Saalik woke up on Wyatt’s bed, relieved when he caught the sight of him out of the corner of his eye, sitting in the chair watching him.
“What happened?”
Azua barked from somewhere else in the apartment.
“You tell me?”
Saalik sat up quickly. The voice was Wyatt’s, and so was the face, but the towheaded man that sat across from him was not Wyatt at all. Saalik tried to reach out, to feel for him at the end of their tether, but he wasn’t there. Instead, he only found this stranger.
“You’re Teddy.”
The man, clad in a pair of old jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, smiled. There was a box at his feet, and Saalik could see Wyatt’s camera, and a few other mostly valueless pieces of junk—a DVD player, a charred bottom of a copper pot, and small wooden box from Wyatt’s dresser—but in his hands he held Saalik’s bottle.
“Yep.” Teddy hopped up, nearly dropping it to the floor, and Saalik would have flinched if he didn’t already have so much experience with careless, thoughtless keepers. “And you’re a…”
“A Jinn. Your Jinn.”
“Fuck me. If I hadn’t seen you just poof here when I touched this ugly old bottle, I wouldn’t have believed you.” He grinned. And as much as he looked like Wyatt before, he looked even more like him now. “Wyatt’s been holding out on me.”
“And me.” Saalik tipped his head, studying him. “He never mentioned you were twins.”
“Yeah, he’d like to pretend we’re not even brothers.” He bent down to place the bottle into the box with the other things he’d obviously planned to steal from the apartment. “I always thought if there were such things as genies, they’d be hot women.”
“I’m afraid we can be hot men, too.” That made Teddy laugh.
“So, I have three wishes?”
“I’m sure you do.” Saalik nodded in agreement. He may not have been capable of lying to the keeper of his vessel, but he was not in the mood to make it easy. “But there are ground rules.”
“No. None of that.” Teddy hefted the box into his arms. “Genie and Jinn are tricksters. Wyatt and I watched something online about that once.”
“You got me.” Saalik folded his arms. He could tell that Wyatt’s brother was not completely wasted, but he wasn’t completely sober either. “So, what’s that first wish?”
“Not here.” He walked to the door, box in hand. “Get in the bottle.”
“You wish me to get in the bottle?”
“No. No wish. Forget it. But we’re leaving before Wyatt gets back.”
“Of course.” Saalik stood, walking to join him at the door. “I just assumed. My mistake.”
“You just assume what?”
“There’s always a twin in charge, isn’t there? The alpha or some such thing?” Saalik shrugged. “I never would have imagined it was poor Wyatt.”
“Fuck off.” Teddy pulled the door open, stepping out in the hall to lean over the railing to see if the downstairs foyer was empty. Mrs. Cain was there, cell phone to her ear. “Shit. We’ll take the fire escape.”
“Or we could go up to Abel’s old room.”
Teddy gave him a look.
“I’m just saying, Abel died a few weeks ago, and he left stuff far more valuable than some old camera. Where do you think Wyatt found me?”
That ended the discussion and Teddy, instead of heading back into the apartment, took the stairs that led up to the third floor. He checked the locked door.
“Want me to open it?”
“I’m not wasting a fucking wish—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Saalik pushed past him, opened the door himself, and stepped inside, Teddy at his back.
“Jesus Christ. It’s like a fucking museum in here.”
“I thought you’d like it.”