The Genius of Jinn Read online

  I slacken my arm that’s entwined with Tayma’s, but she tightens her grip and pulls me even closer. She smells like lilacs. Like the ones that bloom on the bush under my window at home during the spring. I wonder if my mother’s magic can make them bloom for longer.

  “Oui, mon amie,” Tayma says, “but that is only because you refuse to introduce me to your sisters.”

  A jolt of surprise sparks through me. Me knowing nothing of Tayma isn’t unusual. But the other girls not knowing? Not even Hana?

  “And why is that?” I blurt out, momentarily emboldened by Tayma.

  Yasmin juts her chin in the air. “Really, Azra? All of a sudden you care about something Jinn?”

  Tayma covers her mouth with her hand. Her long, burgundy fingertips graze the perfectly round birthmark on her cheek. “What is this? Why, but of course Azra cares about everything Jinn.”

  Now I do loosen my arm from Tayma’s. I shove my fists in the pockets of my jeans. An unexpected surge of guilt prevents me from meeting Tayma’s gold eyes—the same eyes I’ll have when I turn sixteen.

  Yasmin’s eyebrows rise. “No, Tayma. Azra never has. Probably never will.”

  My mind flashes back to a time when Yasmin wore that same condescending look. When she used that same stony voice. When my heart, already shredded into ribbons from the loss of someone who did mean everything to me, was clawed out of my chest by Yasmin. And then destroyed by my Zar “sisters.” They poured acid into the crevices of my tattered heart by not stepping up and stopping her. Stopping her from making my loss of everything into nothing. By not telling me they were sorry for me. By not doing a thing to help me heal. To fill the holes. My “sisters” only care about everything Jinn. Precisely why I don’t. Why I can’t.

  “Take me home, Tayma,” I squeak out. “Please.”

  Tayma’s ample chest inflates as she sucks in a breath. She wraps her arms around me, and, tight against her body, I feel the air leave her lungs. Her long eyelashes tickle my cheek as she whispers in my ear, “For whatever she did, I am sorry, mon chou.”

  The quickening of my pulse precedes a stinging behind my eyes. But even the hint of tears is a weakness I can’t let Yasmin see, and so I stiffen and keep my face blank.

  Tayma releases me. “The Zar sisterhood is a place for us to feel safe and loved. Without judgment.” She positions herself between Yasmin and me. “The world of being Jinn is much more difficult than you may now believe it to be. We must be strong. And our strength comes from one another. Do not forget that, Yasmin.” Tayma turns to me. “Nor you, Azra.”

  Tayma faces Notre-Dame and blows it two kisses. Two pecks, so very European.

  “Now,” she says, once again taking my arm. “To the Seine before Yasmin removes her top.”

  I stare at Yasmin’s chest, already larger than mine and stretching the fabric of her black tee thin across the front. She looks down, too, and then at me. We stare at one another and back at Tayma.

  Finally, I get it. “Oh! You mean blows her top? Like gets angry?”

  “Oui, but with Yasmin it is always angrier, is it not?” She puckers her lips and air kisses two kisses to Yasmin before leading us in the direction of the expansive river that cuts through the center of Paris and makes this little spit of land an island.

  “Let’s just get the book and get out of here,” Yasmin says.

  “Book?” I say. “We’re here for a book?” A book and not ice cream from the best shop in the world? The shop right across the way, on its own island, the Île Saint-Louis, which if we just take a right off the bridge, we’ll reach within minutes.

  Of course, we don’t turn right.

  “Not just any book,” Tayma says as she guides us over a bridge to the Left Bank. “A book of spells. It is Yasmin’s gift to her mother.”

  Gift? Though Lalla Raina’s birthday is coming up, the idea of Yasmin locating a Jinn who lives in Paris just to get her mother a special book doesn’t sound very Yasmin.

  Tayma points out a pile of dog poop for us to walk around. The most beautiful city in the world is filled with dog poop. The French are such a contradiction.

  Tayma walks us along the river, past stall after stall selling used books and postcards and original artwork and prints of all sizes. Propped up on metal rods with green canopies, the stalls run along the Seine as far as I can see. At the next intersection, Tayma waves her hand over her head. “We cross here, mes amies.”

