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.