A Risky Proposition

by Dawn Addonizio

  I froze, furious with myself for having been so stupid as to go somewhere this private with a man I’d just met. Actually, it was more terror desperately trying to work its way up to fury—until I noticed that Balthus looked every bit as stunned as I did.

  Holding onto the small morsel of relief provided by that, I clutched at his hands where they rested on my shoulders, trying to dissolve back into him and away from the other man.

  My relief was short-lived as my gaze shot to the man’s hand. He was pointing something at us. My breath caught in my throat and my brain screamed Gun! Panic swelled, excluding all other thought. Yet for some reason, my eyes kept trying to break in and signal my brain that something was off.

  I didn’t know much about weapons, but the one this man was holding looked rather odd. It seemed to be made entirely of tarnished bronze, and the finger loop at the back looked more like a handle than a trigger.

  “Miss, step away from the djinn.”

  I had the distant thought that the stranger’s tenor brogue sounded Irish. He stared at me expectantly, impatience tightening his features when I didn’t immediately obey his command. My brain finally kicked into gear as I realized that, despite my attraction to Balthus, I didn’t know him well enough to stand between him and a bullet. The thought eased my guilt as I began to inch away from him, my mind registering distractedly that the stranger had called him…the djinn?

  I didn’t get far before Balthus’ grip tightened painfully on my shoulders.

  “Stay where you are Sydney,” he commanded. His cultured voice belied the unpleasant manner in which he held me. “She is mine, by right.” He glared at the other man.

  I stiffened, not liking the sound of that at all. “Um, I’m not sure what’s going on here,” I began, raking Balthus with an indignant glare, “but I really wish the two of you would just…”

  “SHUT UP!” growled the man with the gun. “Not one more word if you value your pathetic life at all!”

  My mouth snapped shut at his vehemence. “Ow!” I gasped as Balthus’ fingers dug deeper into my shoulders, my own fingers scrabbling helplessly against his in an attempt to pry them out of the indentions I was sure they were making in my skin. It felt as if they were beginning to burn brands into my flesh. My panicked gaze flew to the man in front of us as his voice rang out with authority.

  “Balthus of King Moab’s tribe of the Ifrit djinn, in the name of Impellier, I sentence you to imprisonment for crimes against the Realm. In the name of Impellier, I summon you into containment until such time as the Realm sees fit to free you.” He broke into the lilting syllables of a strange foreign language, his words taking on the tone of a well-practiced chant.

  Not that I understood much of what he’d said in English.

  But I did notice that, as the man continued speaking, Balthus’ grip on me weakened. I took the opportunity to duck away from him and scramble back into the corner between the wall and the railing of the balcony, as far away from the both of them as I could get without taking a dive off the tenth storey.

  The bizarre, chanting man blocked the escape I longed for—back inside the penthouse and into the elevator, down and away from this stupid, over-priced hotel full of assholes.

  This whole night had been a mistake.

  “She is mine by right!” Balthus insisted, a note of pleading breaking through his demand.

  His words might have galled me more, if I hadn’t been so damned scared, and if my brain hadn’t started to register the fact that Balthus seemed to be…fading. His legs were going smoky and transparent, and the phenomenon was spreading slowly up his body. I blinked as my obviously damaged mind tried to convince me that the Balthus-smoke was drifting toward the barrel of the gun that the other man was pointing at him.

  No. Not a gun, I realized. It was an old-fashioned, metal oil lamp. I couldn’t do anything but stare—it was either that, or pass out. Come to think of it, unconsciousness might have been preferable, but I’d never been the type of girl to swoon.

  “Sparrow, she’s mine!” Balthus let out a thin, petulant wail, the smoky remains of his upper body drifting toward the opening in the lamp’s spout and disappearing, as if he was being sucked into it by a vacuum.

  “Shut it, Balthus,” the man replied, sounding irritated. “You know damn well that if she’d completed the contract, you’d have already claimed her.”

