A Bottle Full of Djinn

by Paula Lester

  Zoey returned the smirk and examined the bag. The black dust inside was so fine the first bag was stuffed inside a second one because it could spill out of just one.

  It certainly didn’t look like it was worth hundreds of dollars.

  “Be sure to lay a thin circle of goofer dust around the perimeter of your building before you start trying to find or summon the djinni.” Hope actually looked serious for once. Zoey hesitated, wondering if she should come clean and admit she had no idea what goofer dust was or why she should put it around the Community. But her pride got the best of her as she stared into Hope’s eyes, and she said nothing.

  “Do you need some?” Hope pushed.

  Zoey shook her head. “No, I’m good.”

  The blonde’s face relaxed into a look Zoey interpreted to mean the woman was onto her. She seemed to know that Zoey didn’t want to admit to knowing less about magic than her. She shrugged. “Whatever.”

  She returned to the display she’d been working on before. “You’ll be back once you realize you need it. Or when you need help because you accidentally let a djinni loose into Sunnyside and beyond. Goofer dust will at least keep it bound to its location—in your case, the retirement home.”

  Zoey bit her lower lip. Having a djinni escape into the wider town really didn’t sound good. But as she opened her mouth to relent and ask for the goofer dust, Hope shot her a smug look. “You know my number when you get in over your head.”

  Zoey bit down on the words that had almost escaped her mouth and left the store, her hand shaking a bit when she pushed the door open. She couldn’t believe Hope’s nerve. As if Zoey wasn’t a powerful witch just like her.

  She continued to fume as she began walking. What was it between her and Hope? Zoey guessed it came down to jealousy. She’d wanted Hope’s family life when they were teenagers—it had looked so much calmer and more loving than hers. Hope’s mom was lovely and kind and made cookies for her daughter’s friends when they came over. Zoey’s mom was darkly beautiful, had a biting tongue, and left teenaged visitors a bag of kale and some ranch-flavored dressing while she locked herself in the study to do dark magic.

  The competitiveness between Hope and Zoey hadn’t diminished over the years, and if Zoey really sat down and examined it, she knew it was still jealousy, at least on her part. She wasn’t sure why Hope was snarky to her. She couldn’t be jealous of Zoey’s middle-of-the-lane job and beat-up old Chevy.

  Deciding she deserved some chocolate for dealing with Hope, Zoey stopped at the bakery as she walked through Sunnyside’s quaint downtown. Janie Burnett was there again—didn’t the woman ever go home? They chatted amiably for a few minutes, and then Zoey extricated herself gently, bought a chocolate donut, and headed out. She’d been planning on sitting in the shop to eat it, but she didn’t feel up to spending the next half hour making small talk with Janie.

  She carried the bakery bag down a lovely tree-lined sidewalk past quaint houses that were all different until she got to a small park where she sat at a picnic table and ate the donut. There were a few other people there, but they left her alone, and she felt much better after she spent some time relaxing in the sun and admiring the green grass and trees.

  Her footsteps were lighter when she threw the donut bag in a trash can and turned toward the retirement center. Let Hope be smug and make vague threats about loose djinnis if she wanted to. They hadn’t had anything weird happen at the complex for a couple days. The djinni thing must have been a false alarm. The cake explosion and other weird stuff that had happened had probably been one of the residents acting cheeky or forgetful after all.

  But she knew something was wrong the second she walked into the lobby because Cyrus was there. She’d never seen him inside before—he was always outside with his plants. And he wasn’t the only one there. It looked like everyone who lived or worked at the retirement home was in the main common room. And it was freezing, which probably meant Kelli was upset about something.

  Crossing her arms over herself and rubbing them to generate warmth, Zoey took a step into the ruckus. Everyone seemed to be speaking at once. The noise was almost deafening. Ester sat on the loveseat near the fireplace wailing, her sobs so strong it seemed like they might break her frail body. Shawna stood next to Ester, patting her shoulder awkwardly. Scanning the rest of the people in the room, trying to find Steve, Zoey’s gaze fell on Jerry. He appeared to be furious, his jaw and fists both clenched. If someone’s eyes could shoot fire, she thought his definitely would.

