Chapter 9
“Angels?” I repeated back to Zain. “Like, with wings?”
Zain’s once-narrowed eyes were now blazing. “You don’t believe me?” The fact that he asked this, when moments before he was toying with me while he spoke about vampires, was not lost on me. So I decided to play his game.
“I mean, if I told you I was a fairy, would you believe me?”
“Maybe.” His eyes widened, twinkling; then his features grew serious. “Show me your ears.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I didn’t say it was, Roxana.” Hearing my name on his lips did something strange to the pit of my stomach.
“You’re really being serious? You’re saying you’re an…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Angel,” he finished for me.
“Okay, well, this is…” Ridiculous? A prank?
Or something else: Real? Why was it so much easier to believe he was a jinn than an angel?
I let out a small yet mighty sigh. This was not a question I thought I would be asking myself a week ago.
“Say I believe you,” I began, moving my hands onto the table, spreading my fingers out on the top.
“Yes?” Zain encouraged, his mood changing, his lips quirked up. He reached over for his drink and took a long sip. Realizing I hadn’t touched mine, I did so, too. Sweet and milky. I smacked my lips before continuing.
“Why would an angel go around killing jinn? Aren’t angels meant to be good and pure? Snapping necks doesn’t really scream ‘angel.’ ”
“Well, that all depends on what you think an angel is.”
I paused. “It’s not something I’ve given much thought to, but I definitely didn’t think an angel would be a teenage boy who looked like you.”
Zain smirked. “I don’t look like an angel? My angelic hair doesn’t give me away?” He flashed dizzyingly perfect teeth. “Your idea of angels is warped. It’s not your fault, though. Humans just have no idea.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Well, as a human, enlighten me. What does being an angel even entail?”
“That’s a big question, but in short, we help support the good in the world.”
That didn’t help my understanding, but I nodded anyway. “And jinn are your enemies? And they go after humans, too?”
“Yes, we are opposing forces, though we recognize there has to be a balance of good and evil in the world. One can’t exist without the other, but as with most things, there are rebels or stragglers who intervene beyond what is allowed.
Those jinn might bother humans in an obvious, physically harmful way, but that’s rare.
You have nothing to really worry about.”
“That’s not reassuring. I hope you know that.”
Zain barked out a laugh. “I mean, I’ve never had to explain it to a human before. The world that you’ve been ignorant about is too complex to sum up.” He took another sip of his drink. He seemed too relaxed as he said all this, almost relieved, which convinced me that he was telling the truth.
“So what’s the real story behind jinn?”
“They’re supernatural beings brought into creation by Shaitan to bring evil and sadness to the world. They influence humans to do bad things. Some look like they are on the inside—like the jinn you saw—and others look human.” Strangely, that some appeared human was more the frightening information.
“How exactly do they influence people?”
“From what I’ve learned, there are lower-level jinn who have the basic powers of strength and persuasion.
Upper-level jinn have one key power that they harness—it could be the ability to fly, to move objects without touching them, things like that.
I’ve heard some can have multiple, but I have yet to encounter any who do. ”
I couldn’t help but wonder if my sleep paralysis demon was somehow linked to all this. Could the dark figure haunting me be a jinn?
I opened my mouth to speak, when my phone vibrated in my bag. Retrieving it, I saw, unsurprisingly, that my dad was calling. I let it ring.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Zain asked.
I shook my head when the call ended and said, “It’s my dad,” like that was a sufficient explanation.
He nodded as if he understood, though. “You and him aren’t close?”
“He…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to talk about this with Zain, not after everything he had just told me. “He’s a difficult man. But that doesn’t matter.”
Zain’s brow furrowed, and he gestured for me to continue, like he cared about what I had to say, more than most of the people close to me.
I wasn’t sure if that was true, but that was how it felt.
My sister, my dad, my brother, even Nic, to an extent, didn’t hear me—they often heard what they wanted to hear.
My neck warmed from the attention, and I took another sip of my overly sweet coffee.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I finally said when it was apparent he was going to stay quiet, like a TV detective using silence to make a witness talk.
“Looking at you like what?” he said.
I let out a noise of frustration. “It doesn’t matter.”
“So you don’t get along with your dad. Is it because you moved here for his job?”
I sighed, figuring it’d be best to answer his questions so we could get back to mine faster. “No. We argued about my mum. She died four years ago. In a car accident. It’s a long story.” I spoke with a forced light tone and kept my gaze on my drink before taking another long sip.
He rested his elbows on the table. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to say sorry.” I understood yet hated it when people said sorry; the word was often uttered quickly and awkwardly.
Zain nodded like he had heard my thoughts. “I get it. My mom’s dead, too. She died when I was really young, though.”
“Oh,” I said, not quite expecting that. “That really sucks.”
He shrugged.
