Wish in One Hand (Once Upon a Djinn Book 1) Page 3

  Shoving thoughts of the auction aside, I carted my bag of Bedouin inside. Deep in the building’s bowels, a fifth of Tanqueray and my cozy home called my name. I simply needed to attend to the pulsing personage I acquired in the Empire State first.

  “Mayweather Antiquities. How may I direct your call?” I heard as I pushed through the doors. The strawberry blonde behind the reception desk looked up. “Miss Mayweather…?”

  I shook my head. Whoever called could either wait or talk to Basil.

  “…hasn’t arrived yet. Certainly, ma’am. Mr. Hadresham will take your call. Please hold.” She punched a couple buttons and gazed back at me. “Basil’s looking for you.”

  I shot a look over my shoulder. “It’s barely light yet. What are you doing here?”

  “Basil has us at all hands on deck, what with the auction and all, so I offered to man the lines early. You’d be surprised how often the east coast forgets we’re two hours behind.”

  “I doubt it.” I didn’t exactly think about the time in other states.

  “You’re in a mood. Rough night?” Her eyes traveled down my newly tailored turtleneck. “Late night in LoDo or early rave at that new Goth place in Westchester?” She smiled. “You sure didn’t get that around Estes.”

  I started to answer, but thought better of it. If Renee wanted to assume I’d been out partying, I wouldn’t disabuse her. I sure as hell couldn’t tell her the truth.

  “But if you found someplace to thrash here in town, you’d better give details.”

  Renee was a good kid. Woman, I amended. At twenty-something, she couldn’t quite carry off ‘kid’ anymore. Like at ninety-something I wasn’t quite an old lady. Although, with her ponytail and those freckles dusting her nose, she barely looked old enough to drive. My fingers drifted toward my own similar hairstyle. Not for the first time I wondered what would happen if I showed my true self to the world. Hell, I’d look younger than Renee. Instead, I allowed people to think my forties were creeping up and, thanks to a repeating wish, I’d look a year older every year until the day I ‘died’.

  “Jo?”

  Back to reality. “Sorry. I was woolgathering. What’s up?”

  “Maybe I don’t want to know what bar you were at.” She looked pointedly at my shirt again, and I thanked the gods black hid bloodstains. “I’m not that hard core.”

  “Good to know.” I didn’t want to think about how hard core my employee actually got. In the end, it wasn’t any of my business. “So, how’s things?” Like Reggie always said, When in doubt, distract. Lucky me, Renee was easily distracted.

  “Oh, you know the drill, up to my Underoos in alligators.” And loving every minute of it judging by the gleam in her eye. “The phones have been crazy ahead of the auction. Basil says this might be the biggest sale yet. Which reminds me…” She handed over a stack of pink papers. “I don’t know why I tolerate your voice mail phobia.” Giving a little wink, she added, “By the way, someone named Ben Aaron has been trying to reach you. He stopped leaving messages after about the fifth call.”

  “Ben who?” I said as I realized her mistake. “You mean Ezekiel ben Aron?”

  “Oh. Sorry. You know me and accents. Especially ones like his.”

  I remembered how his caramel and honey tone once flowed over me and immediately understood. It’s hard to listen when all that sexy hits your ears. “Do me a favor. If he calls again, send him to voice mail.”

  “Where he can rot?” Renee smiled and shook her head. “Let me guess, he’s an old boyfriend. Or he’s selling something you don’t want.”

  “Right on both counts.”

  “His words will never darken another message slip.”

  I let a little chuckle slip out. Whatever else anyone could say about our Renee, she kept me in a better mood than I would’ve been without her. That alone made her worth keeping around. Life would’ve been much easier if I staffed the whole place with genies and former djinn. When I lost our last receptionist to the real world, and none of the brethren wanted the job, Renee’s humanity proved to be exactly what I needed after wrangling genies.

  When she held the back of her hand up to her forehead in a perfect Sarah Bernhard pose, I laughed harder. I know she thought I slipped a gear, but trying again to explain silent movies wasn’t worth the time or the effort. One of these days, though, I’d have to invite her to movie night and show why she reminded me of the old actress.

