by Amanda Ashby
Kara was silent for a moment before she slowly nodded her head. “Then, even if I freaked out while we were talking about one thing, I would have something else I could move on to.”
“Exactly.” Sophie grinned as she reached over and squeezed her friend’s hand. Then she nodded at the shopping bags, which were the whole reason why they had arranged to meet at Sophie’s house after school. “So am I finally going to see this outfit? The waiting is killing me.”
“I guess so.” Kara started to brighten as she reverently opened up the bag and pulled out a gorgeous pair of red skinny jeans and a black-and-white T-shirt with some kind of modern art painting on it. “And thanks. I feel loads better now.”
“Hey, that’s what having a positive-thinking friend is all about,” Sophie said as she leaned over and inspected her friend’s new clothes. Then she looked up and smiled. “These are gorgeous. You will look amazing. And if you like, you could borrow that black jacket of mine. It’s in the closet if you want to take it home and try it out.”
“Are you serious?” Kara instantly jumped to her feet, hurried over to the closet, and started to rummage through it. “You know how much I love that jacket and...hey, where did you get this?”
“Get what?” Sophie stopped inspecting Kara’s new T-shirt and looked up to where her friend was holding a turquoise-colored silky dress that nipped in at the waist before falling down to three inches above the knee. Looking at it again instantly made her smile, and she jumped to her feet. “Oh, yeah. Isn’t it amazing? I was just about to show it to you. I conjured it up. Do you like it?”
“Um, yeah. I mean, it’s gorgeous,” Kara agreed as she held it up so she could study it better. “But what’s it for? I thought you had a new policy of not conjuring up more stuff than you needed in case your mom did a random closet inspection.”
“I’m going to wear it to the party,” Sophie explained as she took the dress from her friend so she could hold it against herself as she did several clumsy pirouettes around the room.
“The party?” Kara looked confused as she turned back to the closet and started to flick through the rack. “But what about your other outfit? I thought you’d decided on the floral skirt and the shrug that we saw at the mall the other day? You said you already zapped it up.”
“I had, and I really thought it was perfect.” Sophie stopped her twirling and sat back down on the bed, still lovingly clutching her new dress. “But then I realized that it made me look short.”
“You are short,” Harvey reminded her.
“Thanks, Sherlock.” Sophie rolled her eyes at him. “But the thing is that Melissa says that short girls should never wear floral dresses and shrugs. Apparently, it’s some kind of designer golden rule. She said it would be perfect if I was as tall as Taylor Swift, but for someone my height, it would make me look even shorter. In fact, I can’t believe I didn’t realize it sooner. Anyway, she pulled a copy of Girl2day out of her purse and suggested I try something like this, so I did and you know what? She was so right. Can you believe it?”
“Not really,” Kara admitted. “You loved that outfit. You said it was amazing.”
“Yes, but it was short amazing. This new dress is tall amazing,” Sophie explained. Besides, it was all right for Kara, who looked fantastic in whatever she wore, but when you were height challenged like Sophie was, it wasn’t quite so simple. In fact, when Sophie had first become a djinn, she had actually tried to make herself taller, before Malik told her that she could try all she wanted but it wouldn’t make a difference. The best she could do was to create an illusion of tallness, and that wouldn’t be happening for another three hundred years at least. Which was why, when she found a dress that gave her the appearance of an extra inch, she was going to take it.
But despite this, Kara’s lips still pursed, which was odd since, apart from the occasional burst of stubbornness, Kara was never normally prickly. Sophie narrowed her eyes. “Is this because Melissa helped me choose it?”
“Of course not.” Kara shook her head and let out a sigh. “Okay, maybe. Ignore me, I just wish that you had been hanging with me when Patrick had turned up rather than talking about clothes with Melissa Tait.”
“I told you, the only reason I was there was because my mom made me babysit. I would’ve much rather been at the mall with you,” Sophie assured her friend before shooting her a hopeful look. “So are we cool?”
