Jai sighed, looking uncomfortable again. He couldn’t meet her gaze. Great. “Before… when I was teaching you, the Red King ordered me not to tell you everything there was to know about magic. In case you decided not to use it. We needed you to use it. Your dad needed you to use it.”
Her pulse throbbed. “Consequences? What consequences, Jai?”
“When you made it rain… you caused a drought somewhere else.”
Ari’s jaw dropped. “Okay. What are you talking about?”
“Jinn magic — like everything about us — has a balance. The only magic truly our own is that which helps us defend ourselves or aids others in their destiny. We can create enchantments to protect ourselves and others. The peripatos is a part of us, as are flying and telepathy. Granting wishes, and creating paths for life journeys is something that’s also natural to marids, shaitans, and even some ifrits. And as you know, ifrits have something individual within their magic that makes them special. It’s all the genetic make-up stuff, so it’s free. It’s who we are. The other stuff — well, charms and talismans can power it; that’s why sorcerers use them.”
“The other stuff?” Ari asked between clenched teeth, suddenly hating where this was going.
“The unnecessary stuff — food, clothes, money — it all comes from somewhere else. It already exists, it doesn’t just appear out of thin air. It was in someone’s wallet or it was in a store…”
Ari’s eyes widened. “The leather jacket I conjured? I basically stole it from the store?”
Clearly ignoring the rising annoyance in her tone, Jai nodded calmly. “Yeah.”
Her mind whirled with the news. She’d stolen something! She glared at him. “What about everything you conjure?”
“I own what I conjure…. Mostly. Clean clothes come from my wardrobe. Money from my bank account. But stupid things like pineapple juice for the Aissawa Brotherhood… well, that came from somewhere else.”
“Where else?”
“Someone’s fridge, probably. A neighbor’s. It usually comes from somewhere as close as possible in location.”
“Essentially, you stole it then,” Ari snapped.
He shrugged at her again, and she wanted to throw something at him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” An ugly knot formed in her gut. Not Jai. He might not return her feelings, but she at least thought she could count on him. “You had me believing that the cool magic trick part of this nightmare was a little bright spot in a very crappy and dark situation.”
“Your uncle commanded me not to, Ari. I told you, he knew you wouldn’t use your magic if you thought it was unethical and he needed you to in order to trigger your heritage as the seal.”
“But couldn’t you have told me and I would have just conjured stuff I already owned?”
He shook his head at her impatiently. “You needed to stretch your magical muscles and do things that required an almost full scope of power.”
She experienced a heavy dose of bitterness and felt the emotion bleed into her words. “You should have told me. I thought you were my friend.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, she saw his eyes flash with an unnamed emotion before he quickly blinked, vivid but flat, green eyes staring back at her once again. “An assignment from the Red King is a huge deal. I didn’t want to mess it up.”
“You gave me that book when you weren’t supposed to,” she argued.
“That was different. That was to educate you about important things you really needed to know.”
“This is important! I needed to know this.”
“All I can say is I’m sorry. I had to follow those orders.”
He did sound sorry, but Ari was too mad to care. “Good to know where your priorities lie.”
“Ari, come on—”
“What else are you hiding from me?” she cut him off. Before he could answer, she heard her father’s heavy footsteps pounding down the stairs. Ari shot off the couch in surprise and turned around to see him storming across the hall. He grabbed up his car keys. He looked like hell.
“Dad?” She rushed toward him, blood whooshing in her ears.
“I need to get out,” he muttered without looking at her, not even aware of Jai’s presence.
“No, Dad, we need to talk.”
“Not now, Ari.” And before she could say another word, he was outside. The door slammed shut behind him. Utter shock and pent up fury held her immobilized for a second as she listened to his car door open and shut and the engine flare to life. That familiar growl finally knocked her out of her daze and she spun around to glare at Jai, who didn’t have time to mask his soft, sympathetic expression. “No.” She shook her head, her teeth grinding together. She was done with this dance of avoidance between her and her dad. “I don’t think so.” She thought of her car keys and the metal dropped heavily into her open palm.