Magic Gone Wild (22 page)

He closed his eyes, almost feeling the sensations. But like a whisper in a dream, they were just beyond reality.

The tightness in his groin, however, wasn’t.

He chugged the OJ, then tossed the carton into the trash can on his way out the back door. A cold shower was out of the question with her and that dress between him and the bathroom, and rather than flinging her over his shoulder and going all caveman on her to ease this frustrated ache, Zane opted to head out the back door. Nothing killed a good dose of lust like a ton of grunt work, and the outside had it in spades.

And if he could keep his mind on the actual work and not what other activities he’d rather consider grunt work, the afternoon could turn out for the better.

***

Well, that hadn’t gone over so well.

Gee, you think?
Vana set the box of dishes on the back of the sofa and kissed her red dress into the closet inside her bottle upstairs. No sense in letting a perfectly good outfit go to waste in the spectrasphere. After all, she’d been trying to conjure that exact Ungaro creation when Zane had shown up there.

Why
had
Zane shown up inside her bottle? She had yet to figure that out. She’d never heard of any mortal doing that—though, she had
kinda
missed out on some genie-training essentials.

Vana adjusted her lavender T-shirt to lay flat over the matching shorts and pulled her hair into a ponytail. The children were bound to be rowdy when she freed them from the box after spending so much time cooped up.

“So now what? You want to go after him?” Merlin, wings outstretched, coasted around Vana with a bit of a breeze on his second pass around the parlor.

“No.” She opened the box lid, the muted blue-and-green-leaf china pattern belying the energy vibrating from the eight children. She’d hated to magick them from the study during the party, but they’d known better than to be out and about when Peter had guests. She was going to have to talk to them about that.

“You sure you want to unleash them?” Merlin poked his beak into the box. “You do remember why they’re like that, don’t you?”

“Hush, Merlin. They think you’re serious.” She removed Anthony.

Merlin’s feathers changed color to the black-and-white-striped pattern of a referee’s shirt. “I am.”

She flicked his beak away from the children. “No one’s asking you to stay.”

“Good. Have fun with that. I’m outta here.” He left in a flash of flames that looked like little tongues sticking out at her.

She shook her head. Merlin always said he didn’t like children, but he obviously liked
acting
like one.

She took out Hannah, then Dahlia. Eloise was next. Each one ruffled their fluted edges and Vana could almost hear them inhaling the fresh air, which, of course, wasn’t metabolically possible, but it was the closest approximation for what they couldn’t do in their altered state.

Colin practically leapt out of the box by himself, but then, he’d always been the most exuberant. He was the one who’d broken Lady Lockshaven’s china, though none of them ever reminded him of that. He hadn’t done it on purpose, and if there was one thing Vana totally got, it was the feeling of utter dejection when you did something you hadn’t wanted or planned to do. Especially if it turned out wrong.

Francesca was next; then Benjamin and Gregory, the twins, rounded out the set.

“Hello, everyone.” Vana brushed a hand across the line of them along the back of the sofa—everyone liked human contact. Even if they were no longer human.

Their fluted edges rippled against her skin.

“No, I’m sorry. I can’t turn you back yet. But I’m working on it. I promise.” She wished genies could make their own wishes come true because she’d gladly give up her magic if only to be able to do this one thing. But that wasn’t an option. The only thing genies could give up their magic for was love. And thinking about Zane in that capacity was out of the question.

“Come along, everyone.” She summoned her flying
kilim
, and the dishes slid on. “Let’s get something to eat. Wait until you try the new flavors of ice cream that have come along in the last century!”

Luckily, the gods, Karma, and probably even The Fates were on her side for the next hour. Nothing untoward happened while the children glided in puddles of peppermint, toffee, mint chocolate chip, butter pecan, strawberry, and root beer ice cream she’d flawlessly conjured across the table, countertops, and floors looking like exactly what they were: children at play.

It was one of the most perfect afternoons Vana could remember.

Which meant that it was bound to go wrong.

22

Zane kicked the brambles from his legs, cursing both the pain of torn flesh and the disasters of the afternoon. First Lynda, then the hurt look he’d put on Vana’s face, and now the wind chime debacle.

The first round of grunt work hadn’t even taken the edge off his frustration, so he’d gone searching for the bewitched chimes.

They’d had been easy enough to find, but convincing them to relinquish their place on the shepherd’s crook in the middle of a bramble garden had been another thing entirely. Mother Nature, Father Time, and the chimes that Zane now swore were demons (or at the very least, those imps Merlin had described) had conspired to slash his skin to the point where he’d probably shed more of his blood in the muddy earth than he had left in his body. But in the end, he’d persevered and gotten the chimes out of the so-called garden.

That he also had had to remove the shepherd’s crook that’d been cemented into the ground was just an added workout bonus.

Zane propped the heavy chunk of concrete with the crook sticking out of it against the back-porch roof support, but there was no way he was leaving the chimes out here unattended. Amid the brambles, they’d swung out of his reach every time he’d tried to grab them, aiming for his head on the backswing so many times that he’d ended up using a stick to twirl the leather straps they hung from around each other so they didn’t knock him out. They’d struggled the entire walk back but hadn’t managed to get untangled or do any more damage. Well, much. Every so often one of them would get a good enough swing going that it’d smack its metal end into the back of his hand, and son of a bitch, that had hurt.

Grabbing the chimes, Zane pulled a pocket knife from his shorts and flicked the blade out to slice the leather from the crook.

The chimes shrank back in his hand as if he were some sort of ax murderer.

