Chapter 3

Agent Lopez stared at the 'empty' examining table and ran a finger along what she assumed was a shoulder. Without wasting precious seconds by standing up, she rolled her chair along the floor on its wheels, spinning around to the desk in the corner of the room and grabbed a jar of yellow powder and a brush. She pushed herself away from the desk and rolled back to the examining table, her feet not once touching the floor. Pierce would be proud.

She dipped the brush into the powder and tapped it hesitantly where the face would be. The powder settled onto a solid surface, gently landing on tiny hairs which were revealed to be eyelashes, until slowly a closed eye was finally defined. Santana tapped the brush again and continued to cover the rest of the face. An unconscious silly grin spread across her face as more of the features became revealed. She giggled to herself and got to work to reveal the whole body.

Later, when Santana had almost completely covered the body which was now most definitely April Rhodes, with the yellow powder, Agent Pierce entered the room. Noticing the avid concentration on Santana's face, she walked across and quietly watched the other agent work from over her shoulder, staring down intently at the body. She didn't say anything, just watched with a grin as Santana painted the body, the whole time with a cute, dorky smile on her face.

"I think you missed a spot here," Brittany finally interrupted with a soft voice. "I can see straight through to her ass."

Santana came over and dusted a bit of powder on the spot then reached up and dusted a bit on Brittany's nose for good measure. Brittany scrunched up her nose and sneezed in surprise.

"This is April, huh?"

"It is. Her dental records are a match. She was found about half a mile from her house. She was probably hit by a car or a truck or... something."

"And she's... invisible."

"Yes, she is."

Santana and Brittany beamed down at the corpse, having an unrivalled geeky moment. They had never had such beautiful, tangible proof in their grasp before.

"You know, Britt. In the seven years that we've been working together I have seen some amazing things, but this, this is the icing on the cake. It's going to change the boundaries of science," Santana sighed happily.

"It is amazing, but I don't think it has anything to do with science."

Santana raised an eyebrow, sat back and folded her arms across her chest, her body language ready for Brittany to try and rain on her parade.

"Just hear me out," Brittany smiled at her, holding her hands up in peaceful gesture. In one of her hands was a photograph. "Remember Mr. Saturday Night Fever?" Brittany held up the picture they had found in the storage unit. "I did a background check. His real name is Sandy Ryerson and he redefined the term, "overnight success." In 1977, his net worth was $36,000, and in 1978 it was $30 million. Then there's the interesting way in which Mr. Ryerson died."

"How's that?"

"Chronic morbid tumescence."

"Please say you don't mean what I think you mean."

"Shuh-wing. On April 4, 1978, Sandy Ryerson was admitted to Gateway Memorial Hospital with an extreme priapic condition. Apparently, he was quite the specimen." Brittany grinned and waggled her eyebrows. "They had to raise the door frame in order to wheel him into his hospital room."

Santana winced at the thought, then asked, "What does any of that have to do with this?"

Brittany held up another image, this time it was a blown up picture of the mysterious woman from the Rhodes-Abrams trailer. "I think the mystery woman is the link. The mystery woman about whom I can find absolutely no information whatsoever. I think she's responsible for all of this."

"And why would you think that? And how would she even have done this?"

"I don't know," Brittany admitted. "But we need to talk to her."

"Uh," Santana spun around as though she had just remembered the body was still behind her. "I think that I should stay here with the body. I mean, I... you know. I don't think it's a good idea to leave her unguarded. This is... this is truly amazing." She smiled happily at the dead body.

Brittany couldn't help but smile at her obvious excitement. "Okay," she agreed easily. "You guard the body." She laughed again at Santana as she began to obliviously check April over from head to toe and added to her already copious pile of notes and measurements.


WILLIAM MCKINLEY TRAILER PARK, LIMA, OHIO

In the Abrams' trailer home with the out of place yacht still looming through the window, Brittany sat perched on the edge of the worn sofa with her hands clasped on her lap. Across from her sat a very forlorn looking Artie Abrams.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," Brittany said softly, her heart aching for the man opposite her who suddenly looked very young at that moment.

