“Then we watched over you even after you decided to leave us,” she said. “During your time away, we made sure you had ample blood and protected both of you from danger.”
That would explain a lot.
So these creatures are some kind of mystic mind readers. How extensive their mental powers were, I couldn’t be sure. But it was clear to me that these tattoos they etched into each of their “serfs” forged a close connection between them and us.
Jeramiah had a tattoo, along with all the other vampires and half-bloods I saw. They too must be servants to the jinn.
“Where is my family?” I demanded once again.
“I told you already, they are here. And they are safe. And they shall remain safe. Because they are under our care now, they, too, are my responsibility.”
“What do you mean exactly by responsibility?”
“I mean we take care of our own.”
“Neither I, River, her family nor any of my people are your own,” I snapped.
Amusement played across her face. “Anyone who seeks out The Oasis becomes our own. Desiring The Oasis means desiring our home, which in turn means desiring us… which means we desire you.”
This woman is insane.
Clearly, she was living in a different reality to me, a reality I needed to understand and learn the rules of if I was to get us all out of this mess.
“I see,” I said, although I saw nothing. I was trying to reel in my temper. “So you consider us your serfs?”
She chuckled. “Yes and no. You are serfs, and yet you are also much more than that to me, my child. You are part of our family.” Before I could stop her, she leaned down and pressed her petal-like lips against my forehead in a tender kiss before drawing away again. “We take pleasure in fulfilling the desires of our loved ones, as you will come to take pleasure in fulfilling ours… You may address me as Mother, if you like.”
This conversation was becoming more absurd by the sentence.
One mother is enough for me, thanks.
“So,” I said, trying to follow her line of logic, “if you see me as your family—indeed, as your son—and you want to make me happy, I’m telling you what would make me very happy. Free River, her family, my family and everyone else you swiped from the desert in the last hour.”
Her smile grew wider, revealing more of her thick pearly-white teeth. “We are wish-fulfillers, my love. But there is also such a thing as deserving before desiring. We are generous to new arrivals, since you are first coming into our fold and getting used to a new way of life. But after that, you must be deserving of the wishes you ask for. Letting loose all those newcomers, that’s a very, very heavy request. Certainly, you are not deserving of it right now, but even if I agreed to grant it to you in advance of your earning it… I’m not certain that you are ready to bear the burden of deserving such a thing.”
So there’s the catch. Twisted creature.
“So tell me,” I said, gritting my teeth, “is there a way I can deserve it?”
She paused, looking me over from head to foot. Then a glint of what appeared to be excitement sparked in her eyes.
“Of course, there’s something you could do. Although it’s never been done before, since before now we’ve not come across anyone who desired so much from us, but if you’re determined… we could form a bond deeper with you than anyone has ever formed with us before. Which would grant you not only freedom of River’s family and those we took from the desert in the last hour, but also an unlimited number of wishes from us.”
I paused. “What exactly does this involve? What would be the difference between this bond you speak of and the hold that you already have over me?” I asked.
“Even with the bond we share now, if you decided that you hated your life here, and you wanted to leave your new family, you could earn freedom. In fact, that is what some vampires here have been working toward for the past few decades—cutting down on the things they desire while here in The Oasis and doing us extra favors… But you… if we went a level deeper with our bond, you would be eternally indebted to us. A soul bound to serve the Nasiri family for life. Although you could ask us for anything else you wanted, and we would fulfil it as long as it was within our powers, you could never ask for freedom, no matter what you did to deserve it.”
My mouth dried out. It was hardly a wonder why nobody had ever entered into such a contract.
Selling myself as a slave to these creatures for the rest of my immortal existence.
There must be some other way.
“Why were we allowed to leave The Oasis before?” I asked. “River and me. Jeramiah allowed us to just leave. Why was that if we supposedly did not deserve it?”
The queen let out a soft chuckle. “But you never truly left, did you?”
The truth dawned on me. Of course, the presence of The Oasis had been with us the whole time. River had even remarked after hearing the echoing in her ears that it had been like we’d never left.
“The reason I let you go,” Nuriya continued, “was because sometimes it takes time for loved ones to realize what is best for them. I wanted you to experience what life was like without us, and realize the richness of the life you could experience here… where anything is possible.”
“That vision I had,” I said quietly, my eyes boring into hers. “Me as an infant. In Aviary. You gave that to me, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “As I’ve been trying to get you to understand, we can help you in ways nobody in the world can. Not even your own flesh and blood.”
I sat down in the chair nearest to me and covered my face in my hands.
My personal problems and the mystery about myself that I’d been so desperate to solve—all of this was the last thing on my mind now.
All I could think about was my family, River and everyone else I’d led here. And the responsibility I had to free them. Their imprisonment here was all my fault. If I hadn’t taken up Jeramiah’s suggestion in Chile to come here to begin with, none of this would’ve happened. I was the one who’d sparked these events, and now I had to do whatever it took to get them out of it.
I’d had more than enough experience of the jinn’s influence over the past weeks to not be foolish enough to believe that any of us could escape without their permission. That there was any other way to set them free than to agree to this jinni’s proposal. She was the one who ran this place and decided who came and left. Heck, she even had Jeramiah under her thumb.
