Free Genie Knows Best by Judi Fennell Page A

that dried up the spittle but also sparked the gnome’s pants. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Ow! Put it out! Put it out!” The gnome, hopped around, swatting at his butt with his pointed hat, and his Mini-Me leapt off his head.
    Wayne kicked some sand onto the gnome and his little doppelgänger to put out the sparks.
    “Sure you do, sweets.” Bart swaggered down the street. “And might I suggest you clean up that mess? Oh, wait. You don’t clean. Half the reason I moved out in the first place.”
    Maille didn’t budge. “And the other half was Laverne. Don’t give me your holier-than-thou crock, Bart. Your conscience’s as black as your scales. And your name.”
    Samantha groaned. Black Bart. For a dragon. Maybe this was the genie version of the O.K. Corral after all. The dry, dusty road could definitely pass for a cowboy town, well, except for the white sand instead of dirt. The drooping white tepee building took the place of a swinging-door saloon, and rather than a general store or local jail, vacant storefronts with shattered glass were the norm on Main Street.
    The bundles of loose sand and debris that rolled by could pass for tumbleweeds, and the unicorns were this reality’s version of cowboys’ noble steeds. All this place needed were hitching posts, a couple of outlaw wanted posters, and an assayer’s sign to look like an old-time Wild West town. Or, with all the white, dusty, dilapidated buildings, a ghost town.
    And considering everyone who lived here, Samantha wouldn’t have been surprised to see a few ghosts—though the satyr trotting out of a building through the bottom half of a set of swinging doors was a bit unexpected.
    “Khaled!” The satyr skidded to a halt in front of them and adjusted the hat on his head—a cowboy hat. Seemed to be a theme: he wore a holster around his waist—if a goat had a waist—and a silver star hung from a ring of laurel leaves around his neck. “Boy, am I glad to see you. It’s been a long time—”
    “Oh, puhleez.” Maille huffed another puff of lavender smoke. “Give it a rest, Stavros. We’ve had it with you and your orders. That badge is strictly for show.”
    “Now see here, Maille—”
    “Enough!” Kal nodded at Orkney, who slammed his foot down. The ground shook—at least a five-point-six on the Richter scale—and everyone bounced a good ten inches off the ground. The gnomes went higher.
    Samantha shook her head when it stopped rattling. What had happened to her nice, safe little world? Sadly, she knew what had happened to it: it’d been more of a fairy tale than this place, and she’d closed the book on it without reaching the happily ever after part.
    “You two need to sit down and discuss this like rational adults,” said Kal.
    “That’d mean he’d have to be both rational and an adult,” said Maille, pointing her pointed snout in the air, “and brat’s nothing but a whiny little hatchling.”
    “This from the female who’d cry big ol’ dragon tears when she didn’t get her way.” Bart bared daggerlike teeth that had nothing shiny about them, as if he used them for the very purpose Samantha had a sinking feeling they’d been designed for—as evidenced by that toothpick she suspected hadn’t been a toothpick. “Let’s talk about mature, Mailleficent . And hatchlings, too.”
    Maille blasted him with an UZI-like succession of fireballs, but Bart managed to leap out of the way.
    The building behind him wasn’t so lucky. The first spinning ball of fire hit the left front corner, and the structure that had already been listing to the right now groaned to the left. The next half dozen took out the orange roof tiles, which slid off and crashed to the ground, the shards breaking the front windows and making everyone near them dive for cover.
    But not Samantha. She stood up. This was B.S. If she’d wanted domestic drama, she would have stayed home and confronted Albert. She’d wished to get away from