  The only person not crying, fuming, or rushing around was Snores Pickett, who sat sleeping on the sofa across from Ester, his mouth wide open and his arms crossed.

  Zoey pulled at Maria’s shirt as the lady rushed past her. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  Maria caught Zoey’s hands in her own and squeezed. “Oh, thank goodness you’re back. Steve’s doing the best he can, but, you know, he’s really more of a sidekick than a superhero.”

  Feeling her eyebrows shoot up into her black bangs, Zoey stifled a laugh at the sudden vision of Steve and herself in colorful tights and capes, hands on hips as they protected the center’s residents. But as the surrounding noise leveled up another octave, she knew they needed to focus on the issue at hand. “Maria? What happened?”

  “Howie disappeared.”

  Zoey looked around. It was true that she couldn’t pick the little fitness-happy guy out of the huge crowd, but maybe he just wasn’t in the common room. She gave Maria a questioning look.

  “Well, you see, dear, he was getting ready to do one of his fitness classes in the backyard. Look—he set up an obstacle course.”

  Zoey followed Maria’s pointing finger with her gaze. Sure enough, there was a makeshift course laid out on the huge expanse of lawn behind the retirement center. Cones, PVC-pipe contraptions that looked like limbo sticks, and jump ropes laid out in intricate patterns seemed to be the bones of the course.

  “He was in here trying to convince people to go out and do the course, and he wasn’t getting a lot of response. You know, some of us have to watch our joints.” She patted her right hip. “We can’t be trying to jump or pole-vault or whatever and break our hips. Anyway, Howie was getting frustrated. His face turned bright red, and he started shaking his fist in the air. Then, in the next instant, he was gone.”

  “You mean he left?” Zoey moved toward the door, wondering where Howie could have gone and how she might be able to find him and bring him back.

  “Oh, no.” Maria shook her head, the loose bun in her hair moving with it. “He didn’t leave the building. My eyes were right on him the whole time. One second, he was standing there. The next second, he wasn’t. Someone must have cast a spell at him or something.”

  Zoey groaned. More crazy magic? And just when she’d thought things had settled down. She glanced at the bag of dried squid ink in her hand. Maybe she was going to need to use it after all. The uncomfortable thought that perhaps she should have gotten the goofer dust too ran through her mind, but she pushed it away. She spotted Steve, and thanking Maria for her help, hurried over to him. He confirmed the elderly lady’s story and told Zoey he’d already looked in all the main rooms on the first floor of the complex. She asked him to go up to the second floor and search all the suites. Then she found Cyrus and asked him to look for Howie outside. “Check under all the bushes and behind the big garbage cans off the kitchen. Maybe he’s playing a trick on everyone.”

  She sent Kelli to re-check the other two common rooms, library, and bathrooms on the main floor and asked each resident to check his or her room. She looked in Howie’s room herself, but it was empty.

  When everyone met back in the main lobby again, they were all empty-handed. There was no sign of Howie. Zoey’s heart pounded fast as she realized something had happened that she’d literally had nightmares about since she started her job.

  She’d lost a resident.

  Chapter 12

  It took about an hour to get everyone
calmed down as much as possible. Jerry wanted to firebomb everything in the vicinity until Howie was back. Even though the two seemed to be as opposite as could be, they both insisted they were best friends.

  Ashley made a quick lunch and got everyone into the dining room with Kelli’s help while Steve and Zoey met in her office.

  “So, this is new,” Zoey said, hugging herself tightly. Kelli had calmed down enough to allow the temperature to go back to normal in the building, but Zoey couldn’t seem to shake the chill that had settled on her when she’d realized one of her residents was missing.

  “What should we do?” Steve adjusted his rectangular, black-rimmed glasses and sat at the small round table. Zoey was impressed at how well he was controlling himself. If he was as unnerved as she was, he wasn’t showing it.