  Yeah, right after I told her my real species. Then I’d show her what my apartment really looked like. For all she knew, I had a cot in the back, between shelves filled with antique geegaws. And she could never know differently. Telling her would only land me in deep shit with my brethren. Not that I was their favorite child anyway.

  You’re disturbing the natural order was the nicest thing they’d said about me. If most of the masterless genies had it their way, they’d shut the whole operation down. They got their freedom the old fashioned way, either through their Master dying, like I had, or through some kind of trickery, like the bastard who made me. It only followed other enslaved brethren should do the same. Well, their ideas sounded like bullshit to me, and I wasn’t afraid to say it.

  Which explained part of the reason Zeke became a ‘former’ boyfriend.

  Shaking off the memories of that shittiest of shitty days, I sorted out the messages from Mr. ben Aron. His pile went straight into the circular file. Why he chose now to call me was a mystery I didn’t have the energy to solve. Maybe something happened in the djinn circles I wasn’t allowed into. I had enough on my mind without worrying what the olde guarde did these days anyway.

  I hitched my messenger bag higher across my chest as I made my escape from the reception area. Luckily, the phone rang and Renee became too occupied to do more than wave. If given half a chance, she’d be prying more information from me. As tired as I was, I might give it to her.

  Walking toward the back, I marveled again at the two halves of my life. Up front, Mayweather Antiquities looked like any other human venture. We had potted plants some company or other tended once a week. There were couches for visitors. We had a break room with a Bunn and more snacks than our small human staff could ever eat. Through one door lay a conference room where potential buyers could get a better look at individual items. Another opened into a space where we hold our auctions.

  The innards of the building, the places no human ever set foot, showed a different perspective altogether. Past the human-friendly areas with their motivational posters, reprinted lithographs, and immaculate rhododendrons, you experienced the mutant child of a ménage a trois between a carnival, an eclectic museum, and a ritzy hotel. In short, nothing anyone would expect inside an industrial warehouse and everything uber-powerful beings would expect in their halfway house.

  Of course, the juggling act keeps things moving around here. Things have to stay inordinately normal for the sake of humanity. And very not normal for the sake of the djinn.

  As I keyed in the code to let me pass from one area to the other, I was reminded how, to the outside world, this foyer had to be a highly secure storage closet at the back of the building. There wasn’t room for anything else. Human perception wouldn’t allow for it. Good thing genies aren’t hampered by the laws of physics. When the light flashed from red to green, I pulled the door open and walked into what shouldn’t have been possible—a long hallway straight back into the mountainside.

  Gilded doors lined the walls on either side. We only had a dozen or so genies in residence and none of them were permanent guests. Don’t get me wrong. I love my brethren, but I don’t want any of them staying permanently. Sooner or later every freed djinn has to take his first steps into the world, whether that world accepts his existence or not. And he has to do it knowing the world he used to bend to his will could possibly hurt him, depending on what he’s chosen as his future path.

  Damn near every one of my rescues has options.

  The reason it’s ‘damn near’ and not ‘every’
genie with options is sometimes we encounter a djinn who doesn’t want to be free, and sometimes one is too damaged mentally to unleash on the world. My recent Bedouin acquaintance would probably turn out to be one of the latter. Only time would tell. If Mena could coax him back to sanity, he’d get a new life. I wasn’t going to put money on his chances, though. So few of the insane ones ever make it back to reason.

  If they did, we wouldn’t have so many living inside the vault.

  The lamp pulsed inside my bag like the Bedouin read my mind. More likely, Omar didn’t want to be trapped in his sanctuary any more than I wanted to keep him there. I didn’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter. Whatever this guy’s major malfunction was, he obviously wasn’t planting with a full bag of beans.

  So, as much as I’ve always hated the concept of the vault, the best place for him really was tucked safely inside a drawer where his sanctuary wouldn’t ever accidentally be touched. Until we could make sure he wouldn’t slice-n-dice anyone else.

