“You’ve bound me to the village.”
“I would not want you flying off before I get what I want. Is that not what you were about to do?”
“It isn’t morning yet.”
Jamra let his eyes gaze up to the stars, then pointed. “And yet there is Atarsamain, rising to spy on our conversation.”
Sidra didn’t dare move a finger to verify the security of the bottle within her robes. If he detected even the slightest movement at her side, he would know. And she could not—would not—lower her eyes before this jackal. “The morning star is the mother of my tribe,” she said and forced herself to grin, letting the gold scrollwork on her teeth glint in the moonlight. She hoped it unnerved him to know she might have the blessing of the morning star during their meeting. His tribe was of the land of the sunset, and this was not his hour to crow. “Do you wish to continue this fool’s errand beneath her eye?”
Jamra paced to his left. Good. Let him walk on uncertain ground. She held her feet solid on her own patch of earth as he took a turn around her. “They are not worthy, the ones you wish to protect. They are weak. Powerless. Clay-footed mortals. They do not burn bright like us. They do nothing but populate the world with more dull-hearted mortal offspring. Their only grace is that their lives are short and without importance. Playthings to dangle a wisp of hope in front of, only to see how far you can lead them astray before they run themselves off a cliff.”
Jamra laughed, and the hot fire of his disdain scorched the edge of the roof tiles over their heads. “The world is better cleansed of them.” He stopped in front of her, his hot breath steaming in the cool morning air. “The sigil and dagger are the reason powerful families like ours were brought into the world, sister. We were created with a greater purpose in mind. Do you doubt this?”
What Sidra doubted was his sanity. She would not have said there could be too much fire in a person before meeting Jamra, but his heat was all charred earth and blackened cinders and always would be. Yet he was also simmering with fear. It flushed through his veins like gasoline that burned, foul and choking, with the reek of ruin.
“What I doubt is that I will ever see the dagger in your unfit hand.”
“Imagine,” he said, “the shining cities we will build for ourselves, once the mortals and all their mundane possessions are hurled into the crevice of chaos they’ve earned for themselves. Oh, but I forget. The stars say you will not survive to see our visionary future.”
“Perhaps you read the stars backwards. It is a common ailment of those who do not have sound vision.”
“You are trapped and bound. You will deliver the dagger or I swear I will burn this village until it resembles nothing but a charred scar on a southern-facing hillside.”
Her lip twitched of its own volition. “Not in this lifetime.”
“Then I will send you and everyone in this village into the next one by day’s end.” Jamra took a step nearer and exhaled his reeking breath in her face one last time. “I know the dagger is here, jinniyah. The vision was foretold to me in a dream. Discovering where your devious mind has hidden it is the only reason you are still alive.”
Jamra knelt and scooped up a handful of grit from the gutter, sand and sediment that had run off from the roofs and walls. He stirred his finger in the grit, a slow swirling motion, as he whispered a summoning spell.
Sidra knew the magic he called and backed away. “You cannot do this. Not here.” Her eyes searched the sky, and he laughed.
“They are coming,” he said and blew the dirt from his palm, invoking the fury of the fiery riders who drag the great haboob over the desert on their heels.
She’d not believed it possible, not in this land, not this far from the desert, but she felt the wind shift, smelled the sea air rise before the push, and knew he’d grown even more powerful than imagined.
“I warned you not to cross me.”
Jamra shimmered into morning fog and was gone, while Sidra fought the urge to run like a frightened child through the streets, warning the ignorant sleepers in their beds of their impending deaths.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A breeze rattled the windows of the shop, causing Elena to jump. Every little noise seemed to make her flinch once the clock ticked down to the final hour before dawn. She and Yanis had stayed up all night doing the prep work for their protection spell, and now he was meditating, calling his energy to him so they might speak the incantation at the opportune moment. He was a quiet man. Dedicated to his craft. And yet fear had taken the edge off his skill. Not his knowledge or his acuity with magic, but in the stature of his confidence. She’d very nearly succumbed to the same debilitating anxiety after her confrontation with a demon the year before, and so she understood his desire to center his energy now that the moment was nearly upon them.