"April didn't suffer, did she?" He asked, furiously cleaning his glasses with his shirt sleeve.

"No, I don't think she suffered." She cleared her throat and squinted at him thoughtfully. "The part about her being invisible... that doesn't, uh, catch you off guard at all?"

"Uh..." Artie trailed off and didn't answer.

"Artie, the woman who was here earlier. Where is she now?"

"She's... she's gone."

"Let me tell you where I'm going with this, Artie. I think that woman is a 'jinniyah'. Are you familiar with that term?"

"No."

"It's the feminine for jinni. As in a demon or spirit from Middle Eastern folklore."

Artie scrunched up his nose and pushed at his glasses then shook his head, he still didn't get it.

Brittany began to hum a familiar tune from a TV show theme song. Recognising it, Artie grinned and joined in. "Ahh, I get it now," he smirked at Brittany. "'Jinni', as in 'genie'. Although you do know that you hummed the theme to 'Bewitched' and not 'I Dream of Jeannie'?"

"Dammit. But you get what I mean though? Even though Barbara Eden never killed anybody... that I know of." Brittany took a mental note to look that up. "Anyway, in Arabic mythology they speak of these beings that are composed of flame or air but take human form. They can perform certain tasks or grant certain wishes. They live in inanimate objects like a lamp or a ring. Is any of this beginning to sound familiar?"

Artie shook his head hesitantly but Brittany wasn't convinced.

"Artie, I believe your step mom found such an object in the storage facility, didn't she? She took possession of the jinniyah and made some pretty outrageous requests; like Terri Schuester's mouth and the yacht in the driveway."

"Oh, wait, wait," Artie said, looking relieved. "So you don't think it's all crazy, you believe that?"

"I do. And Artie," Brittany sat up straight, trying to make herself look bigger and more professional. "For your own safety, so that what happened to your step mom doesn't happen to you." She stared him straight in the eye and flicked her hair back over her shoulder. What? It might help a bit. "I think you should hand over that object to me."

Artie sighed then wheeled himself over to a table in the corner. Brittany, perched like a meerkat, was trying to see what he was doing without getting up from her seat. She sat back down in a hurry as Artie came back and handed her a hexagonal tin with an ornate design on the lid. Brittany's eyes gleamed and she fought back a grin.

"You're doing the right thing," she nodded, reassuring him.


A short time after Brittany had left the trailer park, Artie opened the door to the storage unit 407 using April's set of keys. From the doorway he turned on a flashlight and scanned the room, the light beam finally resting on the once again rolled up carpet.


FBI MORGUE

Santana would have been highly amused to witness Brittany skipping into the morgue but she was too busy being enthralled with taking pictures of an invisible body, albeit a yellow powder coated invisible body, with the biggest damn camera Brittany had ever seen.

"Hey, Santana, come check this out," she fidgeted in the doorway wanting her partner to come out into the office.

"Just a minute," Santana muttered, clearly not wanting to leave the amazing specimen. She made another circuit around the body tray sticking out of the wall where it was being stored, snapping several more shots. Brittany stifled a giggle at the sight of Santana concentrating so intently, her tongue sticking out slightly as she focused on her task. A smudge of yellow powder coated her right cheek and her hair was wildly trying to escape her regulation ponytail.

"You do realise you're taking pictures of an invisible body? That's like an oxymoron or something. Come on, she's not going anywhere. Come on!" Brittany waved at her to follow.

Santana pushed the slab back into the wall and whispered happily to the body, "Bye." Her cheeks flushed pink as she turned to find Brittany watching her from the door with an adoring smile. "What?" Santana rubbed her nose self consciously, getting more powder on her face before locking the cabinet holding April's body and joined Brittany at the desk in the next room.

"I have a group of researchers flying in from Harvard Medical," she beamed at Brittany. "I can't wait to see their faces."

