The Accidental Genie (3 page)

Sloan reached for his coat from the back of the chair. “It is. Apparently, you have the wrong crisis for this help line.”

“You’re not really telling me being stuck in a bottle doesn’t qualify as a paranormal crisis, are you?” she shouted.

“Have you been drinking?” Sloan winced, peering over his shoulder. If the girls heard him say something like that to a possible client, there’d be no end to their torment about his insensitivity.

“No, you nominee for most unhelpful customer service rep ever, I haven’t been drinking!”

“Well,
you
mentioned the bottle. Not me, lady,” he offered dryly, convinced she’d been slamming a few back.

“I said I was stuck
in
a bottle.
In-in-in!
I’m not
on
the bottle! I swear on my dead Uncle Orvis’s grave! Just listen to me.
Please
. I’m a caterer. I was catering this swank over-the-top party when I opened what looked like a very old bottle of gin. At least I think it was old. I’ve never heard of old gin, but it was really dusty, and it said
gin
on it. So what do I know? I don’t drink—though that could change at any given time. Anyway, I was just replenishing the gin for the bar. And I did . . . Er, replenish. Oh, boy, I did. I opened the bottle and . . . Anyway, the next thing I know, this guy, dressed a lot like someone from my assistant’s niece’s favorite movie,
Aladdin
, like poofy pants and all and a T-shirt that said, ‘Sorry About What Happens Later,’ pops out of the bottle in a puff of some nasty, green smoke, smelling like a week-old
CSI
crime scene and starts dancing around like he’d just won a harem of women.”

“An Aladdin guy . . .”

“Yes!” she shouted. “So, I scream. He screams back. We both scream together, he mutters some gibberish in a Joe Pesci kind of way, does this crazy fun house laugh, and the next thing I know, I’m in this bottle.
A gin bottle
. I know it’s the same gin bottle because I can read the letters G-I-N on it. Only it’s backward because, you know, I’m on the inside looking out—
of a bottle
! A bottle. A. Bottle. Aaaa bottle!”

“Got it. A bottle.” Sloan yawned, covering his mouth with his knuckles.

“And, God, it reeks in here. And it’s a filthy mess. There are beer cans all over the place, cigarette butts stacked in artful pyramids, sweat socks that look like someone mud wrestled in them, and if you can believe it, a velvet wall hanging of Elvis from his jumpsuit days. Which to me says somebody had way too much time on their hands. Is that good enough for you, Sloan the Werewolf? Is that enough crisis?” She hissed the words. “And lastly, put that in your not-a-paranormal-crisis-that-fits-your-stupid-profile pipe and smoke it!”

Sloan blinked when her increasingly hysterical rant ended. If she was a crank call, she was a damn good actress. To be safe, and keep him from the wrath of Nina, he decided to trust she wasn’t bullshitting him. He gave the form he had in front of him another swift glance.

Nope.

Not a single mention about being trapped in a bottle. Time warp? Yes. Bottle? No. So what did that accidentally make her? Wait. Bottle plus Aladdin-like guy plus poufy pants equaled . . . A genie? Shit and piss. He knew as much about the djinn as he did feminine protection. Though, somewhere he remembered hearing they could be nasty little bastards when provoked. But then, there was a lot of false information floating around on the Internet about werewolves, too.

Goddamn it. Why couldn’t she just be something simple like a werewolf? Or a hedgehog? He knew jack shit about anything other than being a werewolf.

When he got his hands on Marty, he was going to kill her for leaving him here alone under the guise of “Oh, Sloan, stop being such a baby. Hardly anyone ever calls on a Sunday afternoon.” He grabbed his phone and texted Marty a 911 and waited.

Nothing. That was just fucking terrific.

“Hey, werewolf? Are you still there? Or did you hang up because this is just too outlandish to believe, you being a
werewolf
and all,” she said with a scoff. “Did you hear a word I said? I’m trapped in a bottle! Oh, my God, a bottle!”

Sloan winced, his eyes moving as quickly as they could over the counselor trainee pamphlet Marty had left him with. There it was.
At all costs, keep the client calm
. “I heard you. But it says here I have to try to keep you calm while we figure this out.” He couldn’t tell her what he suspected or she’d lose it all together—then he’d never find her. And, yes, he’d go looking for her, because he liked his living environment to be ball buster–free.