She supposed she was busy doing the same thing, though to anyone else it might look like nibbling on pomegranate seeds and running her fingers over the pages of her grimoire. The book had served her all her life, or at least as long as she could remember. Grand-Mère had started it for her before she could write, adding notes and instructions that she would later amend or enhance when she had experience of her own. But as she looked at the subject matter, after having spent the evening scribbling magical symbols in orders she’d never imagined, she noticed gaps where its contents were limited. A mere portion of the world’s magic was represented in the book. Yes, it was the magic she understood and wielded with confidence, but those weren’t the only spells worth knowing in the world.
The grimoire, perhaps detecting the shift in her mood, began to sulk by forgetting to turn the page when she was done reading, so she laid the book beside the incense burner, where chunks of the bakhoor still smoked. With luck, the pages would absorb and hold the smell so she could revisit the scent again when she returned home. Of course, thinking of home set off a chain reaction of guilt, longing, and despair over not being there with Jean-Paul. Nor could she be until the next train departure, which was hours away. And only if she were still alive in the morning.
Still, there was a way to “be” home, if only passively. Curling up in the corner of the sofa, she centered her thoughts on the angle of Jean-Paul’s jaw, the heat of his skin, and the way he looked at her in the vineyard when his heart pumped full of life and love for her and all they were building together. Soon she found the silver thread leading to him in the shadow world, but instead of taking her home at his bedside as expected, she found herself inside a small compartment. The floor shook and the outside world, though eerily dark, spun by as if the room were in the center of a tornado.
There was Jean-Paul, sitting up, asleep under a blanket. Beside a window. Was he on a train? She leaned farther into the shadow world. Yes, there across from him sat an elderly gentleman muttering in his sleep. On the seat beside him, sticking out of a valise, was a train ticket.
They were on the overnight train. The very same one she was waiting to take on the return trip back home.
Jean-Paul was on his way to her.
The gentleman let out a snort and grumbled. Not wanting to impinge on his privacy, Elena’s mind whirled back through the liminal space until her eyes snapped open. No, it wasn’t the gentleman on the train who’d made the noise. It was Yanis. He was seated directly opposite her, uttering a distinctly audible “huh.” He looked away and apologized for interrupting, though something was clearly still on his mind.
“What is it? Has something happened?”
“No, nothing yet. Only, you’re able to move in the shadow world,” he said, though it came out more as a question, as if making sense of what he’d observed. “In a trance?”
Elena smoothed her hair back into place, feeling disheveled after two days away from home. “Yes,” she admitted, then had to cover a yawn with her hand. “I’m able to see people I have a connection with.”
Yanis pressed his finger against his lips, considering, the optimism of an idea showing on his face. But before he could speak
whatever point he was about to make, the walls rattled, hit with a gust of wind. Sidra swept into the shop in a flurry, pacing the floor the minute her feet materialized on the hardwood. Yanis, still forgoing his wooden leg in the name of comfort, leaned against the shop counter and hopped over to his drawing to make certain it had survived her entrance. He wiped away a few scatterings of debris until Sidra chastised him.
“This is no time for chalk drawings, you fool. He’s summoned the ifrit.” She stirred a finger against her palm as she spoke at Yanis.
“Haboob?” he said with his eyes on the window. His previous optimism evaporated as terror took over.
“Who is Haboob again?” Elena asked.
“Not who—what.” Yanis absentmindedly massaged the knee above his missing leg. “The haboob is a storm. Made of sand.”
“A storm called up by the churning feet of the ifrit as they ride over the desert,” Sidra added.
A storm? She knew there were degrees of bad weather that could be summoned, but none that justified Yanis’s current wide-eyed reaction.
