Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (8 page)

“That’s the thing about you guys,” he says, waving a hand at me. “You just don’t get it. People here don’t work the way people work in your world. You can’t analyze and rule and make decisions. And you can’t
make
someone fall in love.”

“Sure we can. I can make anyone love you, if I want,” I remind him. He gives me a dark look, an almost threatening one, and I press my lips together apologetically.

“That’s magic,” he finally says, and we continue walking toward his dorm. “Not love. And remember—that’s rule number four. You promised.”

“How am I supposed to know the difference between magic and love if no one will show me?” I complain. “You said you have a love life. Are you in love?”

Lawrence grimaces, but doesn’t answer. I repeat the question.

“No,” he finally says. “I’m not.”

“But you want to be.”

“Sure,” he says, opening the door to his dorm.

“With . . . Jeffrey? The guy from tonight?”

Lawrence sighs as we walk down the hall. He doesn’t answer.

LAWRENCE

Of course I want to be in love. Maybe with Jeffrey, maybe not, but with
someone.
That’s the problem when your best friend is in the middle of her own fairy-tale romance. It means you know that sort of love is real. It means you’re even more aware of how you’ve never been in love, how you’ve never felt sparks or fire or anything other than plain, ordinary lips when you kiss someone.

We walk into my room and Juliet collapses into my desk chair, spins around once with her legs pulled up to her chest. “Could you ever be in love with
me
?”

I snort before I can stop myself. “No. Sorry.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not attracted to you. Or to girls in general,” I explain.

“That doesn’t make sense though. The storybooks say love knows no obstacles.”

“That’s why they’re shelved in ‘fiction,’ Juliet.”

She doesn’t seem to understand, but nods anyway. “Do you think someone will love me?”

I had a joke all prepared, but it gets caught in my throat. I turn to look at her, eyebrows knitted together. All the power in the world, and jinn are the most naive creatures I’ve ever met.

“I’m sure someone could,” I answer.

She doesn’t seem as certain. Juliet spins around in the chair again, then picks up the ends of her long hair and stares at them. I recognize the look on her face—the one Jinn used to wear when he’d dismay over how he aged while in this world. She scrutinizes how long her hair has grown—a millimeter at most, I imagine—then looks back up at me.

“Some of the Ancients think Jinn was a one-time thing. That mortals won’t love jinn, not normally. That we’re not meant to understand love like you do.”

“Is that what you think?”

“That’s what I’m researching,” she says pointedly. “Come on, help me. Please? I’ll help you. Tell me who you want.”

“No,” I say sternly, quickly. I’ve been under the influence of magic before, been forced to love someone. I’m not at all interested in doing the same to someone else.

“Not like that,” she groans. “But I know what they want. I can tell you what they’re wishing for.”

I stare at my hands. What they want. She can solve the mystery, the thousands of questions that plague me not only about Jeffrey, but about every boy I come across. Are they after me because I’m just the first gay guy they met at college, or because they want what I want?

A love story.

I shouldn’t do this. Viola and Jinn would tell me not to do this.

“How am I supposed to help you?” I ask Juliet cautiously.

“I need to kiss someone.”

“Kiss someone?”

“That’s how it starts. With a kiss. That’s what I need to do.” She seems a little embarrassed, and looks at the floor.

“And you think that’ll help you understand love?”

“You have a better idea?” she asks pointedly, and I shake my head. I suppose I don’t.

“You realize you’ll have to let them see you? That you’ll have to break all sorts of protocols? Won’t the Ancients be furious?”

She nods, looks out the window. “The Ancients don’t have all the answers.”

JULIET

My kind don’t sleep here. Lawrence is curled in bed—he told me not to watch him sleep. I think he knew I was still here, just invisible, but he didn’t say it out loud. I don’t know why I’m staying here, save for the fact that Lawrence feels safer to me than the outside world. I’m a little afraid to go out there without him. Some researcher I am.

I look at the pictures lining his desk. Him and Viola, him and Jinn. I remember Jinn telling me that his favorite times with Viola are when they lie down in bed together and talk and kiss and whisper. Seeing one of my own kind in a photograph, looking so mortal, so imperfect . . . it confuses me. I don’t even understand the
appeal
of love, if it can make you so flawed. Jinn’s hair is too long, the skin on his arms dappled with an uneven tan. But his right hand is locked firmly in hers, his left arm slung around Lawrence’s shoulder. He was a wish-granter when they met, a servant.

