Jinni's Wish (Kingdom, #4)

Danika’s face was solemn as she stared at him. Finally she said, “You know why. You worked that magic once before.”


Jinni stayed where he stood long after Danika faded into the ether. Staring out of the cave, at the darkness that engulfed like a shroud beyond. The violent whistle of the wind mingling with the jaggedness of his thoughts made him feel more alone than ever before. Slowly the fire died, until all that remained was the blackness.

In a corner of the cave rested the two necklaces Danika had given him. If he took them, if he acknowledged them, then he knew he’d never look back.

Could he do this?

Dare he trust her?

Not only Danika, but Paz?

The spot in his soul where his heart used to be bled raw imagining a world without Paz in it. Closing his eyes, he sealed his fate as he forced the energy to roll down and gather in his limbs. Floating to the necklaces, he picked them up and using a small bit of the magic still left to him, sealed it within his person.

The stones flared bright and hot, seeming sentient and joyful, as if a friend saying hello.

Before he could rethink this madness, he cracked open one of a million dream stones hidden within Kingdom-- a stone to give him the ability to travel swiftly through dimensions-- and opened a portal to her.





***





Paz huddled on the floor next to the corner of her bed, shivering and next to tears. He was gone again. She didn’t know why.

Why would he leave again?

Was she a bad person?

Terrible to talk to?

Boring?

“Is she going to be okay?” Richard asked the nurse standing next to him.

His voice was raw, rough, as if he’d been crying for hours. Which he had. Her brother had looked better. His skin was waxy, his eyes bloodshot and purple. His hair disheveled.

Paz rocked methodically back and forth, hugging her knees to her chest as the cold, cold floor seeped into her cold, cold soul.

“We’ve done all we can,” the nurse said softly.

But it didn’t hurt to hear it. She was dying. Which should have probably made her sad, but all she felt was relief. She was tired of existing in this weird place where nobody knew her, heard her, or touched her.

No, it didn’t hurt her at all. But it was killing her brother. Richard hiccupped, trying hard to stay composed, but Paz knew him. Knew he was seconds from completely losing it and if the nurse had any kindness left in her, she’d walk away before he bawled like a baby.

Paz should feel terrible for him. A part of her recognized that things that’d once mattered so much in life, the love of her family and her artwork, meant very little here. A restless desire to go was blooming in her heart.

She stared at the body that had once been her. The swelling looked better.

Maybe.

The hair was matted, greasy, probably smelled gross.

Paz touched her still silky hair and then frowned as it dawned on her that her sense of touch was further diminished. She didn’t know how long she’d been here already. A week? A year? Richard was losing weight, his sweater hung on him funny. So probably a week. He was drinking a lot of coffee too.

She knew that because she’d started counting the cups piling up in the trash bin of the body’s room. First time he’d started drinking there’d been three. Then there’d been six. Now, he was on cup fifteen and the day was only half over.

She stared out the window, startled to note the sun was already down.

It’d stopped freaking her out how time spun out of control here. What she thought she knew, she didn’t know, and what she hadn’t known, she now knew.

Like the fact that she kept seeing a lit tunnel glow at the end of the corridor, and that tunnel waited for her. And that now she could go further down the corridor than ever before, that at the end of the hallway waited a tunnel that smelled of a million different flowers and that warmth emanated from inside. That inside that place was joy and she desperately wanted to go.

“I want to go,” she muttered, shocked for a second to hear the scratchy tenor of her unused voice. “I want to go,” she said again, this time a bit more forcefully.

Paz stopped rocking and blinked.

“I want to go.” She stood up, phasing through the bed, through Richard who shook and shivered as she passed. The discordant claxon of the monitor’s beeping lit the room, startling Richard. His eyes were wide as he stared at the screen and with shaking hands he began to screech.

“Help. Help please!” he cried. Footsteps thudded quickly toward the room.

“I’m sorry, Richard.” She gazed at him with tear-filled eyes before leaving him and the room behind. “But I have to go,” she continued to mutter, over and over, until she came to the room with her Todd. What had he called himself on the plane?

Tristan was it?

Paz stopped, waiting for the quiet tug in her soul she always experienced when she got close to his room.

He really was beautiful. And so tall. She’d never have had to worry about wearing heels around him.

“Stop hanging on,” she told him. “It’s time to go, Todd, it’s time to go…”