Wish in One Hand (Once Upon a Djinn Book 1) Read online

  Wish in One Hand

  by B.E. Sanderson

  Copyright © 2015 – Beth Sanderson. All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author and publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

  Edited by: ‘Pink Pencil’ Editing – J.S. Corcoran

  Cover Art by: Enchanted Whispers Art - Jessica Allain

  Acknowledgements:

  I’d like to thank everyone who believed in this book over all those years, but especially my friend and editor, Janet Corcoran – without whom (see Janet, I can use whom) this wouldn’t have been half as readable. I’d also like to send a special shout-out to JB Lynn and Silver James – my other go-to gals – who have given me support and encouragement, as well as the occasional ass kicking. As always, I couldn’t have done this without Hubs. You’ll never know how much this means to me.

  Special Note:

  Wish in One Hand is the first book in the ‘Once Upon a Djinn’ series. For more information about the second book, In Deep Wish, the third book, Up Wish Creek, or the fourth book , Wish Hits the Fan, please see Outside the Box: Paranormal.

  Table of Contents

  Wish in One Hand

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THE END

  Also in the Once Upon a Djinn series:

  Other books by B.E. Sanderson:

  ONE

  ~-~-~-~-~-~-~

  No one bothered to ask if I wanted to be a genie. A modern woman living in the Roaring Twenties would never conceive of such a thing. And I was nothing if not a modern woman. To my mother’s dismay, I wore my hair and my skirts short. I drank at speakeasies. I danced with gangsters. Hell, I smoked, for petesakes. Lord knows, I’d certainly gotten too old for fairy stories anymore.

  My father, Reggie, on the other hand? He held the position of dreamer in the family. Always looking for the next big thing. If he could steal it? Even better. Me, I spent years chasing the next big party. In fact, I’d been out celebrating with friends before my mother’s idea of a twentieth birthday extravaganza when the package had arrived.

  A plain box, wrapped in brown paper tied with twine, waited on the foyer table when I came stumbling home from our liquid lunch. My friends made themselves scarce in the foyer of our building, staggering away with promises to return later and ruin Evangeline’s plans for the rest of my birthday. Such good friends I had then.

  “Marriageable age,” my mother had mumbled at me that morning in lieu of a sentimental greeting. Evangeline made it clear before I graduated high school: she wanted me married and out of the house as soon as possible. Since she gave birth to me at the ripe, old age of seventeen, she figured she should have at least a grandchild or two bouncing on her alcoholic knee.

  I didn’t care about tying myself to any man. Lucky for me neither did Reggie. As he often told his dear wife, “Josephine Eugenia Mayweather will do as she damned well pleases.”

  Personally, I planned to join the family business. I was young. I was invincible. And I would tell Reggie he had a new partner as soon as possible. I imagined myself locating him and demanding my place in his life. He could teach me how to relieve the world of its monetary burdens. I’d kiss Evangeline and my old life goodbye as soon as the party guests left. Then, I’d board a tramp steamer headed to the newly created country of Turkey.

  But I had a package to open first.

  I called out to my mother, but she was either soaking her brain in absinthe or sleeping off an earlier drunk. Servants scurried around the place, preparing for the party. Somewhere deeper in the apartment, duck and pheasant and veal waited to be consumed. My stomach rumbled. Too bad for it, curiosity overwhelmed my appetite.

  Grabbing Reggie’s gift, I raced up the grand staircase to my room. I kicked off my Mary Janes and flopped onto the impossibly-girly canopy bed my mother thought proper for a female child—whether she was of age or not.

  The shipping label said ‘Constantinople’, but I wouldn’t bet my catburglar father could still be found there. Odds were even he’d moved to the next port of call and his next score. At least he’d bothered to send a gift. Unconcerned with the black smudges the box would leave, I pushed it across the silk bedspread Reggie sent from the Orient the year before and wrestled the twine free. The paper I tore away lay forgotten on a goose-down pillow. Packing material tumbled to the floor along with a beige envelope.

  When I leaned over the side of the bed, I saw Reggie’s bold strokes: To my dearest Daughter. Time enough for birthday wishes later. His note would only contain professions of a father’s love, perhaps along with his schedule. I never doubted he loved me. Whether he actually adhered to his schedule was a crapshoot.

  My eyes fixed on the package’s contents. Peeking between the remaining shreds of paper lay a rosewood box. I didn’t have Reggie’s knowledge of antiques yet, but I recognized a prized piece when I saw it. The intricate carvings showed primitive but exquisite artistry. Ivory had been inlaid to create each delicate flower.

  I crouched, visually devouring every nook and cranny of its beauty. My fingers itched to trace the designs, but I savored the visual meal before allowing myself a bite. I held onto the delicious delay as long as I could, teasing my innate impatience until I couldn’t stand myself. I reached out, caressing the silky wood the way a loving hand might slip tenderly over its paramour’s cheek.

  A gentle breeze ruffled my bangs as I lifted the lid. I stifled my disappointment when I realized my only present was the box itself. A really lovely gift, to be sure. I’d simply hoped to find at least a necklace nestled in its velvet interior.

