The Art of Wishing Read online

  The switchblade.

  “You,” I said.

  “Me,” replied Xavier, in Simon’s voice.

  Suddenly I couldn’t move. My leg tensed in memory of long-gone pain, but I lifted my chin and glared at him. “What do you want?”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Actually, I should be asking you that. What do you want. Let’s see. Well, there’s something about finding out who my master is, something about a coin, something about a wish. Come on. Do you really think that will work?”

  “What? How can you . . . !” I sputtered. Then I narrowed my eyes at him, realizing what was going on. “I thought only Oliver could read my mind.”

  Xavier smiled at me. “And you’d have been correct, if you hadn’t given me permission to enter your mind, too.”

  “Permission?” I echoed.

  He lifted the switchblade, turning it idly in his hand as he showed it to me. “You don’t remember our little conversation in the car? I offered you my blood in exchange for access to your thoughts. You accepted by offering your blood to me in return. A blood exchange of this nature is a contract between us, valid for as long as you remain Ciarán’s master.”

  A blood exchange. Suddenly I remembered: He’d given me a pat on the leg. At the time, it had seemed like a pointless gesture, if a cruel one, but it would have been easy for him to nick his hand and mingle his blood with my own.

  “I didn’t offer you a damn thing,” I seethed.

  “Perhaps you did, and perhaps you didn’t. Aren’t loopholes fascinating?” He let out a little laugh. “But I’m not here to talk business, Margaret McKenna. I am here because you have a plan—a stupid plan, but a plan nonetheless—to end my life.”

  “What?” I said indignantly. “I do not.”

  “As if I haven’t already warned my master against those who’d seek to take my vessel,” he sneered, taking a step toward me, the blade steady in his hand.

  I took a step back. “I just wanted to change your mind,” I said frantically, feeling my heart pound in my chest. “I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want anyone killing anyone! That’s the whole point!”

  Something softened in Simon’s—Xavier’s—face. “Ah. I take it our dear Ciarán has filled you in on how I’m secretly Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.” He chuckled, like that was the silliest thing he’d ever heard.

  “Doesn’t seem like that big of a secret,” I said. “And I should warn you: Stabbing me again won’t get me to make my third wish.”

  I nodded toward the switchblade, and he did an exaggerated double take, like he was surprised to find himself holding it. “Stabbing you?” he said, closing the blade with another little laugh and sliding it into his pocket. “Why would I do that? It’s not like another blood exchange would do me any good.”

  “Then why are you here?” I asked.

  Xavier held up both of his hands to the sky. “Finally! She gets to the heart of the matter. I am here, Miss McKenna, to ask you ever so nicely if you would please do me the honor of making your third wish and releasing Ciarán’s vessel.”

  “The honor . . . ?” I echoed, disgusted. “No. Absolutely not.”

  He paused, peering at me like I was a particularly colorful insect. “Look at you. So protective.” A cruel smile spread slowly, Grinch-like, across his face. “In that case, let’s dispense with asking. Give me the ring by sunset tomorrow, Miss McKenna”—he patted the pocket where his switchblade rested—“or else I will force it from your hands.”

  The finality of the statement chilled me, but I refused to let him see. “Force it? By what, stabbing me again? I thought you swore you wouldn’t touch me.”

  “That I did,” he agreed. “But I daresay I don’t need a blade to get what I want from you.”

  The air around him suddenly shimmered, and before I could even blink, I wasn’t looking at Simon’s face anymore. There, right in front of me, was . . . me. A mirror image of myself, from her mussed brown pixie cut right down to the mismatched blue and green shoelaces on her Chucks. I stared. Was my nose really that pointy?

  I glanced quickly around—half hoping nobody else was seeing this and half hoping somebody was—but we were alone.

  Xavier watched through my eyes as I took in the sight before me, and all that it implied. He smiled as he saw me understand. “Saturday night was a warning, Margo. I felt like performing for an audience that night, and I happened to be wearing your image at the time. Nothing you couldn’t handle, am I right? But if I happen to look like you next time I want to, say, rob someone? Shoot someone? Or better yet . . .”

