The Genius of Jinn Read Free Page A

must be strong. And our strength comes from one another. Do not forget that, Yasmin.” Tayma turns to me. “Nor you, Azra.”
    Tayma faces Notre-Dame and blows it two kisses. Two pecks, so very European.
    “Now,” she says, once again taking my arm. “To the Seine before Yasmin removes her top.”
    I stare at Yasmin’s chest, already larger than mine and stretching the fabric of her black tee thin across the front. She looks down, too, and then at me. We stare at one another and back at Tayma.
    Finally, I get it. “Oh! You mean blows her top? Like gets angry?”
    “ Oui, but with Yasmin it is always angri er, is it not?” She puckers her lips and air kisses two kisses to Yasmin before leading us in the direction of the expansive river that cuts through the center of Paris and makes this little spit of land an island.
    “Let’s just get the book and get out of here,” Yasmin says.
    “Book?” I say. “We’re here for a book?” A book and not ice cream from the best shop in the world? The shop right across the way, on its own island, the Île Saint-Louis, which if we just take a right off the bridge, we’ll reach within minutes.
    Of course, we don’t turn right.
    “Not just any book,” Tayma says as she guides us over a bridge to the Left Bank. “A book of spells. It is Yasmin’s gift to her mother.”
    Gift? Though Lalla Raina’s birthday is coming up, the idea of Yasmin locating a Jinn who lives in Paris just to get her mother a special book doesn’t sound very Yasmin.
    Tayma points out a pile of dog poop for us to walk around. The most beautiful city in the world is filled with dog poop. The French are such a contradiction.
    Tayma walks us along the river, past stall after stall selling used books and postcards and original artwork and prints of all sizes. Propped up on metal rods with green canopies, the stalls run along the Seine as far as I can see. At the next intersection, Tayma waves her hand over her head. “We cross here, mes amies. ”
    Like a mirror, the other side of the street is also lined as far as I can see. But this side boasts café after café, nearly identical, and yet all packed with customers. I’m pretty sure there are more cafés on this one street than in my entire town, maybe state. Tayma leads us to the third one down and gestures to the row of round metal tables under the red awning out front.
    “The table at the end is paying,” she says. “Sit. I will be a moment.”
    She passes by a waitress and I hear her say, “Deux chocolat chaud, s’il vous plaît,” and while I don’t know what that means exactly, that some form of “chocolate” is in the middle works for me.
    When the extraordinarily fashionable couple with matching scarves expertly looped around their necks at the last table leaves, I wedge myself in one of the empty seats.
    A trail of smoke from the table behind me wafts my way, and I angle my seat to avoid it. Yasmin stands at the door to the inside of the café with her arms crossed in front of her chest. She stays there until the waitress reappears with a tray.
    The smell reaches me, overpowering even the cigarette smoke, before the waitress does. At the table, the server says, “Bon appétit” and sets down two white mugs that are more like soup bowls and two elegant pitchers a bit larger than the creamer my mother warms milk for her coffee in each morning.
    The waitress lifts a pitcher in the air, and a rich, dark brown liquid spills from the spout, filling my wide mug. I add a spoonful of the fluffy white whipped cream served on the side and bring the bowl to my lips.
    I’m still blowing to cool the molten chocolate when Yasmin plops down across from me.
    Just to be not like me, she doesn’t bother to blow on her hot chocolate and gulps down a massive sip. She winces and squeezes her eyes shut but refuses to acknowledge just how badly she must have burned her tongue.
    Normally I don’t engage with Yasmin, but I can’t look at the stupid pout