Circle of Jinn (27 page)

Matin.

Oh my Janna, is he …

“Mat!” I cry, hopping down into the water. My foot lands next to an empty bottle of gin.

The good stuff, I'm betting.

At least the source of his unconsciousness is his own doing.

I squat in front of him and roughly shake him by his shoulders. He groans. I scoop up a handful of water and splash his face. He groans louder, exhaling a breath that reeks of stale alcohol. I place my hand over my nose.

“Matin!” I shout louder. Nothing. And so I do what must be done. I slap his scruffy-bearded cheek. Hard. Harder than I intended, but I can't deny that right now the release feels good.

His hand flies to his face, and his head jerks forward and then back, cracking against the rock. “What the—?”

“Matin,” I say. “What are you doing here? Did you sleep here?”

He opens his eyes and instinctually raises a hand to shield the sun. “Azra? What are you doing in my motel room? And why is my motel room underwater?”

“Let's get you up.” I yank him by both arms. “Gross. You're all wrinkly.” I manage to slide him partway up the rock. “How did you get here?”

He crawls the rest of the way up, looks around, and falls back, spreading himself flat against the rock. “Aye, I'm going to go with ‘walked.' I'm not much of a swimmer. And I do believe the motel faces the street, not the ocean, a ways back thataway.” He flings his hand over his head, pointing right, then left, then right again.

“Why didn't you stay at the house? With Yasmin?”

At her name, he winces. “Is she…? How is her mother?”

A deluge of emotions hits me. Breaking up with Nate's opened a door to all I've been trying to keep bottled up inside. I choke out, “The same.”

“Aye, well, that's something, I suppose.” He pats the rock around him. “Azra, dear, I seem to be missing the good stuff.”

Uh-huh.
That flings open another door. The door to the room where I think Matin's a coward for running away just when Yasmin, when Hana, when his mother need him. “No, you're not. It's all in here.” I press on his stomach.

He jerks up, makes a slight retching sound, and swallows.

“Sorry,” I say. But at least now he's upright. “Have you been here the whole time?”

His brow furrows. “I do not believe so, but I also do not believe I am the most reliable source of information at the moment.”

“So you don't know about the uprising and the plan to—”

“That's enough of that unless you're in the mood to conjure some beverages.” He cocks his head. “Are you?” When I roll my eyes, he continues, “Shame. What I could do if only I had powers.”

“
Matin.
”

“Right. Well, your dear brother informed me of what was occurring, and I had a choice to make. So my good buddy gin and I had a chat.” He laughs, retches, and swallows again. “Gin, get it?”

“A choice?
You
have a choice to make? But you can't think of going back into Janna without magic. That doesn't make any sense.”

“Aye, so many choices make so little sense to outside eyes.”

With a clunk, he drops back down against the rock. He's still drunk. I'll have to get him out of here. I can't believe with all that's going on I have to deal with this.

I stand on top of the rock, surveying the beach. Low tide and the increase in sandy real estate has turned the beach into a parade. Which means, there's too many people around for us to apport from right here.

I spend a few minutes trying to coax Matin into the woods that line the swath of beach behind us. I spend a single minute trying to drag him. No use. If only my phone weren't dead I could call Laila or Hana to help.

Then again, maybe I don't need my phone to call them for help. The first time Hana felt my emotions, it was because I was upset and desperate. She apped straight to me to find out what was wrong.

I'm nothing if not upset and desperate now. Leaving Matin on the rock, I cross the narrow strip of sand behind it and enter the woods. My desire for help simmers right beneath my skin, so instead I focus on Laila and Hana, pleading with them to find me.

They do. One after the other.

“What was that?” Laila faces me. “That was you?”

I can't help the beginnings of a smile that tugs at my lips.

Hana loops an arm around my shoulder and then Laila's. “So so cool.”

“Actually kinda creepy,” Laila says, echoing my exact thoughts the first time this happened.

