The Accidental Genie (8 page)

Jeannie sat at the edge of her bed, rocking back and forth while Boris and Benito cocked their heads and whined at the gulping sobs erupting from her throat. “Oh, my God. I’m—I’m a—a genieeee!”

Nina stuffed a crumpled tissue into her palm with one hand and scratched Benito’s head with the other. “Wipe,” she ordered gruffly. “Your nose is snotty. It’s disgusting.”

Jeannie’s head fell forward, her chin touching her chest while tears streamed down her face. “And I’m attached to hi—hi—hi . . .”

Marty nodded, her arm around Jeannie’s shoulders as she rocked her in a soothing sway. “Him. Yes. You’re attached to Sloan, but he’s really not so bad, Jeannie. He just hasn’t grown entirely up. He has good attributes, too. He loves children and animals and . . . and . . .”

“Brewskies and blondes,” Nina finished for her. “He’s like a trillion years old, Marty. If it ain’t happened yet, it prolly ain’t ever gonna fuckin’ happen. Being attached to Jeannie might be a good thing for him. Maybe it’ll keep his wandering noodle in his drawers so he doesn’t bring the pack a good case of the clap.”

“Oh, Godddd!” she wailed, thoughtless to the fact that Sloan was just outside the door and would likely hear every horrible thing she said about him.

This wasn’t as much about Sloan, despite his insensitive attitude toward her plight. It was the being-attached-to-any-man gig that she despised. She’d worked long and hard for her independence and a semi-healthy mental state. She’d broken free twelve years ago when she was twenty-three—and she wanted to stay that way.

Free.

From any man. Maybe forever. How uncanny the very thing she’d vowed never to let happen again had happened again—a man owned her, even if it was by circumstance rather than her poor decision making. And in a push-up bra and fez, no less.

Nina offered comfort in what she’d come to silently title The Nina Way. She placed an awkward hand on Jeannie’s thigh and patted it before putting her hand back in the pocket of her hoodie as though touching Jeannie burned. “It’s okay, Jeannie. I’d cry, too, if I was stuck with that womanizing mutt.”

“Womanizing mutt with super ears who can hear you because he has no choice but to be right outside the door, Nina!” Sloan called out, thumping against the wood.

“Vampire who doesn’t give a shit right behind that door, Sloan!” Nina hollered back.

Wanda nudged Nina and clucked her tongue, smoothing her hand over her prim flannel nightgown. “Quiet, Elvira. Let Jeannie mourn in peace. Don’t make me remind you of the horrors that await you should you screw this up.”

Pressing her fist to her forehead, Jeannie wailed, “I can’t be stuck to a maaaan . . . I have a demanding business to run and employees to pay. How will it look if I’m calling him master and following him around like some love-starved teenager?”

“Hot?” Sloan called.

“Shut up, Sloan!” the three women yelled in unison.

Marty wiggled her pink mules. “First, let’s look at the bright side. At least you’re not stuck in that genie outfit, right? I mean, it was cute and all, but now we know you still have fashion choices.” She plucked at Jeannie’s worn bathrobe and wrinkled her nose. “Second, we’ll figure it out, I promise. Sloan knows how to use a knife—he can cut tomato peels into decorative rose petals or something. Peel potatoes. We’ll make sure he’s useful to your catering business.”

“I’m not peeling potatoes.”

“Sloan?” Nina hollered, startling Boris and Benito. “Shut the fuck up, or I’m gonna come out there and punch you in the head. Stop making shit worse so Jeannie can get all this crap out of her system, and I can get some goddamn sleep.”

God, how inconsiderate of her. While the women had changed into their nightwear and settled in, Jeannie had succumbed to the suggestion that she take a hot bath and read more of the OOPS pamphlet. Among the many hair-raising passages, she’d read about all the things Nina had either given up or needed in order to keep her eternity in tip-top shape. One of them was vampire sleep.

Blowing her nose into the tissue, Jeannie fought to control her tears and forced herself to be a gracious hostess to the people who had been kind enough to offer to watch over her. “I’m so sorry, Meanest Woman Alive. You need your vampire sleep, right?”

Nina pulled the sleeves of her pajama hoodie over her hands and rolled her eyes. “Just fucking finish, okay? We haven’t had a crier in a long time. It’s takin’ the shit right outta me.”

