And yet here reclined Josiah Smith, a short, fat man with a lion’s mane of hair—both on his head and chest—with sunken in beady eyes, a bulbous nose, and rotted teeth, surrounded by a bevy of nude harem girls fanning and fawning over him. Their kohl-rimmed eyes and pomegranate juice-stained lips making them a sumptuous feast for the senses. That’d been his first wish. His second had been wealth.
Josiah’s indigo tent sat like a miniature oasis in the middle of a sandy wasteland. He had women, he had stockyard animals aplenty. Camels that were draped in hammered silver and gold. Oxen with their noses pierced through with jade-tipped rings. Peacocks, their gorgeous plumage shimmering with metallic hints of bronze as they danced and paraded about. So much coin that he could live comfortably for millennia.
Only just months into her curse and already she was coming to understand that these two wishes alone would make up at least sixty percent of all wishes she’d be asked to perform.
Josiah was not her first master. He was, in fact, her seventh. Because the moment they used a third wish, she was exiled to her prison and spun through the heavens, landing only God knows where and waiting for some asshole to stumble upon her and have the process repeat itself all over again.
“I told you I wished to have that girl from the tavern be mine, and she is still not here.” His fat lips thinned.
Nixie’s left eye twitched. “Then go down to the bar, hand her some money, and bring her here. What do you want me to do about it?”
He sneered. “You are my genie!” He shot up, shaking his fist at her, causing the girls around him to scatter like bowling pins to escape his wrath.
The harem weren’t actually real women. Well, not real in the sense that they’d been born. They were simply spun fantasy from her imagination of what harem women should look like. She’d based their looks off movies she’d seen back on Earth.
Shapely, nubile women who simpered and smiled and had not an intelligent thought in their vacant heads. Eye candy and nothing more.
“What, you mean this?” He yanked on the black hair of one who’d fallen to her knees in front of him, jerking her up so hard that she whimpered and gripped at her skull. Terror danced in her eyes.
Though the women were magic, they did feel. They did hurt.
“Release her, you’re hurting her!” Nixie took a step forward.
He spat. And not by the woman’s foot, but in her face. A hiccupping sob tore from the vessel’s throat. “You mean this waste of air? It isn’t real. As you’ve often reminded me. It feels nothing!” He slapped her.
Tipping her claws, Nixie ran for him, but immediately the air between them thickened like a wall of steel. She bounced off it, landing squarely on her ass and glaring at him hotly.
Snorting with mirth, Josiah tossed the women from him. She scampered off with tears streaming down her eyes.
One more night, Nixie reminded herself. One more night, and then she would belong only to herself—even if only for a day. She could take her free pass at any point during the year and, while she was still so fresh into this, and it would have been better if she waited to use her chance closer to the end of the year, there were matters that needed settling with Josiah.
“You can’t hurt me, bitch. I am Master here. Get me that girl.”
“Is that your final wish?” Soon her molars would break from grinding them too hard if she didn’t stop.
“You would just love that, wouldn’t you? You worthless piece of scum. To rid yourself of me?”
Nixie stood up, dusted off her golden silk pants, and notched her chin high. She would not let him get to her. She refused to let a worthless piece of life like Josiah Smith make her feel less than.
“Do you,” she stressed, “or do you not wish to use your final wish?” She paused. “Master?”
His mouthful of rotted teeth smiled back at her. “Aye,” he bit out, “make her mine, and then you may go.”
She closed her eyes. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was help Josiah, in any way, but she’d learned enough to know that even if she wanted to or not, as a genie she had to do what she’d been programmed to do or suffer terrible agony.
She’d already suffered enough because of this jackass.
“You do understand, that unlike the harem, the girl is a free women, able to decide whether she will accept you as a mate or not. I can only bring her to you. No more.”
Ripping into another haunch of lamb, he masticated on it loudly before tossing it over his shoulder, only half eaten.
Her parents had never been poor, but Nixie had been raised in a large city where poverty had stared her daily in the face. To see him be so wasteful with his blessings, she wanted to kill him all over again.
She’d thought the last master had been bad, a petty and selfish spoiled thing of ten, but little had she known then just how much she’d wish for screaming tantrums over this perverted bastard of a man.
“Duly noted. Bring her to me, and then you may go.” He flicked his wrist.
Rubbing her wrist cuffs, a habit she’d developed only recently—the power of the genie lay in the cuffs and their soothing hum often helped ease her strain—she turned to go when a hard hand smacked her roughly on the ass.