Circle of Jinn (15 page)

My mother sighs. “You've already told Henry, haven't you?”

I squirm/shrug. Turns out, I did have to tell Henry about Zak being my brother via text. With Samara, Laila, and Yasmin showing up, I never got the chance to tell him in person. I've never seen so many exclamation points in my life. Or shocked double
O
s. Or
S
s with eyes. I had to look that one up. I didn't even know there was an emoticon for “worried.”

“Why am I not surprised,” my mother says.

Zak's brow creases in confusion. “Told Henry what? About me? About
you
?”

My mother heads for the door, twiddling her red fingernails at us as she leaves. “I'll leave this to you to explain, Azra.” When she reaches the hall, she turns back around. “Have fun at the party. Just don't set anything on fire.”

*   *   *

“This?” I ask Zak, smoothing down the sides of a red dress that I'm pretty sure makes me look like a bloody steak.

“Fine.” He doesn't even look up from the cantamen. He's been obsessed with our family's genie handbook since I first showed it to him. I guess there aren't any how-to manuals in Janna.

“Zak! Come on. I'm running out of options.”

He rests a finger on the page. “Good. I can't take much more of this. Could you not have done this before Mother left with Samara? And besides, aren't you dating Nathan?”

My cheeks flush.
Dating.
Weird.

“Nate, and yes.”

“So then why are you so worried about what you will wear to Henry's party?”

“Nate's going to be there too.”

Zak pauses. “But he's already your boyfriend.”

My stomach flips.
Boyfriend
. So, so weird.

Zak raises an eyebrow and looks me up and down. “Besides, I thought you were less … girly.”

Narrowing my eyes at him, I pick up the white linen shirt he spent practically an hour conjuring and begin to wrinkle it.

“Stop that!” He jumps up, and the cantamen lands on his foot. “
Rahmah
, Azra!” He falls back onto my bed and clasps his bare toes in his hand.

“Oh, sorry, is there someone you wanted to dress to impress tonight?” I half walk, half waddle over to the full-length mirror. “The same someone who made you so desperate to attend a high school party?”

Zak's inspecting his big toenail. “The same someone you're cutting off your circulation for, I presume?”

We're both talking about Laila.

I begin to apply lipstick in the same red shade as my dress. “Well, Brother, it's time you started getting ready yourself. You've never worn contacts, right? Might take you a while to get them in.”

With a grunt, Zak sets the cantamen on the bed and heads for the bathroom.

“You're sure Mat's not going to forget his contacts?” I pucker my lips, which could now pass for beef tartare.

“Impossible!” Zak grumbles from the bathroom. “The ways humans torture themselves will never cease to astound me.”

I grab a tissue and wipe off the lipstick that makes me look like a vampire after a midnight snack. “You told him low profile?”

Another grunt, which I take for a yes.

I swap out my
A
necklace for the infinity one Laila gave me and attempt to sit on the bed. The fabric of my dress threatens to squeeze the life out of me, so I remain standing. It seems humans aren't the only ones willing to torture themselves.

I slide the cantamen to the end of the bed and open to the page marked by a yellow Post-it note. “Spell Analysis 101” is written across the top in swirly black calligraphy. Folded in the crease is a sheet of paper with unfamiliar words written on it.

“What's this?” I ask.

Zak flies through the doorway, one eye copper, one eye brown (and red from his poking). “Nothing.”

Interesting … so he's not spilled
all
his secrets, then?

“They don't teach sharing in Janna, Brother?”

Paper in hand, I app across the hall to my mother's bedroom. The spell won't work without her talisman. I have her emerald signet ring out of her jewelry box and on my middle finger before Zak even crosses the threshold.

“Don't,” he says, rubbing his brown eye. The contact lands on his cheek.

“Why not?” I ask.

He flicks the contact to the floor.

“No more secrets, Zak.”

His only response is to stuff his hands into his pockets and so my only response is to hold the paper tight between two hands and start to read.