“Calm?
Calm?
”
she screeched
.
“I’m trapped in a bottle! You be the calm. I, on the other hand, am going to be the whirlwind of flipped completely out!”

And then the tears started. Huge gulping, snot-riddled sobs that, according to the
How to Comfort Your New Client When in Paranormal Crisis
pamphlet, was expected and supposed to be handled with the utmost compassion.

And tissues.

Not one of his stronger suits. Though, he hated to see a woman cry—or in this case, hear it. It turned him to so much mush, and he’d promise almost anything to stop it. Christ, he hated a woman’s tears. “Shhhh—shh-shh. I’ll help you, I promise. Now do you know where you are? Are you still at the party you catered?”

There was a long, shuddering breath and then, “No. Not exactly.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s absolutely humiliating. I don’t know if I can tell you.”

He was growing impatient with her again. Though, if he was honest, he kinda wanted to see a chick in a bottle. For curiosity purposes only. “Lady, do you want me to come get you or not? Because if not, I have a game I wanna catch.”

“You’ll come get me? Really?” She sniffled the words.

He looked at his cell phone again. No text from Marty. Shit. “I’ll come get you,” he soothed with a solemn tone. If he didn’t, Keegan would give him hell for days for upsetting Marty. Not on his list of favorite things.

“I’m in the garbage can at the end of my client’s driveway.”

Placing the back of his hand over his mouth, Sloan muffled his hyena-like laughter and wiped the tears forming at the corner of his eyes on his forearm.

“You’re laughing!” she accused with an outraged tone.

Sloan rocked back and forth, covering his snorts before sitting back up and taking a deep, long breath. “I’m sorry. Sorrysorrysorry. Just give me a second, okay?” he managed to wheeze out, covering the earpiece of the phone and bending at the waist again to still his fits of inappropriate laughter.

Four more deep breaths later, and he was back. He cleared his throat, and rolled his head on his neck. “Okay, do you have an address for the garbage can?”

Garbage can. Hah.

As she ran off her location, Sloan typed it into his phone’s GPS and pulled up directions to a pretty ritzy suburb in Long Island. “It’s gonna take about thirty minutes to get to you with traffic—hang tight, okay? Oh, and what’s your name?” In all this, he’d forgotten to ask her name.

There was a pause and then, “You’ll laugh again, and I’m a little shaky right now. Usually, I can take a joke. But at this stage, your high-pitched, girl-at-a-slumber-party giggle might break me . . .”

He straightened, shrugging his jacket on as he made his way to the door. “Swear I won’t. I’m all laughed out.”

“It’s Jeannie. Jeannie Carlyle.”

Sloan’s eyebrow rose. “As in
I Dream of
?”

Her answer was reluctant. “Yessss.”

Priceless.

Okay, so he wasn’t all laughed out.

*   *   *

S
LOAN
came to a screeching halt precisely in front of the garbage can Jeannie was supposed to be in and jumped out of his car, scoping the dark street to see if anyone was looking. He tucked his chin into the front of his jacket, pulling his knit cap over his head to brace himself against the harsh winter wind.

A quick glance at the mini-mansion with its rounded shrubs and cascading fountains made him wonder if there weren’t security cameras somewhere beyond those wrought iron gates. He tugged his knit cap low over his brow and hunkered into his jacket.

He managed to find the garbage can without trouble, yet he paused and sniffed his surroundings. Well, this was definitely the place. So if this Jeannie was punking him, she’d gone to great lengths to do it. His spidey senses, though, told him she was legit.

With a flip of his wrist, Sloan wasted no time popping open the garbage can’s top and using his flashlight to locate the bottle Jeannie said she was in. Her cell phone’s battery had died ten minutes into the trip over from OOPS, making him worry about that fragile state she claimed. If she freaked out and word got back to the girls, he was in for some sensitivity boot camp.

He located the bottle easily enough under some newspapers. Lifting it out, he held it up to the streetlamp. It looked just like any other liquor bottle. He couldn’t see a damned thing but some murky remnants of amber liquid. It sloshed when he shook it.

Tucking it into his jacket, Sloan got back in his car and took off down the winding road, following it until he left the small suburb and found a 7-Eleven. Whipping his car into the parking lot, he threw it into park and pulled the bottle out to hold it up again.

