The Cowboy Genie's Wife: A Paranormal Romance (The Dirty Djinn Series) (9 page)

“I see.”

“You really don’t.”

“Don’t get uppity with me, young lady,” he said with a chuckle. “You have something to tell me, but you don’t want to tell me. Yes?”

“I can’t.”

“Are you dealing with it alone?”

“No. Yes. Kinda.”

“You told me you had a good husband looking after you. Why haven’t I ever met him?”

“Umm...”

“Is that complicated too?”

“Very.”

“I see.” Manny leaned back in his chair, wheezing and laughing in the way she remembered her grandpa used to do. The sound brought on a fresh round of tears, but Manny wasn’t having it. He thunked two gnarled and arthritic hands against her temple. “Knock it off. You’re young. Healthy. And happy, or so I thought. Has he hurt you?”

“No!”

“Have you hurt him?”

“Not directly.”

“Mm hmm. Go to that drawer. Next to the Vaseline, you’ll find a small bag. Bring it to me.”

The drawer had a little more than Vaseline. Among the Bible, the porn, the chocolate, the
hardcore
porn, and an image of the Holy Mother was a tiny leather satchel. “Is this your important stuff drawer?”

Manny’s eyes twinkled, and he shrugged. “God delights in our joy. Hand it over.” When the bag hit his hands, his eyes closed and lips moved in a prayer too soft for her ears to hear.

At least, she thought it was a prayer.

His eyes snapped open, cold and impassible and not the Manny she’d grown to love. He flipped the bag. Stones tumbled out onto the hospital table, rattling as they did. “What are you doing?”

“Shh...”

Several minutes passed. A nurse came in, but she shooed the man away, not wanting to interrupt whatever the heck this was.

Maybe she should have. Manny had usually prayed over lunch or a heavily betted upon game of whist. Prayers of love or hope. This, however, was new. Heavy. She reached out and the mood snapped.

The warmth returned to Manny’s eyes, and an impish smile twitched his lips. “Your husband. Dark? Tan? Handsome boy. Older? Yes?”

“Yes.”

“By many years?”

“Uh, a few.”

“A few,” he said, chuckling and going back to the smooth and glistening stones. “Why do you think Mama let you go?”

“Wha-what do you mean?”

“I mean, why do you think Mama let you go?”

“You’re confused, Uncle Manny. I’ll call back the nurse and...” She pretended to rise, not really sure what to do. Her plans didn’t involve anything close to the truth being discovered.

Many didn’t care crap about that. “You come from a family of brujos, hermana. They knew you and knew him and saw the love long ago. I don’t think they expected this,” he said, waving his hands in front of her. “But they knew you’d be protected.”

Her stomach bottomed out. After a few false starts, she sucked some air back in her lungs. A tight grip on the back of Manny’s chair kept her upright. “I don’t know what you think you know, Tio—”

“Hermano.”

“Tio Manny, or what a brooha is, but—”

“Brujo.”

“Brujo is, but my husband—”

“Nice fella. He stopped by just before you came.”

Forget the back of the chair. She shoved over Manny’s stack of crossword puzzles and damn near fell onto the plastic bed. “You’re kidding.”

“Too old for that. Might die in the next ten minutes. Shut up and listen. The second I saw that man, I knew he was something Other.”

“No. No, no, no. You’re confused. I ... even if, let’s say you were a whatever, how?” she asked, both hands over her face.

“A brujo knows.”

“What on earth’s a brujo?”

“What!” Manny popped up like a man a third his age, waving his cane in front of her. “That’s the problem with people today. They get married and never talk to the person again.”

“I know you’re not getting on me about being a good wife right now.”

“I am. You should have brought that man here to meet me the instant you found me. He’s family. And if you’d done that, we wouldn’t have wasted all this time on secrecy.”

“Even if what you say about him is true, he wouldn’t want what he is getting out. Assuming he’s something Other in the first place.”

Manny yanked her arm, pulling her upright with surprising force. “More lies and half-truths. A brujo is like a witch, but it runs through the male line. He saw me, smiled, and shook his head. Right there,” he said, pointing to the sidewall. “He told me that he loved you. Who, not what, but who he was, and that he prayed you wouldn’t show up here.”

“To keep his secret.”

