Jinni's Wish, Book 4 Kingdom Series (15 page)

Richard wept, hiding his face in Todd’s neck.
“
I can’t lose her too, I just can’t
,” he said, voice
mumbled.

Todd’s eyes were large and haunted as he
stared at Paz’s body.

“
You just let me hold you. I’ve got you
now and I’ll never let you go
.”

Paz felt the tug in her soul from the light,
the tunnel just at the end of the hall. It could take everything
away from her, it could heal her . . . but it would ruin
Richard.

She closed her eyes and said a quick prayer
of strength, then whispered low, “Jinni, wherever you are, you find
me again. No matter what. No matter how, you find me again.”

Then she walked to her body and laid down
into it, sinking slowly into the shell of who she’d once been. It
was cold and damp, made her cringe and regret for an instant that
she hadn’t left it all behind. But then the shell was closing over
her, covering her and she was being reborn from death back to life
as the memories of the last month rewound swiftly through her
head.

Jinni’s touch. His kiss. Dancing on the
stars. His story of loathing, but in her mind, his triumph. His
ability to have made himself into a good and decent person again.
The first time she’d seen him. When he’d smiled and introduced
himself.

His smell.

His eyes.

Then it all disappeared and she opened her
eyes.

Danika flew to the heavens, seeking the
necklaces. A piece of him would forever remain trapped within the
stone. And that was what she had to find.

Jinni, whether he wanted to admit it or not,
had fallen madly and deeply in love with Paz. There could be no
other explanation, because the golem still survived. She’d created
the golem as a tether to the man himself, if Jinni died so did
it.

It took no time to find the glowing amethyst
stones.

Quieting her mind of all but Jinni she
listened for the small still voice of him.

Jinni?

The stones pulsed bright in her fists and she
smiled.

Danika? Can you hear me?

Yes.

A heated sensation of relief flared through
her.

I thought I would float out here for all
eternity.

She laughed.
Only if you want to.

I want her.

She wants you too. Jinni, there is still
time. The golem still lives.

She waited for his response but it was so
long in coming she feared he’d never answer.

Paz will not want me if I turn into that,
Danika.

She loves you.

He laughed, a sad haunting echo of sound.
She loved this form, this man. Not that.

Danika’s lips twisted.
That is but a
shell, Jinni, same as her own. You fell in love with her spirit,
that will never change. The Paz you knew will never look the same
in form, her body has been broken, there will be lasting
damage…

I do not care!

She smiled.
Exactly my point, nor will
she.

He was quiet again and she pushed the
necklace into her chest, as if to hug it. Please, please, please
make the right choice. She desperately wanted to tell him, but
feared ruining the moment.

Do you really believe that?

Yes, you idiot! Is what she wanted to say.
But instead she said,
she’s already bonded to that form. Maybe
not as much as you, because you are her soul mate, but her
subconscious recognized Tristan as important. She will love you no
matter how you come to her.

Danika could almost see the wheels of his
mind slowly turning.

Then take me back, Danika,
he finally
whispered and she exhaled a heavy sigh of relief.

You rotten, dirty bastard, making me so
scared… she wanted to tell him. Instead she whispered,
I love
you, Jinni. Thank you.

Jinni looked at Danika out of the corner of
his eye as he walked down a busy section of downtown Chicago.
Skyscrapers took up the entire sky, obscuring the stars that he
loved so much.

“Are you sure this is the place?” he hissed
and a pedestrian glanced at him sideways with a horrified
expression on her young face, before sidling off in a quick penguin
march, holding her purse tight to her jean clad thigh.

Danika was of course, invisible to all but
him. Which was wonderful. Made blending in with the crowd so
easy.

She nodded. “Aye, she lives in that tower
there.”

A large bluish black structure of metal and
glass loomed like a giant in front of him. He did not like this
place. The constant honks of cars and business of people, the smog
and stench of sewage, not to mention the strong winds that buffeted
into him making his weak right leg buckle every fifth step.