  FOUR

  ~-~-~-~-~-~-~

  All the way at the back of the guest area stands a plain enough door. If not for the security panel and the ‘Restricted Access’ sign, it would look like it led to the janitor’s office. Behind it lay Mena’s office and the area we refer to as ‘the vault’.

  With one sweep of my hand and a few short syllables, the djinn security measures fell away. Once I removed the danger of breaking my face on the unseen wall, I stepped to the nearby keypad. Some say using human security to back up genie power is overkill, but they aren’t as paranoid as I am. In my line of work, where being lax leads to mayhem, you can’t be too careful.

  And let’s face it. Life’s got enough mayhem without turning insane genies loose on the world.

  Once I disabled the alarms, the door swung open, wafting jasmine incense and Mena’s weird clove cigarettes at me. The incense supposedly relaxes her patients. I guess the cigarettes were to relax her. Lord knows with all the crap she faces, she needs relaxation wherever she can find it. I’ve always been surprised she doesn’t smoke something stronger. With djinn metabolism, drugs don’t affect us for long anyway.

  Mena stubbed out her smoke when I walked in. Rising, she let her fingers trail along the desk she’d had made out of Brazilian cherry the year before. I could appreciate the gesture. Buying nice things is so much more satisfying than conjuring them out of nothing.

  “Princess still is incommunicado.”

  “Not here for her. I have a new guest for you.” I held my messenger bag up for a moment and then let it drop to my side.

  “Another one? So soon? Damn.”

  Truer words were never spoken, but I left the comment alone. “Sorry. I know you’re swamped, but you need to squeeze one more in.”

  She shrugged. “One more won’t break me.” Inclining her head toward the room’s only other door, she added, “It’s not like we don’t have the space.”

  With a snap of her fingers the door swung open. The sight greeting me hadn’t changed. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I stepped into a bank’s safety deposit room. Slots covered the walls, with room for more if needed. Since I’d designed the drawers to hold our kind’s mentally ill, I hated needing so many already. Still, we couldn’t let demented djinn roam the world.

  Genies aren’t allowed to kill people with our magic, but once a wish is generated, we’re not liable anymore. Ever hear of the Chicago fire? Mrs. O’Leary’s cow took the rap, but the bovine didn’t do it. From what I understand, a freed genie lost his marbles somewhere along the way and decided fire was pretty.

  If this Bedouin nutcase had half the power I sensed he did, he could make Chicago look like the candles on a birthday cake.

  I stared at the back of Mena’s head as she let her hand trail along the wall. Her long fingernails clicked at the spaces between the drawers, echoing in the empty room. The sound annoyed me more than necessary.

  “Mena. Please.”

  With one final click, she turned to stare at me. The lady’s cappuccino skin reminded me of one thing to settle both our nerves. Using the last dribble of my power, I wished for a low table, graced with two cups of the finest Columbian ambrosia.

  “You’re going to hell for calling more Styrofoam into existence, you know.” She snapped her fingers and chairs appeared around the table. Regardless of her comment, she picked up a cup and sipped delicately at the contents.

  “I’ll un-create it when we’re finished, if it’ll make you happy.”

  “This. This makes me happy.” In the middle of the table, a small clay bowl with an ill-fitting lid appeared. “She,” Mena pointed at the Princess’ sanctuary, “does not.”

  “I thought you were making progress.” I recognized the object. After all, I’d claimed it less than a week before. Rumor had it she’d been a princess in Ethiopia at some point, but her choice of sanctuaries didn’t jibe. Of course, it beat the supposed czar who called a Scooby-Doo lunchbox home. Not by much, but still.

  “I am, but she’s being a pain in the ass.” She put her feet on the table and gave her newest patient a thump with one lambskin boot.

  “A whole tribe once worshipped that ‘pain in the ass’.”

  “And I’m betting they were worshipping a babbling child for at least the past few decades. Her mind’s shot.”

  “Is that a technical term?” I inhaled the scent of my morning’s first java. Glorious. “Have you tried a translation wish on her?”

