The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(32)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


“You left him alone in a room with a snake.” Yvette crossed her arms as she walked, as if sulking. “What if he dies?”

Sidra admitted she’d thought about such a gesture, but she was no murderer, despite her threats. “Bah. The snake looked real enough but was merely made of smoke. Yanis will figure it out soon enough. A little deadly fear is a good thing for a man to feel course through him. Especially when he lies like a snake in the grass himself.”

They came to the end of the lane. Sidra stopped as soon as they turned the corner. Two moons glittered on a tin sign—one silver, one gold. Her eyes scanned the street in either direction, then squinted at the sign over the door of the abandoned shop again. She knew every stall in the market plaza, every shop that sold goods on its perimeter. This one had sold coffee and tobacco, but the owner had died and the doors had closed. How had the moon sign been magicked into being in the short time they’d visited Yanis? And by whom?

“What’s wrong?” Yvette asked, sensing Sidra’s wariness. The fairy glanced around as obvious as a meerkat on sentry duty, elevating a few inches off the ground to see over the heads of a couple shopping next to her.

Sidra sniffed the air. “Stop that and follow me.” The jinni walked to the front door of the shuttered mercantile, where it now read ELENA’S CHARMS AND STAR-CROSSED SUNDRIES in a metallic sheen that seemed to float above the glass. She peered through the window but could see the store was still vacant. A scale for measuring coffee was mounted on the counter, but the shelves were empty. Straw and discarded packing paper littered the floor.

“Do your trick with the lock,” she said.

“Honestly, I’m good for more than just being your servant.” Yvette put her palm over the mechanism, but the door proved unlocked when she tried the handle.

Sidra stepped inside. Her eyes searched the corners of the room, but it was her nose that sorted out the mystery. Ah, the scent of wine and oak wood, with a whiff of familiar smoke too.

“Hello, Sidra.”

The vine witch came out of the back room. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders, and her clothes were wrinkled and smelling of earth and fire. Their eyes met, exchanging messages of unspoken worry and warning.

“Elena?” Yvette burst through the door and hugged her friend in a tasteless show of affection, as the Fée are prone to do. “When did you get here?”

“Look at you.” Elena held Yvette’s arms out. “You’re absolutely glowing.”

“I’m still an apprentice, but watch this.” Yvette levitated six inches off the ground. “Grand-Mère says it’s why people assume we have wings.”

“Impressive.”

Sidra locked the door behind them and pulled the shade. “She didn’t travel hundreds of miles to see you float, Yvette.”

The girl dropped hard on the wooden floor and made a rude gesture with her fingers under her chin toward Sidra.

“She’s right,” Elena said, though in a kinder tone. “I came to warn you. I was abducted by someone I think you’re familiar with. He tried to force me to find you.”

“Jamra is here?”

“No, not yet. At least I don’t think so. I escaped before arriving.”

“But you aren’t burned?” Sidra looked Elena over in disbelief. “You aren’t harmed?”

“Someone helped me get free of him. They put me on the train south.”

“Someone? Who?”

“Another jinni, as far as I can tell. One who likes to roam the countryside as a dog.”

The dog’s tail?

“Wait, didn’t you see a dog in the bird omen thing in the sky?” Yvette asked.

“Bird omen?” Elena’s brow tightened.

Yvette nudged her chin toward the jinni. “Obsessed with signs, this one.”

Sidra shivered, too perplexed to scold the girl for her ignorance. A dog could be anyone. Then again, it couldn’t. The animal must be jinn. “I have no allies left except the old one, and he doesn’t leave the cave.”

“Sounds about right,” Yvette said and added a mocking laugh.

Elena intervened with hands held in a truce motion before Sidra could push up her sleeve to draw fire. “The dog led me here to the plaza. Made sure we found each other. If he’d meant to do harm, he could have ambushed you at any time. So, it might be fair to say at least four people are on your side.”

“Four?” Yvette scrunched up her nose, then realized what the witch was saying. “Oh, right. Lucky you, you’ve got us too,” she said and lit a cigarette.

Sidra nodded, thinking about what the old one had said about their reunion being good magic. The trio had been brought together for a reason, their fates linked one to the other. Almost as if foretold. But he’d never said anything about another jinni. And she wasn’t convinced the dog was an ally. Not after her home had been burgled by one of her own kind.

“What is it?” Elena asked.

“I need to look into the fire.”

Yvette blew smoke up to the ceiling. “Again, with the omens? Titania says magic has to be respected. Some of les anciennes in the Fée lands even worry it could run out someday.”

For once the girl had a point. “One shouldn’t look too often at the shadows lining the future, true, but this moment needs clarifying.” Sidra gathered the scraps of straw and crumpled paper from the floor and tossed them onto the plates of the scale mounted on the counter. The setup was crude but would suffice.