Loretta bit her lip and took a deep breath before she peered into the keyhole and slid the pick into the narrow opening. “You will open for me,” she murmured.
*
The night guard of annex number five was accustomed to the occasional break in. Over his long career of twenty-nine years he had seen many comings and goings of the kind that that would shock and astonish. At first there had been burglars, brazen thieves and robbers in the night who came to plunder and steal from the secret storage facilities. But over time this had changed, priorities had changed, and the secrets of Annex Five were either left to rot or moved to more modern, up to date facilities. After years of more goings than comings, the annex was mostly empty and falling into disrepair. The break-ins changed too, left now to the homeless searching for shelter and the arsonists looking for a good time.
The night guard checked his watch and shifted in his seat to prevent his cheeks from numbing as he settled into the second hour of his shift, and yet another re-run of Eastenders before he planned to tune in to the live New Year’s celebrations at twenty to midnight. Working on New Year’s Eve did not really bother the night guard. He had three adult children that he and his wife were struggling to put through university on their modest wages so the overtime and public holiday bonuses were always welcome. Taking another sip of his instant coffee, he resolved that he would leave it at least another hour before he did his first tour of the building for that evening, just because it was New Year’s. Other than that, it was just a regular Thursday night.
On the far side of the building from where the night guard sat enjoying his New Year’s Eve, there was an alley shrouded with tall trees that ran along the dilapidated back of the building. In that alley there was a boy, leaning against a large red rubbish bin. He turned suddenly, dropping a cigarette from his lips and grinding it to ash beneath his heel as he did so.
Concealed from the CCTV camera in his shadow and that of the big red bin was a curious scene. Another boy, slightly taller than the first, was staring at his watch intently, only glancing up occasionally to keep an eye on the back door of annex number five. A pretty blonde haired girl hung off his arm, also watching the watch and the door. Before the door, pressed with her face to the keyhole, was Loretta. The sleeves of her oversized hoodie were rolled up to her elbows and her slightly wild and unkempt brown curls were held at bay by a simple rubber band. Over her knee a tool bag was unravelled like a makeup brush kit, and in her petite fingers she held a tension wrench, and the pick.
Loretta had a talent for picking locks that would turn the blood of any honest person cold. She wasn’t dishonest. Admittedly for a sixteen-year-old she’d had a pretty bad run, but it was all circumstantial. Loretta wasn’t dishonest.
She just liked picking locks.
Overhead the pitch New Year’s sky resonated with the deep-throated boom of fireworks over the Thames, but streets away in the narrow alley, shadowed by tall warehouses and hidden behind the stench of open drains and over-sized rubbish bins, Loretta crouched in front of a keyhole uncaring of the celebrations and off-key, drunken renditions of Auld Lang Syne that the masses were enjoying down by the river. She pushed her hair out of her eyes one more time as she leaned forward and glared at the brass keyhole.
“If you would refrain from breathing down my neck for the next minute or so, that would be great,” she half snapped, half grunted at whoever was immediately behind her.
“The security van will come by again in exactly–” there was a pause. A short ‘looking at my watch’ pause, “–in exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds,”
“And counting,” another voice added with a smirk.
“Then bug off and give me some space,” Loretta muttered as she slid the hook down the shaft of the lock for a fifth time, feeling the pins carefully while holding the tension wrench steady with her free hand.
“Hush you two. Let her work,” said Jess.
“We shouldn’t have brought either of you with us,”
“Oh shut up Stan, you wouldn’t be getting in if you hadn’t brought us,” Jess patted Loretta on the back. Loretta grunted unappreciatively as one of the pins slipped.
“Sorry Letty,” Jess grimaced.
“Three minutes, forty-eight seconds,” Peter was watching their time. The second hand seemed to be moving abnormally fast.
“One more try.” Loretta insisted. It had been some time since a lock had gotten the better of her.
She closed her eyes, even though it was already pitch black up the alley. The fireworks were over and while the sounds of celebration and revelry and police sirens could still be heard so near, the only lights and noise by them were those where the alley met the main road, and the light of Jess’ phone that she held in an attempt at helpfulness up to the lock that wouldn’t budge. As Loretta closed her eyes she inhaled deeply, letting it all out slow as the wrench went back in, and the hook followed. The first three pins were old news. The fourth and the last were giving her grief. Her chest tightened, telling her it was time to breathe again.
“One minute, fifty-seven seconds. It’s time to give up.” Peter shoved his phone back in his pocket and took Jess’ hand, “Come, we can return in ten minutes.”