  Suddenly, Oliver was there, right next to Xavier. I froze. He blinked a few times, like he was trying to orient himself, and then he noticed Xavier and smiled. “Hey, Margo,” he said to Xavier’s copy of me.

  But there was something off about him. It took me a second to put my finger on it, but it was definitely there. Maybe the inflections in his voice were different, or maybe his hair fell the wrong way, but it was enough to make me look closer. Close enough to spot the slight shimmer that rendered him just short of lifelike.

  “He’s an illusion,” I said. “The blood exchange. You can get into my head, so you can make me see things. Well, I have news for you: Your illusions suck.”

  Disappointment flickered across his face, but disappeared just as quickly. “Of course they do, to your eyes,” he said placidly. “The connection we have isn’t nearly as potent as the one you have with your dear Oliver. But I merely want to demonstrate something. A path your future might take, should you ignore my warning.”

  He turned back to Fake-Oliver. “Hello, darling,” he said, in my voice. Oliver just kept smiling at him, like I wasn’t even there. God, this was creepy. “Want to play?”

  “Yes, please,” said the Oliver illusion. “Did you bring the knife?”

  Xavier stretched my face into a grin. “Why, as a matter of fact, I did,” he said, and held up the switchblade. “What would you like me to do with it?”

  “That’s up to you,” said Oliver, his voice so sweet it made my teeth clench. “What does my master command?”

  Xavier nodded thoughtfully. “An interesting question. Well, what I really want is to wish you free. Nice and clean, no mess, no pain. But since your real master declined the opportunity to give me your vessel and let you go easy, we’ll do it the hard way.”

  “I understand,” said Oliver, nodding sadly. Then he knelt down in front of Xavier, just like he’d done on Saturday night, when he’d offered to take the ring back from me. He tilted his head to the side. Xavier leveled the switchblade at Oliver’s neck.

  This is not my Oliver, I told myself firmly. This is not real. It’s just an illusion. As if in response to my thoughts, the image of the false Oliver began to go transparent, almost like a hologram.

  But my hands still wouldn’t stop shaking.

  Bright red bloomed across Oliver’s neck, following the path that Xavier’s switchblade carved. Xavier held his head, and I watched, I actually watched, it’s not real it’s not real it’s not real, as the life bled out of Oliver’s eyes. Xavier let him go, and he crumpled unceremoniously to the ground.

  “It’s not real,” I whispered aloud.

  “No, it’s not,” agreed Xavier. “But it could be, very easily. And hey, look on the bright side: With Oliver out of the way, all your problems would go away. Poof!”

  Tearing my eyes away from the Oliver illusion lying lifeless on the pavement, I looked Xavier in the eye. “Oliver isn’t my problem. You are.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, I know, I know: I’m the big bad villain and Oliver is your sweet and innocent little boy toy. You love him and you want to save him and all the rest of that mushy crap.” He paused, narrowing his eyes at me. “But don’t kid yourself into thinking that’s all you feel for him. It’s all right there in your head, Miss McKenna. I can see it. You resent him for dragging you out of your precious little comfort zone. For leading me right to your doorstep. Perhaps even for mak
ing you fall in love with him, when you both knew he wouldn’t be around much longer. Am I wrong? Do tell me if I’m wrong.”

  “You are,” I said hotly. “You’re very, very wrong.”

  But he wasn’t nearly as wrong as I would have liked. And the sharp smile on his face told me that he knew it. But I changed the subject before this could go any further: “And you can’t kill him with a knife. He said so. He’d just come right back.”

  “He would, it’s true.” As if on cue, the false Oliver stirred, then slowly climbed to his feet again. The blood was gone. The gash across his throat was gone. He was whole again, just like Saturday night. He looked at Xavier. Xavier looked at me. “But it would still hurt. More than you can imagine.”

  “What next?” asked Oliver, smiling patiently at Xavier. “Would you like to kill me again?”

  “Stop,” I said hoarsely. “I get it, okay?”

