Circle of Jinn (4 page)

She may be in downward dog, but Henry's the one on the leash. My teeth grate against one another. If I don't leave right now, I won't have any enamel left.

*   *   *

Stupid bike. I don't have a car, or a license, so I'm riding behind Megan, who happens to be as good at biking as she is at sailing, not that Nate can get her to the beach and out on the ocean. I had to quit my job at the snack bar early because Megan refuses to even pass by the road to the beach where the car accident occurred.

I used to like biking—when I could go at my own pace. But by the time we roll into the Reeses' driveway, I'm wheezing and Megan's barely broken a sweat.

I miss apping.

She hops off, unhooks her helmet, and is texting before the wheels on her bike stop rotating. The “Thanks, Azra” and teary embrace that followed our last outings are replaced with a backward wave. The running to Nate or Goldie after inching past her mother's sedan is exchanged for a diet soda and a flop on the couch.

The sadness in her eyes? That's still there.

Even so, it's progress. Unfortunately, no one else is home to see it. Dropping my backpack with the container of Mrs. Pucher's homemade fudge on the counter, I pick up the note from Nate. He's at the gym, naturally, and George and Goldie are out for a walk. It doesn't say “at the beach,” but I know that's where they go when they need to escape. They're drawn to it as much as Megan is repelled by it.

The screech of two squirrels heralds their arrival in the backyard. Prime test subjects. Which, considering my dismal performance with Pom-Pom, I can't exactly turn away from.

One check on Megan confirms she's engrossed in her phone and her book at the same time. When I tell her I'm going outside, she grunts instead of looking up. Definitely progress.

I trudge through the kitchen and slide the glass door open. I'd like to be able to sit in the sun and read. I'd like to be able to walk on the beach and swim in the ocean before the New England cold takes it away for another year. I'd like to be able to apport to see my Zar sisters, especially Laila, whose constant presence in my life I feel most acutely only now in its absence.

But I can't do any of those things. Not until I grant Megan's wish. And, considering last night, not seeing the pain in Nate's eyes anymore ranks pretty high on my wish list too.

Slipping out of my flip-flops, I dig my toes into the dirt beneath the grass and focus. Nothing. Again. How am I supposed to delve into Nate's mind and ease his pain when I can't even get this squirrel to jump from one tree limb to the other?

Concentrate, Azra. Nate's wish was an intricate, complicated one, and yet you managed to successfully grant that just two weeks ago.

Legally, financially, if anything impedes his mother's recovery, all the paperwork's in place for Nate to be able to take care of Megan when he turns eighteen in a few weeks. But I went further. As big and strong as Nate is, even without his renewed dedication to pumping iron, he lacks confidence. The spell I did to boost it seems to be working. I've seen the results of my handiwork in person these past few days. And felt it this morning. I liked feeling it this morning.

Which makes the lingering memory of Henry's kiss that much harder to reconcile. Though it's a bit easier after seeing him with Chelsea.

“Jump, you stupid rodent!” I shout.

And it does. It jumps! But not to the maple tree I intended. To the swing set. It's running along the top as if mocking me.

I kick the cedar frame. I should use my powers to burn this thing to the ground and the memory of Henry's kiss right along with it.

A kiss that was probing, searching, just like Henry himself.

Suddenly, a twitch starts in my big toe. Then full on, the pins and needles are back. My body is wracked with an electric charge.

I'm not being paranoid; someone's coming.

I whirl around to see a silhouette materialize out of thin air amid the trees lining the edge of the backyard. My heart beats like a tribal drum when my eyes see what they cannot possibly be seeing.

The telltale signs are all there: tall, thin, thick, shiny hair, and, of course, gold eyes. The gold eyes of the Jinn. But this isn't just any Jinn.

This is a male Jinn.

 

4

A male Jinn. Disbelief keeps me frozen in place. Male Jinn live in Janna. With the Afrit. Not here in the human world. With us.

The figure, wearing a tan leather waistcoat over a long white tunic and what looks like 1980s baggy parachute pants, ducks under a branch and emerges from the trees.

