Circle of Jinn (19 page)

“Details.” Matin smirks. “As it happens, I was visiting the, well, you know, house of ill repute, that's the term for a place where older female Jinn—”

Yasmin's body tenses beside me like she's …
jealous?

She says brusquely, “We get it. We have the same term.”

“Or we did,” I say, “in 1864.”

Yasmin stares at me and then … laughs. We're having a bonding moment. Pretty sure we're both freaked out by this more than anything that's happened so far.

“Anyway,” Matin goes on, “I overheard, from a very reputable source, but don't ask me to violate code and name names.”

Zak rolls his hand.

“
Shukran, habib
,” Matin says. “So word is the Afrit council is set to have a vote in the coming days. A momentous one, apparently.”

“The election,” Zak says. “But that's not for months.”

Matin wags his finger. “Is this your story or mine? I sat here patiently while you all acted like toddlers—”

Zak's lips thin, but he places his hand over his heart. “
Aasef
. I'm sorry. Continue,
habib
.”

Matin nods. “Again, thank you. As I was saying, the Afrit council is set to have a momentous vote
after
the Chemharouch election.”

“A vote on what?” Yasmin asks.

“On a new mandate,” Matin says.

“That will do…?” Zak asks.

Matin shrugs. “How am I supposed to know? Am I an Afrit?”

Zak flares his nostrils. “You know this doesn't really help.”

Matin frowns. “How about this? It would seem that the election is being moved up in order to have this momentous vote.”

“Moved up?” Zak says. “But Father didn't say—”

“Maybe he didn't know,” Yasmin says softly.

My bangle remains in her tight grip. I wiggle it free, slip it back on, and click it closed. I double-check the clasp. Twice.

Because what if he did know? What if this momentous vote is the culmination of all he's been trying to do? What if he sent Zak here, to me, because he knows his diplomatic solution doesn't have a chance in tortura cavea of working?

So he will need his backup plan. He will need me.

Does that scare him as much as it scares me?

*   *   *

From behind our sofa cushions, I spy on Henry.

He's in his bedroom across the street with Laila. Guess his bedroom will now be hers.

He's in the living room with Samara, moving a cozy love seat from one wall to the next. I didn't realize how much stronger the summer he's spent swimming's made him.

He's outside in the front yard with two duffel bags and a box next to him. He takes his glasses off and cleans them with the end of his cotton sweater. School hasn't even started yet and it's cool enough for a cotton sweater.

I peek my head out from in between the pillows. He looks right at me. Even though he's not wearing his glasses, I know he can see me. I sit up higher. He pushes his glasses back up his nose and waves.

I wave back and then clutch a sequined throw pillow to my chest.

Beepity beep beep.

Into the driveway turns Chelsea and her open-topped convertible. She's wearing a pink wool scarf and matching knit newsboy cap. She looks positively adorable. As Henry wedges his duffels in the elfish trunk and drops the box in the tiny backseat, I realize she's driving him to New Hampshire. Why not? She's the one with a car. Doesn't matter that my mode of transportation is faster, Henry would never let me apport him—though I know he'd love to feel the searing heat, to defy every law of physics we think we know, to simply imagine a place and then be there. It's magic. If only everything in life could change as easily.

Though our powers are not infinite, there is so much we can do. Seeing my magic through Henry's eyes is what helped to curb my resentment at being Jinn. Will all that change with him gone? Now that I have no one to share it with?

Zak, in a white tee and plaid pajama pants, lumbers down the stairs, yawning. Apparently he and Matin stayed at the party late last night finishing off the last of Mina's esophagus-burning limoncello.

“Coffee's in the kitchen,” I say, still watching Henry. He tucks the flaps of his cardboard box inside one another and begins to circle around to the passenger side of Chelsea's car. Before he reaches the door, he pauses and looks at me. He points to the house and then tilts his head toward the fence gate. He mouths, “Sorry.”

