Page 12 of Heavensent & Hellbent

You look just like your mother.

How did that thing even know what my mum looked like?

Dad came home not too long after me. I wasn’t sure how long I stared into space before he arrived.

He was full of stories about his coworkers. While he might want to control my every move, he hardly paid close enoughattention to notice how I was feeling. So, I didn’t have to try that hard to hide how shaken up I was.

“They’re so much friendlier here,” he commented. I leaned against the kitchen cabinet as he talked at me. My heart was beating far too quickly. I dug my nails into my palms to focus on that pain rather than my messy mind. “I almost forgot, how was your trial, azizam?” he asked, while opening the fridge and frowning at the lack of contents. Inside was a carton of milk, some cheese, and a loaf of bread. Dad had gone to a nearby shop for a few things yesterday, but we still hadn’t done a proper food haul. I had told him about the trial last night, and I think he liked the idea of me tying myself to Denver in some way.

“I got the job,” I whispered. In fact, if he hadn’t turned around, I might have thought I didn’t answer him. It was like my mouth was running off without me, and I was watching myself pretend to be normal. Since my mum passed, I had developed a knack for pretending to be fine, but this was taking things to another level.

He clapped his hands together. “Of course you did! Shall we get some takeout to celebrate?”

Normally, I’d comment that that washisidea of celebrating—mine was to go out to a restaurant—but I was in no mood to argue, so I mumbled, “That’d be nice.”

I started to consider whether everything I had seen was a hallucination, an extension of the dreams. But I couldn’t convince myself of that; what happened felt too real.

Leaving the kitchen, I stopped just before the stairs andwent to Ehsan in the living room. He had come home shortly after I returned from seeing a man’s neck get snapped. I had to keep saying it, because the more I thought about it, the more I really deeped what I had seen. And with each passing minute, I asked myself new questions.

Did Zain really snap that thing’s neck?

Were its eyes really black?

Crucially, and not to be forgotten:Why did that thing mention my mum?

Ehsan was playingOvercooked.He often tried to rope me into joining him, but we had played it every day for a month last summer, and I couldn’t stomach it anymore. He still whined for me to play, hoping I might change my mind. He didn’t even have to ask in a full sentence now, all he said was, “Please?”

“Later, maybe. I have a headache,” I lied. I reached for my bag on the sofa, remembering his gift. “I got you this.”

His eyes lit up. Abandoning his game, he opened the pages, running his fingers along the illustrations. “This is so cool.”

Scooping my legs underneath me, I sat back on the cream sofa. It was comfortable and sunk beneath my weight.

“Ehsan, do you think jinn exist?” I asked.

Mum told us about jinn growing up. They were demonic spirits. The thing Zain killed could be a jinn, but saying the word aloud felt sticky. I didn’t think I believed in those kinds of things. And yet it didn’t look human. In fact, it reminded me of the sleep paralysis demon that haunted my nightmares.

“Obviously,they do,” Ehsan said after a beat. “Azar told me they did. And it’s in the Qur’an.”

While we were a Muslim family, and believed in Allah, we didn’t strictly practice our religion. It was something I thought about more lately, since Mum had died and my bad dreams worsened, but I wasn’t sure where to begin with learning more about the religion. I had always been told what I shouldn’t do, more to do with Iranian culture than anything else, but not the fundamentals of Islam.

“Yeah, but like, do youreallythink they do? Like that they’re physically here now? Not just spirits we can’t see?”

Ehsan put the graphic novel down on the seat next to him and furrowed his brows in concentration as if he was really considering my questions. “Sometimes they look like monsters. But sometimes they look like you and me. Those are the ones you need to watch out for, because they’ll try to trick you into doing evil things.”

He was regurgitating what Mum had told us. It was coming back to me now, hazily. No doubt, Azar had relayed this to Ehsan, too. When Mum died, Azar became something like a mother to him.

A vague memory resurfaced, of Mum telling us that the real jinns are the ones you think are your friends, but they’ll influence you into doing sinful things. I’d thought she just said that to make sure we didn’t do anything illegal. Now I was starting to think that maybe she wasn’t exaggerating at all.

My mind wandered to Zain and the ease with which he’d snapped the thing’s neck. It seemed too graceful, like this wasn’t the first time he had done it.

“Do you think jinns ever fight each other?” I was painfully aware that I was leaning toward him now, desperate, like my little brother was an expert on the supernatural.

Ehsan’s round face appeared perplexed for a moment, but more because he was pondering my question rather than why I was asking.

“I mean they’re mainly evil, so they probably do have enemies within their groups. It’s like any superhero movie. A villain is a villain. There’s no loyalty if you’re evil.”

“Right.”