Matt couldn't think of any place more boring than Larkvale. He had lived in countless towns and cities in his nineteen years of life thanks to his parents' unconquerable wanderlust, and he hadn't found a single one that he thought was more boring than Larkvale, which is where he ended up going to school. He had friends who claimed that there were worse places to live, places much more boring simply because they were so tiny, but Matt refused to believe that they could be any more boring than Larkvale.

He couldn't quite remember why he had chosen to get his college education in Larkvale. It wasn't because it was a particularly good school, because it wasn't. The school was your average four-year college, though a friend of his said that the math department was one of the top in the state. He wasn't sure if he believed his friend or not, partially because she was a math major, and he just wasn't sure about the sanity of math majors. Anyway, that wasn't why he was in Larkvale.

It wasn't because it was inexpensive either. It was costing him an arm and a leg to go to school there. At least his parents were helping him to pay for it, when he could get in touch with them. They had moved at least twice in the less than two years that he had been in college, and they never remembered to tell him where they were until at least a month after they moved.

Larkvale wasn't even close to where he had been living when he had finally chosen what school he wanted to go to. It was a good three and a half hour drive from where he had finished high school. Not that he would have chosen a school based on how close it was to home anyway. Home for him was not a fixed place, since he was used to his parents deciding to move every year or two, so he had figured that where his parents would be living when he started college would most likely be a different place, possibly even as far away from where he was at the time as halfway across the country.

Despite not being able to remember why he had chosen to go to school in Larkvale and hating it because it was so boring, Matt couldn't bring himself to go to a different school, somewhere else. He could, get his desired education, a bachelor's in computer science, in many, many different places, but for some reason he felt he needed to stay in boring old Larkvale. He couldn't quite explain it, just like he couldn't explain why he had chosen Larkvale in the first place.

This was something that he mentioned often when talking to his friends at school. They thought he was weird for it, especially since most of them could think of places much more boring than Larkvale. It wasn't like Larkvale was a tiny little town or anything. It was a fairly good-sized city, with lots of things to do when students weren't busy with classes.

But for Matt, who was used to moving around constantly with his odd parents, three and a half semesters of being in the same place most of the time was just too much. There wasn't enough variety for his own sense of wanderlust, something that he seemed to have inherited from his parents. Still, there was that odd compulsion to stay in Larkvale, as well as his own determination to get himself a college degree.

As it was, life in Larkvale was odd for him. He had been there long enough to actually make friends and get to know people. That was something that he had never quite been successful at before college. He had always known that he would most likely not be in the same school, or even the same city, for the next school year, so he had never really opened up to people.

In Larkvale though, he knew he was going to be there for at least four years to finish his degree. So he had tried to open up more than he was used to, and he found that it was actually quite easy. Once he had just stopped keeping himself aloof, he had made friends very quickly, and he discovered that he liked the companionship a lot. By the time he was halfway through his fourth semester of school he had a group of close friends that he spent most of his time with, as well as several not-so-close friends that he would occasionally do things with. So, his life had started to resemble a normal person's life, except that his parents kept moving, and thus so did his permanent address.

But he was still bored in Larkvale. He just couldn't manage to be happy there without the variety of moving all the time. It was too familiar. And besides, since opening himself up to friendship, he had discovered that he wanted more than just companionship. He was lonely.

He hadn't found himself a girlfriend at all in Larkvale. That was the one thing that he had actually regretted about his mobile lifestyle with his parents. He hadn't been able to have a girlfriend. Sure, he could have just dated a girl for part of a school year, while he was living in whatever city they were in. But he was too nice of a guy to do that when he knew that he would have to dump her sometime over the summer because he'd be moving.

But now he was in Larkvale, and he'd be there for a while. But he still hadn't managed to find any girls that he really wanted to go out with. It just wasn't happening. He had lots of female friends, girls that he got along with, but that he just couldn't imagine dating at all. He never felt any stronger for any of them than a strong friendship though, and it was starting to frustrate him. And because of that, it just added to his dislike of Larkvale.

