Thank you for reading the Paranormal Bed & Breakfast series — and for being curious enough about Alec to click this link.
This is his year. The one nobody saw coming, least of all him.
I hope you enjoy it.
— Joy
Alec’s First Year of Freedom: Eight Centuries Late
A Little Bonus from the Paranormal Bed & Breakfast series.
PART 1: The Empty Lamp
Nobody tells you that freedom has a learning curve.
Eight hundred years of being bound to brass, and suddenly I had unlimited magic with nobody to serve and nowhere to be. It should have felt like winning. Instead, it felt like being handed an instrument I’d only ever watched other people play.
I stood in Kyla’s garden on a Tuesday morning, breathing in air that smelled like turned earth and something green and alive, and tried to figure out what a free genie actually does with a Tuesday.
I snapped my fingers and made myself a coffee. Just because I could. No master to serve, no wish to grant. Just coffee, because I wanted it.
“Show off,” Luke said, coming up behind me. He held his own mug — made the mortal way, by his own mortal hands. The man had given up hundreds of years of magic and immortality and looked annoyingly pleased about it.
“Jealous?” I took an exaggerated sip.
“Not even slightly.” He stood beside me, looking out at the garden. “How are you finding it? The freedom?”
I considered lying. It would have been easy — I’d had centuries of practice. “Disorienting,” I said instead. “Like the walls I’d been pushing against my whole existence just… disappeared. And now I don’t know what to do with my hands.”
Luke nodded. “It gets easier.”
“Does it?”
“I spent forty-five minutes outside yesterday and now I’m peeling,” he said, lifting his mug with the careful movements of a man whose forearms were the color of a stop sign. “Nobody warned me about SPF. So no. Not yet. But I think it will.”
I turned his coffee into tea, because some things needed to stay constant.
“Really?” He sighed, staring into his mug.
“Would you want me to stop?”
He thought about it. “Honestly? No.”
We stood there a moment, and I found I didn’t mind the quiet. That was new.
Kyla emerged from the manor in Luke’s oversized dress shirt, her auburn hair chaotic from sleep, squinting against the morning light. My chest did its usual thing when I saw her — that particular ache I’d carried for months. But it was softer now. Less like wanting and more like the memory of wanting.
“Are you two playing nice?” she asked, drifting to Luke’s side.
I restored his coffee. “I’m always nice.”
She raised an eyebrow that said she’d been paying attention.
“I should get going,” I said. “It’s Tuesday.”
Her face shifted into something warm and knowing. “Tell Gerald I said hello.”
I gave them a salute and disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke. I could have simply gone — no theatrics required. But what was the point of being a genie if you couldn’t be dramatic about the small things?
Gerald was already setting up the cards when I arrived, the cancer-free color in his face doing something uncomfortable to my chest every time I noticed it.
“You’re early,” he said without looking up.
“Miss me that much?”
He shuffled with the ease of a man who’d been winning at cards for decades. “I miss taking your money. Shall we make it interesting?”
“You know I could conjure more cash.”
“And you know I’d know if you cheated.” He dealt and settled back in his chair. “How are things at the manor?”
I arranged my cards. “Boringly domestic. Luke accidentally had too much wine and got a little tipsy. Kyla’s garden is apparently developing opinions about the weather. All perfectly ordinary chaos.”
Gerald’s look cut straight through it, the way it always did. The man had an infuriating gift for that.
“I don’t know who I am,” I said, to my cards rather than to him. “Without the lamp. Without the rules. I’ve spent eight centuries being defined by what I couldn’t do. Now I can do anything and I keep standing in the garden drinking coffee I conjured myself and waiting for someone to tell me what comes next.”
Gerald laid down a card. “That’s the work, isn’t it.”
“What work?”
“Figuring out who you are when nobody’s watching. When there’s no wish to grant and no master to serve.” He glanced up. “Most people get to start that in their twenties. You’re just a bit behind.”
I groaned. “Please tell me freedom doesn’t mean I have to listen to more of your metaphors.”
“Freedom means you get to choose.” He laid down a winning hand. “Just like you chose to be here today.”
I threw my cards down. He was right, which was its own kind of irritating. I had chosen to be here. With this old man, in this ordinary living room, playing cards I kept losing. Nobody had summoned me. Nobody had wished for my company.
I’d just wanted it.
Gerald set down his cards and looked at me for a long moment. “You keep showing up,” he said finally. “That’s all family really is.”
Family. The word settled in my chest somewhere deep. Somewhere that had previously been empty.
“Deal again,” I said. “And this time, less wisdom. You’re supposed to be in remission, not enlightened.”
His laugh filled the room, and I found myself laughing too. Not the measured, charming laugh I’d perfected over centuries — something looser than that. Something that didn’t have a purpose.
I turned his winning hand into jokers when he wasn’t looking. He caught me immediately and shook his head.