“To keep his trust. He trusted you, and all he wanted was for you to trust him.”

“But—”

“But you didn’t.” Manny shook his head and hobbled over to a stack of papers on his dresser. One hand clutched the cane as fiercely as the other held on to a set of documents. He sighed and eased his way back to the chair.

“Plane tickets. We leave in two days. He said he needed the time to get things straight for me. He left right away. Said he wasn’t in the business of leaving his animals alone to chase after people who ought to know better. Horses, he mentioned. A real horse farm? Pigs too?”

But she couldn’t share his joy or his wonder. It was impossible while feeling so very small inside.

Small?

Her hand flew to the chain around her neck and fresh tears clouded her vision. He’d trusted her with his lamp and thus his life, power, and eternity. He’d needed her to trust him only once, and she’d failed completely.

Manny laid his hand on her knee and gave it a shake. “He said he’d go, knowing you’d come back to him, but he didn’t look so sure. I think he left you with options, and he’s hoping you choose the right one.”

“I don’t deserve this...”

“Probably not, but I’m hoping you take him up on it anyway. Damned if I don’t want to see some horses.”

F
azil backed out of the way of the staff from the medical supplies company and checked his wife’s flight status on his tablet. The woman and her brother ought to be touching down soon.

The woman.

The liar.

And unfortunately, the love of his life. No, he hadn’t been the perfect man, but he was a product of his time. Plus, he’d been trying to change. Not her. Nope. She was the same as she’d always been—spoiled and stubborn.

Well, stubborn.

But he’d be lying if he didn’t acknowledge the toughness of a woman ruthlessly determined to protect her family. Hadn’t he been guilty of the same? “Damn!”

“Sir?”

“No, nothing.” He waved off the men delivering the lift bed for Emmanuel and reconfirmed the company’s nurse would swing by first thing in the morning. He’d briefly considered placing his brother-in-law in a home nearby, but that was before meeting him.

Although elderly, the man was tough as shit and his magic was no small matter. It was practiced and ancient. Most magic stayed with a person, but every so often, magic rested in the blood—transferring from one generation to the next. Something moved into him the second he was born. Had Manny been a father to sons, it would have gone into one of them too. Very little surprised Fazil these days, but djinn loved to hear of skills other than their own. It could be a blast learning from the man. Besides, there was never harm having someone close whose wishes you could trust.

He pushed on a rising nail on a plank of the front porch and scrolled through his neglected business in-box. As he did, the Nederson kids he’d hired to watch the place came up for payment. He sent them off with fatter wallets, for their time, and his sincere thanks.

While the dust from their vehicle swirled, another series of cars rumbled up the road, and he checked his calendar. Everyone who ought to be here was here.

Rosa and Emmanuel? No way that could be them. Not unless they caught an earlier flight.

Something about the speed of all this didn’t set well either. Never mind the sheer numbers.

The pit of his stomach burned and twisted. A niggling that this wasn’t right. Magic?

The ache seethed and curled, until his knees buckled beneath it. He might call it panic, but that made even less sense. Still the cars approached. Sirens he hadn’t noticed, or that hadn’t been turned on before, were so loud they threatened to punch a hole in his eardrums.

When the cars came up the drive, the shield on the side glowed in the sunlight. ICE? Immigration and Customs Enforcement. What? They were barking up the wrong damn tree here.

The sunlight bounced off one of the windshields. He blinked against it, shielding his face with his hand. When his eyes refocused he saw that he was still wrong. Not ICE but the ATF. That made even less sense.

His beating heart slowed while his head muddled through the bull-crap in front of him. They had to have the wrong ranch. He had no clue who’d ticked off the feds this much, but he pitied the crap out of him.

The lead van shifted again as they rounded the final corner. Then all the vehicles lined up one by one, and he found that once again, he’d misread the shields. Not ICE. Not the ATF.

But the FBI.

And that’s when he knew he was totally and completely fucked.

* * * *

“H
oly crap.” Rosa floored the accelerator of the rental car as she neared the ranch and the billion flashing lights surrounding it. “They know.”

“Know what?” Manny sipped on his ice water, surprisingly calm. Why shouldn’t he be? While coming somewhat clean, she’d failed to mention the teeny-tiny fact that she’d killed a man.

