Alaina rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and spoke in an amazed tone. "So he finally gets to the important questions. Will wonders never cease?"

Sebastian glowered at her but refused to be distracted. "I'm serious. You said that it doesn't happen the way I would think it does, but you never explained further than that. How did I get picked? Is it random, or is there a system to it?"

Now that he was finally ready to ask the questions, Alaina found she didn't have all the answers. Even with all the classes she had taken and all the lectures she had listened to, she still only knew so much about the process and most of that knowledge had been gained from actually experiencing it. Keeping her total honesty pledge in mind, she explained the best that she could.

"Well, I can only tell you what I know, and that's not everything. I'm sure there's a system that they use to decide, although I'm not sure what criteria they have. What I do know is that the people who are assigned a genie are inevitably the ones who need them, and it's as simple as that."

Sebastian sighed. "That doesn't tell me much."

She shrugged. "Sorry, but it's all I know. What we're taught focuses on handling a variety of problems, not one in particular, so it's not like I can say 'I was trained for people who are having problems with their parents, so that's why you got me'. All I could do is guess, and I don't have enough information to do that with any accuracy." She had her suspicions, of course, but it wouldn't do to go blurting those out before he was ready to hear them. Alaina had already decided to study him a bit more before she risked letting him know her thoughts. She didn't want to make him change his routine before she gathered all the clues from it that she could.

Turning her attention back to him, she offered a reassuring smile. "Let me put it this way, Sebastian. I'm not just here to work for you; I'm here to work with you, which means that everything I know I'm going to share. It's only fair, since you have to put up with me messing up your life for the duration of the three wishes."

He nodded, accepting what she had said. A moment passed before his forehead wrinkled and he caught her attention once more. "What exactly did you mean when you said you'd be messing up my life?"

Alaina suppressed a wicked grin. This was a big factor of the partnership that she knew he was going to have a problem with. As solitary a person as she had already made Sebastian out to be, there was no way he would welcome an intrusion that had to remain at his side twenty-four hours a day.

Hesitant to displease him, as she knew her explanation would, she tiptoed around the answer, putting her unpleasant task off for the moment. "That kind of comes up under the category of rules. If we're going to get into that, I might as well cover them all, right?"

"That's right, you did mention rules, didn't you?" Looking thoughtful, he nodded his agreement to her idea.

Taking a deep breath, Alaina screwed up her face as she sought to remember the long lecture she'd been taught to repeat. There were a lot of sternly worded passages in the speech that she had disagreed with, which had made memorizing the thing more difficult for her than for the others in her class. The wording was practically archaic and the message it conveyed was grimmer than it needed to be, in her opinion. By the time a genie finished reciting it, it was a wonder the master dared to wish for anything at all.

It didn't take long for her to decide to forgo the standard lecture altogether. She had no problem with going over the rules, but she didn't think it would be necessary to get into the punishments for breaking them, since she highly doubted it would come up.

"Okay, it's a genie's duty to do anything that their master wishes, but some things aren't allowed for various reasons. I'll tell you the forbidden things first, then explain why they're forbidden. Number one on the list is a big one, so listen carefully. No killing or otherwise harming other people. This can't be granted because all wishes must benefit the master, and having to deal with having hurt someone is not a benefit, no matter how much you dislike them."

Sebastian looked shocked. "I would never want to hurt anyone!"

"I know that. But these rules are for everyone who ever gets a genie, so they have to take all types of people into consideration. Just because it's something you can't see yourself doing doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't try it if they could. Understand?"

He nodded and she moved to the next rule. "Number two; no wishing for love." He made a face at that, but she continued her explanation as though she hadn't seen. "It's un-grantable for the same reason as rule one. It's no benefit to spend your life wondering if the feelings you have for a person or the ones that they have for you are real. It's also one of the most powerful forces there is, and it's never a good idea to mess with those.

"Rule three; no changing the past. Even a genie can't see all the effects the smallest change can cause. There's the chance that something that your wish affects might evolve, over time, into something unfavorable for you, which goes against the whole purpose of a genie again.

"Rule four; knowledge of the future is limited to what is helpful to you. Too much information can be a very bad thing. Nothing is set in stone, and thinking that something is going to happen might cause you to take some action that would keep it from happening. For example, if I told you that you were going to get into a great college, you might not study as hard as you normally would. Your grades might suffer, maybe even enough to keep you out of that college. Get it?" He nodded. "Good.