“Of course we are.” Kara instantly gave a watery sniff. “I was just being a doofus.”
“No, you weren’t. If anyone was being a doofus, I was,” Sophie countered.
“Well, personally, I think the pair of you are pretty doofy to be worried over a dress,” Harvey pointed out, but before either of the girls could comment Malik appeared in the middle of the room. Today he was wearing a black T-shirt and gray trousers, and his Zac-like hair was spiked up like a hedgehog.
But Sophie hardly noticed. Instead, her heart started to hammer in her chest as she jumped to her feet, causing the turquoise dress to fall into a heap on the floor. She ignored it as she clutched her hands together and stared at him.
“So? How did it go? Did you find anything out?”
“Oh, yes, I most certainly did,” Malik announced as he made his way over to Sophie’s bookshelf and produced a packet of M&M’s from behind her collection of books on positive thinking. “And I would’ve told you about it sooner if I could’ve found you. I mean, seriously, I was looking everywhere for you yesterday. I even tried the school auditorium, and you have no idea how much of a racket they were making in there. Where have you been?”
“I was babysitting at Mr. Rivers’s house, but I was home by six.”
“Mr. Rivers’s house?” Malik was immediately distracted as he paused from ripping open the M&M’s with his teeth. “As in the basement where I was stuck in an ugly red vase for what seemed like an eternity? That place is evil.”
“That’s exactly what we tried to tell her,” Harvey added.
“And she had to spend all afternoon with Melissa ‘she thinks she’s so great’ Tait,” Kara chimed in.
“Look, like I told Kara and Harvey, Mr. Rivers is fine. He’s actually been really kind to my mom lately, especially with her pottery business.”
“Oh, and I haven’t?” Malik wanted to know. “I mean, the other day on Facebook your mom wanted to know if she should cook hamburgers or pasta, and I totally helped her.”
Sophie blinked at him for a moment before deciding that it was better to just ignore that last statement.
“Okay, back to my dad. How did it go?” she asked as she tried not to focus on the way her pulse was wildly fluttering.
“Well, my young friends, I finally managed to catch up with Manny the Moody, in a very unsavory bar, and let’s just say that he’s not what I would call the most congenial of djinns. However,” he quickly added, obviously catching Sophie’s frustrated expression, “the important thing is that he’s a talker, and in half an hour he told me everything we need to know.”
“Really?” Sophie’s hands felt clammy as she let go of the breath that she hadn’t known she was holding. “You’ve really found him?”
“I really found him,” Malik confirmed with a nod of his head. “I’m not going to say that it was easy. Or cheap—if a certain camel loses in next month’s All Sahara Invitational Challenge, then there’s going to be one cranky djinn.”
“So tell me everything. Has Manny seen my dad? Is he okay? What is he bound to? Will it be hard for us to find him?” Sophie inquired as a bubble of happiness started to swell up inside her. Being a positive thinker, she had always known that this moment would arrive, but she hadn’t expected it to feel quite so...amazing.
“Last time Manny saw your dad was a year ago, and apparently, he was fine. A bit weak in strength since most sahirs tend to overwork their djinns. He also told me that
Sheterum is a rabid art collector, and it gives him a sick pleasure to bind his djinns into various paintings when he’s not making them work for him. Manny himself was stuck in a miniature Degas for over a hundred years. If you could see the size of him, you would appreciate the irony.”
“And what about Sophie’s dad?” Harvey wanted to know. “Did this Manny know what painting he’s in?”
“He did. This is the pride of his collection, and since Sophie’s father is Sheterum’s prized djinn, it’s no surprise that he’s bound to it.” Malik nodded as he pulled a photograph out of his back pocket and passed it over to her.
Sophie caught her breath and tried to ignore her trembling hands as she studied the photograph. It was a rainbow splat of swirling colors and geometric shapes, somehow all existing side by side in random neatness. Honestly, it looked like something that her younger sister might’ve done. Not that she cared what it looked like; the main thing was that she now knew exactly where her dad was and what she had to do to release him. A burst of happiness went racing through her as Kara leaned over her shoulder to study it.
