But do I have to be the Jinn that grants Nate a wish? Why not let me swap out Nate for another candidate?
When I ask my mother if she thinks this is possible, her olive-toned face goes pale.
“We don’t question the Afrit,” she says, setting down two cups of hot chocolate.
“Baa. Right. Because we are sheep. Drones. Worker bees. Mindless—”
“Please, Azra, don’t,” my mother says softly. “There are things you don’t know. The Afrit … they can do things.”
I tap my bronze bangle.
“Yes,” she says, “they can restrict your magic. And if you defy them, they can extract you from this life and force you to live months, years, a lifetime, alone. And not just alone, but terrifyingly alone.”
This I know. Which makes me scared of what I don’t know. “There’s a but, isn’t there?” My mother nods. “And I don’t want to hear it, do I?”
Another nod as my mother lifts her mug to her lips. “But you have to. Because what you don’t know is there are a few steps in between. Having to remove young Jinn from the human world is not in the Afrit’s best interest. They need you. They need you here to grant wishes. Extracting you is a last resort.”
“Oh, really?” My grin is automatic. “So I can push the envelope before they’ll slap real handcuffs on me?”
Her pained smile and the sadness in her gold eyes cause a tightness in my chest.
“You can.” She shifts her gaze away from me. “But there are consequences.”
“Like what? More years of granting wishes? More time on probation?” I flex my arm muscles. “I can take it.” I’m desperate to make light because of the darkness I feel coming.
“Sometimes, but they’ve found that’s not as effective as other methods of keeping Jinn in line.”
I blow on my hot chocolate. “What kinds of methods?”
“They … they use us against one another.” My mother pushes back her own mug. “If you were to continue to defy them, they won’t take you away from this world.” She now looks me in the eye. “They’ll take me. They’ll take me from you. From everyone.”
Stunned into silence, I struggle to absorb her words.
She squeezes my hand reassuringly, but her voice shakes as she says, “I’m the one they’d send to their little torture chamber. I’d never see you again, Azra. I’d never see Samara or Nadia or any of my other Zar sisters again.” Her eyes full of longing, she continues, “One day I’m supposed to be rewarded for following their rules—reunited with my loved ones who have been kept away from me, from us. But the truth is, before they’d do anything else to you, they’d make me pay for your crimes.”
I’m light-headed, and my throat is so tight, I’m having trouble swallowing. If I screw up, my mother will be punished, and I will never see her again. Never see her again. As many times as I’ve angrily hoped for such a thing since hitting puberty, I cannot wrap my head around the idea.
“But why?” I finally ask.
She wrings her hands, and her tone shifts to one of anger. “They’ll say it’s because I didn’t teach you properly. But it’s simply a way of controlling us. Forbidding contact between loved ones serves as a pretty damn good deterrent for acting out against the Afrit. They use fear to get what they want. Fear and the hope that our love for each other is stronger than our hatred of them.”
I lean forward in my chair. “But if they did that, if they … took you, it wouldn’t be. I’d despise them.”
“Well, I’m relieved to hear it, kiddo.” She smiles weakly. “Unfortunately, they’ve thought of that. So it doesn’t end with me. Once I’m gone, they’ll place you with one of my Zar sisters for retraining.”
My stomach drops. Yasmin’s staying with Samara. Does that mean…? No, Yasmin would have gotten a bronze bangle first, wouldn’t she?
My mother continues, “If you act out, that sister will be taken away, and you and her daughter—your own Zar sister—will move on to the next, and the next, and the next, until you’ve exhausted everyone. And as each sister is ripped away and thrown in tortura cavea, we all feel it. Our Zar connection means one sister’s living hell is felt by all.”
My body grows so cold, it’s like my blood has been replaced with ice. “Then I’d be taken?”
My mother shakes her head. “Not quite. There’s one more thing they can use against us.”
“Humans,” I say, piecing it together. “That’s why Jinn don’t form attachments to humans.”
My mother exhales slowly. “Underneath it all, the Afrit do want us to serve the human world. We need to if we want to keep our powers. But they’ll go after humans if they have to. It’s rare. Most Jinn don’t let it get that far. But the Afrit have done it, if only to show that they can and will.”
Henry. I pick up my hot chocolate, hoping whatever warmth is left will stop me from trembling, but I can’t stomach a sip. “What … what do they do?”
“They ruin their lives. Even for the Afrit, mind control is tricky. Whether it’s inserting thoughts or erasing memories, it’s risky. Dangerous. The Afrit’s goal is to wipe the human’s memory of the Jinn they know, leaving the Jinn without their trusted friend, lover, what have you. But in far too many cases, they’ve left humans as amnesiacs or damaged their brains so much that the person winds up in a mental institution. They’ve even killed a few humans in the most dire cases.”
My mug falls from my hand. My mother’s powers catch it before it drops to the floor where it would have shattered into a million pieces, the same way my heart seems to be doing.
“Are you sure?” I say. “I mean, have you actually seen it?”
