Burning Hearts (14 page)

“
Why all the dangerous
theatrics just to get you to come back to Egypt?”

“
It’s what the Jinn do. They
wreak havoc. I think, no, I know he’s here for me, but he can’t
help being bad.” He shrugged. “He’s a demon, after all. He also
knows who I am, who I choose to be. By unleashing chaos, the Jinni
is trying to lure me into joining Team Evil, so to speak. To come
back to the fold, rejoin my fellow Jinn brothers and sisters.” He
shook his head. “His lures won’t work on me.”

“
But you’re half-human. How
can you resist him? Can’t he sway you? I know you can sway other
humans, successfully, being only half-Jinni.”

“
I can resist him because I
have no intention of leaving or harming Oasis. And I can only sway
to a certain extent.”

She was reminded of Malcolm’s statement about
it being better to humiliate the leader than to strike his
followers. “You swayed Val to strip down in the cafeteria and sing,
didn’t you?”

He gave a slight smile. “Yes, that was…fun. I
just wanted to embarrass him for all the hurt he was causing you.”
He paused, and then asked, “Why’d he break up with you?”

Her eyebrow shot up. “You mean you
dunno?”

“
I’ve heard rumors, but I
want to know from you.”

Her eyebrow drooped as she turned away from
his penetrative gaze, embarrassed. “I refused to have sex with
him.”

“
That’s a big step in a
relationship.” His voice was soft, understanding. “Why’d you refuse
him?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. At the time, I loved
him.” She turned back to Malcolm. “People who love each other have
sex, right?” she inquired.

He seemed embarrassed, blushing. “Yes, they
do.”

“
I dunno why I refused him.
I just wanted to wait. Is that so wrong?”

“
No, Jenna, no.” He held her
hand between his. His skin was like fire. “You did nothing
wrong.”

The kitchen light came on in her house. A few
seconds later, the front door opened with her mom standing in her
nightgown, looking out at the unknown Challenger in her
driveway.

“
I’d better go.” She turned
back to him. “But I have to know, earlier at school, when you told
me you were bad—”

“
I am bad,” he self-judged.
“Well, part of me is. I suppress it, preferring to expose my human
side, showing love and compassion toward others. I want to be with
you, but I don’t know what the future holds. I’m half-demon. You’re
a slayer of demons. One day, I could snap,”—he struck his fingers
together for effect—“go bad. You may have no choice. You may have
to kill me.”

“
That won’t happen.” She
leaned forward and without thinking of the consequences, kissed his
warm lips; her heart felt like it was on fire. “And I can’t kill
someone I love.”

She started to panic, embarrassed that she’d
admitted her feelings. Although the tender kiss was probably a
clue.

His fiery blue eyes seemed to get brighter.
“I love you too, Jenna.” He kissed her back, soft in reciprocation.
Her whole body was on fire now.

She smiled, relieved. “But how? We barely
know each other.”

“
There’s a word in the
Islamic culture that is similar to destiny or fate: Kismet. There
are forces beyond our comprehension and out of our control. I
believe I was meant to come here, to Oasis, to find you. When my
human side yearned for others, it wasn’t yearning for any ordinary
human. It was searching for you. My love. My soul mate.” He
smirked. “Now as for you loving me, well, it’s not that hard
considering my good looks and charm.”

She giggled. “Yes, that’s exactly it!”

He cupped her cheek in his hand, sweeping his
thumb across her skin, then he trailed his fingertips down the side
of her neck, and slowly pulled away.

“
Sweet dreams,
Jenna.”

His warm touch still lingered on her skin and
it took her awhile to speak again.

“
Do Jinn sleep?”

He nodded. “But only for a few hours. We
don’t tire as easily as humans, but being half-human, I need more
than pureblood Jinn to function.”

“
Do you dream? Have
nightmares?”

“
Yes, why?”

“
Nothing. Just wondering.”
She kept the murderous dream about him to herself. “See you
tomorrow?”

“
I can pick you
up.”

