A Risky Proposition (5 page)

“Yeah,” I grumbled.  “I remember feeling it the day of that accident, when I decided to get out of the turning lane for the interstate.  I wish I’d…”  My thought was interrupted by a violent sneeze.

“Shhh…Hush Sydney!” Lorien admonished in alarm, a sparkling red cloud of faerie dust drifting behind her as she flitted away from my nose and back to her perch above the pillow.

I sent her a watery glare.

“No more wishes for you,” she announced, returning my glower.

“I doubt there’s a death djinn hiding in the closet,” I sniffed crossly.

“It doesn’t matter!  There might not be one for ten miles or there might be one ten feet away!  The point is—you won’t know until it’s too late.  You need to remove that word from your vocabulary until we figure out how to get this situation under control.”  She shook one tiny forefinger at me, her wings buzzing in agitation.

I pursed my lips sullenly and nodded in grudging agreement.  I knew she was right, but being told what to do always activated my stubborn streak.

“I still don’t think it was a fair contract,” I grumped.

“Fair?  Hello—death djinn!  Since when has anyone trying to gain possession of someone’s immortal soul ever played fair?”

She zoomed to the foot of the bed and looked back at me with a grin.  “It’s not all bad though; just look at this place!” she exclaimed, trailing iridescent green fairy dust around the room.

“It is pretty cool,” I admitted.

“Oh, it’s better than that!” she teased.  “And you’ve not only wished yourself into physical luxury, but you did a pretty decent job of wishing yourself into an equally satisfactory mental state,” she giggled.

“What does that mean?” I demanded, pushing myself upright again and fighting the bed’s cushy invitation of softness.

She clasped her hands behind her back, her expression mischievous as she recited my forgotten words to Balthus, “I wish I could forget about my problems, even if only for a night.”

I stared at her blankly.  “What did I forget?”

Lorien bit her lip.  “You spent a wish on forgetting it.  Far be it from me to force the memory back on you.” 

“But what if it’s important?” I argued with a pleading look.

Her gaze softened.  “It’s nothing you need to think about tonight, I promise.  And the way you worded the wish means tonight is probably the only reprieve you’ll get from it.”

A weight settled in the pit of my stomach and an inexplicable wave of depression moved through me.

“It’s no good worrying about it now,” she said with a sad smile.  “You made two rather clever wishes, I thought.  You mortals have a nasty habit of creating pandemonium when given the freedom to make three wishes come true.  But you’ve done amazingly well so far.”

“Well, I guess I could have done worse than to lose a memory and gain a penthouse,” I muttered.

“That’s the spirit,” she agreed merrily.  “Just remember not to make any more wishes.”

I frowned at the remnants of red dust on the comforter.  “Yeah, I could do without you shoving more pepper up my nose,” I said with a sniff.

“It’s not pepper—it’s faerie dust.”  She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me with a disgruntled expression.  “And if you can come up with a quicker, more effective way for me to shut you up, let me know.” 

I grumbled at that and then changed the subject.  “I’ll be able to see you from now on, right?”

“You’d be amazed at how much you can see when you actually
look
,” she retorted. 

“Hey, it’s not my fault that life beat the belief in fairy tales out of me,” I said with a yawn.  “So what do we do now?”

“
I’ve
got somewhere to be, and I think
you
should try to get a good night’s sleep.”

My gaze followed her warily as she hovered above me.  “I’m not sure I
can
sleep after everything that’s happened.”  I yawned again.  “It’s not every night that I hook up with a death djinn and almost lose my soul.”  My eyelids began to feel heavy and I blinked.  “And finding out that faeries really do exist…”

I noticed the deep blue dust that was slowly sifting down from Lorien’s wings to sprinkle over me.  “Hey,” I mumbled feebly, “What are you…”

The last thing I heard before I drifted into unconsciousness was a soft tinkling laugh, and Lorien’s voice echoing in my head, “Sleep well, Sydney.  We’ll talk again soon.”

