Genie Knows Best Read online

  Soft curls the color of his lantern framed her face and caressed the hollow at the base of her throat, and her lips were moist from the quick dash her tongue had made over them. A dusting of freckles scattered over her upturned nose, and her eyes were so green that they outshone the emeralds one of his masters had given his harem. Samantha was stunning. Even her name was beautiful. If he could grant himself wishes, having Samantha would be at the top of the list.

  “I wish I had an aspirin,” she said, gulping down the water.

  Aspirin was easy. Kal conjured up two. “Here you go.”

  She looked at him as if he had the same number of heads.

  Kal hid his laugh. New masters. He’d seen that look before. Half the time they didn’t know what they’d gotten into, and the other half… Well, Kal had never had any say in who his masters would be, but he found that Karma ended up giving most of them what they deserved.

  And now maybe Karma had given him what he deserved. He’d certainly paid his dues through the centuries—dues he owed “thanks” to Faruq. That ibn el-kalb had stolen not only Kal’s High Master’s thesis and the job he’d wanted, but also his reputation. So instead of the promotion to vizier Kal had expected all those years ago, his name had been dragged through endless jeribs of worthless desert sand and buried so deep that even Mudd was a better name than his.

  But now Faruq was the one confined to his lantern, awaiting his own sentencing for trying to double-cross the High Master, which left the vizier position up for grabs. Kal fully intended it to be his. Karma couldn’t be that fickle twice.

  Could she?

  Kal shook his head, ending that thought before it could go any farther. Samantha was his last master, and no matter how often he’d fantasized about her, he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. Not when he was so close. “Where’s Monty?”

  “My father?” When Kal nodded, she set the glass in her lap and wrapped her fingers tighter around it. She didn’t look at him when she answered. “He had a stroke six months ago and, well, his memorial service was today. Tonight. Whatever.”

  Zift. Kal hadn’t wanted to end his Service to Monty this way; the man was—had been—a decent guy. He would have preferred that Samantha had discovered the lantern on her own and summoned him that way because Monty’s death meant she was now alone in the world.

  “I—” Kal cleared his throat when the words wouldn’t come. It’d been centuries, but the pain of losing his family still struck a long-buried chord. He, more than most, understood what her father’s death would mean to her, and he couldn’t rejoice at the end of his sentence when it meant the beginning of one for her. “I’m sorry for your loss, Samantha.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Your father talked about you often.” Which had suited Kal just fine. He’d been very appreciative of the photos of Samantha that Monty had had in his office. The ones of her in evening gowns at charity functions had sparked his interest; the one of her in a bikini on a Mediterranean vacation, which he was sure Monty had had no intention of him seeing, had sparked something else—and not because of the scenery. After all, most of the women he’d seen before her had been covered head to toe in burquas or Victorian clothing, so those seaside images had made an impression that even her djellaba couldn’t squelch.

  “So who are you?” she asked.

  Right. The job.

  Kal crossed his arms and gave her the standard greeting he’d given one thousand times before. “Salam wa aleikum. I am Khaled, the genie of the lantern. What is your wish, master?”

  “Genie? Lantern? Wish?” She held up her glass. “I wish this was a lot stronger than water.”

  He’d heard that one before. “As you wish.” Kal waved the fingers on one hand, his Way of doing magic, and turned the water into wine in a shimmer of orange Glimmer. Wish number four. Only nine hundred ninety-seven to go.

  Samantha looked at him, then at the glass.

  She took a sip.

  Which she then spit out.

  He’d seen that before, too. There wasn’t much he hadn’t seen or heard in his four thousand years.

  “I was thinking coffee,” she muttered, mopping the drops from her lap with the sleeve of her djellaba. “I wish I understood what’s going on.”

  “Ooh, Kal can tell you that even without a wish,” said Dirham, the magical-assistance assistant who’d been assigned to him for the duration of his sentence.