Now he’s a lover. I think that’s what might really bother the Ancients the most: that Jinn chose this world. Chose a mortal. Over Caliban, over beautiful, perfect, ageless Caliban. Maybe it’s like the fairy tales—maybe Jinn kissed Viola, and it broke a spell that made him like the rest of us jinn, a spell that made him not believe in love or fate or romance. It broke the Ancients, broke Caliban itself, broke all the rules.

Maybe it was
just
the kiss, in fact, not the resulting love. Maybe kissing a mortal is what makes us understand, is what changes us. Maybe that’s all I need to solve the mysteries of Caliban and what love means for my world, not love itself. It certainly seems a lot more manageable than falling in love, and it
is
one of the things about love I’m certain of. . . .

I glance over at Lawrence in the bed. He doesn’t love me, he can’t—he’s already told me. But someone will kiss me. I think. I hope.

LAWRENCE

Juliet looks even more beautiful than usual. Of course, when you’ve got magic powers, it’s probably easy to look beautiful. Even though I’m not her biggest fan, I’m worried about her— she’s been here a week, and she seems as clueless as she was the day she arrived. I don’t remember Jinn being so naive, or so curious.

We walk up to the gallery side by side.

“Can they see you?” I murmur.

She pauses, like she’s thinking. “Now they can.”

“Right.” I raise my hand to the gallery door, push it open. The scent of wine and clay swoops over us. I think everyone in the theater department was invited, but the artist, a guy named Sampson who works in set design, sent me an invite himself. He said he was worried no one would come, and he wanted to see one friendly face in the room. I was surprised—I wouldn’t call us friends. We barely know each other. But it was a good opportunity to keep my promise to Juliet.

The art gallery is an old antebellum house on campus. All the walls of the house have been painted black, and in each room are a few tables with sculptures in the center. It’s all weird stuff—animals with houses growing out of their backs, their faces twisted into looks of agony. It makes it hard to stare at any one sculpture for too long.

“Lawrence,” a warm, quiet voice says, and I see Jeffrey coming toward me. He’s smiling, his eyes are flickering.

“Hey,” I answer, reach forward, and shake his hands. They’re soft but strong, and he smells like dryer sheets. The scent makes me want to step closer to him, makes me wonder if this is what his bedroom smells like.

“Hi, I’m Jeffrey,” he says, leaving my hand to reach for Juliet’s. She grins widely and takes it, shaking it a little awkwardly.

“I haven’t seen you around before, Juliet,” Jeffrey says curiously, glancing at me.

“She’s a friend,” I say. “Visiting from Virginia.”

“Right,” Jeffrey says, nodding at both of us. “I don’t really know anyone here,” he admits, looking at the crowd. “I’m glad you showed up.”

I try not to smile too big, not to look too ridiculously eager. The three of us meander around the room, toward the first in the rows of sculptures.

JULIET

Everyone is staring. I think, anyhow—their eyes slide on and off me, but it still
feels
like staring. I cling to Lawrence like he’s anchoring me; he gives me a strange look but then touches my forearm gently, leads me along behind Jeffrey. I see wishes filtering around Jeffrey’s face, but I’m too distracted by the onslaught of eyes to tell exactly what they are. Even though I can’t read Lawrence’s mind, it’s very clear what he’s wishing for. They’re obvious in the way he watches Jeffrey’s movements. It’s like a broken, shattered version of the way Jinn watches Viola.

“I don’t get it,” Jeffrey says as we arrive at the first piece. He shakes his head. It’s a miserable-looking ceramic dog with a two-story cottage growing out of its back. He looks at Lawrence, who is staring at the piece, analyzing it.

“I think,” Lawrence says, frowning, “maybe it’s about how things that are normal, things that most people want, can be painful?”

I stare at the piece, baffled. But Jeffrey nods at Lawrence, says that maybe that’s what they’re all about, and that they should ask Sampson later if they can find him. They talk easily, fluidly. I understand why someone might love Lawrence, even why someone might love Jeffrey, with their kind voices and soft smiles. We move on to another piece, this one a rabbit looking even more miserable than the dog. I just don’t understand mortal artwork, I guess.

