“What do you do if someone wishes to have never been born?”
My teeth sink into the lamb kebab right as my mother springs the first question of one of her pop quizzes on me.
I chew and chew and chew because I have no idea. I swallow slowly, reach for my glass of water, and drink the entire thing, tiny sip, by tiny sip. My stalling doesn’t fool her and doesn’t help me find the answer.
“Because you know you can’t kill anyone, don’t you?” she says. “Well, it’s not that you can’t, but it’s highly frowned upon. It can result in severe punishment unless it’s absolutely necessary. There’s almost always a way around it.”
I’m not sure what shocks me more, the realization that I have the power to kill someone or that my mother thought me doing so was a possibility.
My appetite takes a hike. I push back my dinner plate and think for a moment. “Maybe I could give him a new identity?”
“Perhaps, but he’d almost certainly be missed.” My mother pauses. “You’re on the right track, but you have to dig deeper. Find out what’s making him feel that way and what you can do to fix it.”
So maybe mine’s only a C answer, but considering the difficulty of that hypothetical, we really should be grading on a curve. Just like my mom to kick things off with a zinger.
She’s deep in thought, pondering her next question, when a pulsating buzz buzz in my thigh makes me sit up straighter. It took me fifteen minutes to come up with the uninspired “Home” and a smiley face that I sent to Nate before dinner.
I ease my phone out of my front pocket, convinced the text won’t be from him. But it is.
Alone? ;)
My head snaps up to my mother, who’s cutting the fat off a piece of lamb. The thunk, thunk of my heart, the nearness of my mother, the very idea that Nate’s texting me ends with me nervously dashing off a terse:
No.
Warmth from embarrassment and … something else floods my entire body as I read Nate’s reply:
Too bad.
My trembling fingertips hover over the keyboard as I contemplate my response.
“Azra!” My mother snatches my phone. “Is it too much to ask you to pay attention to me for five minutes?”
I shake my head, extending my hand for the phone. She can’t read it. She can’t. She can’t.
My racing heart slows to a trot as she rests the phone at the far end of the table and resumes her questions, which despite my now even more unfocused mind, I answer pretty well, definitely in the B+ or higher range. This likely makes her believe I’ve actually been studying, and I don’t indicate otherwise. If I can fake it this good, why hit that stupid old book?
“Well,” my mother says, “I think maybe you’re ready for your second candidate.”
That’s what I get for being so good at bluffing.
Her forehead crinkles. “Again, it should probably be someone we know…”
Henry’s kindness to me and Chelsea’s meanness to him rush back to me.
The algorithm the Afrit use to select candidates is a mystery. Supposedly, when they see evidence that an individual may be able to do important things for society, they give that person a little prodding by selecting them to receive a wish. There’s a Jinn to thank for everything from the first light bulb to the first supercomputer.
They’ll choose my candidates for the rest of my life.
My mother chose my first candidate.
This time, I want to choose.
Before the creases on my mother’s brow flatten out, I say, “What about Henry?”
Her olive skin doesn’t turn pink, despite how tickled she looks. “Huh, I didn’t realize you two were a thing. Sure, I mean, the balloon and all on your birthday was a clue, but I thought the crush was a bit more him on you.”
My skin, on the other hand, must match the color of the tomatoes left on my plate. “What? Crush? I don’t have a crush. Neither does he. We’re just … just friends. He’s nice, and I think it’d be nice to do something nice for him.”
Nice, very, very nice.
“Whatever you say.” My mother smiles. “Still, I’m not sure that’s the best idea. Considering the history you two share, I think you might be too … invested. Predisposed to grant the wish you want to grant, which may or may not be what he wants. Restraint can be difficult when it’s someone you like—”
“I don’t like him.”
“Or hate, I was going to say. Remember how you felt with Mrs. Pucher?”
I do. The tsunami of emotions surging through me while granting Mrs. Pucher’s wish didn’t just disappear when I was done. A sense of melancholy hung with me all day.
My mother scoops up her last spoonful of cardamom-scented rice. “Now think about how long the human’s residual anima may stay with you if it’s someone you have a connection with. The circulus holds great power over us.”
Reciting the circulus incantation is what allows us to grant a human’s purest wish. It links our spirits, a magical mumbo jumbo I always scoffed at. I still want to, but I can’t. Not anymore. The circulus incantation is what made me feel Mrs. Pucher’s pain. It gave her soul a temporary home in mine. This is how I was able to delve into her inner psyche, into her unconscious “anima,” and understand her needs, her wants, her desires. In that moment, we were one.
