It was, quite simply, the worst time in his entire genie life.

And as Fazire had lived millennia that was saying quite a lot.

He thought the worst was when Sarah slipped away two years ago.

Fazire had never known anyone who’d died and he’d known Sarah for decades. She was his roommate, his protector, his friend.

He’d had a good, long time with Sarah and he was lucky to have it. He knew that.

It didn’t make him miss her any less.

She was kind to him, took care of him even on her teacher’s salary. She kept him fed, clothed, happy and showered him with baseball tickets and suntan lotion. Sarah never, even though it was her right, asked a thing from Fazire in all her years. She just gave and gave and gave.

The first and only human any genie in the entire History of the Genie Race who had been entitled to but hadn’t asked for one single wish.

Sarah, in Genie Land, was a legend as Fazire thought she very well should be.

She’d at least, before she died, seen the outrageous beauty Lily had become, the now well-rounded perfectness that was just simply Lily. Off gallivanting across the world, or at least England where she went to university and then decided to stay. Becoming sophisticated and cosmopolitan but never losing her down-home, Indiana-girl charm and spirit.

Lily’s gold-white hair had changed. It was still golden with strands of white but also, unusually, had strands of strawberry blond as well as copper. And just to make it that bit more interesting, not that it could get much more interesting, here and there were strands of auburn.

She’d been awarded a scholarship to go study at some place called “Oxford” in England after she won some writing competitions, creating magnificent stories that it seemed everyone wanted to read.

Once in England she became more interested in what she called “footpaths” and tramping around in cathedrals and castles and every museum in London (and a fair few shops) and writing more of her wonderful, entertaining stories, than eating. She was busy, busy, busy and the weight just melted off.

Tall, like her mother, father and grandfather before her even though Fazire had only just seen photos of the handsome, slender Jim, Fazire knew he was tall, Lily was curvaceous with a very small waist and a lovely hourglass figure.

She’d matured into her plain face. Her skin was always impeccable but once the baby fat left it, her intelligence and humour fixed it with extraordinary elegance and beauty.

And now, with those miraculous eyes, well…

She was, quite simply, stunning.

Lily was the pride of all of them, Sarah, Becky, Will and Fazire.

And she had absolutely no idea. None whatsoever.

Lily looked in the mirror and saw the old Lily not the beauty she’d become.

So really Fazire had done his job, she definitely had humility and not the barest hint of conceit.

But now Lily looked beaten and he was very certain that this was the worst time in her entire human life as well.

She was sick every morning, he could hear her vomiting in the bathroom and he’d go in just like he did when she was a little girl and had the flu or one of her awful headaches that gave her so much pain she would get violently ill. Then he would stroke her back and hold her long, thick, glorious hair.

Fazire understood why she was ill, she was heartsick at losing her parents so close after her grandmother.

A plane crash. A horrible, hideous plane crash. They didn’t even have the bodies.

One day Becky and Will were in Hawaii for a much needed vacation. They were taking a day trip to another island on a small twin-engine aircraft (this, Fazire could not imagine, a plane, he thought, always needed a lot more than two engines).

The next day, they were gone.

Fazire had had to use the phone to call Lily in England. He knew how to use it, of course, he hadn’t been living like a human for years and not learned how to order a pizza. But it had taken a long time to track her down. She had some job in a shop and bought a rundown house in some seaside town in Somerset called Clevedon for what she called “no money at all” which, Will said, laid testimony to just how rundown it was. A house which she was determined to restore to its full Victorian beauty.

Call after call, she didn’t answer and Fazire finally decided she was not at her ramshackle abode.

She’d graduated from Oxford and declared she could not leave England. She loved it there. Fazire could see why from the pictures she sent home. It looked beautiful.

Nevertheless Fazire hated it. It took away Lily and he wanted her home.

And now she was home, though he would never have wanted her home like this.

After contacting one of her friends who Becky had in her address book, a woman named Maxine, Fazire had eventually found Lily. Maxine said she was staying somewhere in London and gave Fazire the number.

Lily had answered the phone and had been so excited to tell him something, her voice just dripping happiness. He couldn’t bear it, the sound of her happy voice while he was carrying his terrible news. He’d cut her short before she could put three words together and told her his grim tidings.