He—it's most definitely a he—squints as the sun hits his face. The bulk of his costumey getup can't hide his muscular form underneath. He glides gracefully across the yard until he's standing directly in front of me.

The color of his eyes steals my breath. Gold, with a touch of red. Copper. Around his neck is a chain made of elongated, barrel-shaped silver beads engraved with the same design that's etched into the silver bangle around my wrist.

He's definitely a Jinn.

He touches his right hand to his heart and says, “Hello, Azra.”

My name from his lips snaps me awake like a shot of adrenaline to my heart. Goldie, George, Megan, Nate—
Nate
—could come out any second. See him. See me with him. See him do whatever it is he's going to do to me.

I grab his wrist, but before my fingers curl all the way around, a mixture of Pop Rocks and Coke explodes in my veins and I drop his hand like it's a grenade.

Ping, ping, ping.
Not a sound in my ears, but a feeling under my skin. Rebounding off the walls of my veins, the ricochets echo the strange sensations I've had all day. Only stronger.
Ping
. And more painful.

A car door shuts with a slam that echoes all the way out here. Which means it's close. Too close. Goldie? Nate? Doesn't matter. We can't be seen.

I seize the hem of the male Jinn's tunic—soft, so unworldly … unearthly … soft—and drag him back into the woods, as far as I can go without the circulus curse stopping me.

Rubbing my forearms and trying to calm the eruption under my skin, a million questions—a million fears—hurl themselves against the walls of my heart and head, but the one that comes out first is the simple, “What were you thinking?”

His smooth brow creases, his copper eyes grow quizzical, his small smile turns … sheepish.
Sheepish?

“I thought I was greeting you,” he says. “Is that not how you do it here?”

“No, I mean, yes, well, sort of.”
Social graces? That's his most pressing concern?
“That was fine. You did fine.” I wave. “Hi.”
And mine, apparently?

The bubbling spreads through my every limb like it's my heart's job to manufacture Pop Rocks and Coke. I broaden my shoulders and lengthen my torso to eke out as much height as possible. He's still got at least three inches on me.

I steady myself. “What I mean is, how could you risk apporting here? What are you doing here?
How
are you here? And who … who are you?”

“Here?” There's a mischievous glint in his copper eyes.

I cock my head. “Here? Where?” I flex my fingers, trying to push through the pings. “I mean, what?”

“Here. You ended every other question with a ‘here,' I was simply finishing for you.”

Ping.

What a cheeky, cocky ass—

“Apologies,” he says. “I'm afraid this isn't going quite as planned. Shall we start over?” He places his hand over his heart again. “
Hala
. My name is Zakaria Anemissary.”

“Anemissary? What kind of last name is that?”

“It's not.”

“Not what?”

“A last name.”

Did a male Jinn apport all the way here just to bicker with me? The flaring of my nostrils I feel, he sees.

He laughs. There's something eerily familiar in it.

“Third time's the charm, isn't that what you say?” He claps his feet together and bows. “Greetings. My name is Zakaria. I am an emissary sent to investigate the unusually lengthy delay between the invocation of the circulus incantation with a Ms. Megan Reese and the completion of the wish she expressed.”

My face is one big empty slate.

He rolls his eyes. “No wonder you haven't granted the damn wish yet.” He flings his head back toward the sky, sending the espresso-colored hair parted over his right eye bouncing against his forehead. “Look, I'm Zak. I'm here to light a fire under your little Jinn butt to grant the freakin' wish before—instead of me—it's the Afrit coming for you.”

My stomach flips at his words. Too close to ones I will never forget.

“They'll come for her, you know they will.”

Words said to my mother by a speaker I heard but didn't see, though a feeling in my blood—my Afrit blood—makes me 99.9 percent certain the voice belonged to another male Jinn. To my father, who somehow, though I have no proof, must have been visiting my mother in secret for who knows how long. My mother and not me.

