by Melissa Marr
I feel my face fall—I guess it’s only natural he would include that rule. Another ifrit used magic on him once. It was justified, at the time, but still. I imagine it makes him wary. He’s staring hard at me, waiting for an answer.
“What if I break the rules?” I ask, both curious and a little embarrassed that he’s making me feel guilty over something I didn’t do.
“Then I’ll remind you every few minutes until the moment you leave just how your hair is starting to look longer since you got here. How long have you been here anyway?” he asks, and looks pleased when I cringe. We don’t age in Caliban; we only grow older when we’re here. It’s a horrible feeling—going from immortal to mortal, from endless life to impending death—one all jinn desperately try to ignore while earthbound. I don’t exactly want to be reminded of it regularly.
“Fine. I promise,” I mumble.
Lawrence sits down and opens up a laptop. He messages someone—Viola, I suspect, because he tells her that I’m here. They have a quick conversation about me, then he starts to work on something, a long paper of sorts.
This won’t work. He’s got to talk to me. Though really, why should he? I guess he’s as interested in jinn and Caliban as I am in mortal sports games.
“What are you working on?” I ask, sitting on the edge of his bed.
“A paper for English,” he answers. “I have to finish it before the play tonight.”
“Oh.”
How do you ask someone to describe love to you, moments after you’ve met them? I had it all planned out in my head, exactly what I’d say, but it all feels stupid now. Maybe I don’t need to ask him, maybe I can just work it out. . . . I look at him, narrow and widen my eyes at once, the way Jinn looks at his mortal girl.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Never mind,” I say dismissively. “I have a name, by the way.”
“A name?” Lawrence looks at me, almost amused. I glare at him again as he turns his desk chair around entirely.
“Yes,” I say brusquely. “If he—Jinn—if he can have a name, I can have a name.”
“Why do you want one, though?”
Because that seems to be the first step to being in love for jinn. A name. The mortal girl called a jinn Jinn, and then they fell in love. I didn’t see why I should wait around for a mortal to give me a name, so I chose one myself. I almost tell him that, but it feels like I’m sharing too much, letting him know me too well too fast. Instead, I shrug.
“Well, what is it?” Lawrence asks.
“Juliet,” I say, tossing my hair over my shoulder. I picked it out of a book that’s supposed to be a great mortal love story. I’m an excellent researcher.
LAWRENCE
Juliet is a lot of things the previous ifrit weren’t. She asks questions, for starters, instead of watching me suspiciously in line at the cafeteria like the others did. She lurks in the lighting booth with me and seems to actually watch the stage during all four nights of The Tempest. She wants to know things. I’ve asked her why she cares, but she’s always evasive. I’ve gotten used to answering her constant questions subtly, a skill that comes in handy at the cast party backstage on the last night of The Tempest.
“How did it look?” Jeffrey asks, grimacing at me. He still has remnants of stage makeup on his face, and his voice is low. He doesn’t speak a lot, but when he does, I feel like I could talk with him for hours. We’ve known each other since the semester started, and he’s only recently spoken louder than a whisper to me. Onstage he seems to know exactly who his character is; in life he isn’t so sure—a trait I apparently find incredibly charming.
“It was great,” I answer, opening a can of Coke. “Really. You’re better than Jonathan.”
“Hey, you’ve still got a part!”
“Yeah, as a townsperson,” Jeffrey answers, smirking. “Townsperson or Jonathan’s understudy. Look out, theater world.”
“It’s only because Jonathan is precious and sexually nonthreatening. The girls in the audience eat that up,” I joke, nodding toward Jonathan. He has a baby face and ice-blond hair, but he’s practically salivating over the lead actress’s legs.
“Are they in love?” Juliet asks beside me, pointing to Jonathan and the girl. Jeffrey can’t see or hear her, of course—I shake my head slightly, almost imperceptibly.
“Why aren’t they?” she asks. “Because they haven’t kissed?”
