Chapter 22
Entering the Underworld was akin to being shoved into ice-cold water, head pressed down, for just long enough that you think you might drown. My bones froze, skin throbbing, the lack of air insufferable. I could barely feel Zain, though clung to him anyway. Unable to open my eyes, I gasped for air.
And then we were released and thrown to the ground.
Quite literally—we fell through the portal out onto the other side.
The force of it sent us flying. I landed on top of Zain, and we were a mess of limbs.
With our chests together, my heart hammered out of my body.
I avoided looking into his eyes. Zain quickly got up, collecting me in the process.
He held me up like I weighed nothing, and I leaned against him for support while I caught my breath.
It took a while before feeling returned to my body, and when it did, I faintly felt Zain rubbing my back in soothing circles, gently in the areas that were already messed up from yesterday, like he somehow knew the pain lingered.
“The first time is always the worst,” he said, bent over so his lips were close to my ear. His breath was warm against my neck.
“You don’t say,” I grumbled.
He laughed softly, straightening. We stood in an alleyway again, but this one was different from where we’d begun.
For one, it was dark, the sky a dim gray.
The walls on either side of us were brown, worn, and crumbling.
The only thing here was the door we had entered from.
Like before, it was unassuming and weathered.
On the wall across from us were words carved in a script I didn’t immediately recognize.
Despite this, though, the meaning was clear.
“Fire to Earth,” I read aloud.
“You can read that?”
I shrugged. “I guess so. Can you?”
“Yes, but only because we’re taught the jinn language in training. Maybe Rabiya knew for some reason?”
“Maybe,” I said quietly.
He frowned, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“We should go,” he said, leading the way toward one end of the alley.
He stopped right before it led onto another road, distracted by a motorbike that was chained to a lamppost. He paused for a moment before he reached over and in one swift move crushed the chain attaching it to the post with his bare hand.
The remaining metal cascaded and clanged to the ground.
I gaped as I was reminded of his strength.
It was eerily quiet, like there was no one here but me and Zain.
“What are you doing?” I hissed, surveying the area. Though it was deserted, stealing a vehicle seemed risky. I knew little about jinn, but the ones I had seen arrived out of nowhere, silent and stealthy. I thought we’d be keeping a low profile here, not asking for trouble.
“How do you think we’re getting to the seer?
” he asked, stepping over and onto the bike.
“I’ll return it on the way back, maybe. It’s fine.
” I stood next to it, gazing from Zain to the bike.
Suddenly, this all felt like a terrible idea.
Entering a portal to another plane? Fine.
But getting on a stolen motorbike, especially without a helmet, apparently crossed a line for me.
“You can’t fly us there?” I hissed.
“Angels can’t just fly around the Underworld. We need to go undetected. And anyway, judging by how your body reacted to the portal, I seriously don’t think you could handle me flying us there at the speed we’d need to go to stay undetected. We’d need to be much quicker than we were at Red Rocks.”
Despite everything, I couldn’t help but narrow my eyes at him. I resented the way my body was considered weak and fragile just because I was human. “I was fine, it was just cold.”
“Cold?” Zain queried, frowning. “You should have felt—”
But he was interrupted by a voice shouting from the other end of the alley. I didn’t know what the woman was saying, but I knew it wasn’t friendly. Zain reached his hand out, and I took it, flinging myself onto the back of the motorbike.
“Hold on to me,” Zain said, and I obeyed immediately. He grabbed something out of his pocket and fiddled with it at the front of the motorbike. The bike roared to life as the hissing voice drew closer. We flew out of the alleyway, Zain making a sharp right.
We entered a long dirt road, the shadow of mountains looming large in the distance.
The area was mostly deserted as we rode farther out, with sparse trees on either side of the road.
Zain accelerated, and we shot out, dust shooting up around us.
I wrapped my arms tighter around his waist. The jinn’s yelling was no longer audible, so I let myself believe we had escaped her.
Zain wove through the streets, turning left and then winding up another dirt road that led upward to the mountains.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I had never been on a motorbike before, and being so exposed while we climbed the steep road made me think of the many ways we could die.
“Breathe!” Zain shouted.