The situation seemed utterly farfetched and downright insane, but the thought of where my family could be right now and what the jinn could possibly be doing to them was eating away at any reason and logic my panic-stricken brain still possessed.
When I looked back up at Nuriya, waiting for my decision, there were only two words on my mind:
“I agree.”
Chapter 13: River
After sitting with my brother for a few more minutes, I needed to go back to Ben. We had to figure out how we were going to escape this place with our families. I moved to the door, but as I touched the handle, it moved and clicked open. I moved back. To my surprise, Ben stepped into the room.
I was instantly struck by his expression. It was strangely calm. More calm than I remembered seeing him for a long time. My heart lifted, wondering if he could have somehow come up with a solution while I’d been in here with Jamil.
“What happened?” I asked, staring at him.
His eyes fixed on mine intensely. “I found a way out,” he said, his voice low and deep.
“What do you mean?”
“I found a way to free us all.”
“How?”
“Just follow me.”
My heart pounding in my chest, I turned around to Jamil, who was staring at Ben with curiosity.
“Jamil, this is my friend Benjamin. You heard him, he’s going to help us get out of here.”
My brother stepped forward to approach, but Ben immediately
shot backward. In my relief to see Ben, I’d forgotten what danger he posed to my brother.
“It’s good to meet you, Jamil,” Ben said from a distance.
“And you too,” Jamil said, looking confused by Ben’s behavior and still completely out of his depth.
I turned back to Ben. “So do you know where my family is? And your family? The witches? Everyone else?”
I could hardly suppress the relief and excitement bubbling up within me. Despite the fact that I still didn’t understand how on earth Ben had managed to pull this off, right now, I didn’t have bandwidth in my buzzing mind to think too much. All I could think about was seeing the rest of my family again, escaping this place, and returning to The Shade with them.
“Come with me,” Ben said. I grabbed hold of Jamil’s hand, and we followed Ben out of the room.
In the corridor outside, to my dismay, a jinni was waiting there for us. Not Nuriya—a male jinni. This man bore much resemblance to the queen herself. He shared the same jet-black curly hair and stiff jawline, and the noble shape of his nose was also much like hers.
Jamil’s eyes looked like they were about to pop from their sockets as he gaped at the creature.
I slid an arm around his waist, worrying that he might even faint from the shock. He must’ve been thinking that he was in some kind of bizarre dream, and perhaps that was best for him. It would help him to get through all this.
The jinni led us further along the corridor, right until the end, when he stopped outside the door. He pushed it open to reveal another bedroom much like the one Jamil and I had just been in, although larger. It contained three single beds lined up along one side of the wall. Huddled together on one of the beds were my mother, Dafne, and Lalia. My sisters had been holding my mother tightly, their heads buried in her arms, as she sat comforting them with a drained, terrified look on her face. But the moment they noticed Jamil and me, their eyes lit up. Even though the jinni was present next to us, the three of them leapt off the bed and rushed toward us.
A huge smile spread across my face as I waited for the penny to drop.
My mother gasped as she clutched Jamil. She was staring up at his face as though she needed glasses, squinting and touching his face.
“Jamil?” she breathed. “Are you okay?”
My heart soared as he replied with perfect pronunciation, “Yes, Mom. I’m okay. I don’t know how, but… I’m feeling better than I ever remember.”
My mother looked from my brother to me, then back to my brother. She cupped his face in her hands, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. She was utterly speechless for several moments before emotions overtook her and she broke down sobbing against his chest.
I picked Lalia up as she flung herself at me. Wrapping her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, she planted slobbery kiss after kiss on my cheek, holding me so tight she was practically strangling me.
Dafne was rooted to the spot, her face pale with shock, staring at me and Jamil as though we were both strangers.
When my mother drew away from Jamil, she was shaking.
“What happened?” she wheezed, moving to me and hugging me as much as she could while Lalia hogged me.
“We don’t have time to explain now, Mom,” I said.
“My God, River. You’re so cold! What’s wrong, honey? Are you ill?”
“I’m okay. I’m not ill. I’ve just… got a lot to tell you. But where’s Grandpa?” I looked around the room again.
“I-I don’t know,” my mother replied. “When I heard you’d gone missing, I brought Jamil to Cairo and stayed with your grandfather, Dafne and Lalia in his house. The day we were brought… here… your grandfather had gone out. It was just the four of us at home. A strange mist filled the place and it seemed to knock us all unconscious. When we woke up, we were in this room. I thought we’d been gassed but—”
“Okay,” I said, hating to interrupt her. As much as I was dying to hear the full story, we had to get a move on. I looked at the jinni. “Was my grandfather brought here too?”
The jinni shook his head.
Thank God. My family and I shared the same look of relief. I wasn’t sure if his elderly heart could have taken the fright. He’d been under enough stress as it was recently.
I nodded toward Ben, who’d remained as far away as possible and was watching our reunion from the doorway.
“This is Ben, my friend,” I said to my mother, deliberately leaving out the fact that he was a vampire as I’d done with Jamil. They’d find out soon enough. “He’s found a way to get us all out of here.”
