Bad Luck Genie: An Urban Fantasy Folly Read online

  “I feel like I haven’t lived,” Lucy whispered.

  I glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

  “All this time, I just stayed in Omaha, focused on my problems, when there was a whole world out there. I’ve missed out on so much.”

  Penny paused and peered at us from down the aisle. She gestured for us to hurry. Lucy started toward her, but I grabbed her hand. A thought of how I pushed her away, practically demanding she back off, yet I had a hard time keeping my hands to myself flitted through my mind.

  “If you take time to appreciate what’s in front of you, it doesn’t mean you’re missing out,” I said.

  Lucy lifted a brow. “Right, but… Sigvald probably isn’t stopping to view the museum. Do you think we might be able to after we’re done?”

  Penny hurried to us, eyes narrowed. “We don’t have time to sightsee right now.”

  Lucy grumbled. Maybe I should just let him take the bone. Worry and fear permeated from the silk bond. But what kind of world would we have if Sigvald makes his wish?

  “We need to figure out where the sarcophagus is.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Let’s look around.”

  I scanned the surrounding people. Most were taking pictures of the ceilings, the alcoves, the woodwork, and stones. Staircases led to the upper levels of the museum, and in the small recessed area below was a rickety door. Sigvald and two goons were there. My heartrate increased, and I nudged Lucy.

  She froze, then tugged on Penny’s arm. “Mom.”

  I summoned my blending powers and hoped I could block both Lucy and Penny. I’ve only had to camouflage one other person at a time under direct scrutiny, but the circumstances outweighed the risks. We sidled along the side stone wall, and Lucy halted.

  The pearl of the orient is engraved in this stone.

  The smell of rotten vegetation mingled with the scent of old stone and history. A gun appeared in my hands. I nearly dropped it. It wasn’t as heavy as a loaded gun would be.

  “Somebody stop them!” one goon yelled.

  I gaped at Sigvald and his goons, who smirked as they slipped through the doors and down a dark stairwell.

  Guards ran toward us, pulling their batons and Taser guns. “Drop the weapon! Now!”

  People screamed. The church erupted into madness. I froze. People rushed for the exits.

  “Hey, mister,” Lucy said, “I don’t think your Taser is functioning properly.” Magic, in the tones of wildflowers and fresh air, wiped away the sour smell of Sigvald’s dark power.

  “I said, drop the weapon!” The guard pulled the trigger.

  The cartridge flew, but it backfired instead, the prongs hitting the guard. He dropped to the floor, convulsing.

  Penny smacked the other guard’s nose with her palm, and he fell hard. We scrambled to the door and down the dark stairs, chasing Sigvald into the maze of catacombs.

  Chapter 22

  The temperature dropped the farther I stumbled down stone stairs in the dark. Mal and Mom followed me. I tugged my phone from my back pocket and turned on the flashlight. The steps evened onto a landing. One direction led toward a storage alcove with covered furniture, and the other led to a flight of steps descending deeper into the church. My gut told me that was the way.

  Mal stepped in front of me, holding a gun—not the one that had appeared in his hands—out in front of him in a two-handed grip. Mom held a gun, too. I swallowed. I couldn’t think about weapons. I needed to focus on the task ahead of me, which was reaching Rasputin’s bone before Sigvald. And he was winning the race.

  “Stay behind him,” Mom whispered. “I’ve got your back.”

  But who has her back? I squeezed my eyes shut. Focus, Lucy! I followed Mal down the stairs, holding up my phone to light the way. My limbs shook. My heart raced. The stairwell turned in a tight four-corner square deep into the dark depths below.

  Mal halted and stepped to the side. An underground labyrinth of stone and sarcophagi crowded in front of us. The air smelled damp and musty, and the inky shadows beyond my flashlight threatened no end to the maze. My chest hitched. There were too many choices. Maybe we should take the left corridor. No, wasn’t there a saying about right turns always meeting with good fortune? Going straight might be easiest, but it could lead to a trap. Were there traps here? This was too dangerous. Guns, dark djinnis, and an old man’s bones that granted power—it was insane.

  I bit back a whimper. No, I refused to let fear take me. I slapped my cheeks. Bad or good luck—whichever, it was time to get down to business. “Which way do we go?”

