The Third Wish

  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2018 Jewel Quinlan

  ISBN: 978-1-77339-774-0

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Lisa Petrocelli

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  For that mysterious something inside that continues to draw me ever forward.

  THE THIRD WISH

  Jewel Quinlan

  Copyright © 2018

  Chapter One

  I drummed my fingers on the table as I stared at the antique silver pill case on the dingy kitchen table before me. An arrangement of three deep-red garnets decorated the lid and there were symbols on the sides, but the silver was so tarnished that they were barely legible. I didn’t dare try to polish it though, not since the first time, that is. Heck, whenever I had to move it, I made damn sure I didn’t even inadvertently rub it with a fingertip. The inhabitant inside—a genie—had reacted like a pissed off hornet the last time I’d accidentally disturbed her.

  I lifted my gaze to the RV’s small window. Outside, black storm clouds were moving in swiftly over the red walls of the Arizona canyon whose mouth I was currently parked in. I followed their progress, noting how the blockage of sunlight transformed the canyon walls from a bright reddish-orange color to brown rust. The heavy rain clouds were already dropping some of their burden in the distance. And the fresh scent of water now mingled with the earthy notes in the warm desert air blowing in through the screen door. I considered closing everything up to keep the water from coming in, but then decided against it. I’d always found the sound of rain soothing. Plus, I doubted any moisture that got in would make much of a difference to the overall smell of the ramshackle RV I’d borrowed from my buddy, Rick. Even though the air-conditioning worked, I’d had to open everything up once I’d stopped in order to get relief from the stale scents of sweat and cigarette smoke.

  Suddenly, the lid of the pillbox before me opened a crack, emitting a bright purple glow, and an irritated feminine voice said, “Owen, either cut that out or go do it somewhere else. You’re shaking my home and giving me a headache.”

  I stilled my fingers and grinned. “Sorry. I’m just bored I guess.”

  “Read a book,” she retorted. Then the lid snapped shut.

  I snorted and rose to pace the room, if the word pace could be used that is. The RV wasn’t very spacious. It was as if someone had taken the walls of a studio apartment and pushed them in until they aligned with the rectangular footprint of the vehicle. If it had been any smaller, I could have reached everything simply by standing in the middle and turning. After two turns down the center, I sighed with frustration and gave up.

  I wasn’t really bored. The words agitated, antsy, or stressed actually suited me much better right now. There was just something about the genie that made me say things like that. And who could blame me for my current mood when the deadline for my third and final wish loomed hours away?

  I went to the door and propped it open so I could sit on the bottom step and gaze out across the landscape, hoping that the view of open space would do something to relieve my restlessness and provide me with the inspiration I badly needed. Tumbleweeds and a dusting of wiry little plants were scattered here and there across the vast expanse. As I watched, the dark shadow of the storm clouds swallowed them up as it approached with its thick curtain of rain. I glanced over my shoulder toward the pillbox and sighed again. If only she’d help me. I’d asked her several times before, only to receive a sneer in response.

  What the heck does she do in there? Did genies have entire cities inside their … er … vessels? Or amusement parks maybe? Or was it possible that the inside of Cleo’s pillbox bore a resemblance to my old apartment? Nah. No way. A being with the kind of limitless power she had no doubt sported accommodations far beyond my meager imagination. But if that was true then how could the rhythm of my fingers on the table possibly bother her? But Cleo refused to satisfy my curiosity about her, or answer questions about wishes she’d granted before. I suppose I wasn’t the first to ask, but this whole thing was blowing my mind. I’d never believed in anything magical, or even vaguely mystical, my entire life. For me, reality was much simpler to deal with than wrapping my mind around a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. And then—bam—the whole three-wishes thing was in my lap.

  I leaned back, propped my elbows on one of the upper steps, and kicked a foot crosswise over my knee. One minute I was rummaging through motorcycle parts at a salvage yard, and the next I was lifting Cleo’s grease-smeared pillbox from the pile and trying to rub the filth away with my sleeve to figure out what the heck it was. That was the moment Cleo had appeared, and my life had changed dramatically and irrevocably. Who wouldn’t have a million questions? But the little extras I’d gleaned so far, other than the Rules for Wish Granting, had been like trying to unscrew a rusted bolt with my fingernails.

  Cleo had recited the rules to me shortly after she’d appeared and stated that I was her new master and would receive three wishes. Her light-brown eyes had been fixed over the top of my head the whole time as though she were thinking about the millions of other things she could be doing that were a hundred times more interesting than me. And though she’d stated the rules in a rapid-fire fashion that would have put most auctioneers to shame, I still remembered each one with a brilliant clarity. I normally had a terrible memory, but there’s something about meeting a genie that makes you remember. Also, there were only three of them. The rules were:

  1. She could not kill, raise anyone from the dead, or make people fall in love.

  2. No wishing to be a higher dimensional being such as a god, angel, demon, or genie.

  3. No wishing for extra wishes.

  “One more thing,” she’d said at the end. “You only have three months to receive your wishes.”