  And with that, Balthus’ smoky head vanished, and he was gone. I felt a mad giggle rise up into my throat as I watched the last of him get sucked into the narrow metal spout. My eyes rose disbelievingly to the stranger’s face. He was gazing intently at the lamp, making a complicated hand gesture over it and whispering a series of unintelligible words.

  Then he tucked the lamp into a pocket inside his jacket, where it disappeared without leaving so much as a lump or a crease. Surprising, but hardly worth comment after what I’d just witnessed. That task completed, he focused his attention on me.

  I was hoping he’d have forgotten my presence, but no such luck. All the air left my lungs and the old phrase ‘like a deer in the headlights’ suddenly took on a very personal meaning. I searched desperately for a third option to my innate fight or flight response. I was trapped in the corner with him blocking the door, and somehow I didn’t think I’d come out on top in a contest of strength.

  The man had about a foot on me and he looked solid.

  His eyes pierced mine for a long moment, and then he waved over the railing. “If your life means so little to you, you could just jump.”

  Then he turned and went inside the penthouse.

  Chapter 2 – Contractual Obligations

  Still frozen in place, although relieved to be alone on the balcony, I stared after the man who had vaporized my date for the evening. I wondered why his less than appealing escape suggestion had left me feeling more insulted than terrorized.

  “Asshole,” I muttered, knowing damn well I wasn’t brave enough to say it to his face.

  I watched him through the sliding glass door as he performed a thorough search of the sitting room. He felt in the cracks of the sofa and chair cushions, and then dropped into a rather impressive push-up to peer beneath the furniture, before disappearing behind the bar.

  I tried willing him to grab a bottle and drink himself unconscious, but apparently my Jedi mind trick needed some work. He reappeared from behind the bar and strode away unaffected. Oh yeah, I was supposed to make the suggestion out loud. Well, forget that—I wasn’t getting any closer.

  He proceeded to stick his head beneath each of the living room’s lampshades, tracing the inner fabric with his hand. He even went fishing inside an opaque vase containing a tasteful arrangement of silk flowers.

  I scowled when he upended the contents of my little black handbag over the dining room table. But he didn’t appear to find anything of interest, so I stayed put. Riiight—like I would have gone after him just because he stole my favorite lip gloss.

  Finally he appeared to be finished with the room and moved down an adjoining hallway.

  I waited another minute in indecision, and then crept toward the sliding glass door. He’d left it open just far enough for me to squeeze through. I sucked in my stomach and shimmied past as silently as I could, then tiptoed over to the table. I quickly scooped my keys, lipstick case, cash, credit card and license back into my handbag.

  I made a move for the front door, but froze when I heard him walk back into the room behind me. I slowly turned to find him watching me with an expression of tight disdain. I clutched my satin handbag in front of me, as if it might provide some protection.

  “Erm,” I gurgled, clearing my throat before I tried to speak again. “Can I go now?” I asked uncertainly, trying to decide what insanity had possessed me to stop my retreat toward the door. I could only guess that it was some instinct about not running and triggering a predator’s chase response.

  “You can do whatever you want, Miss,” he said blandly.

  I felt a modicum of
tension leave my body at his words. He didn’t seem to be the least bit interested in me—which, I reasoned, probably meant that he had no immediate plans to commit any heinous acts against my person. I started to feel a little braver, and fingers of curiosity poked at my brain.

  “Would you mind telling me what happened out there?” I asked, trying for a polite, inquisitive tone.

  He stared at me coldly. “I arrested Balthus.”

  “I gathered that—‘imprisonment for crimes against the Realm’ and so forth,” I parroted, doing my best to temper my sarcasm. “I meant the part about…well…did I hear you call him a djinn? As in genie of the lamp?”

  He sighed as if I was a tremendous source of annoyance, and then answered, “Yes Miss, Balthus is a djinn, and as you clearly saw, I confined him to a lamp for holding.”

  My remaining fear dissipated with the growing frustration his tone was causing. “Look, I don’t mean to be dense, but I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Until tonight, I would have thought you were crazy if you’d suggested that djinns were real. If I hadn’t seen it myself…well, I’m still not sure that I didn’t hallucinate it. And why did he keep insisting that I was ‘his by right’?”