  Mom lowered her gun. “Should we follow Sigvald?”

  “Turn off your flashlight for a moment,” Mal whispered.

  I closed the app, and darkness pressed around us. Straight ahead, warm light flickered against a passage. Mal grabbed my hand, his fingers wrapping around my palm and pulling me behind him. I reached behind me and grabbed Mom’s hand. It’d suck if we were separated in the dark. Well, it’d suck for me; Mom and Mal would be fine. He squeezed my hand. Right. I needed to stop thinking about what could go wrong, and more about the day ending without a dark djinni gaining limitless power.

  Following the glow while my heart pounded in my ears, we crept around the corner. What would we do when we came upon them? I guessed Mal and Mom would take care of it. Maybe I could curse them? Sigvald only had two goons with him this time, so what happened to goons three and four? They probably waited outside the church as a backup or something.

  I followed Mal around another corner and came to an abrupt stop in a tight dead-end of stone and a single casket. Sigvald and goon one were pushing open the sarcophagus while goon two held a torch high. I sucked in a sharp breath, and goon two whirled around.

  Mal leveled his gun on Sigvald. “Don’t make a move.”

  “Stop them!” Sigvald shoved the lid off. It crashed to the stone floor.

  Goon two lumbered toward us, lowering the torch.

  “Don’t drop the torch!” I yelled, hoping to confuse him.

  He frowned at me but hesitated. Mom jumped in front of him, swung her gun, and pistol-whipped his face. He dropped the torch, but the flame didn’t sputter out. Then she fired a round into goon two’s knee. I clapped my hands over my ears, gaping at the blood rolling down his leg. He howled and turned into a cloud of burnt orange smoke. Supervillain Sigvald ignored us, rummaging in the coffin.

  “Back away from the sarcophagus, Strause.” Mal’s voice held a warning. He sounded as sexy as dark chocolate paired with a dry red wine.

  Sigvald sneered at us, sweat glistening on his forehead in the flickering torchlight. He dissolved into a plume of purple-black smoke and zipped away. Mal swiveled and fired after him, but djinni smoke was too fast. Goon one puffed, too, and raced after Sigvald.

  “Smoke and mirrors,” Mal growled, lowering the gun.

  Mom peered inside the coffin. “It’s a full skeleton. This isn’t Rasputin’s sarcophagus.”

  “Let’s follow them.” Mal shifted to smoke.

  Mom followed suit, and they billowed out of the corridor. My heart hammered too fast, and I was too nervous to concentrate on shifting. I chased after them on foot. Mal, tall and handsome, ran back for me while Mom hovered as a plume of smoke in the hallway.

  “Let’s go.” He held his hand out to me, his voice soft and urgent.

  I reached for him, but a pearl carved in the stone wall caught my eye. Wasn’t there a pearl engraved on the wall inside the church that led us to the catacombs stairway? This was a maze marker. I turned around and padded back into the dead-end corridor, scanning the wall with my phone flashlight. I didn’t see any pearls etched into the stone here. Maybe Sigvald’s clue didn’t include the pearl like the cave mural did.

  “Lucy!” Mom said in her mom-voice. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Mal propped his hands on his hips. “You think the pearls mark the way to go?”

  Mom’s expression softened as she studied the walls. I brushed past t
hem, walking farther down the hallway, noticing another pearl in the stone ahead.

  I looked at them. “Which way did they go?”

  “Straight ahead,” Mom said.

  I nodded and jogged forward, flashing my light on either side of the passageway. At an intersection of stone and coffins, I peered around the corners. There! On the left was another oblong pearl. I grinned and turned into that hallway. I hardly felt the cool damp air as another pearl popped up a little way down the hall.

  “There’s another on the right.” Excitement pitched my voice high.

  Mal sprinted ahead of me, his gun leading the way as he turned the corner. “There’s a coffin here.”

  In this stone maze of burial sites, he didn’t have to speak loud for me to hear him. Mom lightly tapped my shoulder, smiling, and together we trotted after him. He examined the sarcophagus, but something wasn’t right. It was nothing like the squat one in the Rushmore Cave.

  “You’re right,” Mal said. “I don’t think this is it.”