She’d, of course, taken the first flight home.

She sat next to him at the memorial service wearing a very smart, black suit that looked stylish and cultured and all the people around her didn’t know what to make of her. She was very much not the Lily who had left at sixteen to go to Oxford. She was like a modern day princess, graceful, beautiful, refined and untouchable.

She held herself in a regal way that made Fazire so proud to have her on his arm it nearly edged away his bitter sadness at losing his Becky and Will.

Lily was very brave and kind to people, she nodded and smiled. After the service they went back to Sarah’s limestone house which was now Lily’s and she played hostess beautifully, making people feel comfortable and at home even though Fazire knew from her pale skin and sunken eyes she was exhausted.

There was so much food, it was everywhere and the first time in his life he didn’t eat a bite. Nor did Lily.

Everyone knew Fazire, he’d been around for decades and, of course, not aged a single day. They thought this strange but they figured he was from some foreign land and many of them never left the Midwest so what did they know about how foreigners aged? So they’d accepted him. Being a genie and thus above mere mortals, he didn’t mix with them very often and now he did it only as his duty to Becky and Will and, of course, Lily. He helped Lily by playing host and kindly uncle-type figure (“uncle” was the term Sarah had come up to explain his presence in the family and Fazire liked it, always had).

Finally, hours after he thought it was seemly, the last of them left and Fazire cleaned up with a snap of his fingers because he knew Lily was too spent to do it. He put her to bed and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

“Fazire?” she whispered right before she fell away to dreamland.

“Yes, my lovely?”

When she replied, she was still whispering but her voice held a deep sadness that scored Fazire’s heart. “I’m never going to wish my last wish so you’ll stay with me forever.”

For the first time in his life he felt tears prick his eyes and maybe he finally understood a little bit of what Sarah was feeling when he first met her.

“That’s fine by me,” Fazire whispered back but her exhaustion had already melted to sleep.

The next days she got up and was immediately sick. Furthermore, any time the phone rang, her face lit up with a strange mixture of expectation and relief and she’d rush to it. But it was always clear it was not who Lily was hoping it would be just a friend or family member wishing to give their condolence or asking how she was doing. Her face would fall dramatically, as if the caller had told her the world was about to come crashing to an end.

The days turned to weeks and Lily’s phone rushes became more desperate. She was also making quiet calls time and again but whatever was said made her all the more desolate.

Fazire found himself concerned.

Lily nor Fazire did a thing to work out what to do next. Neither of them had gone into Becky and Will’s room, they couldn’t face it. And there were a great deal of Sarah’s belongings still there that should be sorted.

Lily had told him she didn’t want to move back to Indiana and he, well, he’d never been in a plane. Nor did he want to after Becky and Will’s awful demise, not that he could die but she could. He could and did (very often, mostly in order to channel his genie friends) go back into his bottle and he could travel that way. But after they had this brief conversation, no plan came about.

Something else was disturbing Lily, something that had something to do with the phone and her early morning sickness that still came every day.

Finally he could take it no more. She’d been home over a month and they were both drifting through the house, Lily reading most of the time, Fazire fretting.

This just wasn’t Lily.

She’d always had purpose, kept her room tidy, helped with the housework, got her homework done on time, pushed forward to submit her writing for competitions, helped with the cooking. She was a very good cook but then again she was very good at everything, Fazire made her that way. She was a well-reared, polite, industrious Indiana girl.

Now she was tired all the time even more cranky than Fazire (and Fazire was the King of Cranky, at least that was what Becky had called him), short-tempered and completely unmotivated.

This new behaviour, Fazire thought, was not going to do.

Someone had to take care of him after all. He couldn’t be expected to do it.

He decided it was high time to confront her. He knew she still had to be hurting about her parents, as was he, but they couldn’t carry on like this forever. She wasn’t even writing anymore.

“Lily, we have to talk,” Fazire announced one day when he’d come upon her reading again.

He’d decided to float during the conversation. He did this on occasion so he wouldn’t get out of practice. He also did it when he intended to put someone in their place, like he was going to put Lily now. He knew she was grieving but life had to go on. Sarah had said that after coming to terms with losing Jim and Becky had said it after coming to terms with losing Sarah so, considering Fazire thought Sarah and Becky the most intelligent of humans, he figured it must be true. And, he realised rather shockingly, he was the only family she had left. There was no one else to snap her out of whatever state she was in.

