Becoming Jinn (37 page)

“They stake vampires, not genies.”

“Could've fooled me with the way it felt like my heart was being impaled.”

We stare at each other. “The link,” we say at the same time.

I stand up. “You felt … felt, like,
me
?”

“Did you feel like you were having a heart attack?”

“Just about.”

“Then yes.”

“Cool,” she says at the same time as “creepy” leaves my lips.

Her laugh instantly lightens the weight on my chest. Her hand that holds mine as I tell her first about Laila and then about Nate relieves it even more. Her words that guide me through what she expects I'll need to do, pulled from memories of her flash cards, combined with the secret to using the cantamen allow me to breathe again. Her encouragement that I can do this makes me hope I can repay her one day. I'll even wear her genie costume if she wants (which I think but don't actually say).

As she's getting ready to leave, she hesitates. “You know what you did to Laila was wrong, I don't have to tell you that.” Her skin flushes a light pink as she looks me in the eye. “But I understand, in a way. We all have Jinn we wish were in our lives. Even if we don't talk about it, it doesn't mean we don't feel it.”

Her brother. My heart pulls like taffy and I feel her longing.

“I'm so sorry, Hana.” Instinctually, I wrap my arms around her and the ache in her heart—and then mine—fades.

After she wishes me luck and makes me promise to text her when I'm done, she sticks the toothbrush in her mouth and disappears.

I don't know—or care—if it's my own feelings or Hana's, but confidence fills me as I climb into my mother's bed. I set the diary aside and pull the cantamen into my lap. With my mother's ring on my finger, I draw on all the elements of nature and put my own spin on what Hana told me to say.

“Come on, Grandma, Great-Grandma, Great-Great Grandma, help me grant Nate's wish to take care of his sister.” As I wave my hand over the open book, the light shines off the emerald ring I'm wearing. “
Please
.”

Wind whips my hair as the book's pages furiously flip. The green gemstone on my finger glows. When the pages stop turning and the exact entry I need, written in my mother's neat hand, stares up at me, I understand why this beast doesn't require an index.

*   *   *

I app myself to Nate's backyard. All the lights are out, which means, luckily, everyone's still sleeping.

Following the detailed instructions my mother entered into the cantamen after granting a similar wish, it's no surprise that accomplishing the logistical part of Nate's wish wasn't anywhere near as hard as I expected.

It also didn't hurt that his parents had most of the necessary things in order. But just in case Nate's mother … just in case, I made sure Nate, his sister, his family would be protected.

Life insurance, bank accounts, mortgages, wills, I apped to the home of each, conjuring paperwork, changing entries in computer databases, and using spells to do wild (and what I fear could turn out to be addicting) things like make me invisible to alarms and video cameras. The more spells I used, the more in awe—and frightened—I became of what I can do.

The hardest part was remembering to say
“izza samhat”
before using my powers. Would the Afrit know if I recited the words? The ones meant to release my magic? The ones I don't actually need? I have no idea, but keeping up the pretense my mother started seems like the safer play.

With my bolstering, there will be enough money to cover the most advanced medical techniques and rehabilitation Mrs. Reese could ever need. Grad school, medical school, and whatever else Nate and Megan might want to do short of buying a small island will be covered. And if … if circumstances require it, when Nate turns eighteen in a few weeks, he will become Megan's legal guardian. Nate will be able to take care of Megan, financially and legally. Wish granted.

Technically wish granted. Because if I left it at that, I'd be employing a bit of a genie trick. Which is why I'm at Nate's house.

Though I'm sure Nate can do the rest of what “taking care of” entails all on his own, I need to make sure he thinks so too.

I say
“izza samhat”
and magically unlock the back door. Tiptoeing into Nate's kitchen, my heart leaps to my throat when I see him slumped over the table, asleep. Mere hours have ticked away since his father died, and here Nate is trying to take his place, trying to take care of his family.

Unopened folders labeled “financial” and “will” and “mortgage” lay spread out in front of him. I silently move forward and look inside. A smile grows wide across my face. The spells worked. All the paperwork here matches the doctored ones I stashed in each official location.

Feeling the force of the talisman and … something else …
Hana
. Feeling the strength of my Zar sister, I draw on my powers and recite one of the spells I marked in the cantamen. A spell to boost someone's confidence.

Nate should now have everything he needs to take care of his sister all on his own. But he doesn't have to do it alone. I know how lucky I am to have Henry as my best friend, and, right now, I can't risk anything that might change that. So official wish or not, I'll grant Nate's desire for me to be with him. It's not like it's a hardship. I'm positive the whole “making the hurt less” goes both ways.

 

36

When I app back to my mother's bedroom, my adrenaline has me wide awake despite the late hour and all the apporting, conjuring, and spells I've done. Again, my mother was right. Drawing on nature allowed me to do magic without expending as much of my own energy. I can't help but wonder what'll happen when tapping into my full Zar.

I'm sliding my mother's ring to the end of my finger when I catch the splash of red out of the corner of my eye. The diary. For anyone tracking my magical energy, they'd see it activated all night for official Jinn business. If I don't do this now, I may not get another chance. At least not anytime soon.

I push the talisman back down and open the diary to the page bookmarked with the pen. Confident in my use of spells by now, I recite the “Make the Seen Unseen” spell. Nothing. I work through it three times without a single blot of ink appearing. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the writing isn't concealed by magic or maybe this is the wrong spell to reveal it.

Or maybe I'm an idiot. This makes the
seen unseen
. I need to do the opposite. I read the spell again. Though it's a mishmash of ancient languages, like all the spells I've used tonight, its roots are in Latin. Which is why my mother insisted I start taking the dead-for-a-good-reason language in junior high. Yet another part of my life dictated by becoming Jinn.

