Behind me, the door from the kitchen out onto the screen porch opened with the rattle-creak-rattle-thump that I'd forgotten all about until that very moment. "Mom?" Toby asked in what I recognized as his 'not sure how even to ask this question' voice. "Aren't lightning bugs s'pposed to be [i]bugs?[/i]"

"You tell me." I was shelling peas at the time, a skill I'd lost somewhere during the fifteen years I'd been away from Earlville. So I didn't look up from the bucket and pan, my eyes and fingers intent on the unzipping and snapping of peapods. "Do they have creepy little legs and creepy little antennae?"

"I don't know! They won't hold still long enough for me to see!"

On the other side of the table, Aunt Clara gave a snort, though I'm sure she would've denied making any such sound: a sniff, she probably would've called it. "Land sakes! Haven't you ever caught lightning bugs before, Toby?"

Glancing over my shoulder, I smiled at him, dirt smudged along his left cheek and packed under his fingernails even though we'd only arrived at Aunt Clara's house maybe two hours ago. "No, Aunt Clara," he said as earnestly as only an eight-year-old can. "We don't even have them back— Well, not back home anymore since we live here now, but, umm..."

My stomach tightened. "Then that's [i]another[/i] good thing about moving to Illinois, isn't it?" I turned back to Aunt Clara. "Do you still have all those old Mason jars down in the cellar?"

"Well, of course!" she replied with another non-snort. "How'd you expect me to do any canning without Mason jars?"

Gladly abandoning the peas, I rose from the table, wiped my hands on the tail of my long-sleeved flannel shirt—earning a third quote-sniff-unquote from Aunt Clara—and started across the spotless but yellowing linoleum to the cellar door. "Now, you can only use these for catch and release, Tee. Keeping lightning bugs requires a completely different kind of jar."

"Keeping them?" His whole face lit up brighter than any firefly could ever match. "Can I?"

"I should say not!" With Aunt Clara's fourth snort, I began remembering why I'd been so eager to get out of this place a decade-and-a-half ago. "I'll not have my house filled with vermin!"

"Besides," I said, pushing the cellar door open and patting along the frame for the light switch before I remembered that there was only one and it was at the bottom of the stairs, "lightning bugs barely live a week. You wouldn't want to keep them locked up in a jar when they could be out having all kinds of lightning bug fun, would you?"

"I...I guess not..." A good kid, Toby. Looked too damn much like his father sometimes, but I had hopes that the straight black hair, blue eyes, and pointed chin he'd gotten from my side of the family would be enough to outweigh the mouth, nose, and anything else he might've inherited from David, that weaselly little pus bucket. Or, wait, I'll take that back. No need to insult any weasels, after all.

I started down the steps, and a flare of memory reminded me to stomp my feet. I'd had quite the set of rituals worked out for going down and back up these steps in the wet-dirt-scented darkness when this had been Grandma Trenton's house. I'd spent most of my non-school hours here while Mom kept the First National Bank of Earlville running and at least partially solvent: she'd died when I wasn't much older than Toby, now that I thought about it...

Both Dad and the bank had only lasted another year after that, and then it had just been me, Aunt Clara, and Grandma in this big old house on Brown Street. My interest in the rocks along Indian Creek, though, had eventually led me to a graduate geology degree at the University of Chicago, and from there to Denver and my work with the U.S. Geological Survey, to David and the wedding and Toby and—

The tooth-jarring slap of my sneakers hitting cement instead of wood told me I'd reached the bottom, but I had to pat around again for the light: apparently, I was a little taller than the eighteen-year-old me who'd last made this trek. The switch still buzzed when it snapped on, and I'd be willing to swear that Aunt Clara was buying the exact same brand of light bulb because the yellowish glow washed over the shelves in the pattern of shadow and semi-shadow that had always made me check for lizard monsters lurking around the back of each post that held up the floor of the house above me.

Fortunately, the serried ranks of Mason jars stood in the cabinet right at the bottom of the steps; I grabbed one, turned, put my left foot on the first step and pulled the right one from the cement just as I slapped the light switch off. The open kitchen door at the top of the stairs made the upward climb a little nicer than the downward plunge, and this time, Toby standing on the landing made it nicer still. "What's down there?" he asked.

"Not lizard monsters." I ruffled his hair as I reached the top step and handed him the jar. "Now, if you're careful, you'll be able to scoop a bug or two in, flip the lid shut, then bring it up to the porch light so you'll be able to see them."

