“The matches I gave to Elena?”
The fairy queen tilted her chin in confirmation.
“And I gave them to Yvette,” Elena said.
“Merde, and I passed the lit cigarette to Sidra.”
Titania nodded from one to the other as if following a chain, one linked to the other. “And our jinni lit herself on fire and escaped and yet remained indebted to those still inside.”
The old one blew out a string of smoke rings. “We were not expecting that,” he admitted.
Hariq crossed his arms. “Now we had a new dilemma. After returning to free her cellmates, Sidra disappeared again. I searched everywhere in the ether but couldn’t find you.” The warmth in his eyes as he spoke directly to her was magnetic, drawing her in when she did not want to be. Not yet. Not when forgiveness was still a fruit she wouldn’t bite. “So, I followed the witch instead in the hope she might lead me to you. That was how I learned she possesses the rare ability to see into the shadow world.”
“And you have a remarkable ability to remain undetected,” Elena said. “My instinct never once noticed your presence, presumably until you wanted me to.”
“Remaining hidden is our greatest talent, Madame Martel.” Hariq smiled humbly, his hand on his chest as he bowed his head.
Sidra was pleased to hear Hariq call her friend by her married name, but all this shadow talk began to unsettle her. She’d thought she understood how to read the fire as well as any, but there was so much she hadn’t seen. It made her dizzy to think of the spinning world and the multitude of destinies swirling together, fueling the future forward for everyone—individually and collectively. And with so much providence bedded under a blanket of deception.
The old one began to speak again, so Hariq sat cross-legged on the floor near Sidra, close enough that she could smell the intoxicating fragrance of his skin. She made no objection.
“When you escaped and presumably took the dagger with you, we thought we had lost our one chance to outfox Jamra,” Rajul Hakim said through a puff of smoke. “We feared, too, for your life. But the long curl of fate had brought opportunity back to us again so that all could be restored.”
“How?” Sidra’s initial anger had receded, replaced by curiosity about how her life had become a plaything for those with the talent to deceive.
Titania spoke again. “After you freed my granddaughter, my heart would not settle until she was home with us. In the Fée lands. Her mother had already arranged a protocol for her to return on her sixteenth birthday. It was still there waiting for her in that wretched mortal’s apartment after all those years. All I needed was a little supernatural nudge to help her find it.” The fairy queen did her best to feign humility, though on her false modesty hung out of place like tarnished tinsel. “For that I stole a wish. One that brought you both to the city.”
“Wait, my wish?” Yvette stared at her grandmother in disbelief. “That was you?”
“It was still your heart’s desire, but it was I who tapped into the jinni’s magic while you were both in flux.”
Always the fair ones with their airy ideas and fuzzy lines between right and wrong. It had always seemed incongruous to Sidra that the girl could have manipulated her magic with mere desire. “But how does a Fée queen interfere with jinn magic on a whim?” she asked.
“Jinn dream, as do all creatures,” Titania said, a dangerous glint in her eye. “Their hopes, fears, desires—they float about in the ether, riding on the same currents of yearning as everyone else’s while they sleep. Those currents are where I sail my craft. I slide under men’s noses with the scent of desire, spy on lovers dreaming of kisses, and slip over ladies’ lips to give them a taste of lust. And sometimes I put the fear of death in little boys’ nightmares when they think too much of the fire and pain they hope to inflict on others.” Her face flashed to that grotesque figure for half a second. Everyone gasped except for the old one. “Yes, I’ve long maintained familiarity with the jinn mind, slipping in and out of their dream-thoughts at will. Stealing a wish from a jinni was as easy as plucking a string on a harp.”
“The Fée queen exercised a privilege few are in a position to take advantage of,” Rajul Hakim said with a nod. “But she was willing to pay for her theft, once the wish played out and her granddaughter was properly restored to her people.” The old one set his pipe aside and attempted to stand. Hariq rushed to his feet to help steady him. “I have sat too long in that cave,” he said, then shooed his assistant away once he found his balance. He took a few painfully short steps until he stood before Sidra. “The bottle, please.”
