It was almost comical how they responded with military precision, and it spoke to the premium they placed on being out of the box, as all eight of them lined up across the back window and didn’t move one rippled edge for the rest of the ride into town.
But when they got there, Zane decided he didn’t want to take any chances because all he needed was one round of “he’s touching me” or “she’s looking at me” and the insanity would be right there in his back window for the entire town to see. So, foregoing the desire to hang out in a bar, Zane grabbed a couple of six-packs to go.
It turned out to be a good decision because he’d no sooner gotten back into the car when something—not a dish—popped up in the backseat.
“Hey, guys!”
“Damn it, Merlin. What the hell are you doing here?” Zane yanked his seatbelt on and looked in the rearview mirror. The dishes hadn’t moved, thank God. “Anyone could see you.”
“They wouldn’t know what they were looking at.”
“Until some scientists got hold of you and took you apart feather by feather.” Bright orange feather by cherry red feather. “Is that really what you want?”
“Plucking? Really?” The bird shuddered. “Barbaric.”
“Why are you here, Merlin?”
The bird shuddered again—and started molting red and orange all over the backseat. Frickin’ perfect.
“You’ve got company. And if you think
I
scared you, you’re going to be totally freaked out when we get back to your place.”
“Hell.” Zane’s stomach twisted as he tried to remember if he’d left anything magical lying around.
Just
a
set
of
dishes
in
his
backseat…
He should have gotten a case of beer. A keg, even. All for himself. He had a feeling he was going to need it.
“Oh yeah.” Merlin shook his head—and a slew of beaded braids whipped around his head like a lasso. “It’s a real party back there. A couple, their real estate agent, and a pair of hot tamales. Quite a scene going on, and not in a good way.”
Fifteen minutes later, Zane pulled the car into his drive to find people everywhere: the front lawn, the porch, heading toward his car…
“I thought you said there were only five people here.” Zane gritted his teeth as he had to slow down to drive through the news vans stationed along his driveway.
“There were when I left,” Merlin mumbled from beneath the seat where Zane had banished him.
Cameras surrounded the car when Zane parked it. “Vana, put the children in the box while I do the talking. Merlin, you stay here until it’s safe for you to leave.”
“No arguments there,” said Merlin. “Any chance you want to leave the AC on?”
“That’d look a little funny, wouldn’t it?” Zane turned off the car and undid his seat belt.
“Wait until you see what I look like after fifteen minutes in this heat. That
won’t
be so funny.”
“I’ll leave the window open enough for you to get out. Give me five minutes to get everyone away from the car.”
“Leave me a beer and you can have ten.”
“Forget it.” That was all he needed: a drunk, Liberace-wannabe, mythical bird meeting the press. He’d never be able to show his face in any locker room anywhere ever again. And while he might not be thrilled to be playing backup, it beat not playing at all.
Zane put his hand on the door handle. “Okay, here we go. Wish me luck.”
Vana stopped him with a mere touch of her hand.
She blew him out of the water with a kiss on the cheek.
“Luck,” she whispered as she climbed out of the car, but “luck” was not the four-letter L word he was feeling.
***
Vana wasn’t sure if she’d actually managed to conjure some luck for Zane or if The Fates were on her side (they must not have gotten a report on her time travel escapades yet), but it took only five minutes to get rid of the real estate agent and her clients, and another ten to field the reporters’ questions.
But unfortunately, it took a half hour and two beers for Zane to wrestle his temper under control after they’d opened the door to find Eirik, Henry, and Lucia plastered against it, eavesdropping. Vana had had to round them all up and march them into Peter’s study to help ease Zane’s ire. Then she made herself scarce as well, heading out to the front porch to paint the spindles she hadn’t gotten to earlier, using a brush to paint them the mortal way because there was only so much magic Zane could be expected to take in one day and his quota was pretty much filled.
Which was why when Merlin showed up—his feathers now looking like a bad ’70s lime-green shag rug—Vana asked him to leave.
“You can’t be serious,” he said. “You want me to leave you sitting out here all alone doing manual labor? Oh, and by the by? There’s a reason it’s called that. You should get him out here to do it. That way you could kill two gremlins with one stone: get the porch painted and get your hooks into him. You’re going to have to put a little effort into it if you want him, Van. No one’s going to drop him in your lap.”
“I told you, Merlin. I don’t want him. I can’t.”
“Yeah, that’s what Juliet Capulet said.”
“And look how well that turned out.”
“Oh. Good point.” Merlin sniffed the paint can. “But seriously, Van. I can’t leave. Who’s going to be your voice of reason if I do?” He stuck his beak into the paint and came up sputtering. “Blech! What is this stuff? I thought it was a batch of piña coladas.”
“It’s paint, Merlin.” She slid the can away and held up a drop cloth while he shook his head, sending paint spatters everywhere. “And now you really do need to leave.”
“Not without you.”
She sighed and finished painting the spindle. “Give it a rest, Merlin. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t.”
“Because you’re the only one who can paint the porch?”
“No. Because Zane needs me to stay.”
“Really.” Merlin swiped his feathers across a row of spindles so that they ended up looking like barber poles. “The only reason a mortal would need a genie is to have his wishes granted. How many has he asked of you? Besides fixing the legs you broke, I mean.”
Ouch
. Vana dipped her brush in the can and took her time wiping the excess paint off. It didn’t matter that Zane hadn’t done the typical thousand-and-one wishes most new masters spouted off. He needed her to stay, and so did Peter.