“Not again.” Loretta frowned, eyes still closed.
“Don’t be stupid!”
A van slowed at the end of the alley and indicated in.
“Letty!” Jess squeaked in fear.
Stan grabbed her shoulder.
“Got it!” Loretta straightened up and turned the lock in one fluid movement. The door opened in and she threw herself forward into the darkness, her momentum taking Stan with her. Peter and Jess came seconds later, almost too late as the headlights lit the door frame and Stan slammed the door shut.
Loretta gave him a look of disgust, “Let’s hope they didn’t hear that over the engine.”
“They won’t.” Stan was confident.
Loretta straightened up and folded her arms as she looked around her, “I thought you said this was abandoned.”
“It is,” Peter insisted.
They were standing in a corridor, lit with a dim row of emergency lighting.
“This is not an abandoned building. That lock was not an abandoned lock.”
“Come on. You said it yourself only a day ago, that it’s old, a five pin tumbler, easy if it’s not too rusty,” Stan pointed out.
“Old and rusty doesn’t mean abandoned,” Peter said, in a half distracted voice as he lowered his DSLR camera and looked both ways down the hall. He’d clearly been expecting something else.
“Well look, we’ve only just started,” Stan argued.
“Maybe we should go,” Jess suggested, observing the empty hall in both directions, “this is going to be like The Shining or something, isn’t it?”
“You should never have come,” Stan stuck a finger in her face.
“You wouldn’t be in here if I hadn’t introduced you to her,” Jess jabbed her thumb at Loretta.
Loretta had wandered off down the hall.
“Loretta? We didn’t need all that fuss! A drill or a good kick would have done it.”
Loretta turned, “A drill would have made enough noise to alert the entire neighbourhood and would have given you, oh, maybe five minutes before the security guard raised the alarm, especially seeing as this warehouse is clearly not abandoned, Stan. So why are we here? Why did you drag me, Peter, and his lovely girlfriend Jess—who does not have a juvenile record might I add—out here in the middle of the night?”
“I told you, I don’t know,”
“Stan, look, I’ve known you for what, two months now? And I already know you well enough to tell that you blink twice as many times as normal when you are lying. If I can tell that, surely you either lie too often, or are very bad at doing it.”
“Pfff, what are you talking about?”
“She’s calling you a liar,” Jess articulated the word ‘liar’ as clearly as she could.
“Let’s just leave,” Peter dropped his shoulders and went to put his ear to the door to see if the guard was gone.
“Okay okay. It used to be a storage annex of the British Museum,” Stan admitted with defeat.
“What?” Peter pulled away from the door and took a step toward Stan in anger.
“I swear the public records say this place has been empty for fifty years,”
“But you knew better,” Peter suggested.
“I always do, bruv,” Stan laughed.
“You idiot. Stan, this is supposed to be urban exploration, and you’ve just turned it into breaking and entering.”
“Urban exploration,” Jess smirked. She didn’t think much of her boyfriend’s hobbies, despite choosing to accompany him tonight.
“I hate to break it to you, but ‘Urban exploration’ is breaking and entering,” Loretta pointed out.
The topic clearly irked Peter, “Look, so long as we are breaking into abandoned buildings for the sole purpose of taking photos–”
“And getting a sweet kick,” Stan reminded him.
“–then we are not going to get a record for it, come on, they have bigger problems than a bunch of teens taking photos of filth and decay in derelict buildings,”
“I kind of like the way you make the words ‘filth’ and ‘decay’ sound romantic,” Jess took Peter’s arm and leaned into him.
He shook her off. “Come on Stan, what’s going on here?”
“Something. That’s what. I swear this building is owned by the British Museum but has been listed as empty for fifty-five years. My research was thorough, I swear, and you know I’m good for it.” He held his ground though Peter was a good half foot taller than he.
“What’s the ‘something’ then?” Loretta asked.
“Loretta, if I knew that, I would have said. I just thought a derelict building owned by a museum might make for some interesting observations, all in the name of urban art of course.”
“Only my grandmother calls me ‘Loretta’. You don’t look much like my grandmother.”
Stan shook his head at her and turned away. “Come with me or don’t, I don’t care. I’m going to look around,”
Peter sighed and picked his camera up from where it hung around his neck. Jess latched back onto his arm, and Loretta followed behind as they made their way begrudgingly down the hall after Stan.
“You can still get arrested for breaking into a building, even if it is abandoned,” Loretta muttered. She didn’t really fancy being caught breaking and entering, again.