  “Three months? I thought there wasn’t a time limit to genie wishes,” I’d said. I knew about as much as the next guy when it came to magic and genies. But at least that one detail had been gleaned from years of watching TV and reading comics.

  She’d shrugged then and tossed her wavy blonde hair back over her shoulder, which had drawn my eyes to her impressive bosom. “That’s when my mandatory service as a genie ends. Consider yourself lucky to have found me when you did. Take it or leave it.”

  “I’ll take it,” I’d said, because who in their right mind would give up three wishes?

  “Wonderful,” she’d said drily. “Would you like to begin?”

  “Er, not yet,” I’d said, still a bit shocked. But that was rapidly followed with a rush that lottery winners must feel at realizing they’re holding the winning ticket. “This is amazing! I have a ton of questions, and I’ll need to give it some serious thought before I—”

  But she’d turned into vapor the instant “not yet” had left my lips and disappeared back into the pillbox.

  I shook my propped-up foot in a rhythmic fashion to work out some of my nerves and eyed the rust forming on the RV’s doorframe as I listened to the pelting of fat raindrops hitting the earth. I kind of regretted not coming here in my own RV. It was on a whole other level compared to Rick’s and would have been much more comfortable, but I would have been followed for sure. And hiding from anyone who could recognize me—which was pretty much everyone—was
essential right now.

  I’d sweated bullets as Rick’s RV had creaked and groaned during the drive along the bumpy dirt path out to the middle of nowhere, envisioning it breaking down and having to walk back several miles, but I had made it. “Nowhere” was actually the outskirts of a spiritual sanctuary. I’d lied to the owners and told them that I needed to get away from it all, because feeling like I was no one and nowhere was essential to finishing the new album I was working on. They’d eaten that shit up, of course. But at least it meant they would protect my privacy. And I had to admit, I felt safer and calmer now than I had over the last couple of months.

  “Would you stop that?” came Cleo’s irritated voice from the kitchen table.

  “Stop what? Oh.” I stopped moving my foot and uncrossed it from my knee. “You could feel that?”

  No answer.

  “I still don’t understand why you can’t share what’s happened with other people you’ve granted wishes to,” I said loudly, glancing back toward the table. “It’s not like it’s against the rules to talk about it.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d tried to get her to talk to me, but Cleo tended to be taciturn. You would think that a being who spent most of their time in isolation would be chattier. But, no, not this genie. At first, I’d been so awed by the whole all-powerful magic thing that I’d hesitated to bother her. I’d even been downright humble for the first couple of weeks. But now, almost three months later, I’d gotten used to her. The surprising thing was that dealing with her was a lot like dealing with a human woman. I supposed some female characteristics were universal across species.

  I tried again. “You know, if you would just give me a little more information, it would make it so much easier to formulate my last wish. And if I make my last wish, doesn’t that mean you’ll be rid of me?” I didn’t expect an answer, and I didn’t get one. I’d tried this angle before, but it never budged her. I wasn’t about to give up though. I still had time. Cleo wasn’t the only one who was stubborn. I’d been blessed with a good dose of it myself, and I think I’d graduated to a new level of it in my desperation not to waste this last wish.

  I scratched at the stubble along the edge of my jaw and tried to think of another question to ask about the Rules for Wish Granting. I had discovered that it was mandatory for her to answer any questions I had about those. So, the times I’d been able to force her to come out and talk to me had all been under the guise of needing something clarified about one of the rules while I was really prying other information out of her. The problem was, I was fresh out of creative questions to ask. The three rules were so straightforward, even a moron with half a brain would understand them. Oh well, something would come to me in a minute.

  I turned my focus back on trying to decide what I wanted for my third and final wish. Who knew that figuring out what I wanted came with so much pressure? But when your first two wishes don’t go exactly as pictured, you tend to get a little more careful.

  My first wish had been to be insanely rich. I mean, c’mon, who wouldn’t wish for that? But Cleo had rolled her eyes and let out a sound of disgust when I’d done so, showing me how bourgeois it was. Then, with a snap of her fingers and a pert, “It is done,” she’d disappeared in a wisp of vapor back into her pill case.

  At that same moment, my doorbell had rung. And when I answered it, a courier was standing there with a fat envelope I had to sign for. What was in the envelope? Legal documents from a lawyer regarding the matter of my inheritance of the estate of a relative I didn’t even know named Rupert Jones.

  I’d attended a meeting where a team of lawyers had explained the remote connection. But I’d lost track after a few minutes of them detailing my very shady and unfaithful family tree. If they’d been able to verify my status as a beneficiary, that was fine by me. I still had no clue if Rupert had been my cousin, uncle, or grand-something. Once I heard the amount of the inheritance, I’d been too stunned to hear anything after that. The total, after valuation of all assets and conversion of a handful of currencies, had been just shy of two billion dollars.

