its naughty head out from the dim recesses of her mind. He hadn’t been trying to turn anything off with that move.

  But maybe tampering with time had altered what he’d felt for her. It certainly was feasible; anything was feasible with her magic, or lack thereof.

  Hmmm, maybe she should tell him how she felt. She’d say those words, lose her magic, and end the madness once and for all.

  But there was Peter. And DeeDee. The children. She didn’t want to let any of them down. And Merlin would never let her live it down.

  “So you’re okay with this?” Zane asked. “Everything’s okay between us?”

  No, she’d keep her thoughts and her feelings to herself. She’d had a lot of practice doing that. “Of course it is. We’re fine.”

  And they were. She, on the other hand… She’d get over it.

  So she tucked her emotions into a safe little cushioned box in her brain as she’d done every time she’d let someone down, pasted on a smile, and grabbed some Happy from somewhere in her soul. After all, she’d won a little bit of the battle by getting him to put a stay of execution on selling the house, even if only for a few hours.

  Like she’d said, she was all about celebrating victories, no matter how small.

  Now all she had to do was convince her heart to get over him.

  27

  Vana stood on the top of the hill that overlooked the creek bed, with the smell of crackling wood from Zane’s fire filling the air. She wrapped her arms around her waist and stood there, drinking in the perfection of the moment before darkness stretched over the sky. It’d been so very long since she’d experienced a sunset outside of her bottle, and the changing of day into night held its own kind of magic.

  “A penny for your thoughts.” Zane said from behind her. “Or maybe I should offer a dollar. Inflation, you know.”

  She glanced at him when he stood next to her, inches yet worlds away. Yet still her heart fluttered. She needed to stop doing that.

  She wrapped her arms tighter around her waist. “I was just thinking of how perfect this moment is. These last few seconds before the sun slips away. Where the sun and the moon are both visible on different ends of the spectrum. Yin and yang. Night and day. For this one moment they’re equal, just in a different place.”

  The metaphor for her relationship with Zane wasn’t lost on her.

  No, there was no relationship. He wasn’t her master and he couldn’t be her lover. As for anything more, well, that wasn’t in the stars either.

  Venus, the first star of the evening, winked at her. It figured that the goddess of love would think that was a play on words.

  Vana took a deep breath, the cleansing sort. What-ifs and could-bes were for mortals with genies, not the other way around. “The fire’s wonderful, Zane.”

  “I can make one mean fire. Eat your heart out, Merlin.”

  She smiled at his joke, but really, the joke was on him. Or maybe it was on her because he certainly could make a fire—in her. Like now, with that smile.

  Vana tried to look away.

  She did.

  But the moment changed.

  She didn’t know how or why. It was nothing she did. Nothing he did, but it subtly slid into something more, and time stood still with no help from her.

  She saw it then in his eyes. The memory of last night was just beyond his consciousness, but he was looking at her as if he did remember. As if he wanted to remember.

  As if he wanted her.

  He couldn’t. They couldn’t. She couldn’t. She couldn’t go through wanting him again. It was too much. Too deep. Too… something.

  “I think there are some marshmallows in the kitchen.” She interlocked her fingers behind her back, out of temptation’s way, and took a step back. And another. “I was going to make an ambrosia salad tomorrow. We can use them now instead. I haven’t had toasted marshmallows in a while. Have you? Oh, and you should probably find some long sticks so we don’t get burned.” She was babbling, which was odd. Usually, she kept her mouth shut in awkward situations—mainly because most were her fault and mortification made her clam up.

  A basket of clams appeared beside the fire.

  Great.

  “Vana.”

  “I’ll be right back, Zane. Just stay here and I’ll get them. I think we have chocolate and graham crackers, too. I’ll bring them out.”

  She couldn’t get away from him fast enough, practically tripping over her feet to get into the house.

  Zane grimaced. What had he expected after telling her that kiss hadn’t meant anything? He was an ass. No woman liked to hear that.

  Especially when it wasn’t true.

  He walked back to the fire, finding a pair of sticks just right for toasting marshmallows, then grabbed a bigger one to move the logs around with. Sparks crackled upward as the fire danced from log to log, the flames as restless as he was.

  Today had been… He didn’t know the word to explain what today had been. Enlightening, maybe. In a lot of ways.

  He hadn’t known about his great-grandfather’s childhood. Hadn’t realized exactly what this house had meant to the man. But there were people in his furniture. He still couldn’t get over that. And phoenixes. And magic. He kept coming back to the magic.