  “Huh?” Mom asked, her eyes moving between us.

  “Mal’s reading my thoughts again.” I moved my flashlight over the bare walls. “This doesn’t look like the sarcophagus we saw a few days ago. And there isn’t a mural. Do you think there’d be another mural here?”

  “So this was a false lead.” Mom pursed her lips. “All right, one of these halls will lead to the real sarcophagus. Let’s shift to smoke—”

  “I won’t be able to spot these pearls as smoke.” I shook my head.

  “But if Sigvald beats us to it…”

  “That hallway we found him in didn’t even have a pearl engraved on the stones.” My breath caught. We still had a chance at beating him. “He doesn’t know they’re clues. C’mon, let’s go.”

  I backtracked to the intersection and continued down the original hallway. At the next juncture of tunnels, I saw a pearl ahead of us. Time had worn some of the crispness of the carving away, but there was no mistaking what it was. I chuckled; I couldn’t help but enjoy myself. I felt like Indiana Jones. I hoped Sigvald wasn’t like the villain in The Temple of Doom, and I covered my chest with my hand as I followed the pearl down to another similar enclosed space.

  “This isn’t it, either.” Mom glowered, her hands on her hips.

  My shoulders sagged and I bit my lip. I’d just showed her how competent I could be despite bad luck, and immediately I’d let her down. Maybe she was right. I was cursed.

  “It’s all right.” Mal placed a hand on the small of my back. “One of these will eventually lead us to Rasputin’s bones.”

  I glared at the oblong pearl. No pearl was perfectly round, but now that I stared at it, willing it to show me the way, I didn’t think it was the same as the one in the Rushmore Cave. I unlocked my phone, pulled up the picture of the mural, and zoomed in on the pearl centered over Manila. It wasn’t oblong.

  “The pearl we want is a teardrop.” I showed them the image on my phone. “We’ve been following the wrong shape.”

  Mom chuckled and jogged out of the hallway, calling back, “You’re just like your father. Let’s go, honeybee.”

  Hearing her say that filled me with more joy than I could have ever imagined. My eyes watered and I blinked furiously, chasing after her. Maybe I hadn’t disappointed her like I’d thought. Or she didn’t care about the curse anymore.

  Mal came up alongside me, and I flashed him a grin. His dark brows lifted slightly, and he gave me something of a sad smile. I stopped when I caught up with Mom, ready to ask him what that look was for.

  “We don’t have time,” he murmured. “Lead the way, Indy.”

  My cheeks heated. Of course he knew I facetiously compared myself to a fictional character.

  Mom snorted. “If Sigvald starts talking in tongues, be sure to cover your heart.”

  I swallowed my laughter so only one of them would know I secretly enjoyed the teasing. “Har har, you two.”

  We walked along the corridor, passing oblong pearls and ignoring them. The crack of stone against stone echoed deeper within the maze, but no terrible power being unsealed, no shouts of victory. Scanning the walls with my flashlight app, sweat collected at my hairline. What if I was wrong about the shape of the pearl and this was a wild goose chase? What if we couldn’t stop Sigvald?

  “I think I see one,” Mom whispered, pointing to the right.

  Mal jogged over and illuminated the wall with a penlight. “It’s definitely teardrop-shaped.”

  “What if it’s a trap?” I asked softly.

  A loud angry shout sounded close by.

  “Even if it is, we have to try, honeybee.” Mom wrapped me in a hug and patted my back. “I want you to know I’m proud you’re my daughter.”

  My heart swelled, and I returned the hug, however quickly. I pulled away and hurried down the hall. It was longer than most, taking us deep into the center of the catacombs. I’d noticed some oblong pearls leading into obvious dead ends, but we continued following the one that had been etched on the Rushmore Cave.

  We spilled into a room, the stone floor petering away to dirt. Crumbled pillars dotted the floor, or maybe they were ancient coffins that gave in to time. The fresh scent of flowers laid over dank undertones of mud, and shafts of sunlight dappled the catacombs’ ground. A meadow of white orchids bloomed in clumps of the light, and on the wall was a mural of columns and what appeared to be swimming pools. A child-sized sarcophagus rested on stone in the middle of the opening with foreign words and fox-tailed flowers etched in stone.