He took the jar like I'd handed him a magic lamp. "Thanks, Mom!" And with a whirl, a smack-smack-smack of bare feet, and the rattle-creak-rattle-thump of the door, he was gone.

Aunt Clara's snort was more of a sigh this time. "I see so much of your mother in him. And in you, too, for that matter." I turned from closing the cellar door to see her giving me something that, if I'd seen it on any other face than hers, I would've called a smile. "You favor her more each time I see you, Ann."

A part of me wanted to pounce on that as her passive-aggressive way of reminding me how many years it had been since I'd last visited. But no, damn it, I wasn't going to do that. Sure, if anyone had a right to be cynical about the rampant stupidity of the world, it was me, but I was getting sick and tired of being such a grouch all the time. So I pulled my own face into a similar unfamiliar expression and pointed it at her. "Thanks, Aunt Clara." I moved back to the table, sat down, and started in on my peapods again.

"Maybe you could do [i]that[/i]," she said then. "I doubt the job pays anything, especially compared to whatever the government was paying you to look at rocks, but—"

"Aunt Clara?" This was another part of the 'Aunt Clara Experience' that I'd somehow forgotten: the first sentence or two of conversations often happened only inside her head. "What job are you talking about?"

She blinked, her fingers never stopping their work. "Why, at the bank, of course. Oh, I know it's Pioneer State Bank now, but I always thought that was more a tribute to your mother than anything else. After Mary passed"—Aunt Clara touched her forehead, her stomach, and each shoulder in a quick 'sign of the cross'—"they couldn't really call it Earlville Bank anymore, not without her. But Mimi Weismann's son Curtis works there, and he's a nice enough fella."

I decided not to say anything about corporate mergers and acquisitions and just nodded instead. Of course, being a bank clerk was the absolute last thing I ever wanted to do, but I said, "I'll keep it in mind."

"Or the town library!" She was apparently just getting warmed up. "It's been closed for nearly a year now since the council can't find anyone willing to take over running it after all the cuts they've made to the budget. You've got the money! You could buy in and—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I'd never been able to convince her that 'government scientist' wasn't synonymous with 'fat-cat millionaire.' "I've got enough saved up to take a couple months off, and then...I don't know." I filled my lungs with the cinnamon and sugar scent of the big old kitchen. "See if the LaSalle County Community College District needs a geology teacher maybe..."

"Well, it's a fine state of affairs!" Her mouth pinched into a shape as sharp as the arrowheads I'd sometimes found outside town. "David leaving you just because you got fired, and then spreading all those terrible stories about you!" She shook her head, the half-glasses rattling on their chain around her neck. "I know I shouldn't say it, but well! What can you expect from a damn Lutheran?"

It was hard, but I kept my mouth shut. It didn't matter to me in the slightest how Aunt Clara wanted to remember the sequence of events that had brought Toby and me here. Never mind that I'd left David after learning about him and the various lab assistants he'd been diddling the entire ten years of our marriage. Never mind that, after swallowing guys younger than me and with fewer publications getting promoted over me just so I could keep what I thought was the greatest job in the world, I then [i]lost[/i] that job due to the newly appointed administrator deciding that my research contradicted his personal worldview in too many ways. Never mind that the lies my former husband and former colleagues had begun spewing about me had gotten me blackballed from every research facility in the Rocky Mountains. Never mind that—

"Ann? You're grinding your teeth, dear." Aunt Clara was squinting at me from across the table. "We can call Dr. Chumley in Mendota tomorrow morning if you need a dentist."

"I'm fine, Aunt Clara."

Her mouth pinched again, and she tapped a finger against my pea pan. "Then why are you putting the pods in here and leaving the peas in there?" She tapped the bucket.

I opened my mouth with no idea what I was going to say, but Aunt Clara thankfully interrupted me by standing, brushing her hands together, and saying, "Well, that should be enough for now. Call Toby in and get him washed up, and I'll have supper ready in half a tick."

It took me at least three-quarters of a tick to find Toby and scrub him down, a job made both more difficult and more fun by his excitement at chasing lightning bugs. "I almost caught, like, twenty!" he told me as I stood in the doorway of the upstairs bathroom to make sure he actually used some soap. "Can I go out again after dinner and try again?"

And considering what [i]he'd[/i] had to go through the past month, I wasn't in any mood to tell him no.

Supper sent my mind reeling back to late springs long past, peas and potatoes and London broil with bread baked maybe two days ago and milk cold and perfect and making me wonder why I'd ever left. Settling into the front room after helping Aunt Clara with the dishes, I was a little shocked to see that the old boxy RCA TV had given way to a flat screen model, but, well, times did change, apparently. Even here.