I smile. On my birthday, the day Henry and I reconnected, he brought me a “sweet sixteen” balloon and a small silver key that fit the lock his parents had just installed on the fence to their backyard. In the years since Jenny's death, Henry and I had drifted apart. But the Carwyn home was always a place where I felt safe. Every time being Jinn, every time being surrounded by Jinn—my Zar sisters, my mother's Zar sisters, my mother—overwhelmed me, I'd escape to Henry's backyard. I'd spend a few precious moments being something, anything, other than a Jinn. And I'd find myself again.

All those years, all those times, I had no idea Henry had seen. He'd been watching over me. I never saw him, but maybe, somehow, I knew. Maybe that's why I felt so safe.

Stranger things have happened. I've made stranger things happen.

Now, with the last Carwyn leaving the house and three Jinn moving in, what's to become of my escape hatch?

I'd like to think I no longer need it.

Zak, blowing on a mug of coffee, sits beside me. “You're not going to say good-bye?”

Henry waves again, opens the passenger door, and slides inside.

I blink away the tears stinging my eyes. “We said good-bye last night.”

Did we? And good-bye to what?

My heart's being forced through a meat grinder.

I think of Nate, but all I can think of Nate is how I took his pain away. Henry said it was cheating not to feel the hurt.

He was right. Because feeling the hurt is what keeps us honest. It's what shows us what's most important. What we can't live without. If only it showed us what to do when that list of what we can't live without has more than one thing at the top.

 

20

It's funny how quickly a new routine takes hold. Waving to Samara across the street. Fighting with Zak for the last cup of coffee. Setting the dinner table for three instead of two.

Crossing my fingers every morning and every afternoon when Zak attempts to apport into Janna. Trouble is, the more time that passes, the more unsure I become of what it is I'm crossing my fingers for. I want Zak to stay—so does he and presumably so does Laila, with whom he's been spending nearly all his time. But what if Zak staying means something's happening in Janna with our father—or maybe even
to
our father? Not to mention Raina.

Which is why in this last week before school, another part of the routine that's taken root is ransacking the house where Yasmin and Raina lived for clues about the uprising. We plan to go to Samara and my mother when we have concrete proof. This way, they won't be able to brush us off like they normally do. What started as an effort for the four of us—me, Zak, Yasmin, and Matin—has shrunk to just Yasmin and Matin.

I've never known Yasmin to take an interest in boys. Mina, Farrah, even Hana started dating the instant their mothers gave the okay, but not Yasmin. She claimed boys weren't worth her time.

A fact that I may or may not have rubbed her pointy nose in when I caught her and Matin searching for clues in places I'm pretty sure Raina never went.

“He's a Jinn,” Yasmin said, as if that should explain everything.

And I guess for her it does. Yasmin inherited her mother's intolerance for humans. She blames them for making our Jinn world the way it is. But humans aren't to blame; the Afrit are. Sure, granting wishes today is harder than it used to be. There was a time when humans believed in magic and the unknown, and we didn't have to hide the way we do now. But that was centuries ago. It's way past time to accept it. It's way past time to accept humans in our lives.

“There you are!” Nate comes up behind me, twirls me around, and lifts me off the ground by my waist—where his hands remain as he lowers me, kissing me on the way down.

Normally such PDA doesn't bother me, but we're in a hospital. And Megan's right here. Still, I don't want to be rude. But when his head begins to burrow into my neck, I shove him off.

“Vampire biz crosses the line,” I say, taking his hand instead.

Megan rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that's what crosses the line.” A streak of violet runs through a long lock of hair framing the right side of her face.

Goldie finally won. For weeks she'd been wanting to do something to “jazz up” Megan's look. That Megan finally agreed shows significant progress.

Megan tucks her violet hair behind her ear, loops her fingers into the straps of her backpack, and brushes past us toward the elevator.

“Someone's in a hurry,” Nate says.

He doesn't add “finally” because we're all glad Megan is asking to be taken to see her mother, rather than having to be dragged.

“Ten pages, Nate.” She jams her finger on the
UP
button. “We have ten pages left in the cyberthriller!”

