One Wish Away: Djinn Empire Complete Series Read online

  We were sitting in silence, waiting for the nurse, when Maven practically ran into the waiting room. His blond hair was standing on end, his cheeks splotched red and his chest rising up and down. His clear, blue eyes moved around the room until they spotted me. He took a deep breath and approached, hands in his pockets.

  I’d met Maven four months ago when he moved into my Metairie neighborhood with his mother and brother. He went to my high school for two months, only to get his diploma. During that short time, we found that we had a few things in common, like our love for track and field, our workaholic tendencies, and the need to postpone our college plans. All that led to us becoming running buddies and Grandpa finding him a job at a landscaping company so he could save for college. Maven’s single mom couldn’t afford the tuition. I liked him a lot, but, for some strange reason, our friendship still felt young—not like the comfortable familiarity I had with Abby.

  “Hey,” he said, forehead creased with worry.

  I stood. Abby did, too. “Thanks for coming,” I said, unable to make eye contact. I’d called him earlier and he hadn’t hesitated to drop what he’d been doing, not even for a second.

  After our mad dash from the nursery, neither Javier nor I could remember if we’d locked. He’d offered to go back and make sure, but I could tell he wanted to be here instead. Abby had offered as well, but Jardin Noir wasn’t in the kind of area a girl should visit alone—especially at night. So I’d called Maven, simply because there was no one else.

  “Any time,” he said.

  Feeling extremely grateful to this fairly new friend, I took the keys out of my purse and held them out. He put them in his pocket and gave me a faint smile. We stood awkwardly, the three of us, staring at the floor.

  For something to say, I asked, “Um . . . remember Abby?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Maven and Abby nodded at each other. They’d only shared one class while still in school and had never exchanged more than a few hellos.

  The uncomfortable silence stretched and stretched, until Maven finally said, “I guess I’ll go.” He nodded toward the door and backed away, one slow step at a time. When he reached the threshold, he turned, looking reluctant.

  “Maven, wait!” I exclaimed, suddenly guilty for not showing how grateful I was. “I’ll be right back, Abby.”

  Maven and I walked out of the waiting room and into the hall.

  “Thank you for doing this.” I made a point to look him in the eye.

  He blushed. “Please, you don’t have to thank me. It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing. It’s Friday night. I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “No! You did right. I don’t mind this at all. I’m . . . glad you thought of me.”

  I felt my own cheeks flush. I looked at a water fountain across the hall. It hummed and rattled. “Thanks. I’ll drop by your house later to pick up the keys,” I said.

  “If you don’t mind . . . I’ll come back after locking everything,” he said.

  “I . . . of . . . of course.” I nodded, thankful for the support, but also worried about yet another person witnessing the nervous breakdown that I felt waiting, stalking, crouching beside me, ready to pounce.

  The world was crumbling around me, and I was so afraid.

  ***

  After Maven left, a nurse came for me. I followed her, dragging my feet, and walked through a set of sliding doors. Black letters labeled the section: Intensive Care Unit. A U-shaped counter occupied the center of a large area, surrounded by several rooms. Wall monitors flashed with different codes and colors. Beeps and hissing sounds mingled with the hushed voices of the staff on duty.

  “This way,” instructed the nurse. A curtain hung from ceiling to floor. It slid with a metallic swish as she pushed it out of the way. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of Grandpa. Tubes, electrodes, and tape stuck to his chest and arms. His hands were swollen to twice their normal size and his breath sounded labored and shallow. I inched toward his bedside, a hand over my mouth.

  “Is your grandfather a religious man? There’s a Catholic priest . . .” the nurse trailed off.

  “No, he’s not,” I answered with regret. We’d both abandoned the whole mea culpa, chest-beating thing a while back—probably something to do with losing everyone we loved. Our irreverence never seemed to matter until now.

  “The priest could come anyway—if you’d like.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Okay, I’ll let him know.” She closed the curtain and left.

  Just a couple of hours ago I’d been with him, telling him to take it easy. How did things go so wrong? So fast?

  A tear spilled down my cheek. I took Grandpa’s hand. It felt cold, but its roughness gave me comfort.

  “Grandpa,” I murmured.

