The Genie's Witch (Dirty Djinn) (10 page)

“She’ll notice if I’m jingling.”

“Hush.”  With everything laid out side by side, Dinah closed her eyes and started to murmur. He watched it all play out on her face in the mirror – her concentration, her anger, her longing.

When she opened her eyes again, they were glazed over, gone silver with power. She moved mechanically and if he’d had the space, he would have taken a step or two back. The power radiated off her hot enough to redden his flesh.

He was about to be out magic’d and he’d never been prouder.

Dinah’s hands lit the candle and painted fingers passed all three bells through the blue center of the orange flame. There was no way it couldn’t hurt, but she didn’t cry out.  In fact, she licked her thumb and index finger, killed the flame and held what must have been a scalding, smoldering wick between them.

There was little smoke to speak of, but what remained was removed by a twirling hand, before any detectors had anything to detect. Dinah blinked and the white fog cleared her eyes. “She doesn’t get to take you away from me, Tig.”

He twisted her around and pulled her body against his until her lips were right where they belonged. On his mouth. They could chance it. She could be naked and beneath him in his bottle in the next breath. But it wouldn’t change anything, nor get them closer to figuring out a way to safety. Karlin was already suspicious, the two of them in the bottle at once, might set her stupid crystal afire.

Still, of the two of them, Dinah was the only one with enough strength to pull away when someone started knocking on the bathroom door.

He knocked back. “Just a minute.”

Dinah shoved one of the bells in his front pocket. “It’ll ring as a signal of danger and a warning to it, too. If she tries to attack you, you’ll know. Don’t let her see it.”

“What about the other two?”

But she’d already started looping one onto the necklace he’d given her that day...and night...in the hotel. “One for me and one in the lamp. Just in case one of us it isn’t in it for some reason.”

“If I have to call you—”

“I’ll be ready, Tig.”

“I know.”

“When this is over—”

Dinah laid a hand on his chin and wiped a tear from her eyes with the other one. “I know that too. I wish I were in the lamp.”

T
ig didn’t keep up their conversation. It took too much out of them, traveling across the dimensions between his reality on the plane and the pocket reality, tucked in his lamp a few feet away. 

When he and Karlin started disembarking, he strained to hear anything remotely like a wish. The bitch didn’t even ask for a bathroom. Everything she did, she
just
did – without any preamble. Anything she wanted, she paid for in the same silent fashion.

If she rented a car, they’d be alone at some point and he’d take her down. If she had someone picking her up, he’d take them both out. No magic necessary. He had a strong right hook that produced brilliant results in the past.

The small stirrings of hope at the taxi stand diminished when she merely waved and pointed for a car.  Tig took the backseat, folded his arms and watched the miles go by.

Above, thick, gray clouds had a heaviness about them that foretold of oncoming danger. Squeaking windshield wipers had him grinding his teeth. Soon, the pounding of small hail pebbles drowned out the squeaks, exchanging one unpleasantness for another.

The taxi driver’s eyes were wide and unblinking in the rearview mirror. “Ma’am, I’m not sure we’ll make it to Jonsey.”

“Keep going.”

Wherever this Jonsey place was, it lay well beyond the city. It took an hour to get out of Oklahoma City in the nearly stopped traffic, but then their taxi took them well past anything resembling an interstate. Cityscapes gave way to the suburbs and the suburbs gave way to large expanses of farmland.

“Doesn’t look good,” Tig offered. “Haven’t seen a sky that color in ages.”

The driver grunted and spit sunflower seeds into a clear cup. “I have. And if the lady’s from this area, she has too. Am I right?”

Karlin didn’t respond.

By now, the driver’s home garage had called back two times already, warning of tornadic conditions. So unnecessary. The sky darkened from purple to brown and getting worse by the moment. Something bad was about to go down. The driver wiped his brow with a now stained sleeve. “You heard dispatch on the radio. I’m dropping you off in the next town and heading on home.”

“No you’re not.”

“Lady, no job is worth my life. I’ve a wife and kid.”

“That I presume you need to feed.”

