Circle of Jinn (3 page)

Henry's house across the street was empty save for a living room full of Carwyn moving boxes, but the trip proved more than worth it thanks to Mrs. Pucher, my neighbor, my childhood babysitter, and my very first wish candidate. In order to practice before we receive our official assignments, the Afrit allow us to grant a wish for three candidates of our own choosing. Though I was initially peeved that my mother chose Mrs. Pucher for me, granting her wish to reconcile with her sister was the first time I realized (admitted) that being Jinn can actually help people.

And someone as kind as Mrs. Pucher definitely deserves to be helped. Three days ago, as Megan and I were waving good-bye to my mother, Mrs. Pucher pushed herself up from her gardening kneeler and waddled over to us. She shoved a cherry tomato into Megan's mouth and a pair of clippers into her hand.

Like much of our small coastal town, Mrs. Pucher knew about the accident. And, somehow, she also knew that by occupying Megan's hands, she'd occupy her mind. In pruning the dead roses that first day, the pink in Megan's own cheeks came back, just a little. In planting the line of arugula seeds yesterday, a bit more of her pain was buried. Whatever task Mrs. Pucher has planned for today will tend Megan more than the garden.

“Do you think it's ripe?” Megan asks as Mrs. Pucher squats in front of her camouflaged watermelon. “We could maybe make that sorbet I was telling you my mom makes, you know, the one with the mini chocolate chips for the seeds?”

My lungs deflate as she says this, but the usual crack in her voice is missing. Mrs. Pucher doesn't skip a beat and simply rattles off the ingredients she suspects we need. As Megan whips out her phone to search for the recipe, Mrs. Pucher picks up the watermelon. The watermelon with the sticker from the grocery store still attached. She scrapes it off and gives me a wink.

“Heavens, dear,” Mrs. Pucher says to Megan, “those contraptions aren't meant for the eyes of someone with this much gray in her hair.” She takes Megan by the hand and the two go inside to look up the recipe on the Jumbotron-sized iMac Mrs. Pucher's sister recently gave her.

And just like that, I'm alone. I sink into the Adirondack chair on the stone patio and toss my head back, soaking up the late-August sun. Between my magical attachment to Megan, my magical-of-another-kind attachment to Nate, and George and Goldie's attachment to us all, I've had little opportunity to be alone. Which translates to having little opportunity to use my magic.

Not that I've minded. If a thirst for power and control runs in my Afrit bloodline, maybe being careful in my use of magic will stall my own conversion to the dark side.

I stretch out my legs and breathe in, relishing the familiar scent of the lilacs my mother's magic keeps in perpetual bloom that mixes with the briny notes from the nearby beach. My second home, a place I miss even more than my first. A place I haven't been to since the accident.

I should use this time to check in with my mother next door or Henry across the street or even to leave yet another voice mail for Laila that she'll probably delete without listening to.

The breeze rustles my hair, but the rest of me is still, savoring this bouquet custom-made for me.

Until a wet mop rams itself into my stomach.

Pom-Pom. Mrs. Pucher's Pomeranian, whose usually fluffy fur is plastered to his body and dripping muddy water all over my white shorts. Apparently the sprinklers are on.

Serves me right, since what I really should be doing is practicing. Despite all my trying over the past two days, I haven't gotten Mrs. Pucher's beloved Pom-Pom to do so much as fetch a tennis ball. Aren't dogs supposed to
want
to do that?

If I don't figure out how to get the mangy thing to follow one of my telepathic commands soon, I'll be cramming my lanky sixteen-year-old body behind a seventh-grade desk next to Megan instead of an eleventh-grade one.

It's not like I want to fry any furry creatures' brains (not even Pom-Pom's), but practicing mind control on animals is better than hot-wiring a human's brain without having any clue what I'm doing. And so I practice with squirrels, birds, and Pom-Pom. More accurately, I fail with squirrels, birds, and Pom-Pom. And no, I'm not even sure this power works on nonhuman critters.

