Circle of Jinn (9 page)

He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “Want to hear something crazy? Remember that guy who lost his dog at Nate's? He was running on the school's track, and the beast got away again. He really needs to invest in a more secure leashing system. Can you believe I ran into him here?”

Not really. I wonder if being Jinn has made Zak as good at lying as it's made me.

*   *   *

Zak hovers in the doorway. It's strange to see him here among all our things: my mother's Russian nesting doll collection, her pumpkin-colored armchair, our array of Moroccan lanterns. It's even stranger how well he seems to fit.

I wanted to probe him further about the guy who needs a dog leash and his “overthrown” slipup in private. But he only agreed to come home with me when I told him my mother wouldn't be back for a while. Still, I can't get him to venture deeper into the house.

“Wine?” I finally ask.

Zak zooms in with the speed of a cheetah. “Where do you keep it?”

Sucker. Stereotypical Jinn. Fill a glass with booze, line the rim with sugar, and set it outside on a ninety-degree day and Jinn will descend like pigeons on a bag of cheese doodles at the beach. I unearth my mother's favorite bottle of red and pour some for each of us. He sits on the couch only after draining his glass.

Sipping mine slowly, I struggle to find the best way to ask him about the uprising against the Afrit. I was ready to tell him all I'd learned from my mother's diary (
not much
) and grill him about what's going on in Janna. But Henry's fears coupled with Zak's less-than-believable Mr.-I-Can't-Hold-on-to-My-Mutt story have made me question everything he's told me. I know he's been keeping things from me. I thought he was doing so to protect me, but suddenly I'm not so sure.

Zak's pouring his second glass when the feel of a breeze rustling a pile of fallen leaves overcomes us both. He jumps to his feet and sprints toward the front door just as my mother appears in front of it.

“Azra, I brought ice cream ca—”

The familiar white box holding my favorite dessert from the shop near Samara and Laila's plummets toward the wood floor.

I catch it with my powers and float it into my hands.

My mother's usually olive skin pales, making the espresso-colored hair we both share seem darker.

The espresso-colored hair we all share.

My mother grips the molding around the door as Zak places his hand over his heart and says formally, “
Hala
, Kalyssa.”

She stiffens slightly. “The least you could do is call me Mom.”

The cake box wobbles.

“Hi…” Zak stuffs his hands into his constricting pockets. “… Mom.”

A smile consumes her face. “Now that's more like it.”

Her bangle, identical to mine save for its gold color, slides down her wrist as she throws her arms around Zak and clutches him to her chest.

And ice cream cake hits the floor with a squishy splat.

 

10

I have a brother.

“But how?” my mother says, not bothering to wipe away the vertical stripes of tears lining her high cheekbones. She holds Zak at arm's length. Her eyes drink in his smooth dark hair, the hint of a heart shape in his chin, the slight upturn of his nose. The traits I now see we all share like clones.

A new stripe paints itself down her face. “He gave me images of you over the years. I knew they weren't enough, but I didn't know how not enough until now.”

Zak's face, solid as stone, melts into putty as my mother brings his forehead to her own.

I have a brother who lied to me.

“But you're an Afrit,” I say without thinking, without remembering my mother has no idea that I could possibly know this.

Zak steps back and faces me. “I'm as much an Afrit as you are.”

My mother sucks in a sharp breath.

She lied to me too. Like mother, like son.

“I trusted you,” I say, the bitter taste on the tip of my tongue fueling my words. I'm looking at both of them, and I mean this for each of them, but for now, I home in on Big Bro. “I trusted you with Megan and Nate. I could have hurt them! Or is that what you were trying to make me do? No wonder you knew so much about hadi—”

“Hadi?” My mother's hand flies to her temple. “Azra! You used mind control?” Her hand lowers, covering her mouth. “On Megan and Nate? To grant a wish?” Her palm slides down and rests over her heart. “You …
you
lied to
me
?”

My pent-up anger at my mother unleashes like lava from an active volcano. “No way. You don't get to do that. You don't get to make me feel guilty. Especially since lying is clearly the Nadira go-to. And I learned from the best.”