  “Miss,” he began, his condescension making my teeth grind so hard I expected to taste powdered enamel.

  “Sydney,” I interrupted, forcing a determined smile. “My name is Sydney. And you are?”

  He closed his eyes briefly as if it was a great effort to be civil. “I’m Agent Sparrow. And Balthus insisted that you were his because you damn near were—you’re two-thirds his already, and you were about two words away from sealing the contract.”

  “What contract?” I demanded in irritation.

  “Balthus is a death djinn,” Sparrow explained, slowly emphasizing each word as if I was mentally deficient. “You were one wish away from him granting your death wish, at which point your soul would have belonged to him.”

  “What!” I exclaimed. “My soul…death wish?” I spat incredulously, “I didn’t wish for anything! What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Look Miss…Sydney…” he corrected, palms up to prevent my interruption, “I have little patience for those who would throw their lives away so carelessly. You wished for death, Balthus intercepted that wish, and the contract was created. He first had to grant three wishes of your choosing. At the completion of the third, he would have granted your death wish and your immortal soul would have belonged to him.”

  No matter how much I would have liked to believe he was kidding—or maybe just clinically insane—considering the recent scene on the balcony, I had the sinking suspicion that he was deadly serious. My knees buckled and I stumbled backward, dropping onto the thick cushion of a nearby chair.

  “I can’t believe this,” I muttered. “I didn’t wish for death! I didn’t wish for anything.” I blinked at Sparrow, feeling increasingly faint.

  He gazed at me, a flicker of uncertainty moving across amazingly blue eyes. “That’s not possible. Not even Balthus can bend the rules that much. You must have wished aloud for death within his hearing at some point recently. I watched him stalk you to the bar. There’s no other reason he would have been interested in you.”

  I shot him a glare, stifling the offended response that sprang to my lips. This was so obviously not the time to indulge my battered ego.

  “I…I jokingly may have said out loud to myself that I wished I was dead earlier this evening,” I murmured, remembering my words by the ladies room.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the man by the phones who’d overheard me had looked a lot like Balthus.

  Sparrow gave me a look that said I had just proved his point. He walked past me and headed into the unexplored room opposite us.

  “Wait a minute!” I exclaimed, following on his heels through a well-stocked kitchen and down a dim, lushly carpeted hallway.

  When we hit the bedroom, I stopped in my tracks. The most gorgeous bed I’d ever seen dominated the space, its offer of tranquility almost too inviting to resist. A fluffy cream comforter was surrounded by four posters of glowingly polished cherry-wood, draped with gossamer silk curtains that sparkled in the muted light.

  The surrounding furniture, also gleaming cherry-wood, was carved with a delicate and dreamy touch. Deep blue carpet, thick and soft, had me resisting the urge to slip my shoes off so that my toes could sink into it.

  “Just one minute, Sparrow,” I demanded distractedly, forcing my gaze away from the sliding glass doors leading out onto the room’s private balcony. “Are you telling me that some stupid words I spoke to myself in a moment of…uncertainty…were enough to bind me to some crazy contract just because Balthus overheard them?”

  I was going to say ‘moment of weakness’, but settled on ‘uncertainty’ because it irked me to add to Sparrow’s obviously low opinion of me.

  “You must have meant it when you said it,” he insisted, his attention now focused on a thorough search of the bedroom.

  “Oh, come on!” I threw my hands up in exasperation. “That’s crazy. I was talking to myself, for Goddess’ sake. Do you honestly mean to tell me that you’ve never voiced a thought, in a moment of anger, or grief, that you didn’t really mean?”

  I watched him and waited for him to deny it. If he did, he was either lying or he wasn’t human…which, considering the experiences of the evening, was a frighteningly plausible possibility.

  He paused in his search and eyed me in a considering manner. “Are you Wiccan?”

  “What? No…what does that have to do with anything?” I asked in baffled annoyance.

  “You said, ‘For Goddess’ sake’—an unusual turn of phrase for most humans. I wondered if you were Wiccan. It might explain Balthus’ attraction to you, especially if you have an aptitude for spell craft.”