Brittany leaned in with a smile, immediately getting Santana's full attention, then reached over and wiped the errant powder off her nose with her sleeve.

Brittany smirked at Santana's flustered reaction and was about to hand over the container Artie had given her before hesitating. "Is it an invisible body if it's visibly yellow?" she pondered.

Santana smacked her lightly on the arm. "Of course it is!" She huffed indignantly. "What's this?" She asked with a slight scowl, taking the tin from Brittany's hands.

"It's not what I hoped it would be," Brittany sighed. "Judging from the odour inside, I think it's where the Rhodes/Abrams family kept their weed."

Santana sniffed the container then recoiled and handed it back to Brittany with her nose wrinkled up in disgust. Brittany clicked on the computer nearby and brought up a page on to the screen.

"But that's not what I wanted to show you. Recognize this guy?" She pointed to a black and white image of Mussolini on a podium, addressing a crowd.

"Benito Mussolini? I mean, I've never met him but..."

Brittany smirked at Santana's attempt to joke about. She must be in a very good mood to crack some jokes. "Okay, wise guy, how about her?" She pointed to a woman standing off to side in the picture, looking very young and very bored.

"Your mystery woman. Or someone who looks a lot like her."

"The computer says it's the same woman. I ran her through Quantico's facial recognition software and couldn't come up with a match in the known felon database. Then I took a copy of the 70's photo and checked with the image bank at the national archives. VoilĂ !"

Santana made an odd sound like a disbelieving snort. "Even if it is her, what would she be doing with Mussolini?"

"Or Richard Nixon for that matter," Brittany shrugged and clicked on another tab opening up a video clip. She pressed play and a video of Richard Nixon pontificating started playing. Behind him stood the young woman from the Rhodes/Abrams trailer and the old photos, filing her nails and looking bored.

"I don't know," Brittany continued. "But what I do know is, they were both men who got all the power they ever wished for and then lost it."


WILLIAM MCKINLEY TRAILER PARK, LIMA, OHIO

At the Abrams' trailer, the mysterious woman kicked at her rug so it unrolled in the middle of the floor. She looked around the familiar room with a scowl.

"See?" Artie said with an oblivious smile. "I told you it'd look good in here. Nice rug. How do you breathe in that thing?"

"Look, Artie. Can we just get this over with? You got three wishes. Go." She said, snapping her fingers.

"Okay. Don't rush me, all right? I want to do this right. Got to be smarter than April was," Artie said, looking over at a collection of framed family photographs next to the TV. "Damn it, April," he whispered.

"I don't want to tell you what to do, but in the interests of the organisation GAS, 'Genies Against Stupidity', can I make a suggestion?"

Artie looked blankly at her until the woman indicated his legs with a wave of an arm.

"What?" Artie asked.

"This," she snapped. "Your disability. I guess something bad happened for you to end up in the chair? Some kind of tragedy? But that's just a stab in the dark here."

"Yeah, well, it was pretty tragic, I guess. Me and April were playing mailbox baseball," he chuckled. "God, I miss that game, and April's driving. I was leaning pretty far out the window there. Oh." He laughed and slapped his palms on the arms of his wheelchair. "You mean this thing?"

"Finally," the woman muttered and nodded.

"Yeah, you're right," Artie rubbed the arms of his chair fondly. "I could wish for a solid gold wheelchair. Man, that'd actually be kinda sweet."

The woman put her hand up and pinched the bridge of her nose with a pained expression on her face.

"I see what you're saying but, you know what? There's something I want more than that," said Artie. He gazed over at a photo of himself in his high school graduation robes with April hugging him tightly with a proud look on her face.


FBI MORGUE

The FBI building was on cautionary alert that morning. Never had anyone seen Agent Lopez so, there was only one word for it, giddy. She smiled and nodded and even slapped a few of her colleagues on the back, much to their bemusement.