It was even colder in the warehouse than the winter evening had been outside, and the soft chill of air-conditioning in the still of the night made the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight. She pulled her hoodie closer around her neck.
The warehouse was a labyrinth. Of the many corridors that led off the hall they entered by, all led to smaller corridors and rows of locked doors, all with a circular window of wire embedded glass and brass numbers beneath brass description plates. The ruled description cards, where legible, looked like they had not been altered in the last century.
“It’s like they walked away and just left everything here,” Stan said in a whisper.
“I don’t like it. It’s creepy,” Jess announced.
“Do you remember that mental asylum we drove to in East Sussex?” Stan said to Peter.
Peter nodded.
“Familiar isn’t it?” Stan said, as he tapped one of the door plaques.
“Hmmmm,” Peter grunted his reply. “Why would they just walk away?” he asked as he brushed the dust off the sign on one of the doors, “Greater Maghreb, room twelve,” he read aloud.
A drip of water hit Loretta’s forehead. She looked up at the flickering light. Above it there were cracks growing in the water logged ceiling, and mould growing in the cracks. The water damage got worse further down the hall, with wet plaster crumbling and hanging in clumps from the remnants of the framework in the ceiling. Even the floor was damp beneath her feet, and the short-circuiting light flickered in time with the drips.
“What’s ‘Greater Maghreb’?” she asked, looking to Peter.
“Sort of Africa, the north. Morocco, Tunisia and all that, sort of.” Peter’s knowledge extended to an extra year of education, the year that Loretta had spent ‘away’.
“Do you think there’s like, artefacts still in there?” Stan asked, rubbing clean the glass pane and cupping his hands around his eyes to see what he could see.
“Maybe this place is abandoned,” Jess suggested. “It looks like they couldn’t care less about what happens to it.” She picked at a sliver of peeling wall paint to illustrate her point.
“Then why would the lights be on?” Peter asked.
“Look at the roof, look at the floor. They don’t care anymore. There’s nothing here. The lights are on to stop hooligans like us from hiding in the dark,” Loretta said.
“They have the air-con on for us too, do you think?” Stan asked as he shoved his shoulder against the door.
“Stan!” Jess squeaked. The sound he made was quite loud.
Loretta rolled her eyes and made a point of pushing him out of the way.
This lock gave in much quicker.
Stan rubbed his hands together, “Let’s see what ‘Greater Maghreb’ has to show us,”
Jess snorted at him.
Loretta followed them through the door last, and checked for a working handle on the inside before she carefully pushed it to.
The darkness beyond was complete. Peter had a large torch in his backpack, but it took him a moment to find it before they could see what had been behind the door.
As the torch lit the room, it showed rows upon rows and stacks upon stacks of heavy brown cardboard boxes. In the corner by the leaky corridor the stacks were mouldy and had collapsed into each other like a soggy pile of brown pancakes. Stan walked straight up to the first dry stack of boxes and took the lid off the top box. Inside there was not much more than a bound paperwork, records and hand written notes.
He screwed up his nose, “This might not be as interesting as I hoped – looks like we have broken into a records facility.” He dumped the wad of papers back in the box and left the lid discarded on the floor as he walked to the next stack.
Jess stayed by the door, clutching her phone for the light it provided, but Peter and Loretta both ventured forward after Stan. Loretta made a path straight for a large glass fronted cabinet she had spotted against the back wall of the room. The inside of the cabinet was hard to see through the dark and the thick layers of dust, but the small padlock on the sliding door gave way with relatively little effort. Loretta slid the glass aside just as Stan came up behind her wielding the torch. He reached into the cabinet over her shoulder and pulled out the first thing he touched—a long, rust encrusted sword with a curved blade. The handle had long been eaten away by decay, leaving only a thin extension of the blade with a tag attached. Stan held the tag up to the light. It read, ‘Marrakech, El Badii, 122/3476c.’
Stan ripped the label off and gripped the blade, swinging it around a couple of times, before he put it down, bored. “I was sure we would find something better than this,” he said, shoving Loretta aside so he could get a better look into the cabinet.
“I don’t think you are supposed to touch those with your bare hands,” Jess called from the door as Stan reached into the cabinet a second time.
“No one is getting finger prints off this stuff,” Stan laughed as he pulled out another sword, shorter than the first but with less rust on it. With his other hand he lifted out a small urn.