Just him.

“Fazire, I’m in the middle of a good part,” she murmured distractedly not even looking up at him and twirling a strand of hair around her finger like she’d done while reading or watching television since she was a little girl.

He used his magic to flip her book out of her hands, levitated the bookmark sitting on the table, slapped it in her place in the book and then the book flew across the room and set itself down well away from her.

She shot bolt upright on the couch. “Fazire!”

“You must tell me what’s going on,” he demanded in his best commanding-genie voice.

“I was reading,” she replied, being deliberately obtuse, her elegant face settling into a charming disgruntled look that did not, at all, work on him (it would have worked on Will, her father was a pushover where Lily was concerned).

“I don’t mean now, I mean with you.”

A shadow crossed her eyes. A shadow that was only part about losing both her parents in a plane crash six weeks ago.

“Lily,” he went on, “I don’t know if you realise this but I’m stuck in this world and it is not my world. Since you don’t intend to use your wish then I can’t go to someone else. I don’t even want to. But in the meantime I depend on you to take care of me. I can’t float around this house watching you read your books and twirl your hair forever. We have to have a plan and since I don’t know anything about you mortals, you are going to have to make the plan.”

“You know a lot more than you let on,” she accused.

He got down to brass tacks (another one of Sarah’s sayings that Fazire used but did not understand). “Indeed, I do, Lily-child, you would be wise to remember that. What’s troubling you?”

Her beautiful face closed down rebelliously. Fazire had forgotten that she could be the slightest bit rebellious and more-than-a-little stubborn. Fazire didn’t give her that, that she got from her mother and her father.

He floated closer. “Lily, tell me.”

“I… I, Fazire, I don’t know what’s going on. He was supposed to call. I had to leave so quickly and I wrote him a note, gave him my number here, told him what happened, told his brother what happened so he could tell him and he hasn’t called.” She stopped looking at Fazire and stared at the floor. “I can’t believe he hasn’t called, not after what I explained happened to my parents. And I’ve called him and the number isn’t working. I know it’s the right number but it’s been disconnected. I called his office but he isn’t returning my calls.” She finished, speaking as if to herself.

“Who?” Fazire asked.

Her incredible blue eyes lifted to his and there was a world of worry and hurt in them.

Then she said, “Nate.”

“Who, pray, is Nate?”

She fidgeted with her hands, dropping her head to stare at her nails.

“You remember my wish?” she asked.

How could he ever forget the most complicated wish ever?

“Yes,” Fazire answered.

Her eyes lifted again and in them was something that made Fazire’s genie heart beat a little faster.

“Well, it came true. His name is Nathaniel McAllister and he’s the most wonderful man ever. And, I think… Fazire, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have his baby.”

Fazire immediately stopped levitating and dropped heavily to the floor.

Then he screeched, “What?”

Lily shook her head and bit her lip before saying, “It was… I don’t know. I can’t think straight. It all happened so quickly. One second I was just, well, in London doing my normal London things. Going to museums, a little shopping…”

Fazire doubted it was a “little shopping”. Lily could shop like Jackie Robinson could steal a base.

She kept talking. “The next thing I knew I was going to fancy dinner parties and he was taking me out to romantic restaurants and midnight walks in the park and we made love again and again and again and it was so, it was…” she leaned forward, her eyes lighting before she whispered fervently, “spectacular. Mind-boggling. You cannot even imagine.”

Fazire tried floating again but could only get three feet off the floor. This was mainly because most of his concentration was spent on keeping his ears from burning and possibly dripping blood at his Lily-child talked about mind-boggling love-making.

“Then Mom and Dad…” She couldn’t finish. They both still could not talk about it.

“He hasn’t called,” Fazire finished for her.

“No.”

“Has he called, maybe, your thingie-ma-bobbie?” Fazire tried.

“My what?”

“The thing that records voices on the phone.”

“My answering machine?”

“Yes, that.”

“I picked up my messages, none were from him. He doesn’t know my number anyway. I was always in London with him, he never had to phone me and I’m not listed.”