  Needless to say, I signed my name to their documents as quickly as possible. And after I was hooked up with an American Express Centurion Card and a First Royale Mastercard from the Bank of Dubai, I think I bought everything I’d ever wanted since I was five years old … and then some. Before finding Cleo, people had often called me a drifter, which was their polite way of calling me homeless. But I was really just a person who wanted to see the world. I’d never been happy with the typical nine-to-five job and the whole “putting down roots” thing. So, once I’d figured out how to sell things online (mostly used motorcycle parts) and make money consistently, I’d packed a duffle bag and taken off on my bike. My life wasn’t luxurious by any means, but I always had food to eat and a place to sleep.

  Now that I had significantly more money at my disposal, it was funny how people envied my lifestyle. I was no longer a drifter, but a man of the world. There were so many things I still wanted to see that I moved around even more than I had before. But now, I had my pick of premium motorcycles to travel around on. Clothes became like tissues—use once and toss. Hotels became ultra-accommodating and welcoming, an experience I’d never had before. Man, when you had unlimited cash at your disposal, it was just the matter of a few phone calls to get anything you wanted. I hired good old Rupert’s ex-personal assistant to help me. Things were so much easier with someone to make all the arrangements for me. Life was sweet! Well, for about a month and a half.

  That was when the trouble began to snowball. I’d tried to ignore it, but they found me despite my pseudo-gypsy lifestyle. Relatives I didn’t know began to crawl out of the woodwork like termites. They blew up my phone with hostile messages regarding their entitlement to the fortune and threats to contest the will. The IRS and DEA started breathing down my neck as well about some matter they had been investigating prior to Rupert’s death.

  In addition, a shadier set of characters started leaving messages requesting a meeting so that they could complete arrangements they had been making when Rupert died. The few times I’d spoken to these guys and asked questions, they would only say that they were “associates” of Rupert’s and had “sensitive matters” to discuss with me. I took a chance and arranged to meet one of them at a coffeehouse in Montana. But upon glancing in the window of the shop when I arrived, I saw three of them waiting for me at the specified table. Their eyes held the lethal sharpness of men who could kill just as easily as they put their shoes on every morning. And the deep lines on their faces were typical of men with a history of living a dog-eat-dog lifestyle.

  I took off without a backward glance, of course. Despite how dysfunctional my family had been, or maybe because of it, I could spot a criminal from a mile away. I’d smashed my cell phone immediately and had been using burner phones ever since. It was a short-term remedy at best, but at least it was something.

  God, just thinking about it was stressing me out. How long before they got to my personal assistant and forced my whereabouts from him?

  “Geez! All right! Fine. What do you want to know?” came an angry voice from behind me.

  I darted out the door and into the rain before the voice even registered.

  Chapter Two

  “Jesus, Cleo! You scared the crap out of me!” I slicked my wet hair back over my head. The rain was coming down so hard that I was already soaked from head to toe, even though I shot back into the doorway just as fast as I’d left it.

  “Serves you right. You were doing that on purpose to annoy me so I would come out and talk, weren’t you?” She stood at the top of the steps, eyes blazing, lips pouty, wavy blonde hair standing out in a lion’s mane around her head.

  “Doing what?” I frowned at her accusation and then was briefly distracted by the white tank top she wore and wished she was the one who’d gotten drenched in the rain. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her nipples were standing upright as if daring me to touch them. I could
almost make out the circumference of her areolas through the thin white fabric. I quickly smoothed a hand over my face not only to slick away the moisture but also to make myself stop staring.

  When I’d first met Cleo that day at the salvage yard, I thought she was my dream girl come to life. She was petite, with generous curves in all the right places, and had a sexy mouth that tempted no matter what mood she was in. In addition, she was a full head shorter than me, which completed the package. For a guy of average height, it was hard to find everything you wanted in the right dimensions. But it wasn’t just Cleo’s looks that drew me in, it was the thin air of disapproval she always held toward me. Strange, I know. It’s not that I liked women who disdained me. I’d learned the difference between straight-up dislike and reluctant attraction over many years of dating difficult women. It was that secret something more just beneath the disdain that always got me. I liked a challenge. And beneath Cleo’s façade, I could see that she lusted after me just as much as I lusted after her.

  “You know what!” she said, jabbing a finger toward me, making the golden bracelets on her wrist flash and jingle.

  What the hell is she talking about? I’d just been sitting here lost in my musings, staring at the desert… Oh, shit. Yeah, she was right. I’d started tapping my toe. Moving some part of my body was a nervous tick, something I did whenever I got stressed out.

  “Sorry! But you know I can’t help it. Maybe if you’d executed my first two wishes better I wouldn’t be so strung out.” Wrong thing to say. If I could have punched myself, I would have.

  Cleo stiffened, eyes wide. And then they narrowed, and I could almost see the millions of ways she was killing me in her mind right now. I braced myself for a barrage of scorn mixed with profanity. If there was one thing I’d learned about Cleo in the past couple of months, it was that she had an extensive vocabulary of swear words. Not only was her range impressive, it was also interestingly exotic. I was well acquainted with it because it’d been directed at me on the frequent occasions I managed to get her to come out of the pillbox. I’d thought I’d heard it all at this point in my life, but she proved me wrong. And somehow, whenever she directed her skill at me, I couldn’t help but feel that every term she used was eminently fitting.