Then, one day, things started changing. It started in the apartment of a friend of his, one of the girls that he liked, just not that way. She was a fun girl. She was definitely what most people would call odd, in that she just didn't act like everyone else. She loved to learn, with a passion, and she had been attending college for somewhere around six or seven years now, working on her third degree.

She had the money that allowed her to just stay in school instead of finding a nice, well-paying job and settling down to life in the working world. Her plan was to keep attending the school, getting degrees whenever she finished the right credits to graduate, until the school told her that they wouldn't allow her to be a student anymore. And since she was paying them, she figured that she'd be able to do it for quite a while.

Not only that, but she was a strong believer in the supernatural. She didn't claim to have any powers of her own, nor was she strongly religious. In fact, she was quite anti-religious. She just believed in things like magic and that kind of stuff. She could, and would, spend hours, or perhaps even days, telling people just about the different kinds of faeries that were out there. Matt usually found himself listening, just because it was interest

Her name was Anya, though Matt had heard from another friend that that wasn't really her name, just what she preferred to be called. From what he could gather, she got quite angry if people used her real name, and that was why he hadn't even managed to find out what it was. He didn't really care what it was though. His thoughts were that if she wanted to be called Anya, that was what he would call her, unless he was given a good reason not to.

He was over at her apartment that day just hanging out. There were a bunch of people there, not really together for any specific purpose, just to talk and spend time together. There were no classes the next day, it being a Friday, so no one was paying attention to the time either.

By the time it was somewhere around four am, the people left at Anya's realized that there were only two of them, besides Anya. There was Matt, and then another guy by the name of Jake. Both guys decided that it was about time to head home, but instead Anya invited them to stay the night. She had a spare bedroom for one of them, and the other could sleep on the couch.

It wasn't a very rare occurrence for someone to end up staying the night at Anya's. Matt had done it before, as had Jake, and he thought nothing of staying again since Anya offered. It was decided that Matt would get the bed this time, and Jake would sleep on the couch.

Matt had slept in the spare room before, not as many times as he had crashed on the couch, but still enough that he knew the room pretty well. So when he saw something new in the room that had never been there before, he was intrigued. It wasn't odd for the other rooms in Anya's apartment to get new things often, in fact there was almost always something new whenever he came over, but for some reason she never changed anything about the spare room. It was always the same.

But this time there was a bottle sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. It wasn't even remotely similar to the decorative bottles that Anya had in her kitchen, and it certainly wasn't anything that he had ever seen in her apartment before. It was made of an odd white stone, at least he thought it was stone, that looked like it felt like velvet. In other words, it didn't look like stone; it looked soft. There was a geometric pattern carved around the middle of the neck of the bottle, inlaid with gold, or at least something that was golden in color.

Curiously, Matt picked up the bottle. It was surprisingly light, and oddly enough it was just as soft to touch as it looked. It was stone, he could tell that, but it still had a velvety texture to it. Amazed at how stone could feel like that, he ran his thumb over the bottle, wanting to find out just how far the velvety texture ran.

The velvety stone had been cool to his touch, but as soon as his thumb passed over the bottle in that one quick movement it started to get warm. Before long, Matt noticed that the bottle was glowing with an odd, silver-white light. It quickly became too warm for his touch, and he hurriedly put it down on the table.

Then, suddenly, it flashed brightly, momentarily blinding Matt. As he shook his head to clear the bright spots that were still clouding his vision, he could see the blurry figure of another person in front of him. Despite his vision still being pretty blurry, he figured out that the other person was a female, mostly by her voice. She was ranting to herself about something...

"Dammit all!" she exclaimed, sounding very, very angry. "Anya is a dead woman! She said I'd be safe and free of bothers here, and now look what happened! When I get my hands on her she's going to wish that I could kill her!"

While he listened to her angry words, Matt's vision was steadily clearing. By the time she got to "kill her," it was pretty much all back. It was then that he got a good look at the girl that was standing in front of him.

She appeared to be somewhere around his age, late teens or early twenties. She was tall, for a female, standing a good three or four inches taller than Matt's own, admittedly short, 5' 7". She had a slender build, slightly curvy, very attractive, but not overly feminine looking. She was wearing an old, worn, and faded pair of jeans and a loose t-shirt, not nice clothing, but attractive on her in a comfortable, informal sort of way.

