The Genius of Jinn (5 page)

Turning toward the window, I breathe in the lilacs. Along with the fragrance comes the pollen. Along with the pollen comes the coughing. Along with the coughing comes the involuntary opening of my eyes.

Who am I kidding? I can’t skip today. I don’t have that kind of control. The bangle assures that I never will.

I crawl out of bed and shed my pajamas, dropping them on top of the drill. Of course the black tank top I pull over my head and down my newly elongated torso is too short. As I move, the hem plays a game of peekaboo with my belly button, an unintentional homage to the midriff-baring genies of fairy tales and fantasies.

I rummage through the top drawer of my bathroom vanity until I find an elastic and the pair of bug-eyed sunglasses my mother bought for me last year. I gather my hair into a ponytail and hide my gold eyes behind the tinted shades. It’s summer. Well, almost summer. In New England, summer doesn’t debut until July. And only if we’re lucky. June is always a tease. Still, with tenth grade in the rearview mirror, I can camouflage my new look this way until school starts again. By then, no one will remember what I used to look like.

As if that’s a valid concern. I could walk into calculus tomorrow with rainbow-colored dreadlocks and half the class wouldn’t even blink an eye.

Being invisible is a trait I’ve learned all on my own.

2

The smell of chocolate fills my nostrils as I head down the stairs. The bracelet slides easily around my wrist but is in no danger of falling off. It doesn’t have to be tight like a handcuff to achieve the same effect.

I linger in the kitchen doorway. My mother gathers her long hair with one hand and secures it into a bun with the other. The silk of her emerald kaftan glides across her body, accentuating her graceful movements and making them appear all the more effortless. She leans over our farmhouse table and pushes back her sleeves.

I wrap my hand around my silver bangle. It is identical to the one around my mother’s wrist except for the color. Hers, like that of all retired Jinn, shines a deep gold. The same color as her—now, our—eyes.

“Happy birthday, kiddo.” As she takes in my appearance, she shakes her head. “Nice touch with the sunglasses. Very movie star incognito. But the way you’re strangling those pretty new locks is criminal.”

I lower the shades so she can see my eyes rolling. Flipping the end of my ponytail, I say, “How else am I supposed to explain the sudden change in length? I’m not the type of girl to get hair extensions. I don’t want people to
think
I’m the type of girl who would get hair extensions.”

“Because they’ll think you’re vain? Or be jealous?” My mother laughs. “Believe me, they’ve been jealous all along. Yesterday, even I would have sworn you couldn’t look any more beautiful.” She smiles. “But I’d have been wrong.”

Despite or maybe because of what I’ve seen in the mirror, I dismiss her compliment. It’s actually my mother who has the capacity to stun. I’ve spent fifteen, no, sixteen years looking at her, and her beauty still catches me by surprise.

She returns her attention to her pastry bag and with a gentle squeeze pipes the second “a” of my name in gold icing.
Azra.
The letters shimmer atop the chocolate-frosted cake. I know from previous birthdays how sugary the combination is, but nothing’s too sweet for us. Salt, we are sensitive to, but the amount of sugar we eat would incite comas in humans.

She underlines my name with a squiggle of gold. Then she pipes that loaded “16” underneath. The exclamation mark she adds causes me to use my long fingernails to scratch at the skin underneath my bangle.

“So,” my mother says, “just in case your stubbornness kept you under the covers for the better part of the day, I scheduled the party for tonight.”

The groan that escapes my lips is a reflex. She knows I don’t want this party because she knows I don’t want this birthday.

At least the guest list is short. It’s not like I have any friends from school. Having to hide who we are from humans means our social circle consists solely of fellow Jinn.

My mother wanted to invite all five of the female Jinn who make up her Zar, the lifelong friends she calls her “sisters,” and their daughters, who, once we all reach sixteen, will officially make up mine. But I negotiated her down to just Samara, my mother’s best friend, and her daughter, Laila, whom my mother has been desperate for me to make my best friend since we were born. They’re the closest I have to a family.