But he was still smiling when he dealt again.
PART 2: The Wedding
I arrived at Moonstruck Manor on the morning of the wedding with a list of things I intended to do. Turn the flower arrangements into something more interesting. Intercept the caterers. Make a dramatic objection speech at the critical moment — not because I meant it, but because everyone was expecting it, and I did have a reputation to consider.
I found Luke in the garden instead, sitting on a bench with his head in his hands, breathing like a man who’d just remembered he was mortal.
“Please tell me this is a coincidence,” I said. “Because if you stand her up, I’ll have to kill you.”
He looked up. “Alec. What are you doing here so early?”
“Apparently watching you have a crisis.” I leaned against the nearest tree. “Which is remarkable, honestly. You faced down the Paranormal Police. You survived eight centuries of other people’s wishes. And this is what breaks you?”
“I can’t do magic anymore.” He said it like it was still new, still strange in his mouth. “What if something goes wrong and I can’t—”
I snapped my fingers and a paper bag appeared. “Breathe into this. Your human side is showing.”
He took it. I sat down beside him, not because I particularly wanted to, but because someone had to.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” I said, while he breathed. “You spent eight hundred years dealing with other people’s wishes. And you never once learned how to sit with getting one of your own.”
He lowered the bag. “Is this supposed to be helping?”
“You chose this. The mortality, the sunburn, the paper bags. You chose all of it because of her.” I gestured toward the manor. “And now you’re panicking because it’s real. That’s not cold feet. That’s just being human.” I paused. “Congratulations, by the way. You’re doing it correctly.”
Luke stared at me. “Are you actually trying to help me?”
“I’m ensuring my mistress has a wedding. The magic compels me.”
“Right.” He almost smiled. “Nothing to do with friendship.”
I stood and straightened my jacket. “Pull yourself together. We have somewhere to be.”
I caught glimpses of Kyla getting ready through the manor’s windows as the morning moved forward — a flash of her laughing at something Isabella said, the way she lifted her hand to her hair with the distracted focus of someone thinking about something else entirely. My chest did the thing it had been doing for months. I let it. Then I went to go badger Aubrey about the flower arrangements.
The ceremony was outdoors, which surprised nobody. Kyla’s powers had coaxed the garden into full bloom despite the season — flowers that had no business being open in this weather, open anyway, as if the plants had simply decided to cooperate. I stood at the back and watched her walk down the aisle.
When the officiant reached the part about speaking now or forever holding one’s peace, every head in attendance turned toward me. I had a whole speech prepared. Witty. Devastating. Perfectly timed.
What came out was: “Oh, get on with it. We all know.”
The look on Kyla’s face was worth every dramatic speech I’d ever planned.
At the reception, she found me near the edge of the garden, and we danced because tradition required it. Or because I wanted to. The line had gotten blurry.
“You still have two wishes,” I said as we swayed. “Just saying. It’s not to late to run away with the handsome genie.””
She laughed. “You’re impossible.”
“It’s a gift.” I spun her once. “Are you happy?”
She looked at me — really looked, the way she always did, like she could see straight through whatever I’d constructed. “Yes,” she said simply. “Are you?”
I didn’t answer right away. I looked out at the crowd — Gerald winning at something near the dessert table, Aubrey straightening a flower arrangement that didn’t need straightening, Luke watching Kyla from across the room with an expression I recognized because I’d felt something like it myself once.
“Getting there,” I said. And meant it.
Later, Luke and I stood together with drinks, watching the dancing.
“Take care of her,” I said.
“Or you’ll turn me into a toad?”
“I’ll think of something worse than a toad.” I watched Gerald attempt to teach Aubrey a card trick. “But seriously. She deserves everything.”
Luke was quiet for a moment. “Thank you. For today. For all of it.”
I raised my glass. “To mortality and other questionable choices.”
He raised his. “To family and other unexpected gifts.”
I spiked the punch bowl after that. Not maliciously — just enough to improve the dancing. Some things are a service, not a crime.
PART 3: Finding His Place
Freedom, it turned out, had seasons.
Summer settled into something resembling a rhythm. Weekly dinners at the manor became a habit I stopped pretending was casual. Gerald’s card games became the fixed point my week arranged itself around. Kyla’s garden grew more extravagant as her control over her magic deepened — flowers that bloomed in patterns, vines that rearranged themselves overnight, herbs that apparently had opinions about where they wanted to grow. I spent more afternoons out there than I’d intended, turning the stubborn weeds into origami birds when she wasn’t looking.
She always knew. She never said anything.
Dating was a separate disaster. Centuries of watching other people fall in love had given me a complete theoretical understanding of romance and absolutely no practical skill. Each attempt ended the same way — me making comparisons I had no business making, the other person sensing they were somehow losing a competition they hadn’t known they’d entered. Gerald received detailed reports over texts and offered unhelpful observations in return.