“So you live with your dad, too? I didn’t think angels had parents. Like, other than God being their parent.” As the words left my mouth, I wondered if that was the right thing to say. The issue here was that there was no right thing because this was not a conversation most people had.
“No, I don’t,” Zain said quickly, moving the conversation along. “Angels are born like normal people, with parents, and at least one of them has to be an angel for you to be one. It gets passed down through generations, but not everyone gets powers. You find out when you come of age at sixteen.”
Before I could inquire about said powers, our waitress interrupted, asking us if everything was okay. She was in her twenties with red hair and had tattoos up her left arm. We muttered that the drinks were great and were met with a half-hearted “I’m so glad to hear that” before she left.
“Cleo told me you went to school together and you were on the football team. How does that work with being an angel?” I asked.
“We live regular lives, to an extent. With our powers come responsibilities. And there are training camps we go to during school holidays to learn to harness our powers and strength. We have to live normal lives so we don’t raise suspicion.”
I had a million questions, but for some reason the one that rose to the top was “And what are your plans after summer?”
“I got accepted to University of Colorado–Boulder to major in political science, but I’m not sure if I’m going to go.”
“Why not?”
He sighed, like this conversation was more difficult than telling me he was an angel.
“I live with my aunt, who wants me to go to college, to live a normal life and get a good job. She’s my mom’s sister, and my mom was an angel—my aunt isn’t.
Meanwhile, my mentor, Castiel, seems to think having too many distractions is a bad thing.
He and my aunt are always arguing about what’s best for me, but my aunt’s currently in Iran, so Castiel is looking after me, and he’s pretty persuasive. ”
“Well, what do you want?”
His lips curled up so slightly I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it. “What I want doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” I said, before realizing I was being hypocritical.
I was doing law in the fall because it was what my dad wanted, and I’d put London as my first choice because it was what Nic wanted.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I knew it wasn’t any of those things.
Zain and I were not so different, it seemed.
“I want…to see the world. Take a year off. Travel. But now isn’t really the time for that. Maybe when I’m older. Or maybe never, and that’s fine because I’m here for a reason.” He spoke like he was regurgitating something someone had said to him.
My phone pinged with new texts from my dad. The sigh that escaped my lips was louder than I intended. Zain’s gaze followed mine to the device face down on the table.
“I left without telling my dad, so he’s going to be pissed,” I explained.
Zain’s phone rang then, and he gazed at it like he was debating whether he should answer.
“You can take it,” I offered.
He shook his head and silenced his phone. “It’s okay, but we probably should go.” He signaled the waitress for the bill, and before I could offer to pay, he put some money down, insisting that it was on him.
We walked in silence after leaving the coffee shop. Everything he’d said suddenly sank in, and my mind was trying to process it all.
As we made our way back to the diner, I asked, “If what you’re saying is true, why did you tell me about it? Surely you being an angel and jinn existing are things that are meant to be kept secret?”
“Honestly?” Zain asked. “I’m tired of hiding who I am. And…” He trailed off, his expression contemplative. “There’s something about you that I trust, even though I barely know you. Is that weird?”
“No. I know what you mean.” And it was true; there was something about him that was familiar, beyond the dreams. It was like we knew each other.
“And anyway, if you do tell people, there are beings that can erase memories,” he said, his voice cool. “Yours and whoever you tell, so…”
“What?”
“Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
I had no idea if he was being serious, and I had no intention of finding out.
“How can I know if you’re telling the truth?” I asked. “About being an angel.” For all I knew, he could be one of the jinn disguised as a human.
We were now right outside Cory’s. I overheard English tourists standing nearby, perusing the menu. Their accents made me feel warm, like I wasn’t so far away from home after all.
“I can show you,” Zain said. “Have you been to Red Rocks?”
Before we moved, when I was researching fun things to do in Denver, Red Rocks came up.
The open-air amphitheater was set among mountainous red rocks and looked like part of a movie set.
Boygenius was playing there this summer, and I sent the info to Nic, who replied almost immediately with “DAMN YOU HAVE TO GO!” They were one of our favorite bands.
I hadn’t gotten a ticket, though, figuring Dad wouldn’t let me go alone.
“No,” I finally said in answer to his question.
“Do you want to go?” he asked.
“When?”
“Next Saturday?” A week away.
I was only doing a half shift that day. “Yeah, that would be cool.”
“It’s a date,” he said, probably not realizing how long I would turn over those words when trying to fall asleep.
We exchanged phones to input our numbers. He wrote his full name in my contact list: Zain Hashemi. I made a mental note to look him up online later.
“My car is parked right here.” He pointed to a row of cars. “Do you want a ride?”
If my dad saw a guy dropping me off, he’d have a conniption. I shook my head. “That’s okay. I don’t live far.”
“You sure? It’s not a problem.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Honestly, I’d like the walk.”
“All right. Get home safe, Roxana.”
“Bye, Zain.”