It looked like disrupting this piece of the puzzle would cause the entire structure to collapse, allowing the pooled oil reserves to flow back to their original locations. Locations far away from where Saudi Arabia had drilled their wells.
I held out a hand, one finger ready to flick away this support and cause untold damage to the country.
Wait. This wasn’t natural.
Someone or something had set up these bulwarks to hold these immense pools of oil in their current positions. Someone or something with tremendous magical resources.
That damn genie had granted a wish for Saudi Arabia to have access to most of the oil in the Middle East. Then she had set it up so that a single human magician could reverse the spell.
Why? Setting up this set of LEGO bricks had taken vastly more energy than simply moving the oil.
More chess strategy from the chess master genie? A way to back out of an untenable position? Or merely a fickle whim?
I shook my head. This was just more evidence that the genie couldn’t be trusted. All of her wishes came with strings attached.
With a thought, I swam my ethereal form to her location. There she was, still safely trapped in my bottle.
I held her sphere between thumb and forefinger, like a pea—an echo of how she had held the globe at our first meeting.
“Hello, Paladin,” she said. “Did you come back to make your wish?”
“No!” I said quickly. “Just making sure you’re still in your prison.”
“Still here, still watching the game play out. You know, that scarred girl is going to cause you a lot of trouble in the future. I can fix her—restore her mind, body, and soul. All it would take is a simple wish.”
“No. We’ll find a way to heal her without your help.”
Despite the great difference in our sizes, her mischievous grin was visible through the glass. So simple, so charming. I almost wanted to trust her.
Almost.
She shook her tiny head, making her honey-blond locks bounce. “And I see you’ve mastered the spell I showed you.”
“That wasn’t my wish,” I said quickly. “And you didn’t show me the entire spell.”
“Yes, my paladin,” she said. “You figured it out yourself after I gave you the barest hint.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Was I really breathing in this astral plane? “So I didn’t use a wish,” I said.
“No. What you did was within the rules.” She looked up and away. “Like a quarterback who can see the blitz coming before the ball is moved. You don’t need to have everything explained. Not like my former master.”
“When you call him ‘master,’ I hear ‘pawn.’”
“Clever paladin! Game pieces like you are rare. One day you may ascend to becoming a player yourself.”
“No thanks, I prefer to stay human.” At her scoffing look, I added, “Or as human as I can be.”
She looked at me with those piercing eyes, “But there’s something more. Something changed since last we met.”
She tapped a tiny finger against her minuscule chin. Then her eyes brightened, “You’re stronger! Much stronger than before. What happened?”
“I channeled too much energy and burned myself out. When I healed, I had a little more oomph.”
“‘More oomph!’ What a lovely phrase.” She leaned closer. “Just between us girls, you got a lot more than extra oomph from that experience.”
“More power?”
Jeannie crossed her arms and smiled. “Do you think you could have done all this earth magic before?” She spread her arms out and waved. “Just look at what you’ve done here. Why, this is an indication…”
I opened my mouth to ask her to continue, then snapped it shut. “I’m not asking any questions.”
“Such willpower. So hard to tempt. Are you sure you don’t want any hints?”
“No! I just want to be a normal wife and mother. I plan on finishing this and getting back to my old life.”
“That path may be closed to you. I can see that—”
“Whoa! No prophecies!”
She smiled brightly. “Exactly! What fun is a game if the ending is already known?”
“Well, I’ll be on my way. Just wanted to make sure you were still entombed.”
“I’ll be free sooner than you think,” the genie said.
“Not if I can help it.”
“Paladin, you’ll be the one to free me.”
Talking with the genie would be counterproductive. She was so smart, so prescient, that a simple conversation would inevitably lead to her getting what she wanted.
“Well, your paladin has places to go and enemies to destroy, so I’ll be leaving now.”
“See you soon.”
Her grin stayed on my mind as I swam away through the miles of earth.
Back at the grain of sand that held up a mountain that held up a sea of oil, I pondered what I should do.
It would be so easy to flick that grain away and get revenge. Just like the genie wanted.
That was the problem. This was just what the genie wanted. She had shown me the spell that had led to this mastery of Earth magic. Had she foreseen the explosion at the embassy and my newfound abilities?
Then she had goaded me to follow through.
What would flicking this grain unleash? Moving that much earth and oil would release immense amounts of stored energy. Like an avalanche.
Where would that energy go? Flicking in that direction would send the avalanche toward Riyadh. I smiled at the thought of Prince Abdul’s compound getting crushed under tons of rock. Killing him would be sweet revenge.
But it wouldn’t kill just him, would it, Luna? No, there were millions of people in Riyadh. I couldn’t do that.
That tricky genie. Sending the earthquake to Riyadh would also throw her crystal prison up to the surface.
Not going to happen, Jeannie.
Like a pool player examining all the angles, I moved around the fault, tracing out where the energy would go.
Tel Aviv? No, even if Ariel was a bitch, her country didn’t deserve an earthquake.
I circled, again and again. Completing this