  “No,” I shrugged uncomfortably, “I don’t follow any particular religion. It’s just my way of balancing things out. I’ve never found much creditability in the popular assumption that the creator of the universe is a man.”

  Sparrow’s lips twitched, the twinkle in his eyes making him appear genuinely amused. I found that I was smiling back at him in spite of myself.

  “What do you mean when you say it’s a weird thing for ‘humans’ to say? Does that mean you’re not human?”

  “I’m half human, half sidhe,” he answered, turning to continue his search of the bedroom.

  “She?” I repeated in confusion.

  “It’s Gaelic: s-i-d-h-e, pronounced ‘she’,” he explained. “We’re a race of human-sized faerie folk from Ireland. I wouldn’t expect you to know of us—few people do, especially outside of the homeland.”

  An unrestrained smile of wonder stretched my lips. “There are really faeries?”

  Sparrow straightened from his perusal of a drawer to smile grudgingly at my excitement, “Is it so outlandish after seeing a djinn get sucked into a lamp? Yes, Sydney, there are really faeries.”

  I couldn’t help it. I giggled. I’d always loved faeries.

  “That’s awesome. But I’m pretty sure you were about to tell me how Balthus could have overheard me talking to myself and turned it into a contract to take possession of my soul.”

  “Persistent little witch, aren’t you?” He curled his lip at me, but his eyes held barely restrained laughter.

  “I just told you I wasn’t a witch.” I snorted.

  “Alright, Sydney, you win,” he conceded with a helpless chuckle. “Balthus is obviously a criminal. Maybe it’s not such a stretch that he didn’t play fair. But the fact remains that, although he may not have followed the spirit of the law, he was most definitely bound by the letter of it. Even if only for a moment, deep within your soul, you had to have meant to wish for death.”

  His words knocked all of the wind out of my sails. The defeat must have shown in my eyes, because he looked at me with the first hint of sympathy I’d seen from him. “I’m sorry, Sydney,” he said quietly. />
  Dejected, I wandered over to sit on the side of the bed. It wasn’t just beautiful—it was the most comfortable thing I’d ever felt, like sitting on a cloud. “What are you looking for, anyway?” I asked morosely.

  “Any objects that were magically tied to Balthus,” he replied, his voice muffled by the door of the walk-in closet. “Such things can be dangerous to unsuspecting humans who find them. It’s just a precaution—I doubt there’s anything here,” he continued as he stepped into the bathroom and flicked on the light switch. “He only checked in today.”

  After a moment he reappeared and took one last appraising look around. Then he strode over to gracefully lower himself onto the bed beside me. He sighed, his muscular arms distributing his weight as he tested the tension of the mattress. “Quite comfy, isn’t it?”

  His proximity sent awareness cascading through me, and for the first time I noticed just how attractive he was. His eyes were an incredible shade of deep blue, and they radiated warmth and kindness when he smiled. His tanned skin glowed with health, his dark hair looked touchably soft, and his broad chest appeared toned beneath his white shirt.

  He smelled good too—a warm and woodsy scent that stole over me and set all my senses tingling.

  Stubble roughened his features and the edge of a tattoo peaked from beneath the sleeve of his sports jacket, hinting at a ruggedness beneath his polished appearance. And that Irish accent of his definitely wasn’t a turnoff.

  Sparrow rubbed a hand wearily across his shadowed cheek. “Listen Sydney, I know you’ve had a rough night here. And I’m sorry if I made it worse by being hard on you earlier. You didn’t deserve it. Is there anything I can do for you before I take off?”

  I dismissed the absurd vision of him suddenly taking flight over the balcony railing. I hesitated to ask, but I needed to know—“What would Balthus have done to me if you hadn’t shown up?”

  Sparrow studied me before answering, a shuttered look dimming the warmth that brightened his eyes. “He would have claimed ownership of your mortality and your soul. You’d have died a mortal death and returned as an immortal slave, at Balthus’ beck and call for eternity. If you had a talent for spell craft, he may have used you for that purpose.”