“A human being killed? No.” My mother bites her lip. Though she forces back the tears I can just see forming, she can’t stop her voice from trembling. “But the other part … the damage … I’m sure it’s true because I’ve done it.”
My pulse thumps in my ears. “I thought you couldn’t do mind control?”
She stands abruptly, moves to the back door, and stares out the window. “I can’t. Not like you did. Not unassisted. I’ve never known a Jinn who could do what you can do. But with a spell, like the one I used on Ms. Wood, I can come pretty close. It’s probably the hardest spell to pull off. Most Jinn can’t.”
“But of course you can, being the model Jinn and all.”
My mother turns to me, sadness darkening her eyes. “It’s not something to be proud of.” She beckons me over. “Come here. I need you to see this.”
Dread makes me hesitate before pushing back my chair.
She steps to the side and taps the glass with the tip of her fingernail. “That’s how I know the dangers of mind control are real.”
Crazy old Mrs. Seyfreth from next door, wearing her usual fur coat, is staring over the fence into our backyard.
She’s farther down, no longer blocked by the lilac bush I moved. She must have found something else to stand on. I say tentatively, “Why does she do that?”
My mother speaks slowly. “She can’t help it. It’s not her fault. It’s … it’s mine.”
Mrs. Seyfreth’s vacant eyes float in our direction.
“Your fault?” I fall back against the counter. “But how?” I know the answer. She just told me the answer. I don’t want to hear it. But I have to hear it.
My mother pulls the shade over the window and returns to her chair.
“But why didn’t you tell me? I’m sure it was a mistake.”
“Mistake after mistake after mistake.” Her eyes fixate on her lap. “I was careless, and she saw something she shouldn’t have. It was all so horrible, but I was desperate. And arrogant. I thought I could fix it. I’d never used a spell to make someone forget something so huge, but I thought I could do it.”
This is why she didn’t want to try the spell on Henry. Thank Janna she didn’t try the spell on Henry. “So … so you’re the reason she’s … the way she is?”
She raises her eyes to meet mine. “Yes, and no. She’d already been showing signs. Her senility or whatever poor thing she’s suffering from was already there. What I did just accelerated it. The worst part is, I could tell. When I was doing the spell, I could tell I’d erased her memory, but I went a little further, just to be sure.”
I place my hand on hers. “You were protecting yourself. And me. I’m sorry about Mrs. Seyfreth, but if the alternative was the Afrit taking you—”
“Don’t say that, Azra. We can’t use our powers to hurt people, no matter the cost.”
Though she says this, I can tell from the way she’s looking at me, she’d do whatever she had to in order to protect me. “Why isn’t all this in the cantamen?”
“It is and it isn’t.”
“The blank pages,” I say, remembering the section I found in the middle that was completely empty.
“Hidden by a spell. The spell’s in the cantamen. I may as well reverse it now so you can learn the whole sordid history of how this came to be our Jinn world. I’m sorry. I know I should have told you. I was just trying to protect you. I wanted you to be able to be a Jinn without all this—”
“Hatred?”
“Fear, was what I was going to say.” My mother forces a smile. “You know, if you didn’t look so much like me, sometimes I’d swear you were Samara’s daughter.”
“But I don’t understand. Why do we let them get away with it? Why don’t we—”
“Fight? You and Sam really are peas in a pod.” My mother waves her hand. “Look around, who’s here to fight?”
“That’s why the male Jinn have to live with them?”
“And your grandmothers and everyone else who’s not a practicing Jinn, a retired mother raising a daughter, or the daughter being raised. Keeping our community separate, preventing us from living in clusters, ensuring our numbers here remain on the low side, it’s all a way of preventing an uprising.”
“But we’re here. Us mothers and daughters. We have powers. We could take them on.”
“No. The Afrit have powers beyond ours. And Janna is so well-shielded now that we can’t get in without them apporting us in. The same way every Jinn there can’t get out. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“But some want to try, like Samara?” The harsh words exchanged between my mother and Samara on the night of my birthday about taking risks now make sense.
My mother sighs. “Yes, like Samara. Like Raina.”
My head jerks back. “And the Afrit found out? So they took her?” I was right. What happened to Raina isn’t Yasmin’s fault. “She’s … gone? Gone, gone?”
Tears fall down my mother’s cheeks. “See, Azra, talk is one thing, but the consequences are real. Even Sam knows that. We’ve all lost so much. We can’t risk losing what we have left. I know I won’t. I won’t put you at risk.”
And neither will I.
I surround my mother’s cold hand with both of mine. I won’t risk losing her. I won’t risk having Henry’s brain fried. Or worse.
So that’s it. I’ll be granting Nate his wish. I’ll be granting every assigned candidate their wish—and I’ll be granting them perfectly. I’ll follow in my mother’s footsteps and be a model Jinn. I … I won’t form attachments with humans. I won’t form any more attachments with humans. And maybe, probably, I should, I will, I might undo the ones I have. Because the alternative … because there is no alternative.
Exactly as the Afrit planned.