Her hair was thick, straight, and platinum blonde. It was grown long, and it fell to her knees in a heavy waterfall of white-blonde silk. Her bangs were slightly long as well, and they fell forward to partially obscure her eyes. Said eyes were an odd, slightly unnatural looking, silver color, and were at the moment glaring at Matt with a hostile glint in them.

In other words, she didn't look any happier than she sounded.

"Okay, what do you want?" she asked, rage all too evident in her voice. Matt stared at her blankly, not exactly sure what she was talking about. Did she think he wanted her for something? The girl groaned.

"Anya didn't put you up to this, did she?" she asked him.

"Not that I know of," he said cautiously. "Not that I know what this "this" is that you're talking about anyway..."

"I'm talking about you summoning me!" she exclaimed. "You know, the whole "rub bottle, get wishes" thing?" She groaned again at his confused look. "Look, you know the story of Aladdin, right? Guy finds lamp, guy rubs lamp, genie appears, guy gets wishes?"

"Uh, sure," Matt said.

"Same situation here," she said. "You rubbed the bottle. That summoned me. Now you get some wishes, three to be exact. Only exceptions to the whole whatever you wish for thing are that I can't kill people, and I can't affect people's feelings very much. Otherwise, you name it, you got it."

"Oookay..." Matt said dubiously. He really didn't believe this. There was a girl, a fairly good-looking one at that, standing in front of him, saying that she was a genie and that she'd grant him three wishes. He decided, since he didn't really believe in magic, that it was all some odd trick that Anya was playing on him.

She made an odd sound in her throat, and he looked over at her again, just to find that she was watching him with an odd expression on her face. "What?" he asked, feeling like he was being scrutinized.

"Aren't you going to start making your wishes?" she asked, sounding impatient. "I'd like to get back to bed sometime this century you know." Matt still didn't quite believe it, but he decided that it would probably be best to play along for a while.

"Umm, can't I have some time to think about this?" he asked, and she groaned, making another face at the same time.

"Dammit, I knew this would happen!" she exclaimed angrily. Then she started pacing around the room, muttering things about Anya being in deep shit and things like that.

"Uh, what's wrong?" he asked, feeling as if he'd missing something important. She threw a disgusted look over at him, and sighed, sounding quite exasperated.

"You, you're what's wrong!" she exclaimed. "First I have this...problem to deal with. Now you summon me, and you can't even make your wishes and get it over with. And because of the nature of my bond I have to serve you until you make your stupid wishes. And to top it all off, next week is one of my weeks from hell with school, and I'm going to be too busy playing slave to you to deal with it. Yes, Anya is very dead for this..."

"Wait a minute, did you just say slave?" Matt asked, his voice squeaking a little on the word slave, to his embarrassment.

"Yes, I said slave!" she exclaimed. "As in I do your bidding until you're done with your wishes. Now, if you'd just hurry up with those damned wishes, I can get back to my sleep. I've had a long day, and I'm tired."

"This is all some weird trick of Anya's, it has to be," Matt was thinking. Not only was she claiming to be a genie, but she was going to be his slave. It was too good to be true. Yes, it definitely had to be a practical joke. Anya would probably come bursting into the room as soon as he made a wish or something like that, laughing her head off.

"Okay, just what is Anya giving you to do this to me?" he asked her suddenly.

"Huh?" she asked. She sounded confused. Matt flung himself down on the bed.

"You heard me," he said. "What's Anya giving you to pretend to be my slave and stuff like that?"

He could see the anger work its way across her features as she realized just what he was saying. Her whole body tensed up, and she started clenching her fists. She looked like she was about to attack him, or at least yell at him quite loudly, but then she seemed to think better of it. She took a deep breath and began to speak from between tightly clenched teeth.

"You think this is some kind of trick that Anya's playing on you?" she asked, barely suppressed rage clear in her voice. "You think that I'm just helping Anya? Is that what you think this is?"

Matt nodded, and immediately wondered if maybe that was the wrong thing to do as her face darkened even more.

