The Genius of Jinn (2 page)

“Angels, nice call, Farrah,” Mina says, tousling her best friend’s hair. Though Farrah can recite the liner notes of every boy band’s latest album and tell you where and when everyone from the Beatles to Wham! played their farewell concert, scholarly studies that don’t come with a musical note are not her strong suit.

I nab my backpack and try to blend into the alcove. As I begin to read, my hand reaches for the pendant around my neck. The cursive
A
engraved on the front stands for the first letter of the name I share with my grandmother on my mother’s side. Another family member I’ve never met. The necklace used to belong to her. Maybe that’s why it’s always calmed me. I’ve worn it nearly every day of my life; I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t looped around my neck.

I return to my book, ready to quietly thumb through an adventure on the high seas. I’m deciding whether to slip on my scuba gear or stay on the boat when muffled voices float out from under the bathroom door.

“Shh!” Yasmin cries. “They’ll hear you!”

What? Is she talking to me?

A second voice, muffled by the closed bathroom door, says something I can’t make out. I wasn’t yet that engrossed in my adventure, but still I lift my head to check on my other Zar sisters, confirming that none of them made it by me unnoticed; they’re all sitting on the floor by the bed, just as I thought. So who could Yasmin be talking to? I lean against the door, straining to catch a word.

But before I can, the door opens and I’m falling onto the tile floor. Right next to Yasmin’s tapping bronze ballet flat.

“Well, well, well, look who’s turned into a little spy.” Yasmin wraps her hand around my forearm and the gems on her three stacked bracelets dig into my skin as she drags me into the bathroom and closes the door.

“Now what?” Yasmin says.

But not to me.

Towering above me next to Yasmin is a statuesque figure in a long, sapphire-blue cloak with gold embroidery lining the edges. I survey the rest of her: bronze skin deeper than from the sun, ash-brown hair trailing down her back in luscious waves, eyelashes as long as whiskers surrounding a pair of gold eyes.

Gold eyes like those of all our mothers. Gold eyes like those of fully matured Jinn. Gold eyes like the ones that will replace my own hazel ones in three years.

“But you’re a Jinn,” I say, clutching the knob on the vanity to help pull me to my feet.

Yasmin grunts. “As are you, Azra. So much for all that genius they’re talking about out there.”

Heat rises to my cheeks. It’s not like Yasmin hasn’t said similar, or worse, things before, but this time … in front of this stranger … this Jinn stranger … the flush stems not from embarrassment but from anger.

“What I mean is…” I clench my fists, but words escape me. Because what exactly do I mean? We don’t see Jinn outside our circle of Zar sisters. Our mothers occasionally interact with or attend gatherings of multiple Zars, but even that’s rare, especially recently.

So how is Yasmin here, hiding out with a Jinn outside our circle? Maybe the better question is why?

The Jinn’s high cheekbones flirt with her temples as she forms a smile with her heart-shaped lips. “Pleased to meet you, Azra,” she says with an accent I can’t quite place.

“Who are you…” I start. “Where did you come from?”

She pushes the round, gold toggle through the loop at the neckline of her cloak. “I am Tayma. As for your second question…”

She reaches for my hand and then … my insides whirl like fruit in a smoothie blender. My stomach plummets all the way to my heels, which are perched on either side of a funky-shaped toilet.

But not the toilet in Farrah’s bathroom. The Jinn—Tayma—who’s standing in front of me with her other hand still in Yasmin’s, has just apported us.

She teleported us from one bathroom to another? Seriously? Intentionally? Perhaps she’s a distant relative of Farrah and Lalla Isa’s. Lack of magical talent tends to run in families.

Yasmin shakes off Tayma’s hand and pushes open the stall door. “You didn’t just do that.”

Tayma unbuttons her cloak. “Do what?”

“Bring her.”

“Yasmin, she is your sister.”

“But this was my idea, and—”

Tayma shrugs off her cloak and uses her magic to catch the silken fabric before it drops to the dirty bathroom floor.

I follow them out into the larger antechamber, a mix of quaint—the checkerboard black-and-white tile on the wall—and dingy—the ancient yellowed and chipped sink.

“Bring her where?” I say, looking around. Nothing, not the toilet flusher, the soap dispenser, or the hand dryer, is automatic. And then it clicks. Tayma’s accent, the black-and-white tile, the funny-shaped toilet. I know where we are.

Paris.

Home to the best ice cream shop in the world, or so my mother promises. She’s apped me here at least half a dozen times.

Well, not here, here.

Dingy bathrooms aren’t exactly my mother’s apporting style.

“Welcome to my home, Azra,” Tayma says. She conjures a Kermit-the-frog-green leather tote bag, into which she settles her folded cloak.

“You live here?” I say.

“
Ma chérie,
not here in
la toilette,
” Tayma says, hooking her arm through mine and guiding me out of the women’s room. “But,
oui.
I live here in the most beautiful city in the world.”

She magically swings open the door, and before us is a sight that, even though I’ve seen it before, defies the ability of my eyes to take it all in and my brain to believe it’s real and not something out of a fairy tale or Camelot.

Those two medieval towers on either side that stretch to the sky. That perfect row of vibrant stained-glass windows shining in the sun like kaleidoscopes. The symmetrical pointed arches in which live doorways fit for giants. And of course, the posse of gargoyles that guard it all. The statues keep watch as we venture closer to the cathedral of Notre-Dame.

“A masterpiece, no?” Tayma says. “More than seven hundred years old. Must have been one talented Jinn to help get this built,
oui?
”

Questions whiz around my mind of what we’re doing here and how Yasmin and Tayma know one another and why I was brought along, but Tayma doesn’t leave me an opening to ask any of them. Still latched onto my arm, she sways her hips, gently bumping into mine, guiding me down the path toward the cathedral.

Mere minutes ago, I was in Farrah’s bathroom, and now, here I am, strolling down the Île de la Cité with the sun warming my face, surrounded by the energy of tourists and Parisians alike, listening to Tayma recite the history of this Gothic cathedral. The only question that matters is how long before Yasmin ruins it.

“We don’t have time for a history lesson, Tayma.” Yasmin blows past and whirls around directly in front of us.

The answer to my question is approximately one minute, thirty seconds.

Sharp as fangs, Yasmin’s tone doesn’t invite contradiction. Or even conversation.

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 angri
er,
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.”