"Last but not least, we have rule number five. It's simple, but important. While you can wish for just about anything, make it stuff that's not too flashy. There's always the chance of being discovered, and calling attention to magic is the first step towards it being misused. Misused magic is bad for everyone, as I've been told many, many times." Exhaling loudly, she slapped her hands against her thighs before looking at him expectantly. "Did you get all of them?"

"No hurting other people, no wishing for love, no messing with the past or learning too much about the future, and nothing to draw attention to the fact that you happen to be a magical being. Does that cover it all?"

Alaina clapped her hands together happily. "Got them all in one shot. Very good!"

Instead of looking pleased with himself, Sebastian tilted his head to the side and gave her an exasperated look. "While I'm sure all of that is good to know, it doesn't answer my question about how you'll be messing up my life."

She chuckled sheepishly. "I'm getting to that. First off, do you see how some things can't happen if it's to benefit you in the end?"

"Yeah, I get that part."

"Well, the opposite is also true. There are some things that have to happen to be good for you. One of them is that all your wishes get run by me first, to make sure they're really what you want. Another is that I need to ask a lot of questions and have them answered honestly. I need to know a lot about your life to determine what's best for you, and in order to do that, I'm going to have to be close to you at all times."

"What?" Sebastian had sat straight up on the bed, his eyes wide in disbelief as he stared at her. "Run that last bit by me again."

"I have to be by your side at all times. Well, not exactly by your side, but close enough to hear your voice so that I'll know when you need me for something." She saw him opening his mouth to reject that idea and rushed to salvage the situation. "It's not as bad as it sounds. I can make it so that no one could see me but you, and not even you if that would make you more comfortable. You wouldn't even know that I was there."

"I would so know, because you just told me!" He dragged a hand through his hair, obviously more than a little upset. "This isn't going to work. I can't have someone following me around while I try to act normal. You'll just have to go back and tell whoever sent you to assign you to someone else. It's as simple as that."

Alaina didn't know whether to laugh at his petulant tone or get angry over his attitude. "First of all, you don't have the authority to send me back. And even if you did, I wouldn’t go. There is no way that I'm going to fail my first assignment. You're just going to have deal with me, and it's as simple as that." She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, silently daring him to argue.

He refused to let it drop. "No. No way. There is no way that I'm going to let you do that. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on my work, wondering if you were hovering over my shoulder, or whatever it is you would do to make yourself invisible."

"I don't hover; I simply fade. There’s a big difference between the two. And I could make it so that you didn't get nervous or distracted. It's one of the things that I learned at school."

"Oh, no," Sebastian, holding p both hands as though to ward her off. "No way are you casting any spell or sprinkling any magic dust on me. I won't have you messing with my head."

Alaina huffed, feeling the hold she had been maintaining on her temper slipping more and more. She was trying to be nice. She was trying to be understanding. But there was no way she was going to sit there and be insulted.

With a flick of her wrist she toppled Sebastian onto his back, exerting just enough power to keep him there. Rising from her chair she moved to the side of the bed. Looking down at the sprawled boy, she tapped her foot angrily against the floor.

"Listen up. For the last time, this is not negotiable. You can't get rid of me and you can't change the rules just because you're unhappy with them. I'm going to be your genie until I finish what I came here to do. I will do whatever is necessary to get to that point, and you will accept it. Do you understand me?"

A suitably chastened looking Sebastian nodded, swallowing hard. Knowing she might have gone a little far but unwilling to back off, Alaina turned on her heel and stalked back to her chair, releasing the pressure from Sebastian at the same time. Plopping down, she bowed her head to allow her hair to fall over her face as she pretended to study her nails. She listened closely to the sounds that the room's other occupant made. She heard the bed squeak softly as he regained his sitting position, then the whisper of denim against the comforter as he changed position.

The next sound of rubber against carpet surprised her. She had expected him to keep his distance from her for awhile, not come over to her side. The feel of his hand coming to rest lightly on her shoulder made her jump, her eyes flying up to his face in shock.

"Look," he said, contrition written all over his face. "I didn't mean to upset you. I know that you have a job to do, and that there's a certain way you have to do it. I don't want to stand in the way of you doing what you have to do. But you have to understand that this is really hard for me to deal with. Every time I think that I've figured this whole situation out, you throw something new at me. I'm okay with the fact that you really are a genie; at least, as okay as I'll ever be. And the whole wishes thing is starting to seem believable. But to think about having you there, even if no one else can see you; it's unsettling. It would be even worse if I couldn't see you, either. I'd spend all the time trying to find some clue as to where you were in the room."