I imagine feeling that with Henry. Henry, who has Jenny’s eyes. Suddenly the idea of granting Henry a wish seems like a very bad one indeed.
“It really is … intimate, isn’t it?” I say.
My mother lays her fork and knife across her plate. “It lessens over time.” She relaxes back into her chair. “The stronger you become, the more control you have over the depth of the connection. Still, the process takes a lot out of us.”
And takes a lot of energy, so much so that if we ever invoked the circulus for a candidate not assigned to us, the Afrit would be able to recognize such a spike in magic instantly.
“And their anima,” I say, the word still feeling foreign to me, “their souls, do they really stay with us?”
“A piece.”
“But I don’t feel any different.” Except being more than a little weirded out.
“You may not. Not yet, but it builds. Eventually it weighs us down. Not that there isn’t as much lightness as there is darkness. But they’re always there, the effects of linking with a human’s soul.” My mother runs a finger along the rim of her wineglass. “And then, one day, you’ll recite the circulus incantation and find you can’t link anymore. You can’t enter the human’s psyche. Your wish-granting days are over.”
The Afrit retire some Jinn before their circulus powers are bled dry, but my mother, predictably, was one of the ones kept in rotation until she was the equivalent of the Sahara. She granted her last wish when I was five. Sometimes I wonder if the hairline creases around her eyes don’t just come from me.
Her eyes glisten. “Maybe you can’t yet accept it, but making someone’s wish come true is special. It’s what we are meant to do. It completes us as much as them. You see that now, at least a little?”
I shift in my seat. Did helping Mrs. Pucher make me feel good? Of course. How could it not? Did it complete me? Fill all the Swiss cheese holes the Afrit have punched in my life? Of course not. How could it?
My mother sighs as she wraps her hand around the gold bangle that replaced her silver one when she retired. Though she lost her ability to grant wishes, she gained the powers of healing (which is why I never suffered so much as a nose bleed) and tracking (why I never got far when I packed my pillowcase, hobo style, and bolted).
She slowly gets up from the table. “It’s nice that you’d think of Henry, but trust me, you don’t want to make this more complicated.” As she clears our plates, she adds, “Unless you want to be stuck trailing some human for the rest of your life. Remember Farrah? She was tied to that old man for a week.”
We both laugh. We can’t help it. But it must have been awful for Farrah. Scary too.
Without the circulus link, we can’t grant a human’s wish, but with the circulus link, we can’t not grant a human’s wish. Once we recite the incantation, we are magically commanded to grant whatever wish the human makes first. There are no do-overs, for them or for us. We have twenty-four hours to show signs of beginning the wish-granting process, after which the circulus curse kicks in.
Like it did with Farrah. It was her second official candidate. He wished for a “room,” but the old man’s lack of teeth made her think he wanted a “womb.” Her mind-reading skills weren’t, and still aren’t, great so she relied on what she heard with her ears, neglecting to fully enter his psyche. The grace period came and went, and a baffled Farrah became tied to the old man. Magic physically compelled her body to shadow him. She couldn’t be more than a hundred and fifty feet away from him until she completed his wish.
The lore of a genie being tied to a master likely has its roots in the circulus curse. A thousand years ago, a smitten female Jinn probably refused to grant some hot dude’s wish and was forever compelled to remain by his side. Insta-myth.
I think of the flubbed fake ID Farrah made for Laila as I pack the leftover kebabs in foil. “A womb. Can you imagine if Farrah had tried? Now that would have taken one killer genie trick.”
As I place the silver packet in the fridge, my cell phone starts ringing. It’s Ranger Teddy. I answer and immediately head for the couch. I’ve only worked at the beach for a week, but that’s plenty of time to have learned that I don’t want to be standing for the duration of this call. He tells me a story that starts with taking his dog to the vet and ends with him eating what he hopes wasn’t a bad mussel at the Pearl, but it’s the middle that concerns me.
“Yeah, see you Monday,” I say before hanging up.
My mother, who poked her head in several times during the fifteen minutes I was on the phone, says, “I thought you were off until Tuesday.”
“So did I. The other girl in the rotation can’t come in. Something about a crab. I zoned out, so I’m not sure if it bit her toe or she bit its toe, but either way, she’s in no shape to work.”
