Page 76 of Heavensent & Hellbent

“Four hundred dollars.”

Zain let out a low whistle, to which Marissa responded by narrowing her eyes. “What you’re asking me to do is something only a high-level sorcerer can do. That’s what makes me different from the other quacks around here. If you want to leave, to not pay me what I’ve requested, then fine, but I won’t haggle.”

Her defensiveness made Zain’s cheeks go a little pink, a small smile tracing his lips. And seeing him—a six-foot-one, confident guy—being scolded by this small woman was humorous. He raised his hands in the air. “Okay, okay.”

“I take cash up-front.”

I couldn’t help but think of the tarot reading that Nic and I had done at the Hull Fair last year. The woman had been led by everything we had said. She gave us the most generic reading—claiming that we would both find love overseas and that I was haunted by my trauma, while Nic needed to let go of her fears. She gave no further explanation and practically booted us out of her little hut, calling for the next person to shell out sixty pounds.

Marissa flashed me an insulted look. “I’m not like that,” she said, which rendered me speechless. Could she hear what I was thinking?

“No. I can read your emotions, however, and you are apprehensive due to past experience.”

I pressed my lips together, trying not to think or emote.

Zain dug into his jeans pocket and produced eight fifty-dollarbills; he must have expected this. I couldn’t even offer to pay, as I had a measly ten dollars in my purse.

She took the money and put it in a jar on the table. “You need to know, once I retrieve memories of your past, they cannot be erased. They will stay with you, good or bad.”

I sat on my hands to stop from fidgeting. Knowledge was power, and we needed to know what our past selves had done wrong, the missteps that had gotten them killed. I knew that Castiel wanted us to see into our pasts so Zain wouldn’t want to be anywhere near me, and if that was the case, I would have to handle it. But knowing my past would also mean knowing what powers I had, and possibly how I could wield them to defend myself. While the jinn had eased off for now, it was only a matter of time before they came for us again. The benefits surely would outweigh the negatives.

“We know,” Zain said.

“The side effects can be quite severe immediately after. You might feel feverish from the rush of power. You may also feel an overwhelming amount of emotion. Your past selves’ feelings might confuse you. It’s advised not to make any rash decisions in the next twenty-four hours. After that, the flood of memories will simmer down. They will never leave you, but they will not overwhelm you and may lie dormant within you.” It was like she was reading from a safety handbook. Her eyes darted to me. “Past experiences have taught me to warn my clients.”

I gulped. “Right.”

“Give me your hands,” she said, reaching out to us.

I took my left one out from under my leg and placed it in hers. Zain did the same. We gave each other a look before the session began.

Marissa’s grip was firm, squeezing. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to pull my hand away. For a small woman, she was strong. She began muttering under her breath and then humming, her eyes shut tight.

Then she was impossibly still and had stopped speaking, though her grip remained firm. My breathing was loud in my ears, alongside the ticking of a clock I hadn’t seen in the dark room.

It went on like this for at least five minutes, until the room began to shake, the table vibrating. The light bulb overhead swaying. I gasped, trying to take my hand out of Marissa’s, but she held on.

Zain’s eyes snapped to mine, and they appeared different. Darker, somehow. They narrowed at me with a sense of knowing, but above that, longing overrode all emotion on his face. He stared at me like he wanted to devour me, lips parting, pupils dilated. I was confused, about to question why he was being so intense, when I felt a jolt of pain in my scalp. Sharp and sudden. I inhaled a gasp before every version ofherwas thrown into me.

Rabiya, the rebellious jinn princess who frequented Persia, seducing Zal, the warrior angel, in 1723, perceiving him as a mouse she wanted to play with until she too fell deeply in love, entwining their souls forever. She and Zal were burned at thestake for their crime of producing a son so wicked he tipped the balance between good and evil.

Bahar, the daughter from a highborn jinn family in 1772, who couldn’t ignore the intense pull of the stable hand, Meysam, the boy she stole glances with while in the house. She and Meysam were killed in their sleep, unaware they were being hunted.

Sahra, the housewife, married to an old man but who in 1825 passed Younes, a talented blacksmith, in the street, and immediately felt their spark. Months later, she left her abusive husband for the angel. They both were killed through public hanging for the crime of infidelity, tipped off by forces above.

Anahita, who did not have the opportunity to meet Kamran because he died before her in the Persian famine. Even though they did not meet, a part of her was always missing. She dabbled in the dark arts, harnessing her power to converse with serpents and moving to the shadows of the Underworld, solitary, until she unalived herself in 1871, his name on her lips.

Gol, the nurse who gave special care to the soldier, Majid, she was treating in Mashad in 1924. Gol was killed by the jinn hunters, outnumbered, and upon seeing her body, Majid went to enemy lines, alone, and never returned.

Mahsa, the seamstress who stole a kiss from the radical journalist, Sam, in a disco in Tehran in 1973, and from there couldn’t stay away from him. They went on the run, traveling the roads outside Iran to find refuge and help, when they were knocked off the road by high-level jinn and sustained irreversible damage.

Countless versions of myself. All stubborn and hotheaded. All longing for connection but not realizing it. All falling in love with different iterations of Zain. With the way he listened to us. With his kindness and protective nature. With his innate beauty that turned us into much softer versions of ourselves.

Countless times, we fell in love with him. And each time we were hunted.

The memories entered me, thick and fast, and I was breathless, panting. I didn’t know how Zain kept his composure, how he looked at me like he needed me while I was struggling to process each memory.

The past versions of me were so much stronger, so much more assertive than I had ever been. Some were cunning, seducing Zain, well aware of what he was. It was only after we fell in love that I told him I was a jinn, and by that point, he always accepted me. He took his time, but in the end he never cared that I was different.