“Agreed,” I say. “But useful.” I want to tell Laila—both of them—about Nate, but there's no time. So instead, I begin to lead them onto the beach.

The moment I poke my head out, I come face-to-face with a silver-haired woman in a leopard-print bikini. The top's straps are shoved down around her shoulders. For some reason, the sixty-plus set are obsessed with tan lines, avoiding them at all costs, even if that means their boobs droop to their knees.

“When you gotta go, you gotta go, am I right?” the woman says. She laughs with three of her fellow droopsies as they continue the beach parade.

Once they pass, I hop out and gesture for Hana and Laila to follow me onto the beach and to Matin.

“Pee-yew!” Laila swoops a chunk of hair in front of her nose. “Is that coming from him?”

“Unfortunately,” I say. “He's still pretty wasted.”

Hana leans against the rock and lifts her brother's head. “Oh, Mat.”

His eyes shoot open. “Sister, you're all right?”

“Yes, I'm fine.”

“And Mother?”

“She's fine too. She's with Raina and Yasmin.”

“Splendid. That's it, then, it is.”

Hana squints at him and then at me.

I point to the empty gin bottle. “I think he drank that whole thing. I needed your help to get him to the woods so we can app him home.”

“Thanks for finding him, Azra,” Hana says, frowning at her brother. “He keeps doing this. Going off on his own. For someone who says he came here to get to know his family, he's not spending much time doing that.” She sighs as she pulls the hair tie off her wrist and gathers her red strands together. She pats Matin on the top of his stubbly head. “Come on, up we go.”

“That's not going to work,” I say. I raise my hand as if to whack him.

Instantly he sits up. “Right, then.”

Between the three of us and a little levitation, shielded expertly by Laila, we get him to the woods. We're about to app him home when he suddenly pats his pants pocket.

“My pen!” he cries. “It's missing!”

Hana says curtly, “We'll get you another.”

“No! It has to be that one. I need that one.” He fights against our grasp. “It was a gift.”

Hana's frustration is palpable, but still she asks me, “Azra, would you mind…”

It's for Hana, not Matin, that Laila and I return to the beach and start searching.

Laila spreads the sand behind the rock with her foot. “He must really like Yasmin to be this torn up about Raina.”

I mutter agreement but add, “Though you'd think that'd mean he wouldn't leave Yasmin's side. That's what I'd do.”

“You mean, that's what you
did
. With Nate.”

I swallow hard as I kneel and dig in the sand next to the rock. “I had to,” I manage to eke out.

“But you also wanted to.”

I pause, about to admit something I'm not proud of. “Not at first. I was scared. I wanted to leave. But then I knew, despite being scared, there was nowhere else I wanted to be.”

“The definition of love.” Laila's eyes flicker to the sand the instant I look at her.

Laila and Zak? In love? My brother and my best friend?

It's weird. And not.

I grab her hand and pull her onto the sand next to me. “You really care about him? Zak?”

She winds a curl around her finger, still unable to look at me. “I think … I know … I'm falling … I mean, I have…”

“Laila, it's okay. It's me. Best friends share secrets.”

Thank you, Jenny, for teaching me how to be a best friend.

She draws in a deep breath and meets my gaze. “I love him, Azra.” She sucks in her bottom lip.

I stifle my gasp before it escapes my lips.
Don't react. Well, react. Just don't react badly.
My heart thuds against my ribs.
Say something, Azra.
“But it's been … I mean, it hasn't been…”
Janna, why is this so hard?
“Already? How do you know?”

She smiles warmly. “When it's right, you don't have to ask that question. It just is. There's no other way it could be.”

I nod as if this makes perfect sense. Which it does. Except when it doesn't. Except when you don't know if what feels right feels right because of a connection from granting a wish or from the mutual mourning of someone long gone or from the bonding over someone recently gone or from the sharing of forbidden secrets or from a hope and a fear and a yearning for what might be and what could be and—

“Azra?” Laila's voice trembles. “Should I not have told you?”