  “This is definitely it.” Mal holstered his gun and approached the sarcophagus. He pushed against the lid. “It’s locked, just like the last one.”

  I paced around the room, studying the tall, dirt ceiling. I could see grass at the edges of holes and bright blue sky. Had we left the church grounds? I wasn’t sure, and it didn’t really matter. I paused in front of the orchids, and my breath whooshed out of me.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  “What?” Mal stopped beside me, scanning the area.

  “These are albino aerides.” I aimed my phone at the flowers. “Really rare orchids. Mags is gonna be so jealous I’ve seen them.”

  Mom snorted. “We don’t have time to stop and smell the roses, Lucy. Tanaka, watch the hall while I figure this out. There’s a phrase written in… Tagalog.”

  She was right. But I crouched in front of the orchids. They were beautiful and not something I could leave behind when I knew how much Mags would love them. The dirt around the stem felt moist. It must’ve rained recently, and there was a good chance I could dig it up. Mom muttered under her breath, ignoring me, so I dug until I could fit my hands under the bulb and gently pried it from the dirt. I buried my face in the blossoms and breathed deeply. The flowers smelled lovely. Their fragrance was light, not overly sweet. It was the kind of stuff people would dab behind their ears.

  Just like I had with the bullet last night, I needed to make the bottle take in these orchids. A flash of my conversation with Mal about my pervy thoughts flickered in my head, and my ears burned. Nope. I couldn’t think about that right now. I neatly boxed that away and concentrated on my bottle. With a puff of blue smoke, it appeared in front of me as if I’d summoned it.

  I peeked at Mal and Mom. He watched me with a shuttered expression, and Mom tugged her lower lip while frowning at the phrases carved in stone.

  I lowered my head to the bottle, whispering, “You will take these flowers and keep them alive.”

  In a blink of an eye, the flowers stretched into a tapered point and the bottle sucked them up. I grinned. Once we returned home, my Chucks were definitely going inside this bottle. I replaced it in my backpack, straightened, and approached the mural. After wiping my hands clean on my jeans, I took a picture of the mural, in case it’d help like the one in the Rushmore Cave had.

  “Huh.” Mom waved me over. “What do you make of this?”

  I padded next to her and crossed my eyes at the words. “I
can’t read that. Can you?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  “What does it say?”

  “One side says, ‘Rest in sacred sleep,’ and the other says, ‘Crush the love child of the air on the tomb to reveal darkness’s bone.’ I’m assuming darkness means Rasputin.” Mom sighed. “But I have no idea what they mean by crushing the love child of the air.”

  Mal watched us. “It looked like Sigvald had opened the Rushmore tomb with boxwork, which is natural to that cave.”

  “The love child of the air. What the hell does that even mean?” Mom tugged on her braid, her mouth pinched into a thin line.

  The rest of the tomb became deathly silent. I wondered what happened with Sigvald. I frowned, not sure what the riddle meant either, but something about the clue sounded weirdly familiar. I examined the small opening in the dirt ceiling and followed the butter-yellow ray of light to the field of flowers. The white orchid petals practically glowed in the sunlight.

  “Wait… you said ‘rest in sacred sleep?’ ” I asked, approaching the flowers once more.

  “Yes, but that’s not the riddle,” Mom said. “Crush the love child of the air on the tomb to reveal darkness’s bone.”

  “Did you know there’s a legend behind these albino orchids?” I asked.

  “Honeybee… We don’t have time for this,” Mom sternly said.

  “Hear her out,” Mal snapped. “Go on, Luce. What’s the legend?”

  I licked my lips, darting glances between Mal and my mother. “A long time ago in a jungle, a chief and a beautiful maiden met. Their lovemaking was so intense it gave birth to these white flowers.” I gazed at the cluster of fox tail flowers. “Natives call these the flower of the sacred sleep—”

  Mom gasped.

  “—And aerides literally means child of the air.” I held my hand out. “Can I borrow your knife, Mal?”

  “It’s sharp now.” He gave me his Swiss army knife. “Don’t feel like using your hands this time?”

  “I’m not going for the bulb.” I crouched in front of the flowers.