Circle of Jinn (2 page)

I can't breathe if I think about that for too long. Because that would mean not only is this all my fault, but that I could have prevented it. It would mean that my selfish need to have Nate in my life cost someone theirs. The Afrit warn against getting too close to humans. Even with all I've recently discovered about my father's family, I still have a hard time believing something this cruel could be their punishment.

Call it a perverse loyalty to the family, to the father I used to think I'd give anything to meet.

Goldie releases Megan, whose sun-freckled nose is red and runny. I hand her a napkin, but instead of taking it, she takes me. Grabs me with the force of someone twice her size and burrows into my neck.

The pained but grateful smile on Goldie's face twists my stomach into a pretzel. How much I'm to blame for Mr. Reese's death may be a question I'll never know the answer to, but this, right here, Megan's anguish, that's something I'm 100 percent responsible for. Because that I can end.

That is something my powers can do. If only I could figure out how.

 

2

The hockey pucks land on top of the first two batches of burned cookies in the kitchen trash. I wedge the dirty cookie sheet in one side of the double sink and run the hot water until steam puffs, hoping to dislodge the charred remains.

Megan exaggerates a sigh and scoops out a handful of chocolate chips that she drops in my palm before nabbing the entire bag on her way into the living room.

“Where are you going?” Goldie and I say at the same time.

We both want to make sure she's okay, but I have another reason for asking. I need to know where Megan is going because when I don't, it hurts—a lot. It's like my internal organs are hitched to a semi barreling down the highway at top speed.

It's a curse in every sense of the word.

One that started on the day of the funeral when the Afrit left me their calling card with Megan's name on it. She was to become my next assignment. I could have—
I should have
—waited.

But after the funeral, I was overcome by emotion, both Megan's and mine, and rushed into conducting the wish-granting ritual for her right upstairs in Nate's bedroom. The wish she made, to no longer see the pain in Nate's eyes, is not an easy one. Short of going the literal and gruesome eye-gouging route, mind control is the only way to achieve it. Though this power is beyond the reach of most Jinn, it seems to be an inherent Afrit perk. I've used it once, though I have no idea how. Even if I did, I'd still be cautious. Because mind control is dangerous, bringing with it the very real risk of permanent brain damage.

Which is why I still haven't taken any steps to grant Megan's wish. With the twenty-four-hour grace period to get the wish-granting ball rolling long since past, I'm now bound by the circulus curse, magically compelled to stay within one hundred and fifty feet of Megan until I complete her wish. As curses go, it's not so bad. At least mine binds me to Megan. And, as a side effect, to Nate.

But, see, this is why it's tough to be on board with the coincidence theory. Megan being my wish candidate on the heels of Nate is too much coinky dink for me.

“We still on to go to Mrs. Pucher's later?” I call to Megan, who's nestled into the corner of the couch with the mermaid book I loaned her and the bag of chocolate chips. So she's on the Azra diet of mainlining sugar. At least she's eating again.

She gives a thumbs-up and pulls the afghan hanging off the back of the couch over her bare feet. The afghan knit by her mother. More evidence of what's been lost and what's been left behind. It doesn't take an experienced tracker to follow the trail of Mr. and Mrs. Reese that fills this home.

Goldie nudges me aside with her pleasantly plump hip. Her Rubenesque figure, round face, and naturally jet-black hair make her look more like a 1940s pinup girl than a grandmother. She's right to stick with “Goldie.”

“I've got this,” she says, jamming her pudgy hands into a pair of too-tight hot-pink dishwashing gloves. “You take Meg.” She yanks the cuffs up to her elbows. “Although I've been trying, it's you and your magic that's finally gotten her off her tush and out of her own head. One step closer to walking through those hospital doors and visiting her mom, which they both need. You might not be able to bake 'em, but you're as smart as one, Azra Nadira.”

I turn my flinching at her casual use of the word “magic” into a dismissive shrug. “Mrs. Pucher's the smart one, not me.”