  “Expecting baubles perhaps, my young Master?” said a voice from behind me. The second those words hit my ears, the box filled with a rainbow’s worth of light and color. I flung the possessed thing away, scattering gems of every size and shape across my bed. A single emerald the size of a walnut teetered on the edge for a moment and then dropped, clattering on the floor below.

  For an instant I was torn between lunging for the jewel and seeing who’d entered my bedroom without permission. Self-preservation won out, but only just. When I eased myself around, a gorgeous boy sat on my dressing table.

  Not as old as the boys I played at romancing, which meant he couldn’t have been my guest. The dusky-skinned Mediterranean never could’ve made it past my mother’s prejudices, so he couldn’t have been hers either.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Is this some sort of prank?”

  A dark lock of hair fell across his forehead. Darker eyes twinkled in amusement. “Not any I would know of,” he said. Except for a braided vest, he sat before me unclothed from the waist up, giving lie to my earlier impres
sion. He was nothing if not a man. Ebony hair graced muscles I’d only ever read about in dimestore tawdries.

  “What are you doing here if this isn’t a joke?”

  “I am the surprise you hoped for when you opened your gift.” He snapped his fingers. All at once my room turned from Victorian Virgin to Art Deco Dream. “A palace more suited to a woman such as yourself, is it not?”

  I scrubbed at my eyes as I considered whether that scoundrel Wally slipped something into my drink at lunch. The chubby-cheeked bastard fancied himself a regular W.C. Fields. Lord knew he had the girth and the nose for it, but he never was very funny.

  I opened one eye. Everything appeared unchanged. No hallucination then. “Who… What are you?”

  A slow smile creased his face, each tooth an ivory example of perfection. “At least you have brains enough under your silly haircut to ask the right questions.”

  “What’s wrong with my hair?” I touched the sleek, brown bob Evangeline hated. “And what do you mean by right questions?” Still he met me with his damn grin. “What’s wrong with you?” When he still gave me nothing but a silly face, I stamped my foot against the bed’s footboard. “I wish you’d either answer my questions or get out of my room. I have things to do.”

  “As you wish, so I must answer.” I waited for a moment, but he didn’t leave. Instead he raised a single finger. “I am here because your father sent me.” A second digit went into the air. “As to the ‘who’, before today the world has known me by a great many names, but my mother graced me with ‘Stavros’. And your third question is easy enough to discern if you but think for a moment.

  “As for your hair, it is a matter of taste. A woman’s hair should be long enough for her lover’s hands to twine through. Short hair is such a waste.” My mouth fell open. “The right questions to ask means instead of wasting time discerning my identity, you went straight to the heart of the issue. And lastly, nothing is wrong with me, my dear. I am simply djinn.”

  “You’re gin?” A giggle slipped out before I could stop it. “I wonder whose bathtub you came out of.”

  Stavros’ aggravated sigh sounded much like Evangeline’s when I went racing out for a night on the town. “I believe people of this generation call my people ‘genies’, but we prefer to be called by our ancestral name: Djinn. D-J-I-N-N.” Suddenly he appeared beside me. One finger traced along my jaw line. “And as such, I belong to you.”

  “You belong to me?”

  “Surely that head of yours received some sort of education. Your elders perhaps read you stories.” Reaching past me, he lifted the rosewood box. “You rubbed my lamp, so to speak.”

  As he drew the box to himself, his arm brushed my breast, lingering just long enough to make my pulse race. “You touched the place to which I am bound. My home, if you will. By the Rules, I now belong to you.”

  I searched my head to remember the one story a much younger me read. “So I make three wishes and you have to grant them?”

  He winked at me. “Every Master has three wishes. You are no different.”

  My first wish popped into my head in an instant. “I wish my father was here.” The breeze from nowhere ruffled my hair again.

  Stavros snapped his fingers. I didn’t have time to blink before Reggie stood between the two of us.

  I expected a smile from the man I hadn’t seen in nearly a year. I hoped he’d wrap me into a bear hug like he had when I was small. He did neither. Once he finally focused on my face, murderous rage bloomed in his eyes.

  “Josephine.” His voice rumbled barely above a growl. “What have you done?” His gaze sliced from me to Stavros and back, stopping briefly on the new furnishings. “You were told to wait before you made any wishes!”

  “I wasn’t…” The forgotten envelope leapt to mind. “I didn’t…” And like that, the adulthood I’d been so certain of failed me. I became seven again, scolded for something I hadn’t known I’d done. The injustice of it bubbled up.

  “Well, you’re here now, aren’t you?” I shook my finger at him. “And if you think you can come in here and make my last two wishes, you’ve got another think coming. I ought to—”

  “One,” Stavros said, halting the rest of my tirade.

  “One what?”

  “One wish. You have only one left.”

  I thought Reggie wanted to kill me before. The fury leaching from him told me we’d reached the place where simple homicide would be too kind.

  “You wasted a wish on redecorating, didn’t you, you silly bitch?”

  All my certainty left me in a rush. My father—the man who always doted on me, the man who defended me even to his wife—never spoke to me like that.