“Sho’nuf right and that won’t happen if I’m dead. Look, I drove two hours and I’m not even gonna charge you. How’s that?” The man shot an apologetic look to Tig in the mirror.  Why? Because he was abandoning them or because he thought Tig was a man with a harridan for a wife? Only one he felt like clarifying.

“She’s not mine. Just my boss. And married.”

“Poor bastard.”

“You have no idea.”

“I’m right here.”

But having found a brother in arms, the driver continued to address Tig directly. “I suggest you and your boss find a hotel with some inward facing doors and stay tight until this thing blows over. There’s a good one not too far from here. The owner has a huge storm shelter below.”

Karlin unzipped her purse and the bell in his pocket started to chime. He slapped his hand across it to dampen the sound. The mop of red hair snapped up, but she shook her head and went back to her task, something involving crinkling paper. “Pull over. I think I’m going to be sick.”

With no one else on the road, the driver slowed down immediately. After putting the car in park, the poor bastard started screaming and clutching his chest.

“Don’t do it, Karlin.”

Her face was flushed and her hands trembled, splotchy with concentration. Beads of sweat dotted her brow, but she showed no signs of letting up. Tig jumped out to yank open her door as the bell in his pocket, smothered and hidden, screeched in alarm. He ducked, avoiding an unnatural wave of air. “Have you lost your mind?”

But he knew the answer already. If Karlin had reached the point of not caring about who knew what she was or about her abilities, it meant that she intended to leave no witnesses. It reinforced the idea he’d danced around earlier. You didn’t kill unless you thought you could get away with it. Whatever her plan was, she had little concern of Tig talking about it afterwards.

“Did I hear a bell?”

“Is that crazy talk for something?”

“Answer the question, genie.”

The man, no longer screaming, lay slumped over the steering wheel. Death hadn’t come yet, but He was close and Tig didn’t want to be anywhere around when He showed up. “Look, we’ll drive into town and get this guy some help. He doesn’t need to die over this. I won’t let you do it.”

Then the sirens started. Ear splitting, heart rattling sirens that proclaimed a sighted tornado. They didn’t appear to faze her a bit. “You won’t be able to stop me.”

“If you want to survive this, we need to get in this car and leave right now.”

“Don’t act like you care.”

“I sure as hell don’t, but I also don’t want to hunt down my lamp after the winds drop you in a barn fifty miles away.”

She started looking around him. For what? Help? An exit? A place to hide a couple of bodies? “You won’t have to worry about your little lamp ever again.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because, my dear, I have a wish.”

His mind stilled everything around him, narrowing its focus on Karlin. Depending on her wish, and he knew it’d be a helluva strong one, he’d have less than a second to react.

“Legend has it that a genie’s power comes from his lamp. Is that true?”

“Is that your wish? The power that’s in my lamp?”

Karlin stepped back, eyes widening. “I don’t want it to kill me.”

“Okay.”

“But I want the power in your lamp, in my body.”

He smiled.

She gasped.

And he granted her wish.

“T
here’s a tornado behind you!”

“Karlin...or Dinah?”

“What?” Dinah. A ginger, Caucasian and very unDinah, Dinah pointed above his head.

“Baby—”

“Where are we? Do something. Turn around and look. It’s coming right for us. Where’s the crazy lady?”

He turned, but only because it gave him a second or two to think. He had a few issues right now. A half-dead taxi driver, a tornado and his mate trapped in the body of the wicked witch of the Midwest.

First things first, the tornado.

“Why am I white?’

First things second, the body swap.

He grabbed her hand...Karlin’s hand...whatever... and dove in to the ditch. “She wished for the power in the lamp. Fuck! The lamp.” He checked his neck, but the chain wasn’t where it belonged. “Your purse?”

The approaching winds started to drown out every other word. “In...lamp.”

“Not yours. I guess. Hers.” His hands patted down Karlin’s body. Its current occupant clearly figured what he was about and started searching pockets.

Nothing. Then a grin burst into a smile. Pale, freckled hands dipped beneath her shirt and blue eyes winked back. “Bra.”  She lurched down to kiss him with Karlin’s lips, but he leaned back until his head hit the bottom of the ditch. No way in hell.

She mouthed something else and the chain floated on the air above his head, dropping perfectly around his neck.