Jess found the courage to walk forward into the room as she said, “No you idiot, I saw on a documentary that the oils in your hands can damage things that are really old,”
Stan laughed as he turned the dagger over in his hand, “I doubt it can possibly get more damaged than this,”
Jess rolled her eyes and took it off him with her sleeves carefully pulled over her hands, and Loretta helped her place it back inside the cabinet. There were more rusty swords and tiny urns inside the cabinet, and a collection of little figures that looked like they could have been idols or dolls. Copying Jess, Loretta reached in with her sleeve and picked up an object that had peeked her interest, a setting of dirt caked jewels in a half moon shape with a long pin down the back. She turned it over in her hand, wondering what it could be, as Stan walked off to find Peter.
“Do you think they are precious stones?” Jess asked her in a hushed voice, aiming the light of her phone on the half-moon setting in Loretta’s hand.
Loretta looked at the label, ‘Marrakech, El Badii, 213/6778e’. “I doubt it,” she replied. “If it was, why would it be chucked in here, still covered in the dirt it was dug up with? They haven’t even stored it in the right place.” She rubbed the stones carefully with her sleeve, but the dirt was too old and too hard caked to budge.
“Stan!” Peter exclaimed from the other side of the room suddenly.
Both Jess and Loretta jumped.
Jess rolled her eyes, and turned to follow the commotion. Loretta followed her also, the dirty pin still in her hand.
They found Peter at the opposite end of the room. In front of him a large leather bound chest lay open. The chest was covered in ancient travel labels, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, and many more. Piles of paperwork, yellowing with age, photographs, postcards, and hand charted maps were strewn everywhere, spilling out over the floor where Peter had unpacked them. In his hand, he held a cloth which had clearly been wrapped around the object that Stan was now holding victoriously in his hands.
“Give it back you bloody idiot. You know you shouldn’t be touching it!”
“You found it and unwrapped it!” Stan replied quickly, turning the slightly tarnished and green coated lamp over in his hands. Despite the tarnishing, the mellow glow under the torch light was unmistakable. The lamp appeared to be made of gold. “I can’t get the lid off it,” Stan announced, grimacing with effort as he tried to twist it.
“Stan! For crying out loud, don’t break it!” Jess exclaimed.
“There’s something inside it,” Peter explained.
Loretta raised one eyebrow.
“It rattled when I picked it up,” he explained, seeing Loretta’s expression.
“Sounds like coins,” said Stan, as he shook it again. “A gold lamp might have gold coins inside it, right? And who will miss the coins if the lamp has never been opened before? The label only catalogues the lamp, no contents.”
“If only you could hear yourself,” Jess told him, hands on her hips.
Loretta sighed, “If you are going to break it you may as well steal the whole thing,” she suggested.
Stan shook it again, “I want to see what’s inside it.”
Peter shook his head and began re-stacking the papers in the chest.
Stan shook the lamp again, and whatever was inside tinkled.
“Can I have a look?” Loretta put her hand out.
Stan tossed the lamp at her, “The coins are mine,” he said as she caught it with both hands.
She shrugged at him and muttered “Whatever,” as she held the lamp up to the light of Jess’ phone. She was sure it was too orange to be real gold. More likely to be brass, like a good old fashioned padlock. The lamp had a long, elegant spout and fine filigree patterns etched all over its surface, including the handle and the lid, which appeared to be welded in place. Loretta could see no line which marked the lid from the lamp. However the base was different, it was divided into three individual rings.
She squinted as she took a closer look, and Jess leaned over her shoulder to see.
“It’s just a rusty old lamp, Stan,” Jess told him.
“I tell you, it’s made of gold,” he argued.
“It’s not that rusty,” Loretta murmured, applying pressure to the base of the lamp.
“Yeah but it’s also not that gold,” Jess added with a snicker.
As she spoke, one of the rings came loose and began to move.
“Oi! What’s that?” Stan pointed at the base of the lamp.
“It’s a combination lock, I believe,” Loretta told him, keeping the lamp out of his reach.
“You would know,” he smirked.
“A what?” Peter asked, looking up from the contents of the chest.
“I think it’s like one of those Chinese puzzle boxes,” Loretta explained.
“So it can be opened?” Peter asked.
Loretta shrugged, “It might be openable,”
“If it was a Chinese puzzle box, like those ones you get from the markets, then we could just smash it to get it open,” Stan pointed out.
“Oh calm down on the gung-ho would you?” Jess snapped.
Peter said nothing. He watched with fascination as Loretta eased free the second ring.