Chapter 4 – The Daily Grind

The rest of the weekend passed in a blur.  On Saturday my first wish apparently expired, because the memories of Jeremy’s betrayal came rushing back.  I spent most of the day crying as I loaded up my station wagon with things from our house that I was bringing to the hotel, including my cat, Jasper. 

Sunday I unpacked and decorated the penthouse with some of my stuff to make it feel more like home, and then I set up my office on the dining room table.  I usually ate on the coffee table in front of the TV anyway, and I wanted to keep the guest room open for company.  Not to mention I probably wouldn’t get much work done in a room with a bed.

Now here I was, ready to jump back into work like a normal person, with no hint of faerie magic or death djinns anywhere in sight.  It was a wonder that I wasn’t cowering in the closet or wallowing beneath the covers in depression.  I couldn’t decide whether it was residual forgetfulness from the wish, or just my amazing aptitude for denial.   

I’d lied to Jeremy and told him I was staying at my boss Hannah’s spare apartment.  It wasn’t as if the truth was an option.  

Hannah was a jewelry designer from France who owned a little couture shop called Haute Hannah’s on Worth Avenue—the most exclusive place to shop in Palm Beach.  She was a tiny spitfire of a woman in her fifties, the top of her head barely coming up to my shoulders.  I had never seen her anything other than perfectly coiffed, and bedecked with as many of her most mammoth jewelry designs as she could cram into her ensemble for the day. 

And she adored expensive French perfumes.  Her small shop was permeated with an amalgamation of her favorite scents, ranging from spicy to flowery to cloying.  The paperwork that I’d picked up from her a week ago still reeked of it.  I worked from home doing her bookkeeping, making her travel arrangements, and taking care of her administrative needs. 

Unfortunately Hannah’s was only a part time job, so I also worked for Cindy, a permanently frazzled woman with an abusive husband named Leslie and an ungrateful teenage son named Mickey.  Her husband was her ‘boss’ at their store, Designer Jewelry Direct, and he made her call him ‘Mr. Horowitz’ at work. 

Mr. H, or ‘The Horrorwitz’ as I called him, was well known around Palm Beach for verbally flaying both innocent employees and customers who didn’t spend enough money at his store.  D.J.D. only stayed in business because he constantly advertised to bring in new clients and usually held his tongue for the big spenders. 

He was a compulsive gambler who siphoned all the profits from the store during season, and kept things running during the summer off season by only paying the rent and utilities.  Employees and vendors were left unpaid for months at a time through a campaign of Cindy’s sob stories and Mr. H’s threats.

This made things difficult with Hannah because she was one of their vendors.  Whenever her bill came too far past due, she begged me to talk to Cindy for her, who would only give me empty reassurances to pass along.  It always made me feel guilty and stuck in the middle. 

I often thought about quitting my job at D.J.D.  But it was convenient to work from home, and I did their online banking, so I always managed to get paid.  Not to mention the fact that I felt sorry for Cindy, even though she sometimes drove me crazy. 

Each time Mr. H scared away their office manager the responsibility fell on her to keep up with things until she found a new one.  I was the most recent in a long series of them and she’d agreed to let me report directly to her so that I never had to deal with ‘The Horrorwitz’.      

I wrinkled my nose and settled back into the cream cushions of a heavy dining room chair, staring moodily around my new makeshift office.  My laptop and printer were set up on the polished wood table, along with my fax machine and a cordless phone.  My working file boxes were stacked neatly along the rear wall and my cache of office supplies resided in one of these. 

There was a constant whisper of scratching sounds behind me, due to the fascination my cat, Jasper, had developed with the row of open boxes.  He had an inordinate fondness for rubber-bands and paperclips, and seemed to have decided that this was some sort of breeding ground for them.

The first words out of my mouth that morning had been a rude result of my stepping on the pointy end of a bent paperclip that he’d managed to liberate onto the carpet.  Jasper was smart enough not to be anywhere in sight when it happened.  He no doubt knew that the earlier it was, the less charitable my mood tended to be.