  Like a mirror, the other side of the street is also lined as far as I can see. But this side boasts café after café, nearly identical, and yet all packed with customers. I’m pretty sure there are more cafés on this one street than in my entire town, maybe state. Tayma leads us to the third one down and gestures to the row of round metal tables under the red awning out front.

  “The table at the end is paying,” she says. “Sit. I will be a moment.”

  She passes by a waitress and I hear her say, “Deux chocolat chaud, s’il vous plaît,” and while I don’t know what that means exactly, that some form of “chocolate” is in the middle works for me.

  When the extraordinarily fashionable couple with matching scarves expertly looped around their necks at the last table leaves, I wedge myself in one of the empty seats.

  A trail of smoke from the table behind me wafts my way, and I angle my seat to avoid it. Yasmin stands at the door to the inside of the café with her arms crossed in front of her chest. She stays there until the waitress reappears with a tray.

  The smell reaches me, overpowering even the cigarette smoke, before the waitress does. At the table, the server says, “Bon appétit” and sets down two white mugs that are more like soup bowls and two elegant pitchers a bit larger than the creamer my mother warms milk for her coffee in each morning.

  The waitress lifts a pitcher in the air, and a rich, dark brown liquid spills from the spout, filling my wide mug. I add a spoonful of the fluffy white whipped cream served on the side and bring the bowl to my lips.

  I’m still blowing to cool the molten chocolate when Yasmin plops down across from me.

  Just to be not like me, she doesn’t bother to blow on her hot chocolate and gulps down a massive sip. She winces and squeezes her eyes shut but refuses to acknowledge just how badly she must have burned her tongue.

  Normally I don’t engage with Yasmin, but I can’t look at the stupid pout on her face anymore. “What gives?”

  She’s pressing her hand against her lips, trying to soothe her seared tongue. “With what?”

  I take a tiny, careful sip of my chocolat chaud. “With all this. Why are we here? How do you know Tayma? What’s this book all about? Is it really a gift for your mother?”

  Yasmin squirms.

  “Ah.” I lick my lips, enjoying both my drink and this unusual role reversal. “You’re lying to her, aren’t you? The book’s for you. A book of spells, which is such advanced magic that you shouldn’t really even have it at sixteen, let alone thirteen.”

  Whirling her head around, Yasmin shushes me. “She’ll be back any second.”

  “Good, then I can tell her why you’re really here.”

  “You have no idea why I’m really here.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “No, you don’t. Because if you did, you’d be quiet.”

  I add more cream to my drink and stir.

  Yasmin leans over the table. “That’s it? You’re done?”

  “You told me to be quiet.”

  Her nostrils flare, but a bit of a smile creeps onto her lips. Which makes her wince again. She must have really done some damage.

  “Fine,” I say. “Go ahead and tell me why you need a spell book when you don’t have powers yet.”

  “For learning. For studying. For practicing. For when we get those powers.”

  I sigh. “Why are you so eager to use magic?”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  I pour more chocolate into my mug and change the subject. “How do you even know Tayma?”

  Yasmi
n spoons just the whipped cream into her mouth, and her eyes widen at its deliciousness. And its temperature. The cold must feel good against her burns. She then says, “She visited my mom a couple of months ago. She was in town granting some wish for some bigwig computer guy, and she dropped by. Apparently we’re related. Through my father’s side. Not that my mother or Tayma will tell me how.”

  “Course not.”

  “Ridiculous, right?” Yasmin and I are in total agreement. For once. We are both freaked out by this.

  “Anyway,” she says, “I was talking to Tayma alone, and she mentioned she had found this old spell book at one of those stalls on the Seine. Like three-hundred-years-old old. Not a cantamen, just a book of spells. She figured it was a fraud, but she did a few spells and they were real. I told her I wanted it for my mom, because I figured she’d never just give it to me. I didn’t know she was going to pop by today at Farrah’s. Surprised me as much as you.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “Well, not as much,” she says.