“
Uh, I think I’ll take the
bus. I don’t want my friends to think I’ve abandoned them just to
be with my new boyfriend,” she explained, wanting to keep everyone
close to her.

He smiled. “I understand. So I’ll see you in
chemistry?”

“
Yep.”

“
Mrs. Quinn is giving
another quiz.”

She was confused. “And?”

“
Well, I’m just letting you
know that even though you’re my girlfriend, you cannot cheat off of
me.” He pointed at her, smiling.

Feeling frisky, she grabbed his forefinger,
squeezing hard and pulling at the same time. He winced in pain and
she immediately let go.

Her heart almost stopped. “Oh, my goodness,
did I hurt you?”

“
A little.” He bent his
finger forward at the knuckle, showing it was okay. “You have to be
careful.” He smiled. “You might just break me.”

“
Well, you’re strong too.”
She smiled back. “You might just hurt me.”

“
Never.”

He undid the gauze wrapping around her hand
and kissed her skin with warm lips; there was no evidence that
she’d even bashed it against a mirror; the scar had
disappeared.

“
Don’t waste your anger on
those girls. There are scarier things out there.”

TWIST AND SHOUT

The earthquake at Scorpion Stadium was the
major news at school. Second to that was Jenna and Malcolm’s outing
as girlfriend-boyfriend.

Malcolm was waiting for her, leaning against
the red-bricked building in the lot where bused students are
dropped off.

Pru gave Jenna a smile and walked on with
Riddick, who’d been silent the whole bus ride over. But Jenna was
hopeful that they’d remain friends. Riddick stayed beside her,
although he preferred to listen to his distractive heavy metal.

“
Hey,” Malcolm greeted her
with a smile, and then kissed her cheek.

Jenna blushed. “Hey.”

They held hands, fingers interlaced, as they
walked inside the school that was abuzz in conversation about last
night events.

“
I heard a
bunch
of people died,”
said one student.

“
No. No one died. That’s
just a rumor,” countered another.

“
I
heard
people
almost
died,” corrected an
eavesdropper.

“
It was a stampede,” added a
passerby. “People were running all over each other, trying to get
away.”

“
Were you there?” asked the
eavesdropper.

“
No, but I
heard
.”

Malcolm rolled his eyes at Jenna as they kept
walking down the hall. Soon the rumors of what did or didn’t happen
at the stadium were replaced by the new couple at school.

A girl standing in front of her locker almost
spit up her breakfast shake. “Oh! My! Gosh!” She nudged the girl
beside her, sucking on a lollipop. “Those two are going out!”

“
I thought she liked girls,”
said her friend in a muffled voice, refusing to remove her candied
breakfast. “Isn’t that why Val broke up with her?”

“
Hmm…guess not. You know,
the new guy played last night—replaced Val as quarterback,”
informed the first girl.

The friend removed her lollipop and laughed
with a red tongue. “Jenna must like jocks.”

“
No, she likes
Muslims
.” The breakfast
shake girl gave a crooked smile. “Look at him. You can’t tell me he
didn’t come from Al-Qaeda Academy. I bet he’s here
undercover…settling in…making everyone think he’s nice and all, and
then
BOOM!
He’s
blowing up the school!”

Jenna was enraged.

“
Ow,” Malcolm
grunted.

“
Sorry.” She let go of his
hand. “Did I crush it?”

He flexed the fingers of his right hand. “No,
but close.” He wrapped his arm around her waist. “Don’t listen to
those idiots. Al-Qaeda runs camps, not academies.”

“
You shouldn’t joke about
that. These are sensitive times.”

“
Yeah, I know,” he conceded.
“The fact that I came from Egypt and that I’m dark-skinned doesn’t
win me any favors, but the majority of people here know I’m no
harm. They haven’t come at me with pitchforks yet. If I used slang
all the time, I’d fit right in.”

“
You sound perfectly
American. The first time I heard you, you had an accent, but that’s
mostly gone now.”

