Jinni's Wish, Book 4 Kingdom Series (8 page)

“
She needs a friend,” she whispered, “we
all do.”

Then she turned on her heels and walked
away. Jinni stood by, as if deaf and dumb, watching long after her
shadow had fled.

***

Paz lowered her arms, and her gaze hooked
his.

“You loved her,” she said, and it wasn’t a
question. But Paz didn’t sound angry, or sad. Merely, stating a
plain truth.

“It was forbidden.”

Her look was tender as she glanced over her
shoulder at their newest painting. Him, in the traditional garb of
genie, and Nala slightly disheveled, hair mussed (as if she’d just
woken up), and a secret smile playing on her luscious lips.

But Paz had painted Nala too perfect. He
walked up to the picture and with a swipe of his hand altered the
scene, put a tiny cleft in her chin, and small gap between her two
front teeth. He brushed her hair back (the Queen had never looked
mussed), though the bare feet and ankles peeking out from below the
gown were exactly right.

“Forbidden doesn’t mean you didn’t love her.
It just means it ended tragically.”

Jinni stilled his hand, letting her words
sink in. She didn’t know the rest of the story, and yet she didn’t
have to. He turned on his heels, putting his back to Nala and all
that she represented.

“Wise words for one so young,” he said.

She shrugged and glided toward the golem on
the bed. Jinni had nearly forgotten where they’d been, retelling
his story felt so real. So alive, and seeing her paint the pictures
in front of his eyes, made the reality of the hospital seem
dreamlike and ephemeral.

“Who is he?” she asked, switching
subjects.

“Just a man,” he said, eyeing the piece of
formed clay lying prone on the bed. If he didn’t know better, if he
didn’t know the magic at work within that shell, he’d never suspect
it to be anything other than human. It breathed, it grew hair and
nails, it seemed so human. Except for its lack of a soul.

“But you know him?” she continued, tracing
her pale blue fingers along the length of the golem’s hairy
forearm.

“It is just a body, Paz.”

She stopped rubbing his arm and shook her
head. “No, it’s more than that. He’s more than that. He saved my
life on that plane.”

Jinni clenched his jaw. “It is not alive, it
is a golem.”

“A golem?” She frowned and slowly pulled her
hand back. “What is that?”

“Have you not wondered why he sleeps, and yet
looks perfect? Why he is not connected to a life support machine,
but refuses to wake?”

She blinked. “I don’t understand. He talked
to me on the plane. He called me by name.”

Her last words were wistful and full of
longing, the sound of it made him ache. Being around Paz, made him
remember what it felt like to feel. To want and need. To see her
reaching out to an inanimate object made his fingers twitch with
anger.

“When your plane was crashing…”

How could he tell her this so that she would
believe him? Paz hadn’t had a difficult time believing in ghosts,
obviously, since she was one now. But would she believe in fairies
and fairy tales? In creatures beyond this realm, fantastical beings
that lived and breathed and required no soul to do it? He didn’t
want to scare her.

“Yes?” she asked.

“My… friend,” he swallowed the lie that stuck
in his throat like gall, “spoke those words to you, through its
mouth.” He jerked his head in the direction of the golem.

“What?” Paz glanced at the golem, disbelief
gleaming in her eyes. “No. No,” she laughed, “I don’t believe you.
He called me by name, he was my Todd.”

Jinni didn’t know who Todd was, but he did
not like the sound of it. Irritated, he flicked his wrist. “It is
as I say, Paz. That thing is little more than animated clay.
Without a soul to breathe life into it, there it will remain. Never
rotting, never living, never moving.”

She hugged her arms to her chest and
instantly Jinni wanted to apologize. He hadn’t meant to sound so
curt, but to see her looking at that thing that way, it made his
form buzz with anger.

He clamped down hard on his teeth as he
watched her slowly turn aside and make her way out the room.
Sadness clung to her like a parasite, filling the walls, the room
with a soul sucking void of loneliness.

Her negative energy was gaining strength. She
seemed to be happy when he was around, which helped to keep her
grounded to this world and this reality.

“Wait, Paz, wait!” He chased after her, his
fingers brushing through her shoulder blades.

