The old jinni puffed out a circle of smoke, his eyes fluttering at a vision. He cocked his head to the left. “And the other binding?”
Other?
“There’s a frilly yellow creature shadowing you, is there not?”
Sidra nodded. “Fate has tied us together by our wrists in a knot I cannot seem to undo. There’s another as well, though her magic at times is worthy of the bind.”
He considered this, seeing beyond into the cosmos. “It is good,” he said and set down the pipe’s mouthpiece. “Jamra will come, but you will not be alone.”
She hadn’t thought of it like that before. The girl’s presence had always felt like a burden to her. A hindrance to clear thought and inner peace. But on reflection she saw how Yvette’s presence with her in the apartment had kept her from sinking into a despair so deep she would have shut the blinds and stared at the blank wall for an eternity.
“It is good,” she agreed.
Beside her the brass dallah full of coffee disappeared. The canopy and lamps disintegrated. The hassock beneath her collapsed so that she had to float to her feet. The old one’s pipe turned to smoke, followed by the jinni himself. Sidra stood for a moment in the dark with only the faint lamplight from her borrowed lantern to illuminate her thoughts. It was good, she convinced herself. It would have to be. For she knew what Jamra was coming for in addition to her life.
CHAPTER SIX
They laid Jean-Paul on a sofa in the salon with a pillow for his fevered head, a blanket for his body, and a sprig of rosemary tied to an amethyst crystal tucked inside his jacket pocket. Though she didn’t know what good it would do, Elena spoke a protection spell to keep Jean-Paul from further harm, then squeezed Brother Anselm’s hand in thanks for agreeing to stay and watch over him. Without time to consult The Book of the Seven Stars, she could do little to reverse the jinni’s magic. Fortunately, she believed she knew where to find Sidra. That fragment of information was the only leverage she had.
“Thank you for letting my husband stay in the care of my friend,” she said to Jamra as he escorted her into the courtyard.
“How do you keep a man like that as a friend?”
Yes, to an outsider it would look strange for a witch and monk to have developed a friendship, but Brother Anselm was much like Jean-Paul—he didn’t shut his mind to the existence of the supernatural outside his own faith. Well, not anymore. Both men had needed convincing at first. But she supposed their curious minds, convinced by the weight of undeniable empirical evidence, were predisposed to accept the truth in whatever form it took.
“He’s a good man. Unlike some,” she said pointedly and marched toward the wine cellar. Elena had agreed to find Sidra and lead the jinni to her in exchange for Jean-Paul’s life, but she didn’t have to be cordial. She opened the door to the cellar and lit a lamp with a snap of her fingers.
The jinni peered into the dark beyond her flame. “What is this place?”
“It’s where we keep the wine. My workroom is also down there. I’ll require my spell book and a few supplies if you want me to find her,” she said without looking back. If he struck her down, so be it. But she wouldn’t suffer this jinni bullying her another moment.
After he sniffed and gave his approval, Elena pressed her palm to the lock on the workshop door at the bottom of the stairs and whispered, “Vinaria.” The door swung open with a creak. Inside, she ran her finger quickly over her jars of herbs, bits of dragonfly wing that had nearly crumbled with age, and a pouch of salt. Yes, she might want to keep some of that with her. But what else?
“Why do you need a book of spells? Isn’t your being your source of magic?”
Is that how jinn magic worked?
“No, I . . . witches are merely a conduit for the energy they express, though I can call up the magic I need as readily as if it were a part of me. It’s just that some spells are more complicated than others. They require the right combinations of words and offerings to conjure the desired outcome. To pinpoint Sidra’s location, I may need an additional spell to bolster my ability to track her.” A lie.
Jamra picked up the grimoire on her worktable to inspect the contents. Elena made a silent plea for the book to behave while in his hands. She also hoped the jinni’s touch wouldn’t singe the poor thing’s edges. She’d accidentally dropped it once near the kitchen stove, and the book didn’t let her open its pages for a week.
He turned the grimoire over, unimpressed, and handed it back to her. “Collect what you need to find Sidra. Quickly. We are already losing time.”
“Of course,” she said and slid the spell book inside her leather satchel, which she slung over her shoulder.
The only thing she truly required was Yvette’s hairpin, which Minister Durant of the Lineages and Licenses office had returned to her when he no longer held any sway over her future. Elena removed it from the drawer, along with a handful of items she thought might come in handy, including her athame, and slipped them inside her bag.
The jinni rested his hand on her forearm. The heat of his touch penetrated to the bone. “I say again, cooperate and your man will recover. Deceive me or defy me and he will die. Let’s go.”
Jamra stole a bottle of wine from the cellar before forcing Elena back into the courtyard and ordering her to do her magic. She hesitated to enter the shadow world with him standing so near. She was exposed and vulnerable while her vision was elsewhere, but it was the only way to know for sure if Sidra and Yvette were in the Fée lands as she suspected. If her vision would even let her see that far.
If not, there was always the athame. As far as she knew, jinn bled as readily as witches.
She took a seat on the bench by the door where Jean-Paul often kicked off his muddy boots before entering the house. She ought to remove a few items from her satchel besides the hairpin, she supposed, to make it look more like a spell, so she set a calcite crystal and feather on the bench beside her. With the jinni watching her every move, she closed her eyes and concentrated on Yvette’s hairpin. A buzzy sort of energy danced against her palm, encouraging her to follow its trail.
Soon her mind’s eye opened in a meadow near a stream. A grove of trees with standing stones in the middle of a clearing came into view. Two chairs made out of bent branches posed beside a stone font. But no one was there. The forest was eerily quiet. No birdsong, no rustle of leaves. She felt hot breath that reeked of charcoal on her neck and for an instant thought she should reel herself back in, but then a woman approached at the edge of her vision. She wore a metallic-green gown that reminded Elena of the beetle shells she sometimes collected near a rotting log on her walking path. The woman’s shimmering gown floated just above the periwinkles poking out of the earth. On her head she wore a crown made of tiny seed pearls and dragonfly wings, and around her neck hung a silver chain bearing an agate stone no bigger than a thumb. The woman’s eyes glittered when she smiled.
“Welcome,” she said, staring straight at Elena as if she were truly standing in front of her. “I’ve been waiting for your arrival.”
“Titania?” Elena couldn’t be certain if she said the name out loud or not.
The fairy queen nodded, then looked past her as if meeting another’s gaze. The sparkle she’d carried dimmed, replaced by a hard glint full of warning. For the briefest moment her countenance changed from ineffable beauty to something wraithlike and threatening. But it was only a flash before she was herself again.