  He didn’t move.

  I stood holding his hand, watching his chest rise and fall, tensing every time his breath snagged. When my legs went numb, I hooked a chair with my foot and pulled it closer, never letting go of his hand. I watched for a long time, but nothing happened. His stillness unnerved me.

  Lowering my head, I finally prayed. “Please God, don’t take him. He’s all I’ve got.”

  Instead of peace, anger swelled inside of me. Wasn’t praying supposed to make me feel better?

  “You’ve taken everything from me already,” I accused through clenched teeth. “Now, you want to take him, too.” I pressed my forehead to the edge of the bed. “Please, let me keep him for a little longer.”

  I looked up. Grandpa’s lashes fluttered. I stared at his closed eyes. Nothing. Only the rhythmic beeping of hospital equipment and the unbearable coldness of his hand.

  Suddenly, his eyes sprang open.

  “Grandpa?!” I leaned closer to catch his gaze. “It’s me, Marielle.”

  His lips moved. I angled my ear toward his mouth.

  “R-Robert,” he mumbled.

  I shook my head. No, not Robert. He abandoned us! How could Grandpa think of him?! I bit my lower lip, instantly ashamed of my selfish reaction. Robert was his son, the son he’d missed every day for five years. Of course, he wanted to see him.

  He spoke again. “Remember . . .”

  “What, Grandpa? Remember what?”

  “The . . . stone.”

  What?! Oh, God. Not that awful Djinn story. Not now.

  “You’re not dying, okay?” I told him. “There’ll be no Djinn for another twenty years. You’ll get better. You hear me?”

  His eyes seemed to fill with a knowing smile for just a moment, then they closed again.

  “Grandpa?” I whimpered. He’d gone deathly still, aside from his shallow breathing.

  I pressed my forehead to the back of his hand and tried to pray again. I didn’t want a career in linguistics to travel the world, a boyfriend who loved me, a wish-granting Djinn or anything else. I only wanted Grandpa to stay with me, to bitch when I burned his dinner, to shoo me out of the shack when I tried to clean, to beat me at darts, to look at me with pride in his old, blue eyes when I accomplished something—like on graduation day.

  Mom and Grandma had died. Dad had abandoned me. Only Grandpa had stuck by me, making sure I kept on the good path and grew up straight. The thought of being without him filled me with fear and rage. Life couldn’t be that cruel!

  A sudden, loud beeping startled me. I jumped to my feet, adrenaline coursing through my veins. I pushed the curtain aside. “Someone, help my Grandpa, please!” I shrieked.

  A male nurse hurried to his side. Others followed.

  “Take her out of here,” someone said.

  A nurse took my arm. “Please, you need to come with me.”

  “Help him. Don’t let him die,” I pleaded.

  The curtain slid shut, hiding Grandpa’s ashen face while someone gave out orders. “Get a cart. Push one of epi.”

  I didn’t protest as they led me outside. I didn’t want to be there, couldn’t stand to see Grandpa like that. I stood outside th
e ICU, hands trembling.

  “I love you, Grandpa,” I whispered.

  My heart collapsed, robbing what little strength I had left. Holding back a scream, I ran to the restroom and locked myself in the last stall. My chest hurt as if I’d been physically assaulted. I pressed my back against the wall and lifted my tear-filled eyes to the sky.

  “No, please,” I keened as the last of my hope slipped away. My back slid down the wall until I hit the tile floor. Somehow, I knew I’d never see Grandpa again. Though tears flowed and flowed down my cheeks, my chest still felt ready to explode. The pressure made me dizzy, then my vision blurred, and my world, or what was left of it, finally flew out of orbit, tumbling top over bottom.

  I was alone.

  3

  I stood outside Jardin Noir, key in hand, and stared numbly through the chain link fence. Just an hour ago, I’d been at Grandpa’s funeral, going through the motions, a zombie unable to acknowledge anyone—not even Maven and Abby, much less the few neighbors and acquaintances who showed up. I’ve never been more grateful not to have any extended family to speak of, because after it was over, all I wanted to do was be alone. So my autopilot brought me here, away from the rows and rows of cold mausoleums to a familiar place where I would grieve alone.

