Circle of Jinn (39 page)

You are. But you have the spell. Use Mother's spell.

Of course. Her spell. The only one she'd completed before Laila's attack. Zak gave it to me to memorize after Henry showed me the forum. It links Jinn. This will be the first test to see if it does what she hopes and also links Afrit.

I recite her carefully crafted spell and ignore the ferret-faced Afrit grabbing my arm and the mangy-haired one circling behind me and the too-cute-to-be-evil black-haired one picking up my bangle and Zak's necklace. I focus on their mind—singular—and command that it makes the bodies linked to it come to a halt.

It does. They do.

I don't risk anything more elaborate than the same sleeping spell I used on my mother and Gamal, and sure enough, six Afrit collapse around our feet.

And then I breathe. And then I command my own pulse not to puncture an artery. And then I snap my bangle around my wrist and secure Zak's necklace around his neck.

“Told you,” Zak says. “And remind me not to get on your bad side.”

A brief smile, full of pride, precedes a gnawing in my gut. Because it's not pride I'm feeling. It's hubris, which is dangerous. Arrogance is definitely a prerequisite to using this much power. This is why the Afrit are the way they are—why Qasim is the way he is. I understand it. But I don't like it. I hope my mother's blood means I never will.

We step over the sleeping bodies of the ferret and the cute Afrit and approach the steel-lined passageways. We circle in front of each until …

Ping
.

The corridor chooses us as much as we choose it.

I try not to think about what else may lie ahead and that my arrogance doesn't care what lies ahead, and simply allow the pings to guide us through the darkness. They battle the cold that infiltrates from the dank stone. But the pings win out. They keep on coming, faster and faster.

We follow past cell after cell shrouded by heavy metal doors. We can't see or hear anything. Or anyone. But the force with which the pings bounce in our blood means we must be close. Hope fills Zak's eyes as he takes my hand. We turn the corner.

Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping!

Zak's grip verges on crushing my bones. I wince and shake him off. He opens his cloak, swings his satchel to the front, and draws out a flashlight.

The light illuminates the door of the cell before us. Etched into the steel are the letters
XA
. His initials. We've found him.

I repeat the words the guard at the front recited. A rush of hot air blasts my face, and the metal door vanishes without a sound. Like a room in a dollhouse, the cell lies open before us, missing its fourth wall.

He stands in the middle of the chamber with his back to us. I inch closer, and Zak shines the light around the cell. A cot lines one side of the room and a stone washbasin and primitive toilet occupy the other. The light dances around, finally landing on the far wall, on what he's seeing. On what he's feeling. On what's torturing him.

Headstones. Three of them. Each with a name carved into the rounded white tablet:
Kalyssa
,
Zakaria
, and
Azra
.

This is my father's worst fear.

Does he truly believe it's come true? He doesn't move. It's like he's in a trance. Does he even know Zak and I are here? If he does, does he think we're real? Does he think we're apparitions? An extension of the torture he's been living with?

“Xavier,” I say softly as if the volume would make him disappear.

His head of black hair peppered with silver streaks turns, and my breath locks in my throat as I see his face. Older than the face of the boy in the tux, arm wrapped around my mother in her prom dress, more weathered than the face of the man whose cheek my mother's lips were attached to in the photo with the “K
+
X” written on the back. But it's him.

Xavier.

His brow creases, and his hands, hanging loose against the sides of his dirty gray kaftan, rise to shield his eyes from the light infiltrating the cell.

Recognition dawns on him like the first shimmering rays of light from the rising sun. He must feel the pings, for he strokes his arm from wrist to elbow. He remains still, but slowly an invisible eraser wipes the fear and confusion from his face. A weak smile forms and grows wider and stronger as hope and pride and joy draw new, more flattering lines across his forehead and around his eyes and mouth.

I nudge Zak's arm to lower the flashlight that's shining too brightly on Xavier's features. Features my eyes scan and my brain tries to place.

