Bianca’s stomach finally started to feel full, her raging appetite satiated. She stirred her third coffee, thinking. This could be their last breakfast together. After today, they could be controlled by a djinn prince who over-accessorized.
“Is there anything on your bucket list? You know, before we eventually die in a fiery inferno tonight?” Bianca was curious what Leila had always imagined herself doing. Bianca already knew what had been on hers. Eat sushi in Japan, go to a concert at a real stadium, and, of course, live in New York City. Her list was laughably outdated now.
After their trip to Australia, the idea of living anywhere else was now painful. Her friends, her family, everything she had ever known was in Ayers, and she was starting to realize that wasn’t a bad thing. Still, a part of her felt ashamed for changing her mind. Bianca had been famously anti-Ayers. Everyone at school knew she couldn’t wait to leave. She had always projected a cosmopolitan front, and now it felt like a sham. She felt like Steve Rosenberg, pretending to be someone he wasn’t all for the show of it. They had a lot more in common than she’d realized.
The truth was, she had always imagined herself as an urban bruja, but maybe she was just a cottage witch at heart. Cottage witch, she thought to herself. Yeah.
Leila crumpled up her napkin. “I thought I knew what I wanted, but I have no idea,” she admitted. “Everything feels so different now.”
Bianca nudged her with her black boots. “Okay, but like… what about seeing the Eiffel Tower? Or going skydiving or something?”
Leila met Bianca’s eyes, and a new kind of fire blazed in them. One that wasn’t golden or red, like the djinn they’d been fighting: it was a fierceness she’d had there all along. “I want to do everything,” Leila said. “I want to travel the world. I want to have an apartment somewhere with a balcony. I wanna live somewhere where I don’t speak the language. I want it all.”
Bianca gave a low whistle.
“What?” Leila asked. She seemed defensive, as if sharing her deepest, darkest desires made her an easier target.
“Nothing,” Bianca said. “That’s an awesome list.”
“Really?” Leila asked, surprised. “You think so?”
Bianca smiled. “Leila, with your powers, you can pretty much do all those things.”
Leila chewed her lip. “All we gotta do is defeat a giant djinn army.”
Bianca nodded, heart sagging. “All we gotta do is defeat a giant djinn army,” she agreed.
“What about you?” Leila asked.
She settled for the simplest item on the list.
“Well, I’ve always wanted to see a concert. Like, in a big stadium.”
“Who?” Leila asked. “Some cool indie band?”
Bianca blushed. “Taylor Swift.” It felt painful voicing her hopes and dreams out loud. She gave Leila credit for saying hers first.
“You’re a Swiftie?” Leila asked, eyes wide.
Bianca bristled. “What? She writes great songs!”
Leila held up her hands. “No judgment here. I just didn’t think we had the same taste in music, that’s all. Taylor Swift doesn’t wear much black.”
“She contains multitudes,” Bianca replied sagely.
Leila nodded, her face thoughtful. “I’m glad I learned this about you.”
Bianca rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay, let’s not get all touchy-feely.”
Just then, their server approached with their check. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said.
Leila paid the bill and stood up. “Come on,” she said grimly. “We’ve got some wizards to destroy. And I wanna practice some moves before sunset.”
The trucker at the table next to them looked over.
“Let’s destroy some wizards,” Bianca replied. Leila grabbed her phone from the charger and the two exited the cozy diner, unsure when they’d ever get a moment like this again.
Please don’t let this be the last breakfast we share, Bianca prayed.
Bianca had always wanted to be a part of a training montage. Getting swole on the beach, lifting tree trunks, having a wise teacher nod approvingly. Unfortunately for her, the gymnasium of Ayers High, Virginia, would have to do for her transformation.
Leila had teleported them somewhere Cyrus wouldn’t think of, and a place that would be useless to the Esfandiaris: their own high school.
“This is so creepy,” Bianca said as she looked around the empty gym in the fading sunlight. The day after Christmas was guaranteed to be a ghost town, and the dim emergency lighting gave everything a faint, eerie glow. “Man,” she said, kicking a loose piece of flooring. “This is way less epic than I thought it would be.”
Leila sighed. “Try again, Bee.”
For the past couple of hours, Bianca had been trying to possess Leila and use her teleportation and fire powers. If she could make Leila sit and stand, why couldn’t she launch a fireball through her? It was no use. Bianca was ready to throw in the towel and leave the flashier powers up to her sister.
