Heather Turner: The Genie

Rich stared back through the elevator doors. The black cab that had brought them here was still just visible. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked as the doors closed, fidgeting with the cuffs of his shirt. It was an expensive one, tailored to fit, but so creased and rumpled you'd never have known.

Pam snorted and gave him A Look. "Bit late for that," she said. The elevator doors opened and she lead the way out. After a moment's hesitation, Rich followed her. He looked around at the decor. Marble floors, expensive wallpaper, a few potted plants--real, not plastic--and everything so clean it gleamed.

"Do they actually dust the plants in this place?" he muttered. "I feel like I should have taken my shoes off before coming in."

Pam ignored him and strode down the corridor. She stopped with a frown at one door, which unlike the others was ajar. A post-it note covered the peep-glass, and she snatched it off and read it. She sighed.

"What's it say?" Rich asked.

She held it so he could see it. "Come on in, Pam, buggered if I'm getting up to let you" he read. "You told her we were coming?"

Pam shook her head.

He sighed. "She hasn't changed much."

"People don't change," Pam told him, crumpling the note and dropping it. Then she pushed the door open and lead the way in. "Heather? Where the fuck are you?"

"In here, my love!" came a cheerful voice from somewhere inside. Rich followed along as Pam headed towards its source. The room she stopped at was a scene of chaos, made all the more noticeable by two things: The contrast to the clean order of the corridor; and the woman laying on the sofa with her legs leaned against the backrest, staring at them upside-down with her big deep-blue eyes. She was wearing slob-around-the-house clothes, and a half-emptied bottle of wine and empty glass rested on the floor, inches from her dangling head. Opened books, magazines, and lose papers were strewn all over the floor, and every other flat surface.

"Morning, Heather," Pam sighed, picking her way towards her. Rich, still uncertain, followed her into the room. Catching the movement, Heather's eyes turned to him, and she stared at him a moment with a frown.

Then recognition dawned, and she rolled over to look at him the right way up, her long blonde hair catching the wine bottle enough to make it wobble, but not quite fall over. "Bugger me. Shouldn't you still be in jail, Rich?"

"Why ask me? I'm very unreliable. She's the detective," he grinned at her, feeling a surge of nostalgic fondness that took him rather by surprise.

"Fair point! Pam, are your arrests not sticking any more?"

Pam sighed and sat on the sofa next to her. "Heather, if you knew we were coming, why did you knock back half..." She paused with a suspicious look on her face, and reached behind the sofa. "..a bottle and a half of wine?" She drew her hand back up, holding an empty wine bottle. "Chateau nerf, at that? Bitch!"

"Because I knew you were coming. Nothing good ever comes of you wanting a paranormal investigator."

Rich shook his head. Heather was an unreliable psychic--in both senses of the term--and he'd almost forgotten how annoying conversations with her could be.

Pam dropped it and went back to the original question. "Rich got out on good behaviour a few months ago. I got him an in at the pointy building at Canary Wharf--remember Tom Bailey?"

"Oh, very nice," Heather said with heavy sarcasm. "I'm sure you enjoy the grade of cocaine they serve in a place like that."

"I'm in recovery," he said, feeling more defensive than he would have liked.

Pam nodded. "He's staying clean, Heather."

She raised an eyebrow. "I thought people don't change?" she shot back.

Pam ignored that too. "Heather, have you heard of Logicality?"

"Sounds like a crap puzzle book.." Then she frowned. "Hang on.. isn't it that daft book about 'seven rules to change your life' that dotcom arsehole wrote?"

"Paul Duke. Wrote the book, and founded the registered religion. Devotees everywhere swearing it all works. Taking The City by storm, apparently. Every big player in the stock market's banging on their doors trying to learn the secret. They say Logicality's followers have made billions in the last week alone, just by making unbelievably good stock calls."

Heather sighed and refilled her glass. "That's one for the fraud squad, Pam. Not me."

"I thought the same.. till Rich knocked on my door this morning."

Heather stared at him, eyes a little unfocused. "Oh yes?"

He sighed. "One of the higher-ups got us an invite to one of their.. events. I went along with it because.. well, because I'm still on probation and I'd quite like to make some money." Heather raised her glass in a mocking toast. "It.. wasn't what I expected. Duke gave us all a big speech about how he could change our lives, give us everything we wanted.. then invited us to drink from this metal goblet thing and wish for our heart's desire." He shook his head, eyes closed. "They were lapping it up.. something about the way he talked.. it was so convincing.. I believed him. We all did."

"But you didn't drink," Heather said, eyes narrowing.

He shook his head. "I wanted to. I nearly did. But.. I saw their faces.. their eyes as they looked at that fucking goblet.." He looked her straight in the eyes, his voice earnest, trying to make her understand. "It was like being back in the crackhouse. They might be a bunch of Old Etonians and Oxbridge money-making types.. but all I saw right then was a bunch of fucking junkies desperate for their fix. It freaked me out."