  “Do you?” he said, peering at me. Beside him, the Oliver illusion shimmered into nothingness. “Do you really understand what will happen if I don’t have that ring by sunset tomorrow?”

  I forced myself to nod. Then I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I said, when I was sure I could keep my voice steady. “I understand just fine. What I don’t understand is why. You said you want Oliver to be happy. Just now, you said that. If that’s true, then why not, you know, just not wish him free?”

  He hesitated, pursing my lips in a way that made my face look downright ugly.

  This was too much.

  “And stop looking like me!” I blurted out. “Who are you, anyway? You must have made a fourth wish once. Who were you before that?”

  Xavier let out a harsh laugh. “I was nobody of import. One sad, mortal man in a land full of sad, mortal men.”

  “But what’s your name?” I pressed. Oliver had wanted so badly for me to know him, to know his history. Surely Xavier wanted to be known, too. Surely that could help me somehow.

  But he just stared at me. “The name I was born with is no longer mine. At the moment my name is Margo. And before that, Simon. Vicky, once, as you may recall. These days, I am usually a boy called Shen, who shares his master’s admittedly strange tastes in video games, athletic teams, and pornography. I’ve been countless different people, you know. But maybe this will do. . . .”

  The air shimmered again, and there stood a tall, pale young man with black hair, a generous helping of chin-scruff, and deep-set eyes that were an eerily light shade of gray.

  “Meet Xavier,” he said, holding his arms out with a flourish to present himself. His voice was deeper than I’d expected it to be. “This is who I was when Ciarán was bound to me.”

  “What about Niall?” I asked. “Can I meet him? Oliver said you were friends back then.”

  “Oh, we certainly were.” Then he twisted his face into a smirk. “We were even better friends when I was Xavier.”

  I bristled at the implication, but I crossed my arms over my chest. I couldn’t let him see me react. “Fine. Whatever. But I still want to know why you’re after Oliver.”

  He snickered. “You really are a tough girl, aren’t you? No wonder Ciarán likes you so much. He’s always had a soft spot for tough girls. That Maeve—he did tell you about her, didn’t he? She was a firecracker.”

  Despite the overwhelming urge to hit him, I clenched my teeth and refused to rise to the bait. “Right,” I said acidly. “You go ahead and list all the people he’s ever loved. I’ll see that I’m not a special snowflake after all, and I’ll have myself a little sobfest while you stand over me and practice your supervillain laugh. Can we skip to the part where we both get over it, and you tell me why you want to wish him free?”

  He laughed. “Miss McKenna, while I appreciate that you want to know, there are many things about this life of ours that you can’t even begin to understand.”

  “I understand that Oliver wants to keep living it.”

  “Living?” he said, regarding me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “Did he actually use that word? Living? Because this”—he gestured down at his body as he stepped closer to me—“is not living. This is a shadow, an echo of what living should be. People used to love us. They worshiped us and feared us. They put us in stories and songs, built legends and myths around us. We were gods. Tricksters. Angels, devils, creatures of fire. Those who knew us, called us the djinn.”

  At first I thought he’d said “gin,” and it took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. “Oh, djinn,” I said. “But wait, isn’t that just another word for genies?”

  “Well, aren’t you the clever one,” he said, bringing his hands up to give me a slow, mocking clap. “Don’t you just know everything. It’s merely a different placement of the tongue, isn’t it—a quirk of translation. Arabic, English. Djinni, genie. The same thing.” He was closer to me now, looking down at me with such intensity that I had to fight not to back away. “Listen to me, Margaret McKenna. Is the ocean the same as a cup of water? A cup of water is something you can toss away, or boil and flavor to taste, or consume without a drop left over. The ocean, though . . . the ocean consumes you.” He smiled. “Or it doesn’t. But the choice is never yours.”

  He closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out. “We were oceans, once. Now we’re just tap water, easily used and easily discarded. That isn’t living.”

  I frowned, trying to piece together everything he’d said. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we had true magic,” he said patiently. “Magic unbound by the wills of masters. And then it was lost.”

