Wanted: Undead or Alive

Stress Relief

I tossed the phone on the bed and went to answer the knock.

Nick was standing on my doorstep in a pair of black cotton boxer briefs holding a bottle of wine and his cellphone. His skin glowed softly in the dim light of the gloomy evening. The faint outlines of blue tattoos swirled across his torso and over his bare arms. His eyes buzzed with electricity. The snow melted into puddles around his bare feet.

My heart hammered, and my stomach flipped. I wanted to throw myself into his arms, to run away, to punch him in the face.

At the bottom of the stairs, Mr. Jorgenson neared the end of the drive where he would, no doubt, turn around and come back toward us.

I grabbed Nick's weirdly warm forearm, yanked him into the apartment, and slammed the door shut.

He said nothing.

The urges to run away or punch him died beneath the power of wanting to be in his arms. "What the hell, Nick?"

He wandered into the kitchen and started opening cupboards while I gaped at him, truly and utterly speechless. A muscle in his jaw jumped. For a moment, his luminescence faded. When it came back, it was brighter than before. On his third try, he found the glasses. He selected two and turned to face me. "Do you have a wine key?"

"What?" My eyes acted entirely apart from my will. They took the full tour. It was a minute before I was looking at his face again. By then, there was no spit in my mouth and the only thing in my brain was something akin to the sound of cicadas screaming.

"Do you have a wine key? A corkscrew?"

I must have indicated the proper drawer, because he thanked me, opened the third drawer from the left, and pulled out the dollar store corkscrew I'd purchased on my twenty-first birthday and used maybe half a dozen times over the years since.

He carried everything to the coffee table and set it all down before sitting on one end of the sofa, turning toward the middle, and tucking one naked foot under the other naked thigh.

My mouth started working, but my brain hadn't fully rebooted just yet. "Why... What are you... Aren't... How..."

Nick pushed his hand through his hair, reached for the wine bottle, uncorked it, and poured two glasses. "Come, sit face-to-face with me. Drink wine and talk."

I wobbled toward him on trembling legs and dropped onto the couch. "Can you teleport?"

"Not usually." He handed me one of the glasses.

"What is happening right now?"

"You made a wish."

The cicadas screamed louder. Not everyone knows this, but cicadas can actually drown out emergency sirens. They're really freaking loud sometimes.

"A wish?"

"You wished for me to show up on your doorstep with a bottle of good wine and we could sit down together, face to face and talk and let the rest of the world do whatever it's going to do for one evening."

"A wish."

"That's right."

Understanding dawned like the sun peeking over the edge of the ocean. "You said you were sorry."

"I did."

"And now you're in my debt."

"I am."

"And you're a djinn."

"In part." He stared into his glass.

I fought the urge to hide my face. Is that my feeling or his? "Why would you do that?"