Her voice quivers. “That's not fair.”

“Not fair?
I'm
not being fair?”

Zak moves between us. His face is longer and narrower than mine and my mother's. He must get that from his father … his father, which is my father. Xavier is
our
father.

“Azra,” he says, “we'd all be better served if you simply calmed down and allowed us to talk this out.”

I give a harsh laugh. “Really, Zakaria Anemissary? You think you have a chance in tortura cavea of stepping in and filling the role of family peacemaker? You try being calm after being lied to for sixteen years.”

My mother, usually as graceful as a gazelle, stumbles as her kitten heel snags on the edge of our antique Turkish prayer rug. She recovers and extends her arms toward me. “Azra, just let me explain.”

“Explain? Which part, Mom? How my father—how
I'm
—a member of the Afrit the entire Jinn world fears and hates in equal measure? How my Afrit father has been sneaking into our world, our home, to snuggle up with you but to not even wag his tail in my direction? How my whole life all I ever wanted was a family. Turns out, I had one. But you decided to keep it from me.”

Along with the truth about my ability to do magic. Along with the truth about my role in Jenny's death.

I'm perched on a spinning top, fumbling for an edge to cling to, but the only thing I can actually hold on to, the only thing that can stop me from soaring out of control, is across the street.

Facing the front window, I see a light go on in Henry's bedroom. The blinds fall, concealing him behind them.

I turn away from the hurt gleaming in my mother's gold eyes and the desperation filling Zak's. I don't mention Jenny. I don't mention how I know I can do magic without this silver bangle. Everything Zak's told me might be a lie. I have no idea why he's really here or what the Afrit know or don't know or what might happen to me if my
family
learns the truth. Me being unlike all other Jinn may have been my mother's secret, but I'm taking ownership. And there's no way I'm revealing it now. Certainly not to him.

Hot tears prick the corners of my eyes, but I can't let them fall. I can't admit how much they've both hurt me. I steady my breathing and picture the model AT-AT that sits on Henry's bookshelf, though by now it might be packed in a box on the floor of his bedroom or set up on a shelf in New Hampshire or even lumped into that garbage bag he tossed to the curb. Instead I picture Henry. Just Henry. I ground my feet into the floor and begin to feel the searing heat that comes with apporting when a hand clamps around my elbow and yanks me back.

“Get off me!” I shout, pushing Zak away.

But he doesn't. He wraps his thick arms around me and propels me into his hard chest. I struggle to free myself when thoughts and feelings and memories charge at me like stampeding bulls.

We're at the beach, a younger me and Zak and Mom and …
Dad
? Zak adding a rounded column to an ornate sand castle while my mom, tanned and smiling, faces me and Xavier … me and my father in the ocean. My father, floating me with his hands under my belly as I kick and plunge my arms into the water, trying to swim, trying to learn how to swim. We're on the swings in my backyard—our backyard—with Mom behind me and Xavier behind Zak, pushing us, laughing with us, conjuring fake clouds for us to burst with our tiny fingers each time we ride higher. We're in my bedroom, Zak's arms, skinnier but nearly as strong, around me like a shield, telling me it'll be okay, that we'll see each other again, that this won't be the last time, but somehow, some way, we both know it will be. They're leaving. Zak and my father are leaving for good.

“You … you were here.” My words come out muffled, and Zak eases me off his chest. “Both of you. You were here, over and over again.”

My mother rushes to us and spins me toward her. “Azra, how do you know that?”

I'm struggling to figure that out, but she won't stop.

“Azra, answer me, how do you know that?”

“No,” I cry. “I can't … can't…” It's like my lungs are inhaling smoke and my legs refuse to support my weight and my eyes lose focus and … and Zak swoops in again, holding me, grounding me, forging a path through the dark cloud and filling me with oxygen.

It's like it was the night Nate's father died. When I was at the hospital and Henry held me, made me feel like the world wasn't ending, and a memory buried in the furthest reaches of my mind sprang forth, retreating before I could grasp it. It was this: my memories of my brother and father.

The memories my father erased.

