Genie Knows Best (17 page)

“Oh, I’m always on my toes,” said Dirham. “It’s how I roll.”

Samantha finally found something to smile at. Dirham was the perfect comic relief in a situation that was by no means funny.

“All right, then. Let’s get dressed and be on our way.” Kal held up his hand, fingers ready to wave. “I know you can’t make a wish, Samantha, but since I’m responsible for your comfort, I can conjure clothing for you. Is there anything specific you would like to wish for?”

Her first response had nothing to do with clothing, but
turn
Albert
into
the
lizard
he
is
didn’t fall under the Seeing To Her Comfort category. Plus, she’d like to think she was a better person than that.

Still, she could enjoy that mental image. “No, whatever works for you.”

Kal waved his fingers. Apparently he was quite fond of the harem outfit. For both of them. His included another vest that didn’t close across his washboard abs, and hers, well, at least the sari-type top was comfortable. And it was teal, which was a good color with her hair.

“On, and don’t forget this.” Kal picked up the necklace the Oracle had given her and held it out.

Actually, she wouldn’t mind forgetting it and everything it represented. “How about you hang on to that for me?”

“You’re sure?”

“Definitely.” She’d rather not have another anchor around her neck; Guilt was enough of one.

First chance she got, she was going to apologize. Then someone pounded on the door, guaranteeing that wouldn’t happen anytime soon.

“I know you’re in there, Kal,” came an angry growl that Samantha didn’t recognize. “Open up, or I’ll blow the damn door down!”

Kal yanked the door open, hand at the ready to either wave it for magic or punch someone in the face. No one threatened his master and got away with it.

Maille and Bart stood there: Bart, ready to smash the door with his puny fists, and Maille with her arms crossed and tapping one toe.

“Good gods, Bart, you were full of hot air even before you took the wyvern form,” she said, her eyes blazing at her mate. “How in
Al-Jaheem
do you think you’re going to blow anything down with how you are now? Planning to huff and puff?”

Bart got in her face. Too bad he was two inches shorter. “Don’t start with me, woman. It’s your fault we’re here.”

Dirham leapt off the bed and stood on the threshold. “Uh, guys? Is there something you need? We’re kinda in a hurry.”

Two sets of seething black eyes turned his way, and the little fox backed up behind Kal’s legs.

“A
hurry
?” Maille screeched, advancing into the room. “You’re not going anywhere. Not until you help us.”

Kal stepped forward, blocking her. She might not have the capability of breathing fire in her human form, but those talons were still lethal and she already held one grudge against Samantha. “What’s the problem, Maille?”

“Maille’s the problem, Kal.” Bart threw up his hands in disgust. Hadn’t taken him long to remember how to use them.

“Stuff it, wyrm,” Maille snarled at Bart, then looked at Sam. “The problem is that we need
her
wishes.” Some of the fire went out of her bluster. “Someone took one of our hatchlings.”

Bart uncrossed his arms and massaged the back of his neck with one hand. “Laszlo. The youngest.”

For a moment, silence reigned. Then a collective gasp filled the room. Samantha plopped onto the bed next to Lexy, Dirham sat on the floor, and Kal let Maille into the room. He hadn’t known Bart and Maille had a clutch together.

He quickly did the math while pulling out a chair at the table. Dragon gestation was a little over fifteen hundred years, one of the reasons they were an endangered race. They couldn’t afford to lose even one hatchling. “Sit down, Maille. Tell us what happened.”

The dragon sat and her bravado crumbled. Bart, too, looked shaken as he leaned against the door frame, an emotion from the wyvern that was as surprising as the fact that he’d reproduced.

“I woke up this morning to their chirruping. All fifteen—fourteen of them. Laszlo was missing.”

“He didn’t fly away?”

“He can’t fly. He’s newly hatched. Give him a few days to catch up.”

“Just a little surprise my dear ol’ mate waited fifteen hundred years to spring on me.” Disgust laced Bart’s voice, and Kal couldn’t say he blamed the wyvern. To have children and not know it, then to find out when one was missing and possibly kidnapped…

“Give it a rest, will you, Bart?” Maille glared at him. “You’re not the injured party here. Laszlo is. We have to find him.”

“That’s not what you said when you showed up at my place looking for him bright and early this morning, was it?”

Maille rolled her eyes. “Okay, I admit it. I thought, at first, that you might have, you know—”

“You thought it was me. Go on, tell them. Tell them that you’d thought I’d purposely take one of the hatchlings to punish you. Great opinion you have of me, by the way.” Bart snorted and there looked to be a puff of smoke accompanying it. “As if I’d do that.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“After wasting fifteen minutes flaying me with that forked tongue of yours.”

