“I'm so overwhelmed, Dim,” she says, and I can tell she wants to cry but won't. “My uncle, he has me helping him on a … project. Sometimes, I just hate it. I really hate it. But he's the reason I chose this degree. To help him out. So I keep plugging away.”
She goes quiet. I don't want her to stop, not now. If she stops talking, she'll start thinking and remember all the ways I screwed up.
I find my voice. “What project?”
She rolls her eyes, but there's such exasperation on her face, I think she might not answer just because of the effort. “My uncle, he focuses on the religion, science, and culture of pre-Islam Arabia.”
“I thought Aphrodite and Dionysus were Greek myths.”
She chuckles, but she seems bitter. “Yeah, they are. I had to study different myths to get my degree, and the Greek and Roman ones were the most popular. But my uncle and I, we're mostly interested in Arabian tales.”
“So he's doing what?” I try to follow what she's telling me, but I'm not sure what she's getting at. “Is he writing a thesis or something?”
She laughs again, but her mood is darkening. “He believes … Well, he has some strong theories and—” She hesitates. “ —evidence that it's possible … ”
“That what's possible, Syd?”
Her words are kind of strangled, like she's wrestling each one and forcing them out of her mouth: “Well, you know that multimillionaire who lives out the desert? Karl Walker?”
My brain halts.
Syd continues. “He thinks … that Karl has, uh, a jinn.”
The world tips.
“A what?”
“Well, in modern day, a … ” She cringes. “He thinks Karl Walker is keeping a genie.”
Whatever brain power I had dissipates. “Why—Why would he think that?”
This is one of those times I switch to auto pilot, because my mind is fixated on a single thought:
How the hell does Syd's uncle know about me?
“He has a lot of reasons. Just a look at the Walker family history would show you they seem to have a lot of good luck.”
I swallow hard. “So what did you say your uncle's name is again?”
“Larry.” She frowns. “Look, I know it sounds … dumb. I never tell anyone. But it's there, Dim. Karl has something up his sleeve, and we really think it's a jinn.”
I think I might pass out.
Who the fuck is this Larry?
“Hey, I meant to change clothes,” I say, distant. “I'll be right back, okay? Help yourself to the fridge.”
I hurry across the room and down the hallway to my bedroom. I shut the door behind me without flipping on the light and set to work pawing through any documents I have saved from the manila envelopes as of late.
I have no idea how this all fits together, but Phil lectured on Pre-Islam Arabia. If I'm right that the back-to-back wishes are related, then Larry might tie into the fraudulent claims against Doctor Patricia Kerr and her association with Phil Ballantyne.
For my whole life, I had thought I didn't exist.
Come to find out, people have been looking for me.
I stop myself from exiting the room before swapping clothes, then try to act like my entire universe didn't just become reorganized. I take a seat in the chair across from the couch. Syd seems to be in deep thought. Probably about the jinn.
Syd had been lying naked across my lap that day on the bed, watching Aladdin and going off on a tangent about the evolution of the jinn folklore. My skin pricks with goosebumps. Neither of us had realized she had been talking about me.
I'm not allowed to tell her the truth. I also refuse to lie to her. This situation just became more complicated.
I try to sound properly intrigued, but not panicked. “So, what do you guys know about this … jinn?”
Syd props her head on her hand, her elbow on the arm of the couch. “Some things, but not a lot. We know he's bonded to a master.”
“Sucks to be him,” I say, keeping the ball in her court.
“Yeah.” She has a weird sort of smile. “There's not much the jinn can do about his situation. As a sort of fail switch, the master bond keeps the jinn … alive.”
I sit forward. This is news to me.
“The what—How?”
Syd's tone is like we're talking about the lineage of racehorses and not my hypothetical death. “Well, simply put, if the master dies and there's no one to take over the bond, then the jinn dies.”
The hum whirrs right along with my thoughts.
How is this connection possible? How the hell is any of this possible?
First, I'm not even the same species I had, foolishly, thought I was. Now, I'm magically linked to the heartbeat of the Walker next-of-kin. Essentially, if Karl and Silvia died at the same time, so would I. Maybe it's for the best Silvia refuses to fly anywhere.
Syd continues. “The story of Solomon says he bonded with some jinn and used them to build his temple. I've always wondered how the jinn felt about that. I mean, if you read back through the literature, the jinn were not demons. They were just … different … than us. Some good, some bad.