"Hey," she said, interrupting his slightly babbling speech. "I know that this is weird for you. It's weird for me, too. This is my first case, I really don't want anything to go wrong. If I was a little harsh, I'm sorry. I'm just really nervous about all this, and your yelling made it worse. I'm sure that if we talk this out, we can find some kind of solution that's agreeable to both of us."

Sebastian nodded in agreement, dropping his hand from her shoulder. Instead of returning to the bed, he sat down on the carpet at her feet. He stretched his arms out behind himself and then leaned back on them. "Is there any way around the 'sound of my voice' rule?"

Alaina shook her head. "No. That's one of the most important parts of the process. They would have told us if there were a loophole or something. As annoying as the training was, I have to say it was incredibly thorough." She frowned a little as a thought struck her. "There’s no rule that says I have to be invisible, though. When it comes to school, I could always just go as a student. Maybe an old friend who just transferred in?" She could feel her eyes glazing over as she imagined all the cute clothes she would get to wear if she went to school with him.

All through her life, she had had very little variety when it came to clothing. Everyone she knew wore the same tunic like outfits, although the colors varied from moment to moment. Now she would get to choose from dresses and skirts and jeans, and all kinds of styles for shirts and shoes. And the accessories!

She was pulled from her pleasant daydream by Sebastian's voice. "No way. Not to be rude, but I don't think you could pull off the average student thing very well. And it also doesn't solve the distraction problem. I would still spend all my time worrying about you doing something that might get us found out."

Alaina pouted down at him, disappointed. "Are you really, really, really sure that my idea won't work? I think I could do the student thing quite well, thank you. I'd be very careful when other people were around. And even if they did find out, I could make them forget with no trouble at all."

"I'm sorry, but I don't think it would work. Is there anything else you can think of?"

Reluctantly letting go of her first idea, Alaina set herself to thinking of another. There had to be a way to make this work, and she was determined to find it. Sebastian didn't want her at the school, seen or unseen, because it would be a distraction for him. She couldn't let him out of earshot or else she wouldn't be able to fulfill her duties. The two seemed to cancel each other out, making a solution almost impossible.

As she continued thinking, she caught sight of Sebastian's frown out of the corner of her eye. Her train of thought interrupted for the moment, she watched as he shifted his position, reaching into his pocket. When his hand emerged, it was clutching something that glinted in the light from the overhead fixture.

The moment her eyes locked on the mirror, Alaina knew she had found the perfect solution to their problem. Never one to hold back her excitement, she practically yelled in glee. "I've got it!"

Sebastian jumped, letting the mirror slip through his fingers to land on the carpet with a soft thump. He raised a startled face towards her, his wide eyes and slack mouth showing his surprise clearly. She hurried to explain. "I have the perfect solution. The mirror!"

"I don't understand."

"The mirror is how the two of us are connected. It was the means of sealing our partnership. When you rubbed the glass, it bound me to you until the wishes are granted. It also holds a great deal of power because it's still connected to my world. If you carry the mirror with you, I'll be able to hear you through it, no matter how far apart we are at the time. How's that for a solution?"

Sebastian looked cautiously hopeful. "Are you sure it would work?" She nodded vigorously. A slow smile crept its way across his face. "I think I can live with that."

"So it's agreed? You'll carry the mirror with you in you pocket, and I'll stay away from the school so you can concentrate."

"Yeah, it's agreed."

"Good." Alaina giggled happily, pleased to have found a solution. "That only leaves the question of where I should be while you're at school. Would it be all right with you if I hung out here for a day or two? I don't want to go too far away until I'm sure how well the mirror will work. Since someplace quiet would be best, and your house is empty all day, this seems like a good spot."

Sebastian looked hesitant. "Are you sure my parents won't be able to see you? I mean, even though they leave before me and get home after, there's always the chance that one of them might run into you sometime."

She waved away his concerns. "Trust me on this; I know how to keep hidden. That was one of the most meticulous courses we had. I know like twenty different methods for remaining invisible to the mortal eye."

"I know that here would be the safest place for you, but I'm still a little worried. I don't know how I would explain you to my parents if one of them saw . . ." He was interrupted by a voice from the doorway.

"Sebastian? Who are you talking to?"