Circle of Jinn (23 page)

“I swear, I don't know,” my mother insists.

Raina lifts her head. “He left a clue here. He said you would be able to find it.” Her eyes float over to me, and she groans. “I can't believe I was rescued by someone wearing that.” Her head sinks deeper into the pillow. “Now do the damn spell and put me to sleep, for Janna's sake.”

*   *   *

Our house is like a revolving door. One Jinn apps in, another apps out. Unable to handle the hurt, the anger, the betrayal, the fear, the frustration, Jinn leave in search of an escape hatch. No one likes to be kept in the dark, even when the best of intentions are at work.

Over the course of this very long night, secrets spill. About the Afrit, about my father, about Zak and Matin, about the uprising in Janna that Raina wanted to start here, and about Yasmin's blame, which, after learning what her mother said, has shifted entirely to mine.

As has Samara's. Well, maybe not blame, exactly, but Samara learning that my mother kept my ability to do magic without my bangle a secret from her for all these years ignited the worst of the night's fighting—the worst of my life's fighting.

“How could you keep this from me?” Samara said. “Especially after Raina was taken. You must have known this could be important for the future, for any uprising to have a chance.”

My mother stormed across the living room, knocking into a lamp that no Jinn's powers were fast enough to catch. “That's precisely why I didn't tell you. You and Raina can take all the risks you want, but I'm not letting you use my daughter like she's some pawn in your fanciful fight against the Afrit. I won't let you involve her in this.”

“Really? And what are you going to do to stop me, Kal? Hurt me? Erase my mind? Make me a vegetable? You're apparently an expert at that.”

The smack of my mother's open palm against Samara's cheek echoed through the house. A red outline of her fingers remained until Nadia healed her.

But Samara didn't back down. “I never knew how selfish you were. All these years you had Xavier. You were even able to see Zak. What would Nadia have given to watch Matin grow up? Of course you don't need an uprising, Kalyssa. Unfortunately, the rest of us aren't so lucky as to have shared an Afrit's bed.”

This time, Samara caught my mother's hand in midair before it hit the target of her other cheek. She flung it to the side as she said, “Considering it's your union that's to blame for our families being ripped apart, the least you can do is—”

“That's not fair and you know it, Sam.”

“Do I? Is it or is it not you and Xavier defying his family's edict to stay apart that led to the Afrit ordering all the males to leave? You two couldn't keep your hands off each other. You went right ahead and ‘diluted the Afrit bloodline' to prove you could. And now our families live apart and our daughters will bring new Jinn into the world like lab rats.”

Through gritted teeth, my mother said, “You want to know something? I'd give anything to know what clue Xavier left here. I'd hand it over quicker than a Jinn can apport and not even blink as you all marched yourselves right into the Afrit's clutches. Maybe you'll get lucky, and they'll give you neighboring jail cells in tortura cavea. You can listen to one another scream.” My mother stared down into Samara's eyes. “Just know, I'll do anything to protect her. I won't let you put her in danger. She's my daughter, Sam.” Her voice weakened, and she finally let her eyes fill with tears. “I … I need her.”

“That's the problem, Kal. What if we all need her?”

After that, I swung the revolving door myself and left for Henry's backyard. I used the key he gave me to let myself in through the fence gate rather than app, not willing to risk someone sensing and then following me into my private sanctuary. I lit a fire in the pit and have been loading log on top of log. The flames now reach my waist. But I still can't get warm.

“There you are,” Hana says, opening the door of the screened-in porch. She hurries across the yard and down the slight hill to the fire pit. She hands me a pair of skinny jeans and a blue cashmere sweater. As I change, she pours us mugs of hot chocolate from a tall metal thermos.

Both help with the warmth. But not as much as her understanding why I kept all these secrets from her.

“How could I be mad at you when I've been keeping secrets too?” Hana says. “I know a lot of what was exposed tonight. My mother has been telling me bits and pieces since I turned sixteen. She and Lalla Samara wanted to tell us everything the night of the Zar initiation, but things happened.”