  “Sounds like something that could get us in trouble. If not with the Afrit council, then with our moms.”

  Yasmin grins. “That’s what makes it fun.”

  “Fun?” Tayma says, swooping in with her cloak dripping off her arm and flowing in the breeze beside her.

  I don’t realize she’s actually using it to camouflage her conjuring of an extra chair until she’s seated in it at the table. Not only does no one notice, but the chair is a perfect replica. Tayma must be older than I thought with more advanced magic than I realized.

  She sets a small book with a worn, grayish-yellow cloth cover next to our hot chocolates. “I will tell you what is fun.” She nods to the book. “The love spell in here.”

  “Love spell?” I say. “One that actually works?”

  “Oui.” Tayma dips a finger in Yasmin’s whipped cream. “Christophe and I have been together for a year thanks to this love spell.”

  Looking at Tayma, I can’t imagine she’d need a spell to entice anyone to fall in love with her.

  “It is most successful when the object of your affection has interest already. But perhaps just needs un peu push.”

  Yasmin scoffs. “Who wants a love spell when all it can do is entice a human anyway?”

  Unlike my mother and me, Lalla Raina’s and Yasmin’s tolerance for humans is lower than a Jinn’s tolerance for cold. And Jinn hate the cold.

  Hate.

  It.

  Tayma flashes a smile, and the birthmark on her cheek bounces. “You will understand one day, Yasmin.”

  “Whatever,” she says.

  I’m still staring at the book as Yasmin draws it into her clutches.

  Tayma sees me watching and laughs. “Heh, it seems your sister already understands.”

  I jolt back in my chair and crash into the cigarette-smoking Frenchman behind me, who grumbles something I don’t need to know French to know is an insult.

  I mumble a “pardon” to him, but to Tayma I spit out, “No, I wasn’t … I don’t need…”

  She pats my hand. “It is good, Azra. Humans are good. So long as we are careful.”

  Yasmin purses her lips but doesn’t say anything.

  “Speaking of,” Tayma says, “your mother would not want me giving you this yet, so you both must be careful with it, yes?”

  I sip my hot chocolate, leaving Yasmin to try to convince Tayma the book is for her mother. But Tayma’s too clever for that. Just like all Jinn.

  “S’il vous plaît, just keep it hidden,” Tayma finally says. “That’s why I keep it here, in my Christophe’s café. He thinks I have an obsession with witches. How gauche.” She then says with a wistful look in her eye, “Ah, well, I should return you to your home. I should not have kept you away this long. It is just that … I miss having…” She lowers her voice. “…Jinn to talk to.”

  “Where are your Ji—sisters?” I say.

  Her eyes glaze over with a film of sadness. “My Zar, it is broken. Do not let it happen to yours. It is the most important part of becoming Jinn.”

  “See, Azra,” Yasmin says. She doesn’t realize how much it is what she says and the way she says it that makes—that has always made—that so hard for me to believe.

  Just as Tayma leaves a few euros on the table, a short, nearly bald man in a black apron pokes his head out the café door. Though I can’t understand his French, his hands that fly in the air and mime an explosion give me a bit of a clue.

  “Un moment, mon amour,” Tayma says to him. “Kitchen mishap,” she says to us.

  “Wait,” Yasmin says. “That’s Christophe?”

  I kick her under the table.

  “Oui.” Tayma sighs and places her hand over her heart. “Precious, no?”

  “Uh, n—”

  I kick Yasmin harder.

  She kicks me right back and scowls.

  “Wait for me here,” Tayma says to us as she hops up from the table. “I will return in a moment. More chocolat chaud? How about a macaron?”

  “That would be nice,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “But of course,” she says as she hurries to Christophe.

  He pecks her on the cheek and she kisses the top of his head.

  “Pfft,” Yasmin says, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

  My whole life I’ve let Yasmin get away with this. Being rude, insensitive. A bully. I’ve had it. “You really are a piece of work, Yasmin,” I say. “Why can’t you just let others be happy?”

  Her head jerks back, but then … she smiles. “Well, look who grew a spine.”

