The Conjurer (The Vine Witch)

by Luanne G. Smith

“So we snuck a little squirt in front of Thomas.”

  “He’s my assistant.”

  “And he fell straight over asleep. Camille thinks it’s all the lavender we added.”

  “Still not certain about that. Could as easily be the glamour in your blood that’s affected their brains.”

  “But probably a combination of the two would be the most probable explanation,” Yvette said, sounding very self-assured.

  Camille concurred. “That, and my intention during the spell might have been a little too focused on my own lack of sleep.”

  Sidra held up her hands to stop them talking, exhausted already from trying to follow their conversation. “But why are you in this monstrosity of a vehicle with two jugs of the fragrance? Do you see that storm on the horizon? Jamra and his ifrit are going to rain sand down on this village, batter us with destructive winds, and suffocate any who stand in their way.”

  “Well, that’s just it.” Yvette sprayed a whiff of the perfume into the air with an atomizer the size of a grapefruit. “We figured maybe we could knock out two birds with one stone. Use our divine creation to offend the ifrit noses and also maybe protect the mortals by dousing them with the stuff. Put them to sleep so they don’t get caught in any crossfire.”

  “I thought your laws forbid acts like this against mortals?”

  “Oh là là. It’s for the greater good! You said yourself these creeps mean business. Well, so do we.”

  “You can affect everyone in the village with this?”

  Camille dropped her smile. “I sent doves to the witches at the other parfumeries, and they’re helping as well. I’ve got them covering the upper village and the train station below with canisters of their own.” The witch watched the cloud of scent drift from the car to the apartment building on the right. She whispered an incantation that carried the notes of a song in the spoken words. “Sleep, mortal, do not stir, inhale our scented elixir. Breathe in heavy, breathe in deep, sweet dreams await you as you sleep.” The witch swung around in her seat to see Sidra’s face once the spell was sealed. “One street at a time.”

  Sidra believed the women were delusional in their thinking, but perhaps their plan was better than a mass exodus of mortals running out of the city in alarm to huddle in the flower fields surrounding the village. The storm may still kill many, but an unconscious death may prove a kindness. She’d never in her life envied a mortal, but the feeling flickered in her now like a candle flame, knowing the scent had no effect on her except to stir memories of flying over purple fields in a time she thought she’d always be so happy. What she would not give now to sleep and never wake again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Did you know he would do this?”

  The dog avoided looking at the creature as the haboob took shape several miles away. “There is more of his soul eaten away than I thought,” he said.

  Soon this would be over and he could be free of this forced alliance and the creature’s hollow murmurs of concern. Yet for now, the ifrit were worth worrying about. Their horses’ feet would only gain momentum as they closed the distance to the village.

  “Should we do something to stop the horde?”

  Was that the vibrato of fear in the creature’s voice? He shook out his fur and wrapped his tail over his feet as he sat on the edge of the roof. So, even those who can control the chess pieces when it pleases them aren’t sure of where they’ll land on the board? How then does one respect the ultimatum fate demands? But then there were matters of blood at stake that could sway even the noblest judgment.

  “It is too late,” he said. “At least for the limits of my talents. Besides, this will bring us what we’ve been waiting for quicker than anything else.”

  The creature steeled herself, as if proving she, too, could ride out the worst, if that’s what her nerves must do to see things through to the end. She might have been able to halt the approaching storm, if he had faltered and nodded his assent, but then what of the outcome they had all agreed was necessary?

  “You have to be wondering if the end will be worth the cost,” she said.

  But she was wrong. He was long past the frivolous notion of balancing one outcome against another. All he wanted was to be finished with the charade. Then he would stand in the headwind of the consequences and hope he remained on two feet as a man again.

  The creature seemed to intuit his guarded emotions, as if drawing them out into the open with her breath. “Anger is just another energy on the spectrum of emotions,” she said. “Forgiveness another. You’ll know soon enough which end you’ve been stuck on.”