  “I didn’t—”

  “She didn’t.” Stavros chimed in. “All of this beauty? A mere sample of my powers.” He ditched the smile to click his tongue in mock sorrow. “She did something so much sillier. She used her first wish to make me answer her.”

  Reggie’s palm collided with my cheek before I knew enough to flinch.

  “And then she wished for you.”

  I ducked and feinted toward the door, but my father’s hand closed around my upper arm. In all my life, he’d never struck me, but after one slap, my brain started running through all the other things he’d never done and whether he was capable of them, too.

  “Why couldn’t you, for once in your empty little life, stop to think?” He noticed the grooves his fingers were leaving in my flesh and dropped his hand. “This is a mess.”

  “We still have one wish and then—”

  “It isn’t enough, Jojo. I’m in too deep. There’s too much to fix with just one wish.”

  “Don’t you have any of yours left?” I spoke the question before he jerked me to face him.

  “I have one. Only one left. And I need it.”

  I’d never seen my father so frantic. Evangeline always said the day would come when I’d realize Reggie was no ‘shining example of manhood’. I never dreamed seeing him as a regular Joe would be like this.

  My brain raced for a way to fix this. I’d gotten out of scrapes before. Hadn’t I led a half dozen friends out of a raid on the speakeasy last month? I could do this. If only my father acted like himself again, we’d think of something together. If I had more wishes—

  “I wish for more wishes.”

  As my father shouted “No,” I heard Stavros ask how many.

  Why limit myself? With all the wishes I want, I can take care of whatever this problem is. Reggie never has to steal again. Evangeline can stop drinking herself into a stupor.

  “How about unlimited wishes?”

  Reggie’s shriek echoed in the background. I didn’t focus on him. I knew what I was doing.

  “You have to say the words.”

  I didn’t hesitate. “I wish for unlimited wishes.”

  The breeze turned into a hurricane in my ears. My hair whipped, stinging my cheeks. I shivered as a sweat broke out along my arms. And through my tearing eyes, Stavros stood grinning as the same rush enveloped him, too.

  When it all fell away, I felt more alive than ever before.

  “See, Daddy,” I said. “I can fix everything now.” I gazed around for him, but he wasn’t immediately visible. Seconds later, I found him, crouched on the floor weeping into his hands. “Reggie?”

  “Oh, Jojo.”

  Behind me came a tap-tap-tapping to outdo Poe’s Raven. Whipping around to face the source, I found the Greek boy looking more like a man than before. In his hands, the lid to the rosewood box opened and closed like a strange mouth, waiting to consume me.

  “Since neither of us has any use for this anymore.” He gave the box one last clack before dropping it and crushing it beneath his heel. “You might want to choose your own sanctuary before I choose one for you.”

  “Wh… What’s he talking about, Daddy?”

  Reggie raised his head. Tears streamed down his flushed cheeks. “He owns you now, Josephine. The wish. You’ve changed places
with him. Now you’re the genie and he’s the Master.”

  TWO

  ~-~-~-~-~-~-~

  “And that’s when you think he killed your father?” Mena said from her perch on the arm of my sofa.

  I threw a handful of popcorn at her. “I thought I was talking to my best friend, not the resident shrink.” She froze the kernels mid-air, grabbing the closest between thumb and forefinger before tossing it into her mouth.

  “I’m both. Get over it.” She snatched another piece and tossed it at my mouth. “It’s your fault, you know. You’re the one who wanted to watch the father-issue movie of all time.”

  “You agreed.”

  “I can’t refuse a chance to ogle Ewan McGregor, even if it’s in Big Fish. Why do you think I pick the new Star Wars when it’s my turn?” She shot me a bright smile. Her pearly white teeth glowed against her olive skin.

  “That’s not the only reason you agreed.”

  “Of course not. You think I’d pass up a chance to wade around in your misplaced guilt?” She swept the remaining airborne snacks into a nearby trashcan. “Well, now the movie is over and you’ve sussed out my ulterior motives, I should return to work. The last rescue you brought me? She’s in a bad way.”

  No big surprise there. Not every djinn approached freedom from the healthiest mental standpoint. The Ethiopian I brought back a few days before was not in a sane place. I tried every trick in my bag to coax the poor lady out of her sanctuary. Even though eventually she responded, Mena hadn’t been able to convince her to speak.

  “Good luck,” I called to my friend’s retreating back. I don’t know who benefitted more from our weekly movie nights. I needed the time to decompress, but Mena had to need more than a few hours of sanity once a week. Making a mental note to add more days off to her calendar, whether she wanted them or not, I pushed myself away from my overstuffed sofa. I grabbed the remaining popcorn as I whistled into the depths of my home.

  The click-click-click of claws on stone echoed back to me.

  “You missed movie night.” A shaggy white head came into view. “Lucky for you, we didn’t eat all the popcorn.” I threw a single, white morsel and Major deftly caught it without missing a step. He sat in front of me, expectance radiating from his supreme Dogness. Rather than torture him kernel by kernel, I set the bowl down. Any other dog his size would inhale the contents and beg for more. Not mine. He ate slowly, savoring.