Jinni's Wish (Kingdom, #4)

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.

“He was not the one,” he said softly. Not a question, just a statement of fact.

“No, he wasn’t. And I didn’t think it would be fair to him to marry him. He deserved someone to be as madly in love with him as he’d been with me.”

“Do you ever regret it?”

Paz stood, and paced in front of the table. “Sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if he was the one and I was just expecting too much.”

She stopped then and looked at Jinni. A perfect stranger. His large brown eyes made her feel slightly dizzy and breathless. He might be blue, but she’d painted him as he’d been. Dark and olive toned, with a proud nose and sensual lips. Her body pulsed, literally beginning to glow brighter. She frowned.

“It means you are experiencing great emotion,” he said gently.

“How come you don’t pulse?”

Jinni stared up at the ceiling, but she knew he wasn’t looking at it, he was looking beyond it. Seeing something she couldn’t. “Because the longer you stay in this form, the more deadened you become.”

The bitterness in his voice made her ache.

The euphoria of earlier began to fade slowly away. Paz glided to a corner window, pressing her nose against the glass. Or at least attempting to, the moment she touched it, she felt a subtle shift in pressure and then her face was sinking through. Like pushing her head through a gentle fall of water.

Jinni’s head poked out a moment later. She sighed bitterly.

“When I was little I used to love pressing my nose against the glass. Feeling the cold shiver up my nose and settle in my cheeks. It made me feel alive. Mom, hated it though, said I was staining her clean glass.”

Crazy, the things she remembered now. Things that’d seemed so insignificant and meaningless before now mattered so much.

He tipped his head.

Again that feeling of needing to get away, of wishing she could go, slowly crept back into her conscious mind. Outside the manicured lawn glinted with the first silvery drops of dew, a gentle breeze stirred through her. The parking lot was vast and completely empty. Streetlamps, with their orangey glow distracted from the surreal beauty of the full golden moon. Stars, too many to count, filled the black sky like a shower of silver glitter.

But gazing at the beauty of the still night couldn’t detract from the knowledge that behind them a warm and inviting golden tunnel waited for her. A tunnel that she knew would bring her a measure of peace.

“I want to go.”

“Where?”

“Away. Out of this hospital,” she glanced at him, at the proud lines of his jaw and sharp slash of cheekbone, and wished again she’d met him before, “I hate it here.”

“Where would you go if you could?”

She glanced up at the sky. The sky her brother had been so obsessed with growing up. Richard had always wanted to find life on different stars. He’d spun magical tales of aliens and monsters. She’d never wanted to see the creatures, but Paz had fallen in love with the murky blue unknown of the universe.

“The stars,” she whispered, “I want to dance on a star.”





Chapter 9





Jinni didn’t have much magic left to him, and what he did, came with a price. But it was a price he’d be willing to pay, if only to see her smile again.

“Do you want to see where I was born?”

Brown, soulful eyes studied him. Then she nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“I can show you. But first, you need to take my hand.”

She slipped her hand into his, but it fell through. “Paz, I am not strong enough to hold you. You have to focus, like I taught you. Concentrate all your energy, and then hang on to me. Can you do that?”

She nibbled on her lower lip and not for the first time he wished he was more of a man than what he was. That he hadn’t spent so many decades lamenting his fate; that he’d at least fought to remain corporeal. If he’d known in the future he’d meet her, he’d have fought tooth and nail to overcome the misery of the last decades. But he hadn’t known, so he’d let himself slowly die inside, a little every day, and now he was a shell of a man who couldn’t even grasp her hand.

“I’ll try.”

She closed her eyes and his body hummed, willing her to do it this time.

Her energy pulsed again, a bright blue glow that made his soul flare in response. Her face looked lit from within as her radiance sparkled and shimmered over her form. There was a snap, a quick rolling spark shifted down her arm and then she released a strong breath and opened flustered eyes.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

If ghosts could sweat, she’d look haggard and worn. As it was her hair had lost some of its shine, her face appeared slightly puffy from energy drain-off.

Paz shook herself and pulled her head back inside the window. Misery clung to her. Jinni shook his head.

“Do not give up.”