  The fox was trying to be helpful, though hopefully not too helpful; the little guy did tend to get overzealous on occasion. Kal had had to interrupt Dirham more often than he’d liked because spilling the beans about Kal’s sentence—or the fact that giving a djinni his or her lantern would set them free—would cause Kal to have to start over at master number one, as well as sentence the big mouth to life imprisonment. It was a good deterrent that had the added benefit of keeping Dirham quiet around new masters. He and Dir had learned through the years that rarely could a mortal accept a talking fox and the knowledge that Kal was a genie on the first go-round.

  “How does your dog talk?”

  And there; he was proven right again.

  Kal cringed, waiting for Dirham’s tirade. The fennec might be the most accommodating of beings, and quite clueless about a lot of things, but he did know when he’d been insulted, and calling him a dog was the biggest insult in Dirham’s world.

  Dir stood on his hind legs and rested his front paws on his hips. It was a ridiculous pose, but Kal had never had the heart to tell him so because the little guy was a sensitive soul.

  “I speak the same way you do, with my mouth.” The fox circled a paw around his snout. “And for your information, I am not a dog.”

  “Oh? What are you? A bat? A cat? A jackalope?”

  Score one for Samantha. That was one Kal had never heard before.

  Dirham fell onto all fours, his eyes as big as his ears. “A… a… jackalope? I don’t have antlers.” He veed his tiny eyebrows.

  Kal had to step in. He didn’t want Dirham getting any more insulted than he already was. The little guy took everything to heart, and no matter how many times they’d been through this, Dirham never understood why a mortal didn’t believe them right off the bat. “Dirham is a fennec. A desert fox, native to the northern Sahara.”

  “Ah.” Samantha set the glass on the ground and then stood up, his lantern still clutched in her hand. “Now I get it. I’m dreaming. Thank God that’s cleared up since I don’t remember going over any rainbow.”

  “That’s because Kal ran out of mist-paint so I couldn’t paint one,” Dirham said, sniffing the glass.

  “Rainbow?” Kal was glad these two knew what they were talking about because he didn’t have a clue, and Izaaz was definitely not looking rainbow-ish. Matter of fact, it was looking damned sorry. What in the cosmos had happened here?

  “You know,” said Samantha. “As in Oz? Somewhere over the…?”

  Kal raised an eyebrow. It never boded well when mortals quoted mythology to him; it just made it harder for them to accept what he was.

  Samantha shook her head. “Never mind. What I mean is, the Sahara, the fox, you, my father, the memorial… I’m missing Dad. I opened the safe, and when I saw this…” She held up the lantern. “I thought I had a handle on his passing, but maybe I saw this and the memories overwhelmed me.

  “And with Albert’s crap, I probably put my head down and cried.” She shrugged, talking more to herself than to him. “Wore myself out and fell asleep, and this is just a dream. An Arabian Nights kind of fairy tale.” She cocked her head and looked at him. “So does that make you Prince Charming?”

  He could be whatever she wanted him to be—and that was without the benefit of a wish. But, still, there were rules.

  “Is that what you wish, Samantha?”

  She chuckled. “Oh, yeah, right. That’s what I wish. That you’re my Prince Charming, come to kiss me awake.”

  Her wish was his command. Gods knew, he’d thought of little els
e since the first time he’d seen a picture of her.

  Actually, he’d been thinking of a lot more, but he’d start with a kiss.

  He tilted her head ever so slightly and kissed her before she realized what he was doing and wished him to stop. Kal didn’t think he could stop. It’d been so long, and Samantha was just… tantalizing.

  And her lips… He’d dreamed of them more than he should have, and now… Now, they were a dangerous combination of softness and sensuality. The hint of lilac that clung to her hair was a temptation to linger. And the feel of her in his arms… jannah.

  It’d been so long since he’d held a woman in his arms.

  Truly, he’d had no intention of kissing her. Interest, yes; intention, no. She was his master. His last master. He couldn’t afford any distractions and she was one giant one.

  Well, not so giant; she fit in his arms perfectly.

  Kharah! No wonder it was said that the road to Al-Jaheem was paved with good intentions; Kal was already burning.

  Then she made a tiny, soft sound at the back of her throat and the hell with his intentions—they were all good anyway.