“Do you want to get out of here?” Jeffrey suddenly says to me, staring at the floor. He sets his can of Sprite down on a prop table. I watch him rock back on his heels, watch his eyes run to mine. It’s always a mystery to me, trying to figure out what guys want. If they’re being nice, or if it’s something more. But now I’m positive, absolutely positive that the smile tugging at Jeffrey’s mouth isn’t simply friendly. I try not to smile too hard, try not to let myself get too eager, too hopeful, and I—
“Why aren’t they in love?” Juliet repeats, tapping my shoulder. She glances from me to him, her eyes irritated. She’ll follow me to wherever we’re going. I’m going to spend all night trying to ignore the prying, dark brown eyes of a genie girl over my shoulder. I close my eyes. It’s going to actually be painful to say this.
“Actually . . .” I grit my teeth together when I pause. “Maybe another time, Jeffrey?”
“Sure,” he says swiftly, easily. So easily that it crushes me. “No problem.” He waves at someone across the room, and walks away. I turn to Juliet, and can feel my eyes light up in irritation.
“Come on,” I snap. I grab my coat and head for the door.
JULIET
“So, what are you really here for?” he asks as we leave the theater. He slams the door behind him.
“The Ancients sent me,” I answer, jogging to keep up with his long strides.
“The Ancients have sent an awful lot of ifrit after me,” Lawrence answers, shoving his hands into his pockets, “and not one of them has asked as many questions as you. Or studied me the way you do. Or wrecked a chance for me to hang out with a guy I honestly like. So what are you really trying to do? Single-handedly wreck my love life?”
“You have a love life?” I ask genuinely.
“Oh come on,” Lawrence says, rolling his eyes. It’s cold out, and cloudy puffs of air emerge from his mouth as he turns to face me. “What do the Ancients want to know? I’ll tell them. I don’t care.”
“Okay . . . they don’t want anything,” I begin slowly. “It’s me. I’m . . . researching love.”
Lawrence gives me a withering look. “The Ancients didn’t send you? You’re messing around in my life to research? You’ve got to be kidding.” The withering look has transformed to frustrated. I speak before it becomes angry.
“Look, you don’t understand. Jinn loving Viola changed things for us, it raised questions. No one understands what it means, if we should be allowed to come here when we aren’t summoned, if we shouldn’t—no one knows anything anymore. I’ll make a deal with you: help me fall in love, and I’ll report back to the Ancients that you don’t need an ifrit guard anymore. You’ll be totally free of us.”
Lawrence’s eyes widen, and he laughs. Loud. He turns his head to the sky and laughs animatedly. I glare at him, fold my arms, and wait till he’s done. When he finally turns back to me, his face is red.
“I don’t see what’s so funny.” I really don’t—I can’t read Lawrence’s wishes, his hopes, his desires, the way I can read those of most mortals. Apparently Jinn taught him how to hide them from us.
“That’s the thing about you guys,” he says, waving a hand at me. “You just don’t get it. People here don’t work the way people work in your world. You can’t analyze and rule and make decisions. And you can’t make someone fall in love.”
“Sure we can. I can make anyone love you, if I want,” I remind him. He gives me a dark look, an almost threatening one, and I press my lips together apologetically.
“That’s magic,” he
finally says, and we continue walking toward his dorm. “Not love. And remember—that’s rule number four. You promised.”
“How am I supposed to know the difference between magic and love if no one will show me?” I complain. “You said you have a love life. Are you in love?”
Lawrence grimaces, but doesn’t answer. I repeat the question.
“No,” he finally says. “I’m not.”
“But you want to be.”
“Sure,” he says, opening the door to his dorm.
“With . . . Jeffrey? The guy from tonight?”
Lawrence sighs as we walk down the hall. He doesn’t answer.
LAWRENCE
Of course I want to be in love. Maybe with Jeffrey, maybe not, but with someone. That’s the problem when your best friend is in the middle of her own fairy-tale romance. It means you know that sort of love is real. It means you’re even more aware of how you’ve never been in love, how you’ve never felt sparks or fire or anything other than plain, ordinary lips when you kiss someone.