So much for having two Zoe-free days. If only I could grant myself a wish and put an end to her constant griping.
That’s it. I pop up to a sitting position.
My research on Zoe is already done. I’ve spent five days with her, which is four days and seven hours longer than I needed to ferret out what she’d wish for. Granting her wish to be a basketball phenom should easily grant mine too.
“Hey, Mom.” My voice drips with sugary innocence. “How about Zoe? I’ve gotten to know her pretty well this week, but not well enough to be invested.” Well, I am invested, but not in a way that’s going to be a problem.
“Hmm.” She’s studying three containers of ice cream, contemplating which to open. Why, I don’t know. She’s going to open all of them by the end of the night. “Why Zoe?”
“Why not? Don’t you always say it’s not fair that young people don’t get chosen by the Afrit very often?”
“So you do listen to me.” She leans against the counter. “What’s in it for you?”
I widen my eyes and point to my chest.
“Drop the act.” She sets aside the pint of Tahitian vanilla.
I slide to the edge of the cushion. “She’s not happy. I want to help her.”
“Why?” She nixes the caramel gelato.
“Because … because it’ll complete me.”
“I meant why is she not happy.”
“Oh.”
She locks eyes with me. “But now my ‘why’ is for you. Spill.”
“Fine.” I give up. “She’s driving me crazy. She’s obsessed, bouncing that stupid basketball our entire shift. She wants to be as good as her brother. I can help her, right? And is it really so bad if granting her wish also grants one of mine?”
She tears the cellophane off the third container, the mint chocolate chip, our mutual favorite. “Well, it’s not going to cure cancer, is it?”
“Who knows?” I move to the kitchen. “Maybe she’ll get a college scholarship and major in biology.”
Her cherry-red fingernail taps against the container. “Oh, all right. Just tell me what time on Monday.”
What? I don’t need … anyone (Nate) seeing my mother babysitting me at work.
“Can’t I do this one myself? I know what Zoe wants.” I conjure my mother a spoon. “How hard can it be?”
She purses her lips. “You really want to do this alone? Because it’s normal to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” I say brusquely, though what I mean is, I’m not going to tell her I’m afraid.
She takes the spoon out of my hand. “I’ll agree—”
“Great.” I head for the doorway.
She plunges the spoon into the ice cream. “I’m not finished.”
My hand braces against the doorjamb.
“I’ll agree, if you promise to study the cantamen.”
I relax. “Okay.”
“And—”
I tense.
“If you promise to call me the second something bad happens.”
“Bad?” I whirl around. “Why would something bad happen?”
“Sorry, if something bad happens.”
Why do I feel like she just jinxed me? “I promise.”
She sucks the ice cream off the spoon. “And one more thing.”
I swallow my groan. At this point she may as well come.
“Bring one of your sisters with you.”
Should have seen that one coming. “It doesn’t have to be Yasmin, does it?”
Her eyes smile, though she refuses to let her lips follow. “No, it doesn’t have to be Yasmin.”
I conjure a second spoon and dig in. “Deal.”
* * *
Upstairs, I plop onto my bed, feeling satisfied. When negotiating with my mother, getting one’s second choice is still a major win. Plus, if Zoe were toned down, I wouldn’t mind working every shift. Every shift? Or every shift Nate and his abs are also working?
I grab my phone and flip to Nate’s text: “Too bad.”
Now this is what I need magic to figure out. Is he joking? Is he … flirting? Does he want to throw a kegger here? Powers, useless powers. My neutral “Why?” zooms off, and I yank the covers over my head. An eternity passes before my phone dings:
Oh, just glad U R home safe.
That’s it? Home safe? Nate the lifeguard. Nate the protector. That’s all he’s doing. I’m an idiot if I thought it was something else. I stare at my phone but it doesn’t make a buzz, a ding, or a beep. Probably for the best. Despite my bravado in front of my mother, I probably should study some before granting Zoe’s wish.
Hanging upside down, I stretch to reach the worn, leather-bound cantamen I shoved underneath the box spring more than a week ago. My hand fumbles under the dust ruffle and lands on an old shoe box. I slide it out, knowing exactly what’s inside. I blow the dust bunnies off the box and lift the lid.
Amid the stickers, candy necklaces, and two tiaras sits the framed photograph of me, Jenny, and Laila. Buried for too long. I wipe it clean with the end of my bedsheet and set it on my nightstand next to Mr. Gemp.