“A haboob could swallow the entire town,” he said, as if reading her doubt. “Bury it in sand and suffocate anyone caught unprepared with a choking thick grit that gets in the nose, throat, and lungs.”
His terror proved contagious as Elena thought of all the mortals about to wake from their beds. “We have to alert the village,” she said, though the enormity of the task was likely beyond the time they had. “There has to be a way to warn the residents of the danger.”
Sidra stomped across the floor. “There’s nothing worse than a panicked mortal running through the streets thinking it will save their life.”
“But if this haboob is as bad as you both say, there’ll be innocent people hurt if they stay.” Elena shook her head when she came to the other obvious truth. “No, you have to leave,” she said to Sidra. “Get out of the village. Never mind whatever future was foretold to you. You need to take that dagger with you and hope Jamra follows. It might still spare the village.”
Sidra fumed, and a puff of hot air rose around her. “I cannot.”
“What do you mean you can’t? Do you wish to put everyone in this village in the path of that maniac?”
Sidra advanced and spit out her words. “And what do you think will happen if Jamra gets his hands on a weapon that can affect the balance of chaos and order in the world?”
Elena stood toe-to-toe with the jinni. “You have to take the dagger and leave. Run. Go to the ends of the earth to get away from him, if you must. Find another magus who can protect the power of that sigil.”
“Yes, I know, I know, but I cannot.” Sidra relented, hands on her hips, while she thought. Before Elena could argue a second time, she lifted her head to speak, though she kept her eyes cast down. “He has done it again,” she said. “Jamra has used a sorcerer to whisper my true name over the flames, and now I am bound within the confines of this village. He means to bury me and everyone here beneath this storm. To force me to give him the dagger. But I cannot. I will not.”
“This is a disaster. All those people.” Elena’s stomach clenched from fear and desperation coiling into a knot. “Is there any chance you know his real name? Couldn’t we bind him the same way he did you? Perhaps even be rid of him for good?”
“Elena sees in the shadow world,” Yanis offered. “I could do the spell if we knew what to call him. She could make sure he didn’t escape in the ether.”
“My husband was the only one who might have known Jamra’s true name. Curse the heavens, he never told me what his brother’s name was or I would have shrunk that jackal down to the size of his charred heart and been free of him a century ago.”
Sidra removed a small perfume bottle, like the ones lining the shelves in Camille’s office, from a fold in her robe. She squeezed the crystal in her hand and held it to her lips, pacing the floor again until she stopped before the incense burner on the coffee table. “What is this?” she asked, seeing Yanis’s false leg propped nearby against the sofa.
“The worn-out padding was causing me pain while I worked, so I took it off. I’ll move it if you wish.”
Sidra glanced from his chalk drawing to the trouser leg that had been cut off to allow for the false leg, then back to the wooden shaft with the leather straps and steel peg for a foot. “No, no, it’s fine. Go back to your markings.”
The jinni sat, holding the perfume bottle to her forehead. Elena and Yanis let her be and double-checked that the drawing on the floor was still intact. When they looked again at Sidra, she was wafting handfuls of scented smoke up to her face. She took in several breaths, then gripped the perfume bottle with new conviction. “I will go get the girl,” she said humbly. “Their experiments are a fool’s endeavor, but perhaps there’s something we can do to warn the town before disaster falls upon us.”
Yanis pointed out the window. “I’d say it’s already descending.”
Sidra and Elena joined him at the front of the shop. A storm was building against the dawn. It loomed in the distance over the rooftops, an eerie cloud of pink and tan.
“Better start reciting your protection spells, sorcerer.” Sidra tapped a finger against the top of the crystal bird stopper in her hand. “I’ll return before the first grains pelt the town,” she said and disappeared.