We walk into my room and Juliet collapses into my desk chair, spins around once with her legs pulled up to her chest. “Could you ever be in love with me?”
I snort before I can stop myself. “No. Sorry.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not attracted to you. Or to girls in general,” I explain.
“That doesn’t make sense though. The storybooks say love knows no obstacles.”
“That’s why they’re shelved in ‘fiction,’ Juliet.”
She doesn’t seem to understand, but nods anyway. “Do you think someone will love me?”
I had a joke all prepared, but it gets caught in my throat. I turn to look at her, eyebrows knitted together. All the power in the world, and jinn are the most naive creatures I’ve ever met.
“I’m sure someone could,” I answer.
She doesn’t seem as certain. Juliet spins around in the chair again, then picks up the ends of her long hair and stares at them. I recognize the look on her face—the one Jinn used to wear when he’d dismay over how he aged while in this world. She scrutinizes how long her hair has grown—a millimeter at most, I imagine—then looks back up at me.
“Some of the Ancients think Jinn was a one-time thing. That mortals won’t love jinn, not normally. That we’re not meant to understand love like you do.”
“Is that what you think?”
“That’s what I’m researching,” she says pointedly. “Come on, help me. Please? I’ll help you. Tell me who you want.”
“No,” I say sternly, quickly. I’ve been under the influence of magic before, been forced to love someone. I’m not at all interested in doing the same to someone else.
“Not like that,” she groans. “But I know what they want. I can tell you what they’re wishing for.”
I stare at my hands. What they want. She can solve the mystery, the thousands of questions that plague me not only about Jeffrey, but about every boy I come across. Are they after me because I’m just the first gay guy they met at college, or because they want what I want?
A love story.
I shouldn’t do this. Viola and Jinn would tell me not to do this.
“How am I supposed to help you?” I ask Juliet cautiously.
“I need to kiss someone.”
“Kiss someone?”
“That’s how it starts. With a kiss. That’s what I need to do.” She seems a little embarrassed, and looks at the floor.
“And you think that’ll help you understand love?”
“You have a better idea?” she asks pointedly, and I shake my head. I suppose I don’t.
“You realize you’ll have to let them see you? That you’ll have to break all sorts of protocols? Won’t the Ancients be furious?”
She nods, looks out the window. “The Ancients don’t have all the answers.”
JULIET
My kind don’t sleep here. Lawrence is curled in bed—he told me not to watch him sleep. I think he knew I was still here, just invisible, but he didn’t say it out loud. I don’t know why I’m staying here, save for the fact that Lawrence feels safer to me than the outside world. I’m a little afraid to go out there without him. Some researcher I am.
I look at the pictures lining his desk. Him and Viola, him and Jinn. I remember Jinn telling me that his favorite times with Viola are when they lie down in bed together and talk and kiss and whisper. Seeing one of my own kind in a photograph, looking so mortal, so imperfect . . . it confuses me. I don’t even understand the appeal of love, if it can make you so flawed. Jinn’s hair is too long, the skin on his arms dappled with an uneven tan. But his right hand is locked firmly in hers, his left arm slung around Lawrence’s shoulder. He was a wish-granter when they met, a servant.
Now he’s a lover. I think that’s what might really bother the Ancients the most: that Jinn chose this world. Chose a mortal. Over Caliban, over beautiful, perfect, ageless Caliban. Maybe it’s like the fairy tales—maybe Jinn kissed Viola, and it broke a spell that made him like the rest of us jinn, a spell that made him not believe in love or fate or romance. It broke the Ancients, broke Caliban itself, broke all the rules.
Maybe it was just the kiss, in fact, not the resulting love. Maybe kissing a mortal is what makes us understand, is what changes us. Maybe that’s all I need to solve the mysteries of Caliban and what love means for my world, not love itself. It certainly seems a lot more manageable than falling in love, and it is one of the things about love I’m certain of. . . .
I glance over at Lawrence in the bed. He doesn’t love me, he can’t—he’s already told me. But someone will kiss me. I think. I hope.
