Under a Spell

by Amanda Ashby

  “No one’s trying to stop you, Malik, you big baboon. Now come on, the early bird bingo starts soon, and you know how I hate to miss that,” the old woman djinn pronounced as she floated back into the council chambers, where Sophie had done her demonstration. The walls were covered with dark wooden carvings. Richly colored tapestry rugs were hanging everywhere, and a heavy smell of incense filled the air.

  The cool tiled floor was dotted with decorative earthen pots filled with delicate palms, and in the center of the room was a selection of large cushions, which hadn’t been there before. The old woman gestured for Sophie to take a seat while she joined the rest of the council members, who, instead of sitting on cushions, were all in large leather recliners that Sophie was pretty sure had come from Pottery Barn.

  “Sophie, daughter of Tariq, we have witnessed your skills and considered your request. And we have decided to help you.”

  “You have?” Sophie widened her eyes as her heart started to pound in nervous excitement, while next to her Malik’s jaw went slack in surprise. “D-does that mean you know where my dad is?”

  “Unfortunately, we don’t know where he is, but there are two things that we can tell you. First, he is still alive; and second, he has been bound by a sahir named Sheterum.”

  “Sheterum?” Sophie repeated in shock. That was the guy Malik had just been talking about. “The techno-sahir?”

  “I see you’ve heard of him.” Another of the Djinn Council members nodded. This old woman was as fat as a house, with wispy gray hair pulled back from her face and a few unpleasant-looking stray hairs on her chin.

  “S-so how do I unbind him?” Sophie demanded. She felt the blood pound in her temples, but the members of the Djinn Council just looked at her blankly.

  “That is not our concern. Malik will tell you what we think of djinns who get themselves bound,” Farizad said in a sharp voice as she glanced up at another one of the strange-looking clocks. “And now, it is time for you to leave. More importantly, it’s time for bingo.”

  “What? No.” Sophie shook her head as she watched the twelve old women start to hover up from their recliners. “You can’t go. I need more help. And what about opening this box? It could have something important in it.”

  “Oh, yes.” Farizad paused for a moment and lifted a gnarled, arthritic-looking finger in the air. Sophie felt the box being tugged out of her hands, and she watched as it flew across to where Farizad was hovering. The old woman then snapped her fingers, and the silver lid effortlessly flipped back. Farizad eagerly peered inside it and pulled out a carefully folded parchment of paper. Then she frowned as she tried to read it. Finally, she looked up. “Malik, you spent a lot of your dissolute years around mortals. What does this say, and is it in Tariq’s hand?”

  “A letter from my father?” Sophie immediately jumped to her feet, but one of the other old women raised a finger, and instead of crossing the cool tiled floors, Sophie felt herself being pushed back down into the cushions by an invisible force. She tried to wriggle free, but it was no good, and she was forced to watch helplessly as Malik floated over to where Farizad was holding on to the piece of paper.

  “Well?” the old lady demanded. “What does it say?”

  Malik paused for a moment and scanned it before he turned and shot Sophie an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Sophie. It’s not a letter. It’s a recipe.”

  “A recipe?” Farizad sounded almost as disappointed as Sophie felt. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” Malik bristled. “It’s for spaghetti Bolognese. In case you didn’t know, Tariq was quite the cook. Huh, well, will you look at that, his secret ingredient is nutmeg. Interesting.”

  “Interesting?” Farizad spat in disgust. “You’re just as bad as Tariq himself. He was once a brilliant djinn, but instead of working with the council to unleash his true potential, he turned his back on us and married a mere mortal. And look at him now: bound by one of the worst sahirs in our recent history and his only legacy is a recipe.”

  “How dare you speak like that about my mom and my dad?” Sophie felt a flash of rage go racing through her as once again she tried to stand up, but whatever was restraining her only tightened its grip.

