Free Djinn: Cursed by Erik Schubach

badass who was sexier than anyone her age had a right to be.

Chapter 6 – Stranger In the Mirror
    I must have dozed off sitting in the little plush reading chair beside the bed while Hailey slept.  I had a rough time in the shower trying to get clean.  My stupid wings would not cooperate because I was thinking about moving them again.  My damn mental blocks were frustrating as hell.
    Eventually, I was able to spread one wing at a time out from behind the shower curtain to wash myself properly.  At one point I was fascinated as I just stared at my alien appendages as the water seemed to bead up and roll off the mottled colored outer feathers, while the down and stark white feathers on the underside got wet and soggy looking.
    I sighed and closed my eyes at one point and accused the heavens, “I'm a flippin' bird-girl.”  I mentally flipped off my ancestors for this new level of hell I found myself in.  As if growing up in today's world wasn't hard enough, or the fact your mother committed suicide when you were just a kid, leaving you drifting through the foster care system.
    I had staggered under the spray of the warm water in the shower at that particular thought, while the ghost of a memory that was not mine played in my eyes.
    A woman who looked like the pictures of my mother, on a train platform, men chasing her.  Then my perspective changed, and I was her, feeling as though all hope was lost, not wanting my daughter to go through this same hell.  I heard a train coming and then smiled at my pursuers as I made a decision and murmured a wish, what I knew to be my tenth and final wish.  Then I just fell backward and let the darkness take me as the train took their prize from them, ending my own torment.
    Why had I experienced that?  Was it because of my wish to know what was going on?
    I had collapsed to my knees in the spray of water and just stared at nothing in shock and horror.  She hadn't abandoned me because she was selfish like I had thought all these years.  She had done it to protect me and to deny Xerxes line the boon of three wishes.  She denied them the power they pursued and her final wish still echoed in my ears, “I wish my daughter to be hidden from Xerxes and his kin.”
    I had felt her experience the same distortion of reality and self which I have experienced when making my two wishes.  I also felt the pain of her free will being stripped away forcibly to be replaced by ironclad chains of sin, to prepare her for servitude for whoever used her as a conduit for their wishes next, as she stepped off the platform into oblivion.
    I tried to get my breathing under control and stop myself from hyperventilating.  My anger was rising, and I had no outlet to lash out at.  I swore I'd never use another wish, but they took my mother from me!  I had been alone my entire life because of them, I had no idea who my father was.
    I tried to form another wish to wipe out Xerxes descendants, but I couldn't voice it.  Then I growled in frustration, it was one of Xerxes wishes that we lesser Djinn could not use our power against his family.
    I exhaled in defeat as I got back to my feet, feeling heavy and emotionally numb, then turned the water off.  I dried off the best I could.  On instinct, I flicked my wings out with an audible snap a couple times to sling the water from them.
    A stray thought popped up.  If mother had wished them not to find me, then how did Baldy and crew find me?
    Then I stood there stupidly balling my toes on the little shower rug, with a towel wrapped around my chest, staring at the clothes Hailey had left on the counter at the sink.  I peeked my head out the bathroom door, Hailey was asleep, and Dorian was in a deep conversation with someone.  I held up the t-shirt in my hand and looked sheepishly at the overly cute and inquisitive look on Dori's face when she paused in her conversation to look at me.
    I asked in embarrassment, “Umm... how am I supposed to get into