"Prob'ly for the best. But you wouldn't go to Pam just for that."

"No.. that was bad, sure, but... Hell, they're all fucking addicts up there. They just get their fix from profits, instead of a powder. I knew that from the start. I could cope. But all the next day..."

"Stunningly good stock calls?"

He nodded. "Every time. Everyone who'd been there.. I swear they doubled annual profits in a day!"

"Oh dear oh dear," she grinned. "Worried about your performance not being miraculous enough, are you?"

"Worried about everything. I don't know what that goblet was about, but..." he shivered.

"Did it look old? Weird ancient writing? Unpleasant green glow? Anything?"

"Looked brand new to me.. it definitely had stuff written on it.. here.." he pulled out his phone. "Everyone was so intent on the bloody thing they weren't looking at me." He called up the picture he'd managed to sneak. It wasn't in great focus, but it showed the engravings on the metal clearly enough.

Heather took it and looked at him, almost impressed. "You always could think fast on your feet." She dropped her eyes to the picture, stared at it for a few moments, then zoomed in on it. She swore under her breath, scrolling around the image. Then she leaned back. "Pam, there's a big hardback with black leather cover near your foot."

Pam looked around the jumbled mess, then bent to pick up the book in question. It was big enough that she grunted to lift it, then dropped it without ceremony onto Heather's lap.

"Ooof! That's the one!" She opened it and flipped through the pages, glaring at them in turn as they failed to be the one she wanted. Then she paused. "Yup, here it is!" She stared at the book for a few moments, then slammed it shut. "Fuck."

Pam and Rich stared at her, waiting for her to elaborate. Instead, she just took another gulp of wine and closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the sofa.

"Well?" demanded Pam after a few seconds.

"Genie."

"What?" they chorused.

"It's a fucking genie. That's why their wishes are coming true. Duke's trapped a genie."

There was a long pause. "Are we talking.. like.. Arabian Nights? Aladdin? Rub the lamp..?" asked Rich, his voice weak.

"Doesn't have to be a lamp. In this case, it's the chalice. Drinking instead of rubbing. Fuck knows why, but that's how this one works. Given the religious angle, it's probably a god Duke's trapped."

"A.. god..?" Rich spluttered. Pam just sat back, a resigned look on her face.

"Just means a spirit that draws power from belief," Heather shrugged. "Nothing special about gods. He probably found one with no believers left, shoved it in the chalice, then used what little power it had to drum up followers." She shook her head. "I dunno whether to be appalled or impressed."

"How come?" Pam asked. She'd pulled out her notebook and was already writing.

"Trapping a genie's bastard hard to do right. It's not that hard to bind a spirit to an object... a weak one, anyway... but trapping it in a way that it has freedom to do your bidding, without being able to escape or screw you over... that's hard. Really bloody hard. One mistake..." she waved an arm for emphasis. "Bugger. Sorry, Pam."

Pam took a deep breath to calm herself as she used her sleeve to wipe red wine droplets off her notebook. "So he'd need, what, a lot of research?"

"A lot of research and a lot of working stuff out.. you'd need someone really good at logic..."

"Like a programmer who made a fortune in the dot-coms?" Pam asked, her tone pointed.

Heather sighed, then glared at Rich. "Right, sonny-jim. You need to get me to that chalice. Go see your boss. We need an invite."

He stared at her, wide-eyed. "You're kidding."

"Gods have a desire for believers that borders on the pathological. They especially love winning over the hard-to-get types. You rejected it by not drinking. Trust me, it wants you."

Rich shook his head, filled with doubts. "That sounds like a really bad idea."

-----

As they waited in the lobby of the Logicality movement's headquarters, Rich sighed. "This is a really bad idea."

Heather, having traded her leggings and oversize jumper for a smart business suit complete with neat ponytail, gave him a sweet smile. "You should have said."

He glared at her. "Don't get smart with me, assisstant."

"Yes, master," she replied with a grin. She looked around again. "Place like this in the middle of London.. cult must have pulled in a lot of your mates to pay for this."

"Cult is a word with such unpleasant connotations," said a voice from behind them, making Rich jump.

"Mr. Duke! So good of you to see me.. I apologise for my assistant, she's one of life's skeptics!" He gushed, darting forward to shake the man's hand. Duke was a tall man with an athletic build, his hair greying at the temples but still thick and lustrous. The kind of man he just looked at and automatically labelled "C-level business wanker."

Duke just smiled. "The world needs its cynics just as much as its optimists. Please, come this way."

He turned and lead them along one of the corridors off from the room, into a large room that looked like it had been designed by an architect with no other brief than "grandeur". In the centre, on a marble column that could almost be considered an altar, was the golden chalice he'd shown Heather on his phone.

"Very pretty," she commented, her eyes flickering along the engraved words for a moment before she turned back to Duke as though the chalice had no interest at all.

Duke smiled again. "High praise indeed from the Ghost Slayer herself!"