More photos of Jenny and me—Henry too—line the bottom of the box. I flip through, feeling selfish and guilty about not fighting more to grant Henry a wish. Or Lisa. I should have asked about Lisa. But as soon as my mind zeroed in on Zoe, all other thoughts disappeared.
I lie on my back and toss the contents of the box in the air. Before everything floats to the ground, I use my powers of levitation to create a memorabilia mobile.
I stare at the revolving photos and Hello Kitty playing cards until I fall asleep.
* * *
My arms have a rash. A red, blue, yellow, and white rash. One lick identifies it as candy necklace.
Crushed pastel mounds of the multicolored sugar dot my bed. I must have rolled over the brittle necklaces in my sleep. And the photographs. Fortunately, most of those survived unscathed. I flatten out the ones my body creased and return everything to the shoe box.
As I wipe the sleep—and sugar crystals—from my eyes, I check my phone. No new texts. Did I really expect there would be?
Downstairs, I fix myself a bowl of cereal. Eating while carrying the bowl into the living room, I almost choke on a pink heart marshmallow when I see my mother through the open front door.
What is she doing?
She’s on the sidewalk in front of our house alongside Henry’s mother. With Jenny gone, my mother’s need to socialize with Mrs. Carwyn dwindled. Socialize with, not be friends with. Though being friends with humans isn’t explicitly forbidden, there are reports of the Afrit punishing Jinn who become too entwined with a human, fearing we’ll slip up and let down our guard. Which is why my mother adheres to the caution against becoming too attached.
So what’s changed? The little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The nonexistent crush, that’s what’s changed.
Watching (spying) through the front window, I make a mental note to search the cantamen for a spell to amplify one’s hearing. When the two of them start hugging, I dive into the couch and slurp the last of my cereal.
My mother strolls through the door, the contents of our mailbox in her hand. Upon seeing me, she hurries over and kisses the top of my head.
“Azra, you should have told me. Not that it would have changed my mind, but I’m so proud of you for wanting to help Henry and his family. I had no idea Mr. Carwyn’s been out of work so long.”
Out of work? Me neither.
She drops a pile of catalogs on the end table on her way into the kitchen. “Six months? That’s a long time. Poor Elyse.” My mother’s voice lowers to a whisper. “Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Carwyn have been fighting a lot. On the verge of separating, it sounds like. It’s affecting all of them, Henry and little Lisa too.”
The sugary milk churns in my stomach. The fries. That’s why Henry was so weird about the free fries. He thought I was pitying him.
Popping up from the couch, I’m ready to go to battle over Henry being my next practice candidate. We’re a lot alike, at least we used to be, which is why I don’t need research to know what Henry would wish for. He’d use his one wish to find a job for his father because his family is hurting, and because it might make them whole again, and because … because it’s the wish I’d make.
Oh … invested.
My mother pours coffee into two mugs and adds a cavity-inducing amount of sugar to each. She returns to the living room and gives one to me.
As I blow on the hot liquid, I debate asking my mother if I can switch to Mr. Carwyn. She’ll probably still say I’m too invested. But why can’t I just help Mr. Carwyn without invoking the circulus, without risking granting the wish I want to make, not the one he wants to make. If what I give him just happens to be what he or Henry would wish for, lucky coincidence, right?
I take a sip. “So, how can we help? Can’t be that hard to get Mr. Carwyn a job.”
Before she can respond, a feather tickles the back of my neck and Samara and Laila materialize on the staircase landing. And I burn my tongue on my coffee.
My mother didn’t tell me they were coming over. If past behavior is a predictor of future behavior, I guess I understand why.
“Perfect timing,” my mother says to Samara. “I could use your help. Azra’s confused, despite all her studying.”
That emphasis on all is definitely going to come back and bite me in the—
Ooh, cake … ice cream cake. My eyes follow the familiar white box my mother takes from Laila, whose past behavior is always an accurate predictor. She and Samara never show up without my favorite dessert from their local shop.
Closing the freezer door, my mother says, “Azra’s asking about the kitten clause.”
Laila drops her polka-dot tote bag on the couch. “What’s the kitten clause?”
I’m relieved that not even she knows what this is.
Samara hugs me from behind and purrs softly in my ear. “The tugging of the newbie’s heartstrings. In other words, the desire to use your freshly liberated magic to help humans. No surprise you’d feel it, Azra. Not all Jinn do.” She coughs, and under her breath so only I can hear, she says, “Raina, Yasmin.” She resumes in a normal tone, “You will too, Laila, dear, so listen up.”