I shake away everything. “No, I'm glad you did. I'm happy for you. For both of you.”

“But what if it doesn't work out? What if he has to leave?”

I pick up the gin bottle, and the pen rises to the surface. “Then you enjoy it for whatever time you have.”

I grab the pen, and we start for the woods. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a figure running down the beach. His glasses slip down his nose. I hand the pen to Laila.

“You guys go,” I say. “Turns out, someone has been waiting for me.”

 

28

“I know, I know,” I say once Henry is in range. “I'm sorry. I forgot, and then my phone was dead, and then—”

Henry crashes into me with the force of a Mack truck. I stumble as his momentum propels us both backward. Somehow I manage to catch myself and plant my feet, holding him, grounding us. He smells of sweat and vinyl and fast food and fear.

“One,” he says, his voice muffled by my hair. “You get one pass.” He squeezes me like a corset. “Do it again, and the Afrit will be the least of your worries.”

His arms relax and his torso begins to separate from mine, but I'm not ready to let go. I know I should. As much as I know he shouldn't be here. That he shouldn't—can't—become a part of this. But now that he
is
here, now that I've let Nate go, I also know I don't have the strength to do the same with Henry. My selfishness pushes me forward and closes the gap.

His rapid breaths slow while mine speed up. I open my mouth to speak, to apologize, to tell him everything, to lighten this burden that's so heavy it's contracting my spine, but all that comes out is a squeak.

Azra, I'm here. I'm always here.

I know. The trouble is, will I be?

*   *   *

Well, this isn't awkward
at all
.

I scoot further to the edge of the big black rock, ironically now needing to distance myself from Henry, as Nate sprints by on his afternoon beach run. Gentleman that he is, Nate waves politely. I suck in a breath as a sharpness tightens my chest. Henry's sandy-brown-haired head tilts to the side.

Having just spent the past hour telling him about Raina, my father's backup plan, and F. P. Daher, I haven't broached the subject of my newly single status.

Henry returns to his smartphone and finishes the search for Daher's home address.

“Got it,” he says. “But you can't go to Cambridge alone.”

I pick at a shell attached to the side of the rock, once the cozy home for some tiny sea creature. I was hoping he'd say that. But I can't actually let him come with me.

We're so close to the end of the beach that Nate's already turned around and about to pass us on his return trip. He's faster this time. Focused. He doesn't look our way.

Henry sees me watching Nate and leans forward. “You're not going with him, are you?” He places his elbows on his knees. “You haven't
told
him, have you?”

The shell cracks in my hand. “No! Of course not. I'd never put him in that kind of danger.”

Henry looks over his glasses at me. “Gee, thanks.”

“I mean, it's too dangerous to lay all this on him. Make him keep all these secrets.”

“Again, thanks.”

I bump my shoulder against Henry's. “You know what I mean.”

“All too well, I'm afraid.”

“Stop it. It's not the same, and you know it.”

“Boy, do I ever know it.”

“Henry! You're impossible!” A smile creeps up on me. Henry always seems to be able to make me smile, even when I'm at my lowest. Funny how often that seems to be the case.

Henry sniffs the neckline of his yellow T-shirt. “You know what's impossible? That I still smell like fries. That was the guy on the first bus. Or maybe it was the second. The third bus was definitely the one where I'm convinced the exhaust fumes were venting inside not outside. Did I mention the lack of air conditioning?”

I find another empty shell and start tugging. “I can't believe you took three buses just to get here.”

“You're just lucky it wasn't four. Four was my limit. Four, and I'd let the Afrit swoop in and never think twice.”

“You're a jerk.”

“Maybe, but I'm still your best friend,” he says, before his mind follows with
And best friends do more than share secrets.

Then his phone rings.

*   *   *

And then, somehow, we're no longer side by side on the black rock but just as close, if not closer, in Chelsea's convertible. Henry blackmailed me into coming—threatening to call my mother if I didn't let him—but he refused to let me apport us.