The Conjurer (The Vine Witch)

by Luanne G. Smith

  Sidra paused. Was it possible? Had she somehow been swept up in someone else’s magic yet again? It had happened before, being delivered to a place she did not wish to go because of the force of someone else’s desire. Is that what the tail she’d seen in the birds’ omen meant? That her will was once again being buffeted by the whims of others? Turning her around and around until she was too dizzy to know where her own feet would materialize?

  Heavy foot stomps on the rooftop behind her told her she hadn’t fooled Jamra by going to ground.

  “Show yourself, jinniyah!” He landed on the cobblestones in front of the spot where she had stalled in the ether to get her bearings. “I know you are here. Understand that the fair one will die a painfully slow death if you do not come out.”

  A chunk of golden hair sailed down in front of Sidra. Above, an ifrit held Yvette on a chain. The foolhardy girl hadn’t got away after all. An iron ring had been fastened around her neck to control her Fée powers. Jamra paced in his soft boots, moving nearer the factory with each step. Could he feel the lure of the sigil within the village? Even in her disembodied state, she felt her heart squeeze for all that had gone wrong. But most of all she missed Hariq. Why did she let him talk her into such a mad scheme? The deception had always been doomed to fail.

  She stared at the strands of yellow hair. Let him have what he was after, she thought. Let him have the dagger and be done with the charade. All of it. At least he might keep his word and feel indebted enough to let the girl go. Maybe then he’d leave, and the rest of her friends—yes, that’s what they were—could return to their homes unharmed. There would be hardship and suffering for others in the world, but maybe Jamra had a point. Maybe some mortals deserved retribution for what the jinn had suffered in the past.

  Sidra materialized. There was no more reason to run. If the All Seeing wished to play them all for a fool, so may it pass. “I am here,” she said and walked toward the factory, following the trail of mysterious fate that had brought her to its door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The funicular had been blown off its rails and was now wheels up in a patch of weeds, which meant that witch, sorcerer, and mortal had to walk. The steep climb to the village would have proved hard enough without being pelted by jinni magic, but the wind only made the effort that much more difficult. Elena rested a moment beside a door tucked within an archway. Jean-Paul, still fever-weary, gave no complaint at stopping to shelter out of the storm for a moment. Nor did Yanis, dragging his false leg behind him, his breath coming in great gulps of effort. The dog had followed them up the hill, only reluctantly resting when they did.

  Out of curiosity, Elena peeked in through the window to the side of the door. Two young men, their hair and skin dusted white with grit, slept sitting up in front of a stove that had yet to be lit. One of them still held a box of matches in his hand. “It’s like they’re frozen in time,” she said.

  The dog stood on his hind legs and pressed his nose against the glass beside her to see the mortals for himself.

  “You could reveal yourself,” she said. “If there’s something you’re not telling us, now would be a good time.”

  “Isn’t that the same dog I saw running in the vineyard?” Jean-Paul asked, wiping his forehead with the lacy tail of the fichu.

  “Yes. He’s also the one who saved me from my abductor.”

  The animal dropped from the window and stared at them with a nervous energy that suggested he didn’t think they should linger much longer where they were.

  Jean-Paul reached out to pet the dog’s head. “What did you mean by asking him to show himself?”

  “She means he’s jinn,” Yanis said while the dog keenly avoided eye contact with him.

  Jean-Paul retracted his hand, as if he thought the dog might bite. “Oh, of course,” he said. “I should have realized. What was I thinking?”

  The dog trotted a few feet down the lane before turning back, encouraging them to follow a different street from the one they’d been taking.

  “He wants us to go that way,” Elena said, gazing ahead.

  “Can we trust him?”

  Yanis stood. “In this, I think we can,” he said. “Quickly, the wind is dying down. We should take advantage of the break in the storm.”

  The animal barked and trotted up the narrow street, his ears alert, tail high. The pace was still slow going, like a recurring dream of Elena’s where she put one foot in front of the other but never seemed to make any forward progress, eventually crawling on her stomach, clawing for an inch of ground until she awoke.

