The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(49)

“Thought you’d be halfway to your desert by now,” Yvette said.

“And maybe I was. But a debt is a debt.” Sidra, now fully reanimated, grinned and flashed her gold-inlaid teeth at them, then shook her head at their shackled wrists. “This complicates things, does it not?”

Yvette raised her arm, hauling Elena’s up with it by the chain. “Can you get these things off us?”

Sidra shrugged. “It is a thing I can do. I owe you each for my escape, and therefore a favor is due to both. And yet I did not expect you would be chained together.”

“What difference does it make?” Yvette squealed before stealing a look over her shoulder. “Just do it before that damn guard comes back.”

Sidra trailed her fingers through the air, and a screen of smoke cut them off from view of the guards.

The jinni met Elena’s eye. “Your fates have been bound.”

“What’s that mean?” Yvette asked.

“It means you both must want freedom for me to grant such a thing.”

“Of course we do!”

Sidra thumped a knuckle against Yvette’s forehead and then pointed her finger at Elena. “Did you ever stop to think this one might actually be innocent? If I grant your desire and set you free, I make her a fugitive too. I cannot decide another’s fate for them. She must choose her path.”

Yvette dropped her arm and glared at Sidra.

Elena felt the pinch of the shackles against her wrists. Running meant guilt, but she feared staying would end in a sure date with la demi-lune, innocent or not. She was trapped again by the same wicked hand of fate that had stripped her of her freedom once before while the real murderer still wandered the lanes and hills of home. As did the witch who’d cursed her seven years earlier.

Her desire for justice reignited. She raised her wrist before the jinni. “Set us free.”

Sidra raised an eyebrow and nodded. “As you wish.” A second later a flash of sparks encircled the magical shackles binding the witches together. The cuffs glowed as if they’d been thrust in a blacksmith’s fire before disintegrating into a pile of ash at their feet. The witches rubbed their unburned wrists, kissed the jinni’s cheek, and ran.



The crescent moon slipped loose from the clouds as the baying of hounds and the shrill of the alarm bellowed over the embankment. A layer of smoke, meant to conceal movement and confuse the bloodhounds, thinned to reveal distant torchlight moving in their direction. Elena crouched lower in the ravine beside the impish girl. She was a fool to have fled, escaping into the night like a common criminal. But her desperation to find the truth and exonerate herself had outweighed her better judgment. She’d followed an impulse, a witch’s natural instinct, and one that had rarely let her down before.

The dogs were near enough that she heard the snuffling of their breath against the earth.

Yvette stretched her neck to listen. “Why are they getting closer?”

“The guards must be using counterspells to disperse Sidra’s smokescreen.”

“What do we do?”

“Give them what they want.” Elena scanned the ground and plucked up a fuzzy dandelion by its stem. She swiped the delicate puffball over her exposed forearm, then held it to her lips. “Scatter these seeds upon the ground, and with them shall my scent be bound.” She blew on the seed head to scatter its hundreds of pappi on the prevailing breeze. The tufted seeds shimmered briefly in the dark as they carried her magic over the ravine and into the woods to create a separate scent trail.

“Let’s hope it’s enough to confuse the dogs. Come on.”

With Yvette on Elena’s heels, the two ran for their lives in the opposite direction. Thorns, twigs, and stones ravaged their unshod feet as they cut through a meadow. They crossed a shallow creek lined with silver birch, then clawed through mud and weeds to climb the opposite bank. When they emerged from the water they followed a dirt road as far as they dared, then ducked beneath a stone bridge to catch their breath.

“Are they coming?”

Elena listened, watching for the flicker of torches. An owl hooted. A frog croaked in the reeds. A firefly blinked above the meadow. “I don’t think so.”

“I haven’t run like that since I was a kid stealing bread from the boulangerie on the corner.” Yvette leaned her head against the stone, breathing hard but smiling.

Elena tried not to think about how deep her life had plunged into disaster. Instead, she eyed the weeds that clung to the patch of ground beside the bridge. Spotting a familiar stem, she plucked gray-green mallow leaves off by the fistful.

“Show me your feet,” she said.

Yvette pretended to be annoyed but did as she was told, peeling her stockings off. Elena inspected the cuts on the soles, then rubbed the mallow leaves over both feet while whispering a quick healing spell to seal the skin for the long walk still ahead.

“How’d you know how to do that? Or that trick with the dandelions?”

“The healing spell? I’ve known about that since I was eight. Got my share of slivers running around a vineyard in my bare feet, I can tell you.”

“Is your maman a witch too?”

“I’m told she was. A country hedge-witch who made potions and wine. I barely remember. She died when I was a young girl.”

“Who taught you all those spells, then?”