  He kept coming back to Vana.

  It was a good thing she’d ended that moment back ther
e. She was a complication he didn’t need. He’d always been able to block out whatever he’d needed to keep focus on: training camp, the game, whatever. But no matter that he kept telling himself to forget Vana, he’d been aware of her every second of the day.

  Maybe he ought to take it to the next level. Apologize for that asinine comment and own up to wanting her so he could get her out of his system.

  A log hissed and sparks popped onto the grass. Zane stamped them out, the symbolism in putting out a fire making him shake his head.

  His indecision made him shake it again. Since when had he ever had to second-guess how he acted around a woman? Since coming here, that’s when. Since meeting Vana.

  No, if he were honest, he’d been second-guessing himself since the moment he’d come out of surgery after he’d taken that hit. Football had shaped who he’d become; being part of the team defined him. Now he was no longer a superstar, but an aging player whose failing body was forcing him to be second best. Who the hell was he supposed to be if he was no longer the player he’d worked so hard to become?

  The screen door slammed shut and Vana walked toward him with her arms full, looking utterly gorgeous in the fading light. As before, his body went on instant alert.

  “Vana,” he said, dropping the marshmallows sticks on the table, then walking over to help her. “I heard Merlin asking you earlier why you won’t leave, and you said you couldn’t.” He took the chocolate and the graham-cracker boxes, and his fingers brushed hers, making him swallow as his nerve endings roared to life. “You can, you know. I won’t hold you to whatever rules you’re supposed to follow as a genie. As your master, I can do that, right?”

  She snatched her fingers back as if she’d burned them, and her smile became strained.

  What the hell had he said wrong now?

  “Isn’t it lucky that I’d planned to make pies so we’d have all of this?” She walked to the other side of the table, dodging both him and his question.

  What was it she’d said about equal but on different sides?

  He wasn’t so sure about the equal part. For all that her magical ability wasn’t reliable, Vana knew exactly who she was and didn’t make excuses for it. She owned up to her shortcomings and tried to make the best of them. He admired that about her.

  “Vana—”

  “I think all the strenuous exercise of the last two days caught up to Henry and Eirik and everyone. They’re all sound asleep in there. The children even put themselves to bed somewhere.”

  Good. He didn’t need prying eyes tonight.

  “Vana—”

  She stopped ripping open the bag of marshmallows and looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “Yes?”

  Zane forgot what he was going to say. He could swear she’d looked at him like that before. He’d swear that he knew the softness of those lashes fluttering against him. Knew the feel of her cheek, the sound of whispered longing at the back of her throat, the softness of her curves pressing against him, the slide of her skin on his.

  He blinked and the image faded. He was imagining things. Fantasizing things. Things he had no business fantasizing but didn’t ever want to stop.

  Flames hissed and flickered, sending the fire’s bluish smoke wafting between them, making her seem… Otherworldly. Ethereal. Magical.

  “Vana, how come I never knew you existed?”

  She finished ripping the bag and dumped the marshmallows into a bowl. “I’ve been in my bottle, and since Peter never passed down that information, there’s no reason you could have.”

  “No, not you specifically. You as in genies. And magic. And Merlin.”

  “Oh. Well, genies aren’t meant to be known to anyone but their masters,” she said, opening a bar of chocolate. “Can you imagine if everyone knew about us? Your race would never have accomplished anything. They’d always be in pursuit of a genie for themselves.” She picked up the two sticks he’d found and stuck a marshmallow on each.

  “Most people like to keep us hidden. Have us at their beck and call for wish granting. Not everyone is like you, Zane, asking very little of me. On average, mortals rattle off 53.2 wishes within the first half hour of meeting their genie. Most for money and power. Several for revenge. A bunch of greater-good ones that we, unfortunately, can’t grant, and then there are the random ones unique to each person. Part of the thrill of having a genie is knowing what others don’t.”

  Zane set down the package of crackers he’d opened. “So what about you? Do genies ever have their wishes granted?”

  “Us? No. That’s not how the system works.”

  “Yeah, I can see why. Why have someone else grant it when you can?”

  She handed him a stick. “Actually, we can’t fulfill our own wishes.”

  He headed to the fire with her. “So what would you wish for if you could? What’s the one thing you’d love to have more than everything else?”