  She took a deep breath. This was it—one of those situations when she needed to step up and be a leader. Uncrossing her arms and straightening her spine, she asked, “Should we call the police? Get a search party lined up?”

  Steve ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Maybe both. But I wonder if we can narrow down what could have happened.”

  Zoey paced across the room to look out the window. “He just disappeared, right? Popped out of sight?”

  Steve nodded. “I didn’t see it, but that’s the story I got from everyone who did.”

  “Okay, so what could cause that? Magically speaking. Because it had to be magic. A spell?”

  Steve pursed his lips and a line appeared between his eyebrows as he thought. “It would take a powerful spell with quite a bit of preparation to accomplish that.”

  Zoey nodded. “And who here could do something like that? Jerry?”

  “Maybe. But he sure seemed to be distraught about the disappearance. And he was right there when it happened—not off in some circle reciting an incantation.”

  Zoey spun around to face her friend. “I know who could have done it.”

  Steve raised his eyebrows, inviting her to continue.

  “Howie’s a great guy, but his constant pecking at everyone about fitness classes gets to some people. I think it’s possible someone might have wished him away, never thinking that wish could be granted.”

  Steve’s face smoothed out and his head bobbed slowly. “The djinni,” he breathed.

  “The djinni,” Zoey agreed. “We need to figure out what its container is.” Crossing to her desk, she pulled out the bag containing the Devil’s Shoestring and dug the dried squid ink out of her purse. “Let’s go see what we can find around the complex that might house a djinni and bring it back here. Then we can make the mixture and test each thing.”

  Steve jumped up and moved toward the door. “That sounds like a good plan.”

  They started in the dining room because it was closest. Everyone was eating, and they moved surreptitiously around them. There wasn’t much in there that looked like it could be a djinni’s home besides a couple decorative vases that sat on the buffet. Zoey grabbed those and took them to her office while Steve moved on to the kitchen. When she got back, he held his hands in the air. “Seems like there’s so much in this room that it could be.”

  He was right. Containers, bottles, and dishes sat everywhere.

  “I don’t think it would be something that’s currently full of food or liquid or that’s used routinely for another purpose.” Zoey knew that was only a guess, but it felt solid, and they had to draw the line somewhere. “And it seems like it needs a lid or cork or something, right?”

  Steve nodded, and they searched the kitchen for anything meeting the description. They only found a couple empty, corked wine bottles, which they stowed in Zoey’s office before moving on to the main common area.

  Jerry stood gazing into the backyard, his fists clenching and unclenching rhythmically at his sides. Zoey approached him as Steve began grabbing likely looking containers.

  “Steve and I think we know what’s going on.” Zoey paused and then admitted, “Well, a little bit anyway. We’re going to find Howie and get him back here where he belongs. With us.”

  Jerry glanced at her. He didn’t answer right away, but his shoulders relaxed a fraction.

  “We might need your help at some point, so stay ready.”

  Jerry nodded, sparks seeming to fly out of his eyes again. He grinned. “I’m always ready to kick some butt.”

  Grinning, Zoey turned away. Steve seemed to have cleared the room of containers, so she crossed to Kelli’s office and grabbed a few things she found there. The receptionist wasn’t there—she was probably somewhere helping some of the residents get their minds off the disturbing events of the afternoon.

  Methodically, Zoey and Steve moved through the first floor of the complex, making frequent trips back to her office to drop off containers. Then they went up to the second floor and gathered things there. Zoey tried not to think about how much stuff they were probably missing. Doug had said the Djinn could live in lockets or containers of any kind. How could they find all that stuff? She pushed the thought aside. They would start with what they could find and go from there. It wouldn’t do anyone any good for her to get overwhelmed and give up. Least of all Howie.

  “You know, we haven’t even gotten anything out of anyone’s room,” Steve said when they’d finished collecting and stood in Zoey’s office surveying the huge mound of stuff sitting on the table, loveseat, desk, and floor. “If the djinni’s bottle or container or whatever is being specifically controlled by a resident or staff member, they’ve probably stashed it somewhere safe in their room.”

