The Conjurer (The Vine Witch)

by Luanne G. Smith

  “Sidra!” Yvette spotted her lurking in the dark. Curse her fairy instincts. “We’ve been at it all night. And now we’ve just about got a plan of attack sorted out. You won’t believe how we managed it.”

  “What is all this?” she asked, stepping into the room, her eye steady on the witch holding the glass bottle. “What have you done?”

  Yvette wiped her hands on a cloth and nudged her chin toward the witch. “This is Camille Joubert. She owns the joint. She’s been letting me help her with the perfume.”

  “Enchantée,” Camille said before peering closer. “You are Sidra? Then I feel like I already know you. Hariq talked about you all the time when he was here.”

  Sidra’s lip began to curl at the idea of this woman thinking she knew her. Yvette nudged her in the arm and mouthed, “Behave.”

  “Actually, I’m thrilled you’re here,” Camille said. “We could certainly use your opinion on this concoction we’ve come up with.” The perfume witch crossed the room to where several beakers full of liquid sat atop a wooden table. She pulled the stopper out of a large container filled with a yellowish fluid.

  The aromas of vanilla, jasmine, lavender, and a hint of something animalistic and wild clung to the air. Sidra was drawn to the scent like an aroused lover. “What is in this?” she asked, leaning her nose in. Her brain knew it was merely a mix of the petals she’d already experienced in the room, but there was something else, some magnetism to the scent that made it impossible to resist.

  “Three things,” Camille said. She smiled coyly as Yvette nearly squealed with delight. “First, we’ve made a delectable mix of some of nature’s finest scent offerings. Second, Yvette was in possession of a goodly amount of castoreum, procured at the market, so we tossed it in.”

  “Turns out what that old witch gave me was from a beaver’s ass,” Yvette said, scrunching up her nose.

  “Highly prized for its robust aroma.” Camille held up a finger as if presenting the pièce de résistance. “And finally, there’s a unique tinge of magic holding it all together. A combination of my spellwork and this young woman’s glamour.”

  “We put a few drops of my Fée blood in the mixture. A pinch of fat would have been better, but, oh là là, I’m not that dedicated to the cause.”

  Camille gave a comme ci, comme ça shrug. “I think our jinni friend here has shown it worked as well with the castoreum replacement.”

  Feeling an unnatural giddiness infiltrate her mood, Sidra blocked her nose and mouth with the edge of her robe so only her eyes showed and stepped back. “What has worked? What magic is this?”

  “Camille has a theory, or rather she got the idea from your . . . from Hariq. Seems perfume can awaken a person’s spirit. Both the good and the bad, depending on the scent.”

  “And depending on the person,” Camille added.

  “But with jinn it also matters what their intentions are,” Yvette said. “At least that’s what Hariq told her when they were making that perfume of yours.”

  The mixture of scent and talk of her husband combined to form a whirlwind of happiness, sorrow, longing, and a deep, deep desire to forgive him anything if only he would materialize once more. Sidra kept her nose covered as she slumped against the wall. Her fire, the flame that kept her mood sharp and mind fixed, flickered within her until she felt woozy with watery emotions too complicated for her to control. She didn’t think she could hold up her physical embodiment another moment. And yet her mind couldn’t focus long enough to dissipate. Yvette, attuned as ever to the capricious moods of others, swept in and put an arm under her before she collapsed to the floor.

  “Take her to my office,” Camille said and put the stopper back in the bottle.

  Yvette used her power to levitate and guide Sidra to the next room. “Strong stuff, eh?” she said as she eased the jinni down into a soft chair.

  With some distance between her and the fragrance, Sidra recovered enough to gain control over her body and mind. “Hariq often took an interest in the creation of such complicated scents,” she said once her head cleared. “But what was the part you said about good and bad intentions?”

  “That may still be a matter of guesswork,” Camille said. “The idea is these pleasant smells are attractive to jinn whose intentions are well meaning. Or at least benign.” The woman paused briefly, as if only just making up her mind about Sidra. “Whereas a jinni whose intentions are of a befouling sort, his essence will be repelled by the pleasantness of such airborne aromas. They’ll get in his lungs, eyes, and nose, stinging the membranes with the stench of beauty.”

  “My husband was often right about such things.”

  “So, you think our jinni repellent will work?” Yvette moved to lean against a shelf. Her glow was soft but steady, enough to distract the eye and the mind from unpleasant thoughts.

  Sidra opened her mouth to speak when she saw the bottles lining the shelf behind the fairy. Rows and rows of perfume bottles like the one Hariq presented as a gift years ago. The one with her fragrance in it. The one she’d left behind in the Fée lands.

  The girl had made a joke. She was still smiling. But then she patted her hips as if feeling for something. “Oh, that reminds me. I keep forgetting to give this back to you.” Yvette reached in her pocket, the one that never showed the bulk of any of the things she hoarded, and produced a bottle. It was like the others behind her, but with one very distinct and terrifying difference the girl could never have understood.

  For the second time in mere days Sidra felt a chill overtake her. “What is that doing here?”