LAWRENCE
Juliet looks even more beautiful than usual. Of course, when you’ve got magic powers, it’s probably easy to look beautiful. Even though I’m not her biggest fan, I’m worried about her—she’s been here a week, and she seems as clueless as she was the day she arrived. I don’t remember Jinn being so naive, or so curious.
We walk up to the gallery side by side.
“Can they see you?” I murmur.
She pauses, like she’s thinking. “Now they can.”
“Right.” I raise my hand to the gallery door, push it open. The scent of wine and clay swoops over us. I think everyone in the theater department was invited, but the artist, a guy named Sampson who works in set design, sent me an invite himself. He said he was worried no one would come, and he wanted to see one friendly face in the room. I was surprised—I wouldn’t call us friends. We barely know each other. But it was a good opportunity to keep my promise to Juliet.
The art gallery is an old antebellum house on campus. All the walls of the house have been painted black, and in each room are a few tables with sculptures in the center. It’s all weird stuff—animals with houses growing out of their backs, their faces twisted into looks of agony. It makes it hard to stare at any one sculpture for too long.
“Lawrence,” a warm, quiet voice says, and I see Jeffrey coming toward me. He’s smiling, his eyes are flickering.
“Hey,” I answer, reach forward, and shake his hands. They’re soft but strong, and he smells like dryer sheets. The scent makes me want to step closer to him, makes me wonder if this is what his bedroom smells like.
“Hi, I’m Jeffrey,” he says, leaving my hand to reach for Juliet’s. She grins widely and takes it, shaking it a little awkwardly.
“I haven’t seen you around before, Juliet,” Jeffrey says curiously, glancing at me.
“She’s a friend,” I say. “Visiting from Virginia.”
“Right,” Jeffrey says, nodding at both of us. “I don’t really know anyone here,” he admits, looking at the crowd. “I’m glad you showed up.”
I try not to smile too big, not to look too ridiculously eager. The three of us meander around the room, toward the first in the rows of sculptures.
JULIET
Everyone is staring. I think, anyhow—their eyes slide on and off me, but it still feels like staring
. I cling to Lawrence like he’s anchoring me; he gives me a strange look but then touches my forearm gently, leads me along behind Jeffrey. I see wishes filtering around Jeffrey’s face, but I’m too distracted by the onslaught of eyes to tell exactly what they are. Even though I can’t read Lawrence’s mind, it’s very clear what he’s wishing for. They’re obvious in the way he watches Jeffrey’s movements. It’s like a broken, shattered version of the way Jinn watches Viola.
“I don’t get it,” Jeffrey says as we arrive at the first piece. He shakes his head. It’s a miserable-looking ceramic dog with a two-story cottage growing out of its back. He looks at Lawrence, who is staring at the piece, analyzing it.
“I think,” Lawrence says, frowning, “maybe it’s about how things that are normal, things that most people want, can be painful?”
I stare at the piece, baffled. But Jeffrey nods at Lawrence, says that maybe that’s what they’re all about, and that they should ask Sampson later if they can find him. They talk easily, fluidly. I understand why someone might love Lawrence, even why someone might love Jeffrey, with their kind voices and soft smiles. We move on to another piece, this one a rabbit looking even more miserable than the dog. I just don’t understand mortal artwork, I guess.
“What do you think, Juliet?” Jeffrey says, glancing toward me as we come to a statue of a bear with an armchair lashed to his back.
“I . . .” I shake my head and glance toward Lawrence. I have no idea what to say. He comes to my rescue.
“I think I look old enough to scam a glass of wine off the bartender,” Lawrence says, nodding to the guy manning the bar—he can barely be twenty-one himself. “Either of you want one?”
“Yes,” I say quickly, just so I can get away from the conversation for a moment.
Jeffrey shakes his head. “I don’t drink, but thanks.”
Lawrence seems surprised, but nods. Together we walk toward the bar.
“Anyone you want to kiss yet?” Lawrence asks as we grow closer.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. He sighs and introduces me to a few other people from the theater department. We approach the bar. Lawrence was right—the bored bartender doesn’t think twice before filling two glasses of red wine.