She sighed and reached for Leila’s hand. Leila didn’t put up a struggle as Bianca tried to take over the part of Leila’s brain that let her catch fire. “Come on,” Bianca said, gritting her teeth. She could see her reflection in the windows of the gym, and it looked like she was trying to get over some serious constipation.
A puff of smoke erupted from Leila’s palm. Bianca shook her head.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “It’s just not there.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Leila said, rubbing Bianca’s back. “Maybe you just need a break.”
Bianca nodded, sitting down on a bleacher. “This is exhausting.”
“I’ll go,” Leila offered. “I wanted to try that strobing trick you mentioned.”
Bianca watched as Leila concentrated hard, staring at a point on the other side of the gym underneath all the sports pennants. Veins started to pop out of her forehead as small flames flickered all over her body. Then, Leila evaporated. A second later, she was back. She went back and forth like this for a while, until the gaps between her disappearances became shorter and shorter. She had done it: she was strobing, just like Bianca had suggested.
Bianca wanted to feel happy for her sister but instead felt like an even bigger failure for not being able to push her powers further too.
“Whoa,” Leila said, her form going solid. It looked like she was twinkling, the flames barely able to alight the faster she teleported. “I did it! I teleported between here and the language arts hallway. It probably looks like I’m strobing there too.”
“You did it,” Bianca agreed, trying not to sound bitter. After all, any win for Leila was a win for their family, their town, and for themselves.
Leila sat down next to Bianca. “Wanna try?”
“Huh?” Bianca asked.
Leila took Bianca’s hand. “Come on.”
Bianca exhaled. This was a low point. Just a low point. They could only go up from here. “Okay.”
And then Leila disappeared, leading Bianca along. They reappeared for a split second by a random bank of lockers. Then, as quickly as Bianca got her bearings, they teleported back to the gym. Over and over, they alternated between the two locations, Bianca’s vision spinning until she learned to spike her sight between the swim team pennant and locker 403. Faster and faster they went, the two going in and out of either location so fast Bianca wondered if this trick made them practically bulletproof.
Finally, Leila stopped, breathing heavily as she took a sip from the water fountain. “Pretty cool, right?”
Bianca grinned. It had worked. She did feel better. “Pretty cool,” she agreed.
Leila stood up again but stumbled over a loose sneaker lace. Bianca instinctively reached out to grab her.
“Be careful,” Bianca said. But when Leila stood back up, her eyes were bright blue.
“Bianca?” she asked, still conscious despite Bianca’s possession. “Did you break my fall?”
Bianca gasped. “No. You did!” She let go of Leila’s hand, horrified she had possessed her without even realizing it.
“I was in there, though. I had control. You just… nudged me in the right direction,” Leila said, a slow smile creeping on her face.
“What?” Bianca said, not liking where this was going.
“We can work with this,” Leila replied, a smug look on her face.
Bianca groaned. “Oh no.”
They trained hard into early afternoon. Leila’s accuracy with teleporting was getting better now, and all Bianca had to do was throw a basketball as far as she could only for Leila to catch it seconds later. Not only that, but Leila learned she could grow her fireballs to the size of a car, though it took her a while to recharge her flames after such a large blast. The football field would survive.
Bianca’s power had been trickier to train, since her only test subject was Leila. But after possessing her over a dozen times, Bianca finally learned that she didn’t even need to touch her sister anymore to take control. You there? Bianca could ask.
Right here, Leila would reply. They’d done it. They’d achieved twin telepathy, albeit by very unconventional means. But if she could do it, that meant Cyrus could too. Bianca shivered at the thought of him controlling her own town with only a whisper of a thought. Like a puppeteer with dozens of marionettes, he could completely take over Ayers.
By three p.m., they were exhausted. Leila teleported to a sandwich shop and got them both huge foot-long subs, chips, and giant sodas. Bianca gulped hers down, ending in a large belch.
“Bianca!” Leila chided her.
“What? There’s no one here to care.”
Leila said nothing. Because Bianca was right. They drained their sodas in minutes, Bianca wishing she’d asked for more food. Something about using her powers made her extra hungry.
“The sun will set soon,” Leila reminded her.
“Ugh,” Bianca groaned. For a moment she’d forgotten that sunset came earlier in winter. She was sweating so much from training that she’d barely felt the cold. “So now we wait.”
“Now we wait,” Leila repeated grimly.