“What do you think, Juliet?” Jeffrey says, glancing toward me as we come to a statue of a bear with an armchair lashed to his back.

“I . . .” I shake my head and glance toward Lawrence. I have no idea what to say. He comes to my rescue.

“
I
think I look old enough to scam a glass of wine off the bartender,” Lawrence says, nodding to the guy manning the bar—he can barely be twenty-one himself. “Either of you want one?”

“Yes,” I say quickly, just so I can get away from the conversation for a moment.

Jeffrey shakes his head. “I don’t drink, but thanks.”

Lawrence seems surprised, but nods. Together we walk toward the bar.

“Anyone you want to kiss yet?” Lawrence asks as we grow closer.

“I don’t know.” I shrug. He sighs and introduces me to a few other people from the theater department. We approach the bar. Lawrence was right—the bored bartender doesn’t think twice before filling two glasses of red wine.

“Will you . . . um . . . Jeffrey . . .” Lawrence struggles for words as he takes the glasses from the bartender. It’s a moment before I understand what he’s asking. What he doesn’t want to say.

“You want to know what Jeffrey is wishing for?” I ask, forgetting the bartender can hear me. He gives both Lawrence and me strange looks. I respond by sipping my wine, but cringe at the taste. We turn our backs to the bar and look at Jeffrey, who has wandered into the main hallway.

Focus, Juliet. I study him, wait for him to glance this way. It’s easiest to tell wishes if you can see their eyes. . . .

“Never mind,” Lawrence says loudly, stepping in front of me, breaking my line of sight. “I never should have asked anyway, to be honest.”

“Why’s that?”

“It just seems . . . wrong. I’ve had it used on me before. I can’t believe I was going to do it to someone else. To use magic and find out about people I . . .”

“Love?” I say eagerly.

“No.” Lawrence cuts me off quickly. “Not even close. People I’m
interested
in.”

“But it was part of our deal,” I say, a little frantic—how am I supposed to get kissed without Lawrence’s help?

“Relax, I’ll still help you,” he says. “Although really, you could introduce yourself to people. You don’t need me, you know. Just try it.” We stand together for a moment while I think about the possibility of walking around, talking on my own.

What would I talk about? I’ve been to this world plenty of times, but I can count the number of conversations I’ve had with humans on one hand.

“Lawrence?” a voice from behind the bar asks. It’s a boy I don’t recognize, with short hair and blue eyes that seem too bright for his face. Lawrence nods at him.

“Sampson, hey,” he says. I turn away from them. I can do this. I walk toward the other side of the room, arms crossed. First person I see wishing to talk to me, I’ll introduce myself to. It’ll be easy. I turn and look, and a wish seems to grab me. It tugs at me desperately, the longing to talk to me hot behind the boy’s eyes.

Behind Jeffrey’s eyes.

LAWRENCE

Sampson is confident, certain. While everyone else looks at his sculptures with a slightly bewildered expression, he looks thrilled. He talks me through how he creates them, and by the time I turn around I’ve lost track of Juliet. This place has so many walls that unless she’s standing in the main hallway, I won’t be able to see her. I notice Jeffrey has disappeared as well.

“Are you okay?” Sampson asks. “You’re not looking for a way to run out of here, are you? Because that’s occasionally the reaction to my long explanations about sculpting.”

I laugh. “No, not at all. I was just looking for my friend. The girl I came in with?”

“Pretty, dark-haired girl?”

“That’s her.” I nod. “Let me go make sure she’s not getting into trouble. . . .” Sampson nods and claps me on the back as I walk away, back to the room with the dog sculpture.

JULIET

“Did you lose Lawrence?” Jeffrey says, glancing at his hands like I make him nervous.

“No, he was talking to someone else,” I answer. Now that I’ve seen one wish, it’s impossible not to see dozens of them flooding out of Jeffrey. He likes me. He wants to hold my hand. He wants to see what kind of music I listen to and know if I saw the play he was in.

“Oh. Hey—have you been in this room yet?” he asks, pointing toward another gallery room. There are paintings in there, mostly portraits of the sculptures that are to the front, but the room is darkened so that the lights on the paintings shine bright in comparison. I shake my head.

Lawrence wants Jeffrey. I know this.

Jeffrey wants me.

I want to be kissed. I want to break the spell. The spell that makes jinn different than humans, the spell that keeps us from understanding love. I want it gone.