I sigh and haul myself out of the Adirondack. I force myself to try to get Pom-Pom to stop gnawing on the hose for five minutes before I give up and walk across the street to Henry's house. Well, halfway across the street. Because that's as far as I can go without my spleen being sucked through my belly button.

Standing in the middle of the road, I hear a thunk and see Henry dragging a round lump of a black garbage bag to the curb.

We haven't seen each other since the day of the funeral. He looks up and our eyes meet. My muscles pull taut like a rubber band, but the tension releases as soon as his dimples appear. He drops the bag and rushes to the middle of the street, where the hug that appears imminent dies abruptly.

“I'm here for you, Azra, always.”

That's what Henry said after I finished telling him how I was going to have to use mind control on Nate and Megan and risk hurting them, maybe even hurting myself. He dug the heels of the dress shoes I had magically shined into the patch of dirt under the swing to come to a complete stop.

“You know that, don't you?”

That's what he said after he grasped the metal chains above my head with one hand. He turned me toward him and tugged, gently closing the gap between us. The plastic seats met with a soft tap.

“I need for you to know that.”

That's what he said as his light green eyes bored into mine, chilling me like a gust of wind in a snowstorm, but then his thumb was on my cheek, his breath was on my neck, his lips were on my forehead, and I was whisked inside to a crackling fire, and that's what I felt, warm and safe and home, and that's what I was thinking and that's where I wanted to be in that moment, home, my home, away from all the pain and hurt and tears and wishes to be granted and then … all of that was gone.

Because he was kissing me. I no longer knew where I was, let alone where I wanted to be.

Henry pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and I shove my hands into my back pockets, casually shifting my weight from one foot to the other to hide my nerves.

“Megan at Mrs. Pucher's?” he asks.

I nod, pushing past the memory to match his nonchalant tone. “So you do read my texts. You just don't reply.”

“I replied.”

“Three times. In ten days.”

He flicks the top of his head toward his house. “Things have been busy with the move. Back and forth. We're doing it ourselves.”

Because they couldn't afford movers, which is why they're defecting to New Hampshire to live with Henry's grandparents in the first place. After more than six months of being unemployed, his father finally found a job near where Mrs. Carwyn's mother and father live. So even though it's Henry's last year of high school—he and Nate are both a year older and incoming seniors—he's … leaving.

“So,” he says. “How is…? How are…? You okay?”

This is not my Henry. He's being so distant. He's been distant since the day of the funeral. Why? Oh, I don't know, choose one:

We went to a funeral. We kissed. I told him I'm the spawn of Jinn Satan. We kissed. I'm living with Nate. We kissed.

Staring through the lenses of his glasses and into his eyes, I'm about to read his mind, which he's explicitly asked me not to do. Unlike most Jinn, but very much like the Afrit side of my family, I can read human minds outside the confines of the wish-granting ritual.

I've gotten a better handle on dipping in at will. Living with my maybe-boyfriend Nate and his grieving family provided excellent incentive to rein in the involuntary nature of my mind-reading skills. But here, in the middle of the street, where Henry and I stood not long ago, with him basically saying he thought I was so pretty he didn't have a shot with me, temptation tugs at me.

Reading his thoughts would be simpler, and less mortifying, than having to actually
ask
him what that little swing-set rendezvous meant … not to mention having to hear him answer … and hear me answer.

No, I can't. He has a right to privacy.

To distract myself, I say, “What's up with the glasses?”

He adjusts the arms that are tucked behind his ears. “I ran out of contacts.”

“You should have told me, I'd have conjured you more.” I gesture toward his messy hair, back to its normal sandy color without all the goop he's been adding lately. “Run out of gel too? Not sure I can conjure that.”

I can, I just don't want to.

He raises his palms. “I don't want you getting into trouble on account of me.”

I snort. “Contacts and styling products are not on the Afrit's radar.”

He crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Which you know for a fact? Because you know everything there is to know about the Afrit? Because your mom's been so forthcoming?”

She hasn't. He knows she hasn't.

Henry knows as much about being Jinn as I do. I smile, remembering the string of questions that followed the shocked, then mesmerized look on his face when he caught me in the act of granting a wish at the start of the summer. I had no choice but to tell him I was a Jinn.

