The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(37)
The sound of the monk running up the stairs caught Sidra’s attention.
It is done. She shimmered softly, then dissipated, as the warmth rose again behind Elena’s eyes before receding.
Elena waited to see Jean-Paul sit up and recover from coughing before telling Brother Anselm he’d had the strangest dream. When he was assured it wasn’t a dream, he nodded as if he understood how that might be so. Though his voice was choked, he appeared restored as he asked about Elena. Brother Anselm handed him her telegram from the nightstand. While he read, she reeled herself back in, opening her eyes with a start as she regained consciousness.
“Merde, I didn’t think you would ever get back.” Yvette rubbed the gooseflesh on her arms. “Jiminy, it’s creepy sitting here alone while you’re passed out in zombie land.”
“It’s all right now.”
Sidra materialized at Elena’s side. Her thumbnail was jammed firmly between her teeth as she seemed to fret in a very un-jinni-like way.
“What was it that Jean-Paul coughed up?” Elena asked when the jinni was fully back in her body. “Is he going to be all right?”
Sidra jumped up and checked the street, the rooftops, and the clouds through the veiled front window of the shop. “It was merely the remnants of Jamra’s foul magic. He’d sent your man’s mind into the desert, as he said. I found him following a dog deeper and deeper into the land of endless sands. If a storm had come to erase his tracks, he would have been lost for good.”
Elena absorbed the news of how dangerous the curse had been and how close she’d come to losing Jean-Paul. A lump of pity for Sidra formed in her throat. And yet her mind was curious about the peculiar magic. “A dog? You mean like the one that brought me here?”
“It’s a common-enough form among my kind, but this one was ifrit.” Sidra’s brow tensed, as if she didn’t believe the words she’d spoken. Her eyes searched the sky once again.
“Ifrit? What’s that?”
“Jinn but not jinn. The dispossessed ones I spoke of. Made of fire and smoke. Jamra has made a pact with the ifrit. It is they who will come with him.”
Elena and Yvette exchanged a worried glance.
Sidra stopped to listen when the walls of the shop creaked, as if speaking the very word had summoned the fire demons. She sniffed the air, then continued. “We should prepare for the inevitable.”
Elena agreed. Now that Sidra had successfully freed Jean-Paul’s mind from the desert, she owed the jinni her help. It was impossible to return home, at least not yet, so she needed to stay and do what she could to aid her friend. But until she could summon a more effectual magic to wield against Jamra, she was as useless as a mortal.
“And how, exactly, does one defend themselves against these ifrit?” Yvette asked.
“Or Jamra, for that matter,” Elena added. “My fiercest defensive spells had no effect against him when he attacked the vineyard. He merely absorbed the magic as if it fed his power. Swallowing it whole. He was barely scathed.”
Sidra got that look on her face that said it was to be expected going against a superior being. “Ah, but that was because you were trapped in the moment. But given time for your mind and your book to work together, I’m sure you can form a spell to meet the need. Sorcerers are known for devising all sorts of tricks.”
“But how much time?”
Sidra tilted her head as if listening for something. The wind? The cosmos? The sound of ifrit gathering in the ether? A straight answer was all Elena needed.
“There’s a spell over the village already,” Sidra said. “It will hold him off for a short while. A day perhaps, if luck is with us.”
“What kind of spell?” Elena stuck her hand out to try and sense the magic, but there were no filaments of a spell she could detect. Leastwise not within the walls of the abandoned shop.
“We did a scent spell together.” Yvette beamed at having been a part of creating an incantation. “We gathered ingredients from the market and then read the words the one-legged sorcerer wrote down.”
Now it was Elena’s turn to tilt her head. “One-legged—”
“He’s not a jinni, but he makes talismans and amulets to help people summon them.”
“He’s a thief and a liar, but his sorcery masks my presence,” Sidra said. “Still, the spell isn’t foolproof. A determined enemy could see through the veil easy enough, once he knows where to look.”
The town was already full of perfume. The scent wafted everywhere, from the distilleries to the flower fields to the women who bathed in the stuff. But wasn’t that what Camille Joubert, the perfume witch on the train, had been talking about? The witch was quite proud of how scent could manipulate matters of the mind.
“That’s it,” Elena said, struck with an idea. “We’re in the midst of the fragrance capital of the world. Run, at least in part, by witches. There has to be a way we can use that against him.”
“Their spells are all trifling sweet notions meant to attract a lover,” Sidra said, tossing her hand in dismissal. “The art of allure is their only magic. And I do not wish to attract Jamra any sooner than I must.”
Elena shook her head. “Oh, I think there’s more they can do than attract a paramour. In the right combination, scent can be as powerful a concoction as anything a potions witch could come up with.” Already her mind was racing with possibility. “I think we need to pay a visit to the parfumerie at Le Maison des Amoureux.”