At eight am precisely, Agent Lopez proudly led three members of the esteemed Harvard Research team to the locked unit in the morgue. She frowned as she noticed her guard asleep while on duty. She nudged Agent Pierce whose chin slid off where it rested on her arm until she jumped up and shouted, "I'm awake!" Her eyes locked with Santana's and narrowed into a frown when she couldn't see any coffee. She mumbled, "S'all yours," and left them to it.

Santana laughed it off and couldn't help but turn back and beam at her guests. Her hand shook slightly as she pulled the key out of her lab coat where it was tied to a solid metal keychain.

She turned the key and then paused for a deep, calming breath. This was it. Her defining moment, the beginning of medical miracle history. This discovery would have her name go down in the annals as one of the most famous pathologists of all time. Even her father would have been proud of her at this moment. She addressed her small audience.

"Doctor's, Professor, I'm so excited that the Harvard Research Team came here today. Thank you so much for coming at such short notice. I'm sure you'll agree when you see this that I haven't wasted your time. You're not going to believe your eyes," she chuckled. "I certainly didn't. You ready?"

She opened the door and pulled out the tray which was, unfortunately, very empty. She stared at it for a second then nervously glanced back at the team behind her who were exchanging sceptical glances with each other.

"Uh," Santana began to mutter. "She's, uh... she is invisible after all. Um...," she laughed weakly and put out her hand to feel about the tray only to touch nothing but air. "She is in there, I swear."

She reached back further into the compartment but there was still nothing. In desperation Santana climbed onto the table and searched inside the storage compartment giving the Doctors a gratuitous view of her ass. She looked out of the box to see the Doctors shaking their heads.

"No wait!" She called out desperately from the hole in the wall as they started to leave. "She was here! I saw her. Well, I didn't see her but... No, wait!"


WILLIAM MCKINLEY TRAILER PARK, LIMA, OHIO

In the Abrams' trailer living room, Artie and April, who was still covered in yellow powder, sat across from each other at the table. The genie leant against the counter which constituted the kitchen, carefully filing her nails and ignoring the situation at the table. Before both April and Artie was a bowl of cornflakes, but Artie was the only one eating anything.

Flies buzzed around the reanimated, sort of squashed, dead body of April. Artie stared at her and then turned to the genie. "Okay, you know what? She's creeping me out. This isn't what I asked for. She's all weird and messed up."

"She's been hit by a truck, genius. What did you expect?"

"I asked you to bring her back to normal."

"Nuh-uh, you asked me to bring her back."

"Okay, the..." Artie frowned and leant down to sniff his bowl of cereal, then looked over at April. "She's starting to smell now, like, really bad. Come on, this isn't what I wanted! She's got to at least be able to talk. Okay... You know what? That's my next wish. I wish April could talk."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do and that's final."

"No, really. You don't."

"My wish, my call, and I wish April could talk!"

The genie sighed. "Done."

Artie watched April carefully, not noticing the genie cover her ears with her hands as April opened her mouth and began to scream, and didn't stop.


FBI MORGUE

Brittany stuck her head around the door warily, wondering why the morgue was so quiet. She walked in with a cup of coffee in each hand and a bag of celebratory iced doughnuts dangling from her fingers, along with a hesitant smile. She made her way over to April's designated slab and peered carefully inside the hole in the wall before setting down the snacks on the empty table. Alongside her, Santana sat despondently with her head in her hands.

Brittany wisely decided not to ask aloud the question in her mind. Instead she prodded a finger at the table while Santana wasn't looking and received her answer that way. There was nothing there. She startled, caught looking for April under the table when Santana spoke.

"I should just shoot myself. Oh my god, I was so happy, so excited. What was I thinking?" Her voice tailored off into a humiliated whisper. "An invisible woman?" she squeaked.

"You saw it. It was real," Brittany reassured her.

"I don't know what I saw," Santana said, shaking her head. "I do know that having that kind of proof in my hands was too good to be true."

"I don't think that's why the body disappeared, so to speak," Brittany said.