  “I picked it up on our way out of the grotto. Old habit, I suppose, keeping it safe for you. Good thing, seeing how we got kicked out right after. I know how much the bottle means to you. It’s like your home away from home, right?”

  Sidra stared, confounded by her bottle’s physical presence in this strange room. “You stupid, interfering girl! Do you know what you’ve done? You must send it back to your mother’s realm this instant. Back through that portal your frivolous kind slips in and out of. Now!”

  “Send it back? If I knew how to send the bottle back, do you think I’d still be standing here?”

  The fire surged back into Sidra. “The bottle cannot be here.”

  Fool of a girl! Sidra swept the container up in her fist and had to restrain herself from pulverizing the crystal into dust. Not that it would have eliminated her problem.

  And then Yvette understood. Her mouth formed a small O that she covered with one hand as her eyes went to the bottle. “You mean you had it with you all that time?”

  “Had what?” Camille was naturally confused, but she wouldn’t find enlightenment from this jinni.

  Sidra tucked the bottle in the folds of her caftan, threatened Yvette with death by a thousand fiery ants gnawing at the inside of whatever brains she had left if she said another word, then shimmered into the ether. There had to be one safe place in these infidel lands that wasn’t overrun by fools.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “She’s right. These markings will help a little, but they won’t stop a full-force attack from a jinni as powerful as Jamra.” Yanis had removed his wooden leg so that he could sit on the floor and move without the hindrance of a limb that wouldn’t bend. Leaning forward, he added the symbol for Venus in the lower right corner of his seven-sided star. Elena handed him the parcel of salt she’d brought so he could sprinkle a handful around the perimeter.

  “Isn’t there some way she can stop him?”

  “She’s still young, in terms of the life of a jinni,” he added when he saw the doubt in Elena’s eye. “Sidra is centuries old, don’t get me wrong, but her will hasn’t been tested. Not like those who’ve been around for thousands of years, who’ve seen the world turn over again and again.”

  “Is that why he was able to bind her inside the city?”

  “When was this?”

  Elena explained the wish magic she’d been caught up in months earlier while in the
city—the tugging at her instinct and the feeling that she’d been swept inside a whirlwind of energy, driving her toward a predestined outcome. “Even Sidra couldn’t resist the pull of her own magic. She’d had no intention of returning to the city, but a stolen wish landed her there anyway. Jamra had set a trap for her should she ever return. Bound her so she was physically and magically unable to leave the city limits.”

  “How did she escape? She couldn’t have broken his binding spell on her own.”

  “That’s what Jamra said. But she didn’t exactly free herself of the spell. She’s clever, our Sidra. She slipped free by using the protection of Oberon to transport her to the Fée lands. Apparently, changing dimensions is a little stronger magic than a binding spell that confines one to the cross sections of mortal streets.”

  Yanis shook his head in disbelief as he shaded in another symbol. “Oberon? As a child I’d been taught the Fée were a myth, characters from stories leftover from antiquity.”

  After Elena revealed how she, too, had been raised in ignorance of the existence of jinn, she shared her thoughts on Sidra’s escape. “I can imagine her fiery temper didn’t go over well with the locals in the Fée lands, which may be why Oberon decided to redeposit her here, where she has some history.” She sorted through their remaining items to see which would be of the most help in protecting them from a jinni hell-bent on destroying mankind. “Do you use knots to seal a binding?” she asked and held up the blades of sweetgrass and some string.

  “Yes, but also a small ritual using a talisman.” Yanis rubbed his knee as if it pained him. “There is an incantation.”

  “Well, that’s it. Why can’t we use the ritual? Bind Jamra within the village or, better yet, something smaller. A vessel of some kind. Isn’t that how it’s done? With an oil lamp or a bottle with a tight-fitting lid?”

  Yanis shook his head. “To bind a jinni, you must know their name. Their real name,” he said, holding his finger up to clarify his point. “The name that rises from the fire when they’re born into the world.” He paused then, as if distracted.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s just the jinn make every effort to protect their true name. Simply because it can be used against them in spells. Jamra would’ve had to have known Sidra’s true name to bind her to the city.”

  “Hariq,” she said. “She might have confided such a thing to her husband.”

  “Perhaps. But then somehow Jamra got it out of him. Or, if he has an accomplished sorcerer working with him, he could have figured her name out using a code that pairs letters with numbers, such as those found on certain talismans. Sometimes the name is disguised that way. For, while their true name is something they wish to keep secret, it is also a means of invoking their power. But that’s the only way he could have bound her to the city limits. Or any boundary line.”

  “So, we can’t trap Jamra without his true name.”

  “No. Not unless Sidra knows what it is. Which I doubt, or she would have retaliated already.”

  The revelation made sense, even if the news deflated Elena’s brief bout of excitement. She watched as Yanis returned to his drawing. He was absolutely meticulous when it came to his markings. Though he used a humble piece of chalk to draw his symbols, there wasn’t anything sloppy or ambiguous about the lines he made. Everything was deliberate. Neat. Intentional. Which didn’t comport with Sidra’s derisive version of the man, calling him a charlatan and jackal.

  “Nothing went wrong, did it? With the potion, I mean. I know I asked earlier, but that was before I saw how dedicated you are to your craft,” Elena said.