My mother then makes me promise to be good, like I’m turning six instead of sixteen.

“I’d appreciate it if you could dial down the attitude for the party,” she says. “Laila hasn’t turned yet. Let her be excited, okay?”

She sinks sixteen candles into the smooth icing, and I promise to try. But I know it’s a promise I won’t be able to keep. The only way I could is if the wish I make when I blow those candles out comes true and this band magically falls off my wrist. But I know better. Birthday candles, eyelashes, shooting stars, that’s not how wishes are granted. Being selected by the Afrit, that’s what makes wishing so.

Even if I don’t get a birthday wish, I should be able to spend the day however I want, wherever I want. Sun, sand, and a book. Maybe mussels for lunch. Considering we live less than ten minutes from a four-mile-long sandy shoreline, that’s a wish even a newbie genie like myself could easily grant.

“If the party isn’t until later,” I say, “we can spend the whole day at the beach, right?”

“We could,” my mother says, “but I think we need to start practicing.”

The perfectly decorated cake leaps from the counter, beelining for my head. My instinct to duck kicks in a second after my instinct to throw my hands in the air. The cake freezes, hovering three feet above the hand-painted Moroccan tile floor.

I walk a circle around it, amazed not that the mass of chocolate is floating but that I’m the one making it float. Unlike the magic I’ve been doing upstairs in my room, this just happened. It was automatic. Something engaged even before my brain could.

I admit it. Having powers doesn’t suck. If only they didn’t come with being told when and how to use them.

“Who needs practice?” I say with confidence, despite the quiver in my hands.

Crumbs fly and chocolate icing splatters the dark cherry cabinets as the cake plummets to the floor. The three-second rule doesn’t even get a chance to be applied, for the cake reassembles in perfect form in less time than it takes to blink.

My mother smiles and places her hands on her curvy hips. “Practice? Certainly not me.”

No, my mother doesn’t need practice. She’s been doing magic since before I was born. Since the day she turned sixteen, probably even earlier. The rules were different back then.

I wipe the single leftover dollop of brown off the kitchen table. As I suck the icing from my finger, my heart pounds. I have no idea how I summoned the magic that suspended the cake in midair or if I can do it again. I’m as curious as I am terrified to find out.

1

I’m sixteen years old, and I live with my boyfriend.

At least I think I do. I mean, I know where I live. I know I’m living with Nathan Reese. What I don’t know is if Nathan Reese is my boyfriend.

Or if I want him to be.

Who said wishes don’t come with tricks?

Oh, right, that was me. But what do I know? I’ve been a genie for less than two months. I’ve granted the sum total of six wishes, two of which I botched, one of which I would have botched had my mother not been there, and the last of which I’m currently in the process of botching. Not to mention I’m fresh off probation.

If one could be fired from becoming Jinn, I’d be rocking a pink slip right about now instead of this silver bangle. This intricately carved silver bangle doled out by the Afrit, the council—I mean
family
—that rules over our Jinn world. The family that I’ve just learned is my father’s family. Which means it’s my family.

The all-powerful, arguably sadistic Jinn who govern with not just a stick but a two-by-four are my “peeps.”

A chunk of my long, dark hair falls across my eyes as a late-summer breeze wafts through the kitchen window. It’s not even September and the hints of fall are already trespassing, igniting a row of goose bumps across my bare shoulders.

I gather my hair into a loose bun, using a strand to keep it in place. Of all the things I learned from my mother, this has turned out to be the simplest.

A stronger gust rattles the wood blinds inside and creaks the thick metal chains hanging from the swing set outside. The green plastic seat sways, and I’m back there, sitting on it, the day Nate said good-bye to his father and hello to a new life, a life he never wished for. At least, what with me being a genie and all, the life he did wish for—the one where he can take care of his little sister—I was able to give him. More or less.