"I cannot fucking believe this!" she yelled, loud enough that Matt was afraid she would wake the others in the apartment. "First I get this stupid curse. Now, when I asked Anya to watch over the bottle while I was trying to find a cure, you came and summoned me. And now you think it's all some trick of Anya's to embarrass you? You selfish bastard! What the hell do I have to do to convince you that I'm for real anyway?"

"Umm..." Matt said, feeling very, very stupid for pissing her off, though he still didn't really believe that it wasn't some plot of Anya's.

"Why don't you make a wish?" she said acidly. "Maybe if you got something you'd believe me! Remember, I can do almost anything."

"Uh..." Matt said, trying to think of something that would prove that she wasn't just doing it for the joke. Then he got an idea, though it would probably end up pissing her off even more. He knew there were people who would do that sort of thing easily and not be embarrassed, but she didn't seem like the sort who would, so if she really did have to do whatever he said, then she'd do this, but otherwise he didn't think she would.

"W-why don't you strip for me then?" he said, stumbling over the words a little, because the suggestion itself embarrassed him a little. He could feel a blush rising to his cheeks at the thought of her naked in front of him, but all of those thoughts left his head as he noticed the even greater anger that had taken over her face.

"What!?!?!" she exclaimed.

"I said," he said, gaining a little more confidence. "Why don't you strip for me. If you do that, I'll be convinced."

"No way in hell am I doing that!" she exclaimed. "Not unless you make it a wish. There is only so much I will take today."

"I thought you said you had to be my slave," he said. Part of him was glad that she was refusing though. He wasn't sure if he could handle her naked right in front of him.

"And I thought you said that you didn't believe me," she said. "I'm still not doing it unless you wish it. I don't care if I get in trouble."

"Fine then, I wish for you to strip for me," he said, before he could realize what he was saying. He immediately regretted the words, but it was too late for him to take them back.

Her face darkened even more with anger, if that was possible anymore. He considered trying to take it back before she did something that might hurt, but he had a sinking feeling that he couldn't take the words back now that he had said them. The tension built as she scowled at him, but then finally she broke it by sighing heavily.

"Fine, since you wished it I have to do it," she said, still scowling though. "But you had better believe me after this!"

She directed a particularly hostile glance at him, and suddenly he found that he had no control over his body. He was pushed back onto the bed to sit, and then he felt the force controlling his body leave. Then she stepped in front of him and started to lift up her shirt.

Matt found it odd that he really had no interest in what she was doing as she removed her clothing, except for enough to make sure he was paying attention so she didn't try and kill him later. She looked angry enough that she might do that if he ignored her. Oddly, though she was quite angry at having to strip in the first place, she made it look good, turning it into a striptease, even though it still didn't really interest Matt at all.

After she was completely naked she stood there for a moment in front of Matt, seeming completely at ease without any clothing on at all, but still extremely angry. Then, before Matt even knew what was happening, she was clothed again, still scowling at him. It was a short while before Matt had anything to say to her, not because she'd just been naked in front of him, but because of the sheer hostility on her face as she stared at him.

"You happy?" she asked him. "And you'd better say yes, because I'm not taking my clothes off again."

"Uhh, sure," Matt said.

"So do you believe me now?" she asked.

"I guess so," he said uneasily. He still couldn't quite believe that she'd actually done it, but she had, and she looked angry, so he figured playing along with her would be for the best.

"Well then," she said. "I'm supposed to be your slave and all, but if you don't mind, I have something I need to do tomorrow that I really should be well rested for. And since I don't want to screw it up, I'm going to bed now. Keep the bottle and rub it sometime tomorrow, but after lunch, and I'll find you. But keep in mind that if for some reason you do bug me before lunch, especially while I'm busy, you'll regret it."

"Uhhh, okay..." Matt said.

"Good," she said, and she disappeared from the room. Matt was left staring at nothing but the bedroom wall, with the bottle sitting on the nightstand. He blinked a few times before finally shaking his head in confusion. He still wasn't quite able to believe it all, so he settled for getting some sleep. Hopefully, it would make more sense in the morning.