My heart pounding in my chest, I turned around to Jamil, who was staring at Ben with curiosity.
“Jamil, this is my friend Benjamin. You heard him, he’s going to help us get out of here.”
My brother stepped forward to approach, but Ben immediately shot backward. In my relief to see Ben, I’d forgotten what danger he posed to my brother.
“It’s good to meet you, Jamil,” Ben said from a distance.
“And you too,” Jamil said, looking confused by Ben’s behavior and still completely out of his depth.
I turned back to Ben. “So do you know where my family is? And your family? The witches? Everyone else?”
I could hardly suppress the relief and excitement bubbling up within me. Despite the fact that I still didn’t understand how on earth Ben had managed to pull this off, right now, I didn’t have bandwidth in my buzzing mind to think too much. All I could think about was seeing the rest of my family again, escaping this place, and returning to The Shade with them.
“Come with me,” Ben said. I grabbed hold of Jamil’s hand, and we followed Ben out of the room.
In the corridor outside, to my dismay, a jinni was waiting there for us. Not Nuriya—a male jinni. This man bore much resemblance to the queen herself. He shared the same jet-black curly hair and stiff jawline, and the noble shape of his nose was also much like hers.
Jamil’s eyes looked like they were about to pop from their sockets as he gaped at the creature.
I slid an arm around his waist, worrying that he might even faint from the shock. He must’ve been thinking that he was in some kind of bizarre dream, and perhaps that was best for him. It would help him to get through all this.
The jinni led us further along the corridor, right until the end, when he stopped outside the door. He pushed it open to reveal another bedroom much like the one Jamil and I had just been in, although larger. It contained three single beds lined up along one side of the wall. Huddled together on one of the beds were my mother, Dafne, and Lalia. My sisters had been holding my mother tightly, their heads buried in her arms, as she sat comforting them with a drained, terrified look on her face. But the moment they noticed Jamil and me, their eyes lit up. Even though the jinni was present next to us, the three of them leapt off the bed and rushed toward us.
A huge smile spread across my face as I waited for the penny to drop.
My mother gasped as she clutched Jamil. She was staring up at his face as though she needed glasses, squinting and touching his face.
“Jamil?” she breathed. “Are you okay?”
My heart soared as he replied with perfect pronunciation, “Yes, Mom. I’m okay. I don’t know how, but… I’m feeling better than I ever remember.”
My mother looked from my brother to me, then back to my brother. She cupped his face in her hands, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. She was utterly speechless for several moments before emotions overtook her and she broke down sobbing against his chest.
I picked Lalia up as she flung herself at me. Wrapping her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, she planted slobbery kiss after kiss on my cheek, holding me so tight she was practically strangling me.
Dafne was rooted to the spot, her face pale with shock, staring at me and Jamil as though we were both strangers.
When my mother drew away from Jamil, she was shaking.
“What happened?” she wheezed, moving to me and hugging me as much as she could while Lalia hogged me.
“We don’t have time to explain now, Mom,” I said.
“My God, River. You’re so cold! What’s wrong, honey? Are you ill?”
“I’m okay. I’m not ill. I’ve just… got a lot to tell you. But where’s Grandpa?” I looked around the room again.
“I-I don’t know,” my mother replied. “When I heard you’d gone missing, I brought Jamil to Cairo and stayed with your grandfather, Dafne and Lalia in his house. The day we were brought… here… your grandfather had gone out. It was just the four of us at home. A strange mist filled the place and it seemed to knock us all unconscious. When we woke up, we were in this room. I thought we’d been gassed but—”
“Okay,” I said, hating to interrupt her. As much as I was dying to hear the full story, we had to get a move on. I looked at the jinni. “Was my grandfather brought here too?”
The jinni shook his head.
Thank God. My family and I shared the same look of relief. I wasn’t sure if his elderly heart could have taken the fright. He’d been under enough stress as it was recently.
I nodded toward Ben, who’d remained as far away as possible and was watching our reunion from the doorway.
“This is Ben, my friend,” I said to my mother, deliberately leaving out the fact that he was a vampire as I’d done with Jamil. They’d find out soon enough. “He’s found a way to get us all out of here.”
Here. My mother didn’t even know where here was.
Her, Lalia’s and Dafne’s gazes fell on Ben. His stoic expression broke as he offered them a slight smile. I could see how nervous he felt about being so close to my human family. I had to keep a close eye on him. If he showed even the slightest sign of moving toward us, I’d rush at him and smother him.
“Let’s go to your family now, Ben,” I said.
He nodded.
Still carrying Lalia, who clung to me like a monkey, I took Dafne’s clammy hand, as well as my mother’s. My mother had latched onto Jamil again.