  And so was this. Kal swept her up in his arms so that she was at just the right height, her lips at just the right angle to be claimed, her arms at just the right spot to encircle his neck, and her breasts… ah, her breasts were perfect no matter where they were.

  And when she gasped, the warmth of her mouth was just as perfect when his tongue slipped in to taste hers.

  She tasted as sweet as he’d imagined. And imagine he had. Those pictures of her had gotten him through many a long and lonely night, and this kiss was turning his world upside down more than that last carpet ride he’d taken over the Himalayas.

  Kal angled his head the other way, her curls sweeping across his cheek. He’d always liked lilac.

  His hand slid to the small of her back and pressed her closer, her tongue dancing with his.

  “Kal? Should I reserve a hoodoo for the two of you?”

  Dirham. Leave it to Mr. Conscientious to be willing to help out by finding them a room.

  Need played havoc with Kal’s common sense. Her wish had been hypothetical, but by the letter of The Djinn Code, he was honor-bound to grant it.

  And he’d wanted to. The minute he’d materialized in her father’s office, saw that she was his new master and heard her wish, he’d started fantasizing about this.

  Dirham cleared his throat. Kal was surprised that the troll behind her hadn’t chimed in. Although, given Orkney’s problem, he’d probably missed the entire thing.

  Kal gripped her arms and allowed himself one last taste of her lips before breaking off the kiss. It took her a moment to open her eyes. And when she did, Kal saw the flash of desire in them.

  But then he saw the confusion.

  She ran a shaky hand through her curls, and Kal allowed himself to bask in the knowledge that he’d put that tremor there. A hundred and sixty-plus years of celibacy, and he still had it.

  “I guess it wasn’t a dream after all.”

  Orkney snorted, and a rope of his mud-brown dreads blew across the back of the chair to rest in the seat. “First time anyone’s ever called me a dream.”

  Ah, so the narcoleptic troll had been paying attention.

  Samantha spun around. “I’d forgotten you were there.” She licked her lips. “What are you?”

  Oh, gods, here it comes. Kal’s ego and libido reined themselves in quickly. That moment was over.

  “What am I? What?”

  Orkney’s ire made the ground tremble. Or rather, the stomp of a giant foot that was out of proportion to his height did. He said the reason he grew his hair long was to cover his feet, but, personally, Kal thought it had to do with the narcolepsy—the hair gave him an out when people accused him of falling asleep. But trolls as a race weren’t narcoleptic, and they all had the same hairstyle.

  “I am not a what. I’m a who, and I’ll have you know that I’m a—”

  “He’s a blabbermouth, is what he is.”

  Kal groaned as Fritz crawled out of the listing drainpipe on Tia Pipa’s Nut Shop. Talk about an end to whatever moment he and Samantha might have had… Where one gnome went, others were sure to follow, especially since many of them carried pint-sized friends beneath their pointed caps.

  Surprisingly, this time, only six popped out. But they all had their pitchforks.

  But then the shutters on McKeever’s Pub opened and Seamus tapped the window with his shillelagh. His cronies raised their frosted mugs and flipped gold coins toward Seamus, who caught them in his green top hat with a wink at Kal.

  So much for fulfilling Samantha’s wish of making all her troubles disappear. From the way she was spinning around as the citizens of Izaaz crawled out of the woodwork—literally—Kal would bet (and from the looks of the leprechauns, they already were) that she was thinking her troubles were just beginning.

  3

  A genie.

  A genie. No. That wasn’t possible. Genies didn’t exist. This had to be a dream. It was crazy. It was ridiculous. Insane.

  Yet that kiss had been real. Samantha put her fingers to her mouth, the feel of her skin nothing like that of his lips.

  She glanced at him. Why had he kissed her? And why wasn’t she giving him hell for it?

  She’d been about to, but then pitchfork-carrying, pointed-hat-wearing gnomes had crawled out of the downspouts, and… oh, yeah, that’d be why. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Albert’s offhanded, metaphorical stomping of her dreams and self-esteem. Nothing to do with being blindsided yet again. Being used. No, nothing to do with that at all.

