Don’t touch her hair? Don’t touch her hair? Jeannie was not going to touch her hair. She was going to turn her into something small and yippy. She was going to send her back to Bagdad and leave her in the middle of the square to be sold as a slave. She was going to shrink her down into a very small being and then step on her. But she was not going to touch her hair.

With determined steps, that may have looked more like stomping, she quickly crossed to place herself between this little woman and Spike. Who did she think she was to kick someone like that? That was not polite! Who… who… oh. Oh dear.

Had she said she was a slayer? She was a slayer? That did not make any sense at all. She was mean, yes, but she was quite small. But if she was a slayer, then something was very odd here.

“You,” she pointed at Fray, shaking her finger. “You must stop kicking people. It is not nice. There was a camel driver in my home town that kept cursing people and trying to hit them with the crop, and do you know what happened to him? They dropped him down a well. I will not drop you down a well, but I will… I will turn you into a tadpole! I do not want to have to do that, but I shall if you do not stop kicking people.”

Having delivered her threat, (and sure that it would be listened to, because who would ignore a genie?) Jeannie rounded on Spike. It was hard to remain angry when he lay there after being harmed, but she reminded herself to be firm. He had lied to her. “And you. You told me that this slayer person you wished to find was your friend. I do not know what sort of friends you have, Spike, but even in Cocoa Beach they do not kick each other.”

She threw up her hands in frustration, now addressing both of them. “I do not understand any of this. What is a lurk? What is a radie or a pump? What is a ruttin’? I am most confused!”