“I happened.”

“Stop making
everything
about you,” Hana says.

I stiffen.

“I'm kidding, Azra.” She refills my mug. “You're not the one who got Yasmin drunk that night. You're also not the reason Lalla Raina was taken.”

I jiggle my head in a half nod, half shrug, and Hana sets her cup down and faces me. “But you think you are, don't you? Look, we're in this together. Maybe we haven't always been, but we need to be now. You have to let us in.”

“I will.”

She wrinkles her freckled nose.

“I mean, I am,” I say.

“Good.” She smiles, but there's an uncomfortableness behind it. “I'm really sorry about your father.”

Suddenly the hot chocolate's too sweet. “I don't even know him.”

“Doesn't matter.” She places her warm hand on my arm. “He's your dad.”

I rest my mug on the ground and fight the queasiness in my stomach by changing the subject. “How's everyone else? Mina and Farrah?”

“They knew the least of all of us. They're still in shock. Plus, they heard Lalla Jada and Lalla Isa fighting about Isa's old flame Hairy Larry. Did you know he knew about us?”

I do my half nod, half shrug, realizing the only secret I've yet to tell all of them is about Henry.

“Well, Farrah was super interested to learn about her mom, that Lalla Isa had told a human—a human boyfriend—about us being Jinn. And Isa's all pro-uprising, but Jada thinks it's just because she hopes if we win, she can get back together with Larry and ditch all of us, which somehow made Mina bring up that albino—”

“Dwight.”

“Oh,
white
. Is that, like, more PC?”

I shake my head. “His name is
D
-wight.”

“You're joking.”

“I'm not that funny.”

The way we laugh makes me think of Henry and Jenny and Nate and not because I'd rather be with them, but because I wish they could be with me. With us. I wish life wasn't so damn complicated.

“There's one other thing I need to tell you,” I say.

Hana's laugh ends in a yawn. It's really late.

She covers her mouth and then says, “About Henry? We all know.”

“You all …
What?
”

“Zak told Laila, who told Yasmin, who somehow already knew, who told Mina, who told Farrah, who told me. And now I'm telling you. But you know, of course. And now you know that we know.”

I'm dizzy.

“It's not really surprising,” she says. “You've always been close to humans. Truthfully, most of us have probably wanted to tell a human at one time or another.”

“Except Yasmin,” we say at the same time.

I smile despite imagining the “conversation” I'm going to have with Zak about trust, and then I think about our father and know that Zak's getting a pass on this.

I toss another log onto the fire when the delicate flap of a butterfly's wings flutters over us, and Laila appears.

“Azra! Your mother thought I'd find you here,” she says.

That's it. Good-bye, sanctuary. I have no more secrets.

Yes you do. Jenny. You still have to tell Henry about Jenny.

“Is something wrong?” I ask.

Hana leaps to her feet. “Is it Raina?”

“No, no.” Laila's trembling fingers brush a curl of blond hair off her forehead. “It's Zak. He's missing.”

 

25

“What do you mean he's missing?” I say, kicking over my hot chocolate as I spring to my feet.

“No one's seen him,” Laila says. “I thought, I assumed, he was with you. Yasmin and I were upstairs with Lalla Raina. Yasmin did a spell to block out the noise from all the fighting between our mothers downstairs. When I finally came out, I couldn't find Zak anywhere.”

Hana asks, “What about Mat?”

Laila shakes her head. “He's gone too.”

“He didn't stay with Yasmin?” I ask, surprised.

“No, he never came upstairs.” Laila's shallow breathing begins to deepen. “I didn't think of that. They must be together, then. They're fine. They're not…”

“Taken,” I finish. I circle around the fire pit, trying to remember the last time I saw Zak. He was in my bedroom. I thought he needed a break from everything, which I couldn't blame him for. But he was sitting at my desk. He was—

The cantamen.

“I know where they are.” I slip my hand into Laila's and tell Hana to put out the fire here. I've got my own less literal one to douse. “Come on, Laila. I think I'm going to need your help.”