She shuddered and stopped. “Go away, Jinni.
That’s what you want to do anyway, right?”

He floated in front of her, soul clenching at
the sight of her perfect teardrop tears tracking down either side
of her face.

“I am sorry,” he admitted. “I do not know how
to befriend others well. I did once. Or so I thought, but I am
mindless and cruel at times. Please forgive me.”

She nibbled on the corner of her blue lips
and his heart clenched.

Though Jinni wasn’t much more than molecules
of vapor, he felt her. Being around her, seeing her smiles, she
made him feel alive. He needed her as much as she needed him.

“Don’t go to the light, peace.”

Her lashes fluttered and a soft chuckle
dropped from her lips. “My mother used to call me that.”

He smiled. “Then maybe it’s your turn to tell
me a story.”

Paz flicked at her thumbnail with her finger
and nodded shyly. “I will. But only if you promise to finish
yours.”

“I will tell you everything. But some of it
is hard. Give me a moment to smile.”

“And how is telling my story going to make
you smile?”

“Because it is about you.”

She inhaled sharply.

“But first,” he held up finger, “are you
hungry?”

“Hungry?” She laughed and the sound reminded
him of the silvery twinkles of starlight. “But we’re ghosts. I
don’t get hungry. I don’t think.” She frowned. “Should I?”

Her innocence and naiveté amused him. The
smile on his face would become permanent around her, of that he was
certain. He’d never felt like this with Nala. With the Queen it had
always been passion and sparks, fire and fury.

But with Paz, it was a gentle brook burbling
through a quiet meadow. And he was hungry for more.

“No, little dove,” the endearment slipped
easily from his tongue, “we do not get hungry. But we do get
abysmally bored. So,” he gestured with his hand, “lead me to the
food area, I’ll teach you how to eat, while you tell me all about
Paz.”

“My life was pretty boring.”

He placed a hand on her back, shoving what
little bit of energy he had left to him into it and for a split
second he felt the cool shivers of her energy roll along his. He
trembled and she purred.

Jinni couldn’t sustain the power long, but
it’d been enough. He stared at his hand as she walked toward the
dining area, sure he’d see a mark upon it. Something tangible to
mark the beauty of the moment.

But there was only a faint blue hand staring
back at him, curling his hand into a fist he pressed it against his
chest. She stopped and turned to look at him, all innocence and
sweetness.

“Are you coming?”

Forever. Endlessly. Eternally. “Always.”

Paz glanced shyly from out the corner of her
eye as he laughed at her. His laugh was rich, like dark chocolate
cocoa. It warmed her and made her feel like she glowed.

Maybe she did glow. She stared at her
arms.

“Shove it out, Paz,” he instructed again.
“Push all that energy you feel rolling deep, deep below the
surface, shove it up to the surface. Force it into your hand, your
feet. You’re a fresh ghost, you can probably maintain it for a
while.”

“I keep trying, but it’s not easy. You’ve had
how many years of practice?” She huffed, and narrowed her eyes,
concentrating on that stiff ball of crackling energy he’d talked
about. She felt it like a witch’s brew bubbling and fizzing just
beneath the surface of her chest bone.

There was no one else in the cafeteria, which
really didn’t surprise her. It was past four in the morning last
time she checked, not that it mattered.

It was one thing to flick aside a sheet,
quite another to try and lift a cup of coffee, let alone drink said
cup of coffee.

Visualizing the energy like a hard steel
ball, she mentally imagined herself pushing it up to her collarbone
and then rolling it one hard turn at a time down her arm. Her
entire frame shook and rattled, silverware at the end of the long
white table began to make a buzzing noise as it softly bounced upon
the hard top.

“Seven hundred years,” he said, and she
snapped her eyes wide, losing the ball and her concentration.

“What?! You’re seven hundred years old?”

He laughed. “No.”

She snorted and shook her head, rolling her
shoulder, feeling an ache at her shoulder joint. The same type she
used to feel after a hard workout. Paz rubbed her arm, reveling in
the ache that made her feel more alive and real than she had in
days. “Good, because for a second there I was about to totally wig
out--”

“I’m infinitely older.”

The words died on her tongue. Did ghosts lie?
Were they capable of it?