Laila scrunches her delicate face. “But why even consider it? If we grant wishes for humans not assigned to us, can’t the Afrit tell?”
Samara tilts her head back and laughs. “Sometimes I think our little Jinn were switched at birth, Kal.” She tousles Laila’s hair as she moves next to my mother. “We’re not talking about granting wishes, babe. Because Janna forbid we choose our own wish candidates. The mighty Afrit are the only ones who could possibly know who deserves to benefit from our powers.”
“Sam,” my mother says.
Samara bows. “Apologies.” She turns to me. “I assume we’re talking about other things, Azra?”
I refill my coffee cup using my powers. “Yup, like this. Or like helping Henry’s dad get a job.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Henry? Your birthday suitor?”
“Stop. We’re friends, Lalla Sam.”
“Uh-huh,” Samara and my mother say at the same time. The way they giggle with each other gives me an instant picture of them at my age.
“Anyway,” I say, looking at Laila. “His dad needs a job. Why can’t I do something to help?”
Samara waves her hand. “Technically, you can. There’s nothing to prevent it.”
“Except,” my mother says, snatching Samara’s hand and lowering it, “it’s risky. Sure, you can conjure Henry a shirt or light a candle while he’s out of the room, but how are you going to conjure him a car and explain it away? The greater feats of magic you do for humans, the more chances you have of someone getting suspicious, catching you in the act, and spilling the beans to some reporter—”
“Blogger,” Laila says.
“YouTube,” I say.
A deep sigh precedes my mother’s “Whatever. The point is, there’s too much unknown to feel safe. If you recite the wish-granting ritual incantations, the Afrit will catch you, but if you don’t, the human might, because you won’t be able to read his mind. You’ll be working blind. The human could be fishing, even trying to trap you and you’d never know. If a human figures out what you can do, you put all Jinn in jeopardy. Think humans are going to discover magic exists and just let us stand behind them in line and order a mocha latte?” She pauses, but it’s clear she doesn’t really want an answer. “Even if you escape the human’s notice, what about the Afrit?”
Laila sucks in a breath. “Tortura cavea,” she whispers. “If they find out you exposed our magic to humans, it’s an immediate life sentence.”
Locking us up in tortura cavea, the equivalent of jail in the underground world of Janna, is the Afrit’s punishment for most infractions. But from what our mothers have described, there really is no equivalent for the human version of jail in Janna. Think less metal bars and more fire-breathing dragons. Or snakes. Or ghosts. Or clowns. Or in Laila’s bizarre case, squirrels. Whatever your fear, the Afrit tap into it and make it your cellmate. In the most extreme cases, for life. Jinn aren’t exactly a “trial by a jury of our peers” kind of species.
“If,” I say. Part of me has always believed tortura cavea is nothing more than my mother’s way of ensuring I behave.
My mother stares at me.
“If they find out. And I’m not even talking about conjuring a car in the Carwyns’ driveway, I’m talking about floating his dad’s résumé to the top of the stack. The Afrit can’t track everything we do, right? Just the circulus incantation. So if we’re careful—”
My mother seizes my arm and draws me to her. “The circulus is the only thing we know they monitor.” Her eyes bore into mine. “Don’t push the boundaries, Azra.” She swivels her head to the side. “Laila?”
Like she’s surrounded by squirrels holding tiny pitchforks, Laila can’t even nod she’s so scared stiff.
Samara circles in front of us. “I know I like to tease, but your mom’s right. You girls do need to be careful. So conjure your paramour an argyle sweater but wrap it in a box from the mall.” She winks. “Just don’t screw up, and you’ll be fine.”
We’ll be fine. Henry, his dad, his family, less fine. Guess serving the “greater good” all depends on one’s perspective.
Laila finally takes a breath. And what she says may be even worse than what my mother’s said. “Speaking of malls, wait until you see the swimsuit Mom and I got for you, Azra.”
Samara hooks her arm through my mother’s, and the two step in unison into the kitchen. The start of their discussion signals the end of ours.
“Come on.” Laila grabs her bag and slips her arm around my waist. “App us to your room.”
With a loud sigh I hope reaches my mother’s ears, I app upstairs.
We’re in my bedroom and Samara’s shouting “show-off!” from downstairs before I realize this was my first time co-apping. I should be proud, but right now I’m feeling anything but proud to be a Jinn.