That's not true. I did have a choice, but I made the selfish one. I chose to break the Afrit's biggest rule and out the Jinn world to a human because I wanted to. Granted, when I made that decision I wasn't in possession of all the facts about becoming Jinn.

Since then, Henry's become my confidant, my best friend, and the one I trust most in this world. Just like his sister Jenny. My best friend for the first nine years of my life. Before she fell from the swing in my backyard. That was the day I learned magic has its limits. It can't heal humans, and it can't bring someone back from the dead.

Though, in a way, it has. It's magic, it's becoming Jinn, that brought Henry and me together this summer. Before my sixteenth birthday, I didn't have friends. I thought it was a side effect of being Jinn, of having to hide who we are. But it wasn't a side effect of being Jinn. It was a side effect of being me.

“Azra,” Henry says with frustration in his voice, “you found out about your father from your mom's
diary
. A diary that she hid from you. Haven't you stopped to think what else you don't know?”

What else I don't know has been all I've been thinking about for the past two weeks. Because, as it turns out, my mother's been keeping secrets from me about the Afrit my entire life. Not just that I was one of them, but that threats and coercion are how they keep us Jinn in line. Tortura cavea, a jail, literally of our worst nightmares, awaits not just me, but my mother, her Zar sisters, and my own if I screw up, and maybe even that or worse for Henry. Because if the Afrit find out I told Henry about our world, they'll use mind control to make him forget. And this power I'm struggling to learn is tricky even for them. Done improperly, it can leave humans as amnesiacs or in a vegetative state or even … even dead. Maybe by accident. And maybe not.

Still, despite all the secrets, something about Henry's attitude and that family loyalty thing makes me push back my shoulders and defend my mother.

“She's only trying to protect me. And besides, Lalla Samara wouldn't lie to me.”

I purposely use the “lalla,” a term of love and respect similar to the “aunt” and “uncle” that humans use for close family friends unrelated by blood.

Henry tosses his head back and laughs. “Your mother's best friend? Believe me, she's in on whatever your mom's got cooking.”

It's like flares have been lit inside my cheeks. My chest tightens, and all I'm thinking is where my Henry went. Why he's being so … mean. Especially after our lips did their little meet and greet. I pivot to return to Mrs. Pucher's. If he wants to move away like this, then fine, don't let the Massachusetts border hit him on the way out.

Henry seizes my elbow and draws me to him. His sweaty shirt sticks to my bare arm.

“I won't let you risk it,” he says. “Not for me. I won't let you risk so much as magically swatting a fly away. Not with what's at stake. Not after everything else you've done for me and my family.”

He's talking about granting his sister Lisa's wish—my third and final practice one—to be rid of her stutter. And more. More that I have to … need to ask him about.

Beepity beep beep!

And just like the last time we were standing in the middle of the street, Chelsea appears.

A gleaming Fiat convertible weaves around us and pulls into the Carwyn driveway. Chelsea the cheerleader, Chelsea the bikini-clad lifeguard who used to make fun of little girls who stutter and ignore me closes the door of her brand-new car. Red. The same color of the lip gloss she always wears at the beach and in the Reese kitchen. True to her word, Chelsea has been helping me with Nate, coming by several times to help cook food and even clean the house for Goldie, which is why my teeth shouldn't be grinding the way they are right now.

“Hey, guys!” Chelsea says, skipping toward us and popping up on tiptoes to peck Henry on the cheek.

Right. Chelsea the maybe-girlfriend of Henry.

A summer in the sun (and perhaps a visit to the salon) has added shimmery gold highlights to her buttery blond hair. She's practically glowing.

“You here to help us paint, Azra?” she says.

“No,” I say. Henry didn't ask me to help paint. Even if he doesn't want me using my magic, which could paint the entire house in seconds, I do know how to use a paintbrush. Well, not
know
know, but how hard can it be?

“I've got extra brushes.” Chelsea rests her fancy yoga bag on the ground and bends over. “Let me find you one. With three of us, we'll get it ready for those lucky renters in no time.”