Of course, the house had no internet connection whatsoever, but I figured I could see to that—as well as wiring a light switch at the [i]top[/i] of the cellar stairs—in time. I had some wound licking to do before I started uncurling my feelers again. So to speak...

[i]Wheel of Fortune[/i] was just ending and the sky just about dark outside when I heard the rattle-creak-rattle-thump of the screen door, but whatever cop show Aunt Clara was watching had already gotten through a couple shootings before Toby came trundling through the kitchen door into the foyer. "Toby?" I called without getting up from the sofa. "Everything all right?"

"Yeah, Mom." He yawned as he wandered into the front room.

"And the jar?"

His eye twitched just enough to make me sit forward, but he gestured back toward the kitchen. "I put it back down in the basement."

"All of it?" I pushed myself to my feet. "Or just the pieces of it you could find?"

"I didn't break it, Mom. Yeesh!" Another yawn. "Gimme [i]some[/i] credit, huh?"

I put a finger to my chin and pretended to think about it. "All right," I said stepping forward. "But just this once." My hands on his shoulders, I turned him around and aimed him at the stairs. "Right now, though, it's showering and tooth-brushing and pajama-wearing time for some of us."

He climbed the stairs without even a squeak of protest, and sitting there with Aunt Clara dozing on and off, I listened to the whoosh of the pipes as he went through the first two items on the list I'd given him. I gave him a few minutes after the last rattle, then with a bit of effort, I roused myself from my own television-induced stupor and padded up to the big common room at the top of the stairs.

The furthest door on the left stood open with light streaming through, and I moved over to lean against the frame, my son settling into the bed I'd called my own when I was his age. "So," I said, stepping into the long, trapezoidal room and folding my arms. "How're you liking your vacation so far?"

"There's a lot to do, but..." He yawned again. "It's not really vacation if we're living here now."

Leaning down, I touched a kiss to his cheek. "School's out and doesn't start again till August." I patted his still-damp hair and forced myself to stop when he gave me a look. "That means summer vacation in my book."

"Yeah, okay." Rolling over, he snuggled into the blankets. "G'night, Mom."

"Good night, Toby." At the door, I gave him one more look, then flicked the light off, left the door open most of the way, and started back downstairs just in time to meet Aunt Clara coming up.

"Early to bed," she said as I squeezed over on the kite step to let her pass, "and early to rise."

"Tried that," I told her. "And yet here I am, sick, poor, and stupid."

She stopped on the top step, looked down her sharp little nose at me, and gave a snort. "It's good to have you home, Ann," she said before continuing on to the right and the door of what had always been Grandma's room.

I had to do some blinking at that and some swallowing, too, my eyes a little blurry and my throat a little tight.

Then I made my way back to the front room, spent a few hours clicking through whatever basic DirecTV package Aunt Clara subscribed to, and finally figured that I might as well head upstairs myself. Clicking off the TV and the lights, checking the front door—of course it wasn't locked; where did I think I was, anyway?—I went up the stairs, paused at the top, and tiptoed over to peek in on Toby.

Moonlight drifted through the window to show me the dark shape of his head between the blankets and the pillows. The regular in-and-out of his breathing tickled my ears, and I was just turning to head over to my room when that breathing caught. "Mom?" he murmured, his voice thick with sleep.

I froze. He'd been through a stage of talking in his sleep years ago; could the stress of the past few weeks trigger him to—?

"It wasn't a bug, I don't think," he more mumbled than said, and I was almost sure he wasn't awake. "The one I caught. I left it in the jar down in the basement so I could look at it more...in the...morning..."

Standing there, I counted to five hundred while his breathing softened back to a regular rhythm, and when he didn't speak again, I remembered to breathe myself.

Only then did I let my lips go tight. He'd looked a little fishy when he'd come in after supper, hadn't he? And after both Aunt Clara and I had told him he couldn't bring any lightning bugs into the house...

Ah, the joys of motherhood. We'd discuss this in the morning, of course, but right now, there was a jar I had to empty.

Back downstairs, down the little hallway into the kitchen, over to the cellar door, I yanked it open—

And light trickled up from below, golden and wavering like the summer sun reflecting off a flowing stream.

Staring down, I found myself wondering how many lightning bugs he'd caught, but even as the thought floated across my mind, I knew this wasn't any sort of insectoid light.

I wiped my suddenly sweaty palm across the leg of my jeans. Because I was the mother, wasn't I? I was the adult. Whatever the Hell Toby'd done, well, I was the one who had to deal with it.