  No, the reason she wasn’t taking umbrage with that high-handed kiss was because the insanity of this situation was even more insane than some random guy kissing her.

  Some random, half-naked, hot guy.

  One of the gnomes tripped and his pitchfork went flying, landing at Samantha’s feet.

  Gnomes. Pitchfork-bearing gnomes. That was insanity.

  Then the gnome picked up the pitchfork, tipped his hat to her, and army-crawled back the way he’d come.

  She had to be in Oz. Or Narnia. Maybe Middle-earth. Or possibly the Addams family’s neighborhood, because not only was she looking at gnomes, the likes of which she’d only ever seen on television commercials; but a dozen of Cousin Itt’s cousins were shuffling out of one building, and a parade of men no taller than the back of that suddenly appearing chair were filing out of another. Dressed in green, the men had black shoes, black belts, and black bands around their green top hats, all with big gold buckles on them.

  Yes, she’d definitely gone over some rainbow because this had to be Oz—and that guy at the head of the green-man brigade the mayor—because she’d planned Dad’s funeral for November seventeenth not March seventeenth and she hadn’t had even a sip of the arak.

  “Top o’ the mornin’ to ye, lass,” the mayor said with a heavy, deep brogue, putting the kibosh on Oz. Maybe she was in Brigadoon.

  “All right, all right, stand back. Give the lady some breathing room.” The fennec was running back and forth like a Border collie wannabe, as the parade fanned out around them. “She’s still in the adjustment period. No one say anything to upset her.”

  Ah, her very own knight in shining fur. Pity he was too late on the no-upsetting thing.

  Then a centaur trotted up behind the crowd, taking upset to a whole new level.

  “Kal!” Half-horse, half-man, the creature fist-pumped the genie over the little people. “How’s it goin’? You done yet? I figured, with the High Master all set to announce something big at the bash next week in Al-Jannah, you’re finally getting that promotion.”

  Aladdin—no, Kal—shook his head. “Not yet, Wayne. There’s still her.” He nodded her way and the sword swung on his hip.

  “Her… I mean, me?” Samantha squeaked. She stuck her hand behind her back and furiously pinched herself. Wake up wake up wake up! “What do I have to do with anything?�
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  “Oh lots,” said the fennec, bouncing around. The guy could use some Xanax. “You’re going to—mmmrph!”

  Kal scooped up the fox and tapped his snout. “Enough, Dirham. Don’t forget your job.”

  Job? The fox had a job?

  Well, sure. Why not? Why not a feather boa, too?

  That’d be because the boa idea had been claimed by the pair of sparkling white unicorns—literally sparkling and literally unicorns, horn and all—strolling down the sidewalk.

  “I’ll take that aspirin now, if you don’t mind.” Samantha held out her hand to Kal, then tossed the pills into her mouth sans water. Wine. Whatever.

  Gulping them down, she grimaced at the chalky residue they left on her tongue. “Wish I had chocolate instead,” she muttered.

  And, voilà! A chocolate bar hovered before her eyes.

  This time she sat without an invitation. “How… How is this happening?”

  The gnome and the army of munchkins chuckled. Even Cousin Itt and his cousins cracked smiles beneath their hair, the upward curve of yellow teeth behind the dreads making them look like Rastafarian jack-o’-lanterns.

  Dirham squirmed in the genie’s arms. Nicely muscled forearms that had been around her not five minutes ago—

  “It’s because Kal’s your genie and he’s here to do whatever you want.”

  Now that had some interesting possibilities…

  Samantha shook her head. Apparently, betraying, soon-to-be-ex-boyfriends and strange dreams sent one’s libido into overdrive. And let us not forget that out-of-this-world kiss. That definitely had gotten her libido going. Albert had never kissed her like that.

  She didn’t think Albert could kiss like that.

  She touched her lips again. She’d liked it. A lot. If she needed any further proof that Albert wasn’t the man for her—recent double-crossing, manipulative, lying, sack-of-shit status notwithstanding—the fact that his kisses had never left the kind of impression that one from a guy whose last name she didn’t even know, ought to do it.