He exhaled. He’d had enough of magical beings today. He raised his hand to slice through the straps and—

“Zane, no!” Vana came flying out the kitchen door (only figuratively, thank God) and would have tackled him if he hadn’t caught her, dropping the knife and the chimes in a discordant jumble against the side of the house in doing so.

“Oh Zane, you can’t,” she said, breathlessly, as she smacked against his chest.

Oh yes he could.

Wait. What was she talking about?

He closed his eyes for a second. She was still there when he opened them. Still plastered against him, his arms still wrapped around her tight little body, her lips right there for the taking.

Time stood still for the space of three heartbeats. He knew because he counted them tolling in his head like a bell.

“I… that is…” She braced her arms against his chest, then looked into his eyes, her silvery ones darkening.

He knew what that meant. Somehow he knew her passion when he saw it. Maybe it was because he was feeling it himself. And hell, she couldn’t fail to know he was feeling it, too, not with her abdomen where it was.

Apparently, wrestling with bewitched garden accessories hadn’t dampened his frustration as much as he’d thought. One touch. That’s all it’d taken, and he was wound up tighter than the chimes.

“I… I didn’t want you to hurt them.” She made a movement to slip down his body and Zane let her, if only to torture himself.

“
Hurt
them?”

Vana tucked some hair behind her ear and took a step backward. “The chimes. You can’t cut their straps. Those are literally their life lines.”

“I don’t understand.” So many things.

“The chimes need to be attached to the shepherd’s crook to be able to make music. If they’re not, they turn into inanimate objects.”

Of course they did. “Vana, I
want
them to be inanimate objects. I can’t have people seeing them like this.” He waved his hand their way and the chimes shrank back as if he was going to strangle them—which actually wouldn’t be a bad option if she wouldn’t let him cut the straps.

“Look, Vana, just do something with them so they won’t be a danger to me or the sale of this house.” He picked up the knife and shoved it into his pocket, then raked a hand through his hair. A couple small bumps had sprouted where the chimes had hit. “I need a beer. I’m going into town. “

“Can I come with you?”

Her words stopped him midstep onto the porch. He spun around, the word “no” on the tip of his tongue, but she stood there, looking utterly delectable and utterly hopeful, and well, it was that kitten-kicking thing again.

He was insane to even consider it. But then, given what he’d learned in the past twenty-four hours, insanity was the natural progression. “Fine, but remember: no funny business. I don’t need any more stories to add to the rumor mill.”

She cocked her head, and her lips puckered up in a sexy way he was sure she hadn’t intended but that looked sexy as hell nonetheless.

“I’m not trying to be funny, Zane.” Her eyes flashed with specks of steel as she crossed her arms. “And it’s very insulting for you to say so. I haven’t done anything wrong on purpose, you know. Haven’t you ever tried to do something that didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped?”

“Yeah, the entire last twenty-four hours.”

Her arms fell by her sides, and the flash in her eyes fizzled out. Shit. Apparently he hadn’t finished kicking kittens.

Zane took a deep breath, acknowledged the futility of trying to turn her down, then held out his hand. “You’re right and I’m sorry. Sure, come with me.”

“Can the children come? They’re so longing to get out.”

That’s what worried him. “Vana, I don’t know—”

“Oh, please, Zane. I promise they won’t be any trouble. It’s just that they’ve been cooped up so long and they’ve never ridden in a car. They’ll love it. And just think of how good the fresh air will be for them. I promise you they won’t be any trouble.”

Famous last words.

But when she smiled at him like that, so full of hope and happiness, he just couldn’t say no to her.

He just hoped he didn’t come to regret it.

***

Gary checked the balance in Marshall’s college account. Both sets of grandparents had been more than generous to their only grandchild; there was enough there to put a serious offer on Zane’s house. But how long would it be before Lynda noticed the money missing?

If he got the genie out of this, that wouldn’t matter.

A genie. Zane had a fucking genie. No wonder the guy seemed to live a charmed life; he actually did. The son of a bitch.

Well, the jig was up. Gary ripped the withdrawal slip from the back of the checkbook and shoved it into his pocket. That fund had been set up to secure Marshall’s future; no one could argue that having a genie wouldn’t do that.

Not that he was going to tell them. Oh no. This—she—would be his little secret. And so was this money. After all, once the genie was his, she could make the paper trail disappear.

Make Zane and Lynda disappear, too.

23

Zane regretted his decision the minute they’d pulled onto the main road.

Vana had introduced him to the children—and the fact that they fluttered their edges like sea anemones, the pattern and direction changing like some sort of Morse code that Vana understood, freaked him out no end.

She’d introduced him to each one, and he had no idea how she could tell them apart. Well, except for the one with the chip missing. Anthony? Or was it Benjamin? Zane couldn’t—and didn’t want to—remember, because as long as the children and the armoire and the phoenix and Vana existed, his life would never be the same.

They’d made it to the first stop sign before the dishes proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were children: power plays to see who could be in the middle of the back window, who could sit on the front dashboard, who got to sit on Vana’s lap, who tried to climb onto his arms and drive the car—that one was Colin. Children were children, no matter what their form, but unfortunately they couldn’t use seat belts in this one.

“Vana, they need to go back in their box. It’s too dangerous for me to drive with them jumping all over the car. If they were”—he’d almost said “normal,” but, really, what could be more normal than a bunch of kids bouncing around the backseat?—“That is, if they want to go for a ride, they have to behave themselves or I’ll have no option but to put them away.”