Goldie flings a soap bubble at my head. “Nonsense. Meg and Nate … Oh, let's be honest, Georgie and I wouldn't have half as many reasons to smile without you. Why do you think we're having you stay here?”

Because my mom used a spell to make you think it was a brilliant idea.

Goldie pushes her pink-gloved fingers through her barrel-curled bangs. “We'd be lost without you, love.”

A blustering whoosh sends prickles down my spine. Not trusting the strength in my voice, I simply nod to Goldie. I then reach around her to close the window above the sink, pausing when I notice the blinds inside are still. The swings hover outside, motionless.

But, again, a tingling like pins and needles trails across my shoulders.

I focus on the window, and though Goldie's kind words make it feel like a betrayal, I let myself revisit the scene once more. The green plastic seats, the twisting metal chains, the pair of friends, best friends, entwined in a way that best friends usually aren't.

Which is why I need to see him. Henry, my best friend, my
human
best friend, the only human to know I'm a Jinn.

I shut the window and close the blinds.

Enough.

I know every stroke of the painting I call
Henry's Kiss.
A discussion with the artist is long overdue.

*   *   *

“Hey hey, where's the fire?”

At the top of the stairs, Nate cups my shoulders and pries me off his chest. His chest that can't be touched, seen, or thought about without the word “chiseled” coming along for the ride. All three of which I know from firsthand experience.

“Sorry,” I say, unusually quick to remove my fingertips from his biceps, getting harder by the day from his amped-up lacrosse training. If Megan went inward to cope, Nate went outward, mostly to the gym. “I wasn't looking.”

“Well, that's better than the alternative.” Nate extends his neck toward the stairs and breathes in deeply. “I was afraid you were running from an out-of-control kitchen fire.”

“Nope, perfectly contained in the oven.” I start to inch toward the bedrooms. We've been avoiding each other all day. At least I assume he's been avoiding me, but since I've been avoiding him, I guess I can't be sure.

“So,” he says, “no need to call the fire department, but I'm assuming this also means no cookies?”

Like me, Nate has a sweet tooth. All the Reeses do.

“Maybe I can pick some up on the way home,” I say. “I mean, back.” A mutual love of sugar is one of the many things making it easier and easier to think of this place as my home. “I'm taking Megan to Mrs. Pucher's again.”

“Third day in a row? You're … That's really sweet, Azra. You've been so good to her. And to me.” His eyes find his feet, which are shuffling against the white carpet that blankets the second floor. “Which is exactly why I should … What I mean is, why I need to … About last night—”

“Don't,” I say, pressing my hand against his forearm. In response to my touch, his eyes flicker to mine before lowering again, this time settling on my neck, on the
A
pendant I wear because I know how much he likes it.

Talking to my exposed collarbone, Nate says, “I've made things weird between us.”

Things are already weird between us for so many reasons: me being Jinn, my ability to read human minds including his, the wish I granted for him to be able to take care of Megan that leaves me connected to a piece of his soul—
his soul
. Oh, yeah, and let's not forget my little lip-lock with Henry.

Fortunately, Nate doesn't know any of this. Unfortunately, that does little to ease my guilt.

I stroke his cheek before lifting his chin, forcing his chocolate ganache eyes to meet my gold ones. We hold each other's gaze, which, despite all that's between us, including what happened last night, turns out not to be weird at all.

It was long after dark when a shaking woke me. I had expected it to be my roommate, Megan, who, since the night I arrived, has started each night in her own twin bed but finished it in mine. Goldie knows, and I think it's this, even more than the spell my mother used, that ultimately convinced her to let me stay. But last night, for the first time, Megan was curled up in her own bed. I knew before I flipped onto my side that it was Nate.

Tears had finally broken through the brave front he's been pushing himself to maintain. Words, even if I knew the right ones, didn't seem necessary. I simply pulled his head to mine and we lay there, squished together side by side, until his tremors no longer rocked the bed.

When I woke up this morning, he was gone.

I took my cue from him, not tracking him down, worried that he might be embarrassed even though he shouldn't be.

I slide my hand down his arm and lace my fingers between his.

