The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(61)
“But where’s Yvette?”
Camille shook her head. “She was still on the roof. I don’t know what happened to her. There was a flash of lightning. I’m sorry. That’s all I saw.”
“You’re alive after tangling with an ifrit,” Yanis said. “That’s no small feat.”
“Yes, but if they’ve still got Yvette, that brute will kill her if Sidra doesn’t give him what he wants.”
The dog circled the group, sniffing the air as if seeking a lost scent. He tried four directions before pausing and letting out a small whine.
“What’s wrong with him?” Camille asked Elena.
“He must’ve lost Sidra. We were following her. Jamra was chasing her on the rooftops, but we couldn’t keep up.”
“But he could,” Yanis said, gesturing to their four-footed friend. “If he wanted to, he could keep up.”
The dog grumbled low in his throat.
Elena had seen the animal move with the speed of the jinn. It was true—he could have left them behind at any time to catch up to Sidra. So why hadn’t he? Why did he need them to follow so badly?
“Jamra has bound Sidra to the village,” she informed him. “They can’t have gotten too far.”
The dog looked up sharply and bared his teeth.
“Do you want to go after them alone?” she asked.
The dog shook out his fur and sat on his haunches.
“In that case, mind if I try finding them my way?” Following a hunch, Elena rested a hand on the animal’s fur and closed her eyes, testing the boundaries of her connection with the shadow world, if not the dog’s tolerance as well. Though he kept himself veiled, she sensed intelligence, loyalty . . . and love. Yes, deep love. Transcendent love. The kind poets write about. That’s what guided him, what drove his urgency. But for some reason he remained hidden behind his furry masquerade.
Still, using that thread of emotion from the animal she was able to trace a connection to Sidra. Elena sank deeper in her trance, deeper in the shadow world, until she was following an invisible trail that veered one way and then another. Racing. Panicking. Darting down a narrow alley only to turn around and go back the other way. Though she couldn’t see her, she knew it was Sidra’s energy. Her fiery spirit in the ether. But something was interfering with the jinni’s free will of movement. Forcing her to move in a direction she didn’t want to go. Turning her around so she was no longer in control of her destination.
Elena absorbed the feeling of panic, her heartbeat speeding up as she followed the jinni through the streets, under arches, searching for a crevice to hide away. She feared she might not be able to hold on at the disorienting speeds the spirit flew. But then a familiar scent wafted in the distance. The fragrance of flowers, pressed and drained, stripped of their purest essence. Camille’s factory. She was staring straight at it. And there was Jamra pacing the street, searching for Sidra. Elena’s breath sped up. She could sense Sidra trying to hold back, to not show herself, to be strong. But she couldn’t turn away from the lock of blonde hair on the flagstones.
All hope fell out of the bottom as the jinni stepped from the ether and into the path of certain death.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
They had barely animated inside the lobby of the perfume factory before Jamra began complaining of the smell. Sidra could have said the same about the sulfur-like odor lifting off the ifrit who led Yvette on a chain. If only there were a scent to revive the girl. She’d wilted from the touch of iron against her skin, wanting to collapse to the floor but held upright by the beast’s tight rein.
Jamra covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve to avoid inhaling directly. “I’ll never understand what brought my brother to this place. I would have flown a hundred miles around such a stinking village to avoid that smell.”
Sidra twitched her lip at him. Was he so self-involved he couldn’t understand the underlying benefit to her in his opinion?
“This way,” she said and passed through the wall to the shop where the factory’s many perfume bottles lined the shelves to sell to the wealthy tourists. The smell to her was intoxicating. Love’s elixir, he’d called it. She’d teased Hariq about his work at the factory, calling it frivolous dabbling in inferior spell magic. But the truth was that she’d been as enamored of the possibilities as much as he. The way nature’s essences could elicit both emotion and memory by a single inhaled molecule, depending on the combination of a flower’s most intimate identity, was a delicious sorcery to contemplate.
Per fumum. Through the smoke. It had been their private love talk while Hariq perfected his scent with the help of the witch until one day he presented Sidra with the bloom of his efforts. Her very own fragrance. Fleur de Sable in the witch’s tongue. Sand Flower. Zahrat al sahra’. His flower of the desert.
If this was where she was meant to die, she was pleased it was as near to Hariq as events would allow.
The jumble of fragrances seeping from the bottles inside the shop made Sidra’s head float. She had to concentrate on not dissipating in front of Jamra again. She would have to give him what he wanted. He’d grown too powerful for her to deny him much longer. There, too, Hariq had played too frivolously with his plan. With their future. With the security of the dagger. With her life too.
“Where is it?” Jamra stood in the center of the shop and folded his arms.