Never before had I moved so quietly down those steps. The shimmering was coming from around the little jog at the bottom: my memory put a big carved oak table along the whole far wall of the cellar, and as near as I could figure, the glow was coming from there. Reaching the last step, I took a breath of the loamy air, pressed my back against the cabinet full of jars, inched toward the corner, and peered around into the main space of the cellar.

The big table sat right where I'd recalled, and on top of the table inside a solitary Mason jar, golden light swirled.

It wasn't just light, though. It had substance, I could tell, a liquid three-dimensionality flowing and pulsing like, oh, I don't know, like orange juice stirred in a glass and held up to a really powerful lamp. Except the light wasn't passing through the stuff inside: the stuff wasn't even emitting the light. The stuff [i]was[/i] the light, light that had been caught and slowed down, sluggish, almost frozen.

Pretty much the damnedest thing I'd ever seen, in short.

Reaching out to touch the jar, and started back like I'd suddenly come awake. When had I crossed the room? [i]Why[/i] had I crossed the room? What if the stuff was radioactive?

Okay, I was reasonably sure it wasn't. I'd dealt with radioactive substances fairly regularly during my college days and in my research at U.S.G.S.

This was good, though. Starting to eliminate things that it wasn't was the first step to figuring out what it was. Or something.

Swallowing so hard my ears popped, I reached out again—consciously this time—and touched the jar. The glass felt cool and normal, dry and smooth with no condensation. Just to make sure, I rubbed my fingertips back and forth, up and down—

And the whole thing kind of exploded.

Not that it [i]actually[/i] exploded. The jar didn't blow up, for instance: I still had my fingers pressed against the glass. The lid didn't shoot off, nor did any of the substance inside leak or squirt or splash out. Still, light beamed upward from the neck of the jar, spun like a cyclone in the air above it, and formed itself into a humanoid figure maybe the size of my forearm. Eyes opened in its golden, fluttering face, arms separated from its sides, and it bowed toward me. "Master," it said, its voice rustling like a breeze caressing new spring leaves. "Your wish is my command."

"No," I said. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no!"

The thing—and even though I was thinking the word "genie" already, I refused to let myself think it very loud or very hard—the thing sort of glanced up through its eyebrows at me, then straightened and said, "Forgiveness, please, Master, but I don't—"

"You don't call me 'Master'!" I pretty much shouted, pointing a shaking finger at the thing. "You don't give me wishes! You don't exist! Magic doesn't exist, so you just...you just get out of here right now!"

It cocked its head. "Magic doesn't exist?" It waved at itself, an impossible flex of anthropomorphic light projecting out of a Mason jar filled with glowing goo. "You think this is CGI?"

"I don't care what it is because it's not real!" Again, I refused to think about why I was shouting at something that wasn't real. "[i]You're[/i] not real, whatever you are, and—"

"I am a genie," it said, and even though I couldn't see any mouth on it, I could tell it was grinning. "And now that I've been trapped in a lamp—so to speak—and that lamp has been rubbed, I must come forth and grant my master three wishes."

"No!" I'd read the stories when I was a kid, had seen the movies and the TV shows, and if there was one thing I knew— "This wishing stuff never works out well for anyone! So you just...just go away, all right? Go away and don't come back!"

It pressed its semi-shapeless little hands together. "Is that your first wish, Master?"

I almost shouted, "Yes!" But like I said, I'd seen too many stories like this. "No! You'll twist it somehow, leave me alone and start bothering my son or my aunt or something!"

It made a 'tsk tsk' sort of noise. "Such suspicions, Master. Believe me, I exist only as a slave to your will. It's not the easiest thing, after all, to catch one of us, and when one has succeeded as you have, well, one ought to be rewarded, oughtn't one?"

Not asking what it meant—whoever heard of catching a genie?—was the hardest thing I'd done in months. But I was flashing on more of the stories I knew. "I'll wish you free then, all right? Wish that you never have to worry about being caught again, never have to grant another wish to anyone for the rest of whatever! How 'bout that?"

Every trace of humor vanished from around it, the flickering golden glow seeming to harden and sharpen. "This is no Hollywood cartoon, Master. Solomon the Wise cursed my people due to the overweening pride we showed in our strength and prowess, cursed us always to serve those who find us, trap us in a proper receptacle, and then summon us forth from said receptacle with a rub of the fingers. I can no more free myself from my bondage than you can lift yourself by grasping yourself under the arms and pulling upward."