If anything, I feel even closer to him. And as I can tell from reading his mind, he feels it too. Spending the night in the same bed will do that to you, which I should know since it's happened before. Except it was me, upon having just discovered my Afrit heritage, in need of comfort, and Henry was the one giving it, not Nate.

And you're surprised by the kiss?

I was … and I am. With two strides, Nate presses me into the wall, nearly knocking the wind out of me. He hears my gasp and pulls away, but I clutch his other hand and pull him right back. He starts at my necklace, at my collarbone, a whisper of a touch so light it could be a breeze. But when his lips travel the length of my neck and his teeth graze the tip of my earlobe, the only breeze this could be is a tornado.

It feels both right and wrong for this kiss to be every bit as intense as the one on the beach the night of our second date, the night his father was killed.

Lost in Nate, it's only when my fingertips hit warm skin that I realize I inadvertently unbuttoned his shirt with my magic. I skim my hands up and down his torso, rumpling and twisting the fabric, to cover for what I've done. Not trusting myself or my powers, I playfully break away and roll down the wall into Megan's seafoam-green bedroom, leaning with my hands behind me against the hand-painted emerald vine that winds its way across this side of the room.

Nate follows but hangs back, his fingers toying with one of the paper flowers attached to the vine that gives the whole mural a killer 3-D effect. Mrs. Reese was—is—Mrs. Reese
is
something of an artist.

“Was that not okay?” Nate asks, self-consciously raking his hand through his cropped black hair.

I allow myself a nod, but my breath is too short for verbal communication. And my mind is too jumbled, juxtaposing
this
kiss with
that
kiss, for me to trust what may spill from my lips anyway.

Then, for the third time this morning, a tingling floods me like head-to-toe pins and needles, but the only part of me that's numb are my lips.

Nate's an extraordinary kisser, but this is more like walking out into a nor'easter. No, that's not quite right. It's more like the sensation we Jinn get when another member of our species is about to apport in. But this doesn't feel like any Jinn I know—not the five lifelong friends who make up my mother's Zar sisterhood and not their sixteen-year-old daughters who now make up mine.

From the sting of a wasp (my Zar sister Yasmin) to a stereo vibration (my Zar sister Hana) to the tickle of a feather (my mother's best friend and Zar sister Samara), apporting Jinn have their own signature. Funny, I've never asked anyone what mine is.

With my back to Nate, I toss sweaters for myself and Megan into a backpack and tap into my abundance of adrenaline to strengthen my magic. I don't sense another Jinn in the house. As nonchalantly as I can, I move to the windows and survey the backyard.

When my mother stops by to check up on me, she comes by car. She knows better than to magically teleport herself here. Besides, if she did decide to apport, she'd be more careful than this. Apporting Jinn can detect the presence of humans, and my mother wouldn't risk apping in with people this close. Neither would any of my Zar sisters, especially Laila, Samara's daughter and my former best Jinn friend. Since she's the only one whose apporting signature I have yet to feel, this could be hers. But I know it's not. As much as I want to see her, she's not ready to see me. I'm up to three texts a day and still not a peep from her. Not even an angry-faced emoticon. There's no way she'd app here.

I turn around to find Nate buttoning his shirt. The sensation of my fingers on his abs lingers. I shake out my arms as I fling the backpack onto one shoulder. I'm being paranoid. There's no reason for me to be tingling.

Nodding to my bag, Nate starts walking backward out of his sister's bedroom. “Now you really are running from something too hot to handle.”

He winks and there's ample reason for me to be tingling.

 

3

A bowling ball–sized watermelon somehow hidden under the leaves of her squash plants has Mrs. Pucher gushing the moment we arrive.

My next-door neighbor deserves the credit for drawing Megan out of the cocoon she's been in since the accident. As much as I understand Megan's need to cloister herself, the circulus curse means I'm cooped up right alongside her. Three days ago, the combination of stir-craziness and wanting to see Henry led to me feigning a severe case of homesickness. Even so, Megan only agreed to come when I sweetened the pot by telling her she could raid my bookshelves.