Sidra cradled the green bottle with the crystal doves in her hands. It was the most precious thing she owned, but she handed it to her adopted clan leader without hesitation.
“Such a trifling thing, is it not?” The old one held the bottle up to the light as if he might be able to peer inside. “We had lost track of Sidra yet again after the wish was stolen, except for a brief moment when she entertained the witch at a café in the city, but then Titania was good enough to let us know our jinni had been smuggled into her realm within this very vessel.” He gave the bottle a tiny shake near his ear, as if testing for the sound of something inside. “As payment for her theft”—he wagged a chastising finger at Titania—“she kept Sidra safely hidden in the Fée lands. And notified us when Jamra’s dreams lusted again for the missing relic.”
Yvette gaped at her grandmother. “Why’d you send us back if you knew that lunatic jinni was after the dagger again?”
Sidra narrowed her eyes at Rajul Hakim. “Because one doesn’t escape a lion by outrunning him. One must set a trap.”
The old one nodded. “We already had Yanis, who could do the binding. But now we also knew of a witch, a companion of yours, who could see into the shadow world. Who could snap the trap, once it had been baited properly.” The old one took the perfume locket from Elena and held it up by the chain. The two pigeon wings above his eyes knitted together as he studied the delicate glass and metal container keeping the jinni imprisoned inside. “You and the dagger were our lure,” he said to Sidra. “And now both are safe.” He held his hands out before him as if testing the weight of the perfume bottle against that of the locket. “And chaos and order remain in proper tension.”
The old one handed the locket to Hariq for safekeeping, then turned his attention to Sidra’s bottle. “I do not mind admitting how nervous I was when Jamra began smashing bottles against the floor. To think what might have happened if he’d broken this one open.”
Sidra shrugged. “I would have lost a treasure, but the world would still have been safe.”
The old one took the stopper out and shook the bottle so that whatever was inside would fall free into his hand, but his palm remained empty.
“What is the spell to remove the dagger?” he asked.
Sidra grinned so that the intricate gold design in her teeth sparkled. “Sometimes a trap works best with a decoy.” The jinni crossed the floor to stand before Yanis. The bracelets on her wrists rattled as she pushed back her sleeves. “Lift your leg.”
“What are you doing?” Confused, Yanis extended his good leg.
“Your other one,” she said, kneeling beside him.
The sorcerer gripped his wooden leg at the place where it strapped onto his knee and pulled up. Sidra rested the leg on her knee and tapped on the wood with her knuckle.
“You didn’t.” Elena gawked.
With permission, Sidra unscrewed the peg from the bottom of the false leg. From the hollow center inside, she slid out a curved silver dagger with a black hilt. On the pommel end was a round sigil that showed a sunrise on one side of a median line and a sunset on the other.
“Circumstances forced me to hide the dagger where I knew it would be safest,” she said. “With one who had the heart and skill to protect such an object from those who would abuse it.”
Yanis, so accustomed to threats and derision from Sidra, pressed his palms together and bow
ed his head. “I am honored to have earned your trust.”
“It’s not in my power to give you a new leg,” she said in return, “but we can make a false one that won’t cause you any more pain.”
She met Hariq’s eyes, and he nodded at her with the admiration of one who knows the long journey she’d taken to see Yanis for who he was.
“And I cannot take away the heartache my deception cost you,” Hariq said, reaching for Sidra’s hand. “But I hope, in time, you will also see that it wasn’t done to hurt you, my beloved. That there was always a plan to find you, to reunite, so that we may spend the rest of our lives together without ever having to look over our shoulders again.”
How many times had she said to herself if only Hariq were alive again, she would forgive him anything? She didn’t know the words would stick so hard in her throat when, at last, it happened. Chaos and order rested on two sides of a sharp edge, but so did pain and pleasure. Harmony and discord. There was not one without the other. Always the dance of tension. One could choose which side to lean into if or when the blade tipped off-center.
“I am pleased to see you alive, habibi,” she said, knowing her heart had always leaned toward forgiveness.