The book I loaned her sticks out the top of her backpack.

“And you really didn't peek?” I tease.

She presses the button again and this time holds it down. “No, I promised. Besides, I want us to finish it together.”

Nate peels her hand off the button panel. “You've been reading to Mom for two days straight. You're starting to sound like you smoke a pack a day.”

Another eye roll. The elevator doors open and Megan scoots left, then right to find the stack of numbers. “Sixth, right?” She turns to me. “Did you know they're moving her, Azra? No more freaky tubes. Dad would be…”

“Happy,” Nate says, though that shadow still lurks in the corners of his smile. “Dad would be happy she's going to be okay.”

When the elevator dings, announcing the sixth floor, Megan's sneakers squeak with the speed with which she takes off. Nate and I follow, checking room numbers as we go.

He grabs my arm. “Did I tell you? Coach thinks I've got a shot at that scholarship. Maybe even UMass, but I'm kinda liking BU since”—he uses my arm to practice a lacrosse throw—“it's closer. Less than an hour from here.”

“You don't say?” I playfully tap my chin. “Boston, that close?”

I'm about to laugh when it registers that he's talking about something that's a year away. He thinks we'll be together in a year. And the fact that this is what I'm thinking means what? That I don't think we'll be together in a year or don't think I'll be here in a year?

The vinyl tiles morph into glue beneath my feet. For the first time in my life, I don't know where I'll be this time next year.

Because for the first time in my life, there's a chance that what it means to be a Jinn today might not be what it means to be a Jinn tomorrow. It isn't until right now, this very moment, that the end result of all that's going on coalesces in my mind as something real, something with tangible, life-changing effects.

And it isn't until right now that I realize how much hope I have for that.

Odds are I'll be right here, well, not
here
here, hopefully not here in this hospital, but in this town, granting wishes, living the life I always knew I'd have to live. But what if my father changes things? What if Zak and I … what if
I
can change things? What if being Jinn a year from now is nothing like it is today? What if it's better?

I might be living the life I want to live, all the while still being Jinn.

But what is that life?

I may not be sure
what
it is, but I am sure of who I want in it.

Letting Nate enter his mother's hospital room ahead of me, I hang back, pull out my phone, and take a selfie. Which I then add to a text to Henry.

How 'bout this? Every day, no matter what, we do this so we can see each other and know we're both okay.

My finger hovers over the Send. On a scale of one to ten with one being acquaintances and ten being a couple, Henry and I are smack-dab at five—friends. Maybe seven if we're still best friends. Does sending this move us up the scale? No, it confirms we're both right where we want to be. In the middle.

Right?

“Azra, you coming?”

I jolt at Nate's voice, and my finger taps the screen, sending the text. Oh well. Life is complicated, after all.

Before I can even slide my phone back into my pocket, a selfie of Henry reading a bodice-ripping romance novel lights up my screen. I laugh, and the nurse behind the desk shushes me, which only makes me laugh harder.

What if a year from now, I no longer have to worry that Henry's in danger because of what he knows? What if a year from now, being Jinn is nothing like it is today?

Then again, what if being Jinn a year from now is nothing like it is today because it's worse?

 

21

My mother's racing through the house, muttering to herself.

“
New furniture. Don't want red wine spilled.
Oh, but it can be spilled here in
my
house.”

“Mom?”

She flings an argyle sock—Zak's—into the pile of clothes in her arms. “And would it kill him to pick up after himself? When I see Xavier I'm going to ask just what kind of household he raised my son in if he can't even drop a sock in a laundry bin.”

“Mom? Is something…” I was going to say “wrong,” but that seems obvious. Instead I finish with, “Happening?”

“Why don't you ask your Lalla Sam?”

She tucks a motorcycle magazine under her arm and apps upstairs. I follow just in time to see her bury the glossy in between the cooking and travel magazines on her nightstand. She pitches Zak's dirty clothes into the bottom of her closet and slams the door shut. She then falls against it, clenching the knob in her hand.