Circle of Jinn (16 page)

“Yasmin,” Zak says, leaning against the side of the door.

“No, I told you, it's Matin.”

“I know. But before that you said ‘Yasmin.'”

“Right,” I say. “Well, I'm not sure how you're going to feel about this … I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I think Yasmin might be able to help us. I think she knows the truth of why Lalla Raina was taken.”

Zak nods slowly. “Which means perhaps she knows more than we do about the uprising. We'll have to feel her out.”

The doorbell rings again.

“At the party,” Zak adds.

“Tonight?” I say.

Henry deserves a good-bye party free of Jinn angst. I wasn't even going to bring up the whole me-being-the-key-to-the-uprising thing until tomorrow.

“Father could be in trouble,” Zak says.

And there's the card that trumps everything.

“Okay,” I say. “But let's try to be discreet so Henry doesn't know.”

When I open the front door, a red- and teary-eyed Matin marches through waving the box of contact lenses above his head.

“Impossible!” He drops the box onto the coffee table. “
One
. I would like one reason why I should continue to assault myself with these dastardly things.”

Remembering how Zak looked at Laila, I stroll—okay, I shuffle—over to Matin and pick up the box. “Girls within five years of your own age.”

Matin plucks the box out of my hand. “Azra, do you by chance have a mirror I can avail myself of?”

 

17

Mina lied. Or doesn't know how to count. There are way more than forty people here. I strain my neck to look over the crowd. Not so ironically, since Zak, Matin, and I arrived—forty-five minutes late due to their inability to touch their eyeballs—Mina's been nowhere to be found.

Henry's more easy to spot, what with Chelsea in one hand and a beer in the other. He's surrounded by his friends from school—friends it was easy to forget he, unlike me, has. We spent most of the summer together, and I only met Jake, John, and Ryan once. Tonight, the three are collecting keys, which, at a high school party, is the clearest display of friendship.

The stifling smell of sweat and beer leads me outside. Hana, in a strapless black-and-white maxi dress she no doubt made by hand, hasn't budged from the spot in the screened-in porch where Matin cornered her when we arrived. She's leaned in, fingering the soft fabric of the button-down Zak conjured for him.

Matin asked me to conjure him the I-still-can't-figure-out-why-it's-not-as-soft-as-Zak's-fabric purple pocket square that's tucked into his front pocket next to his black pen. Of course Hana had to choose tonight to wear her fiery-red hair in some complicated updo. With Matin's hair now shorn close to his head, the two look more alike than Zak's comfortable with. What I'm not quite comfortable with is her possibly thinking Matin's hitting on her. Because,
ew
.

Kinda like the
ew
of Yasmin with her flat-ironed black hair contrasting with her tight red dress (I'm convinced she saw me coming from the upstairs window and changed the color of her outfit just to toy with me) on one side of my brother in his pristine white linen shirt and Laila on the other.

Laila like I've never seen her. And I don't mean physically. Sure, her golden hair falls in waves down her back and her pale blue baby-doll dress accentuates her still-petite frame and the hints of blue in her eyes. But she's twirling her hair around her finger like she's making corkscrew pasta and crossing and recrossing her courtesy-of-Italy tanned legs like she's in need of a toilet.

And Yasmin appears ready to conjure a voodoo doll. She's been giving me a strange vibe all night. Zak's trying to be polite, but it's obvious he prefers blondes. How are we supposed to “feel her out” about the uprising if he's angling to reserve all his “feelers” for Laila?

Ew.

If sweat and beer dominate inside, outside smells of smoke and s'mores from the fire in the large pit past the in-ground pool at the edge of Henry's backyard. The pit where I finally find Mina. She and Farrah are wearing matching plaid jumpsuits—green and white for Mina and blue and white for Farrah—with V-necks to their belly buttons. Clearly magic is what's keeping things PG-13.

“Azra!” Farrah launches herself at me as I approach, almost knocking us both into the fire. Instead of her usual headband, a crown of acorns and pine needles winds through her straight, dark brown hair. She's also added sharper angles and more caramel highlights to her long bob.