Hariq gazed at her, as if she were the only star worth seeing in a spiraling galaxy, and there, in his eyes, she chose to chart her future once more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The physical damage had been easy enough to repair. A bit of broken glass. A door off its hinges. A few dented streetlamps that required reshaping. The sand was the worst. The haboob had blown grains of sand into every street and open window in the village. Flowerpots sat coated with dirt, awnings sagged from the weight of the grit, and the mortals who’d been put to sleep by the lavender potion needed to have their clothes and hair swept clean. But between the jinn and the queen of the Fée, the cleanup took little more time and effort than was needed to sweep the cobblestones from one end of the loggia to the other. The villagers woke groggy and confused, and perhaps a few found sand in their ears if they dug deep enough, but otherwise the day resumed as any other. Titania, while still in her moonlighting guise, had made certain the people’s dreams bore the blame for the peculiar ennui they felt upon rising.
The train north was scheduled to depart on time. Hariq had taken special care to set the cars upright and clean the sand out of the boiler so that it steamed properly while awaiting departure. The funicular, too, had required righting, but it was a trinket compared to the train’s locomotive. Elena and Jean-Paul walked out of the depot, tickets in hand for the return trip. They stood on the platform only a little worse for wear, she in her muddy sabots and he still slightly trembly from the effects of his fever and overexertion. But their mood was bright as they were met by friends at the station to say their goodbyes.
Hariq and Sidra made a stunning couple. He still wore his long black jacket and wide smile and she’d conjured a fine new robe and jangling gold bracelets. The scents of jasmine, burnt citrus, and woodsmoke mingled in the air between them.
Behind the couple the old jinni, his body hunched over as he leaned on a walking stick, shuffled forward. Yanis stood at his side with an ornately carved wooden box on a leather strap secured over his shoulder. Elena knew it was a decoy. The real dagger was hidden back inside his polished wooden leg with the generous new padding, where it would be kept safe for the journey ahead. For he and the old one, with the protection of Hariq and Sidra, were also embarking on a journey. All had agreed with Yanis that the dagger must be returned to the care of the Order of the Seven Stars so that it might remain protected and in balance for centuries to come.
“As-salaam-alaykum,” Sidra said to Elena and Jean-Paul as they met on the platform.
Elena reached out to shake the jinni’s hand. “You know, I don’t think we’ve ever had a proper hello or goodbye, you and I.”
“No, but perhaps we’ve had everything in between,” Sidra said and squeezed Elena’s hand.
Hariq shook hands with Jean-Paul, remarking on how he’d admired the vineyard when he’d been there. “I hope one day to sample the fine vintage it produces.”
Jean-Paul did a double take before remembering he was speaking with the dog he’d seen lurking in the vines. “Of course,” he said. “You’re welcome to visit the cellar anytime after les vendanges. It would be our pleasure.”
Elena noted how her husband took such things like entertaining jinn at the vineyard in stride now. How far they’d come since his first encounter with the gargoyle perched among the grape clusters. He no longer ran from the supernatural, and she no longer resisted the pull of his mortal faith in that which could be proven. Tawazun, as Sidra would say.
“We would be most honored.” Hariq held up a finger. “But we will not wait until then to return this, which I believe belongs to you, madame.” The jinni stepped behind a station post and walked out again holding a rolled-up tapestry that Elena was certain had not been there a minute earlier. “There’s a grass stain on the back and a snagged thread from where it caught in the tree branches, but otherwise it’s still in good shape for flying.” He reinforced his subtle jest with a smile.
“My tapestry. I didn’t think I’d ever see it again.”
“I have grown too old for flying rugs,” Rajul Hakim said with a sigh. “So, they are making me ride in that yellow beast to the coast, and then I am being put on a boat. A boat!”
On the street, Camille waved from her big yellow automobile paid for with the scent of desert flowers.
“It is necessary for the sorcerer’s sake. And once we land safe on the other side you will sit in a café under the sunshine, smoke your pipe, and forget all about it,” Sidra said to him. “It’s a good thing, getting out of the house once in a while.”