“Whoa. Sophie, that’s a Kandinsky.” Kara breathed in awe as she reached out and reverently touched the photograph. “I mean, that’s a seriously famous painting that your dad is bound to. That’s amazing, and”—she stopped abruptly, probably after catching Harvey’s pointed look—“very important because we now know where to find him.”
“That’s right,” Malik agreed as he pulled out a roll of paper and flattened it. From where Sophie was standing, it looked like the floor plans to Sheterum’s mansion. “According to Manny, our best plan is to fly directly into the room. He’s given me a photograph so that you can visualize where to land. If we get it right and land in between the sensors for the security system, then no alarms will be triggered until we’re ready to make our move. Then we’ll have about a minute. Oh, and he also mentioned brain-pulverizing laser beams. Typical sahir stunt. They do love to pulverize things.”
As he spoke, Harvey and Kara began to pore over the plans, but Sophie just stood perfectly still as her fingers traced a line along the photograph of the painting her father was trapped in.
She felt like she had been doing a jigsaw puzzle and that the final pieces had just fallen into place. She had everything she needed to rescue her dad. The picture he was bound to, the floor plans of the mansion, the day that Sheterum would be away, and most importantly, Solomon’s Elixir.
She allowed herself a smile.
Soon they would be a family again. Sophie had only to close her eyes to see the four of them sitting around the large teak dining room table, eating the lasagna that her dad was so famous for making, laughing, and joking at the various things that had happened during the day. A family once again.
OKAY, SO THIS WOULD WORK A LOT BETTER IF YOU could stop smiling so much,” Malik complained half an hour later as he glared at where Sophie was sitting with her legs crossed in the middle of the red-and-purple carpet, which was currently spread out in the back garden. “You have to understand that flying a carpet has a certain element of coolness attached to it, which is completely lost if you go around looking like the dorky girl who has just won a free day trip to Disneyland.”
“Sorry. No more smiling,” Sophie assured him with a smile. She put her hand over her mouth to try to hide her happiness, but it was hard now that they were so close to rescuing her dad. She smiled again, and Malik made a snorting noise.
“I knew we should’ve taken this practice session down to the basement. I bet you wouldn’t be smiling then. Plus, it would let us get away from your sister’s cat. I tell you, that stupid thing is really starting to get on my nerves. Before you got home from school, I was up in your room innocently checking my Facebook account when it launched itself at me like I was some kind of heinous criminal.”
Sophie groaned. Despite her best efforts to bribe him with Pretty Kitty snacks, Mr. Jaws had taken to hissing and growling every time she or Malik was in the room. But still, she would rather face Mr. Jaws than all the spiders in the basement, so she decided that she had better not annoy Malik anymore.
“I promise, no more smiling while I’m on the carpet. I will be the model of concentration. Okay?”
“Humph,” Malik grunted as he launched into a big lecture on jumping through time and space. Most of it was filled with words that she didn’t understand. When he was finished, Sophie almost thought he was going to make her jump into the basement like the other day, but instead he announced that she could try going to the school. “And,” he suddenly added, “I think this time you can fly solo. You’ve still got the stabilizers on, but you won’t have me with you. Do you feel ready?”
Yes. No. Maybe. But instead Sophie nodded her head; until she mastered her flying, she couldn’t see her dad.
“I’m ready,” she said in a firm voice. She closed her eyes and blocked everything out until the only thing she was conscious of was the hallway at school where her locker was. Thankfully, considering that was the place where Jonathan had first talked to her, it was something she had visualized on a regular basis. Then she pictured a plastic bubble all around her and the carpet before finally blinking her eyes three times.
She felt a familiar tug in her stomach, and when she opened her eyes, she was really in the hallway of the school. She was just about to congratulate herself when she suddenly heard a loud noise and looked up to see the janitor pushing some kind of huge floor polishing machine toward her.