My olive skin, my dark hair, my slightly turned-up nose all come from my mother. I thought maybe my chin or my lips or the width of my brow, something would come from him. But none of them do.

Then I see his eyes. The shape, the distance apart, the intensity. I see all of those in my own.

His lanky frame, his squared-off shoulders, the defiance in his stance. I see all of them in me.

My wish has come true. Next to me is my brother and before me is my father. We may not be normal, but we are a family.

A warmth fills my heart, but just as quickly it seeps out and I grow as cold inside as the stone is making me outside. Because what if he's hurt or his brain is damaged or he's simply furious that we're here, risking our lives for his? What if he's given up and has no will to fight or, worse, no way to fight, no way to help us win against the council, no way to prevent the uprising from starting, no way to save Jinn lives?

What if … what if he's not what I imagined?

What if the wish, the hope I've placed upon his name before I even knew it, for all these years, the one thing I thought would make me whole doesn't?

The answer is bittersweet. Because I know in my thudding heart that it'll be okay. That
I'll
be okay. Because this is my family, yes. But there are all sorts of ways to have a family. And the one waiting for me back home will always be enough. More than enough.

I swallow hard. “Hello, Xavier.”

He pauses and scratches the full, dark beard I didn't expect. His deep voice wavers almost imperceptibly as he says, “The least you could do is call me Dad.”

My knees wobble, not so imperceptibly.

“Hi…” My hands, my legs, my voice tremble. “… Dad.”

He smiles, and in him, beneath the furry coat around his lips, I also see Zak.

“Now that's more like it,” he says.

Pings rocket through me as he nears. He tentatively reaches for me, laying his hand gently upon my wrist. He spins the bangle to get a glimpse of the hinge.

Is that all he wanted? To check out my magical talents? Is that all I am to him? A bundle of magical energy?

I recoil despite the pings still battering my insides.

But he doesn't.

My father pulls me to him. “You're really here,” he whispers.

And that's it. Words and thoughts vanish. All I have is feeling—the feeling of my father's arms around me. For this one moment, I let myself become the girl I didn't get the chance to be with him.
My father is real.
His embrace calms the pings, soothes my fears, empowers my magic.

“
We're
really here,” I say.

“Together. Finally.” His voice grows stronger. “I've wished for this every day of my life. My little Jinni.” Words I now remember him saying many times before.

They took this from us. They took so much more from so many other Jinn. They can't take anything more.

He kisses my cheek and his beard scrapes my skin. A new feeling, a new memory formed.

I won't let them take anything more.

“Mom's going to make you shave,” I say.

His gold eyes sparkle as he grins. “You're probably right.” He holds me at arm's length. “Azra, my little Jinni no more. I am so proud of you. What you've discovered with your brother, what you've done with your Zar, your wish candidates—”

“You know about my candidates? About Megan and Nate?”

“Most certainly, I gave them to you.”

“You? On purpose? Why?”

“To make it easier on you, love. The council was watching. I didn't want to give them more reason to. I didn't want them to discover all that I knew about you. It helped, did it not? Being invested in the human makes granting the wish less difficult, yes?”

And this is how I know my father never granted a wish. Because then he'd know all about my mother's “invested” theory. But he was trying to help in the only way he could from here. He was watching out for me, trying his best to protect me. A skill I hope I inherited.

For Laila's sake. I'm about to turn to Zak to begin our plans when the guilt that's been living inside me and the need to know exactly what I'm up against makes me ask something else.

“Xav—I mean, Dad?”

“Yes, Azra?”

“The car accident. Nate's parents. Did the Afrit cause it?”
Did I cause it?

He sighs and the crow's-feet around his eyes deepen. “No, my
ibna.
My sweet girl. Sometimes accidents are just that.”

This fills me with relief as much as it does fear.

My father then claps a hand on Zak's shoulder and pulls him in with his other arm. The pings ebb and what flows instead is a feeling of peace and warmth and love that defies this frigid place. But time is not on our side. So we break apart.

