Gin Genie, Chapter Three
The boxes were heavier than the dread sitting in Cam’s gut, and that was saying something.
He dragged another one across the sticky floor of the back room, boots scuffing through dust resenting the disturbance. The cheese-whiff was now had a lingering sweet-wrong juniper of the blue smoke that still curled lazily from Kamal’s collar every time the man (spirit, djinn, whatever the fuck he was) shifted. Outside, the autumn wind rattled the old sign above the door like a town crier rang a bell, proclaiming the building occupied.
“You always this quiet when you’re working, or is the company putting you off?” Kamal asked. He lifted a crate that should have needed two men and set it against the wall like it weighed nothing. The blue streak in his hair caught the torchlight; the swirling colour in his eyes never quite settled.
Cam grunted and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, leaving a smear of dust behind, “just wondering if I’m having a breakdown or not.”
Kamal’s crooked smile appeared, “most people scream or try to hit me with the nearest bottle. Your uncle opted for a bottle and missed. We got on better after that.”
“Dan Dare by name,” Cam muttered, more to himself than anything, “he never could leave well enough alone.”
Kamal’s expression softened a fraction, the cocky tilt of his mouth gentling, “he tried, that’s all.”
The two worked in silence for a stretch after that, Cam’s mind did what it always did when the quiet stretched too long: wandered. He thought of Todd already eyeing the place for flats, of the developers who’d started circling the street like seagulls over chips, of the one-month clock ticking down to the end of the lease or the end of the money, whichever came first. He thought of Uncle Dan in the middle of a Friday night crowd years ago, buying rounds he couldn’t afford, telling stories that got taller with every telling, laughing like the world’s stresses were only a temporary inconvenience that would sort itself out if you just kept pouring. The bar had been many things under Dan’s ownership: gastro pub, gay bar, wine bar, Olde Worlde whatever - none stuck. Now it was Cam’s problem, Cam’s inheritance, Cam’s white elephant with a genie attached.
A heavy box suddenly felt lighter under his hands. He glanced over, Kamal stood three yards away, not even looking, but a thin ribbon of blue smoke drifted across the floor and curled under the cardboard. Dust lifted itself in neat little spirals and dissolved, the torch on Cam’s phone, which had been fading, brightened again without explanation.
Cam didn’t comment, or couldn’t.
They cleared a path through the worst of the chaos and pushed into the main bar. The space felt bigger in the dark, the empty stools lined up like witnesses, the marble counter dull under its layer of grime. Cam ran a hand along it and grimaced at the stickiness, somewhere behind the optics a pipe groaned, the only sign the place still had any life in it at all.
While stacking a final crate of ancient receipts and forgotten glassware, Cam’s fingers brushed a leather bound book that was thick and worn, its binding, though tattered, had clearly outlasted several owners. He pulled it free; the cover was decorated with faded lettering that might once have been gold. In the dim light, he could just make out the words: One Hundred and One Spirits. Some edges of the pages showed ink that seemed to catch the light wrong and too bright, almost glowing; Cam didn’t open it, he ignored the cold prickle walking up the back of his neck.
“What’s this?” Cam asked.
Kamal glanced over from where he was wiping the far end of the counter with a cloth that hadn’t existed a moment earlier. His eyes swirled a fraction faster, then settled, “an old ledger of the previous owners; it makes for dry reading, pay it no mind.”
Cam set the book carefully on the end of the bar, out of the way, but the prickle didn’t fade.
They worked until the worst of the detritus was at least stacked rather than scattered and the cheese-dust smell lessened, overtaken by a clean juniper scent, with a citrus bite that shouldn’t have been pleasant but somehow was. The autumn chill seeped under the door, but the air inside felt less dead. Cam leaned against the counter, arms folded, staring at the empty room.
“The three wishes: about the bar only, no lottery, no exes, no bringing anyone back, right?” He asked.
“Right,” Kamal answered. He leaned on the opposite side of the marble, bow tie still slightly crooked, smoke curling from one shoulder lazily.
“Keeps things… focused,” the genie added.
Cam tested the edges carefully, “if I wished that developers and debtors would leave us alone… that’s about the bar, right?”
Kamal’s smile didn’t fade, but something behind it cooled by a degree, “careful around edges, kid; they cut, they have sudden drops under them, your uncle learned that.”
Cam exhaled, he could almost feel the wishes waiting, heavy in his gut, heavier than the boxes they’d just shifted. The place was a tip and he couldn’t open the doors like this, couldn’t even think of that without wanting to walk away and let Todd have the lot.
“Alright,” the word came slow and tasted of dust and bore the dustier wind on the breath of Cam’s hope.
“First wish: clear this tip out. Make the back room and the main bar clean, usable, and not smelling like a tramp’s arse and old cheese. Get the electrics, plumbing, structure, make it all totally sound, so the place doesn’t feel like it’s about to collapse. Enough to, I dunno… give the old girl a chance?”
Kamal’s grin returned, bright and wicked and far too alive, “YOUR WISH IS MY COMMAND!”
Cam shrank a little from the genie’s changed voice, heart leaping at the momentary boom echoing through the bar as Kamal simply rested both palms flat on the marble counter and exhaled.
Blue haze rolled out from him in a slow, deliberate wave that was thicker than the earlier smoke, shot through with those same sparks Cam had seen when the bottle first opened. It threaded between the stools, climbed the walls, slipped under doors and into corners. Boxes that had been stacked against the far wall lifted themselves, drifted, and settled into neat, orderly ranks. Dust rose in soft clouds, hung for a moment as if protesting eviction, then dissolved. The sticky film on the counter vanished under Cam’s elbow and the lights above the bar - dead for months - flickered, steadied, and glowed a warmer, cleaner gold. Somewhere in the back, a pipe gave a single solid thunk and the distant sound of water running clear reached them. The air changed: the last of the cheese-whiff and damp decay replaced by that sharp, resinous juniper scent that somehow still carried a quiet warning underneath the freshness.
Outside, the old neon sign above the door gave one weak, hopeful buzz, then fell quiet again.
Blue haze thinned, the bar was still the same shithole in the same corner of the same street, but a clean and tidy shithole. The marble shone, the floor no longer stuck to Cam’s boots and the stools stood in straight lines. It looked, for the first time in years, like a place that could open its doors. Cam stood very still, dread in his gut hadn’t left but shifted to something quieter and joined by another sensation: thin, cautious hope that felt almost as dangerous.
Kamal moved behind the bar with the easy familiarity of someone who had done this in a hundred different rooms across a hundred different decades. He found two now spotless tumblers and a half-bottle of cheap whisky that had survived the clear-out, poured two shots and slid one across to Cam.
“To new partners,” he said, “and old bottles.”
Cam took the glass. The whisky was rough and ordinary and exactly what the moment needed; he felt it burn on the way down and looked around the quiet, improved space that was now his responsibility in a way it hadn’t been an hour ago. Outside, the autumn wind teased the sign gently now, as if the building started breathing steadily. Cam set the empty glass down, two wishes left. The closed leather book sat at the end of the counter like it was waiting and somewhere in the blue-violet dark of the back room, the bottle of Djinn Gin rested on its side, quiet.
He wondered, not for the first time that night, what the real price was going to be.