“Where am I?”

“Oklahoma,” he screamed above her.

“Where
am I
,” she asked again, through clenched teeth.

“Right. Lamp.”

She moved above him, but if she said anything, his ears didn’t pick it up over the roaring wind. Something between a train and a steamship’s horn howled north of them. Fence posts, now javelins, lodged near their heads. “Wish!”

Before he could say more, his heart tugged and the air went still. He flipped Dinah over and popped up in time to see the tornado head into town. He had his pick of wishes from not too far away and struggled to set the storm’s path on a different angle. It hurt and exhausted him, but no one would die today. That still left one very serious problem. “Baby?”

She rose, chest heaving, and eyes unfocused, fighting for her soul and losing.  Possession was never an easy thing. The body knew its owner – its essence – and fought hard on the side of it. He gripped Karlin’s face, uncaring of how rough he was. To hell with the vessel, he needed its contents.

“Dinah!  I know you hear me,
hamdullah
. Be ready to fight. Wish yourself in your body. I can’t do this without you.”

Karlin’s face twisted and the once slack mouth, curled into a sneer. “No. She...has...so...much...power.”

“Dinah, get out of there!”

“She...stays. Mine!”

He ignored the face and the voice, concentrating on the soul. “Don’t do this to me, baby. We haven’t even gone out on a real date, yet.”

The sneer dropped and tears pooled in Karlin’s eyes beneath him. Dinah was still there. Still fighting.

“Don’t make me go back into that lamp and find you dead. I can’t deal with a future that doesn’t involve you and planes and...”

Karlin’s hand brushed his own tears away, before curling and clawing at his face. “I’ll kill you, genie.”

“Bitch, please. Move out the way, Tig.”

He whirled around to see Dinah next to him, rising to her feet, arms outstretched. He rolled to the left and watched Dinah shove a swirling green wall of power into Karlin.

It didn’t connect.

Either Dinah was more drained than he thought or Karlin had a better grasp of dark magic than he realized. She met Dinah’s spell with a wall of her own, until both women, one standing, and one still on the ground, screamed behind their florescent blazes of light. This should be over already. Dark magic or not, Dinah was a thousand times the witch Karlin was.  Then he realized the totality of the woman’s final wish – that the power of the lamp wouldn’t kill her. “Baby?”

“Not the time, Tig.”

He cracked his neck and shuffled towards her, dropping his chin to her ear. “I’m about tapped out, but I was wondering if you could use a wish.”

*****

“H
e’s got a heartbeat.” Dinah put the driver’s head in her lap and brushed dirt from his forehead.

She gave less than two actual fucks about the pile of scorched earth in the ditch. All of her attention was reserved for the unconscious man and Tig.

Smart, brilliant, powerful, Tig.

He’d gotten the man from the flipped taxi and was now flagging down an officer from the parade of screaming emergency vehicles. While the driver was hauled off into an ambulance, she and Tig got a ride into town. Aside from a few farms, most of the homes survived unscathed. People were already hailing it a miracle.

“Our help isn’t needed here. Take me home, Tig. It’s time to go. I just need to be safe in my bed.”

“Nothing’s going to hurt you again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“I never do.”

She wished them to the airport, but he was too tired to do much of anything and they rented a car instead. He didn’t speak much, but hadn’t let go of her hand either, except to shift gears every once in awhile. Sometimes there was so much to say that it was impossible to know where to begin. She started with Karlin. “What do we do about her family?”

“The authorities have probably made contact. Karlin’s purse was still on her. When the driver wakes up, he’ll give a matching description.”

“He can describe you too, Tig.”

Tig cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow.

“Unless I wish that he couldn’t.”

“Maybe. We’re a good distance away though. I’m not sure I can reach. I feel it trying to wrap around, but I can’t get a hold on it. Fuck, this hurts.” He let out a breath of air, massaged his chest and shook his head. “I could turn around.”

“Bad idea. They’ll claim a knock on the head. Even if someone believed him, it would take a lot of work to track you down. They’d have to trace her back to the airport and see who she traveled with. It’s a long shot, but keep going. Just never use that ID again.”