“We?” Damn that meddling Oberon. “There is no ‘we.’ Go back to your misty, damp home. You’re not needed here.”
“I haven’t learned how to slide between realms yet.” The girl crossed her arms and glared. Her skin glowed with temper. “So, you poof off. I don’t need your complaining, either.” Yvette gave her the once-over with her eyes. “Well, can you?”
Could she?
The bonds of the spell that had kept her confined inside the city couldn’t still have their hold on her, could they? She’d escaped. Slipped through the crevice of time and space. Clever that, smuggling herself into the Fée lands. Fate and fortune had seen her through to a safe place where she could curl up and forget. And, she’d hoped, be forgotten. But Oberon’s interference had brought her back to this place with its scented memories. Already they twined around her heart, making her suspect she’d been bound all over again.
“Well?” The girl rolled her eyes and began walking down the hill. “Thought so.”
“I can leave whenever I wish it.” But even Sidra knew her words were as hollow as winter gourds that rattled in the wind. She was caught at the ankle by the past and future. Returned to a place that had proved the birthplace of her downfall.
Yvette spun around. “You know, I was happy where we were. Best I’ve ever had it. I was just learning how to master my glamour. Until you ruined everything by getting us tossed out.” She pointed a finger. “You owe me now.”
Curse that girl and her family to Jahannam and back. She was right. Always the wheel of fate kept turning, tipping the balance from pauper to prince back to indebted fool.
The scrub bush poked between the straps of Sidra’s sandals, irritating her even more. “We don’t need to walk like mules through the brush,” she said. If it were mere sand, she would cherish the feel of the grains of warm quartz against her skin, but she didn’t like the scrape of sticks and prickly thorns.
Yvette yelled over her shoulder. “What are you going to do, fly us down to the village on a magic carpet?”
The thought of taking to the air was tempting, though she didn’t trust herself not to drop the girl headfirst on the steepest rooftop. And for good or ill she must have needed the blonde-haired one to see this unfortunate foretelling to its end. Otherwise, fate would have left her behind.
“No, girl,” she called. “Come take hold of my sleeve. There’s another way.”
Yvette hesitated before climbing back up the hill and grabbing a handful of silk. “You better not turn me into a bird again or I swear I’ll—”
Silencing the pest, if only for a brief shift in time and space, was a pleasure all its own. The transformation was nothing. Fire and smoke. Mist and air. It was what jinn were made of. The source of their being. The girl would feel nothing but light-headedness when she reanimated. But where to land? Was the apartment still safe? Was the old one still nearby?
Sidra and Yvette glided over the rooftops of the southern village, appearing as nothing but a wisp of cloud. In this state it was difficult to know the risk they’d meet on the ground. If not for the girl, Sidra would stay hidden, watching, waiting from the shadowy corners, as all jinn prefer, but she couldn’t carry the Fée one in their present state for too long. If Yvette were still the filthy street witch Sidra once believed her to be, it would be nothing to leave her body to wither in the ether like a dried fish, but that wouldn’t do for one who belonged to Oberon. And one’s balance in this life and the next was something to consider always.
Curling like a trickle of smoke from a doused candle, Sidra guided them through a narrow street lined with two-story buildings, their plaster walls painted the soft ocher color of sand and shells. She slipped under an arch that connected the buildings, emerging on the other side where the corner apartment loomed above. The shutters were closed against the bright light. No scent of bread and oranges escaped beneath the door from the kitchen. No residual whiff of oud lifted from the caftan still hung on the peg. Still, she had to enter, if only to keep them safe for the night.
Spilling through the keyhole in the heavy oak door, she entered the stale space and circled the room, feeling out the darkness. The energy was cool to the touch—in the corners, under the eaves, above the bed. The apartment was as it should be, but she was saddened to know the room had been empty long enough for the heat to have dissipated. She sighed and reanimated, bringing the girl into the room with her.
“—peck your eyes out.” Yvette finished her sentence, wobbling on her feet momentarily until she realized she’d already been transported. “Oh, we’re there.” She steadied herself against the semicircle majlis sofa, blinking as she took in the new surroundings. “Where are we exactly?”
Sidra wiped a finger through the dust on the mosaic tray where the brass dallah and glass finjan were displayed. “It is my home,” she said. “Or at least it was for a time.”
Yvette let out a breath of surprise. “You live here? In an apartment?” She gestured broadly at the lush silk and wool fabrics lining the walls, the sofa set low on the floor, and the round hassocks trimmed in leather. “But this is fabulous.”
A bowl of figs and oranges appeared on the small octagon table beside the sofa. She offered them to the girl as a matter of hospitality, though it was only a shadow gesture done out of obligation to the custom. Was the apartment still her home? Could it be such a place with only one occupant? She stepped deeper into the room until the spicy scent embedded in the textiles reached her nose.
“We can stay here for the night. Perhaps longer, should the need arise.” She produced a steaming dallah full of aromatic coffee. “Help yourself to the food. It won’t poison you. I promise.”
Yvette picked up an orange and peeled back the skin. She didn’t sit as she ate, which made the jinni nervous. Instead the girl wandered around the room, taking in the personal details of the apartment—the hanging brass lamps with colored glass panels, the woven tapestries on the walls in hues of red and blue and gold, the incense burner carved out of a stone still filled with bakhoor, and the man’s robes hanging on a peg on the wall above a pair of worn black leather balgha.
The girl spun around, the thrill of discovery bright on her pale pixie face. “And who do these belong to?” she asked, eyeing the slippers.
Sidra looked up, heavy with grief. “The man I killed,” she said and sank onto the sofa with the weight of a log collapsing in a fire.
CHAPTER FOUR
Elena knelt in the courtyard beside Jean-Paul’s limp body, adrenaline looping through her circulatory system. “He’s burning up.” She glared at the jinni, hoping to sear him with her anger. “What did you do to him?”
“His mind is wandering in the desert of my people.” Jamra gave a flick of his hand, as if it were of little difference. “It is up to you if he finds his way out or not.”
With her heart galloping, Elena reached in her pocket for a sprig of rosemary and chamomile. She ground them between her shaking fingers and sprinkled the crushed leaves on Jean-Paul’s forehead.
When he didn’t rouse from her magic, she dabbed at the beads of sweat rising on his skin with the corner of her apron as Brother Anselm felt for a pulse, his fingers pressed against Jean-Paul’s neck.