*   *   *

“I'm so proud of you, kiddo.” My mother's hand shakes as she twirls her hair into a messy bun. The strand she winds around barely keeps it in place. “You must have truly opened yourself to all that your magic can do if these memories have returned to you on their own.”

My brother and my father were a part of my life, and I never knew it.

“But you understand now, don't you?” she says.

She's just finished explaining that my father had no choice but to make me forget him and Zak because the Afrit's abilities allow them to mind-read and mind-control both humans and Jinn. But not one another, which is how my father's deception hasn't been discovered.

My mother squeezes Zak's forearm like she's afraid he'll disappear if she lets go. “If your father let you remember and the Afrit ever had reason to come here, to come to us, they could discover he'd been here. He'd be…”

He
wouldn't
be is more like it. So yes, I understand. But it doesn't make it hurt any less.

Still, now that I have the tiniest glimpse into what their abilities can do, it makes me realize something.

“Wait,” I say, wiggling to the edge of the sofa cushion, “if the Afrit can use mind control on Jinn, why don't they implant whatever they want in our heads? Why do they need any other way to control us or punish us?”

Scratch that, it makes me realize two somethings. Because if, like the Afrit, I can use mind control on humans, does that also mean I can use it on Jinn? For a second, I try. I try to make my mother's fingers release Zak. I try to make him lift his arm. Neither budges. Guess my half-Afrit status only gives me half their abilities.

Zak turns to me, addressing both of my somethings. “Unlike with humans, using mind control on Jinn requires an additional incantation that is only known to members of the council. Even then, mastery of such a complex skill isn't guaranteed.”

“Plus, they tried,” my mother says. “Early on, when the Afrit first came to power and realized their abilities, they tried to control us that way. But not only is it difficult magic even for them, turns out, it also drains their powers at an exponential rate.”

“Drains?” I say. “As in uses up? Like the circulus?”

My mother nods. “But even worse. When the circulus no longer works for us to grant wishes, we still have our powers. Too many uses of the hadi incantation completely eradicates an Afrit's magic. Especially when the subject resists. The greater the resistance, the more damage it inflicts—on both sides. It's not a long-term solution, which the Afrit quickly realized. They only use it on Jinn now in the most extreme cases.” She snickers. “In truth? They're selfish cowards. Not willing to sacrifice their own well-being even in support of their cause. While it does take longer to inflict permanent damage on Jinn than humans, it can cause the same things. Amnesia, dementia, insanity—”

“Death,” I finish. “And dead Jinn can't grant wishes. We're of no use to them. Enter tortura cavea, Jinnies and Jents.”

“Azra, this isn't funny,” my mother says.

But Zak laughs his familiar, for a reason I now know, laugh. My mother can't help but smile, at least weakly. She then conjures a glass—slightly misshapen—and with a shaky hand attempts to pour herself wine.

Zak holds the bottle still for her. “Father thinks hadi not working on Afrit is a combination of our strength…”

Our.

“And keeping the bloodline pure.”

“Pure?” I snort. “Isn't that just a fancy term for inbreeding? No wonder they're insane.”

Zak's jaw tenses. “They're our family, Azra.”

Is he serious?

“They're not all bad. You don't know them. Some of them, a lot of them, want what our father wants.”

“And what's that?”

“To change things. To change everything.”

Just like my mother's diary said he was going to do.

“He's taking his sweet time” spills from my lips before I realize how harsh it sounds.

Zak pops up from the couch. “Are you actually that self-centered? Do you have any idea what he's done for us?”

I jump up to be more equal in height. “Haven't you been paying attention? Of course I don't know. No one's let me know. Unlike you. Why did he let you remember? If it's so dangerous, why do both of you know he's come here and I don't?”

Darkness flits in and out of my mother's eyes. “It's not just you, Azra. He used to make me forget too. For a time, he was allowed to come and visit, even to bring Zak to us.” She clasps her hands in her lap and her red fingernails dig grooves into her skin. “But then the council tightened the apporting shield even further. Only Afrit could pass through, and only those Afrit of the highest strength, those like your father who could—”