Becoming Jinn (23 page)

Not exactly the head honcho. Nate's the lead lifeguard. But I don't think Henry really cares about the distinction, so I simply nod.

“Azra, I'm a princess!” Lisa shouts, drawing even more attention to herself.

My eyes plead with Henry. He rolls his own in response, but he gets her down. “Come on, Lisa. Azra wants you to practice your curtsying again.”

While I chase Lisa up and down the beach, Henry stays behind. With Chelsea. Chelsea, who leans her tiny, bikini-clad body against the bottom of the lifeguard chair and swings the red rope of her whistle as if she were posing for the cover of a swimsuit issue. When Henry laughs, I can't fathom what Chelsea could have possibly said to elicit such a reaction. That a half-naked girl doesn't have to say much to cause a teenage boy to be enraptured crosses my mind. But Henry's too smart to be taken in simply by Chelsea's assets.

I check my watch and am more relieved than I have a right to be when I see it's five minutes past my mom's pickup time. Lisa sprints ahead of me toward Henry.

As I follow her, Nate sidles up next to me. “Turned out not to be so bad of a day after all.”

This, like so much else in my life at the moment, I have conflicting feelings about.

The four of us stand at the lifeguard chair. Chelsea who's looking at me who's looking at Henry who's looking at Nate who's looking at me.

“My mom's probably here if you want a ride,” I say, desperate to break up the awkward gathering.

As we leave the beach, Henry and I trail behind Lisa. He then turns, waving to Chelsea.

Seriously?

Before we cross over the dunes I steal a last glance at Chelsea. Her back is arched and she's laughing. I'm convinced she knows I'm watching when she lands a teasing slap on Nate's stomach.

In my head, the satisfaction of telling Henry how Chelsea mocked Lisa battles against the fear that it would hurt him too much. But it's not even a fair fight. If I've learned anything from what I did to Laila it is this: from this moment on, not hurting my family will always come first. And without a doubt, Henry is now my family.

 

22

It is happening. My first assignment arrives, sealed inside a gold envelope with my name embossed in an ornate script across the front.

Azra Nadira
.

It doesn't fall from the sky or anything, just from my mother's hand.

My bowl of chocolaty cereal no longer holds my interest. The soggy mess and I stare at each other for so long, my mother gets fed up.

“Oh, come on, Azra. Just open the damn thing.”

The lightness of the envelope belies what's inside. I wedge my nail in the small gap at the corner. Sliding my finger across, I jerk my hand back. Paper cut. Apropos. I stick my finger in my mouth, sucking the blood. Who cares what Henry thinks? Vampires would be a cool supernatural being. Grass is always greener, right?

I nudge the textured linen note card out of the envelope and read the gold lettering. Anne Wood. My first candidate is a woman. The only other information this paper gives me is her address. As expected, she lives right here in town.

I dump my soggy cereal in the trash. “So, want to come along for the ride?” I'm only half joking.

“You know I can't. No one can. You're supposed to be fully trained and able to do this yourself.” My mother's model Jinn answer is accompanied by a glint of worry in her eyes. Especially as she adds, “Which, you are.” She takes the paper out of my hand and her body relaxes. “Or you will be by the time you need to do this. You have a week.”

She lays the card facedown. On the back, in between two squiggly lines is a 7.

“That's how long you have before you need to grant Ms. Wood's wish.”

As my mother pours me a new bowl of cereal, she launches into her Jinn lecture of the day: research.

In this, I'm lucky. The Internet affords Jinn of my generation a huge technological jump on how our ancestors performed this least glamorous part of the wish-granting ritual. Even during my mother's genie days, recon had all the hallmarks of some cheesy movie. Jinn would shadow their candidates like a detective trailing some rich woman's cheating husband, camera hidden inside a trench coat, binoculars at the ready.

I now understand how proficiency in mind-reading might be a desired skill. The more a Jinn can read their victim's—
er,
candidate's—mind, the less external prep work required.