He went back to holding her hand as they made
their way to first period chemistry. “Jinn can mimic very well.
That’s how we blend into society so easily. The pureblood Jinn are
more proficient at seducing, persuading, and that helps when you
can speak someone’s language, using their accent.”

“
So what’d you do in Egypt?”
She smiled. “When you weren’t
seducing
, that is.”

He smiled back. “Well, believe it or not, I
was very good, like I am here. I was around my own kind, but I was
my own self. I didn’t do bad things to fit in. As for what I did,
well, I went to college and studied classical literature.”

“
You what? How old are
you?”

“
Seventeen.”

She raised her eyebrow. “Really?”

“
Yes, really. I
did
use my talents to
persuade the dean to admit me, just like I did here with Principal
Greene. There are no records of my birth, or any paperwork to
identify what I’ve been doing for the past seventeen
years.”

“
You said your parents are
dead, right?”

“
Right. My father was
part-Jinni, like me. His name was Ishmael. I can only assume his
birth was the product of dark designs by a pureblood
Jinni.”

“
Dark designs?”

He gave her a sickened look. “Rape.”

She felt her heart tear. “Oh.”

“
Or a Jinni
influenced
a human
woman,” he gave as an alternate possibility but still the same.
“Either way, it wasn’t consensual. So…rape. And that’s how my
father came into this world.”

She opened her mouth, desiring to give her
condolences for such an outrageous act, but was silenced by the
continuation of his story that he resumed after a short pause.

“
My mother was human, named
Antonia King. She and my father fell in love while she was in
Cairo, studying Egyptology at the university there. Not long after
their...copulation, my father died.”

“
Was it a Mage? Like
me?”

“
I don’t know. My mother,
pregnant with me, fled to England where she had some friends. I was
raised there—that’s why you heard a bit of the accent—until the age
of twelve, when she died”—he’d been smiling, but now it was
fading—“from cancer.” He paused, swallowing a lump of sorrow. Jenna
kissed his cheek in comfort. He gave her a little smile of
appreciation and continued, “I was alone and scared until a
Jinniyah found me. She took me back to Egypt to live with her kin
and that’s where I stayed until a few months ago.”

“
This…Jinniyah…is she still
in Egypt? Was she like a mom to you?” Jenna shook her head. “Do
demons even care?”

He hesitated before replying as if he were
considering how best to answer her questions. “As for the Jinniyah,
yes, she’s still in Egypt. No, she wasn’t like a mom to me, more of
a…companion…especially when I reached my teens. Demons are selfish
creatures. Their idea of care is…twisted. They get jealous easily.
They have no concept of forgiveness. In the end, they’re about as
loving as a sandstorm.”

She smiled. “But not you. You’re one of the
most loving people I’ve ever known.” She chuckled. “You’re nicer
than most humans.”

They’d arrived at their first class. Malcolm
didn’t smile back at Jenna’s praise, only squeezing her hand as if
in warning. “But there’s still Jinni blood flowing through my
veins. My humanity, my desire to love, suppresses my demonic
tendencies. But Jenna, it’s still there. I was born this way, and
if I allow my evil side to rise, I’ll become a monster. And
then…you’ll have to kill me.”

“
No,” she countered. “If you
were around those Jinn in Egypt, and you didn’t turn bad, you’re
not gonna in Oasis.” She smiled. “We may not have the nicest
people, but they’re not demons.” She gently squeezed his hand. “I
trust you.”

He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. “And
every day, I’ll act to ensure your trust in me.”

When he opened the door, there was a loud
groan from several students as they faced Mrs. Quinn, standing at
the front of the class.

“
Yes,” she told the
groaners; two of them were Daniela and Emma—who should be grateful
they’re alive—and not buried in the ground from last night’s game.
“There will be a test next week. At school, you take tests,” she
added sarcastically.

Jenna smiled at Malcolm. “Tell me why you’re
enrolled in high school? If I was you, I’d be in Vegas, persuading
the Blackjack dealer that you do in fact have 21.”