The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(49)
“And before you knew about my past?”
“Well, yes.” She glanced over his shoulder at the nearly complete drawing on the floor. A work of art. “You’ve obviously had more training than the mere street vendor you tried to pass yourself off as.” She knelt beside him, feeling the energy begin to coil over the symbols, coalescing in the ether, waiting for the incantation. “But there was something else at play in Hariq’s death, wasn’t there.”
Yanis set his chalk aside and brushed his fingertips off on his trouser leg. “Please don’t say anything to Sidra, but I have often wondered if Hariq did it himself. If he added something to his dose.”
“You mean . . . he took his own life?”
“I have no proof, but we had a pact, the four of us. The spell wouldn’t work unless we all said our part. I wrote it myself, without error. No one could have interfered.”
“But why would he do that?”
“He wouldn’t. That’s what doesn’t make any sense. They seemed happy here.” He nudged his chin toward the last place Sidra shimmered into the ether. “She used to be pleasant to me. But one never truly knows the mind of another. Or the inner workings of a marriage not your own.”
“I met her not too long after Hariq died,” Elena said. “In jail. Just before she was to be executed.”
“You helped her escape.”
“Actually, she helped me escape. We’ve been helping each other ever since.”
She’d often thought about how their lives had intertwined with Yvette’s, the three like vine tendrils that stretch out and anchor themselves one to the other. An odd tangle, but one that had borne fruit in friendship.
“It’s finished,” Yanis said.
He backtracked from the drawing, said a sort of prayer or incantation in his native language, and then blew over the chalk marks, sealing them with his breath. Yanis never claimed the magic would hold off Jamra, but with luck it would be an eye in the storm.
Elena might not have believed in the power of chalk and breath and whispered foreign words when they first met, but she had every confidence their intention was well received under the gaze of the All Knowing. And the eye of the All Seeing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Are they sleeping yet?”
The dog lifted his head to see where the voice had come from. There, at the end of the roof, legs dangling over the lip of a chimney top, sat the unnerving creature. She stared with eyes that glittered like starlight.
“The witch and sorcerer are still awake. They’re trying to create a protection spell that will hold off Jamra.”
“Can they do it?”
“They’ve underestimated him. The sorcerer’s chalk magic will break like the brittle bones of birds. But there’s still the chance their other talents will shine.”
“And Sidra?”
“Scared. Hurt. Gone for now, but she’ll be back once she processes how the bend in fate will favor the best outcome.”
The creature looked up at the stars as she dangled her legs. “Whatever course the magic must take, whatever pain it causes the heart, that’s how these things work.”
The dog knew her words were true, but the knowledge didn’t make witnessing the unfolding events any less painful to watch. That would have to be dealt with later. He changed the subject to hide his despair from the creature’s glittering eyes. “Yvette has done well. You were right about her instincts.”
That seemed to please the creature, though he couldn’t care less about her happiness. She’d made him uncomfortable for days with her unblinking gaze, as if reading his intentions, his worries. He’d hardly slept for fear of her intrusions. She turned away from him with a crooked smile, as if reading his thoughts even now, and called her diminutive minions to heel at her side. Their black beetle shells reflected the light from the stars, drawing attention to the halters on their backs. In this form she was hideous. A nightmare to scare a man from ever wanting to close his eyes. He was glad to see her fly away in her hulled-out shell of a chariot, snapping her cricket bone whip. He wouldn’t have slept anyway, but knowing her devilry was alight in the night air made him shudder as he curled up atop the roof to wait for the dawn with his tail over his nose.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The apartment wasn’t safe. Not even a random crevice in the village wall was safe. Sidra skirted the cobblestone lane, keeping to the shadows where the glint of moonlight didn’t reach. She ought to get up higher onto the rooftops, where she could anticipate the threat better, but then she, too, would be visible. A lone starling under the eye of the soaring hawk.
There had to be some haven, a temporary place where she could hide the dagger and keep chaos out of the hands of those who would use it to cut the throat of the world. “Think!” she scolded herself, but the only solution that came to mind was the one she couldn’t be sure of. And yet it was her only option. She must go to the old one and confide in him and his wisdom, and quickly, before the morning announced itself on the horizon.
Sidra dissipated, ready to fly as quickly as she could to the cave. Her spirit form soared over the rooftops, a mere wisp in the night air, desperate to find help. She dipped and dived between chimneys and steeples, swooped above treetops of cypress and palm, with the speed of the desert zephyr. As she approached the tumbledown buildings forming the outskirts, she veered west, preparing to accelerate over the open land, when she slammed into a wall of resistance at the edge of the village. The collision forced her back, her energy curling in on itself like smoke blown into a bottle. She regrouped and pushed forward again, only to be hit by a barrier that refused to let her pass. Materializing, she reached a hand out to test the invisible blockade when a shadow rose up behind her, forcing her heart into her throat.