“See? You don’t even have an argument. You say you don’t want him, so that must mean you’re staying for you and a dead guy. Seriously, Van, I think you might have conked yourself on the head getting out of your bottle.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Merlin. Besides, it’s my life.”
“Exactly. It
is
your life. And you’re just hanging out here wasting it. What’ll you do if he just up and asks you to leave, hmmm? All this time wasted. And he doesn’t even
know
about last night. When he does…” The bird whistled. “He’s gonna
order
you out of the house.”
“No, he won’t.”
Merlin flung his wings again. “What—find out about last night or ask you to leave?”
“Both.” She grabbed the phoenix’s beak and clamped it shut. “You’re getting paint on the floor.” She was
not
having a life discussion with Merlin. Merlin had zillions of lives, being reborn whenever he upped and flamed himself into a pile of ash, and while hers was an immortal one, it was the only one she had. He couldn’t relate. “And you’re not going to tell him, either.”
Merlin shook his head until his beak was free. “Oh, don’t worry. I was done interfering in mortals’ lives with the whole Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot debacle. Learned my lesson on that one.”
“Good.” She started painting the next spindle. Four down, seventy-six to go.
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t advise you on yours.”
And she thought The Fates were on her side? They were probably laughing their collective patooties off on Mount Damavand right now that she was held captive by a determined phoenix. Why didn’t he just poof himself up in a ball of flame and go bug someone else?
“Just because you’re immortal, Van, doesn’t mean every day isn’t precious. It is. And you need to remember that instead of hanging out here hoping for some, I don’t know... romance, maybe from Studly in there, you should focus on your magic and freeing the children and everyone else. Isn’t that what you say you’ve been trying to do for a hundred years?”
She threw her brush at the bird. And didn’t care that it left a two-inch-wide streak on not only his back, but the porch, too. “Merlin, you know nothing about it. I
am
trying to free them, but it’s not as easy as you or my parents or my sister or half the djinn world think it is. These are
children
. Flesh and blood. Who are only immortal because of the enchantment. I can’t go magicking them back until I’m absolutely certain I can do it. Otherwise I could end up killing them. And whether you understand this or not, I
owe
Peter. I caused him enough trouble, and this is my chance to fix it. So don’t go thinking you know anything about me or my life until you’ve lived in my bottle for a while.”
Merlin held up his white-tipped wings. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just here to give you food for thought.”
“I don’t need another conscience. The one I have is enough. And it’s telling me I need to stay not only for Peter and the children, but also for Zane. He doesn’t know it, but he’s searching for something.
“Uh, sweetie? I don’t think so. If he were searching for something, he wouldn’t be selling the place.”
“That’s exactly
why
I have to stay, Merlin. Zane thinks he wants to get rid of this house, but there’s something here he needs. Peter used to tell me what it’d been like for him growing up without any security, any place he could call his own. Zane has financial security and a condo, but his father died years ago and, more recently, his mother. That’s it for him. All he has in the world.” June Ertel loved to gossip about the Harrisons to Jack whenever they came by. “Oh, he talks about his teammates being his family, but his job is up in the air, and players get traded or injured all the time. Coaches move to different teams. Owners sell their franchises. Nothing’s stable. Zane doesn’t have a grounding spot. A home base. This place could be that for him.”
“But what if he doesn’t see that?”
“Then I have to show him. It’s the least I can do for all the pain I caused Peter, pain that has trickled down to Zane.”
“Huh?”
“If I hadn’t screwed up and gotten the townspeople talking, Zane wouldn’t have gone through what he’d gone through and—”
“But he also wouldn’t have turned out to be the man he is today. Do you think he’d want to be any different?”
Vana shrugged. “We’ll never know. What happened is in the past and can’t be changed.”
Well, okay, it could, but if The Fates weren’t yet on her case, undoing the last twenty years of Zane’s life would have them out in full force. With two time alterations already under her belt, she’d be doing more than tempting them; she’d be in full
bring-it-on
mode, and one shouldn’t do that if one didn’t want her own Life Thread snipped. “I’m doing this for future generations.”
“Okay. Fine. Whatever. Sounds like a plan.” Merlin hopped onto the edge of the paint can. “I guess you don’t need me since you’ve got it all under control. I’ll see ya around.”
With a flap of his wings, Merlin took off—and flung zillions of tiny paint droplets everywhere: the porch floor, the railing, the steps, the spindles, even the siding on the house. Great. One more mess she had to fix.
Vana sighed and stepped off the porch to survey the damage. Besides paint being everywhere, the shutters were lopsided, two chimneys needed repointing, a section of fence had been knocked out of whack by a falling tree limb, and the overgrown shrubs had been trampled by the mob of people earlier.
This place would take forever to fix up. And while that could be a good thing to keep Zane here, she didn’t want him to see the house as an obligation. A time-sucking money pit. He’d definitely want to get rid of it then.
She fiddled with her fingers. She could try to fix this…
She looked in the front window. Zane wasn’t in the parlor anymore. He wouldn’t have to know—
if
she got it right. If she didn’t… Well, that was
not
an option.
Closing her eyes, she conjured up the memory of their first kiss. The taste, the feel, the intensity, the way her magic had flowed through her like a fine symphony. Then she puckered up and gave it a whirl—
Only to open her eyes and see the porch spinning around the house like a merry-go-round.
24