Stomach matted in a bundle of nerves, Jinni
slowed down. It’d taken a year of physical therapy to learn how to
control this stupid body. Everybody thought it was because of the
accident, but the truth was the golem’s body was foreign and so
different from the one he’d known before.

At first he’d barely been able to crawl out
of the bed. And using the bathroom. Good gods, the indignity of
having a nurse help him to hold himself just so that he could
relieve a bladder he’d not had much use for in over a century.

By the time he’d been strong enough to walk
out of his room with a walker, Paz had been long gone. He’d
discovered she’d entered her body not long after he’d thrown her
back and that the moment she had, Todd and Richard had whisked her
back to Chicago and away from him.

Only one thought kept him hanging on, and
that had been finding her.

“But what if she’s with a man now?” he said,
and a man sitting on a park bench quirked his brow, then bit into
his hotdog with a muttered curse.

Danika shook her head and touched the stones
he kept hidden beneath his gray sweater. “The stones glow, her love
for you is as strong today as it was then.”

“But what we had was so short, Danika. So
brief, what if she doesn’t remember me?” He ignored the next round
of stares, walking slowly but resolutely toward the tower of
windows.

The sky was so overcast today, gray and the
clouds bulging with water. This was a terrible day, maybe an omen
for him to stay away. Let her live her life.

“You are so very vexing, my boy. Even Gerard
did not give me this hard a time. Now march.” She flapped her wings
harder, flying in front of him and forcing him to keep her pace,
even though it made a twinge zip down his leg with each step.

He still wasn’t a hundred percent perfect,
probably never would be. The golem’s form was immortal so long as
he lived, but it could be damaged and the magic used to create it
could never recreate it again. Which meant, crashing in airplanes
in the future was probably a bad idea.

In no time they were at the tower and two
minutes later they were traveling up an elevator to the
thirty-first floor. The penthouse suite.

Jinni gripped the golden handle bars as his
stomach dived into his knees.

“It’s not that bad,” Danika whispered.
“You’ll see, before the night is done you’ll be making sweet
passionate love to her and saying, ‘Danika who’?”

He frowned at her, which only made her
laugh.

Too quickly they were on the thirty-first
floor and the door was dinging open.

“I can’t do this,” he said with a shake of
his head.

Danika rolled her eyes. “Good gods, did you
lose your balls the second you entered that thing.”

“Dani,” he growled, not in the mood for her
jokes.

She snorted. “Listen to me, boyo, all of this
angsting and worrying, it’s for naught. I visited her last
night.”

He hissed. She hadn’t told him that. His
heart thundered. “And?! What did you see?”

Her blue eyes grew melancholy. “She’s so
desperate for you, it’s really rather pathetic.”

Mouth dry, stomach ready to heave chunks, he
released the bars and forced his rubbery legs to exit the
elevator.

“It’s the one at the very end of the hall.”
Danika nodded and then tapped him forward.

He felt a pop of air and then nothing and
knew Danika had vanished, leaving him alone to face her.

Not that he was terrified of her. No, he
wanted her. Ached for her each and every day. Every second of
physical therapy, one thought kept him working in spite of the
pain, one less day until he got to see her.

The time was now. He was here.

But what if this didn’t live up to
expectations? What if he’d created a goddess of a woman in his mind
that wasn’t really her? He’d done that with Nala. What he and Paz
had shared had been intense, but unbelievably short.

And as he thought up a million different
reasons why he shouldn’t go to her, the door opened.

Paz didn’t see him. But he saw her.

She was dressed in a white gown, exposing the
long lines of her shapely calves. His stomach knocked around and
his breath whooshed out of his lungs. A long, jagged scar raced up
the side of her left calf, curving around her knee and disappearing
beneath the hem of her dress.

She rested heavily on a cane as she tried to
lock the door.

He couldn’t move. Frozen in place, his mind
an empty canvas except for one thing. Her. His Paz, alive and
healthy. Then she turned around and dropped her purse and cane as
tears came instantly to her eyes.