"Why did the body disappear?" Santana asked with a frustrated sigh.

"I think it was the result of a wish being granted."

"A wish? Whose wish?"

"Who would want April Rhodes back? I mean, really, really back."

Santana's residual embarrassment disappeared, her eyes narrowed and she scowled. "Artie Abrams. Imma kill him."


WILLIAM MCKINLEY TRAILER PARK, LIMA, OHIO

In Artie's trailer, April was still screaming in horror after twenty straight minutes. The noise finally tapered off into a weak gurgle when her throat dried up out of lack of moisture.

"Well, this ain't good." Artie's hands trembled as he brought them down from where they'd been protecting his ears.

"What did you do to me?" April gasped out. She stared at her yellow coated arms held out in front of her.

"What?" Artie said in disbelief. "You're back from the dead. What kind of gratitude is that?"

April rounded on him. "What did you do to me?" She rasped.

"I wasted two wishes on you, that's what I did!" Artie huffed.

April slapped her palm to her chest and squeezed a boob. "I can't feel my heart."

Artie looked accusingly at the genie, who raised an eyebrow and shrugged back at him.

"I can't feel my blood." April coughed and a cloud of yellow powder puffed before her eyes. "I'm yellow! I'm cold." April shivered miserably. "I'm cold. I'm cold."

"Screw this," Artie snapped. "I wasted two wishes on you. And a perfectly good bowl of corn flakes." He rolled over to the thermostat and cranked the dial up to full blast. "There, I turned the heat up. Are you happy now? Huh? Are you happy? Is there anything else I can do for you there, April?" He turned back but April had gone.

Artie looked over to the kitchen where she was shakily trying to light some matches. There was an odd hissing noise coming from the gas stove.

"Damn, why wont these light? I managed to get a cake out of a kid's birthday party once with the candles still lit and I cant even light a frickin' match. My fingers aren't working properly," April's teeth chattered as she tried to start the burner.

The genie turned her attention back to Artie, taking no notice of the aftermath of the wish she had just granted. Frankly, she couldn't wait to be out of the company of these two morons. "You want to make your third wish, Robo-boy? I'd like to get out of here before the blowflies hatch and it gets any nastier."

"Yeah," Artie muttered darkly. "And I tell you what, my last wish is going to be for me. It's going to be for me, you hear that, April?" He yelled over at her. "I wasted two wishes on you and you don't even give a damn about that! All right, third wish. Uh, let's see, I could wish for, uh... I could wish for money. Not everybody wishes for money. No, um... or there's the invisibility thing."

He looked over at April who was completely ignoring him and muttering away to herself. "Cold, cold, cold, colder than hell."

"I guess that turned out pretty stupid, huh? April? To be invisible! That was real smart, huh?"

Outside the trailer, a rental car pulled up and Agents Lopez and Pierce stepped out of the vehicle and began to walk towards the residence.

"X-ray eyes, maybe? No, that would be... hmm. Like you said, solid gold wheelchair."

As Artie took his time pondering his final wish, the genie looked over at April with slight concern as the yellow tinted woman croaked aloud her triumph at finding a cigarette lighter in the kitchen drawer.

"Uh... wait, I got it. Legs!" Artie yelled with a grin.

The genie cracked a smile for the first time that evening at the irony of it all. "Finally," she breathed in relief. "Granted."

Artie beamed with pure happiness at his perfect wish just as April succeeded in producing a flame from the lighter and igniting the stove and the entire trailer with a bang. At that same moment, Agent Lopez rapped smartly at the door which slammed into the two FBI agents and threw them back down the path as it was blown violently off its hinges.

At the far end of the blackened yacht, Brittany looked up from where she was covering Santana protectively with her body as debris rained down around them. They watched as a rolled up carpet landed on the smoking grass nearby, a muffled "Ouch" could be heard as it impacted the ground. Brittany and Santana stared at it, then at each other, then back at the remains of the destroyed trailer.