  She laughed and cracked her whip in the air until it splintered like thunder in his ear.

  “And you?” he asked. “Will you be satisfied?”

  “All debts will be paid.” She exhaled, and some of the tarnish around her wore off so that he could almost look her in the eye. “It is a peculiar sort of magic, though, this wishing. The way it manifests, swirling through the cosmos like the tail of a comet. Such a fierce desire to be realized. Lives colliding, separating, and reforming again as each stage progresses.” She extended her bony finger, stirring the invisible air so that a trail of stardust formed a tiny whirlpool of sparkling light at her fingertip. “Pooling in odd little eddies of commonality, tugging at filaments of swirling light that are somehow interconnected.” She flicked the whirlpool into dust with her finger, letting it whoosh away on the breeze. “No care for the damage left in its wake while the recipient is granted their heart’s desire.”

  “That’s how wishes work.” And even as he said it, the painful truth rattled through him, knowing he, too, may end up as collateral damage scattered on the wind. “That’s why they’re precious and not to be wasted.”

  The creature seemed satisfied that she’d made him flinch, at least emotionally. “I will intervene if blood is to be spilled. I never agreed to that.”

  And yet death doesn’t require blood. One should not be so careless with their words. “I understand,” he said.

  The storm drew closer, building in height and width. He was certain the cloud was big enough to swallow the whole of the little village. And still the inhabitants slept as though . . .

  It was only then he realized what an odd thing it was to see no one about on the streets. No baker to open his shop, no lamplighter out snuffing the flames, no street sweeper clearing the gutters of debris. No alarm raised. Certainly, the storm occluded the low angle of the sun, but it was still light enough out to signal the dawn. He raised up on his haunches.

  “What is it?”

  “Do you smell that? Lavender tainted with witch’s words.”

  The creature stood, her nose in the air. “And fairy blood.”

  He swung his head around to see if she was serious.

  “There,” she said, pointing. A yellow car rumbled into the lane below. “They’re casting a sleeping spell.”

  The pair peered over the roof’s edge and sniffed. “Yes, that’s the stuff,” said the creature as a string of saliva dripped from the corner of her tiny mouth. “What dreams shall be born this morn?” she wondered aloud as her eyes lit with greedy mischief.

  He cringed, watching this midwife of dreams out of the side of his eye. None he knew ever spoke of her except for when the dream turned caliginous and sour, forcing one to wake in the middle of the night with the sheets twisted around their legs as they lay in a fretting, soaking sweat. The midwife of nightmares was more apt.

  “I could change back, if you prefer,” she said. “But we agreed it would be more effective if we each took our alternate forms. Less risk of being spotted and derailing the task at hand.”

  Curse this witch. The way she eased in and out of one’s thoughts was unnerving. He actually felt a pang of sympathy for the mortals whose minds he’d entered for a bit of fun.

  “The wish is almost completed, and then you can do as you like,” he said and trotted off to the corner of the roof to watch the yellow car wind around the buil
ding. He understood what Yvette and Camille were attempting. A noble effort, at the very least. They might not save any lives, but at least the mortals wouldn’t suffer. He wished he could say the same for the rest of them as the first harsh winds of the coming storm ruffled through his fur.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A battering wind hit the building, shaking the walls and whistling under the eaves. The haboob was nearly upon them. Elena opened the shop door to gauge how much time they had before the worst of it arrived. Thirty minutes? Five? A train whistle sounded in the distance, screaming through the air like a wild animal trying to outrun a predator. Panic pumped adrenaline through her limbs, knowing Jean-Paul was aboard the train and on a collision course with the storm. What was he thinking leaving the vineyard after he’d only just woken from his fever? But she knew why he’d done it—to find her and make sure she was safe from Jamra. She would have done no less for him.

  And would do so now.

  Sand pelted the terra-cotta roof tiles and the windows. But the protection spell seemed to be holding. Not a single grain of sand entered the shop while she studied the sky through the open doorway. It was something, however tenuous, in the face of the stacked cloud of sand bearing down on them.