  She held her marshmallow over the flames so long, Zane wasn’t sure she’d heard the question.

  But then he heard her answer. Whispered, as if she didn’t plan for him to.

  “Competency.”

  The marshmallow hissed when it hit the log as Vana dropped the stick into the fire and clamped her hands over her mouth. She blinked at him with those big gray eyes that sparkled silver and gold in the firelight.

  Sparkled with tears…

  Zane set his stick down on the rocks ringing the fire pit and tugged her fingers from her lips. “Don’t, Vana. Don’t cry. You’re competent. More than you realize. And you deserve a hell of a lot more than that for your wish. You are who you are, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.”

  Fat lot he knew. But Vana blinked back the stupid tears anyway. Gods, how could she have blurted out her deepest desire—and her deepest embarrassment?

  And then Zane had to compound her misery with his utterly sweet reply.

  She’d done the absolute best thing last night in turning back the clock because, with those few sentences, he’d crept further into her heart. If there was even the slightest chance that he remembered what they’d done, she had no doubt they’d be doing it again right now. The moment was ripe for it; the emotion, the attraction, and, for that one sliver of humanity and understanding he’d just given her, she might be willing to utter those three words she so wanted to say.

  But he didn’t. And she couldn’t.

  “Are you okay?” Zane asked, his fingers still holding hers.

  She nodded, her composure having flown off somewhere.

  “Good. I’ll get you another marshmallow. I hate eating s’mores alone.” His smile took away some of the tension, and by the time they’d finished making the snacks, the rest of it was gone.

  And then Merlin showed up.

  “Hey, kids, how’s it shakin’?” asked the phoenix, proceeding to do just that, flinging feathers—striped zebra ones—all over the place. “Hey, s’mores! Cool! Love me some of those. Anyone up for toasting one for me?”

  Zane swung a flaming marshmallow toward him. “Is there a reason for this visit, or are you just always around to annoy?”

  “Sheesh. What rotten apple did you eat today? Snow White’s stepmother hasn’t been by, has she? They swore she wouldn’t be able to get out of the new nursing home, but I wouldn’t put anything by that old broad. She’s only gotten craftier in her insanity.” He snapped the marshmallow off the stick.

  “Speaking of insanity.” Zane twirled the stick above Merlin’s head. “How much longer are we going to be graced with your presence? And your feathers?”

  “Chill, will ya, big guy? I got some news you’re going to want to hear.”

  Zane glared at Merlin but put the stick down. “What is it?”

  “Seems like your buddy Gar is planning a surprise for you.”

  “What kind of a surprise?”

  “Sheesh, let me tell it my way, already.”

  “I don’t have time for all the grandstanding, bird. Just get to the point.”

&nb
sp; Merlin sighed loud and long and put-out. “Fine. You really are a killjoy, aren’t you?” He looked at Vana. “Just like his great-grandfather, ain’t he?”

  Zane like Peter? Aside from the color of their eyes, they couldn’t be more different.

  “Anyhow, here’s the CliffsNotes version. Your buddy Gar has been meeting with the city inspector’s office, trying to slip this house out from under you any way he can. Eminent domain, getting it condemned, running title searches, and probably even your credit history for all I know. He’s calling in all sorts of favors. Seems the guy’s kept a checklist since high school and a lot of people are in his pockets.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah, well, you’d think his mother would be if she birthed him, wouldn’t you? But, poor thing, she’s a mouse of a woman. Her husband on the other hand… Gary is definitely a chip off the old blockhead.”

  “He’s not going to get away with this.”

  “Actually, I think he kinda might. Question is, which head honcho is going to cave first? For such a sleepy place there sure is a lot of cheatin’ and snortin’ and embezzlement going on around here. And your man, Gar, knows about it all.”

  Zane swiped a hand through his hair. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

  “You might want to take him up on his offer to buy you out. After all, he did say you could name your price.”

  “No!” Zane answered at the same time she did. Vana didn’t care that they did so for different reasons; it was the first time they’d agreed about something having to do with the house.

  Merlin held up his wings. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just telling you what I know. It’s up to you two to figure out what you’re going to do, but I’d suggest you come up with something quick because if I know Gary—and unfortunately I do—that guy is going to have more than a couple of tricks up his sleeve.”

  28

  Zane had spread drop cloths on the floor and moved the furniture to the center of the room by the time she’d materialized from her bottle the next morning. He was already rolling primer onto the second wall.