“Yes. You have to understand, Naomi, people were dying horrible deaths, and so many! The countryside was in a panic, and everywhere you could see the terror in people’s faces. No one knew what was causing it, how it spread so quickly. There were no cures, and the things that were said to be cures were often times as bad as the sickness, and always ineffective.”
“I was a young mage, in my early twenties, an apprentice in training, and my Master, the alchemist I was studying under, had left the city on a quest for knowledge, as so many alchemists did at the time. Then the plague arrived. I was alone, bursting with magical knowledge, a promising future as a powerful mage before me. And healing was my special calling. I wanted to help. That was the worst. I was sure I could cast the right spell that would allow me to save lives. To make a difference. It wasn’t hubris,” he declaimed. “I was desperate to do something. People were dying by the hundreds. The bodies, the smells, the cries of the families. I couldn’t do nothing.”
Naomi nodded, understanding clearly. “So you cast a spell.”
He nodded also. “I cast a spell to be able to help people. And the magic that I called bound me to a Djinn vessel, forced to grant wishes to all those who had possession of my vessel.”
“An old perfume bottle,” Alessandra spoke up. “It’s lovely, hand-blown glass, all in purples with gold leaf trim. I found it wrapped in the folds of an old quilt in my attic.”
“Wait, what?” Naomi frowned, trying to puzzle that out. “From the fourteenth century?”
Julian shook his head. “No, but the bottle would travel, magically, for the next owner to find. I never knew when, or to where, I would be called next, until the person meant to have it, found it and activated the spell.”
Naomi felt a shudder crawl through her. “How horrible for you!”
“Yes, rather,” he admitted. “The Djinn had been alerted through the use of their magic when the spell was cast, and they set someone to help me along the way. A mentor, if you will. Which is how I met Jacinth. The Djinn also set some of their people to studying the spell, to see if there was a way out. And,” he drew a deep breath, reaching his hand to Alessandra, and their fingers intertwined. “There was only one way to break the spell. The bottle’s owner must use all three wishes to help others. Not one wish used for their own benefit. Only then would I be freed from the spell.”
Naomi opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Alessandra chuckled in sympathy.
“I know, right?”
Naomi found her voice. “For sixhundredyears?” she asked, her voice rising.
“Six hundred seventy-one,” Alessandra said, “if you want to be exact.”
“And in all that time, no one …” her voice trailed off, and she scrunched up her nose, considering that. “Okay, I can actually see that. I don’t think I could not use at least one wish for myself. In fact,” she sat up straighter in her chair, “I know that I would have to use one, the only one that really counted, to never, ever turn Rogue.”
Across from her, Alessandra leaned forward, one long strand of pale blonde hair falling forward over her shoulder. “Actually, that raises an interesting question. Would that be considered self-serving? Of benefit to you? Or might that be considered a selfless wish, to not want to bring death to others?”
“You make an excellent point, my love,” Julian said, bringing her hand up to his mouth and pressing a kiss on the back. “I have no idea.”
“The other problem with the magic, though, was that Julian wasn’t able to tell me how to free him. He could only tell me that itcouldbe done.”
“Oh, that totally sucks.”
“To make it worse, the only thing that he was able to tell me was that, once I had made my third wish, he and his bottle would be whisked away by the magic, and I’d never see him again.”
Naomi wasn’t able to hold back a gasp of horror. “Oh, no! How awful!”
“I’d already used two of my wishes, and I even considered simply never using my third wish,” Alessandra confessed. “By then, we were very much in love, and the idea of losing him, of never seeing him again, was too awful to be borne.”
“So what happened?” asked Naomi, about dying of curiosity by now. “Obviously, you used that third wish.”
Alessandra grimaced. “I was mugged. Sort of. My car broke down in a bad part of town…”
Julian interrupted, giving Alessandra a pointed glance. “Her old, beat-up Volkwagen Beetle, which I told her over and over needed to either be completely overhauled, or replaced.”
“Hey, it’s a classic!” She defended. “Anyway, I wound up in the middle of a police chase, and the guy took me hostage. I managed to get out of his hold and the police officer in pursuit got the shot to take the guy down, but the police officer himself was shot. He was there in the street, dying, because he’d tried to save me… so I called for Julian, and wished for him to save the police officer.”
Naomi clapped her hands, excited. “And he was freed!”
“Not exactly.” Their hands, still entwined, tightened their clasp, as Julian took up the tale. “The magic pulled me away, into some kind of… I want to call it a vortex, but honestly I have no idea. I heard Jacinth calling to me, telling me that I had to choose. Choose a time and a place.”
“And he chose me,” Alessandra broke in, all but glowing with happiness as she gazed at Julian. “Although, he was actually gone two days. I thought he was gone forever. And then suddenly, he was there, in my living room.”
Julian chuckled. “And we lived happily ever after.”
Naomi heaved a huge sigh, unable to hold back her smile, no matter how sappy she thought she must look. “That is so sweet I could almost die,” she told them.