Learning about the wishee through a combination of research and mind-reading helps us craft the right wish the right way, most importantly, the way it won't wind up on the evening news. Whatever genie was responsible for the building of the Great Sphinx of Giza or the Roman Colosseum certainly didn't have to worry about paparazzi, twenty-four-hour news cycles, and conspiracy bloggers.

I go through the day feeling like I have an itch on my insides that I have no possible way of scratching. I even texted Hana, Mina, and Farrah to ask their advice. Well, I
wrote
texts to Hana, Mina, and Farrah. Knowing my butterflies would get back to Yasmin, the only text I actually sent was to Henry.

Which turned out to be a huge mistake.

“World peace?”
My phone dings with another message from him.

He's been quizzing me all day on potential wishes. Thinks he's hilarious.

I slide my laptop onto the bed, taking a break from my barely started cyberstalking of Ms. Wood to reply,

Trick. Make her feel the current state of the world is perfectly peaceful as it is.

Cheater. Sure I can't come? Love to see you do real magic.

Real magic? As opposed to …

How those spiffy loafers working for ya?

That's baby stuff.

You try it.

I
∗∗
wish
∗∗
.

LOL.

When's big day?

One week.

'K. Grams giving me evil eye. H out.

He's out to dinner with his visiting grandparents and still he's texting me? I delete all the incriminating messages and toss the phone on my bed. Baby stuff. Hardly. Then again, world peace? What the hell
would
I do with that? I rub my hands to warm them. What if he's right? What if everything up until now
has
been baby stuff?

I close my laptop. Maybe I'd better flip through the cantamen instead. I search my room, but the book's nowhere to be found.

Right. My mother said she was working on a spell. I cross the hall and enter her bedroom where I easily find the codex on her nightstand. When I pick it up, a stack of travel magazines falls to the floor. Along with something else. Staring up at me from in between the pages of an issue on desert oases is a small, red leather book with one word written across the front.

DIARY.

Five block letters centered on the cover saying so little and yet so much. Instinctually, my eyes flicker across the room. My mother's downstairs “reading,” which means she's probably fast asleep. Using my powers, I shut and lock her bedroom door.

Clutching the diary to my chest, I pace in front of the bed. A simple snap keeps the journal closed. No lock needs picking for me to invade my mother's privacy.

My hand rests on top, as if I could absorb her thoughts by osmosis. I can't. I tell myself I don't have to open it—to which my self replies,
What if she wrote about your father?

A gentle pop and the snap closure releases. The spine cracks so that I'm somewhere in the middle of the diary, but the page is blank. I thumb forward a few pages. Blank. I move a few pages back. Blank. I go to the very first page. Blank. Flipping through the entire diary, I can't find a single written word.

I slam the book shut. Total rip-off.

Wait, of course. Magic must be concealing the writing. I sit on the end of the bed, open to the beginning, and concentrate. Still blank. I really have no idea what I'm doing, though. If my mother's thoughts are hidden by magic, she probably used a spell. I know nothing about using spells.

I fling the book toward the headboard, and a page falls out.
Great.
Now I damaged the stupid thing. But I didn't. It's not a blank sheet of diary paper. It's a photograph. My mother, younger and just as beautiful, planting a kiss on some guy's cheek. Even though her eyes are closed, she exudes a happiness I've never seen. The dude in the photo, though? Him I think I've seen. In fact, I know it.

In her closet, I find the white linen pants I wore on my birthday. I slide my fingers into the back pocket. It's still there: the picture of my mother and her prom date that I pulled from her old photo album. Holding the two photographs side by side, I confirm the guy whose cheeks are attached to my mother's pursed lips and the guy whose arm is wrapped around my mother's tiny waist are one and the same.

Both my mother and her beau look slightly older in this new photo. I turn it over, searching for a date or a name or any clue as to who he is or why my mother would have a picture of him stashed in a blank diary.