She took a shuddering inhale of air. Okay. No more feeling sorry for herself. Life had changed, even if it was only for the moment. She’d dealt with plenty of change in her lifetime, and she’d done it without being given the opportunity to look back.

And while that change hadn’t exactly involved granting wishes and skimpy harem pants, she’d have taken this kind of change over the one she’d experienced what seemed a lifetime ago.

Two deep breaths later and she was on her feet, ready to regain any small measure of control she could manage. “I’m done.” She brushed her hands together in a gesture of finality.

Nina shook her head, her coal black eyes skeptical. “That’s what all the noobs say. Until round two.”

Jeannie shook her finger, ignoring the throb of her red eyes. “No-no. I’m really done. Any more gut-wrenching sobs will occur privately. Promise. So let’s figure out sleeping arrangements. I have a spare bedroom and a pullout couch. Oh, and a few weeks off to figure out this madness before I have a big wedding to cater. Until then, Betzi and Charlene can handle things.”

“I call the bed,” Marty hollered playfully, making Boris and Benito sit up and bark when she hopped off the edge of Jeannie’s bed and bolted for the door.

“Fuck you, Marty!” Nina yelled, racing after her in a blur of limbs and feet.

Wanda slid gracefully off the bed to the tune of Nina and Marty’s bickering banter. She smiled in what appeared to be an apology. “I’ll go check to be sure they don’t have a pillow fight.”

“Motherfucking motherfucker!” Nina bellowed from the guest bedroom. The tone to her expletives, filled with palpable anxiety, sent a chill up Jeannie’s spine.

Jeannie and Wanda looked at one another—their gazes mirrored the same question.
Now what?

Jeannie didn’t have a choice but to scramble down her short hallway filled with boxes of silver serving platters she hadn’t had the chance to bring to storage as Sloan literally dragged her by their invisible tether.

Wanda rushed in behind them, pushing past Sloan and Jeannie to cock her head at her friend. “Nina?”

Jeannie tightened her flannel bathrobe around her neck while she watched wisps of lavender smoke feather around Nina’s head. Her stomach lurched.
No.
She hadn’t felt a thing. Not a single tingle. No wave of heat. Nothing. She gulped. “Where’s Marty?”

“Fucking hell,” Nina muttered, throwing the pillow she held back on the bed with such force it burst open, revealing the cushiony foam.

Wanda grabbed her arm, her face frantic. “Nina? What happened?”

“We were fucking fighting over the stupid bed. You know, the way we fight over everything. Next thing I know, she’s gone. Just like that.”

Realization spread over Wanda’s freshly washed face. “You didn’t make a wish, did you? Mary, mother of God, Nina . . . you didn’t!”

Nina, usually so growly and fierce, scrunched her nose up. She almost looked contrite. That alone brought Jeannie to silent panic. Nina didn’t seem like the type who let remorse anywhere near her.

Nina’s eyes fell to the floor, away from Wanda’s scowling gaze. “Not fucking out loud . . . Swear, it was subconscious, Wanda. I think shit like that all the time about her—about everyone. I didn’t say it out loud because we have the wishmaker over here to worry about.”

Jeannie gasped, stepping in front of Sloan, her chest tight with fear. “But I didn’t feel a thing. When I turned Sloan into a woman, I felt it. I knew I’d done it!”

“What exactly did you wish for, Nina?” Wanda hissed the words, so obviously fighting for composure a vein popped out in her forehead.

She jammed her hands into the pocket of her hoodie with a sullen pout. “You’re not gonna like it.”

“Like we’d expect less, Nina?” Sloan quipped, but his tone was heavy.

Nina didn’t even make an attempt to lob a snarling retort at Sloan.

Oh, hell. It must have been a horrible wish. Jeannie’s stomach took a nosedive. She clenched her hands together and held her breath.

“Nina?” Wanda shook her arm hard, her voice tight.

Nina pressed her fingertips to the bridge of her nose. When she answered, her tone was stoic. “Fine. I fucking wished she’d fall off the face of the planet.”

If this legend or myth or whatever were true, that made wish number three. The last wish she was capable of granting . . .

Oh, Jesus Christ and a pair of MC Hammer pants.