  She nodded. “I’ve tried every language I could think of. Ishtar’s tits, Jo, I threw something at her in Klingon, for petesakes.”

  “Klingon?”

  “Desperation can bring a person to strange lengths.” Her long sip of coffee had me wondering how fast her tongue healed to deal with the burn. “I almost had her once, but I don’t think she meant ‘chicken, chicken, chicken, whirligig bush crying pennies’. Or maybe she did. She’s fairly well wrecked.”

  My diminutive friend shook her black braid over one shoulder. “Sorry. I shouldn’t speak about my patients in those terms.”

  “Frustrating morning?”

  “You have no idea.” Mena yawned as she arched into a lazy-cat stretch. “I wish it was next week already.”

  “Lucky for you our wishes don’t change time. You don’t want the Council after you.”

  “If the Rules allowed it, I’d be living the high life in sunny Spain circa ten thousand B.C.” She set the empty cup down and gave something more akin to a grimace than a smile. “I hear it was quiet back then.”

  “If you could avoid the dinosaurs,” I shot back, trying to coax a real smile. It worked.

  “If you believe that, you need to spend more time reading history rather than combing through those damn archives of yours.”

  “The archives are history. Our history.”

  “Not my history. Unless you’re reading about India before the Brits. Those were the days, my friend. Lice, amoebic dysentery, tigers eating people left and right.” She shuddered. She never talked much about her past, but when she did, it never seemed pleasant.

  “But enough about me.” She snapped her fingers and her chair turned into a damask sofa. A pillow appeared behind her and she leaned into it. “Is it just me or do we seem to be getting more damaged djinn than ever before? If this keeps up, I’m going to need a bigger place.”

  My eyes fell on the rows of locked drawers again. Too many of the rooms for transitioning genies sat empty and too many of these drawers were full. Whether something happened to cause it or it was purely a coincidence, I couldn’t tell. I knew for certain I’d take my spot as the advance team over delving into supernatural psyches any day and twice on Sundays. Mena, on the other hand, lived for the challenges of bringing a mind back from the fetid swamp.

  And she had the bona fide degree from Stanford to prove it.

  “So, what goodie did you bring today?”

  I withdrew the tightly wrapped prize from my bag. No way I wanted to touch that damn thing again. A
s I handed it over, I shook my head. “This one seems batshit crazy. But I could’ve met him on a bad day.”

  She arched one eyebrow and stared hard at my freshly aerated shirt. “Claws?”

  “I wish. This one came complete with his own Ginsu and a kung fu grip to boot.” I flexed my hand, testing my djinn healing powers. Other than a few twinges, everything felt normal.

  She shook her head at me. “You need to be more careful.”

  “I was careful.” Her eyebrow arched again and I knew I was caught. “Okay, fine. I thought about being careful. But let’s face it, careful or not, the guy’s just nuts.”

  Tucking the packaged Bedouin into the crook of her elbow, she unsealed an empty slot with a few quick motions. With another puff of power, she transferred his sanctuary into its new home.

  “I’ll deal with him later.” She tapped the back of her wrist as though a watch actually resided there. “Not that I don’t love the company, but don’t you have someplace else to be?”

  “Trying to get rid of me?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I have to get back to our Princess, and anyway, Baz wants you.”

  “So Renee said. Any idea what he wants?” I hoped he didn’t want to rehash the rescue. Basil never went into the field, and usually I went over every detail so he could live vicariously. Today, the thought dragged on me. With any luck, my partner had some last minute auction issues to cover. Not something I particularly wanted either, but better than a blow-by-blow of Omar’s capture. For this one freaking moment, however, I wanted to be left alone.

  Mena tilted her head to one side. “No clue.”

  Without knowing Baz’s problem, I couldn’t blow him off. I desperately needed a shower and twenty winks, but a trip upstairs had to come first. Damn it.

  “Well…” I pushed myself out of the too-comfy chair. “…if he happens to call, tell him I’m on my way. Unless you think I should stay, and, you know, make sure you’re not julienned.”