In a stream-of-consciousness whirlwind, we tell him about Laila and Matin and Austan and Gamal and the sleeping Afrit guards and my successful use of hadi. The power he ensured I would have.

When we are finished, I expect my father to grab me with one hand and Zak with the other and storm out of tortura cavea in search of Laila's cure. But he doesn't. Instead, he lowers his eyes to the dirt floor. “This should have never come to pass. I naively thought the rumors of Qasim experimenting with new punishments was simply another of his intimidation tactics. I should have paid more attention … I should have known what Qasim was capable of … but my focus was elsewhere.”

Me? Was his focus on me?

My father should be two feet tall by now with the amount of weight that he's set on his shoulders. And though my own shoulders droop as I share in his burden, Laila's hourglass is losing sand with each moment we remain here. The focus can't be on anyone but her.

“So what do we do?” I ask.

My father calmly clears his throat but can't dislodge his guilt. “With what's happened to Laila, we know the rumors were correct. And Gamal's involvement is not surprising for he has been serving as Qasim's
althani.
”

Bouncing from one foot to the other, Zak exhibits the impatience I feel. He quickly says to me, “Like his apprentice or houseboy.”

I shift closer to the missing fourth wall and the way out of this awful place. “So he's had access to Qasim's home?”

An eagerness fuels Zak's nodding as he follows me. “The antidote. That's where it must be. Maybe … maybe Gamal was even acting without Qasim's knowledge? To gain favor? Maybe he's actually the one who sent Matin?”

I feel my body begin to match Zak's rhythm, but Xavier stands still, save for the stroking of his beard. I know he's been tortured, quite literally, but with every second we wait, more of Laila is being destroyed. I clutch Zak's hand and reach for my father's. “Let's get go—”

“Perhaps it was Gamal,” my father says, interrupting me. “This attack does sound too rash for Qasim.”

My body goes rigid. He's right. I don't even know Qasim, and I know he's right. But then … there's another option. A more likely one. I not only think it, but I read it in my father's mind.

Unless it's a trap.

Laila, hurt for me. Because of me.

“It doesn't matter,” my pride makes me say. “I'm strong enough.” My arrogance chimes in, “Even if it is a trap.”

The hope that had filled Zak's eyes only seconds ago evaporates. “Azra, no,” he says.

I stand up straighter. “We don't have a choice. Laila's running out of time.”

Laila. My best friend. My brother's love. Samara's daughter.

My father's eyes show he understands the urgency, but his years of patience and planning make him pause. He won't act impulsively. “I never intended for you to confront Qasim on your own. I wanted the council behind us. I wanted the Jinn here to see what you were capable of first. I wanted them to stop accepting this life out of fear. I wanted them to know we had the power to fight him—all of us.”

And I want, more than anything, to put Laila first.

But wanting doesn't make it so.

“I understand.”

Laila may be all of those very important things, but in the end, she is just one Jinn. What we're doing is bigger than just one Jinn. That's what my father is saying.

I strangle the shrieking of my heart. “Do you think we have the time to implement your original plan? To assemble your supporters before Qasim learns we are here?”

Zak gasps, knowing what this would mean for Laila. My father then tents his fingers, and I think he's going to object but he doesn't. He's not the same parent as my mother. He's been in Janna. He understands sacrifice.

“If Qasim truly is behind poor Laila's attack?” He sighs and shakes his head. “It is unlikely we will have the freedom of movement we require.”

Unlikely. Thank Janna.
We don't have to choose.

But …
we don't have to choose
. That means confronting Qasim. Now.
Just the three of us.

“This is your decision, Azra,” my father says. “I will be behind whatever you decide. But I cannot help you. I no longer possess my powers.”

He turns and points to a ragged, seeping blister on the back of his neck.
Just the two of us, then.
He was injected with the inhibitor to block his powers.