I stared at it. I mean, what good was pop-culture pabulum if it didn't even give us the tools we needed when the impossible came knocking at our door? "I'll never trust Disney again," I muttered.

The genie had slumped in its place, hovering over the glowing Mason jar. "So please," it said, and it sounded even more weary than I felt. "Simply wish for three hard-boiled eggs or something similar one after the other. I will give them to you, will be dispersed back to once again become a wandering speck of light, and we can both get back to our horrible, dreadful lives."

"No," I said, hot and cold prickles crackling up and down my back. "This...this isn't right! None of it! If this whole thing is gonna be as stupid as this, then I was right all along! Magic doesn't exist!"

Sighing, the genie held out its hands, and blue fire danced all up and down its arms. "Again, not CGI." Its arms flopped to its sides. "Just make your wishes, and—"

"No!" Bunching up a fist, I shook it at the damn little thing. "I believed in the magic of education, and here I am with no one willing to let me do what I know how to do! I believed in the magic of advancement, and here I am, back in my childhood home again! I believed in the magic of egalitarianism, and I spent my career earning less than the men around me! I believed in the magic of science, and all my findings have been buried because of politics! I believed in the magic of friendship, and half the people I used to spend time with won't answer my calls anymore! I believed in the magic of love, and my husband cheated on me for ten God damn years! I believed in the magic of my own intelligence, and I never noticed him cheating on me! Not for all that time! Never! Didn't even suspect it!"

My face was wet, my eyes blurry and my nose running. I smeared the sleeve of my shirt over my face and blinked at the genie, staring up at me with wide black holes in the places where its eyes would've been. "So, no," I said. "I'm [i]done[/i] with magic. And you should be, too. However many thousands of years you've been alive, it's only made you miserable, right? If stupid magic says I have to make a wish, then that's all I want to wish for: that you can be as done with magic as I am."

The golden glow of the thing began taking on a reddish tint. "I told you. The rules don't allow—"

"Rules?" I barked a laugh. "What was it you said? Solomon cursed you because you took too much pride in your strength? Well, where's that strength now, huh? Or is it just my luck to get the wimpiest genie in creation?" I flicked my fingers at it, bubbles bursting all through the dark redness of it. "You're supposed to use your vaunted powers to serve me, and you can't do the one little thing I want! Free yourself! Stop being a slave! Throw away your magic or whatever it takes, but if you're my genie and I'm your master, then let this be the last wish you're forced to grant! Break your shackles and—"

"No!" the genie shrieked like a steam whistle. "I can't! But I must! So I—!" The bubbles all froze suddenly, and the genie's eyes holes went even wider. "Oh!" it said, and then it vanished without so much as a pop, the cellar plunging instantly into pitch and utter darkness.

My panting roared in my ears like lizard monsters, but I stayed put, my hands clutching the lapels of my flannel shirt, my body shaking too badly to risk moving. It seemed like minutes, but more likely it was less than one before my eyes adjusted enough for me to make out the faint moonlight coming in at the slit windows just below the ceiling. Still, I didn't trust myself to take a step, didn't even trust myself to grab for the edge of the table in front of me. With my luck, I'd blunder into the Mason jar, knock it onto the floor, and have glass shards to deal with as well...

A genie. That had been an actual, living, magical genie. And I'd just...just—

I didn't have any vodka, no wine, no beer, nothing. Hell, Aunt Clara had never been a drinker: I doubted she even kept cooking sherry in the house.

Yeah, I needed to go shopping tomorrow.

That struck me as funny, so I let myself laugh at it. Not too much, though, the rough edge of hysteria beckoning to me with sticky fingers.

Some time after that, I finally turned, felt my way across the cement to the wall cupboards, then slid along them to the steps. My knees felt as squishy as balloons as I climbed up, and I shut the door behind my with the softest possible click.

I'd just set a genie free. Unless I'd just made a genie blow up.

Either way, not something I was going to put on my resume.

Another little bit of a laugh burped out of me, but it didn't seem nearly as likely to blossom into uncontrollable screaming as the last one. I took that as a good sign and barely even stumbled reaching the foyer and the stairs and the upper sitting room. My room—Aunt Clara's room when I'd been growing up—was at the back of the house on the right side. I pushed inside, dropped onto the bed, and I'd have to say that I more lost consciousness than fell asleep.

Maybe I dreamed, but I hardly ever remember them, and I didn't when I woke up the next morning, either. I remembered everything that had happened the night before, though, even if I was having a little trouble reconciling it with the smells of coffee, hot butter, and syrup wafting in through the open door.