  “Lost?” I said, taken aback. “How can magic be lost?”

  He stepped away, laughing as he threw his hands up to the sky. “How the hell should I know?” he cried, so loudly that I looked around to see if anyone was listening. “Some believe it was taken from us. Some believe it was cast off by one of our own kind. And others . . .” He paused to make sure I was listening. “Others believe it left of its own accord. It knew the world was changing, and true magic would soon be stifled by chemicals and wires and screens. So it abandoned us and moved on to the next life, leaving behind only enough of itself to bind us to our vessels, and remind us of how much we’d lost.”

  With his head slightly bowed, he let the words float away into the evening air, as solemn as a sermon. True magic, possessed and then lost—the idea of it made me feel uncomfortably small.

  I tried to steer him back to more familiar territory: “And what does Oliver believe?”

  “Oliver.” He snorted. “Ciarán’s still young. To him, this life of slavery is still whimsical and thrilling, even when his masters force the most horrible of wishes upon him. The things I’ve seen him do . . .”

  My stomach turned, remembering how Oliver had said the same thing.

  “The last time I found Ciarán,” Xavier continued, “his vessel had landed somewhere in eastern Europe. He called himself Dmitri, and he belonged to a bitter old man who treated him like dirt. I offered, back then, to unbind him from his vessel, but he said no. He wanted to see who he could become next, when this was all over.

  “Ciarán throws himself into this with his whole heart, reinventing himself time and time again, making himself newer and prettier for every master he has. Falling in love with each of them, in his own way.” He gave me a pointed look, which I tried my damnedest to ignore. “But the day will come when he’ll realize there’s no substance to this. He’s only playing different versions of the same part, over and over, with no end in sight. He can deal out life and death, but only at someone else’s whim. He’s nothing more than a slave. He can’t even die without a master to wish it so.”

  “In other words,” I said slowly, “he can’t choose when to die, so you get to do it for him? What kind of sense does that make?”

  Xavier gave me a tight, disappointed smile. “The kind of sense we immortals understand,” he said, almost kindly, “and you do not. It’s a matter of honor.”

  That rankled, but I kept my f
ace as neutral as I could. Xavier sighed. “I encountered the one who made me, shortly after our true magic left us. She was called Dunya, and she was old. Six thousand, seven thousand years, maybe. One of the most powerful djinn I ever knew. She asked me if I’d felt the loss, too, and she asked if I would wish her free. She said that our time here was nearly over—that there was no longer a place in this shrinking world for great beings like us.

  “So I did as she asked, and do you know what she said to me? She said ‘Thank you.’ She smiled, and she burned until she was nothing but air and light.” He shook his head slowly, reverently. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

  “But that’s different,” I said. “She was ancient. Oliver isn’t even two hundred!”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand.” He gave a little shake of his head, like he was horribly disappointed in me. “Ciarán does, though, even if he won’t admit it to you. Maybe he doesn’t even want to admit it to himself. But he does understand.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” he said gently. “Sunset tomorrow, Miss McKenna. I won’t ask again.”

  Chapter TWENTY-ONE

  Years of after-school rehearsals had accustomed me to being alone in the dark mostly-empty school parking lot, but after my encounter with Xavier, nothing seemed familiar anymore. Shadows were deeper. Edges were blurrier. A pink-orange sunset stretched across the sky, only to be cut off by the pine trees that bordered the lot, but I could imagine it stretching on and on, beyond the reach of my vision, continuing forever and ever and ever and . . .

  I zipped my coat up and wrapped my scarf tightly around my neck. Then I reached into my pocket, grabbed Oliver’s ring, and called him. It seemed like eons before he arrived.

  “Margo!” Oliver jogged briskly toward me, his cheeks flushed, his hair messier than usual, and his camera clutched in one hand. The sight of him looking so happy, so alive, made me want to grab him and hold him tight and never let Xavier near him again.

  “Listen,” he said, “I found the greatest spot, just a couple blocks away, and there isn’t a lot of sunlight left, so I should get back, but if you want to meet me . . .”