"Bloody tabloids!" Heather cursed under her breath.

Rich stared at her, alarmed. This wasn't in the script! "Um.. you, er.. " he stammered.

"I'm not an easy man to fool, Rich--can I call you Rich?" Duke said, with apparent amusement. He waved a hand and the door they'd come in through slammed shut. "Not that it really matters."

Rich's eyes flicked from the door to Duke to Heather, tying to hide his unease. This wasn't just off the script, this was into the jungle. He had no idea what to do.

Heather, it appeared, did. "You did that without wishing for... oh, are you kidding me?" Her eyes went wide. "The water! The drink! You're not just using it for a connection.. you're actually using it for admission! The genie possesses you when you drink and wish!"

"Very astute," he praised her. "Yes, it seemed the best way at the start, when the.. genie.. had so little power to spare. So many wishes can be granted just by making the wisher say or do the right thing, you know."

She shook her head. "How can someone smart enough to snare a genie be dumb enough to think inviting it into his body is a good idea?"

He grinned, and Rich couldn't help feel there was a rather manic look to it. "One man's idiocy is another's genius. Look at this place and tell me I'm a fool!"

"You're a fool," Heather said, her voice flat. "If not for the genie being inside your head, muddling you, you'd know."

"You might change your mind," Duke told her, beckoning the chalice, which floated into the air and drifted over to them, "after a little drink."

Rich badly wanted to say something. Or run screaming from the room. But neither his voice nor his legs wanted anything to do with such ideas. He couldn't move. He stared at Heather in a panic, but she didn't seem all that concerned.

"We might," she conceded. "After you, Rich."

His eyes went wide, but she just looked at him with... with that look she always had when he was missing something, he realised. His mind spun. What the hell could she..?

An idea sparked. He hoped like hell it was the right one. He nodded, and his arms could move again. Heart pounding like a jackhammer, he took the goblet, sipped water from it, and made a fervent wish.

The water went down like the strongest whiskey he'd ever drunk. It lit a fire in his belly, which began to spread through him, filling him with a feeling of power that took his breath away.

He felt Heather grab the chalice from him, and saw her raise it in a mocking salute to Duke, whose smile was now looking forced. "Cheers!" she said with a grin, and took a large swig. "I wish..."

-----

Pam glowered from the chair besides Heather's hospital bed. "Fifty million in estimated damages," she said, slumping back. "Logicality headquarters razed to the ground. Reports of cars flying through the air, lightning being thrown around, and god knows what else. Do you ever remember my job is to cover this shit up, not advertise it on national news??"

Heather gave her an innocent smile. "Consider it a challenge?"

"You really couldn't think of a better option?"

"Nope. Sorry." She leaned back against her pillow, wincing as her bruises complained. "Picking a fight with a god tends not to end quietly."

Pam sighed. "So.. Duke actually got the spell right? Like, completely?"

Heather gave a grudging nod. "I'll give him that, the daft bastard. I couldn't see a single mistake in the logic."

"So what mistake did he make?"

Heather grinned. "He thought people are logical."

Pam blinked. "Poor bastard."

"Right? Rich had it right: They're all junkies. Money addicts. They let the genie in to make them rich and powerful. But it wouldn't leave until they felt the wish was granted. So it stayed resident, 'cause none of those buggers will ever feel rich and powerful enough."

"Which meant it didn't just have their belief, it had all of them. It was living in the heads of everyone who made a wish."

"It had a lot of oomph," Heather admitted.

"So why did you decide Rich needed to make a wish?"

"The spell bound the genie to protect people whilst it was possessing them," she explained. "It was for his own good!"

"Yeah, thanks, I felt so protected," came Rich's sarcastic voice from the other side of the curtain behind Pam.

"Oh, man up, Richie, it's only a couple of broken bones," Heather called back with a grin.

"That you gave me!"

"Wasn't me, it was the genie. Working through me," she corrected him.

"So," Pam interrupted, "his wish was for you to beat the bastard?"

Heather nodded.

"And then your wish.." Pam sighed "..was to kill Duke. Who was also possessed by the genie. So it had to protect him. From you, powered by it."

Heather grinned. "One genie, two wishes. In conflict. It had to attack him, and it had to defend him. It burned out all the power it had trying to grant my wish without breaking his."

"And without the power, it couldn't dominate any of its followers, so you're all free again," Pam finished. "Do you happen to have any idea what happened to the chalice?"

"Far as I know it got buried under rubble when we caved in the building," Heather coughed. "If you find it, make sure no bugger drinks from it, eh?"

"It'll still work?" Pam asked, looking up from her notes with concern.

"No idea, but best not take chances, eh?"

"Good point," said Pam, closing her notebook. "Maybe bear that in mind yourself next time you want to pick a fight with an actual god."

Heather grinned. "What makes you think there'll be a next time?"

"Somehow there always is with you," Pam sighed as she closed her notebook.