  Finally, after what felt like an hour of slogging, they’d nearly reached the market square. Exhausted, they’d meant to sit and catch their breath when a crash like the breaking of clay tiles sounded overhead. Elena glanced up and saw a flash of red and gold leap over the gap between buildings. “It’s Sidra!” The dog growled as the others tilted their heads back in time to spot Jamra jumping from one rooftop to another in pursuit. Hot flames erupted from the jinni’s feet when he landed on the opposite side.

  “Follow them,” Yanis said and darted through a narrow passageway that wound between apartment buildings.

  It was impossible to keep up. Even though the storm had died down, sand covered the streets and back lanes, making them trudge twice as hard as normal to cover the same ground. They were going to lose the jinn.

  “That way.” Jean-Paul pointed ahead where Sidra hurdled over another gap.

  Restricted by the corridors of an inner-village maze, the group couldn’t maneuver fast enough even to follow the rare glimpses they caught of the jinn leaping overhead. Sidra was in trouble, likely running for her life, and yet there was little they could do even if they could catch up.

  Elena stopped in her tracks. She tugged the makeshift scarf away from her mouth. “You have to help us,” she yelled. She waited for the dog to lift his ears and turn around. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for. I don’t know whose side you’re on or what you have to gain by leading us, but if there’s something you can do to save Sidra, you must do it now.”

  The dog checked the roofline, bent his ear to the right, and sniffed the air. He stuck his nose in the other direction and drew in a deep whiff, testing the scents on the wind. Concern rested in the dog’s eyes as he lowered his head. He understood her, she knew he did, but for some reason he continued to hesitate. Instead he kept his nose pointed toward a side alley, growing more agitated the longer he sat. Elena rounded the corner to see what he was reacting to, and there, hobbling forward, was Camille.

  Elena ran to meet her, followed by the others. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  “They ambushed us. At the shop.” Camille’s hair hung in her face. Tears had left tracks through the dust on her cheeks. “Those things, they dragged Yvette and me to the top of the bell tower.” Her body shivered, remembering. “There was a jinni. He tried to kill us, but Sidra . . . she saved my life. I sprayed that thing in the face with my scent spell, and she helped me to the ground.” The perfume witch leaned against the wall and took a deep breath.

  “But where’s Yvette?”

  Camille shook her head. “She was still on the roof. I don’t know what happened to her. There was a flash of lightning. I’m sorry. That’s all I saw.”

  “You’re alive after tangling with an ifrit,” Yanis said. “That’s no small feat.”

  “Yes, but if they’ve still got Yvette, that brute will kill her if Sidra doesn’t give him what he wants.”

  The dog circled the group, sniffing the air as if seeking a lost scent. He tried four directions before pausing and letting out a small whine.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Camille asked Elena.

  “He must’ve lost Sidra. We were following her. Jamra was chasing her on the rooftops, but we couldn’t keep up.”

  “But he could,” Yanis said, gesturing to their four-footed friend. “If he wanted to, he could keep up.”

  The dog grumbled low in his th
roat.

  Elena had seen the animal move with the speed of the jinn. It was true—he could have left them behind at any time to catch up to Sidra. So why hadn’t he? Why did he need them to follow so badly?

  “Jamra has bound Sidra to the village,” she informed him. “They can’t have gotten too far.”

  The dog looked up sharply and bared his teeth.

  “Do you want to go after them alone?” she asked.

  The dog shook out his fur and sat on his haunches.

  “In that case, mind if I try finding them my way?” Following a hunch, Elena rested a hand on the animal’s fur and closed her eyes, testing the boundaries of her connection with the shadow world, if not the dog’s tolerance as well. Though he kept himself veiled, she sensed intelligence, loyalty . . . and love. Yes, deep love. Transcendent love. The kind poets write about. That’s what guided him, what drove his urgency. But for some reason he remained hidden behind his furry masquerade.

