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limited to what I’m doing.” I shrugged. “Besides, Dad gets upset if Mom brings up the Genie Bureaucracy.”
    “Your father is a civil rights attorney.”
    With a nod, I said, “It’s too bad he can’t help you.”
    “Genies would actually have to have some rights for a civil rights attorney to help,” Leo grumbled. “Doesn’t it bother you at all, Jen? One minute you could be at home with your family and the next, you’re banished to the other realm.”
    “It’s probably a good idea if you don’t remind me,” I said, shifting in the booth. “Genies have been banished for way less than what we’re doing right now.”
    “Sorry I brought it up,” he said, sincerity in his gaze. “But you have to admit the timing is suspicious.”
    I nodded. “You’re right. So what’s your plan? You want me to find out information from my mother. She told me that my monitor, the Directorate, and the senior staff can access information about the wishes I grant. And of course, Mom can.”
    Leo typed on the laptop. “Okay, the Directorate, that’s eight people. I don’t know who monitors my dad, but it should be a senior staffer. Odds are we’re looking at a problem with the senior staff. There are eighty-seven of them, and approximately fifty live in the Atlanta area.”
    “How do you know that?”
    Leo turned his laptop so I could see it. “Disclosure statement from Genie Communications. You wouldn’t believe how much surfing I had to do to find it. I’ve been trying to get names of the senior staffers since Dad was incarcerated, but I haven’t come up with anything. I even got license plate numbers from the Genie Communications lot and paid a PI to run them.” He shook his head. “She got names of several employees of the cell phone side, but a bunch of plate numbers caused her computer to freeze. The genie plates are protected by magic.”
    “Is that how you knew about my mother?”
    “No. My dad told me about her. He sent his reports directly to your mother.”
    “Are you saying that your father thinks my mother is involved?”
    “No,” Leo said quickly. “He doesn’t. He thinks that your mother is a good place to start. He said that she had access to more information than any other person.”
    She probably did. “You didn’t consider just talking to her directly?”
    “My dad also said that’s she’s loyal to a fault and that she’d never reveal any secrets.”
    True. “So he suggested you try to get to her through her daughter.”
    Leo narrowed his eyes. “No. Talking to you was my idea. And I’m not trying to trick you or use you. I’m desperate.” He sighed. “My father is all I have. I’ve tried everything else. I need the names of the senior staffers.”
    “How am I supposed to do that? Break into my mother’s office?”
    He nodded. “You can, can’t you?”
    My mom had her office guarded with magic. Only a female with her blood could enter without setting off any alarms. I’d discovered this by accident when I was five. Mom had been working in her home office for hours. I eluded Dad and spent God knows how long trying different combinations on the office door.
    When it finally opened, I went in and stood right behind my mother’s chair where she was working on the computer. She hadn’t heard me.
    I jumped up and yelled, “Boo!” Mom screamed and screamed. Later I heard her telling Dad she should have recognized the flaw in the magic protecting the room.
    I could definitely get in and access her files without any alarms going off. And I knew the key code to the door. I’d seen her punch it in half a dozen times.
    I didn’t want to share any of this with Leo. “What would you do with the information?”
    “I’d check them all out. I’d ask my dad about them. Maybe one of the senior staffers is holding a grudge from my father’s wild days.”
    “If he was such a nightmare, why wasn’t he punished?”
    “He was punished,” Leo admitted. “Several times. He went