“Oh my god, are you real?” she whispered.

She’d recognized him? He’d feared she might
not. Tristan didn’t overtly resemble him.

She was shaking.

“Paz,” he whispered and then her eyes rolled
to the back of her head and she fell ungracefully in a heap to the
floor.

***

Soft cooing words of love and devotion were
whispered in her ear. Paz shivered at the warm touch of a hand. His
hand.

“Oh my god!” She sat and stared into his
eyes. “Is it you? Really you?”

They were in her home, on her couch and the
face was all wrong. Beautiful, but wrong. But the eyes, the eyes
were full of tears and light and love and she knew. She threw her
arms around his neck and cried, venting a year’s worth of pain and
agony, crying and staining his shirt until there were no more tears
left.

He held her and never tried to turn away,
even though he must be uncomfortably wet by this point. Finally,
trusting herself to speak and not blubber like an idiot, she pulled
away. Not enough to get out of his arms, she never wanted to be out
of his arms again.

“Jinni, how… I don’t…”

He placed his finger on her lips. “I’ve
dreamed of this for a year, Paz. What I would say, how I would say
it,” his voice was deep, throaty and lyrical. Slightly different
than the one she’d grown used to; this one was richer, like a shot
of amber whiskey. “And now I’m here and I do not remember any of
it.”

She laughed, it felt so good. For over a
year, she’d lived. Breathed. Ate. Painted. But hadn’t laughed.

It’d been so obvious that she was depressed,
even Richard had stopped commenting on it. He’d gone from cracking
jokes and giving her hugs, to casting worried glances in her
direction. She was sure he’d planned an intervention at some point,
but she’d always assured him that it was just going to take some
time to heal.

And that’d been true. But not in the way he’d
expected. Living without Jinni had been harder than she’d expected.
Any time a good-looking man had cast a glance or smile her way all
she could do was frown and think how imperfect it was.

She’d holed herself up in her studio and
painted. Her art had morphed from something light and pretty to
dark and mysterious. The brooding artist had lent her an air of
mystique and suddenly she’d begun selling paintings hand over
fist.

Paz gripped his face, tracing the lines of
his hard jaw, the planes of his wide mouth, familiarizing herself
with a body she didn’t know. “So what now?” she whispered.

“We get to know each other.”

“I’m all for that,” she agreed. “Do you have
a place to stay? Do you live any--”

He chuckled and man was that sound a whole
lot of awesome. Dark and rich, and made her stomach tighten and her
heart beat fast. “I stayed at a motel on Danika’s dime until I was
cleared medically and then took a bus here.”

“From Alaska?”

He shuddered. “Gods it was ghastly.”

She giggled. “Poor baby.”

He rested his head against hers and breathed
deeply, sharing breath, making her remember all the times they’d
done this before. “I missed you, Paz. Every day and every second in
it, I ached to hold you. I was so scared you wouldn’t remember me.
So scared you’d find this form displeasing.”

She frowned. “Displeasing?” Paz stood and
held her hand out to him. “I’ll need to rest some of my weight on
your arm, but I want to show you something.”

He held his arm out for her. “Where are you
taking me?” he asked as she led him down the hall to bedroom she’d
converted into her private studio. Each step was painful, her hips
had broken in six places, making the healing long and slow and
tedious.

The doctors assured her eventually even the
limp would go away, but it could take years.

They got to the end of the hall and she
turned the knob. “I’ve sold over two hundred paintings this year.”
Steeling herself, she opened the door and led him inside.

Jinni inhaled as his eyes took in the canvas’
covering every square inch of wall and floor. Some were of the
stars, a galaxy of them, spun silver in a sea of pink and black.
Others were of a lush kingdom far, far away. But all of them held
the face of a man she’d fallen madly and deeply in love with. A
ghostly image of Jinni staring out of the canvas, keeping her
company, always on her mind and in her heart.

He turned to her. “Paz, I--”