  Humidity hung thick in the air, making the hideous black dress I’d just bought and would never wear again cling to my legs. I took a deep breath to steel myself, then went in through the service door. As I walked in a half daze, my eyes locked on a fat garden gnome—one of the big ones that sold for $69.99. Surrounded by smaller versions of itself, it stared at me from under bushy, concrete eyebrows. I would never understand why people liked those stupid statues. They were supposed to look sagely, but to me, they looked diabolical, especially today.

  The gnome’s hands stretched forward as if reaching for something . . .

  For me.

  Cupping my elbows, I shrank into myself. Childlike laughter rang in the air, accompanied by the din of cicadas from the nearby woods. The gnome’s lips tipped in a mocking grin.

  No. No more. No more!

  I pressed my hands against my temples. I wanted to feel sane and capable of moving forward. “Not real. Not real,” I said, shutting my eyes.

  But if it wasn’t real, then what? A hallucination? Sane people didn’t have those.

  Grandpa’s voice came to me from the past. “The Djinn likes tricks.”

  The Djinn’s fault, then? His magic?

  A slithering sound startled me back to the moment. I opened my eyes. Ivy erupted from several pots, surging like green garden snakes. I froze, my heart huge and throbbing inside my throat. The plants slid, made figure eights around my ankles, and squeezed. I lost my balance, flailed and fell toward the ivy. Rolling to my side, I managed to land on my shoulder. Thorns pierced through my dress. A vine stood out from the rest and lashed at my cheek. I screamed and clawed at my face.

  Suddenly, everything went still. My cry echoed in the silence. I lay on the ground, trembling, imagining a jungle of vines growing around me, waiting to choke the life out of me.

  “I’m not crazy. I’m not!” I shrieked.

  This had to be his doing. I wasn’t insane and this was his fault.

  “Bastard,” I said under my breath. “Bastard,” I repeated over and over, my voice getting louder, as I gained confidence by pretending to be sane. Of course, believing in a Djinn was also insane, just a better type of insane. Right?

  Yes, that’s it! The Djinn.

  I sat up, banking on that explanation. My heart slowed down a little. Hugging my legs, I listened over the pounding in my ears. All was quiet. After a moment, I opened my eyes and looked around. The ivy was gone. Everything was back to normal.

  “You son of a bitch!” I growled, trying to sound brave even as my heart shriveled to the size of a raisin.

  My cheek tingled. Wincing, I touched my fingers to the spot and felt the sticky blood. I stared at the bright, red reality of the attack. This was no hallucination—not if there was blood involved.

  “I won’t be a coward. I won’t,” I whispered to myself.

  Trembling, I got to my feet. I stared at the shack, the last place where I’d seen Grandpa smile. Tears pricked my eyes as I remembered him lying on the floor while we waited for the ambulance. Sorrow tightened around my throat like a rope. Still, I found the courage to open the door and go in.

  Paper lay strewn on the floor and the phone was off the hook. Absentmindedly, I dropped my messenger bag by the door and returned the receiver to its base.

  I collapsed on the swivel chair in front of the desk and, immediately, my eyes zeroed in on the green box by the file cabinet: my great-grandfather’s army trunk. As if from a distance, Grandpa’s last words swept through my mind, a crippling reminder of his final moments alive.

  “The stone.”

  The Mardi Gras masks on the wall leered through empty sockets, stretching in and out of my field of vision. My heart pounded.

  “I’m not gonna let you intimidate me,” I told the footlocker.

  As if in answer, my face smarted again. Wincing, I turned and pulled out a mirror from a desk drawer and examined my wound. A one-inch cut sliced across my cheek, shining with blood.

  Oh, God . . . Blood!

  Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Every vision had involved blood! The rosebush had pricked my finger. The water rope had torn open my wrists. The vine had cut my cheek. Could that mean the Djinn was real?

  When I was a little girl, I’d believed in Grandpa’s Djinn stories blindly. He’d told me the creature lived trapped in a stone. He said I would inherit it from him one day, just like he’d inherited it from his father. My great-grandfather had won the ancient thing in a poker game while stationed in Morocco during World War II—without knowing what it was. After the war, while looking for old pictures in his trunk, he cut himself on his army issue knife, spilling blood on the stone, accidentally releasing the Djinn that—with three wishes—changed his life forever.