“It's time, Kal. If not now, when? How much longer does she have, really? They'll come for her, you know they will.”

And have they? Is this a trick? Am I in danger? My mother? Megan?

I inch backward, away from Zak, and a rock scrapes the bottom of my bare foot, giving me an idea. With my hands behind my back, I do something I haven't done in days: use my magic. The icy tingle that accompanies conjuring snakes up my spine as I conjure a rock. A big, heavy one. So big and heavy it's a struggle to hold on to it while keeping my hands hidden from view.

I turn the mammoth beast end over end, trying to get a better grasp, but it's so smooth I can't get any traction, and it's now pinning my thumb to my spine and …
Whump!
It slips to the ground. I retreat faster and faster but I lose my footing, and with a harsh smack, I land on the ground right alongside it.

Zak rushes forward, dropping to one knee beside me. “Are you hurt?”

Like a reflex, his hand reaches out to touch my forehead. And all of a sudden the ricocheting in my veins stops. Replaced by … nothing. But a good—a welcome—nothing. When our eyes meet, he quickly retracts his hand, picking up my conjured rock instead.

He runs his fingers along it. “It's so shiny. And dense. What is this made of? Lead?”

I rub my lower back and mutter, “Could be anything. Guess I should have paid more attention in geology class.”

Oops, I just admitted I conjured a weapon. But that's not the part that surprises Zak.

“You can conjure?” he says.

“Of course.” I wiggle my wrist and point to his matching necklace. “Can't you?”

A rosy undertone blossoms under his olive skin.

“But your necklace,” I say. “Don't you have your powers? Of course, you must if you apped here.”

He says slowly, “We have the powers the Afrit allow us to have.”

The bitterness in his tone ignites a kinship between us.

I let him help me to my feet and magically brush the dirt from the backs of my legs.

“Where were we?” he says.

“I'm not really sure.” That's an understatement. My head is telling me to conjure a machete this time, while my heart wants to take him in like a stray puppy.

He leans against a large pine tree. “We don't have these,” he says.

“Pine trees?”

“Trees.”

“Why not?”

He shrugs. “Because that's the way the Afrit want it. Which, if I had a mescouta cookie for every time that's the answer to a question in Janna, I'd be a fat Jinn.”

I laugh despite not knowing what a mescouta cookie is. “Sounds about the same here. But we don't have any fat Jinn.”

“Neither do we.” There's an impish look in his widening eyes. “Aha, common ground.”

The smile comes too easily to my face.
This is a male Jinn. From Janna.
Here to check up on me.

I begin to picture a baseball bat.

“I'm not here to hurt you,” he says softly.

My belief, from a place deep inside, swells. I feel it so strongly in my Afrit blood. That I can trust him. Then again, anything having to do with the Afrit can't be trusted.

Even me.

With a deep inhale, I summon my jaded side, well honed from years of not wanting to become a Jinn. “Why should I believe you?”

His shoulders inch down and he clasps his hands in front of his stomach. “Because I swear on my life. I swear on my family's … on my father's life.”

I study his copper eyes. “For all I know you two are bitter enemies.”

“He has enemies, but I am not one of them.”

Sadness and fear darken his eyes.

“Azra,” he says. “I know how hard it must be, but I hope you can give me a chance to earn your trust. I'm here on behalf of someone who has your best interests at heart.”

My father.
It has to be. My mother used the exact same words the last time I was in a wish-granting mess and someone she refused to name helped bail me out.

Like a tidal wave, my million questions rise back up, flooding my brain. Is he part of the potential uprising I read about in my mother's diary? Is that why he's here? What about Raina, Yasmin's mother? The Afrit took her from this world just a few weeks ago. Is she okay? Will she ever come back? Does he know who I am? Does he know who my father is? Does he
know
my father?

Fighting against asking, fighting against trusting him to ask him, forces a battle between my heart and my head. But my head wins. It knows the facts. This is a male Jinn, from Janna, who apported here. The only question to ask is why.

I clear my throat. “So you're like, what, the advance team?”

“In a way.”