Mum didn’t believe a word of it, of course.

I did my best to explain everything to her as she drove us back from High Wycombe to Stroud, but the more I talked, the less convinced she looked. I told her everything about my weird powers, the demon hound, Section 13. About Major Wilson, the monsters that had attacked Section 13’s base. I told her about warlocks and cursed ones and what had happened in World War Two.

The more I explained, the more focused on driving she became.

Eventually she settled on, “It sounds like a good idea for a story, Ethan. I didn’t know you had such a vivid imagination. You should write it all down as a story, maybe.”

I gave up.

I guess I couldn’t blame her, and rather than digging a deeper hole, I let it go. Mum wasn’t above believing in conspiracy theories if it suited her left-wing view of the world, but nothing I said made sense to her.

There were two people who would believe me, however. Maybe if I’d been more open with Jess and Dee from the start, things wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand between us all. I’d been so busy trying to figure out who I could trust that I’d overlooked the two most obvious people in my life.

I considered including Forrest, but the fact was he wasn’t one of my two best friends. Maybe I shouldn’t have shut him out, but I figured I’d tell him later, perhaps.

For now, it was more important to get Jess and Dee back onside, and that would be a lot easier without Forrest’s barbed comments getting in the way.

*

It turned out that Jess knew.

Of course, Jess knew.

At least she knew some of it.

Mum let me take the day off school, not commenting on my remarkable recovery. I’d called Dee and Jess in the early afternoon. Asked if we could meet because there were some things we needed to talk about. I guess I wasn’t the only one feeling sorry about our arguments because they both agreed.

An hour later, the three of us were sitting in my living room. Everything was awkward, none of us could look each other in the eye. Despite that, I pressed on and told them everything.

“I’ve known about your weird powers since you were twelve, Ethan,” Jess said as I started to explain.

“What? How?”

Jess had seen me push Maxwell across the room that day, seen my strength first hand through a window from the playground.

That was the day she’d become convinced a paranormal world existed. Since then, she’d kept a file on me. She’d been keeping files on all kinds of weird stuff. She’d hunted around forums, picked up on strange news items, and kept an eye on me. She’d even spent several months trying her hand as a witch, collecting books on magic and witchcraft, and trying to cast spells.

“Nothing happened, though.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason for that,” Dee said. “Most of the magic books you’ll find are misinformation, made up rituals and nonsense. Stuff to stop people practising real magic.”

Jess looked at Dee oddly. “And you know what about it how, now?”

“Uh, right, yeah. Nothing,” Dee said, “Never mind.”

He still hadn’t revealed his djinn side to Jess. She gave him more odd sideways glances as she continued to explain. The reason she’d been so mad with me was because I hadn’t told her the truth. She’d wanted me to be honest with her, to prove we were friends - and to prove that her belief in the existence of the supernatural wasn’t crazy.

“You’ve got a file on me?” I cut in.

“Ethan, god you are so oblivious sometimes. When did I start hanging out with you and Dee?”

“A couple of weeks after the Maxwell incident.”

“And? Dot dot dot?”

“I dunno, I thought it was because you’d heard a rumour I was tough or something. Or felt sorry for me.”

I could see Jess’s hand go for the facepalm again, but she resisted.

I moved on, getting into what had happened at Section 13’s base after the demon hound attacked. Dee held up a finger. He’d been looking puzzled for a while now. He turned to me.

“Wait a minute. What powers, Ethan?”

I looked him dead in the eye.

“Are you actually being serious?”

Dee looked at me blankly.

*

I told Dee and Jess everything, then. Every detail, everything I knew, including the anonymous hacker. Dee, I’m not joking, had no idea about my powers. I’d assumed he’d known all along when I found out about the djinn side of him. Instead, he’d thought what had happened with Maxwell in the classroom had been a fluke and had promptly forgotten about it.

The muppet.

I guess we were both so busy trying to keep our own secrets that we didn’t see each other’s.

It took a few hours to go over it all.

