Page 93 of Bewitched By the Djinn
I should have thought to tell them right away. They must be so worried, as worried as we’ve been about them. “They’re all okay. Mimi is with the kids now. They miss you, but they are both doing well. Kevin is playing little league. Jackie is... she’s still sick. But I think she’s getting better.”
Mom’s eyes widen. “She’s better?”
Dad looks over at her, then back at me. “We came to Aetheria hoping to find a cure.”
My hand clenches around my fork. “You knew. You knew she had magic and it was making her sick.”
Mom presses her lips into a line. “We didn’t know for sure, but we suspected. Her sickness wasn’t normal, not in the way the doctors thought. We could sense the magic in her, but something was wrong with it. We needed answers.”
Dad covers her hand with his. “Richard helped us come here. He believed Jackie’s condition was connected to our bloodline.”
Because we must have djinn blood to have magic.
Mom leans into Dad, their shoulders touching. “He helped us find a tether to Aetheria. He warned us it wasn’t stable, said we’d have only one shot to return.”
Richard knew? This whole time? That ass-face. Why didn’t he ever say anything? Ugh, I could kill him. If he tells me something blasé likeyou never asked, I absolutelywillkill him.
“Then it didn’t work,” Dad continues. “We didn’t mean to vanish without a word. The window to act came fast and we barely made it with mere seconds to spare. There was no time to explain. We thought it would be fine. It was just a scouting trip. In and out. But we ended up stranded. The tether snapped before we could return. We tried everything. We searched for ways back, but nothing worked.”
Mom picks up the story. “We didn’t know what to do. But then Rebecca found us.” She tilts her head at a tall woman with short blonde hair sitting at a table nearby. “She takes in strays. Most of the people here are refugees from the borderlands, cast out of their kingdoms or caught in the middle of conflicts. We help each other survive. But we’ve been so worried about Jackie too, about her condition progressing, about all of you not knowing where we were.”
I tap my finger on the edge of my plate. I don’t know how to deal with all this information. I can’t believe they didn’t tell me. No time for a quick text to let me know they’re fleeing to another realm? They were crunched for time and stressed, but the past three years of my life were spent wondering what if, and what if that could have been avoided? “Bennet figured out what may be wrong with Jackie. Bennet taught her how to redirect the energy, how to draw power from outside instead of within. We think it’s working, but it’s only been a couple of days.”
Mom presses her hand against her mouth.
“All these years I have been worrying.” My voice is thick. “Wondering if you were dead, or if you’d just left.”
“We never stopped trying, sweetheart.” She blinks back tears. “We couldn’t get back.”
Emotion swirls through me, thick and tangled. Relief. Grief. The sharp ache of time lost. “It’s okay. We found each other. And we’re not leaving without you. Helen can open a portal to help all of us get back. Kevin, Jackie, Mimi, they’re going to be so happy.”
“But first,” Helen says carefully, “we’ve got some problems to solve.”
Mom and Dad straighten.
“What kind of problems?” Dad asks.
I take a deep breath and launch into the story—how I bought the lamp from Ernie with Bennet inside, how the curse bound us together, the failed attempts to break it, and how we found Helen in the mortal world.
Helen picks up from there, detailing her uncle’s attempts to trap them, their roles in Aetheria’s court, and what we saw scrying: the doppelgängers, the real Lord Wallace imprisoned, and a wedding being orchestrated with someone pretending to be Helen.
“So we had to come,” I finish. “We need to find out what their uncle’s endgame is. Why fake a marriage between two imposters? What’s he planning?”
Dad twists around, scanning the room. “We need Darius.”
Bennet leans forward in his seat. “Who is Darius?”
A chair at a nearby table scrapes back.
One of the men—broad-shouldered, with sand-colored hair and intense golden eyes—rises to his feet.
Mom motions him over. “Can you tell our guests about Dominic? It’s important.”
He stands at the head of our table. “Dominic is my brother. I was recently in your uncle’s court, visiting as a delegate of my kingdom. A few months ago, I discovered Lord Hugh was working with ifrit. When I threatened to expose him, he had memarked for death. I escaped. My brother didn’t. He is still there. We have been making plans to rescue him.”
Helen pales. “You’re saying Uncle Hugh is colluding with ifrit?”
Darius nods. “I overheard his plans. He is offering them power and freedom and what they’ve always wanted, land of their own in Aetheria. I don’t know what his final move is, but ifrit are involved, that much is certain.”