A bell rang, signaling the funicular was arriving from the top of the hill. They turned to greet it, but before the car even docked, Yvette’s hair and soft glow caught their attention. She, too, had found new attire. She had donned a powder-blue suit and a matching tricorn hat with a peacock feather that fluttered over her golden head as she disembarked. Her skin was radiant as she burst onto the platform bearing good news.
“I’m going to study to be a nose!” Yvette said. “Can you believe it?” The young woman held up her letter of acceptance as proof. “Camille arranged it. I’m going to learn to make perfume at Le Maison des Amoureux. Grand-Mère put her up to it, I’ve no doubt, but isn’t it wonderful?”
“You’re staying in this village?” Sidra asked.
“Not getting rid of me so easily, eh?”
Elena waited for Sidra to snap at the news she would be sharing a village with the young woman, but the jinni’s face betrayed the hint of a smile, even as she curled her lip. As if admitting a little lunacy in one’s life was the necessary cure to boredom. Sidra reached into the folds of her new silk and produced two bronze medallions. She placed one in Yvette’s palm and one in Elena’s. “One for each. The sorcerer made them for me,” she said, pointing to the star and the bird symbols engraved in the center of a pentagram. “Hold the talisman in your palm and speak my name. I will answer.”
“What if there’s something I need now?” Yvette asked.
Sidra raised her brows, her patience already tested.
“Slip the woman the suffragette pamphlet. The one in the village asking for help. Do that for me and we’ll be square.”
Sidra glanced up at the hillside village as if listening for something only she could hear before Hariq called over her shoulder that he and the old one were ready to leave. She breathed in the scent of the village that had protected her for so long and said, “It’s a thing I can do.”
Yvette and Elena both kissed the jinni’s cheek and said adieu. She walked away, then turned and waved, her gold bracelets jingling their own tune for one last farewell.
“And, of course, I had to come and say goodbye to you,” Yvette said, gripping Elena’s hands. “Isn’t it reassuring to know we’re all just a train ride aw
ay?” Yvette winked. “Or, you know, a quick shimmer from here to there for some of us. Grand-Mère swore she’d show me how the portal magic works, now that I’ve decided to stay.”
The young woman gleamed under the halo of her newfound purpose. Shimmering bright and radiating joy. Elena pondered, upon their farewell from the perfumed village, that Yvette was like a citrusy high note in the floral tonic of their rare and remarkable friendship. First to shine, first to see the luster of value in others. And Sidra, with her oft overpowering personality, was without question the solid base that would always be there for them, now and in the future. As for herself, Elena supposed she fell somewhere in the middle, the heart note infusing her influence where she could to bind and keep them all together.
“A mere day away,” Elena said and hugged the young woman.
There was a rush of activity as the conductor made his boarding announcement. Jean-Paul took her hand, and together they found a compartment with a window overlooking the platform. The boiler let out a puff of steam, briefly enveloping them all in a cloud of mist. When it cleared, the young woman was still there waving. Yes, Elena thought as she slipped her talisman in her satchel, it was reassuring, indeed, to know there would always be a friend waiting just on the other side of a wish.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I don’t know how common it is in publishing to get to work with the same people on all three books, but that was my good fortune in writing The Vine Witch series. More times than I care to admit, the editorial team members were often the ones to point out inconsistencies in details from one story to the next that I, as the author, had overlooked in the writing. That is why I thank them publicly and profoundly, because, as I’ve said before, in the effort to guide the books to publication, they make me look like a better writer than I am. So, thank you to Clarence, Jon, Karin, Robin, and Laura and the rest of the 47North team for your editorial magic. Thanks also goes to Micaela Alcaino, who designed the three enchanting book covers for the series. I am also indebted to my editor, Adrienne Procaccini, for believing in my witchy trilogy, and to my agent, Marlene Stringer, for plucking The Vine Witch out of her slush pile. Whatever fairy hand that had a part in orchestrating that particular magic, I thank them too! And, as always, thanks to Rob and David and the rest of my family for their continued support and encouragement.
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