  “Sophie, daughter of Tariq, we will speak as we please, and you will show us respect,” the bearded old lady retorted. Then, without another word, the old women all floated out of the room, no doubt in the direction of the bingo hall. As soon as they were gone, whatever had been restraining Sophie suddenly disappeared, and she jumped to her feet.

  “Malik, we need to go after them. How am I supposed to find my father without their help?” she demanded.

  Malik shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sophie, but once the council members have made their decision, there’s no changing their minds. And at least you know he’s alive. Plus, he left you this lovely recipe, so I suggest we go home and try to make it.”

  Sophie stared at Malik in disbelief as he waved the piece of paper in front of her face. Was he kidding her? “I don’t want to make spaghetti, I want to find my dad. I thought you were my friend. I can’t believe you’re not going to help me. Hey—” she started to say as she stared at the recipe in confusion. “This isn’t—”

  “This isn’t the right place to talk about spaghetti?” Malik quickly cut her off. “I completely agree,” he said in an extra loud voice, as if someone was listening. “Besides, looking at all those old djinns has given me a headache, which is why we should get going. Plus, Zac Efron is on Ellen today, and if you think I’m going to miss that, then you’ve got another think coming.” Then he clicked his fingers, and the next thing Sophie knew, they were both outside the Robert Robertson Middle School gymnasium again.

  Sophie blinked and then looked at her watch. It was two minutes past ten, which meant that somehow she had been away for only a couple of minutes. She had no idea how it was possible, but it was obviously part of the whole “Djinn Council being on a different dimension” thing. Not that it was her biggest worry right now. She looked at the piece of paper in her hand and then looked up at Malik, unable to hide her confusion.

  “What’s going on? Why did you tell the council that this was a spaghetti recipe when it’s really all about Solomon’s Elixir? And, hey—” She suddenly frowned. “Is that the elixir that you said doesn’t exist?”

  “It doesn’t, well, it didn’t,” Malik replied, his voice tinged with excitement. “But according to this, it looks like your father might’ve managed to find a way to make it. Don’t you see, not only was your dad a great cook, but he might’ve been on the verge of discovering the secret that every djinn for two thousand years has been searching for?”

  “But I still don’t understand.” Sophie frowned. “Why didn’t you tell the Djinn Council about it? I mean, wouldn’t they want to know about it?”

  “Of course they would, but let me tell you something about the Djinn Council. They may look like a bunch of old ladies who could use a dip in a tub of Nair and a visit to the mall, but underneath it all they are powerful djinns. And the one thing that powerful djinns like more than anything else in the world is more power.”

  “And you think that if this really does turn out to be the elixir, it would be powerful?”

  “More powerful than any of the other trinkets they currently have in their coffers,” Malik confirmed. “And more to the point, if you gave it to them, there is absolutely no guarantee that they would let you use it to help your father.”

  “But we don’t even know where he is. Maybe we could’ve done a trade with them for information or something?”

  “Haven’t I told you that you should never do deals with other djinns?” Malik reminded her as he made a tuttutting noise from between his teeth. Then he grinned. “Besides, you can stop looking so gloomy, because I promised you that finding your dad was always going to be the easy part, it was the getting him unbound that would’ve been tough. But now—”

  “Now we stand a chance.” Sophie suddenly re
turned his grin: she finally understood why he was looking so happy. Then she turned and started to head down the hallway to wait for her mom out in the parking lot. It sucked that Sophie couldn’t tell her that she was one step closer to finding her dad, but hopefully the time would come when she wouldn’t have to tell her anything. Instead, she could actually bring her dad back, and then they would be a proper family again. The thought made her smile.

  17

  WOW, I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE IT.” KARA SHOOK HER head in astonishment on Monday morning. “I mean, I thought I lost half an hour of my life last week when I was trying to finish Colin’s tail and the glue I was using wouldn’t stick, but you literally lost time. I mean, you said you were gone for over an hour, but it was only two minutes later when you got back.”