“
Khallas
, Azra!” He launches himself at me, trying to rip the spell from my hand.

He may be bigger, but my magic's better and faster. I app to the other side of the room.

“Brother?” I clutch the spell and waddle farther away from him. “Do we know more about this spell than we're telling little sis?”

I recite the first line. I don't make it to the second before Zak tosses his hands in the air.

“You don't make anything easy, do you?” He closes his eyes and starts to pace but can't even bring himself to do that. His face flushes, and he spins around in a circle, muttering to himself. Finally he says, “I'm not supposed to tell you this. Not yet. I'm supposed to wait until … until … For the love of Janna, let the carpet fly. I do not even know what it is I am supposed to wait for.”

His eyes meet mine. “Our father wrote that spell. He made me memorize it so I could safeguard it in the unlikely event it was necessary. If his diplomatic solution does not succeed and an uprising ensues, it is his fail-safe. I only wrote it down now so I could try to decipher it.”

“Decipher? So you don't know what it does?”

He sighs. “All I know is that it involves you. And me. He said it's for us. That if all else fails, you, dear Sister, are the key to the uprising. He said if things went awry I must find my way to you. That together, with this blasted spell, we have the ability to fight the Afrit.”

A chill runs down my spine.
The key to the uprising. Me?
But I don't know anything about the uprising. I only found out about the uprising because I was being a snoop, reading my mother's diary. I only just found out the truth about the Afrit, about them being my family, about them hurting Jinn to keep their control over us and to keep themselves on the council. I only just discovered my ability to do magic without my bangle, an ability no other Jinn, at least no other Jinn I know of, has.

Is that the reason? Is that what our father means? But why? And how? And what could this spell possibly have to do with it? I give my bangle a push and watch it whirl around my wrist. Should I tell Zak? But what if I'm wrong? Then Zak will know a secret that could get him into trouble. And then get me into trouble. The Afrit might even
come for me
. We have the spell. We should find out what it does first. It might have nothing to do with my inhibitor injection being a fluke.

I realize I should probably look more shocked than I do when Zak says, “You're not laughing.”

I cover by looking scared, which is easy since I am. “Why would I laugh?”

“Because it's ridiculous, isn't it? How could we assist the uprising?”

“I don't know, but why don't we find out?”

He shakes his head. “I'm not sure we can. Father said the spell doesn't require a talisman to work. But I recited it countless times while memorizing it and nothing ever happened.”

“Then why were you so afraid of me saying it?”

“Because it's his backup plan,” Zak says. “He said you were the key. I thought maybe it would work for you. Or maybe it only works when it needs to.”

“And you're afraid it might need to. You really do think something's wrong.”

He lowers himself onto the end of my mother's bed. “I honestly don't know.”

I kinda liked it better when he was covering his fear for my benefit.

I twist the emerald around my finger.
Do I even want to know what this spell does? How I'm the key?
My brain shouts a loud
no
, but somehow I find myself saying, “Can I try? With the talisman?”

He hesitates.

“If there's any chance this helps us figure out if Xavier is in trouble, don't we have to?”

He hangs his head in surrender and lifts the sheet of paper in the air. “Be careful.”

With a deep breath, I begin to repeat the words, some of which I recognize, most of which are in a language I don't know, when Zak pops to his feet and points to a phrase.

“You're pronouncing it wrong,” he says.

“You speak … whatever this is?”

“No.”

“But you know I'm saying it wrong?”

“I heard our father say it.”

I shove the paper at him. “Here, then you do it.”

“But you have the talisman.”

“I thought it didn't require a talisman.”

He growls before clutching my hand and reciting the words. He's halfway through when I lean in and add my voice to his.

“
Shaqiq shifa
.” We finish the spell together. We pause. We stare at each other. We wait. I'm wresting my hand from his when without warning my silver bangle snaps open and falls to the floor, followed half a second later by his silver necklace.