“Should we put some oil on it or something?” Stan asked when the third and final ring did not seem to budge after several minutes.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Jess said, watching the lamp intently as Loretta’s thin fingers wrestled with it.
Finally there was a deep screech of protesting rust, and the last ring came free.
“There,” Loretta let out a long breath and smiled, pleased with herself.
“There what? Can we open it?” Stan asked.
Loretta laughed, “Not yet, speedy. Three rings with an unknown number of settings could mean anything. Assuming there are at least ten different settings per ring, like a regular combination lock, that would mean at least one thousand possible combinations to crack it.” Along with lock picking, Loretta had an unfortunately good head for math. Unfortunate in that it had often found her bored and in trouble at school, and also unfortunate that it easily made people angry.
Stan snatched the lamp back, “This is ridiculous!” He dashed it against the concrete floor.
Jess shouted in protest.
Loretta was better used to angry people. She knelt down and picked the lamp up calmly. There was now a noticeable dent by the neck which hadn’t been there before. But the rings still spun relatively freely.
Loretta let her subconscious take over as Jess continued yelling at Stan and Peter tried to calm them both down. She turned and walked away from them as her fingers slid across the rings. She could feel the settings as each ring passed over them. The craftsmanship was impressive, but it was not fool proof. Each ring however, had a different number of settings that it could possibly stop on, and when she held it up to the light of Peter’s torch, she realised this was because each ring was smaller than the last. Each ring also had barely visible script engraved upon it. She briefly wondered if this had anything to do with opening it, but she had no hope of reading it so the thought did not stay with her long. As Jess continued to bicker with Stan, she sat down on the floor and continued to spin the rings, frowning as she concentrated on the pause at each setting.
It could have taken days or even months, but the lamp was old, and despite the hundreds of possibilities, Loretta could feel the difference in one.
“We’ll be here till dawn at this rate,” Stan said. They had stopped arguing, and were shining the light on Loretta where she sat cross-legged with eyes closed on the floor.
The lamp let out a sigh as the last of the three rings fell into place. Loretta opened her eyes. The script writing was perfectly aligned now, though it would have been impossible to tell if it was or not before. But that was not all, the sigh of the lamp was followed by a long fizzing noise, like the lid had just been loosened on a bottle of Coke Cola. The fizzing was coming from the spout of the lamp. Loretta let out a squeal and dropped it as she jumped up.
“What was that for?” Stan asked, annoyed as he reached to grab the lamp off the floor, but the lamp was hot. So hot he yelled even louder than Loretta when he touched it.
“Maybe it’s booby-trapped?” Peter suggested, forcing Jess to stay behind him.
Stan sucked his fingers and swore. He was about to kick it, when smoke began to leak out of the spout.
“Some kind of acid?” Peter speculated, horrified as the pool of smoke grew stronger, accumulating into a cloud that billowed and grew up from the floor.
“Do you think it might be poisonous?” Jess covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve.
The lamp began to spin like a Catherine Wheel with the force of the smoke spouting from it.
“We should leave,” Loretta suggested.
Peter nodded and grabbed Jess by the arm, leading her toward the door.
Before they reached the door, the whole room was smothered in smoke, even darker than it had been when they entered.
Stan made it to the door first and placed his hand on the knob, but it too was scalding hot. He screeched again.
The shaft of light from Jess’ phone now only shone a few inches ahead of them into the darkness, and Loretta could not even see her own hand in front of her face. The smoke was so thick it was almost solid, and breathing was difficult.
In the moments which followed Stan’s scream, a voice came to them out of the smoke and darkness.
“Who wakes the lamp and runs away?”
Stan swore again, his panic escalating to a new level as he grabbed the door with his sleeve over his hand, but it wouldn’t budge. Jess yelped in shock as Peter threw her back against the wall and placed his body in front of her. Stan threw his own body against the door and began to yell for help, smashing his fist against the glass portal to the empty corridor beyond.
Loretta would have been amused by his terrified screams, if not for the fact that she was just as terrified and stuck to the spot where she stood, a little in front of Peter, and farthest from the door.
The voice was soft and melodic, but strong with the threat that lay beneath the question.
Behind her Stan was coughing as he inhaled the smoke between his screams for help.
“Who wakes the lamp and runs away?” The voice asked again.
Jess reached an arm around Peter and grabbed tight on Loretta’s jacket, afraid for her.
Stan stopped yelling as reason overtook him, “Who’s there?” he asked, between his coughs. Peter put a hand out on his chest, cautioning him.