In the corner, surrounded by a tiny heart, are the letters “K
+
X.” That's it. “K” for “Kalyssa,” my mother, and “X” for, appropriately enough, “mystery man.”

As far back as I can remember, my mother's never gone on a date. She's not a hermit. Though most of her socializing hours have been spent with either Samara or her Zar, she has gone to parties, to the movies, to the occasional dinner with human friends. But not with a man. If a man was involved, he was always part of a larger group.

Though Samara's dated lots of men, it never occurred to me before now that my mother's nonexistent love life was peculiar. Can't blame me, really. No one wants to see their mom making out with some random stranger. I still don't, but knowing how I feel when I'm around Nate, who's not even my boyfriend (cue mixed feelings), it's a bit sad to think my mother hasn't felt that, at least not in my lifetime.

Her soft footsteps don't make much noise as she walks toward the stairs, but sixteen years of listening assures I'm attuned to even her lightest tread. I place the diary and the magazines back on my mother's nightstand, unlock her door, and app across the hall with the cantamen. I leap onto my bed and slip the two photographs inside my pillowcase.

“Come in,” I say over my drumming heartbeat in response to her gentle knock.

She sits at the foot of my bed. “Feeling okay, kiddo?”

I nod. I don't know why I lie any more than I know why I don't ask her about the guy in the photographs.

“Well,” she says, smoothing out my comforter, “I just wanted to say if you were playing host to a swarm of butterflies, they will eventually find themselves a new home. It gets easier.”

So weak is her smile that I doubt she expects me to believe this. I mirror the forced grin right back, and we stay that way, each pretending we aren't aware the other is full not just of butterflies but of bull—

“Night then.” She eyes the laptop. “Don't stay up too late doing research. I imagine Ms. Wood will be pretty straightforward.”

*   *   *

But she wasn't, at least not in my dreams. All those random potential wish texts from Henry gave me nightmares. Another reason I should have texted my Zar sisters instead of him. Is that karma or hindsight? Probably both.

On the kitchen table is a note from my mother. “
At the beach with Samara
.” She hasn't been all summer. Funny that she waits until my day off to go. Aren't I the one who's supposed to be embarrassed to be seen around her?

I traipse around the house, trying to send the butterflies that are ricocheting off my intestines back into their cocoons. Iced coffee, the latest mermaid book, texting with Laila, binge-watching TV shows with pithy HITs, nothing slows down the flapping wings.

The only thing that will is granting Ms. Anne Wood's wish. Which is why I grab the note card with her address and settle into the couch with my laptop. Having not really used my mind-reading skills with Zoe or Lisa, I have no idea if they're good enough to rely on. No matter how silly it feels, I need to do some research.

As I flip the paper over to double-check the address, my eye is drawn to the 7.

The 7 that's not a 7
.

The 7 that's a 1
.

How can it be a
1
?
I could have sworn it was a 7. My mother even said I had a week. But I don't have a week. I have a day.

I check the time on my computer. Scratch that. I don't have a day. If 1 means twenty-four hours, I have exactly forty-five minutes.

I have no time to do external research.
Mind-reading, it's all on you.

The panic I feel inside oozes out of my fingertips, which are slimy and shaking as I pound out a text to my mother, a text that resounds from across the room. She forgot her phone. Again. And Samara doesn't believe in those “smart thingys.”

I could app to the beach and find them, but what are they going to do? They can't come with me. They'll see how nervous I am, and all I'll end up doing is ratting myself out. My mom will realize how little studying I've been doing all summer. Gone will be days off ogling Nate at the beach. No more evenings around Henry's fire pit. And I can hang up my beige work polos for good.

I grab my mother's phone and erase my message. Pausing, I then pick up my own and text Henry:
“I have to do it today.”

He's spending the day with his grandparents before they return to New Hampshire.

“But you haven't done much research,”
he replies.

Why do I tell him so much?
“It has to be enough,”
I text back. Though I add,
“I'm ready”
so he won't worry, I can't help but feel mildly betrayed when he simply replies,
“Good luck.”