I trace circles along the granite countertop as I stare out the window that frames the backyard swing set like a canvas painting. Except the picture I see, the one I see whether my eyes are open or closed, is from the day of Nate’s father’s funeral, almost two weeks ago.

Me on one seat and him on the other. Him planting his feet on the ground, seizing the chains above my head with one hand, spinning me, turning my body to face him, drawing me closer. His knees bumping against mine, his finger drying the wet tears on my cheeks, his breath warming my neck, his lips brushing my forehead, and then, before I could stop him, before I could think what it meant, what it might mean, his lips pressing on my lips.

Soft and then hard. Like the beating of my heart. Then and now.

“Something’s burning,” Goldie says, rounding the corner into the kitchen.

Something’s burning all right.

“Oh, the cookies,” I say. “Damn.” I look at Megan. “I mean, darn. I mean, oops.”

Megan pauses the hunt for split ends in her shoulder-length dark hair. “I’m twelve, not two. I’ve heard worse. Hell, I’ve said worse.”

“Not in this house, Meg,” Goldie says.

My gaze returns to the groaning swings as the harbingers of autumn make my sun-darkened olive skin shiver again.
Right, Azra, it’s the wind. And what are you going to blame when the windows are sealed up tight?

A chocolate chip ricochets off my ear.

“Earth to Azra,” Megan says, popping a second semisweet morsel into her mouth. “Did you even set a timer?” The perfect roll of her eyes that answers my head shake makes me think she’s spent all twelve years of her life perfecting the move. “The batch in the oven’s going to burn.”

Goldie sniffs the air. “
Again,
” she says, sidling up next to me. “The batch in the oven’s going to burn again.” She moistens her thumb with her tongue and wipes a stripe of war paint made of flour off my cheek.

I do my best imitation of Megan’s eye roll, and Goldie winks at me. The warmth in more than the crinkles around her eyes screams “Grandma,” the name she refuses to be called.

I’m sixteen years old, and I live with my boyfriend. And his sister. And his grandmother.

A deep voice floats in through the screen door. “I’d take a gander at those puppies if I were you.”

And his grandfather. I live with the entire Reese family.

It’s the first time I’ve ever had to share a bathroom.

For the past sixteen years, my mother’s had hers and I’ve had mine. Though we may live in the human world, the Jinn world—my world—is mothers and daughters. Not that there aren’t brothers, fathers, and grandfathers, there just aren’t brothers, fathers, and grandfathers
here.

All male Jinn live in the Afrit’s underground world of Janna. Including Xavier Afrit. My father.

We’ve never met.

Because my job, my sole purpose for living here—for living
period
—is to grant wishes for the humans assigned to me by the Afrit council, a group unseen but plenty heard. Giving and taking away our magic, our freedom, our loved ones for infringements against their dictatorship-like rules. Rules I’ve just learned my father’s been covertly working to change.

My mother’s job is to teach me to use and control my powers, the magic that lives inside me, passed down from the generations of Jinn who’ve come before us. Her gold bangle symbolizes her retirement, allowing her to practice all magic save for the granting of wishes.

Granting wishes is for the young. For those of us with silver bangles. Bangles spelled to release our powers. Spelled so the Afrit can monitor us. Spelled so only the Afrit can remove them.

The upside is that I can conjure mint chocolate chip ice cream, levitate my sugary iced coffee from table to lips, and travel via Jinn teleportation, apporting myself from blizzard to beach in an instant.

The downside? It’s not exactly a shackle or handcuff, though it might as well be. We grant wishes, nature allows us to keep our magic. We grant the wishes the Afrit order us to grant, we keep our lives. As fishy as it smells, the wishes the Afrit have ordered me to grant include ones for Nate and now Megan, my current assignment.

Though it feels like a long summer of learning to use my powers, of learning to grant wishes, my bangle’s a relatively new accessory. Two months ago, the day of my birthday, the bangle silently locked around my wrist. I was sixteen. I was a genie. I was no longer free.