  Still, using that thread of emotion from the animal she was able to trace a connection to Sidra. Elena sank deeper in her trance, deeper in the shadow world, until she was following an invisible trail that veered one way and then another. Racing. Panicking. Darting down a narrow alley only to turn around and go back the other way. Though she couldn’t see her, she knew it was Sidra’s energy. Her fiery spirit in the ether. But something was interfering with the jinni’s free will of movement. Forcing her to move in a direction she didn’t want to go. Turning her around so she was no longer in control of her destination.

  Elena absorbed the feeling of panic, her heartbeat speeding up as she followed the jinni through the streets, under arches, searching for a crevice to hide away. She feared she might not be able to hold on at the disorienting speeds the spirit flew. But then a familiar scent wafted in the distance. The fragrance of flowers, pressed and drained, stripped of their purest essence. Camille’s factory. She was staring straight at it. And there was Jamra pacing the street, searching for Sidra. Elena’s breath sped up. She could sense Sidra trying to hold back, to not show herself, to be strong. But she couldn’t turn away from the lock of blonde hair on the flagstones.

  All hope fell out of the bottom as the jinni stepped from the ether and into the path of certain death.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  They had barely animated inside the lobby of the perfume factory before Jamra began complaining of the smell. Sidra could have said the same about the sulfur-like odor lifting off the ifrit who led Yvette on a chain. If only there were a scent to revive the girl. She’d wilted from the touch of iron against her skin, wanting to collapse to the floor but held upright by the beast’s tight rein.

  Jamra covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve to avoid inhaling directly. “I’ll never understand what brought my brother to this place. I would have flown a hundred miles around such a stinking village to avoid that smell.”

  Sidra twitched her lip at him. Was he so self-involved he couldn’t understand the underlying benefit to her in his opinion?

  “This way,” she said and passed through the wall to the shop where the factory’s many perfume bottles lined the shelves to sell to the wealthy tourists. The smell to her was intoxicating. Love’s elixir, he’d called it. She’d teased Hariq about his work at the factory, calling it frivolous dabbling in inferior spell magic. But the truth was that she’d been as enamored of the possibilities as much as he. The way nature’s essences could elicit both emotion and memory by a single inhaled molecule, depending on the combination of a flower’s most intimate identity, was a delicious sorcery to contemplate.

  Per fumum. Through the smoke. It had been their private love talk while Hariq perfected his scent with the help of the witch until one day he presented Sidra with the bloom of his efforts. Her very own fragrance. Fleur de Sable in the witch’s tongue. Sand Flower. Zahrat al sahra’. His flower of the desert.

  If this was where she was meant to die, she was pleased it was as near to Hariq as events would allow.

  The jumble of fragrances seeping from the bottles inside the shop made Sidra’s head float. She had to concentrate on not dissipating in front of Jamra again. She would have to give him what he wanted. He’d grown too powerful for her to deny him much longer. There, too, Hariq had played too frivolously with his plan. With their future. With the security of the dagger. With her life too.

  “Where is it?” Jamra stood in the center of the shop and folded his arms.

  Sidra approached the shelves lined with green glass bottles wrapped in metal filigree. Crystal birds topped them all, each an exquisite piece of art that caught the light and promised all the beauty in the world. The girl squeaked in protest despite the burn of the iron ring on her neck. As if she could read minds. “The sigil is there,” Sidra said and pointed to a bottle on the third shelf, the fourth one over from the left.

  Jamra snatched the bottle in his hand and tore out the stopper, tossing it to the floor, where the birds’ wings shattered on the marble. He tipped the bottle over and shook it, expecting a shrunken dagger to fall out. Instead, a pungent stream of perfume dripped and spilled over his fanciful jacket. She hoped it had ruined the silk forever. Sidra may be facing her final moments of life on this earth, but she didn’t have to change how she felt about this camel’s ass.

  “My mistake,” she said and took a final ounce of pleasure at seeing Jamra’s eyes water from a cloud of perfume once dedicated to her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Elena hurried down the narrow lane, her feet slipping in sand as she rounded the corner. The steps leading to the parfumerie were straight ahead. It couldn’t be too late. The vision had taken place only moments ago.