Wonder what she'd say if she knew how I was about to employ all I've learned.

Calling on my memory of the Latin words I can ferret out, I sub in ones that seem more appropriate for making the
unseen seen
. I rearrange some of the other ones I don't know and recite the spell one more time.

Ink spreads across the open pages of the diary. I lift the small, red leather book from the pillow where it was perched and gently turn pages. In blue ink, in black ink, in the occasional green, words written in my mother's elegant handwriting fill three-quarters of the journal.

It's only now that the words are able to be read that I consider whether they should be read. This ranks as a pretty serious invasion of my mother's privacy. I'd be furious with her if she did this to me.

Maybe just a peek to see where she left off. Considering I was fine with eavesdropping, how different is this, really?

I lay the diary in front of me and open to the last page with writing. As I skim through the entry under today's date, my pangs of guilt recede. I know all this already. She's simply reflecting on having told me the truth about the Afrit. When I hit the emotional stuff where she blames herself for not telling me sooner, it seems the too-personal line is being crossed. I avert my eyes and go back a few pages.

An entry from the day before the Zar initiation seems to be the first one in a long time.

Dear Diary,

Years have passed since the last time I wrote those words. As my pen touches this page, I realize the hole not keeping up with you has left in my life. Especially now. Now that my Zar has been broken. They've taken Raina.

We don't know why. We can only assume it has to do with her increased involvement in the uprising. But how was she discovered? Sam insists this is proof of why we need to act now. Doesn't she realize it's proof of nothing but the opposite? Yes, the Afrit need to be overthrown. The revolt is a worthy cause, and I want my family to be whole again. But at what cost? Should Azra and Laila lose us the way Yasmin lost Raina? They'll never see each other again. I cannot do that. Not to Azra and not to myself. I cannot lose anyone else.

But I need to tell Azra the truth. Sam was right about that. She needs to know what's at stake. I thought not telling her would protect her, but she's going to get herself into trouble even if she doesn't intend to. She's got too much of her father in her.

My father. I scan the rest of the entry, but there's not another mention of him. There's also nothing else about whatever this revolt … this uprising … against the Afrit's all about. Would an uprising stand a chance? And would it really mean my family would be whole again?

All of a sudden it's like a five-year-old has grabbed both sides of my Jinn world and is shaking it like a snow globe.

As much as I want the Afrit ousted from power, my mother's right about what we all have to lose. The question is how it compares to what we have to gain.

I start leafing through the diary, scanning entries, until I find one that appears to be the longest one in the book. I check the date. It's from a few months before I was born.

Dear Diary,

I need to write this down. I need it here in case something happens to me. I'm too afraid to put it in the cantamen. But my words should be safe here, hidden until this little one growing inside me is old enough to both read them and discover how to read them. I need her to know this history so she'll understand. And it
is
a she. I know it's a girl. Xavier wants to name her “Azra,” after my mother. We're certainly not choosing a name from his family. We don't want her to have anything to do with them.

Xavier. I fly off the bed and yank out the bottom drawer of my mother's jewelry box. I dump the contents onto the dresser. The photographs land facedown. There it is: the “K
+
X” written in the bottom corner of the later one. “K” for “Kalyssa” and “X” for “Xavier.”

I flip the photos over and search for a resemblance in each of the two faces before me: the face of the boy in the tux, arm wrapped around my mother in her prom dress, and the face of the man whose cheek my mother's lips are attached to. My olive skin, my long, dark hair, my slightly turned-up nose all come from my mother. I push out my chin. It has a delicate heart shape. I move it from side to side, finding the light. Is that his? I pucker my lips. What about them? Are they his?

I touch the photograph. It's not my chin, it's not my lips, it's not anything I can put a name to, but it's something. This is my father.
My father.

My head spins. This simple fact changes everything. This fact cancels out the fiction I've written of my mother's life. Of my life. My mother loved my father. My heart breaks imagining what it must have felt like to be torn apart.

When I pick up the diary again, my hands are trembling.

Little one, bear with me on this history lesson. To know how things came to be, you need to know how they were. We always had a council of elected Jinn—a cross between the human world's government and police. We were subject to the council's decisions, but today's types of controls and monitoring were basically nonexistent unless a Jinn was in danger of exposing magic to humans. If that happened, and it did and still does on occasion, the council was responsible for doling out punishment. But the other, more important job of the council has always been selecting humans in need of a wish. The idea of the greater good is ingrained in our species.

The difference is, in the past, Jinn volunteered for assignments. Only the best of the best were accepted as volunteers, and Jinn trained for years to achieve such an honor. Granting a wish for one of these specially selected candidates garnered much respect.

If Jinn did not volunteer for assignments, they selected their own wishees at will. Some did it randomly, some did it according to special criteria they devised on their own, some didn't do it at all. Jinn had the freedom to use their powers however they saw fit. That's not to say there weren't any rules or any consequences for inappropriate behavior. It's not like they could roam the streets doing magic for all the world to see.

When Jinn went too far, the council stepped in. Punishment was having one's powers stripped for a certain period of time, or if the crimes were that heinous, for life.

At some point in the long history of our world, it was discovered that certain earthly compounds conflict with a Jinn's ability to use the powers that are literally in our DNA. And, since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, other compounds do the opposite. Kind of like how magnets can attract some metals but repel others.

Therefore, the way a Jinn's powers were stripped, at least for the past couple of centuries, was by affixing an unremovable object to a part of the Jinn's body that blocked and prevented the use of magic. But that's not how it's done anymore, not since the Afrit came into power.