  “Not to mention that you found out that your dad is still alive, and now you have a way to break his bind,” Harvey added. “Though, you know, it’s kind of a pity that you didn’t have the recipe sooner. It would’ve saved you a lot of stress.”

  “I know,” Sophie agreed. “But on the positive side, if I’d had the elixir to break the bind, then I might never have figured out that sometimes I can fix a problem without actually using magic.”

  “Could you just excuse me while I puke,” Malik chimed in from where he was lying across the top of a bank of lockers, peering down on them all. “Because if that isn’t the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard, then I don’t know what is. Next you’re going to tell me that you spent the whole night doing your geography assignment by yourself just because it’s the right thing to do.” Then he let out a disgusted groan. “You did, didn’t you? Honestly, sometimes I think I should just wash my hands of you.”

  “You watch High School Musical, and you’re calling me cheesy? Besides, after the Moroccan almond debacle and the catastrophe of losing my magic, I didn’t want to push my luck,” Sophie protested as she stifled a yawn and clutched her freshly printed assignment. Anyway, Malik could say what he liked; not relying on her magic so much was actually quite empowering. In fact, from now on she was going to think twice before she even considered using magic again, unless it was a total emergency.

  “Well, I think it’s great,” Kara said. “And really, all that matters is that things turned out just the way Sophie wanted them to.”

  “Absolutely.” Sophie grinned as she hugged her assignment close to her chest. Her friend was right. For the last four years all she had dreamed of was her dad coming home, and now it looked like all of her positive thinking and affirmations were finally paying off. In fact, everything was completely and utterly perfect—

  “Earth to Sophie,” Kara’s voice suddenly cut through her thoughts. “Jonathan is looking this way. Are you going to talk to him?”

  Apart from the whole Jonathan Tait thing.

  Sophie groaned as she glanced over to see Jonathan standing next to his locker looking grim. It wasn’t exactly that she had forgotten about what had happened last week—she had just kind of hoped that if she ignored it enough, it would go away. But judging by the lack of a smile on Jonathan’s gorgeous face, she was guessing that it hadn’t gone very far.

  Well, that sucked.

  Especially since, despite the fact that she had a very good explanation for why she had been covering her eyes every time she saw him, it wasn’t exactly one that she could tell him. Sophie licked her lips and took a deep breath. She should probably go over and talk to him and say, well…actually, she had no idea what she should say, but hopefully she would figure something out. And if he didn’t want to have anything to do with her on account of the fact that she was a freak who had avoided him just because his twin sister had told her to, that was the chance she would have to take.

  She cautiously smiled at him. The minute she did so, Harvey, Kara, and Malik melted away (well, Kara and Harvey melted, Malik made a loud snorting noise and then declared that if this was how it was going to end, he would prefer to go watch High School Musical, and then he disappeared from sight).

  Sophie checked her hair as she made her way across the hallway to where Jonathan was standing. It was as flat as ever, and she quickly made a wish to give it a bit more body. (What? If fixing your hair when you were about to talk to your crush, who probably hated you, wasn’t necessary and appropriate use of djinn magic, then she didn’t know what was.)

  Too soon she was standing in front of him. He was wearing a plain black T-shirt, and his hands were thrust deep into the front pockets of his jeans. Sophie couldn’t help but notice that he was also clenching and unclenching his jaw as he rocked back and forth on his feet. Suddenly, she wished that Harvey was still there to tell her what jaw clenching and rocking meant. Was it a nervous thing? An “I’m mad as anything at you” thing? Or something else entirely?

  She also wished that she had come up with an explanation for why she had been acting like a total freak for the last few days. Because unfortunately, right now she had nothing.

  “Hey, Sophie,” he finally spoke as he stopped the jaw clenching.

  “Hey,” she gulped in reply before nervously licking her lips and avoiding eye contact. “Look, I’m not really sure how to explain what happened last week.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded his head before he finally looked at her. “Okay, so here’s the thing. If you like Ben, then just tell it to me straight up.”