I was still wearing my jeans and flannel from yesterday, but I didn't bother changing before heading down to the kitchen. Toby was happily stuffing pancakes into his face; I sat, thanked Aunt Clara for the coffee she gave me, and took a few sips before I asked, "So, Tee. Had a chance to check on your lightning bugs yet?"

His fork froze halfway to his mouth, and I assured him quickly that I wasn't angry. I'd had to let them all go, of course, I explained, and proceeded to give him a quick lesson in the right sort of jar a person needs to use when catching lightning bugs to keep: a jar you could punch holes in the lid of, which most definitely was [i]not[/i] one of Aunt Clara's Mason jars. "And didn't Aunt Clara say you weren't to be bringing any bugs into the house?"

"But Mom!" Toby started, but then Aunt Clara folded her arms, the spatula still clenched in one hand and the glower on her face that had made me wince on multiple occasions growing up.

It made Toby wince, too. "I'm sorry, Aunt Clara," he said, then his gaze flicked over to me. "But they weren't bugs, were they, Mom? They weren't anything but just solid light, huh?"

Lying had never been one of my strong suits. "Lightning bugs are just bugs, Tee." I sighed. "We'll go out tonight, and I'll show you."

He looked about ready to argue, but fortunately, Aunt Clara came over with another load of pancakes, so we both found ourselves too occupied to continue.

I got him to clean up quickly by telling him I was going to take him around and show him the town, and we set off into the spring morning sunlight with a hastily scribbled shopping list in my pocket.

Earlville had never been [i]that[/i] big a town: a few blocks down Brown Street to Water Street, then a left, cross the train tracks, and there was Founders' Park at the center of town. I pointed through the wonderfully familiar trees to the bandstand where the summer concerts would likely be starting up in a week or two, then we began the circumnavigation to see the fire station, the bank, the grocery store, the library—

Which had its door open, two figures standing in front and a shiny new black BMW parked along the curb. But hadn't Aunt Clara said that the library was closed?

One of the figures threw back her head and laughed, a whooping sort of sound that I'd first heard in kindergarten. Beth Hudson: there was no one else it could [i]possibly[/i] be.

Except she was Beth Millsbank now, I remembered, her and Ronnie Millsbank getting married just after graduation and merging their adjacent family farms into one spread. Smiling, I gave Toby a nudge. "Get ready to meet the closest thing Earlville has to landed gentry, Tee."

"Huh?" he asked, but I pushed him across the street, around the BMW, and onto the circular brickwork pattern that marked the library entryway.

Beth caught sight of me right then, and she waved frantically. "Ann! Ann Price! Clara said you were coming to stay a spell! Oh, this is so wonderful!" She turned to the man beside her, short, thin, and dark, his black suit perfectly tailored and pressed. "Forgive me, Mr. al Marid, but this is Ann Price, a friend of mine I haven't seen in, oh, it's been years!"

"Certainly, Ms. Millsbank," the man said, and something about his voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He nodded at me, then did a double take. "Ann Price, you say? But certainly this is Dr. Ann Thomlinson, the renowned geologist!" He stepped forward and held out a hand. "I once heard you give quite a stirring lecture on the dangers of magical thinking, doctor. I can say it quite literally changed my life."

Numbly, I took his hand and was completely surprised when I didn't receive a massive electric shock. Because it was him. The voice, the shape of his face, the shimmer that lurked in the back of his eyes: I couldn't begin to imagine how, but this was the genie standing here shaking my hand. "Yes, I, uhh, I recall meeting you there..."

He smiled and ducked his head. "That's very kind of you to say."

"Are you—?" I had no idea how to ask this question. "Are you still in the same line of work?"

"One could say that I'm retired." His smile broadened, and the hand that I was still shaking seemed to grow warmer; glancing down, I saw brief waves of blue fire dance between our fingers. "One never quite abandons CGI, though you helped me to understand so much about...well, about [i]everything[/i], really, that I needed to find a whole new outlet for myself."

"Whoa!" Toby said breathlessly beside me. "Was that, like, static electricity?"

"Ummm," was all I managed before Beth chimed in:

"Mr. al Marid's interested in taking over the library! It's just so exciting! All of us on the town council have been so hoping to find someone we can partner with in getting the system up and running again!"

Before I could think twice, I asked, "You need any help with that, Mr. al Marid?"

"Oh, please, Dr. Thomlinson: call me Tariq." He hadn't stopped shaking my hand. "And in fact, I couldn't wish for a nicer offer."