  Elena shut the door and took one last look at the pages of her grimoire, hoping to find some spell strong enough to protect a moving train without injuring everyone on board. There were illusions and halting spells, but they were meant for stopping people, not twenty-five-ton locomotives barreling toward a village at forty miles per hour. So, if she couldn’t stop it, her only option was to meet the train at the station and somehow get everyone back up the hill to the safety of the shop before raining sand inundated the streets. Which meant leaving the protection of Yanis’s spell.

  Outside, the storm sent a whirlwind of newspapers and dirt twisting toward the market square. She could no longer see the daylight stars through the window, but she knew the time was due for the train to pull into the station.

  Elena twisted the wedding band on her finger, wanting more than ever to feel the warmth of Jean-Paul’s body safely beside her. “I have to get to the depot,” she said, unable to put it off any longer.

  “You can’t truly mean to go out there.” Yanis watched her gather her things. “The ifrit could already be sniffing around the town.”

  “My husband is on the morning train. He has no idea what he’s riding into. He and the other passengers are going to need help. I have to go before it’s too late.” Elena slung the strap of her satchel over her head and shoulder. There wasn’t anything of much use remaining in the bag, but her spell book and athame were like extensions of her arms.

  “What about Sidra? And the fair one? They haven’t returned yet.”

  Sidra had popped in an hour earlier to explain how Camille and Yvette were using perfume to put the town’s mortals to sleep. They could take care of themselves. “Yvette is safe enough with Sidra. But there’s no one to warn those arriving on the train.”

  “You’d better let me come with you, then,” he said, reaching for his wooden leg. “Maybe together we can stay alive long enough for us to die with your husband.”

  “Have you always been such an optimist?”

  “Realist,” he corrected and finished strapping the leg to his thigh. Yanis slung his own bag full of loose items over his shoulder and wrapped his head and mouth with the scarf around his neck. Before he would allow Elena to leave, he yanked one of the drapes Sidra had manifested down from the ceiling. He ripped the cloth in two and offered Elena a manageable length. “Wrap it around your head and mouth like a mask. It will protect you from breathing in too much grit.”

  Elena accepted the red silk and tied it over her head the same way he’d done, making sure to cover her face so only her eyes showed over the top. She tied it off in the back, then nodded she was ready, and together they left, taking advantage of the last moments of relative calm before the storm.

  It was slow going down the hill. Elena’s legs constantly tangled in her skirt as it twisted in the wind, and her clumsy sabots felt untrustworthy on the pavement. Yanis, though, seemed to have no difficulty with his balance, limping on his false leg. She wondered if he self-spelled, given the pain he said it caused him, but it was only a passing thought as her foot finally lost traction on the grit-covered cobblestone streets. With her hair blowing wildly around her face, she slid forward on the hill and nearly tumbled; then her hand fell on a broad, hairy back. The same dog who had saved her before had bounded out of nowhere and caught her, bracing himself against the stones. Elena righted herself and was about to thank him when he tugged at her skirt. Yanis moved to intervene, but the dog bared his teeth before pulling her to the side.

  “What’s he doing?”

  Over the howling wind, Elena shouted, “I think he wants us to go there,” and pointed toward a narrow stairway leading to a two-story building.

  Yanis cursed and leaned into the wind, following the dog. At the bottom of the steps, they found a large man wearing a leather apron curled up asleep beside a stone wall in the yard. The dog ran to the man, tugging at his pant leg and trying desperately to haul him toward the building. He dragged the man a mere few inches before stopping to pant. He let out a yelp as the wind whipped over their heads.

  “He wants us to get the man sheltered,” Elena shouted. “Before the storm buries him.”