By the time I’d finished, a lot of things were clearer in my head. Including the need for me to trust the right people: Jessica O’Leary and Deepak Patel, my two best friends.

Dee had been subdued for most of it, Jess asking me the questions. At a certain point, though, there was no way for him to avoid being involved in the story. He knew that me telling the truth meant that he had to do so as well and reveal what he was to Jess.

She took it quite well, all things considered.

“Yeah,” I said after Dee had transformed into his djinn form and then back to his human form. “So Dee is a demon...”

“Djinn,” Dee sighed.

“Right, djinn, sorry. Kind of like my guardian angel.”

“Past tense,” Dee said. “That spell is broken now. I’m here because I want to be here.”

“Right.”

Jess was stunned into silence for once. I grinned.

“Yeah, you don’t know everything, Miss Smartypants.”

Jess scowled. “Right, and how long have you known about this?”

“About a week,” I admitted.

“Well, there you go then,” Jess replied in her best ‘case closed’ voice.

Before I had time to think of a snappy comeback, Jess started grilling Dee on the details. It was like a cross between the Spanish Inquisition and a scientific survey. She asked him all the questions I’d asked, and then she got into a bunch of things I hadn’t even considered.

Her ‘too stunned for words moment’ had lasted about three seconds.

“So, you’re a genie?”

“Ah, don’t use the ‘G’ word,” I said, seeing Dee wince. “It’s kinda racist.”

“Right,” Jess nodded, and she carried on with her questions

It turned out that the reason Dee had chosen the form of an eleven-year-old British-Indian kid was simple enough. The original Deepak had been taken by a bunch of vampires that were cruising in the area. Dee, in his spirit form, had been monitoring them in case they were a threat to me. They weren’t. They’d just snatched up the real Deepak, who I’d never known, and driven off.

“He’ll be dead by now,” Dee said. “I figured, well, maybe I could take his place. You know? His family wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, so I gave it a go. I didn’t expect to end up stuck in this body, only able to shift halfway into my real form for short periods of time.”

“And you didn’t try to save him?” I said, “The real Deepak?”

“What was I supposed to do, make the vampires trip over their shoelaces? I told you, I don’t have the power I used to. The last thing I wanted was a bunch of punk-ass vampires to find out about me.”

“Right,” I said, “Wow.”

“That’s kind of dark,” Jess commented.

“There wasn’t anything I could do, and remember, my priority was Ethan. I had no choice in that at all.”

“What would you have done if they’d somehow found and taken me instead?”

“I don’t know,” Dee admitted, “Back in the day, sure, I could have had a crack at them, but nowadays...my powers are so limited with magic being cut off I doubt I’d have been much use.”

Jess shrugged.

“Well, at least we’re getting things out in the open,” she said, “and now I know for a fact that I’m not crazy.”

“No-one said that,” I grinned.

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” Jess replied.

Somehow, over the past few hours, the mood between the three of us had lightened. Little jokes had slipped in, bits of banter here and there. It wasn’t much, but it was an enormous improvement on where we had left things off, with both of them storming out of my house.

Getting rid of our secrets was a relief for all of us.

Suddenly, Dee’s face became serious again. He’d been outlining stuff about the djinn realm, filling Jess in on the mythology of this strange new world that we’d all found ourselves involved in. Some stuff I knew, some stuff I didn’t.

Now, however, his face darkened.

“There’s something else you both need to know,” he said, his voice sombre.

“Go on,” I said.

“You know that old joke about gingers not having souls?”

He paused, hesitated. He grimaced as he dropped the bombshell.

“It’s not a joke,” he said.

Jess gasped, put her hand to her mouth. Ran a finger through her ginger hair.

“No soul...?” she whispered. “But...”

To his credit, Dee kept his face straight for a full ten seconds before cracking up. Then he couldn’t hold it in any longer, and he roared with laughter.

“Your face, Jess!” he cried, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Oh my days, you should have seen the look on your face!”

“You absolute idiot,” Jess said, but she saw the funny side.

For the next couple of minutes, Dee howled with laughter, and before long, Jess and I were joining in.