The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(58)

So be it.

Sidra held her arms out to welcome him. The sleeves of her caftan, now tattered and dirty, fluttered in the wind. Her bangles rattled as she raised her arms higher. Come, she thought. Try and take what you think is yours.

In a flash, Jamra vanished from the clock tower and reappeared at Sidra’s side atop the cathedral. He’d ditched his Western suit and put on his finery: an indigo-blue caftan jacket with gold embroidery and matching leggings that ballooned slightly over the tops of soft leather boots, as if he’d arrived at an improvised coronation of his own making. The demons, meanwhile, smelling of rotten meat and foul waste from the back end of a cow, squatted on the wall behind him, one on each corner. Their tails dangled over the side of the building as their fetid breath steamed in the air. Sidra focused her eyes on Jamra. The wind swirled around them in a dizzying motion, though once he landed it did not touch them. They stood in the eye of the vortex, cut off from the rest of the devastation.

Jamra folded his arms. “In the name of sanity, I hope you have the dagger with you.”

“In the name of all that’s sacred, it will never belong to you.”

They were mere spoken words, a puff of breath in the dirty air, but their meaning burned as they struck Jamra’s ear with the heat of rebellion. His face contorted from its usual sneer into a full-frowned expression of loathing.

“Enough of this game playing.” His hand lunged out lightning fast and gripped her by the throat. He lifted her off the ground. Sidra clutched at his fingers against her neck, fighting for release. “You will not dissipate. You will not change form. There is nowhere for you to go. You are bound here. There is no crevice I cannot find you in this filthy human village.” He set her down again, and she gasped for air. “I am done asking, jinniyah. If you do not produce the dagger, now, you will watch your friends die.”

Jamra snapped his fingers, and behind him both demons took a dive off the roof. Sidra felt for damage along her neck as she coughed up smoky phlegm. She’d been singed by his touch. He’d grown stronger since their last encounter. And she, her power bound within the village, had grown weaker. She straightened and sent a blow to his stomach with a jolt of energy stolen from the storm. He stumbled backward, dirtying his fancy coat as he hit the roof tiles.

Sidra braced for more violence, but instead of retaliating, Jamra stood and laughed at her pathetic effort. He brushed grit from his fine blue jacket a speck at a time as the fire demons rose up behind him. It had been no bluff. Each carried a struggling woman in their grip—Yvette, shimmering with anger, and Camille, wide-eyed and out of her depth. The ifrits’ scaled hands were pressed tightly over the women’s mouths, though the beasts kept their noses turned away as if trying to avoid inhaling the women’s stench. Jamra was wrong if he thought she believed he’d keep his word. He’d never said he would let them go, even if she were to falter and give him the dagger and its dangerous sigil. And so she could show only indifference.

“They’re nothing to me,” she said and hoped the shaking of her leg didn’t show under her caftan.

Jamra approached Camille. “Was this the one with you in prison?” He sniffed her hair and turned his nose away as if the scent disgusted him. “They all begin to look alike to me after a while. Though this one’s reek I would remember.”

Camille had been trembling uncontrollably, her eyes brimming with tears, until he said that. The woman was still scared, but something changed. She stopped clutching at the demon’s arm, letting her hands slip inside her lab coat pockets instead.

“Where is it?”

Sidra drained the emotion from her eyes. He would find only hooded apathy in them. Nothing more. When she did not answer, Jamra put his hands on her, feeling under her robes, patting her sides, fumbling over her breasts. She stared at the clock tower across the lane as she suffered through the indignity of his unclean hands on her body. As if she were so stupid as to wear the thing on her person once dawn arrived.

Frustrated, Jamra pushed her away. “I warned you,” he said.

He reached for Camille’s hair and yanked her out of the arms of the fire demon. Behind him, Yvette struggled and let out a muffled scream. Her breath heaved under the scaly arm that covered her mouth.

Sidra twitched her nose as if she smelled something in the air, looked at Camille, then turned away. As subtly as possible, she put the thought in the witch’s head that she wasn’t powerless.

Held only by her hair, Camille pulled an atomizer filled with the enchanted perfume out of her lab coat. She pointed it directly in Jamra’s face and sprayed. The jinni reeled, spinning away from the witch. Incandescent with rage, he coughed and spewed the sensuous, beautiful fragrance out of his lungs and mouth. Camille jerked free of his grip, but not before he flung the back of his hand out, connecting with her jaw. She fell to the ground as the cathedral bells began to chime.

The clanging noise rattled the roof, giving Sidra a moment of distraction. She took hold of Camille and jumped from the tower onto the tile roof below. Camille began to slip on the landing, but the jinni held firm and lowered the witch to the street. Before the ifrit could dive down to reclaim her, Sidra ran up the side of the tower and hurled the fiery demon into the wall of the raging vortex. His body ricocheted through the storm and was spit out on the other side of the ether. The burst of magic cost her dearly. She doubled over to catch her breath, wary for the next blow.