Stan brushed the hand away. “I said ‘who’s there?’” he demanded when no answer came.
“Yet you were not the first to ask it.”
“But we are the last. There is no one else here but the four of us, and you,” Loretta said to the darkness.
Jess pinched her, “Don’t tell it we are alone!” she hissed, terrified.
“Clever girl. You ask no questions, yet you make two assumptions. One that in saying there are four of you is enough to answer my question and tell me that you think I am outnumbered. And two, that you correctly assume there is only one of me,”
“Then stop playing stupid pranks and come out of the dark,” Loretta told the voice, angry because she assumed that this joke had something to do with Stan and his choice to bring them here.
“You already see me.”
Loretta beat the smoke away from her face in frustration as she breathed through her sleeve. But the smoke was already moving, it began to pull away from them and Peter’s torch light became visible again. It followed the receding smoke to where it gathered in the middle of the room.
“No way–” Stan gaped as the black smoke began to take form.
“Shut up!” Jess hit him.
The smoke became a man, or more it took the form of a man, larger than life and towering above them, yet still ephemeral and insubstantial as smoke.
Loretta decided this was probably not a prank of Stan’s.
The smoke man outstretched his arms in a questioning gesture. As he did so, the long dead ceiling lights came to life, hissing and spluttering as the electricity once more contacted the water that had rendered it useless. The lights flickered dimly, just enough to make the room and the smoke figure visible.
“My first question still remains unanswered.” As the mouth of smoke spoke, it fell to pieces like it was made of dust, reforming at the sentence end.
Peter, Jess and Stan all gaped at the figure of smoke with mouths open and eyes wide with horror. Loretta did the same.
“You woke the lamp.” The creature extended an arm at Loretta.
“Me?” Loretta whispered.
“You.” The creature leaned its face toward her.
“Don’t speak to it!” Stan urged her suddenly.
“And you, you tried to break the lamp,” the hulking smoke creature accused him.
Stan said nothing. His fear spoke louder than words could have.
“Is it a demon?” Jess asked meekly, from where she peered around Peter’s arm.
The smoke laughed. “You would wish it so.”
“Not at all,” Loretta said quickly.
“No, you would. A demon might have been better to conjure than such as I.” The smoke creature shrunk in size just a little and folded his arms and legs as he waited in the air for the next statement to be made.
“Are you a genie?” Stan asked, unable to help himself suddenly.
The smoke man clapped his hands three times with distinct sarcasm.
Loretta laughed out loud.
Stan shoved her, for he guessed she was laughing at him, which was only half true.
She hit him back with the back of her hand, not bothering to look to see where she hit him, though it felt like his nose.
“You mock me?” the genie asked Loretta directly. “You wake me from a thousand year sleep to mock me?”
“Genies don’t exist,” Loretta said, disbelieving even of the fact she was arguing with a smoke monster.
“Then what do you propose is happening right now? Am I made of your imagination?” the genie asked, his voice slowly become less imposing and unnatural.
“Unlikely,” Loretta crossed her arms. She was sure it was beginning to mimic their own pace and accent.
“Well, right or wrong, real or unreal, possible or impossible, you have annoyed me,” he pointed at Stan, “and you, have woken me from a very long rest, and I don’t take that too well,” he pointed at Loretta.
“Don’t you have to obey me or grant me wishes or something?” Loretta said, taking a step forward.
The genie laughed now.
“We don’t grant wishes.” He sneered. “I might trade you a curse or two, but only in exchange for an answer to how you drew me from the lamp,” he leaned forward with interest.
“I cracked the code, that’s all,” Loretta shrugged, “What do you mean ‘trade me a curse’? That doesn’t sound great.”
“Cracked the code?” the genie laughed again, “Humans get simpler the longer they exist.” His statement didn’t allow for protest or questioning.
Loretta frowned at him.
“Any fool can align the verse to wake me once the lamp is found, except that found or lost, aligned or not, the lamp has been sealed for the last thousand years, as have all the lamps of the Jinni.”
“Then we are all fools, and none the wiser to the accident of your appearance, nor caring,” Loretta snapped back at the genie, offended.
The genie nodded. “In which case this happy accident can be reversed.” He had the answer he wanted, and now the creature of smoke moved again, quick and fluid. He snapped the fingers of his left hand once, and flung his arms out. As he did, he burst into smoke.
Partly on infuriation, and partly on instinct that she couldn’t explain, Loretta threw herself forward and grabbed at the smoke creature.
The last thing she heard was Jess and her scream as it spiralled into the distance.