For a moment Sophie just stared at it, assuming he would stop for her, before remembering that the janitor couldn’t see her. Panic raced through her—she had a funny feeling that if he ran over her, she would feel it. But she felt frozen, unable to think or move, and suddenly, she understood just why Malik had been so pedantic in his teachings. Her heart pounded, but just as the polisher reached the tip of her carpet, she snapped out of it and quickly pictured her backyard. A second later relief flooded through her as she was once again in her garden, her carpet hovering three feet off the ground.
Sophie let out a grateful sigh, and for a moment she lay back on the carpet to try to regain her composure. That was far too close. But before her heart rate had a chance to return to normal she heard a yowling noise and sat up just in time to see Mr. Jaws launch himself at the corner of the carpet. The impact caused the whole thing to start wobbling, and it took all of Sophie’s skills to bring it down to the ground without falling off.
Then she looked over to see Mr. Jaws hunched on all fours, his eyes narrow and his tail fluffy, like he was going to pounce all over again.
“Seriously. What’s his problem? It’s almost like he’s never seen an invisible person fly on an invisible carpet before.” Malik floated over and glared at the cat, but the sound of his voice seemed only to aggravate Mr. Jaws even more. “Still, at least it’s stopped you smiling so much.”
“How can he even tell that I’m here?” Sophie demanded as Malik’s words reminded her that she was still invisible. “Do you think it’s a djinn thing?”
“More like a stupid dumb animal thing,” Malik retorted. “Anyway, if you can’t get rid of that cat, then I might as well go. Even being in the same backyard as that thing is giving me the creeps.”
“No, you stay right here,” Sophie said in alarm as she thought of how she’d almost frozen when the janitor and the polishing machine had been coming toward her. She needed a lot more practice, and if Malik disappeared, then she would be stuck. She lunged at the cat, but before she could get him, he darted away and hurled himself underneath her mom’s pottery shed. Sophie got on her belly and poked her head under there, but Mr. Jaws edged farther away from her.
“I don’t think it’s working,” Malik announced unnecessarily, his head suddenly appearing down the other end of the shed. “Cats aren’t just stupid, they’re very belligerent, too. Try turning visible.”
“What?�
�� Sophie spluttered, before realizing that his suggestion was actually a really good idea. She clicked her fingers and said the word visible. At the sight of her, the cat promptly shed about three bucketfuls of fur all over her as he violently tried to dart past her. But Sophie lunged for him again, and this time she made sure that he couldn’t wriggle out of her grip.
Mr. Jaws yowled even louder, but Sophie ignored the noise as she marched inside the house and up to Meg’s bedroom. Her sister’s door was open, and Meg was sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by old National Geographic magazines that she was cutting shark pictures out of with her child-friendly scissors.
“Hey, if I’m not allowed to go into your room, then how come you can come into mine?” Meg demanded in a sulky voice.
“Because your cat’s driving me crazy,” Sophie retorted, not bothering to add that he was also ruining her flying practice. Instead, she dropped Mr. Jaws onto Meg’s bright blue comforter. The cat immediately darted into Meg’s lap.
“Well, you still shouldn’t be here. I have rights, too, you know.” Meg poked out her lower lip, and suddenly Sophie remembered that she had promised her mom she would try to learn what was bothering her sister—apart from the fact that she was friendly with a crazy cat. Sophie joined her sister on the floor and picked up one of the shark pictures her sister had been cutting out.
“Look, Meggy. Mom’s totally worried about you right now. What’s going on?” Sophie asked. She glanced at the picture in her hands and noticed the shark’s bloodstained teeth. She immediately put it back down.
Meg sniffed as she patted Mr. Jaws’s fur. “Why do you care? You’re too busy doing your own stuff.”
“Of course I’m not too busy,” Sophie protested as she glanced at her watch, hoping that Malik was still waiting for her.