“Hey, Farrah, how's it going?”

“Going?” She blows her bangs out of her eyes, which, like Mina's, are lined with a green the color of grass. They both really do commit to a bit.

“I'm trending!” Farrah squeals. Always as jittery as a rabbit, tonight she's a bunny on amphetamines.

I step back before her arm waving gives me a black eye. “Trending?”

“My mixing! Can't you hear it from here?”

The music, right. “Wait,
your
mixing? But you're out here.”

“The albino.” Mina curls a lock of hair around her finger. “She's got him wrapped around just like this.”

“Mina,” Farrah says, jutting a plaid-painted fingernail at her, “you promised. Do I need to bring up Marco?”

Mina raises an eyebrow at me and neighs like a horse. Marco must have been the Italian stallion. “Sorry,” she says. “You
really
like this one, I know. And I can clearly see why. Honestly, Marco pales in comparison. If there's even a ghost of a chance, I know you and Mr. Anemic will be very happy.”

“Thanks,
Meen
.” A twinkle in Farrah's eye accompanies her shy grin.

Not surprisingly, every single one of Mina's gibes went right over Farrah's head.

Mina warms her hands by the fire while I send Nate another text—my third. He went for drinks twenty minutes ago, and I haven't seen him since. The teensiest part of me thought maybe I'd find him here, magically or otherwise trapped by Mina, who all but drools at the mention of him. But she's my sister. She would do anything to …
Marco
. Mina's neighing echoes in my ears, and I make a mental note to toss my own set of reins around Nate.

Suddenly, the hip-hop song that had been reverberating off the clapboard siding transitions into smooth jazz, and Farrah screeches, “The list!” She hops up and down and an acorn tumbles from her hair. “I told him to stick to my list.” She then races past us, up the backyard incline and around the pool, as she heads for the house.

“That was a little harsh, wasn't it?” I say, forcing myself to stop staring at Mina's perfectly-in-place cleavage.

She shrugs and not a thread of her jumpsuit shifts out of position. Definitely held by magic.

“Has Farrah been spending a lot of time with … with … What's the albino's … I mean, what's the boy's name, anyway?”

“Dwight.”

“You're joking.”

“I'm not that funny,” she says, unconsciously fidgeting with her infinity necklace. When she lets go, the pendant hangs crooked.

I glance up at the pool, where Yasmin and Laila are still making a Zak sandwich. Considering the strides we seemed to be making the other night, I'm hoping Laila's abrupt greeting tonight has more to do with her interest in Zak than her lack of interest in spending time with me.

I close the gap between us to straighten Mina's pendant. “We're all wearing these tonight, did you see?”

“Even Yasmin,” Mina says. “Speaking of, wouldn't you have expected her to live with Hana?” Before I can respond, Mina cries, “Oh! And speaking of speaking of, did you see Hana's neck? She's got a figure-eight tan line front and center. More of a Farrah thing to do, isn't it?”

She traces the edge of her deep V-neck and stares at the house.

It's not just the color of Mina's jumpsuit that's turning her green. I ease my way into the Farrah door that she's just swung open. “Nice touch with the plaid. Whose idea was the matching outfits? Farrah's, right?” Mina nods, and I say, “She'd never ask anyone else, not even Dwight, to do that, you know.”

She bites her bottom lip and looks at me with gratitude.

“In fact,” I add, “I'm sure her obsession will fade once she milks it for all it's worth.”

“You're not that funny either,” Mina says.

But as we both laugh, Mina's usual bubbliness returns. Followed by Nate.

“There you are,” he says, handing me a red cup in a wood-paneled cozy.

Cozy … add “up to” and that sums up my current feeling about Nate. Sure, the light gray ribbed henley he's wearing that was clearly purchased prior to his recent weight training doesn't hurt. But it's more than that. Ever since I granted Megan's wish, the hurt in Nate's dark eyes has been replaced by a longing, an intensity. It draws me to him.

