Read Online Djinn Rummy by Tom Holt - Free Book Online Page A

he said. ‘Apparently, there’s been some bloke going round trying to recruit genies for some job or other.’
    â€˜Oh yes?’
    Kiss nodded. ‘Offering good money, apparently. Which shows how much whoever it is knows about genies, if you stop to think.’
    â€˜Really.’
    â€˜If you think about it, I mean,’ Kiss went on, trying hard to maintain the affability level. ‘I mean, trying to bribe a genie with promises of wealth beyond dreams of avarice is like offering a fish a drink. Still, there’s been a lot of interest.’
    â€˜Is that so?’ Jane said, her face still obscured by the catalogue. ‘Well I never.’
    Kiss ground his teeth silently. Small-talk , said the training manual, is the mortar that cements together the foundations of the ideal genie/mortal relationship. Talk to your mortal and you will find that empathy inevitably follows. Something told Kiss that whoever wrote that hadn’t been on active service for several thousand years.
    â€˜Oh yes,’ he ploughed on, ‘ever such a lot of interest. I’d probably have put in for it myself if I’d been at a loose end. Whatever it is,’ he added lamely.
    Jane closed the catalogue. ‘Now then,’ she said briskly. ‘Kitchen worktops.’

    The door opened.
    Nobody walked through it, and nobody stood in the door-frame. After a moment, it closed itself again. The three people sitting at the table looked at each other.
    â€˜Good afternoon.’ There was a brief flash of blue light and the genie Philadelphia Machine and Tool Corporation IX materialised in the air, hovering precisely one metre over the table-top. ‘Sorry if I’m late, but I had a press conference. ’
    Better known to millions of cinema-goers as the star of A Thousand And One Dalmatians II under the name of Spot (and the corporeal trappings of the cuddliest, most adorable puppy ever) Philly Nine floated gently down and folded his arms. Each of the three members of the interview panel got the impression that he was face to face with the apparition; which wasn’t the most comfortable illusion in the universe, not by some way.
    â€˜Um,’ said the Chair at last. ‘Thank you for, er, making the time.’
    â€˜No worries,’ the genie replied. ‘The job sounds interesting. ’
    â€˜Yes.’ The Chair tried to keep the hesitation out of her voice. ‘The pay,’ she went on, ‘is excellent. I expect you want to hear about the money first.’
    â€˜Not really,’ the genie replied, making his body translucent just to be aggravating. ‘Let’s see, now, I had one per cent of the gross for making this film I’ve just done, which at last count came to seventy million dollars, but so what? All I have to do to make seventy million dollars - silver dollars, if I want - is whistle. Like me to show you?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said the Chair, quickly. ‘I mean,’ she added, ‘if that’s all right with you, of course . . .’
    Suddenly it was snowing banknotes. Thousand-dollar
bills. Great big coarse sheets of money, drifting and floating in the air, settling in drifts, skittering in the draught from under the door. You didn’t need to look to know they were genuine. For a while, the three committee members were a blur of fast-moving arms.
    The money vanished.
    â€˜Easy come,’ sneered the genie, ‘easy go. And you reckoned you were going to pay me.’
    â€˜All right,’ panted the Chair, catching her breath. ‘Point taken. You are interested in the job, aren’t you?’
    The genie nodded, like a will-o’-the-wisp dangling from the rear-view mirror of Satan’s Cortina. ‘It sounds like it might be fun,’ he said. ‘From what I’ve heard, that is. Why don’t you tell me all about it?’
    The second member of the committee took a deep breath. His right hand was tightly closed around