CHAPTER

4

Sloan ran his hand over his hair and let out a ragged sigh. “That’s just perfect. The
planet
, Nina? Could you have been any more descriptive? Maybe a little less all-encompassing?”

But Nina still didn’t rise to the bait, making it clear to Jeannie that despite her bickering with Marty and all the name-calling, she cared a great deal about her. “I swear, I only
thought
the words. I didn’t say them out loud. Jesus Christ and a Shetland pony.”

Fear for Marty’s safety, and the possibility she was now granting random, unspoken wishes, made Jeannie shiver. She spoke the words that pulsed in her brain without thinking. “Hang on a second. I thought I could only grant
Sloan
wishes and he’s used two now. Nina’s makes three. How did I mind-meld Nina’s wish? And if Sloan owns me”—she fought a gag reflex at the word—“isn’t he in charge of who gets a wish?”

Wanda was pacing now, treading a path back and forth on the hardwood floor with her white ballet slippers, her hand in her hair. “I don’t know. None of this makes sense. Not that much ever does in most cases. I must have uttered those words a thousand times since we started OOPS. Very déjà vu. We’ve got to find Marty—that’s all I know.”

Jeannie grabbed Sloan’s arm, letting her fingers sink into the leather of the jacket she’d returned when she’d changed into her pajamas. “Wish her back! Go ahead. Just say it.” She closed her eyes, praying when Sloan spoke the words, some lavender smoke would appear.

Sloan’s pause made her eyes pop open. “Let’s do this! What are you waiting for?”

He put a hand on her shoulder, leaving a warm imprint that left her uncomfortable for a brief moment until she took a cleansing breath, letting her panic subside, only to find what Sloan’s hand really did was leave her quivering all over. “Hold on. I’ve been reading a little about genies online while you women shredded my very person in that bedroom, and wording this wish is crucial to having the proper results. I read a story, whether it’s true or not is anyone’s guess, but this guy wished his headache away. You’d think aspirin or something would be involved, right? No. In fact, quite the opposite. He lost his head.
Literally.
”

Jeannie’s stomach heaved, making her wrap her arms around her waist. “But the other wishes you made turned out okay. Well, as okay as a wish for a man to be a woman can turn out,” Jeannie protested. Sloan’s reluctance was wasting precious time. What if Marty was all alone somewhere—in the dark?

Jeannie shuddered inwardly at the thought, stuffing her unwanted memories back into the metaphoric Pandora’s box in her mind.

Nina clenched her fists into tight balls, the thin blue veins under her skin visibly tense. “None of this makes any fucking sense, Wanda. If Sloan only gets three wishes like all that
Aladdin
Disney bullshit, then how did I get one of them? How did Jeannie read my goddamn mind and virtually hear what I was thinking? Can she read minds, too? And what if that really was the last wish she had to give?”

Wanda held up a finger to her lips, her eyes flashing. “Quiet!” she snapped. “Let me think. Nina, go check my phone and see if Darnell’s gotten back to me yet. Sloan, take Jeannie and think about what we’re going to tell Keegan when he calls looking for his wife.”

Sloan’s expression was instantly full of concern. Looking to Jeannie, he held out his hand to her. “C’mon, wishmaker, we have some serious thinking to do.”

She wanted to take his hand, feel the warm, lean length of his fingers. She wanted to let him lead her out of the guest bedroom and have it mean nothing more than just that. But her fears, her pathetic, ongoing issues just wouldn’t allow it.

Instead, Jeannie brushed past Sloan and the scent of his woodsy cologne without so much as touching him. She made her way to her living room, flipping on the lights as she went. She felt Sloan’s presence behind her and heard him flop down on her puffy recliner.

Sitting on the edge of her matching couch, Jeannie asked, “Keegan? That’s Marty’s husband, right? The man responsible for turning her into a werewolf?”

Sloan sighed, dragging his hand through his hair. “That’s him. He’s also going to be the werewolf who turns anything he can get his hands on inside out until we find her.”

Jeannie’s heart clenched at that kind of love. Oh, God, what had she done? “He really loves her . . .”

“He really can’t see straight where she’s concerned.”

Perfect. An angry werewolf who would look to her as the responsible Marty-napping party. “How long have they been married?”

Sloan’s face softened before he cleared his throat. “Four years. They have a little girl, Hollis, my niece.”

