The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(24)
Elena looked down at her ticket and read her destination. The train was heading south to the very place Sidra and Yvette had gone. She only hoped whoever was sending her there was friend and not foe, though the lines between the two had become awfully muddled of late.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sidra and Yvette stood on the roof of the cathedral, their bare toes curling around the lip of the clay tiles. Spread below was the hillside village still waking with the dawn.
“Tell me again what we’re doing up here?” Yvette took a step back from the edge.
“Listening.”
“For?”
“Tidings.”
“Of course.” The girl tucked her gown behind her knees and sat with her face tilted toward the scattering of morning stars. “You’re not worried someone will see us up here and wonder?”
“Nobody ever looks up in a town. Ah, here they come now.”
Sidra turned east toward the dawn as a flock of starlings swooped over the rooftops. They made a wide circle over the village, dipping their wings as they chased some unseen prey that zigzagged through the air. The starlings’ voices cackled full of self-importance and alarm.
Yvette looked as if she might say something, then changed her mind and rested her head on her knees. The girl didn’t know the power of birds. The visions they carried on their wings. The omens sung out of their mouths.
Sidra held still. The flock had grown to a thousand birds as more gathered. They painted the sky, a black cloud against the pink dawn, tipping their wings one way and then another. And then she saw her sign form as the birds swooped as one in front of her. A crescent tail. A dog’s tail? Unmistakable. But how to interpret such a shape?
A cry came out of the south, high and piercing. The murmur of starlings scattered in a panic. Then straight as a dagger, a merlin flew into the heart of the flock, snatching a single bird in its talons before veering toward the clock tower on the opposite side of the street. There he pecked and plucked until he swallowed globules of raw meat and bone by the gullet full.
The beating-heart panic she’d seen in the birds transferred to her breast. “We must go. We must gather the other talismans. Quickly.”
“Is it Jamra?”
“I believe so.” And yet she couldn’t be certain that was the thing making her want to disappear. She checked the sky once more, but the birds had fled, taking their squawking with them.
On the ground the girl practiced her newly learned levitation, pretending to walk when she was actually floating. Let her feel that freedom, Sidra thought. A precious thing, when all around uncertainty is closing in.
“Here,” Sidra said, pointing to a blue door.
“Why can’t you take the medallions back from the people yourself?”
“I’m akin to a patron. I cannot steal from my own people. Not even a small trinket like the ones we’re after. How would that look if they found out the thief was me?”
“Mon Dieu.” Yvette rolled her eyes and knocked on the door as soon as Sidra dissipated. A middle-aged man with a stomach that protruded under a mustard yellow thawb answered. The girl smiled, glowing with the power of her glamour. The man’s face brightened, as if he’d been revisited by a long-forgotten dream. He stepped aside when Yvette asked if she could come in. Five minutes later she reemerged, flipping the talisman from one palm to the next.
“What did you do to him?” Sidra asked, animating from the mist once the girl ducked into the alcove around the corner as arranged.
“I don’t know how it works exactly, but mortal men turn to absolute mush when I look at them a certain way. Titania tried to explain it once, how the glittery energy that wells up in the glamour mesmerizes a certain part of their brain. Stuns them, really, so the only thing they can focus on is making sure I’m smiling at them. I can get away with just about anything while they’re in that state.”
“Astonishing.” Sidra had to admit it was a good trick, though somehow still tawdry.
Yvette handed her the medallion, and they traveled across town to knock on the door of the second known owner, another older man who lived alone. Five minutes later the medal was in Sidra’s palm, same as the last. The third bearer of the talisman was the woman Sidra had spoken about, the one who didn’t know if she should leave her husband. She worked a stand in the market selling packets of anise, cardamom, cloves, and coriander. To save time, Yvette simply nicked the thing out of her apron pocket. In recompense for stealing from a woman in such doubt, she bought five packets of cardamom at full price, claiming the smell was too divine to pass up.
In possession of the last three talismans, Sidra let herself relax. There would be no summons, no whispering of her name into the ether over the village. The augury earlier hadn’t given her the information she’d hoped for, though she should have known better. One shouldn’t carry expectations into any conversation with birds. She had to accept the threat was getting closer. What preparations she could make must be completed.
The jinni didn’t argue when the girl asked if they could walk back to the apartment so she could see the perfume shops along the way, claiming the scents had been driving her mad with curiosity since they arrived. Sidra didn’t argue because she, too, had once been a young single woman attracted to pretty things and expensive, alluring smells bottled up in crystal. And, too, it was on the way, so there was time enough to give the girl this thing of pleasure in exchange for getting her the medallions. With the Fée, she’d learned it was best to keep things in equilibrium. Such a volatile people.