The cordless phone rang and I frowned because I hadn’t given the number to anyone yet.  The caller ID read ‘Cleaning Svcs’ and my spirits soared immediately at the reminder of one of my new perks as a hotel resident.

“Hello Miss Corrigan, this is Angelica.  Would it be convenient for me to come by to clean now?  If not, I could come by later this afternoon.”  Her voice was sweet with a hint of huskiness, and an odd impression of warm, drizzling caramel flashed through my head.  I blinked at the image and at her use of my maiden name. 

The guy at the front desk had also called me ‘Miss Corrigan’, despite the fact that no one at the hotel should know me by that name or any other.  I guessed it must all be a part of the living in the penthouse wish.

I realized she was waiting for a reply and cleared my throat, “Um, yes, now would be great.  Thank you.”

“Sure thing.  I’ll see you in a minute.” 

She hung up, and soon after I heard a soft knock at the door. 

I opened it expecting a woman in a subdued hotel uniform, but standing there was a six foot blonde in a French maid’s outfit.  And she made it look like naughty lingerie without even trying.  I couldn’t help gaping at her.  It was like having a Victoria’s Secret model show up to clean the house.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like me to focus on today, or should I just give everything the once-over?”  She offered me a smile, and between her luminous blue eyes, perfectly straight white teeth, and infectious warmth—the effect was dazzling.

“Uh, the once-over would be great,” I stuttered.

“No problem, Miss Corrigan,” she replied cheerily, turning to pull some cleaning supplies from her cart.

“Thanks.”  I returned to my ‘office’, shaking off a strange reluctance to leave her side.

“Ooh, I love what you’ve done with the place!” she exclaimed as she stepped into the living room.  “These pre-furnished rooms can feel so cold without a few personal touches.  This is a lovely coffee table—so much nicer than that formal hunk of metal that was here before,” she remarked as she began Windexing the scratched, glass surface of the table I’d brought from home.

“Thank you,” I replied, taken aback by her friendliness.  “Uh, the base was hand-crafted from driftwood by an artist that collected his materials from the beach.  My Mom bought it before I was born.”

“It’s so
primal
,” she commented, her voice dropping into a soft growl.  “I love it!  And look at all these adorable frogs!”  She smiled at one of my figurines as she picked it up to dust it.

“Yeah, I’ve always loved frogs—as evidenced by their sudden take-over of the room,” I added self consciously.

“It’s important to surround ourselves with the things we enjoy.  Did you know that there’s a yoga pose called ‘frog’?” she asked.

“Really?  I’ve taken a class or two, but I don’t know much about it,” I answered as she paused in her dusting to glance up at me.

“The frog pose works to open the pelvic region.  It’s been known to initiate spontaneous orgasm in some women.”  Her eyes sparkled with contagious humor.

“Wow,” I chuckled.

“Mmhm.  Gave me one of the best orgasms I’ve ever had.  Yoga can be an extremely enlightening practice.  You may want to think about exploring it further.”  She grinned.

My eyebrows rose.  “Maybe I will.”

“Will it disturb you if I vacuum?”

“Not at all; thanks for asking.” 

I watched her disappear into the outer foyer, amazed at how comfortable she was discussing orgasms within the first five minutes of meeting me.  Her openness felt natural and unassuming, though, and I couldn’t help liking her.

She returned pushing a fancy vacuum with multiple attachments.  As soon as she turned it on, Jasper went streaking from his hiding place behind the couch and gave her a baleful glare before he shot down the hallway toward the guest room. 

I had set up his litter box behind a large potted palm on the main balcony, and the cat door was hidden behind the window treatments on the unused end of the sliding glass door—both purposely out of sight. 

I had a suspicion that the hotel didn’t allow pets, but now the cat was out of the bag, so to speak.  Angelica switched the vacuum off and stared after the frightened feline.