  “What?” Sophie, who had been desperately trying to figure out what to say next, paused for a moment to check that she had heard right. “You still think that I like Ben? Didn’t you see him and your sister on Saturday morning?”

  Jonathan shrugged, still looking a bit pained. “Just because he likes someone else doesn’t mean it stops how you feel.”

  “I guess not, but I absolutely don’t like Ben. How can you even think that?”

  “It’s not really that crazy. Every time I saw you, you were talking to him, and to make it worse, you kept covering your eyes as if you were cutting me dead. And”—he stopped for a moment and did more jaw clenching—“you took off the guitar pick. I guess when I saw that you weren’t wearing it anymore, it just kind of hit me. This is going to sound dumb, but when we were at the concert and Eddie Henry gave it to you, it felt to me like we had a moment—”

  “It did? Because that’s exactly what I thought,” Sophie exclaimed in an excited voice before realizing that people were starting to look at them. She lowered her voice. “I mean, about having a moment. I thought that, too.”

  “Really? So why did you take it off then?” he wanted to know, his dark eyes now steadily staring into hers.

  “It’s a long story.” Sophie chewed at her lip as she tried to ignore just how tempting it was to put Melissa right in the middle of it. Unfortunately, her better half won out, and she just shrugged. “But the short version is that I lost it.”

  “It’s not lost.” Jonathan shook his head as he awkwardly pulled something out of his pocket and held it up. Sophie gasped as she realized he was holding up a delicate silver chain with the familiar-looking guitar pick hanging off it.

  “You found it?” Sophie continued to stare at it as he carefully started to undo the tiny catch. “I don’t believe it. I didn’t think I’d ever see it again.”

  “I found it last week before school. It was in a trash can near my locker,” Jonathan admitted. “I just wasn’t sure if you wanted it back or not. In fact, I was pretty certain you didn’t, but then on Saturday at basketball, when you got me to listen to the third song on the playlist? I guess I hoped you’d changed your mind.”

  “My mind never needed changing,” Sophie assured him as she realized he had opened the clasp and was waiting to see if he could put it back around her neck. “It was just a series of freak-crazy things that happened, and I swear that if I have my way, they will never happen again.”

  “I’ll second that. No more freak-crazy things.” He grinned as he tentatively walked around behind her to put the chain on. Even better, because she was so short he easily slid it around her nec
k and carefully did the clasp. The minute the delicate silver chain touched her collarbone, Sophie started to smile. She spun around to face Jonathan again, and they headed down the hallway together. As they went, he nudged her with his elbow. She nudged him back and continued to smile.

  Magic or no magic, things had ended up turning out just the way she had wanted them to. Now that’s what she called positive thinking.

  1

  SOLOMON’S ELIXIR.

  Sophie Campbell’s fingers tightened around the tiny vial of amber liquid, which shimmered and sparkled like the sun rising over the Sahara Desert. Well, okay, so Sophie hadn’t ever seen the sun rising over the Sahara Desert, but Malik, her ghostly djinn guide, had assured her that it was completely identical, minus all the locusts. Not that it really mattered what the liquid looked like; the important thing was that it was not only the most sought-after magic in the djinn kingdom, it was also the key to freeing her father from the binds of Sheterum, an evil sahir. The idea made Sophie feel giddy, because the sooner her dad was freed, the sooner they could be a proper family again.

  Her smile faded slightly.

  Unfortunately, there was one small chink in her very good plan. In order for the elixir to free her father, she needed to find out where he was being held, and that was proving to be a problem. A big problem. Thankfully, Sophie was a positive person and she was sure that the Universe wouldn’t have helped her find all of the ingredients to make the elixir (including eel-tail oil extract, which, for the record, stank worse than gym socks) if it wasn’t going to help her find out where her father was being held.

  And so Sophie slipped the precious vial back into the pocket of her jeans as she made her way through the crowded backstage area of the Robert Robertson Middle School auditorium on Monday afternoon.