They lie on my mother's thick woolen rug, entwined. They do not move. And neither do we.

“We're the—” he says.

“Key,” I say, my palms starting to sweat. “To the uprising.”

“But how?” Zak kneels on the rug. He gently rolls his necklace off my bangle and lifts it as if it were a live snake. “It … it has a clasp now.” He picks up my bangle and stands, holding it in front of me. “Yours too.” Though it's almost hidden on the inside, if I look closely, I can see the hinge. Gingerly, he takes my arm. “May I?”

Knowing what he's about to do, every cell inside me screams for me to yank my arm back, to leave this place, to run far away.

My bangle is off. I am free.

I can grab Nate and Henry and disappear and never have to worry about my Afrit family finding me, finding out about me, never have to worry about granting another wish, about screwing up while granting another wish and risking hurting them or my mother or her Zar sisters or my own.

My mother and her Zar sisters and my own.

They are not free.

Raina is not free.

My father is … I have no idea what my father is.

And so I stick my arm out and nod. Zak sets the bangle underneath my wrist and closes it. He inhales, holding his breath. And then he opens it.

The hinge remains.

Again and again, he takes my bangle on and off. I do the same with his necklace. The Afrit have power over Jinn because they control our ability to access our magic.

That power is now in our hands.

But the power to do what exactly? Remove what gives Jinn access to their magic? To what end? Without magic, Jinn have no way to defend themselves against the Afrit, let alone fight them.

Except for me.

I doubt my father thought an army of one would win against the Afrit. There must be more to this backup plan. And someone must know what it is.

“You know what they say if you can't beat 'em.”

And I'd bet my silver bangle that that someone is Yasmin. Yasmin, who, after her mother was taken, said those words right after saying, “You can't win a fight against the Afrit.” She also held my hand and, in a rare moment of vulnerability, said about my mother and Samara, “Don't let them risk it.”

The only way her words make sense is if she knew Lalla Raina was taken for her involvement in the uprising that Xavier has been trying to prevent. And if Yasmin knows that, she probably knows more.

Wait … of course she knows more. Among my non-magical skills is a talent for eavesdropping. And it caught Samara saying to my mother, “Raina told Yasmin long ago.” At the time, I had no idea what Raina may have told Yasmin. Now, I just hope whatever it is can help us with this.

Is it irony or karma that the one sister I never wanted to have to go to for help is the only one who can give it to me?

“Yasmin,” I say at the same instant the doorbell rings.

“
Jameel!
” Zak's eyes grow wide. “Nice! You knew she was here? I have to admit, your powers are beginning to frighten me.”

I shake my head. “Coincidence.” But part of me is unsure. After what's just happened, I'm starting to realize I have no idea what my powers are capable of. I move across the room to the window and push the embroidered silk curtains aside. “It's Matin.”

So that really
didn't
have anything to do with my powers. I'm surprised to find there's a bit more disappointment than relief in this discovery.

“Make sure your bangle is secure,” Zak says, doing the same with his necklace. The fear he let show earlier seems to be fading. Or he's simply back to covering.

“What does he know?” I ask as we walk down the stairs. Well, Zak's walking. I'm shifting down sideways, unable to move my legs wide enough to take the steps normally.

“Only that our father sent me here to check up on you. He knows he's on the council, of course, and realizes this was a brazen violation of the rules, but he was so excited to come here that he doesn't care. Like I said, even most of our extended Afrit family is fed up with the way things are.”

I hold back the snort I feel coming on. I'm about to open the front door when Zak says, “About the spell and the plan, let's not tell anyone until we have something in sandstone.”

Sandstone?
Now I do snort. “I'm not an idiot. I know enough not to tell anyone.”
Except Henry.
I fold the spell and tuck it into my push-up bra. Between the two of us reciting it over and over again, I have it memorized. I'll burn it in the fire pit in Henry's backyard.