Fazire thought for awhile. He was, although out of practice, very good at what he did. Sometimes genies could go for years and years without having their bottle rubbed so they knew there might be magical delays and any good genie prepared well for them. Fazire, if he did think so himself, was very, very good with his wishes.

And he’d made absolutely certain sure Lily’s was the best of all.

Something else must be happening with this… Nate.

Fazire peered at his mistress and made his decision.

Decision made, he declared, “Then we must go and find him.”

Fazire walked up the short staircase to the beautiful white house that Lily told him was something called “Georgian”. It had black shutters and in every window there were window boxes filled so full with startling red geraniums, you couldn’t tell where one flower stopped and the other started. Each box was trailing lacy, green ivy. There were fancy wrought iron fences in front of each house all were painted a shiny, perfect black.

All the houses looked exactly the same. It was almost as if they had a pact that everyone on the whole street would have the same coloured geraniums with trailing ivy so the street would look tidy and splendiferous.

Fazire very much wanted to hate this place called England and he was pretty certain he’d really hate London for although Jim had found his bottle in a market in London, Fazire had actually come from a bazaar in Morocco and never been released in Europe at all. But even though some of London was rather shocking, busy, grimy and graffiti-filled, this street was quite lovely.

During their terrifying plane ride (neither Lily nor Fazire had a good time on that plane after what happened to Becky and Will, and it had far more than two engines), Lily told him some people lived in this house that knew her Nate, a man and woman named Victor and Laura. She said they were nice people, kind and caring and they’d taken care of her after Nate had saved her life. Or, she’d understated the story when Fazire had been struck dumb at the idea that her life was in danger, and she explained this Nate saved her and her purse from a purse snatcher.

Lily was nervous, he could see her shaking and he stood two steps behind her. He was certain everything would be all right. This Nate had come to her through Fazire’s wish so of course it would be all right.

She knocked, using the hoop that went through a brass lion’s face nose. Fazire thought that was peculiar, he’d never seen a lion with a hoop through its nose but he figured he’d mention that titbit later maybe use it as an opening gambit to some future conversation with Lily’s Nate.

A dark-haired woman answered the door. Fazire was surprised that she was young, not much older than Lily. She was also crying, her face wet with tears and a mottled red with the force of her emotion. Fazire thought she might have been pretty without the tear-stained face but then decided she was not when she looked at Lily and her face contorted with repugnance and her eyes filled with hate.

“Oh, hello, Danielle, I was…” Lily paused then asked, “Are you all right?”

Lily stopped speaking and Fazire heard her voice was concerned as she lost all track of their quest and asked after the girl who was looking at her with such venom. Fazire wanted to grab Lily back but he stayed where he was in order to let her do what she needed to do.

“No, I’m not all right,” the girl snapped. “What are you doing here, Lily?”

Fazire found himself thinking these people who lived here weren’t very kind and caring at all.

Lily hesitated, somehow not surprised at this reaction from the woman, then she went on. “This is a little embarrassing but I had to leave town unexpectedly and now that I’m back, I went to Nate’s and his doorman says he doesn’t live there anymore. I was just –”

The woman didn’t allow her to finish, her face changed to what looked somewhat sly and scheming to Fazire but he lost those thoughts at the next words she said.

“Nate’s dead,” Danielle informed them coldly.

Then, without further ado, she slammed the door right in Lily’s face.

Lily stood staring at the door, frozen to the spot.

Fazire stood behind her, just as frozen.

And then, after what seemed like an age (and Fazire had lived many of them so he knew exactly how they felt), slowly she turned and stopped and simply stared down at him, every bit of colour had drained from her face.

Two years ago she’d lost her beloved grandmother. Barely two months ago she’d lost her parents. Now her new beloved boyfriend, the romantic hero that was supposed to sweep her off her feet and at the sound of their meeting and courtship he certainly did that, and love her more than the earth was dead.

She was twenty-two years old, pregnant with only a genie to call family.

And the expression on her face showed every bit of that pain and agony.

Fazire ascended the two last steps and carefully put his arm around her fragile, tense shoulders.

“Let’s get home,” he murmured to his Lily-child.

She didn’t move. In fact she seemed rooted to the spot.

Then she whispered, “But Fazire, where’s home?”

He had no answer for that, for he didn’t know.

Then it came to him.

“Wherever we make it, my lovely.”