The same way his smile draws in everyone else. Nate's warm, caring nature would make old Saint Nick reassess his people skills, but combined with the boost in confidence from my granting
his
wish, he's somehow able to make every girl feel like a bride on her wedding day and every guy feel like he's just won a Super Bowl ring.

And me? He makes me feel like an Azra who lives in the now. Not the Azra before becoming Jinn. Not the Azra after becoming Jinn. For too long after Jenny died, my life was about what I had lost, what I couldn't have, what I would never have. But there was so much I
could have
had if I only let myself. It doesn't seem right that Nate's loss, the loss of his father, somehow became my gain.

He pulls me in close and whispers in my ear, “Thanks for inviting me.”

I press my hand against the ribs of his henley. “No thank-you needed. What kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn't?”

“Girlfriend.” His lips graze my cheek and it's like someone's struck a match against my skin. “I am so in love with—”

Panic, panic, panic.
I squeeze my wood cozy so hard a piece of bark cracks.
He's not going to say he lo—

“With the way that sounds in your beautiful voice.”

Whew
. And,
huh
? The way that
sounds
? That's what he loves?
Nice, Azra, now you're a contradiction even to yourself.

Nate smiles, but the grief he's always working to mask darkens the edges like a creeping shadow. “It'd be easy not to invite me after everything. Thank you for treating me like everyone else and for making me feel, well, normal.”

Words I want to say right back to him. When I was forced to grant Nate's wish, I thought knowing his deepest desire would make things weird between us because I'd know him in a way he'd never know me. But what I didn't count on was that Nate didn't need magic to begin to know me. He slides his arm around my waist and faces Mina.

There was a time when having Nate here surrounded by all my Zar sisters would have had me itchier than rolling around naked in a bed of poison ivy. But tonight, I like showing him off to them, and them to him.

I'm embarrassed that my first thought upon realizing I could be free of my bangle was to leave my Zar, was to stop being Jinn. Because stopping being Jinn means stopping being a part of this.

Around me, a circle forms. Of Jinn. Of friends. Of the life I now have. The life I didn't know I needed until it found me. Until I let it find me.

A life I can't help but think my father's backup plan intends to change.

“Now this is where the real party is,” Matin says, approaching with a wide smile and Hana at his side. He wiggles his paneled cup. “Pardon, but have you all found the good stuff?”

Hana smiles at me. “Having fun, Azra,” she says, not asks. It's like she knows the answer.

She winks.

The Zar connection? Is she feeling me? If she is, why can't I feel her?

After our Zar initiation, when our magic became linked, we were supposed to be able to feel one another's emotions. Though I've been trying, I haven't felt anyone's. Hana's the only one who's felt mine and only once—as far as I know. Unless that really is what's happening now.

Hana bunches the jersey fabric of her striped dress in her hands as she moves forward to introduce herself to Nate. I'm filled with pride—both ways—as she does.

The way her hand lingers in his before she elbows me in the side means her feeling my emotions is exactly what's happening now. Hana's always been the smart one.

Nate's explaining the intricacies of lacrosse to Matin (in truth, to all of us) when Henry and Chelsea join us. Laila, Yasmin, and Zak are right behind them.

“Tell me, Henry,” Laila says, clicking her nude-colored high-heeled sandals together, “where have you been hiding this one? Why have I never met your cuz before?”

She's referring to Zak.

Here, at the party at Henry's house, my sisters are my cousins and my brother is Henry's cousin, and Hana's brother is Henry's cousin's best friend.

It's confusing.

Farrah and the albin …

Farrah and
Dwight
round out the group. In Farrah's hand is a wine bottle.

“Ah, that's the good stuff,” Matin says.

Farrah upends the bottle into his cup, but less than half a glass pours out. “Sorry, Dwight and I must have gotten carried away.” She burps and Dwight giggles worse than Hana.

Yasmin narrows her eyes, studying the group—studying part of the group, specifically me and Zak—like she's about to draw a portrait. A family portrait? I link elbows with Nate and drag us away from the light of the fire.

Yasmin snags the empty bottle by its neck. “There's only one thing this is good for now.”

“Recycled glass jewelry,” Hana says.