A child. She’d taken a mother from her child. “And a dog, if I remember reading that pamphlet correctly, right? Cake or Brownie or something?”

Sloan chuckled a warm and deep sound that slithered along her nerve endings. “You really blow at names. It’s Muffin. Yes. And they have the perfect all-American werewolf dream together.”

Jeannie’s ears picked up on tension in Sloan’s voice—tension and something else. “Do I hear bitter in your tone?”

“No. You hear the that’s-their-dream-not-mine tone.”

“I did notice everyone has a lot to say about your very active love life.” They’d all made it clear Sloan liked blonde women, booze, and football, and women, and more women.

At least he was honest.

His raven eyebrow swung upward, but his lips thinned. “I’m confident I won’t lose my womanizer title any time soon.”

God, she was bad at small talk, but she felt they should at least know a little about each other. They were sort of rocking the Siamese twin thing . . . “So you don’t want children and a family?”

“I don’t want to be pressured to have them is what I don’t want.”

Jeannie tucked her fist under her chin. “Why would anyone pressure you?”

“Because when you belong to a pack, the pack wants you to keep their seed strong and reproduce more little pack members.”

“A pack . . . Oh, right. I remember reading about that in the OOPS brochure. You belong to a pack and Nina belongs to a clan, and you all coexist peacefully with humans, though most of us aren’t even aware you exist.”

His nod was curt, his lips thinned. “Right. The pack.”

Jeannie pulled the one pillow from the couch Boris and Benito hadn’t slobbered all over to her lap and wrapped her arms around it. “Now I definitely hear bitter.”

“I guess maybe you do.” His answer was reluctant if not honest, the hard line of his stubbled jaw tense.

Definitely a touchy subject. She was pretty good at gauging people’s lines in the sand, and she was even better at not crossing them. Jeannie took a mental step back so as not to smudge that line. “So this pack-reproduction thing, it sounds pretty antiquated. Not unlike our new slave-master relationship.”

Now his face expressed true distaste. “How about we don’t use that word anymore. I don’t want a slave.”

“Right. No slaves. Though, I’d bet if I were blonde and five-ten, you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss my new title.” She grinned.

Sloan didn’t.

In fact, he looked almost angry. The shadows the lamplight played over his face made his jaw harder and more angular. “I like women and I make no bones about it. I like women who go away when the good times are gone—which usually isn’t longer than twenty-four hours. But I’m never disrespectful to them by not sharing my honest intentions when liking them. I don’t lie to them, and I would never dub any woman my slave—especially not you. And you’re not blonde or even close to five-ten. Point officially moot.”

Hot button. Though, Jeannie still couldn’t quite grasp why. So he liked one-night stands? At least he was free enough about his needs to pursue them. That was something to be admired. One-night stands implied he never gave too much of himself. Never allowed himself to be lost in a sticky entanglement. “So the pack and its antiquation . . .”

His lips turned up on either side for a brief, shining moment. One she filed away in her brain to recall when he wasn’t smiling. Which was often. “It’s not as antiquated as it was. Since Marty and her quote-unquote ‘accident,’ the pack’s loosened up a little. She’s helped them to see that love conquers all or some such crap.”

“You don’t believe in love?”
OMG. Shut up, Jeannie. Why would you care?

“Do you?”

“I asked first,” she said with a small, teasing grin, avoiding any focus on her.

“I asked second.”

Jeannie looked down at the floor, her eyes counting the slats of her wood flooring. “I can’t say for sure. I haven’t experienced it.”

“You’ve never been in love?” Sloan sounded surprised.

She was, after all, thirty-five. Most would naturally assume she’d been in love at least once. At one point in time, she’d thought she was, but she’d learned. Oh, she’d learned. “And you have?”

His smile was fond and it stirred something inside Jeannie similar to a green-eyed monster. “Yeah. I have.”

“I feel faint.” She hid her ridiculous notion of envy by joking.

“Want me to wish you up some smelling salts?”

Jeannie smiled, then immediately frowned when she thought about Sloan’s brother and how angry he’d be if they didn’t find Marty. “I want you to wish me up a way to keep your brother Keegan from killing me for shipping his wife off to parts unknown.”

Sloan sat up and placed his elbows on his knees; his eyes were intense when she caught his gaze. “I won’t let him kill you.”

