The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(51)
The grimoire, perhaps detecting the shift in her mood, began to sulk by forgetting to turn the page when she was done reading, so she laid the book beside the incense burner, where chunks of the bakhoor still smoked. With luck, the pages would absorb and hold the smell so she could revisit the scent again when she returned home. Of course, thinking of home set off a chain reaction of guilt, longing, and despair over not being there with Jean-Paul. Nor could she be until the next train departure, which was hours away. And only if she were still alive in the morning.
Still, there was a way to “be” home, if only passively. Curling up in the corner of the sofa, she centered her thoughts on the angle of Jean-Paul’s jaw, the heat of his skin, and the way he looked at her in the vineyard when his heart pumped full of life and love for her and all they were building together. Soon she found the silver thread leading to him in the shadow world, but instead of taking her home at his bedside as expected, she found herself inside a small compartment. The floor shook and the outside world, though eerily dark, spun by as if the room were in the center of a tornado.
There was Jean-Paul, sitting up, asleep under a blanket. Beside a window. Was he on a train? She leaned farther into the shadow world. Yes, there across from him sat an elderly gentleman muttering in his sleep. On the seat beside him, sticking out of a valise, was a train ticket.
They were on the overnight train. The very same one she was waiting to take on the return trip back home.
Jean-Paul was on his way to her.
The gentleman let out a snort and grumbled. Not wanting to impinge on his privacy, Elena’s mind whirled back through the liminal space until her eyes snapped open. No, it wasn’t the gentleman on the train who’d made the noise. It was Yanis. He was seated directly opposite her, uttering a distinctly audible “huh.” He looked away and apologized for interrupting, though something was clearly still on his mind.
“What is it? Has something happened?”
“No, nothing yet. Only, you’re able to move in the shadow world,” he said, though it came out more as a question, as if making sense of what he’d observed. “In a trance?”
Elena smoothed her hair back into place, feeling disheveled after two days away from home. “Yes,” she admitted, then had to cover a yawn with her hand. “I’m able to see people I have a connection with.”
Yanis pressed his finger against his lips, considering, the optimism of an idea showing on his face. But before he could speak whatever point he was about to make, the walls rattled, hit with a gust of wind. Sidra swept into the shop in a flurry, pacing the floor the minute her feet materialized on the hardwood. Yanis, still forgoing his wooden leg in the name of comfort, leaned against the shop counter and hopped over to his drawing to make certain it had survived her entrance. He wiped away a few scatterings of debris until Sidra chastised him.
“This is no time for chalk drawings, you fool. He’s summoned the ifrit.” She stirred a finger against her palm as she spoke at Yanis.
“Haboob?” he said with his eyes on the window. His previous optimism evaporated as terror took over.
“Who is Haboob again?” Elena asked.
“Not who—what.” Yanis absentmindedly massaged the knee above his missing leg. “The haboob is a storm. Made of sand.”
“A storm called up by the churning feet of the ifrit as they ride over the desert,” Sidra added.
A storm? She knew there were degrees of bad weather that could be summoned, but none that justified Yanis’s current wide-eyed reaction.
“A haboob could swallow the entire town,” he said, as if reading her doubt. “Bury it in sand and suffocate anyone caught unprepared with a choking thick grit that gets in the nose, throat, and lungs.”
His terror proved contagious as Elena thought of all the mortals about to wake from their beds. “We have to alert the village,” she said, though the enormity of the task was likely beyond the time they had. “There has to be a way to warn the residents of the danger.”
Sidra stomped across the floor. “There’s nothing worse than a panicked mortal running through the streets thinking it will save their life.”
“But if this haboob is as bad as you both say, there’ll be innocent people hurt if they stay.” Elena shook her head when she came to the other obvious truth. “No, you have to leave,” she said to Sidra. “Get out of the village. Never mind whatever future was foretold to you. You need to take that dagger with you and hope Jamra follows. It might still spare the village.”
Sidra fumed, and a puff of hot air rose around her. “I cannot.”
“What do you mean you can’t? Do you wish to put everyone in this village in the path of that maniac?”
Sidra advanced and spit out her words. “And what do you think will happen if Jamra gets his hands on a weapon that can affect the balance of chaos and order in the world?”
Elena stood toe-to-toe with the jinni. “You have to take the dagger and leave. Run. Go to the ends of the earth to get away from him, if you must. Find another magus who can protect the power of that sigil.”
“Yes, I know, I know, but I cannot.” Sidra relented, hands on her hips, while she thought. Before Elena could argue a second time, she lifted her head to speak, though she kept her eyes cast down. “He has done it again,” she said. “Jamra has used a sorcerer to whisper my true name over the flames, and now I am bound within the confines of this village. He means to bury me and everyone here beneath this storm. To force me to give him the dagger. But I cannot. I will not.”