I’m sliding my mother’s ring to the end of my finger when I catch the splash of red out of the corner of my eye. The diary. For anyone tracking my magical energy, they’d see it activated all night for official Jinn business. If I don’t do this now, I may not get another chance. At least not anytime soon.
I push the talisman back down and open the diary to the page bookmarked with the pen. Confident in my use of spells by now, I recite the “Make the Seen Unseen” spell. Nothing. I work through it three times without a single blot of ink appearing. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the writing isn’t concealed by magic or maybe this is the wrong spell to reveal it.
Or maybe I’m an idiot. This makes the seen unseen. I need to do the opposite. I read the spell again. Though it’s a mishmash of ancient languages, like all the spells I’ve used tonight, its roots are in Latin. Which is why my mother insisted I start taking the dead-for-a-good-reason language in junior high. Yet another part of my life dictated by becoming Jinn.
Wonder what she’d say if she knew how I was about to employ all I’ve learned.
Calling on my memory of the Latin words I can ferret out, I sub in ones that seem more appropriate for making the unseen seen. I rearrange some of the other ones I don’t know and recite the spell one more time.
Ink spreads across the open pages of the diary. I lift the small, red leather book from the pillow where it was perched and gently turn pages. In blue ink, in black ink, in the occasional green, words written in my mother’s elegant handwriting fill three-quarters of the journal.
It’s only now that the words are able to be read that I consider whether they should be read. This ranks as a pretty serious invasion of my mother’s privacy. I’d be furious with her if she did this to me.
Maybe just a peek to see where she left off. Considering I was fine with eavesdropping, how different is this, really?
I lay the diary in front of me and open to the last page with writing. As I skim through the entry under today’s date, my pangs of guilt recede. I know all this already. She’s simply reflecting on having told me the truth about the Afrit. When I hit the emotional stuff where she blames herself for not telling me sooner, it seems the too-personal line is being crossed. I avert my eyes and go back a few pages.
An entry from the day before the Zar initiation seems to be the first one in a long time.
Dear Diary,
Years have passed since the last time I wrote those words. As my pen touches this page, I realize the hole not keeping up with you has left in my life. Especially now. Now that my Zar has been broken. They’ve taken Raina.
We don’t know why. We can only assume it has to do with her increased involvement in the uprising. But how was she discovered? Sam insists this is proof of why we need to act now. Doesn’t she realize it’s proof of nothing but the opposite? Yes, the Afrit need to be overthrown. The revolt is a worthy cause, and I want my family to be whole again. But at what cost? Should Azra and Laila lose us the way Yasmin lost Raina? They’ll never see each other again. I cannot do that. Not to Azra and not to myself. I cannot lose anyone else.
But I need to tell Azra the truth. Sam was right about that. She needs to know what’s at stake. I thought not telling her would protect her, but she’s going to get herself into trouble even if she doesn’t intend to. She’s got too much of her father in her.
My father. I scan the rest of the entry, but there’s not another mention of him. There’s also nothing else about whatever this revolt … this uprising … against the Afrit’s all about. Would an uprising stand a chance? And would it really mean my family would be whole again?
All of a sudden it’s like a five-year-old has grabbed both sides of my Jinn world and is shaking it like a snow globe.
As much as I want the Afrit ousted from power, my mother’s right about what we all have to lose. The question is how it compares to what we have to gain.
I start leafing through the diary, scanning entries, until I find one that appears to be the longest one in the book. I check the date. It’s from a few months before I was born.
Dear Diary,
I need to write this down. I need it here in case something happens to me. I’m too afraid to put it in the cantamen. But my words should be safe here, hidden until this little one growing inside me is old enough to both read them and discover how to read them. I need her to know this history so she’ll understand. And it is a she. I know it’s a girl. Xavier wants to name her “Azra,” after my mother. We’re certainly not choosing a name from his family. We don’t want her to have anything to do with them.
Xavier. I fly off the bed and yank out the bottom drawer of my mother’s jewelry box. I dump the contents onto the dresser. The photographs land facedown. There it is: the “K+X” written in the bottom corner of the later one. “K” for “Kalyssa” and “X” for “Xavier.”
I flip the photos over and search for a resemblance in each of the two faces before me: the face of the boy in the tux, arm wrapped around my mother in her prom dress, and the face of the man whose cheek my mother’s lips are attached to. My olive skin, my long, dark hair, my slightly turned-up nose all come from my mother. I push out my chin. It has a delicate heart shape. I move it from side to side, finding the light. Is that his? I pucker my lips. What about them? Are they his?
I touch the photograph. It’s not my chin, it’s not my lips, it’s not anything I can put a name to, but it’s something. This is my father. My father.
My head spins. This simple fact changes everything. This fact cancels out the fiction I’ve written of my mother’s life. Of my life. My mother loved my father. My heart breaks imagining what it must have felt like to be torn apart.