he was gone. I felt a mad giggle rise up into my throat as I watched the last of him get sucked into the narrow metal spout. My eyes rose disbelievingly to the stranger’s face. He was gazing intently at the lamp, making a complicated hand gesture over it and whispering a series of unintelligible words.
Then he tucked the lamp into a pocket inside his jacket, where it disappeared without leaving so much as a lump or a crease. Surprising, but hardly worth comment after what I’d just witnessed. That task completed, he focused his attention on me.
I was hoping he’d have forgotten my presence, but no such luck. All the air left my lungs and the old phrase ‘like a deer in the headlights’ suddenly took on a very personal meaning. I searched desperately for a third option to my innate fight or flight response. I was trapped in the corner with him blocking the door, and somehow I didn’t think I’d come out on top in a contest of strength.
The man had about a foot on me and he looked solid.
His eyes pierced mine for a long moment, and then he waved over the railing. “If your life means so little to you, you could just jump.”
Then he turned and went inside the penthouse.
Chapter 2 – Contractual Obligations
Still frozen in place, although relieved to be alone on the balcony, I stared after the man who had vaporized my date for the evening. I wondered why his less than appealing escape suggestion had left me feeling more insulted than terrorized.
“Asshole,” I muttered, knowing damn well I wasn’t brave enough to say it to his face.
I watched him through the sliding glass door as he performed a thorough search of the sitting room. He felt in the cracks of the sofa and chair cushions, and then dropped into a rather impressive push-up to peer beneath the furniture, before disappearing behind the bar.
I tried willing him to grab a bottle and drink himself unconscious, but apparently my Jedi mind trick needed some work. He reappeared from behind the bar and strode away unaffected. Oh yeah, I was supposed to make the suggestion out loud. Well, forget that—I wasn’t getting any closer.
He proceeded to stick his head beneath each of the living room’s lampshades, tracing the inner fabric with his hand. He even went fishing inside an opaque vase containing a tasteful arrangement of silk flowers.
I scowled when he upended the contents of my little black handbag over the dining room table. But he didn’t appear to find anything of interest, so I stayed put. Riiight—like I would have gone after him just because he stole my favorite lip gloss.
Finally he appeared to be finished with the room and moved down an adjoining hallway.
I waited another minute in indecision, and then crept toward the sliding glass door. He’d left it open just far enough for me to squeeze through. I sucked in my stomach and shimmied past as silently as I could, then tiptoed over to the table. I quickly scooped my keys, lipstick case, cash, credit card and license back into my handbag.
I made a move for the front door, but froze when I heard him walk back into the room behind me. I slowly turned to find him watching me with an expression of tight disdain. I clutched my satin handbag in front of me, as if it might provide some protection.
“Erm,” I gurgled, clearing my throat before I tried to speak again. “Can I go now?” I asked uncertainly, trying to decide what insanity had possessed me to stop my retreat toward the door. I could only guess that it was some instinct about not running and triggering a predator’s chase response.
“You can do whatever you want, Miss,” he said blandly.
I felt a modicum of tension leave my body at his words. He didn’t seem to be the least bit interested in me—which, I reasoned, probably meant that he had no immediate plans to commit any heinous acts against my person. I started to feel a little braver, and fingers of curiosity poked at my brain.
“Would you mind telling me what happened out there?” I asked, trying for a polite, inquisitive tone.
He stared at me coldly. “I arrested Balthus.”
“I gathered that—‘imprisonment for crimes against the Realm’ and so forth,” I parroted, doing my best to temper my sarcasm. “I meant the part about…well…did I hear you call him a djinn? As in genie of the lamp?”
He sighed as if I was a tremendous source of annoyance, and then answered, “Yes Miss, Balthus is a djinn, and as you clearly saw, I confined him to a lamp for holding.”
My remaining fear dissipated with the growing frustration his tone was causing. “Look, I don’t mean to be dense, but I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Until tonight, I would have thought you were crazy if you’d suggested that djinns were real. If I hadn’t seen it myself…well, I’m still not sure that I didn’t hallucinate it. And why did he keep insisting that I was ‘his by right’?”
“Miss,” he began, his condescension making my teeth grind so hard I expected to taste powdered enamel.
“Sydney,” I interrupted, forcing a determined smile. “My name is Sydney. And you are?”
He closed his eyes briefly as if it was a great effort to be civil. “I’m Agent Sparrow. And Balthus insisted that you were his because you damn near were—you’re two-thirds his already, and you were about two words away from sealing the contract.”
“What contract?” I demanded in irritation.
“Balthus is a death djinn,” Sparrow explained, slowly emphasizing each word as if I was mentally deficient. “You were one wish away from him granting your death wish, at which point your soul would have belonged to him.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “My soul…death wish?” I spat incredulously, “I didn’t wish for anything! What the hell are you talking about?”
“Look Miss…Sydney…” he corrected, palms up to prevent my interruption, “I have little patience for those who would throw their lives away so carelessly. You wished for death, Balthus intercepted that wish, and the contract was created. He first had to grant three wishes of your choosing. At the completion of the third, he would have granted your death wish and your immortal soul would have belonged to him.”
No matter how much I would have liked to believe he was kidding—or maybe just clinically insane—considering the recent scene on the balcony, I had the sinking suspicion that he was deadly serious. My knees buckled and I stumbled backward, dropping onto the thick cushion of a nearby chair.
“I can’t believe this,” I muttered. “I didn’t wish for death! I didn’t wish for anything.” I blinked at Sparrow, feeling increasingly faint.
He gazed at me, a flicker of uncertainty moving across amazingly blue eyes. “That’s not possible. Not even Balthus can bend the rules that much. You must have wished aloud for death within his hearing at some point recently. I watched him stalk you to the bar. There’s no other reason he would have been interested in you.”
I shot him a glare, stifling the offended response that sprang to my lips. This was so obviously not the time to indulge my battered ego.
“I…I jokingly may have said out loud to myself that I wished I was dead earlier this evening,” I murmured, remembering my words by the ladies room.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the man by the phones who’d overheard me had looked a lot like Balthus.
Sparrow gave me a look that said I had just proved his point. He walked past me and headed into the unexplored room opposite us.
“Wait a minute!” I exclaimed, following on his heels through a well-stocked kitchen and down a dim, lushly carpeted hallway.
When we hit the bedroom, I stopped in my tracks. The most gorgeous bed I’d ever seen dominated the space, its offer of tranquility almost too inviting to resist. A fluffy cream comforter