  Yanis did a double take at the dog; then he and Elena grabbed the man by his legs and dragged him into the apartment on the first floor, where a woman slept upright in a chair beside her breakfast table. They leaned the man against the wall, then stopped to catch their breath. Yanis stared at the canine again. “Is this the same dog that you encountered earlier?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He can be very helpful when he wants to be.”

  The dog cocked his head to the right before trotting out to the lane. Elena and Yanis followed, shutting the apartment door against the storm. Back outside, the dog stood in the wind with his ears and tail up. He barked once with a good deal of insistence, then scampered off in the direction of the funicular.

  “Will it even be operating in this wind?” Yanis asked.

  Elena nudged her chin, and the pair put their heads down against the brunt of the storm as they hurried behind the animal. Sand and wind assaulted them from all directions until Elena was forced to keep her hand on the makeshift scarf covering her mouth to keep it in place. There was no one to run the funicular down to the depot, but the dog jumped inside, waited for them to follow, then barked once. The cable jerked, and the car ground into motion.

  As the car traveled down the track on the village hillside, passing the second railcar as the opposite cable forced it back up to the top, they got their first clear glimpse at the size and ferocity of the approaching haboob. Elena squinted to see through the flying dirt. A massive cloud wall of swirling dust towered over the village, casting a sickly brown shadow as it smudged out the sun. Sand stung their skin with growing velocity, so they turned their heads, thankful for the masks over their faces. The railcar shuddered in the heavy wind, and its wheels jerked against the track. The dog barked and wagged his tail, and the car rolled forward, though Elena couldn’t be certain it was still on the track as it seemed to float over the ground.

  At last the funicular reached the platform at the bottom. The dog leaped from the car and ran for the lee side of the depot building. Down the track, a whistle sounded, loud and shrieking, as the train approached the station. The locomotive emerged through the brown cloud of debris as steam billowed sideways out of its smokestack. The wheels slowed, the brakes squealed, and the chugging of the engine gasped to a stop as the passenger cars aligned with the platform. Faces pressed against the windows, staring incredulously at the building storm and the odd trio awaiting them in front of the station, their backs turned to the wind. Elena searched for Jean-Paul through the glass, but he wasn’t among the gawkers. He had to be there. Her vision couldn’t have been wrong.
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  A strong gust battered the side of the passenger cars, rocking the train on the rails. Screams of surprise from the women inside carried over the shrill wind. The conductor leaned out the door and peered at the station, but he wouldn’t find anyone inside to confer with about the storm since Camille and Yvette had done a proper job of putting them to sleep as well. The conductor cupped his hands around his mouth, about to shout for the crew, when Jean-Paul pushed him aside and jumped from the train. Elena called out for him, the wind and face covering muffling her voice. She tore the wrap from her face and shouted again. He saw her then and ran, embracing her even as the strengthening storm blew sand hard enough to scrape their skin and scratch their eyes.

  “My God, are you all right?” he asked once he released her.

  She nodded. “I knew you were coming. I saw you’d woken from your fever.”

  He hugged her again. “That damned jinni. I swear I’ll kill him if I see him again.”

  “It’s him. This storm. Jamra called it up to punish Sidra,” she yelled. “Yanis says it’s only going to get worse.” Elena quickly introduced Jean-Paul to the village sorcerer.

  “We must get everyone off the train and sheltered in the station,” Yanis said to Jean-Paul after a quick handshake. He turned to Elena as another gale rocked the train, nearly tipping it off its wheels. “There’s no time to get anyone back to the shop. The storm is almost at full force.”

  And just as he said it, the windows of the passenger cars exploded, sending shards of glass flying into the side of the depot. Panicked screams followed as people aboard ran for the exits. They pushed past each other, squeezing two and three at a time out the doors and onto the platform. Men and women tripped, falling to their knees as a strong gust whipped them from behind. But it wasn’t merely the wind that assaulted them.

  A pair of fiery demons, shaped like men but with a corona of flames for hair and eyes that glowed orange and red, descended from a whirlwind above. They landed on the roof of the railcar with hands ablaze. The ifrit.