Something must have happened. She’d been too shy and, well, scared to call Fazil, and now the FBI was here. God knows what they were doing to him. “I wish the FBI would go away.”

Through squinted eyes, always a bad idea while driving on a winding road, she was horrified to find that nothing had changed. Did the FBI live-record things? They must. It was the only reason Fazil wasn’t sending them on their merry freaking way.

“Rosa?”

“Right. So, yeah.” She turned to explain. The man was as blasé as if she’d brought in the morning paper. “Sorry, would you mind putting down your drink for a minute?”

“Why?”

She knocked back against the headrest. “I’ve gotta go to jail.”

Another slurp. “For?”

“Not important.”

“The cops seem to think so.”

“Can we do this sibling squabble later?”

“Thought you were going to jail.”

“Really? Right now, really?”

His hand landed on hers as she put the car in park. Manny’s smile carried so much optimism and youthful expectation that her heart ached with jealousy of it. “What happened to your faith in your husband? Trust in him. Try it, Hermana.”

Whelp, not trusting hadn’t worked. She threw up her hands and kissed her brother’s head.

She and her brother walked out of the car together, arm and arm toward the house. Channeling his hope, she let her trust lead the way.

That became harder when armed men stormed out, guns leveled at their heads. One kneed Manny in the back, but he didn’t cry out, and so, neither would she. Instead, she concentrated, holding on to that trust and the soft, quiet patience that she’d come to learn from her brother ... and Fazil.

She held on to that as they dragged her into the house where she saw her husband, her beautiful Fazil, handcuffed and purple, lying on his side. A choked, ragged sob escaped, one impossible to hold back. “Baby?”

“It’s all right, Rosa. I’m fine.” Fazil licked at the blood pooled around his bottom lip and winked. “No biggie.”

One of the men, obscured by a large helmet and glasses, stepped forward, shoving Fazil back down. “He won’t tell us what we need to know. You will.”

“Or?”

The agent unholstered his weapon to rest the metal against her love’s head. “Or this. You choose. Tell me what—”

“I killed him.”

“Shut up, Rosa! Ignore her, officers. It was me. I killed him. You know I’m right. No way could that woman have killed a man that strong. Let her go, and I’ll come peacefully.”

A boot to Fazil’s chest met his confession. Metal clinked on metal as handcuffs cinched into place around his wrists.

The helmeted men turned to each other and nodded toward the door, dragging Fazil behind them like a golden prisoner. She couldn’t let it happen. His eyes begged her to stay back. No, not begged. Pleaded. Hoped. Prayed. “I love you, Rosa.”

“Fazil—”

An agent’s gun slammed across Fazil’s nose. Her scream met Fazil’s forward lurch. He looked back but didn’t stop. “Get out of here, baby.”

“Manny.”

“He’ll go with you. You know what to do. It isn’t safe to stay here.”

“But—”

“Damn the consequences, Rosa. Do it,” he screamed as two uniformed men pummeled him with fists and batons. “I’ll figure something out.”

She couldn’t. The consequences he suddenly didn’t care for were everything. He’d just offered to out his kind to save her and her brother. She couldn’t let that happen. He’d go to jail and stay young forever. It wouldn’t take long before they brought in their scientists and doctors.

She, however, would age faster. If not, she’d ask for the death penalty early and refuse to fight it. She’d age far faster than he ever would. She’d done enough to hurt him already.

“I did it. Let him go.”

“No!” Fazil fought and screamed. He kicked and swore, all the while proclaiming his guilt for a crime he didn’t commit.

She ignored him.

So did the agents.

Temporarily. “Explain, woman.”

“I just have.”

The lead agent, identified by more badges on his shoulder than the rest, stepped around her struggling husband. “Maybe we’ll take you both in.”

That was a start. Once things settled, Fazil would have to agree with her for the good of their kind. This was for the best. He was worth the sacrifice. “Can I say goodbye to my uncle? That would be the elderly man in the corner you insisted on roughing up.”

She didn’t wait for a response and ignoring the screams of her husband, turned to Manny for the last hug she would ever give him. She snaked up her hand, and when she was sure no one else could see, she wrenched free the lamp and necklace from around her neck, dropping it into Manny’s hand. “Look after him.”