  The old trunk sat there, mocking me, reminding me of Grandpa’s promise.

  “When I die, you’ll be able to set the Djinn free again. After he grants you three wishes, put the stone away, then pass it on to whoever you want.”

  Suddenly, it all made sense. The bastard wanted out!

  For a brief moment, I considered the possibility that I’d truly gone certifiable. For years, I had believed Grandpa’s stories until, in middle school, I wised up and decided he was just messing with me. Lately, though, I’d begun to think he was really off his rocker. Because weird customers who lick their purchases and a few odd stories didn’t amount to anything supernatural, but they did amount to a worrisome level of crazy. And still . . . Grandpa was gone and, on his deathbed, he’d reminded me of the stone with the Djinn trapped in it, a Djinn that needed blood to be released, a Djinn that was starting to seem more real by the minute. Guess whose levels of crazy were up now?

  “Damn you!” I yelled at the footlocker. Anger fizzed inside of me and I let it. After all, wasn’t anger better than grief?

  Clenching my fists, I rolled the chair toward the trunk. The corner braces, handles, and latch were corroded, the army green paint cracked. A Wordlock secured its contents. Leaning forward, I snatched the lock. Rust peppered my hand. Slowly, I turned the five dials, lining up the letters to form the word Grandpa had chosen.

  B-O-U-N-D.

  A chill made me straighten. I stared at the lock, then looked out the open door. My pulse throbbed in my neck. Rubbing the spot, I inhaled, slid off the chair and knelt in front of the trunk. The lock gave way after a gentle pull. I pushed the lid up with both hands. The smell of mothballs rose from inside.

  A wooden tray with three compartments rested on top, making me think of a giant jewelry box. A green folder occupied the middle partition, bearing a Post-it note that read: “To Marielle.” I sat and crossed my legs, reaching up to wipe the sweat from my forehead. I hadn’t turned on the air conditioner, but
this was more than just the heat. I opened the folder. A letter, written in Grandpa’s scrawl, waited inside.

  Well, I guess I kicked the bucket. Don’t be too sad about it. Ever since Eloise, I’ve felt pretty much ready. Don’t take me wrong, I’m going to miss you. You’re the only thing that kept me going. I’m glad I was there for you and you were there for me. We made an alright team, don’t you think? Now, be done with your grieving or your happy dance (either way) and get on with your life. I’ve left the nursery to you. This envelope contains my will and testament and a business card for the lawyer. Go see him ASAP. Also, take care of that other little business you know well. I know that ever since you became Ms. Maturity, you’ve laughed at my stories and thought I was full of it. Ha! I hate that I won’t get to see your face.

  Love, Grandpa.

  P.S. Remember, think carefully and get it done quickly.

  Really, Grandpa?! I stood up, left the papers on the floor. He wouldn’t still be playing the same joke from his grave, would he? He couldn’t be that cruel.

  Mind spinning, I picked up a box of matches and lit scented candles around the room. They always helped clear my mind.

  “You’ll burn the place down,” Grandpa’s words rang through my mind.

  “The place stinks like old fart,” I bickered with his ghost.

  A spiced aroma impregnated my senses as I inhaled and tried to ignore the musty scent of loneliness. I gathered the documents and placed them inside a drawer in the desk, then, with a firm stride, returned to the trunk.

  So if there’s really a Djinn, could he erase this pain? Could he make me forget? There were rules, I knew, but it’d been a long time since Grandpa mentioned them, and I couldn’t remember if begging for oblivion went against any of them.

  I lifted the wooden tray. The starkness under it surprised me. I’d expected to find the case full of things, but there were only four items. A neatly-folded army uniform. A box of mothballs. An old Time magazine with an “X” across its white cover. And a tin can of Royal Crown Pomade.

  I picked up the magazine, purposely ignoring the can. I thumbed the pages, scanning the articles. When I reached the image of a huge mushroom cloud, I set the magazine on the floor, and, pretending it wasn’t hard, took out the can. Something rattled inside. In one rapid motion, I removed the round lid. As I peered inside, a cold wave ran down my back.