“Can we just focus on what’s important right now, Bart? The kids. They’re what’s important.”

“You think I don’t know that? Who suggested we come here? Who talked you into eating the crow you served up nice and steaming hot to Samantha yesterday, eh?”

These two were enough to drive the gods to drink—which was how dragons had been created in the first place. One of the nastier side effects of
arak
.

“Maybe Laszlo’s hiding.” Kal had to get the focus off their marital troubles and onto what was important. He remembered what it’d been like losing each member of his family—and that’d been to old age. He couldn’t imagine what the dragons were going through, though the purple stripe in Maille’s hair that had turned gray told its own story.

Maille shook her head. “He’s not. I turned the nest upside down. There’s no place he could hide.”

Kal grabbed the other chair, spun it around, then straddled it. “Any signs of a break-in?”

She shook her head. “None. But the rest of the clutch was huddled together as if they’d seen a ghost. And since it’s been eons since any ghosts left Spooks’ Nook, I doubt it. Besides, a ghost couldn’t pick him up even if it did come to visit, and anyway, ghosts aren’t known to snatch dragonlets.”

“What about a fall?” asked Samantha.

“We would have found him there.”

Maille was right; dragon nest accidents used to be the third biggest killer of baby dragons, after overeager knights in shining armor with Sleeping Beauty complexes who slayed any dragons they could find—even hatchlings—and gnome-weevils that bored into the unhatched eggs. The mutant creatures were one of the reasons the position of High Master had been created: to control genie magic. Run-amok djinn weren’t pretty and neither were their creations. As the shining armor hysteria had phased out and the gnome-weevils had reached the end of their life expectancy, nest falls had risen to the number one killer spot.

Which meant that if Laszlo hadn’t been below the nest and he couldn’t fly away or hide, the only logical conclusion was that someone had taken him. And with the very real possibility of Albert having the amulet, Kal was betting he knew who.

He looked at Samantha. “I’m not a big believer in coincidences.” That was because most coincidences, like déjà vu, could be attributed to genie magic. Or magic amulets.

Samantha sat in horrified silence. Albert wouldn’t resort to kidnapping, would he?

Kal seemed to think so. And if she were honest with herself, she could see it. Albert was desperate. The question was, what was he going to do with a baby dragon?

A bigger one was, what could she do about it? Of all the times to not be able to make wishes. She’d lost her own mother at such a young age; to be however indirectly responsible for Laszlo being taken from his… She could barely breathe, let alone think.

“So if you could just wish for Laszlo’s return, we’d be in your debt.” Maille lost the blistering, nasty look of a dragon for the mien of a heartsick, desperate mother, and Samantha would have liked nothing more than to be able to grant that wish.

“I’m so sorry, Maille. I’d love to, but I can’t.” The ramifications of her one careless, emotion-driven wish were washing over her like angry waves on the shoreline. She couldn’t wish Albert here, she couldn’t wish the baby dragon here, and she couldn’t wish herself anywhere
but
here.

She
was
useless. And the baby dragon was going to pay for her ineptitude.

“Of course you can. Kal, tell her.” Maille put a hand on Kal’s knee. “Tell her all she has to do is say, ‘I wish Laszlo was back home,’ and everything will be all right. I don’t even need to know who took him. I just want my baby home safe.”

“Well,
I
want to know. I’d like to tear him apart. So if you could undo this”—Bart waved a hand over his body—“and deliver the bastard to my front door, I’ll take care of the rest.”

“No, really. I’m sorry, but I can’t,” said Samantha, the knife twisting in her gut a little more. “I can’t make wishes.”

“Of course you can.” Dragon tears filled Maille’s eyes, and the knife twisted a full three-sixty. “You can’t have gone through them all already.”

“What she means, Maille,” Kal’s voice was low, “is that the last wish she made was that she wouldn’t say the word
wish
anymore, so she actually
can’t
make a wish.”

There was a lull in the room—in speech, in breathing, probably brain waves, too, as they all tried to process the sheer inexplicability of that sentence, because who in their right mind would wish to
not
wish with their own personal genie around?

That would be her.

“Are you out of your smoke-laden mind?” Bart stalked across the room. “What kind of being makes that stupid wish? I’ve heard of wishing for more wishes, but
not
wishing? Are you insane? Mortals! I’ll never understand them.”

“Now wait a minute—” Dirham leapt onto her lap, his tail swishing angrily.