Elena tried to calculate the arrival of the storm against the arrival of Jean-Paul’s train. She wondered briefly if there was anything she could do to stop the locomotive from pulling into the station, but there was nothing in her power, not with the measly supplies she had with her. As for the approaching storm, she could conjure a crosswind easy enough. A quick appeal to the elementals. And yet her instinct told her it would be useless against the charge of trampling hooves bearing down on them.
“Quickly,” Yanis said, standing over his seven-sided star. “We must continue adding to our protection magic.”
Elena joined him, isolating her doubt so the energy and intent of the spell would flow in the proper direction. There was no more time to dawdle on speculation. The time was upon them. Jean-Paul was on a collision course with the storm, as were they all. And so she raised her hands in the sacred pose and joined Yanis at his task.
Moments later the air grew still, the first rays of dawn shed their light through the window, and the sky darkened under a cloud of sand and fury.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sidra had to reserve her energy. The binding spell had not only trapped her but had also diminished her powers so that each act drained her just a little more. If she wasn’t careful, she would be helpless in the teeth of the storm. But the demons, too, would be weary. The magic Jamra had called was powerful, but the ifrit had been forced to travel from the deserts of their homeland over the open water to find her. Still, the storm would come with a ferocious appetite. One that could kill everyone in the village to fill its stomach.
The jinni reanimated at the perfume factory inside the witch’s office. No light burned, and no laughter or shrill cry of excitement echoed down the corridor, though the scent of lavender hung thick in the air. Down the hall, a man in a white lab coat near the brass distillery equipment sat hunched over on a stool, his head leaning against his worktable. Sidra sidled up to the mortal and reached a finger out to touch the skin on his neck. Her skin shivered at the contact, but he was still warm and breathing. He exhaled a chorus of snores, and she retracted her hand.
Curious, Sidra dropped down to the main floor and found a similar scene in the lobby. Lavender and absolute quiet, only this time it was the night janitor who’d slumped against the wall, asleep beside his mop and bucket. She stepped over his outstretched legs to peer through the glass doors where a lamplighter, too, snored with his cheek on the pavement. It was as if she’d stepped into a bewitched fairyland where all the mortals had been put under a spell. And yet where was the girl?
For a moment Sidra contemplated if this was Jamra’s doing, but the enchantment didn’t carry the stench of cruelty. No,
this was magic done by the girl and the perfume witch. It had to be. Which meant the building was still safe. She had a moment. She wandered nearer to the gift shop, where dozens of bottles of Fleur de Sable lined the shelves like birds on a wire. Hariq’s gift. His passion. She passed through the door to be nearer to the bottles. Lying at his side before they each put a drop of mocking death in their eyes was the last time she’d felt safe. Staring at the bottles, she knew she would never again have those first moments after the sun rose in the morning when the heat and scent of his body reminded her she was alive and happy for one more day.
That life was gone. Memories and mist. She tucked her bottle in among the others on the shelf and said goodbye.
The girl. She shook her head, remembering her aim. She flew to the rooftop to scan the village for the fair one. Dawn had broken over the horizon. The wall of storm collided with the first rays of sunlight, turning the sky shell pink. It was still too early for most villagers to be up and about, but those she spotted—the baker, the newspaper hawkers, the train station attendants—had also collapsed in place. And then, at the bottom of the hill in the passenger seat of a bright yellow automobile, she spotted the girl’s eerie glow. Using another ounce of energy she couldn’t spare, she made the leap into the back seat of the car.
The girl spun around. “Sidra, you found us!”
“Goodness, you gave me a start,” Camille said, adjusting her rearview mirror as she pulled over to the curb.
On the back seat beside Sidra were two canisters that reeked of lavender. “Prophets protect us, what are you doing with these?”
Yvette nodded toward the witch. “It was Camille’s idea. We were ready to deploy the scent we’d been working on—”
“But we hadn’t considered what the overpowering scent-magic might do to the mortals in the village,” Camille finished. “Some of them are dear friends, mind you.”
The Conjurer (The Vine Witch) Page 16