The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

trouble keeping my breath. “Man, you’d make a very dangerous criminal.”
    “So I have,” he agreed. “From time to time.”
    Different masters holding his bottle, I thought, but I didn’t say that. David wasn’t in a bottle any more. David was the conduit, the power connection between the New Djinn - Djinn who’d once been human - and the sleeping power of Mother Earth herself.
    In short, he was the boss.
    On the other side of the organizational chart were the Old Djinn, or - as they liked to call themselves - the True Djinn, which tells you something about their arrogance. They had a conduit, too, his name was Ashan, and he was a right bastard who didn’t like David, didn’t like me and didn’t like humanity in general cluttering up his planet.
    Mutually assured destruction kept the peace between the Djinn.
    “You’re going to have to tell me a story sometime,” I said. I rolled over on my side to face David and propped my head on my arm. My long, dark hair slithered over my shoulders and cascaded down, curling at the ends in the moist breeze. “About that part of your life.”
    “I’m not sure you want to know.” He considered that for a moment, and from the wry twist of his lips, he knew how wrong that was. “All right, I’m not sure that I want to tell you.”
    “If we’re together, we’re together. Good times and bad.”
    “I’ve got plenty of bad,” he said. “I’d rather make some new experiences with you. Pleasant ones.”
    “After you tell me a story.”
    He tried to suppress a smile. “Can it be a bedtime story?”
    “You wish. Something personal. About your - criminal past.”
    I think he might have actually started to open up to me. His lips parted, and I saw the resignation on his face - and then a shadow fell across both of us. A big shadow, maybe twice as broad in the chest as David, with biceps as large as my thighs.
    A bodybuilder. One with so much overdevelopment that you could almost smell steroids in his sweat. He’d adopted a stiff military-style haircut, and a lot of truly ugly tattoos.
    And he had friends. Four of them. Although none of them was anywhere near his desperation-level of intimidation. Lots of tattooing and attitude. They weren’t exactly fitting in, but then, they didn’t intend to.
    Muscles stared down at David with what I suppose he thought was ferocious menace. “Move,” he barked.
    David looked up at him, eyebrows arched, perfectly at ease. “Why?”
    Apparently, Muscles wasn’t prepared for anyone to ask a reasonable question. “Because I said so,” he blurted back, and then pulled his face into a frown that looked very odd on a grown man’s face. “Because you’re in our spot, asswipe. Get your punk ass up.”
    Here’s the problem with being supernaturally gifted: you really can’t go around blowing away every goofball idiot who tries to make himself your problem, no matter how convenient it might be. Muscles might think he was badass, but he wasn’t up to going one round with me, never mind David. It’s always difficult to break that fact to them gently, without wounding their sensitive, macho feelings of inadequacy.
    David was already moving forwards on that. “There’s plenty of beach,” he pointed out.
    “I said this is our spot. Now get up and leave before we bury you in it.”
    David looked at me, and I saw the frustrated humour in his shrug. I sighed and started to gather up my things. It wasn’t worth the fight.
    At least it wasn’t until Muscles said, “Not you, bitch. You, you stay. We need us some candy.” He stuck out his tongue and fluttered it in the approved Gene Simmons manner, although he was nowhere near able to pull it off like His Rockness. Meanwhile, his friends spread out around us, trying to cut us off. I noticed that other people who’d parked their towels and coolers nearby were hustling away, sensibly thinking that maybe they had better places to be right now.
    I sat up and pulled my knees together, wrapping my arms demurely around them. “Excuse me? Did you just call me ‘bitch’? Because I’ve got a name. In fact, every girl you leer at has a name. Mine’s Joanne. Hi, nice to meet you.” I let a slow, wicked smile spread over my lips. “Now take your inked-up posse of posers and find another spot.”
    “Oh, here we go,” David murmured. He flopped down on his back, hands crossed peacefully on his chest.
    Muscles stared at me like I’d grown another set of breasts. “What? Bitch,