I hadn’t realized it was so obvious that I was holding my breath. I let it out before sucking new air into my lungs and holding it again.
I was suddenly very thankful I’d worn jeans today, rather than my usual skirt.
It took another ten minutes for us to reach the peak. Once we did, a village lay before us. It reminded me of the ones I had seen in old photographs of my grandparents, from my dad’s side, in Iran.
I wasn’t expecting jinn to have ordinary jobs. There were street vendors selling fried corn and roasted nuts. Those scents filled the air now, whereas before all I could smell was gas from the old motorbike. The vendors seemed normal, human, but I’d been tricked before.
The homes here were built into the mountains, the exteriors smooth and tan, the small different-colored doors and window-like gaps the only indication that people lived there.
“What is this place?”
“Ghadimi Kaufa. ‘Old Mountain.’ One of the oldest villages in the Underworld. The jinn here lead regular lives, or at least as regular as they can be for jinn. That’s why they’ve chosen to be so secluded up here.
I would never take you to some of the other territories in the Underworld. ” He shuddered at the thought.
We stopped outside a house with a worn teal door.
“Follow my lead,” Zain said, eyes boring down into mine, like that might make his message permanently stick.
I stayed close to him as he knocked twice on the door. It was completely silent for about a minute. I assumed no one was inside, but then the door opened just a crack.
The voice said something in Farsi that I didn’t understand.
“It’s me, Zain,” Zain said, and then I think he said in Farsi you’re expecting me.
The door opened wide to reveal a tall man with olive skin, long dark hair, a mustache, and round brown eyes.
He was wearing navy trousers, a loose shimmering silver shirt with its buttons open at the top, revealing dark unruly chest hair and a silver chain.
Upon seeing us, his eyes seemed to widen even more, if that was possible, in something akin to delight.
The door opened fully, and he clasped his hands together.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” His Iranian accent was thick as he spoke in English.
He assessed me up and down and I pretended not to notice, gazing over his shoulder at a painting hung on the wall behind him.
I could barely make it out but found returning the jinn’s gaze disconcerting.
“Well, I don’t know why I’m asking. I know exactly why you’ve come,” he said to Zain before pointing to me.
“But whether this one would be joining you was a bit more of an unknown. Let me introduce myself. I’m Jamshid.
” He jumped to the side to let us through, waving his hand in the air theatrically to indicate that we should enter.
The inside of the home was lavishly furnished—a stark contrast to the outside, which appeared dilapidated.
I had imagined very limited furniture inside, but the space was large, with high ceilings and chandeliers that twinkled.
The living room that we were now in contained a large plush floral-patterned Persian rug with cream, brown, and turquoise threads, and all the other decorations in the room were a nod to these colors.
The kitchen was in a corner of the room, the dark wood cabinets intricately carved with flowers and leaves.
“Sit,” Jamshid said, leading us to the far corner of the room, where there were two sofa cushions on the floor, both adjacent to the wall. “Would you like some tea?”
“We’re okay,” Zain said.
“Can the girl not speak for herself?” Jamshid’s bright eyes bored into mine now. “You’ve not told me your name.”
“Roxana,” I said. “And erm, no, I’m okay, thank you, though.”
“You’re not playing a game of tarof with me, are you?
” Jamshid said before letting out a raucous laugh.
“I lived a lot of my life in Iran, so I know our people’s culture well.
I’ll bring some in anyway, in case you change your mind.
” He quickly moved to the other end of the room, and I heard the pouring of liquid, though his back was blocking whatever he was doing in the kitchen.
“The tea has magical properties,” Zain whispered.
“What kind of magical properties?” I choked back, speaking as quietly as I could.
“One time I took him up on it, and it was an honesty potion. He learned too much about things he shouldn’t know.
” He shook his head, cheeks pink, like he was embarrassed by whatever he had revealed.
I rarely saw Zain embarrassed and wanted to press him, to find out more.
Before I could question him on it, though, Jamshid returned with a gold tray.
Atop it were a teapot and three small clear glasses, the handles also gold.
He even provided a little pot of sugar cubes.
It was like I was visiting an Iranian relative and not the big, bad Underworld I had been warned about.