Sloan squinted. Shit. Maybe he’d gotten the wrong bottle? Putting his eye to the open mouth of it, he peered inside. The sting of something sharp to his eyeball made his head snap back.

He put the bottle to his lips, swiping at his watery eye with his thumb. “Jeannie? What the hell was that?” he yelped now putting it to his ear to see if she responded.

“A beer can—which, if you could see this pigsty, would put ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall to shame, and, yes! Yes, it’s me! Oh, thank God you came!” she yelped back, her relief evident.

The bottle gave off a slight humming vibration beneath his hand. Holy. Shit. “I’d hold off on thanking the man upstairs,” he said into the glass rim. “I’m not sure where we go from here because all of the paranormal experts are out designer discount shopping and can’t come to the damn phone right now.” He clenched his jaw. Damn that gaggle of women. “Suggestions?”

“You know what, when this is all over, if these invisible OOPS people give me one of those customer feedback forms to fill out, you’re screwed. You’re the expert here! How should I know what’s next?”

Right, right, right. The expert. Shit. Think, Sloan. Without warning her, he tipped the bottle upside down and gave it a hard shake, watching the opening to see if she did the obvious and fell out.

Nothing but some leftover drops of liquid. “You still in there?”

“Don’t you mean am I concussed and battered?” she yelled at him, her anger echoing in his ear.

Damn. “Look. I’m doing my best here, okay? I’m still new to this. Just give me a minute to think.”

And then it hit him
. I Dream of Jeannie
. He put the bottle back to his lips and talked into it. “Did you ever watch
I Dream of Jeannie
? You know the show with Larry Hagman and the hot blonde in those fluffy pants?”

There was that rasp of a sigh again. “I know this is an admission I’ll regret, but, yeah. I arranged my pillows on my bed to look like the inside of Jeannie’s bottle, and if you only knew at this very moment how familiar I am with fluffy pants. So, what of it, expert?”

He didn’t remember a whole lot about the show other than the cute blonde with the ponytail, but he remembered a little something . . . It was a feeble suggestion at this point, but it was all he had until he could locate those women. “Do you remember how Major Nelson got Jeannie out of the bottle?”

“I can’t remember. I only know that if you don’t get me out of here soon, I’m going to asphyxiate from the stench, and it won’t matter if I get out of here.”

Sloan slid down in the front seat of his car when he noticed customers of the convenience store were staring at him while he talked into a bottle like some nut out on a day pass from the crazy house. “He rubbed the bottle.”

He heard her scoff. “Weak, Sloan Flaherty. Weak.”

Rolling his tongue along the inside of his cheek, he pressed the bottle to his lips. “Got a better plan?”

She sighed a sigh that whispered in his ear, sending a chill along his spine. “No. So go ahead. Rub away.”

Heh.

“Hang on to something, then. Things might get bumpy.” Without waiting for an answer, Sloan put the bottle between his two hands and gave it a brisk rub, then set it on the passenger seat.

And waited.

His nostrils flared. Was that the scent of beer and stale cigarettes filling the interior of his car? His head swung around just as his car began to rock like they’d hit an eight point five on the Richter.

Sloan grabbed for the steering wheel, leaning forward and clinging to it with one hand while protecting the bottle on the seat with the other. The violent shaking lifted the front end of the car right off its wheels. It humped the paved parking lot like a lover, lifting up and slamming back down, over and over.

And then she was there. In the passenger seat beside him.

A disheveled, raven-haired pixie with cigarette butts stuck to her chin-length hair and a crushed beer can in the purse she clung to.

Wearing sapphire blue harem pants and a matching wisp of satin bra.

Multicolored smoke surrounded her, then drifted away and disappeared, leaving glittery rainbow trails.

Her mouth, red and plump, fell open as her light blue eyes met his, glazed and shiny.

Sloan’s mouth fell open for a moment, too. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to look like, but it wasn’t the cute little package she’d turned out to be. Though, definitely not his type, he liked ’em leggy and blonde. Yes. That was what he liked. Or had liked.

Sloan was the first to react. He put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a light squeeze, noticing her skin warm and supple beneath his fingertips. “Jeannie? Are you okay?”

Her wide eyes fixed on him, and she visibly cringed at the touch of his hand, but recovered quickly. “
You’re
the werewolf?”