In autumn I traveled. First real solo adventure in eight centuries — no lamp, no master, no obligation to anyone. Venice. Prague. A small village in Scotland where something in the hillside hummed with old magic and the locals pretended not to notice. I sent postcards to the Manor family:
Venice is lovely. Almost turned the gondolas into flying carpets. Wish you were here. Not literally, Kyla — save those wishes.
Scotland has better magic than advertised and worse weather than promised.
I came back before winter. Couldn’t have explained why, exactly. But I came back.
Christmas at the manor was loud and slightly chaotic and nothing like the thousands of human holidays I’d observed over the centuries without participating. Shopping for actual gifts — objects chosen, purchased, wrapped — turned out to be genuinely difficult. Magic made it too easy to miss the point. I bought Gerald a deck of cards from a shop in Prague and watched him open it like it was something significant, and something in my chest did the thing it kept doing that I still didn’t have a word for.
After dinner, sitting by the fire with Luke and Kyla drowsing on the sofa and Gerald beating Aubrey at something across the room, I understood a thing I’d been circling for months.
I hadn’t been looking for freedom. I’d been looking for somewhere to belong.
Apparently this was it. This odd, largely mortal, thoroughly chaotic collection of people who kept setting a place for me at the table without making a production of it.
I turned Luke’s hot chocolate into something more interesting when he wasn’t looking. He caught me immediately, sighed, and drank it anyway.
That was family too, I supposed.
PART 4: Full Circle
Spring returned with the wedding anniversary and a garden that had somehow exceeded itself. Kyla had been experimenting, and the results were spectacular in ways that probably shouldn’t have been botanically possible. The manor smelled like every good thing at once.
I’d written and discarded four versions of my toast. Not that anyone needed to know that.
“A year ago,” I said, raising my glass, “I stood here and made jokes about turning the wedding cake into frogs.” Laughter. “What I didn’t mention was that the day changed more than Luke and Kyla’s lives. It changed mine too. Which I find deeply inconvenient.”
More laughter. I let it settle.
“See, I spent eight hundred years believing freedom meant having no obligations. No masters. No wishes I didn’t choose to grant. Turns out I had it slightly wrong.” I glanced at Kyla, nestled against Luke’s side, both of them watching me with expressions I didn’t deserve and had somehow accumulated anyway. “Freedom isn’t the absence of obligation. It’s choosing your obligations. Choosing who you show up for. Choosing — and I want it on record that I say this under protest — to be part of something bigger than yourself.”
I raised my glass higher.
“To Luke and Kyla. Who taught a selfish genie that the best wishes are the ones you stop making and start building. May your happiness continue to be profoundly annoying for many years to come.”
Gerald put his hand on my shoulder afterward. “Well done,” he said quietly.
Across the room, a woman I’d noticed at previous Moonstruck Manor gatherings stood near the window with a glass of champagne and the particular stillness of someone who sees more than they let on. A repeat guest — Selene, I’d heard Aubrey call her. Water witch, if I had to guess, though her magic had an edge to it I couldn’t quite place.
She caught me looking and raised her glass a fraction — not a greeting exactly, more like a question she wasn’t ready to ask yet. I found I wasn’t ready to answer it either. But for the first time in eight centuries, I was curious what came next. Not restless. Not adrift. Just curious. That felt like enough of a beginning.
I looked away. Tonight wasn’t about unresolved mysteries.
Tonight was about this — Gerald healthy and laughing, Aubrey losing gracefully at cards for once, Luke pressing a kiss to Kyla’s temple in that unthinking way that meant it was habit now, the best kind of habit. The garden breathing outside the windows. The particular quality of noise that means a house is full of people who chose to be there.
I turned Luke’s champagne into sparkling water when he wasn’t looking.
He caught me, sighed, and drank it.
Some things, I had decided, were worth keeping.
End Note:
Thank you for reading Alec’s story. Writing him was one of the great surprises of this series — he arrived as an antagonist and refused to stay one. I hope this epilogue gave him the ending he earned.
If you’re looking for your next read, here’s where I’d point you based on what you loved here:
If you loved the witch cozy mystery and small-town magic — the Mail-Order Witch series starts with Ettie, a witch who signs up for a husband and a charming town and gets considerably more chaos than advertised. The introductory story is free: www.joynellschultz.com/mow
If you loved the found family and the romance — the Quarter Witch Chronicles follows Ruby, a college student who didn’t choose her magic, a dragon who crashes her lectures, and two very distracting men. Witty, warm, and binge-worthy: www.joynellschultz.com/dragon
If you loved the humor and the chaos — Married to a Superhero asks what actually happens after the hero gets the girl. Cold dinners, missed anniversaries, and the occasional suspicious earthquake. Think Hallmark energy meets superhero conspiracy: www.joynellschultz.com/superhero
Explore everything here: www.joynellschultz.com/books
Happy reading,
— Joy