“Chivalrous.”

He shrugged his shoulders, the leather of his jacket crinkling. “Probably not so much. I’m really just looking out for my best interests. Who knows what could happen to me if something happens to you. We’re sort of connected.” He used a finger to indicate the space between them.

“What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking like a woman—wishfully. Something I hope never to do again.”

She let her chin fall to her chest with a snort. “Too much estrogen, not enough logic?”

“Undoubtedly.”

Jeannie shook her finger at him. “We ain’t the sissy gender, and don’t you forget it.”

“How do you stand all those highs and lows? It was brutal. And those heels? Jesus . . .” he muttered, though he was smiling again and that somehow made everything shiny.

“I think you just got a huge dose of it all at once. It’s not always like that.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“So wishing for Marty to come back—what should we do?” The knot in her stomach returned, tightening into a painful coil of nerves.

Sloan’s hands gripped the arms of the chair he sat in. “We should word the wish
very
carefully. The trouble is we have no way of knowing if Nina used up my last wish, or if you’re Wishes-Unlimited—or if you’ll never be able to grant another wish again. We need to find out more about your origins before we take chances. If you were a werewolf, this would be easy. We’d have a steak. You’d learn to shift, find the best the market has to offer in razors, and you’d find some nice guy in our pack and discover the true joys of falling in love with some lucky pack male.”

She mocked a huge sigh. “Bummer that. Every girl who’s turned into a werewolf wants love and steak—oh, and a good razor.”

Sloan didn’t laugh, his expression somber. “We can’t afford to waste or mince words with Marty at stake.”

Jeannie shuddered. “I’m afraid . . . for Marty. Where do you think she is?” Again, the feeling that she could be somewhere dark and dank made Jeannie’s heart race. She hated the dark—and dirty sheets. Not necessarily in that order. Thus, she imagined everyone else did, too, and it was all she could do not to crawl out of her skin with the memory of it or the fear that Marty was somewhere unmerciful, feeling that way, too.

Sloan’s look was thoughtful, but then he grinned. “I think, wherever she is, she’s making someone crazy with her color wheels and makeup advice. But Marty’s pretty tough. I promise she can take care of herself.”

Her head cocked to the tone in his voice. “Is that admiration I hear?”

“She’s my sister-in-law.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to like her. I know plenty of people who hate their in-laws.”

“Fair enough,” he conceded with a nod. “For all her clothes, makeup, hair, and damn well annoying perkiness, she’s been good for our family and the pack. She lightened them up with her jokes and why-does-everything-have-to-be-so-doom-and-gloom-all-the-time attitude. Since she joined the pack, a lot has changed, including the strict no werewolf-human relationships. I also admire that she can get my brother, a diehard tight-ass, to do almost anything if she just bats her eyelashes and smiles. He was pretty uptight before Marty, but he’s a whole helluva lot easier to be around now. And she gave him Hollis—who also wraps Keegan around her toddler finger. If I’m honest, she does the same to me. Hollis, that is.” Sloan followed the admission with a doting smile.

Jeannie bit back a disturbing sting of disappointment. She’d never experienced that kind of romantic hold on a man.
Because you’ve only experienced one man, Jeannie, and that didn’t work out so well, now did it?
“God, I feel shitty now.”

“This isn’t your fault, Jeannie.”

The sympathetic tone in his voice made her flush with an uncomfortable heat. She slapped her hands on the pillow in her lap. “You know what? I absolutely know that. I didn’t ask to be thrown in a bottle. I also didn’t know taking me out of that bottle would cause so much harm. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in thera—” She shook her head. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s to place blame where it deserves to be placed. I place it squarely on MC Hammer pants. What I mean when I say I feel shitty is simply this—Marty’s obviously a good person. She came over here the moment you called her, and she was only trying to help me—a virtual stranger. That says something about a person’s heart and the good contained therein. The last thing she deserved was to vanish into thin air.”

Sloan snorted, crossing his ankles. “Yeah. Maybe you could have just made her mouth disappear?”

Jeannie chuckled, but the lighthearted moment didn’t last for long before reality settled back in by way of a cold lump of trepidation in her stomach. She squeezed the pillow tight, digging her fingers into it. “What are we going to do?”