  She settles into her chair and begins to flip through the spell book.

  That’s what it takes to impress her? Acting like, well, like her? I don’t want to be her. I’d take a human over her any day.

  And that’s the sentiment that will always keep us apart.

  The waitress brings over another hot chocolate and a plate of cookies in every color of the rainbow. I pick up a yellow one and bite into it. It’s like eating a cloud. A light, airy, delicious lemon cloud. I pull the plate closer to me. These are the times I want magic. I want to be able to conjure a bag to take every last one of these home.

  Tayma’s green tote sits at my feet. I push her cloak aside, searching for something to carry the macarons, when all of a sudden Yasmin cries out.

  “Oh my Janna!” She rams the big spell book onto the table, opens it wide, and ducks her head behind it.

  I look up just in time to see what she’s seen. “Is that—”

  “Your mother! In here, Azra, now!” She yanks me by my hair and forces me behind the book.

  “Ouch!”

  “Shh!” She starts flipping pages. “She must have done some kind of locator spell on you. This is all your fault.”

  “My fault? Pretty sure I was kidnapped. Which means you’re the one in trouble, not me.”

  “That’s your story.”

  My story? “You wouldn’t.”

  Her black eyes grow wide with innocence. “I swear, Lalla Kalyssa, I had no idea what Azra was up to. I was just enjoying the afternoon with my Zar sisters when all of a sudden, she forced me into the bathroom.”

  “My mother would never believe you.”

  “Maybe not, but what about the rest of them? Who’s the one who ran away last, Azra? Sure as Janna wasn’t me.”

  The last time was during one of our Zar reunions. Everyone was there. Magic this and magic that and I … I just needed to breathe. I was only across the street in my neighbor’s backyard. But my mom couldn’t find me, and she freaked. I was grounded for three weeks. Not that I go anywhere much. But I did miss the opening of that ghost movie, and all the kids at school spoiled the ending.

  “Come on,” I say, starting to push my chair back, “let’s get inside and hide.”

  “I have a better way,” Yasmin says. She taps her finger against the book. “Concealment spell.”

  “But you don’t have magic.”

  “Oh, Azra
, always a step or two behind.” Yasmin pulls a gemstone signet ring big enough to cover half of the fingers on her hand out of her pocket. “My mother’s talisman.”

  “You stole it?”

  “Borrowed.”

  “Yeah, right. Doesn’t matter. They don’t work without Jinn powers.”

  “And you’re sure of that?”

  “You think … no, no way.”

  “A talisman is made of magic,” she says. “If these spells in here are real spells, well, who knows what does or doesn’t work.”

  “That’s why you wanted the book now. You think you’ll be able to do magic before you get your powers?”

  “Powers we shouldn’t have to wait for,” Yasmin says.

  She slips the ring on her finger and begins to recite the spell.

  I peek above the book. My mother’s closer. And this time she’s not alone. A man is with her. Tall, dark hair, as dark as mine and Yasmin’s. My mother’s gesturing frantically. The man takes her by both elbows, trying to calm her.

  Is he a policeman?

  She wouldn’t go to the police. Would she?

  The man pulls her into his arms like he’s about to hug—

  “Hey!” I cry.

  My A necklace is in Yasmin’s hand. She yanked it straight off.

  “What are you doing?” I feel naked without it against my skin. More than naked … unsettled, disturbed, freaked out. I can’t remember the last time it left my neck.

  “It was your grandmother’s, wasn’t it?” She squeezes it in her hand, and all I want to do is smash her fist open and take it back. “It’s probably a talisman. We need all the magic we can get.”

  She begins to mutter the spell under her breath, and I reach across the table and take her hand in mine. Her hold on my necklace is strong. I can’t unclench her fist.

  “Help me,” she says.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Come on. Say it with me.”

  She’s got some nerve, I’ll give her that.

  I peer around the book once more. We’re running out of options. My mother’s crossing the street. And so against my every brain cell, I lean across the table and recite the spell with Yasmin.

  When we finish, a shudder runs through us both, and Yasmin drops the book.

  My mother is on the sidewalk. Directly across from us.