  Zoey took a deep breath. “Yeah, I thought of that too. But we also have another problem.” She held up the small bag of dried squid ink. “I don’t see how we’re going to make this stretch enough to check all of this stuff.”

  Wincing, Steve adjusted his glasses. “That does look like it could be difficult.”

  Zoey pulled a mortar and pestle out of a cupboard by the window and dumped some Devil’s Shoestring and the entire bag of dried squid ink into it. She ground it all together and then showed Steve how much they had. They both studied it and then looked at the piles of containers they needed to check.

  “We have to figure out how to get a tiny bit on each thing. Just sprinkling it with our fingers will probably end up with us losing a lot of it and not getting some on everything.”

  Zoey knew he was right. She bit her lower lip, thinking. Then her face lit up and she lifted a finger. “I have an idea!” Rushing out of her office, she made her way straight to the metal bucket full of tools next to the fireplace in the center of the common room. “Aha!” Triumphantly, she snatched the bellows out of the bucket and hurried back to her office with it. She held it up for Steve to inspect. “We can put the mixture in here and then puff it out onto everything. It should make a thin layer that will hit everything without losing too much.”

  Steve gave Zoey an impressed look. “Great idea. Let’s do it.”

  It worked pretty well. They managed to get the mixture of Devil’s Shoestring and squid ink to touch most of the items in the piles of containers. Still, it missed a few, and when they were done, nothing had happened. No green glow had erupted on any item, and they stood in a room full of dirty bottles and jars.

  Zoey slumped into her desk chair, feeling defeated.

  “What’s next?” Steve fixed his glasses and gave her a questioning look.

  She rested her head on a clenched fist. “I have no idea. But I know we need to find the djinni, get him to give up Howie, and figure out how to keep him contained.” It felt like a tall order. Too tall.

  Suddenly, a picture frame seemed to dive off a shelf under its own power. Zoey jumped up, staring at the frame and wondering what had caused it to fall. Then, all the containers in the room began to jiggle and bang against one another. The floor beneath her feet felt as though it was moving, and she leaned on the desk to steady herself. “What’s that?”

  But Steve’s face looked as confused and shocked as she felt. “I d
on’t know. An earthquake?”

  Carefully, Zoey crossed to the window. Nothing outside seemed to be moving. Cyrus stood pruning a small hedge, not appearing as though he felt anything wrong. “It’s just the building.”

  Quickly, she crossed back to her desk and sat down. Laying her hands on her knees, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  Since she was a teenager, Zoey knew she was a powerful witch. She’d inherited her mother’s strength with magic but tended to avoid using it as much as possible. Somewhere deep inside her, there was a fear that, if she touched that extreme power too much, she’d go down the same route her mother had—seduced by the dark side of magic. But she didn’t have time to second guess herself.

  Closing her eyes and drawing in a deep breath, Zoey prepared herself to talk to the earth that supported the retirement center.

  It was time to let go of fear and take care of her charges.

  Chapter 13

  The earth didn’t speak in words. When Zoey called on it to reveal its secrets, she sort of felt the answer in her bones rather than hearing it in her brain. Zoey wouldn’t have been able to explain to someone who didn’t possess her sort of magic what it was like when the earth gave her information.

  All she knew was it felt like home. Warm, enveloping, and calm. Of course, at that moment, the earth was a bit upset. But as soon as it felt her making contact, it stilled and let her know it felt joy at the communication.

  A pang of guilt flew through her. She’d avoided touching this magic for so long that the beloved earth had thought she was gone.

  The contact made her feel whole again—like she’d been missing a small piece of herself for all that time.

  Steve was so silent that he faded into the background of Zoey’s consciousness. She didn’t have time to worry about what he would think. When she was young, she’d learned to hide her powerful magic, not wanting to be associated with her mother’s connection to the dark arts. But there was nothing to be done for it now. If the earth wasn’t calmed, the shaking could get worse and one or more of her residents might be injured. She’d just have to deal with any aftermath that occurred due to the judgment of Steve or anyone else later. After her charges were all safe.