  “And before you knew about my past?”

  “Well, yes.” She glanced over his shoulder at the nearly complete drawing on the floor. A work of art. “You’ve obviously had more training than the mere street vendor you tried to pass yourself off as.” She knelt beside him, feeling the energy begin to coil over the symbols, coalescing in the ether, waiting for the incantation. “But there was something else at play in Hariq’s death, wasn’t there.”

  Yanis set his chalk aside and brushed his fingertips off on his trouser leg. “Please don’t say anything to Sidra, but I have often wondered if Hariq did it himself. If he added something to his dose.”

  “You mean . . . he took his own life?”

  “I have no proof, but we had a pact, the four of us. The spell wouldn’t work unless we all said our part. I wrote it myself, without error. No one could have interfered.”

  “But why would he do that?”

  “He wouldn’t. That’s what doesn’t make any sense. They seemed happy here.” He nudged his chin toward the last place Sidra shimmered into the ether. “She used to be pleasant to me. But one never truly knows the mind of another. Or the inner workings of a marriage not your own.”

  “I met her not too long after Hariq died,” Elena said. “In jail. Just before she was to be executed.”

  “You helped her escape.”

  “Actually, she helped me escape. We’ve been helping each other ever since.”

  She’d often thought about how their lives had intertwined with Yvette’s, the three like vine tendrils that stretch out and anchor themselves one to the other. An odd tangle, but one that had borne fruit in friendship.

  “It’s finished,” Yanis said.

  He backtracked from the drawing, said a sort of prayer or incantation in his native language, and then blew over the chalk marks, sealing them with his breath. Yanis never claimed the magic would hold off Jamra, but with luck it would be an eye in the storm.

  Elena might not have believed in the power of chalk and breath and whispered foreign words when they first met, but she had every confidence their intention was well received under the gaze of the All Knowing. And the eye of the All Seeing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Are they sleeping yet?”

  The dog lifted his head to see where the voice had come from. There, at the end of the roof, legs dangling over the lip of a chimney top, sat the unnerving creature. She stared with eyes that glittered like starlight.

  “The witch and sorcerer are still awake. They’re trying to create a protection spell that will hold off Jamra.”

  “Can they do it?”

  “They’ve underestimated him. The sorcerer’s chalk magic will break like the brittle bones of birds. But there’s still the chance their other talents will shine.”

  “And Sidra?”

  “Scared. Hurt. Gone for now, but she’ll be back once she processes how the bend in fate will favor the best outcome.”

  The creature looked up at the stars as she dangled her legs. “Whatever course the magic must take, whatever pain it causes the heart, that’s how these things work.”

  The dog knew her words were true, but the knowledge didn’t make witnessing the unfolding events any less painful to watch. That would have to be dealt with later. He changed the subject to hide his despair from the creature’s glittering eyes. “Yvette has done well. You were right about her instincts.”

  That seemed to please the creature, though he couldn’t care less about her happiness. She’d made him uncomfortable for days with her unblinking gaze, as if reading his intentions, his worries. He’d hardly slept for fear of her intrusions. She turned away from him with a crooked smile, as if reading his thoughts even now, and called her diminutive minions to heel at her side. Their black beetle shells reflected the light from the stars, drawing attention to the halters on their backs. In this form she was hideous. A nightmare to scare a man from ever wanting to close his eyes. He was glad to see her fly away in her hulled-out shell of a chariot, snapping her cricket bone whip. He wouldn’t have slept anyway, but knowing her devilry was alight in the night air made him shudder as he curled up atop the roof to wait for the dawn with his tail over his nose.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The apartment wasn’t safe. Not even a random crevice in the village wall was safe. Sidra skirted the cobblestone lane, keeping to the shadow
s where the glint of moonlight didn’t reach. She ought to get up higher onto the rooftops, where she could anticipate the threat better, but then she, too, would be visible. A lone starling under the eye of the soaring hawk.

  There had to be some haven, a temporary place where she could hide the dagger and keep chaos out of the hands of those who would use it to cut the throat of the world. “Think!” she scolded herself, but the only solution that came to mind was the one she couldn’t be sure of. And yet it was her only option. She must go to the old one and confide in him and his wisdom, and quickly, before the morning announced itself on the horizon.

  Sidra dissipated, ready to fly as quickly as she could to the cave. Her spirit form soared over the rooftops, a mere wisp in the night air, desperate to find help. She dipped and dived between chimneys and steeples, swooped above treetops of cypress and palm, with the speed of the desert zephyr. As she approached the tumbledown buildings forming the outskirts, she veered west, preparing to accelerate over the open land, when she slammed into a wall of resistance at the edge of the village. The collision forced her back, her energy curling in on itself like smoke blown into a bottle. She regrouped and pushed forward again, only to be hit by a barrier that refused to let her pass. Materializing, she reached a hand out to test the invisible blockade when a shadow rose up behind her, forcing her heart into her throat.

  “You have grown careless, jinniyah.” Jamra emerged out of the shadow, his eyes shining with the ungodly lust of a grave robber. “There was a time I could not sneak up on you.”