The Seven Kings of Jinn

That still made no sense. Ari snorted. Like any of this made sense. She was probably in a padded cell somewhere, gazing blankly at a man in a white coat, saliva dripping down her chin. “Still… not getting it.” She shrugged, burrowing deeper into the jacket, and studied the White King’s form. He was truly a magnificent creature, imposing and arrogant, and utterly terrifying. Those eyes of his. They were so black. So soulless.

“I wanted you to wish to see your mother so that it would bring you here. Of your own free will.”

“It’s not exactly my free will if you manipulated me into missing my mom.”

The White King smiled and Ari flinched. It was the strangest smile she had ever seen. He stretched his lips into an approximation of a smile, but it was more a bearing of teeth. There were no lines to crinkle the corner of his eyes, no spark to make the black of his irises glitter. It was a dead smile. “You are clever. I am glad.”

She shook her head. It was like he wasn’t human. Wait, she reminded herself; he said he isn’t. “I really want to wake up now.”

“This is not a dream. Please stop trying to convince yourself otherwise.”

The sheet beneath her was chilled from the winter air and lack of heating, the mattress firm, contouring under her butt. The candlelight flickered when wind blew into the room from the door she’d left open, casting threatening shadows over the very real man in front of her. Jasmine still danced in the air and Ari doubted she would ever smell the floral scent again without thinking about this alien room. Ari pressed a palm to the velvet blanket at the end of the bed, smoothing over the plush fabric, and its softness tickled. Her arm didn’t hurt but it still felt raw from the nisnas’ bite and the fur inside the jacket made the sensitive skin tingle. Oh God, it had attacked her. She really had been attacked! Ari glanced behind her to make sure the thing was definitely gone, fear prickling her spine and making her check once more before she turned to the White King. She laughed a little hysterically inside. The White King? It was like something out of Narnia. Inhaling deeply, Ari let the bitter air flood her lungs, opening up her airwaves. Although her heart slammed in her chest and the blood rushed in her ears, she felt calmer, knowing she wasn’t crazy.

This was real.

She locked gazes with the White King and tried not to shudder. “You were right earlier. I’m not the girl who cries easily anymore. But I am scared. I thought maybe I was going crazy but weird has already entered my life. I have a poltergeist, you know. And I’m pretty sure a poltergeist stalker. And at the party when Rabir took my hand, I knew there was something off about him. Like really off. Like poltergeist living in my house off. This isn’t a dream. And I’m not crazy. So what am I?”

He nodded at her and then turned, snapping his fingers over the air beside him. A glass chair appeared out of an explosion of fire.

No wait. A throne.

He settled down into the high-backed chair, arranging his colorful robes just so. “How would you like me to explain? From your beginning or from the beginning?”

“I think this is one of those occasions where the long version is preferable to the short version.”

His opaque eyes remained trained on hers. “How much do you know of the jinn?”

She shrugged, sucking in a shuddering breath, her stomach muscles clenching and choking the life out of the butterflies that had awakened in her belly. Her foot bounced on the floor and she had to press a trembling hand to her knee to stop it. “Not much. Just that Disney was apparently way off the mark.”

“You know nothing of your heritage?”

“Why don’t we lead up to the part where you explain how it is my heritage?”

“Your tone is disrespectful. Do all children speak to their parents this way where you come from?” his voice had grown calmer. It had a rumbling, icicle-laden edge to it that stopped her from rebutting with a smartass comment. This wasn’t a dream. If the White King over there wanted to take her out with a snap of his fire-breathing fingers, there was no waking up from that.

At her continued silence, he blinked those dead eyes and straightened up in the ‘chair.’ “Then we shall begin at the beginning.” He curled his fingers elegantly in the air and little flames danced into the darkness, transforming into the outline of a man. “In your world, this, and the others, exists jinn. A diverse race of many colors spawned by Azazil.” The figure pulsed more vividly in the air, so Ari assumed it represented this Azazil person. “Azazil is the sultan of all jinn, created from Chaos; he is as powerful as time and a lover of destruction. Power like Azazil’s leads to fear, betrayal and death. Over the centuries Sultan Azazil bore children—the Seven Kings of Jinn, each a ruler of one day in the mortal realm. The Gilder King, ruler of Sunday. The Glass King, ruler of Monday. The Red King, ruler of Tuesday. The Gleaming King, ruler of Wednesday. Myself, the White King, ruler of Thursday. The Shadow King, ruler of Friday. And the Lucky King, ruler of Saturday.”