  “This way,” Yanis shouted.

  The sorcerer moved deceptively fast over the stones, maneuvering his false leg in a step-drag motion. Camille limped behind, ignoring for the moment her injuries, fatigue, and the obvious shape of a body buried beneath a blanket of sand beside a lamppost. The dog trotted alongside Elena and Jean-Paul, restrained for the moment from his usual supernatural speed. He deliberately kept pace with them, waiting for something. Holding back, yet herding them forward as if they were sheep he was shooing into a pen. All the while his eyes watched the rooftops as he kept his ears bent skyward. His lack of panic was the only thing giving Elena hope that they weren’t too late.

  The group reached the perfume factory, out of breath and ragged from the ravages of the wind against their skin and the adrenaline rushing through their veins. The plaza in front of the parfumerie was the last place Elena had seen a vision of Sidra. The scent of toasted orange rind and frankincense still lingered in the swirling air, as did the odor of meat left too long to scorch in the fire. She and Jamra had to have been in the plaza mere minutes earlier, but where had they gone?

  The dog sniffed the air too. Instead of following the trail to the parfumerie as Elena expected, he spun around and grumbled at the sky.

  “Wait, something’s wrong,” Yanis said.

  The dog’s shoulders tensed and he growled. At first Elena worried she’d led them to the wrong place, but then a dark smudge appeared in the sky. The figure grew larger as it descended through the haze of dust. The clear outline of fiery wings and a tail came into focus. In a matter of seconds the air churned with the beating of half a dozen wings as two more ifrit dropped from the sky to circle the courtyard.

  “Run!”

  The group sprinted for the factory door, only to find it locked. Camille, her hands shaking, fumbled for the key in her coat pocket as the dog barked and snapped his teeth at the creatures.

  “Come on, Camille! They’re swarming.”

  The witch slipped the key in the lock and jiggled the door open just as a pair of scaly feet landed on the flagstones beside them. Camille sprayed her perfume at the beast, making him gag and swipe at his nose. It was distraction enough for the group to get inside and slam the door shut.

  All but the dog. Their guide and guardian hadn’t made it inside.

&nb
sp; Elena peered through the glass in time to see the animal get plucked up in an ifrit’s arms and carried away to the rooftop across the courtyard. She squeezed her eyes shut as her heart sank for the poor fellow. If not for him, none of them would be alive.

  Inside, Jean-Paul waved a hand in front of his face. “Does the perfume always smell this strong in here?”

  The overwhelming fragrance polluted the air in the factory lobby, affecting the nose keenly but none so much as that of the perfume witch. She inhaled in alarm at the full degree of scent floating in the air. “My perfume,” she said, tracing the source with her nose. “It smells as if . . . oh, no, no, no. What is he doing in there?” She flinched as the sound of smashing glass hit the floor and a fresh cloud of Fleur de Sable billowed out of the shop.

  Camille marched toward the entrance to the shop until Jean-Paul took hold of her shoulders, keeping her back a mere second before she would have been seen. And he was right—they couldn’t just barge in there. Who knew what Jamra might do if cornered? The perfume witch relented and held her trembling fingers over her mouth as she worried over her precious goods being destroyed on the other side of the glass.

  The group tucked themselves out of sight to figure out what they must do, while the wings of even more ifrits battered the side of the building. On the other side of the wall, Jamra raised his voice. They tensed, waiting for a violent outburst or the sound of shattering glass, but heard only his mocking laugh cut through the aftermath. Something had changed. The urgent panic Elena had sensed while following Sidra through the village had morphed into something else: sheer survival.

  But something else had shifted, too, almost as if a layer of static electricity hung in the air around them. Camille caught the sensation as well, raising her hand to test the air. Above them, a cloud of light appeared in the lobby, shimmering as it swirled in a clockwise motion.

  “Is this your magic, Camille?” Elena whispered.

  The perfume witch shook her head.