Even though she was a ghost now, Paz had no
idea what it really meant to be one.

“Wow, that’s…”

His molten brown eyes sparkled and she
giggled.

“Yeah, ancient. You’re ancient. So genies
don’t fade into the light like we do?”

Paz eyed the cup of lukewarm coffee before
her. Jinni had brought it to her hours ago, it’d steamed then. The
scent rich and bitter and so mouthwateringly tempting she’d been
sure she’d have learned the trick long ago. If only because her
desire for the cup of java had been so strong. But no beans (pun
intended).

She’d abracadabra’d, open sesame’d, and
counted to three, none of which had worked. The coffee had gotten
colder and colder and Jinni had laughed harder and harder.

He shook his head. “No, we don’t fade like
that. But we do fade. Gradually.”

Giving the coffee up as a lost cause, she
settled her chin on her fist and shrugged. “So you don’t fade, but
you do. Trippy,” she teased.

When he laughed again, she sighed. That smile
of his made her belly squeeze and her body tingle. “You have such a
nice smile.”

The laughter died on Jinni’s tongue and Paz
froze the moment she realized she’d said it out loud.

“What I meant to say was--”

He held up a hand. “No need to apologize.
There was a time in my life once when I enjoyed laughter. Medicine
for the soul Aria had called it.”

“You miss her?”

The flicker and buzz of the fluorescent
lighting suddenly dimmed, leaving them in near darkness. But his
glow was so bright, Paz had no problem making him out. He reminded
her of a movie she’d seen once long ago, a corny stupid movie
Richard had made her watch…

“You’ve a smile in your eyes. What are you
remembering?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s silly.”

“Stories go both ways, Paz, and I do recall
you saying you would share yours with me.”

She flicked her wrist. “Just when I was ten,
my brother was really into aliens and space crafts, you know,
U.F.O. nonsense. Which is probably why he’s working on his
astronomy doctorate.”

Jinni nodded, and it felt so easy to talk to
him. Memories she hadn’t thought of in days assailed her, but not
only the memories, also the warm feelings associated with them.

“Aliens do exist, but continue,” he said with
a regal nod.

Her jaw dropped. “Really? You’re yanking my
leg.”

A twinkle danced in his dark eyes. “As much
as I would love to yank your leg,” his voice reminded her of the
slow burn of whiskey sliding down her throat, “I do not jest. He is
correct. I am one, in the human sense I suppose.”

She frowned. “But I thought you said you came
from Kingdom?”

“And Kingdom is another planet, ergo…” he
lifted his brow, a smug look on his face.

Snorting with laughter, she shrugged. “I
guess you’re right.”

“Anyway, you were saying?”

“Oh, the movie. Yeah. Well, he wanted to
watch some stupid movie about an alien coming to our earth. And the
only thing I can really remember about that movie was that the
aliens glowed blue at night and how pretty I thought that was, and
you reminded me of that movie. You glow too.”

Neither spoke, each one letting the words
settle in, maturate and root. If she could have blushed, she might
have. But it seemed pointless to pretend something she didn’t feel,
they were both semi-dead after all.

“Have you ever been in love, Paz?” Jinni
asked, so quietly she’d barely heard it.

“I thought so. Once. I even got engaged. But
I broke it off two weeks before the wedding.”

“Why?”

She rolled her eyes, fingering the table,
attempting to push some of her energy into the tip. Just so she
could feel it, but apart from the brief shock of static, she felt
nothing. The “touch” sensation was fading rapidly. The first day
she’d felt the world around her still, now… it was getting harder
to even remember what “touch” felt like.

“It would be so much easier to say he cheated
on me. Or he was a jerk and I was naïve and the injured party. But
Harrison was a good guy. He and Todd, my brother’s partner, work
together in the same chiropractor clinic. He was really nice.”

Saying it only made her feel worse, she
couldn’t look Jinni in the eye. Didn’t want to see his scorn or
anger. Richard and Todd, bless them, had been two of the few people
to stay on her side after the messy break-up.

“You left him?”

Nodding slowly, she said, “Yes. He was so
nice, but…” finally she looked at him, and didn’t see the judgment
so many others had cast her way.