Here. My mother didn’t even know where here was.
Her, Lalia’s and Dafne’s gazes fell on Ben. His stoic expression broke as he offered them a slight smile. I could see how nervous he felt about being so close to my human family. I had to keep a close eye on him. If he showed even the slightest sign of moving toward us, I’d rush at him and smother him.
“Let’s go to your family now, Ben,” I said.
He nodded.
Still carrying Lalia, who clung to me like a monkey, I took Dafne’s clammy hand, as well as my mother’s. My mother had latched onto Jamil again.
I would never know what this experience had been like for my mother. She’d spent the last nineteen years of her life raising an intensely sick son, fully expecting to continue caring for him until she died. She’d held not even a glimmer of hope that he’d ever live a normal life—or even a life without pain and suffering. A life that most people took for granted. Now, seeing her child changed—normal for the first time, the way she’d wished he always was—it was no wonder she was shaking. She was still in shock, and I expected it to take a long time before the reality fully sank in.
The jinni hovered up ahead of us with Ben, and we followed them out into the corridor and then took a left. My family stared around in wonder as we reentered the grand living room of Nuriya’s apartment. It was empty now, and the male jinni led us right across it toward another door at the far end of it. This led us into another corridor, at the end of which was the exit to the apartment. We stepped through it, emerging back out into the magnificent atrium where he led us down the wide, carpeted staircase and all the way back to the kitchen. This huge room was also empty, but now there were some pots cooking on the giant stove. I’d no idea what they were cooking, but the fragrance coming from the pots was so divine it made my mouth water.
Ben hadn’t said a word yet about where his family and the others were being kept, but as we began climbing up the winding staircase leading back to the atrium above, I could only conclude that they’d been put up there and not in the jinn’s atrium like my family.
I thought about all The Shade’s inhabitants we were about to meet. Yet more supernatural creatures to blow my family’s mind. I was interested in particular in my mother’s reaction. She had always been the most skeptical person in the world, not believing anything she saw on the television. Now, in the midst of this supernatural world, I could already see it was doing her head in.
As we passed through the prison cells housing humans and newly half-turned vampires, my family’s expressions turned to horror. Especially Lalia, who’d been trapped down here with Hassan. Her whole body tensed up and she buried her head against my neck. She closed her eyes, gripping me even tighter.
I pressed my lips against her soft cheek. “It’s okay, Laly. We’re leaving this place.”
We passed through the last of the sprawling network of prison chambers and climbed up the steps toward the exit. The jinni opened the door, allowing Ben to step through first before we followed, arriving in the familiar bare room.
We stepped out into the gardens in the center of the atrium—which now appeared tame and ordinary compared to the heaven beneath us. We walked along the veranda and stopped outside the seventh door to our left. There were murmurs coming from inside—indicating a crowd.
As Ben pushed open the door and we stepped inside a large dining hall of sorts, gasps s
wept around the room. To my relief, it seemed that the whole crowd of people we had arrived with had been bundled in here… except I couldn’t make out any witches. There was a long table down the center of it, and dozens of chairs dotted about. Some were sitting, but most were standing, with tight expressions on their faces.
Sofia rushed up to Ben, and Derek looked like he wanted to, but held back to avoid tempting his son with his blood. Sofia clutched her son, even as her eyes roamed my family and finally settled on the jinni.
“What’s happening?” she and her husband asked at once.
“I found a way out,” Ben replied, looking over the crowd as well as his parents. “You all need to come with us. Now.”
I was surprised that Ben didn’t ask what had happened to them exactly. Perhaps Nuriya or this jinni had already told him, or he’d just guessed that they would’ve been kept here in this room the whole time. Why exactly the jinn had taken them, I still didn’t understand.
But as before, now wasn’t the time for questions. Now was the time for escape. I knew that Ben would fill us all in as soon as we arrived back in The Shade.
The Shade. Thinking of that island again, I could hardly contain my excitement as I imagined returning there with my family and showing them around. The spellbound looks on their faces…
“We just need to fetch the witches now,” Ben said, “and then we can get out of here.”
Derek appeared uneasy as he looked his son over, but he didn’t say anything. The room emptied as they followed us back out. Stepping out into the gardens, I wondered where the jinn were keeping the witches.
I was surprised when the jinni stopped outside a towering silver birdcage erected in the middle of a willow-tree grove. It was filled with bright blue parrots who were fluttering about in unrest. I couldn’t ever remember seeing this while staying here, nor even on Ben’s and my way down just an hour or so ago.
The jinni raised a hand, and with a snap of his fingers, the birds’ wings arrested in midair and they drifted in slow motion downward. Almost as soon as their bodies touched the ground, a billow of smoke appeared from nowhere and engulfed the entire cage. As it cleared, I found myself staring at a cage filled with our witches. Their faces were pale and they looked utterly traumatized. Ibrahim was standing near the front, his white knuckles gripping the bars. He glared at the jinni, who barely made eye contact with any of them. The jinni casually moved to the entrance of the cage, opened the door and let them pile out.