Maille put a hand on Bart’s arm, those talons of hers encircling it. “You can’t fry her, Bart, so don’t even try. If you’d kept your big beak shut, we wouldn’t be in this form in the first place and
we’d
be able to find Laszlo
and
fry the person who took him. But, no, you had to come out with guns blazing, acting all tough and mighty, as if you owned the joint. Now look where that bravado’s gotten us. So like you to not consider the consequences. Always shooting your mouth off—well, now you’re shooting blanks. How’s that feel? You enjoying that?”

Kal shook his head and held up a hand. “Yo, guys. Focus. This isn’t solving anything. There has to be a clue or something. Baby dragons don’t just disappear.”

Lexy stood on her hind legs and rested her front paws on the table. “Unless they have an amulet. Then they can.”

Samantha’s blood ran cold at the vixen’s statement. If Albert had the amulet
and
the dragon, he could do whatever he wanted and there was nothing they could do about it. He had more magic than she did at the moment even though she was the one with the genie.

“There has to be a clue somewhere. Something.” She was grasping at straws, but she felt responsible for this. If only she hadn’t brought Albert into her life; if she’d seen him for what he was, greedy and sneaky and utterly heartless. If she’d figured it out earlier… Had kicked him out. Or closed the safe…

If she hadn’t wished away her wishes.

“Of course I looked for clues,” said Maille, “but I didn’t find any.”

“Was that before or after you turned the nest inside out?” sneered Bart.

Maille flicked her tongue at him, and it really was forked. Samantha thought Bart had been speaking figuratively.

“I was panicked. Plus, I thought
she
could fix this.”

Samantha
wanted
to fix it. How could Albert have done this? He
knew
what not having a mother meant to her. How that was the one thing she’d ever really wanted in her life, but even Kal’s magic obviously hadn’t been able to make that happen. And now he’d purposely taken Laszlo from his mother. “We should look again. You might have missed something in your worry.”

“
You’re
going to find something?” said Maille, anger quickly replacing the forlorn look—and Samantha couldn’t blame her. “Weren’t you the one who screwed up having a genie? Pardon me if I’m not all agog with excitement over your offer.”

Samantha tamped down a retort because Maille had a point. Still… “Look, if it was Albert, I know him better than anyone.” Well, anyone here. But she obviously didn’t know the Albert who would have done this. Still, they had to start somewhere.

“Who’s Albert?”

“Her boyfriend,” said the ever-helpful Dirham.

“Ex-boyfriend,” Samantha and Kal said together.

Samantha kept her gaze firmly on Maille, but she could feel her cheeks flaming. Semantics came into play in all sorts of situations, didn’t they?

“Your
boyfriend
?” Maille screeched. “Great balls of fire, you do know how to pick them, don’t you? And I thought my taste in men was bad.”

Samantha didn’t need the reminder. “How about I give you Kal’s lantern, Maille? Then he’ll be your genie and you can wish Laszlo home.” The idea just slipped out, but the minute she said it, Samantha knew it was the right thing to do.

Except that Maille started laughing. “Oh, now that’s priceless! She’s going to give me the lantern. Wouldn’t
that
be a kick!”

Bart joined in. “And I said Kal had gotten himself a smart one? What was I thinking?”

Still, he gave her the once-over. Twice.

Samantha shuddered. Maille had a legitimate complaint.

The dragon flicked Bart’s arm. “Yeah, as if you’d know smart, worm-brain.”

Then again, Bart did, too.

At least Samantha had gotten the two of them on the same page—even if it was at her expense.

Kal took her hand. “That’s very generous of you, Sam, but dragons, as the second most magical beings, can’t command a genie. It’s the system of checks and balances—no one magical being can have too much power.”

“Except the High Master,” said Dirham. “He has all the power.”

“But he still answers to Nature and Time,” said Lexy, which caused Dirham’s ears to droop.

Samantha knew the feeling. “Well, what about Dirham? Can he be your master?”

Dirham splatted onto the floor again. “Me?”

Lexy shook her head and hopped down next to the Dirham. “Magical-assistance assistants can’t be masters. It would upset the natural order.”

“Speaking of which, we need to get going if we’re going to find Laszlo.” Kal waved his hand and the flying Mercedes showed up, hovering a few inches off the ground outside her door, with a second set of gull wings for the additional passengers since they could no longer fly under their own power. “Ready when you are.”

Maille leapt a few inches out of her chair. “I thought you couldn’t do magic.”

“Only for Samantha’s comfort. Getting you where you need to go quickly is a fortunate by-product.” He opened the door and looked at all of them. “Coming?”

Bart scowled. “Do I have a choice?”

“Sure,” said Maille. “You can choose to jump off a cliff in your present form.”

“Love you, too, Maille.” Bart swept his hand for her to precede him out the door. “After you, my sweet.”

The dragon stalked out. “My sweet ass, you mean.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, babe.”