We app to the woods behind Nate's house. The pinpricks of light I can see from here come from the Reeses' second floor. I thought I was cursed when I was living there. That's irony for you.

We turn around to find Zak knee-deep in mud. Swatches of dirt cover his cheeks, making them match the darkness of his hair. It's like he's a five-year-old who thinks if he digs down far enough, he'll reach China.

“Oh, Zak,” Laila cries. Her pale skin and blue dress become marred with black as she drops in front of my brother and pulls him against her body. “What are you doing here?”

I kneel beside her and swallow the lump that's swelling in my throat. “He's trying to get home.”

Upon hearing my voice, Zak looks up, and tears stream down his cheeks. Intense as the volume is, it's not enough to clear a path through the caked-on mud.

“I have to … help him.” Zak's head falls, and he covers his eyes with his filthy hands.

“I don't understand,” Laila says.

I'm desperate to steel my own nerves long enough to get him home. “This is the spot where Zak first arrived,” I explain to Laila. “Where we found Raina. If Xavier were able to lower the shield again or if this were the portal she was talking about—”

“I could go to him,” Zak says.

Laila's hand flies to her mouth. I hear her teeth crunch on specks of dirt as she says, “No! You can't go! They'll just take you too.”

“No, but Azra and I … we can … we could—”

I gently turn Zak to face me. “We're here. It's not opening. It's not the entry point.”

He wipes his cheek with the back of his hand, clearing some dirt but leaving a line that makes him look like a football player with grease paint under his eyes.

“But we'll find it,” I say. “I promise you.”

Though Laila tenses at this, she says gently, “Let me take you home, Zakaria.”

And then, sweet, petite, normally pristine Laila leans in and rests her small mouth on his. Zak cups the back of her head, turning a section of her blond hair as dark as ours before he nestles into her neck.

The two of them disappear. And all I'm left with is the light from Nate's house that's trickling through the trees. I sink deeper into the mud.

My father outed. Raina hurt. The spell. The portal. The uprising. It's all real. There's no more denying what I am. What I'm meant to be. The key to the uprising. Somehow.

There's no room in my life for anything else.

The lights in Nate's house go out.

Anyone else.

I claw my fingers into the dirt beneath the
X
as shudder after shudder of grief rocks my body like a tidal wave.

*   *   *

They say things are always better after a good night's sleep.

They're not.

I slip out of bed into air that hangs thick with humidity. It's too early to be this hot. Except it's not. The time on my phone shows it's well past lunchtime.

As I cross the room to my window, my feet stick to the tacky wood floors. I raise the glass pane higher, straining for a hint of sea, but the moisture in the air crowds out everything else.

Henry's house looks smaller from here. Or maybe it's just that my world's gotten bigger. Expanding to places I'm not entirely sure I want to go at the same time as it shrinks to those I can allow to come with me.

For the first time, I'm glad Henry moved away. He can't be a part of this. Already I've put him in too much danger. Danger I can't let extend to Nate. No matter how big a hole it leaves in my heart, I have to let Nate go.

I find my cell phone under the sheets and start a text. But what do I say? How do I explain that my entire world changed overnight? Again. Changed overnight
again
, just like at the start of the summer when I woke up and became a Jinn. Became part of a world I tried to deny. A world Nate helped me to deny.

I set my phone on my desk while I rinse off the sweat and dirt that coated me last night. I then pull on the lightest article of clothing I own, a tissue-thin black romper I let Chelsea talk me into buying, and drop my phone into the side pocket. I'll text Nate. But why does it have to be today?

Having seen the sun rise, I'm not surprised I slept in. Though once I leave my room, I do question how. Because instead of sleeping, I'm pretty sure my mother's been setting off bombs inside the house in search of Xavier's clue. Each room I pass—bedroom, bathroom, guest room—has been ransacked. All except Zak's room. Where Yasmin sits in the same spot on the mattress beside her mother. The separate bed we conjured for her remains made. Did she not sleep at all?