The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)
Luanne G. Smith
PROLOGUE
She emerged from the layer of mist too late to avoid colliding with the rose-colored window three stories up. Her right wing smacked against the glass, leaving behind a feathered streak of dirt as she tumbled to the ledge below. Reeling at her precarious position, the little bird dug her claws into the stone ledge. The reflection of a startled sparrow blinked back at her from the bottom of the glass’s surface. In the midst of her confusion, the pain in her shoulder announced itself smartly. Shaking all over, she settled her ruffled feathers back into place.
The bird had no recollection of flying, no idea how she’d come to crash into the side of a building. Or how it was she’d come to have feathers, for that matter. A string of red silk trailed from her left leg, teasing her with the half-shadow of memory. It meant something, it must, but no matter how hard she tried to grasp the significance, the meaning drifted from her avian mind, elusive as mist. She made the mistake of trying to force the thought by pecking at the string, but vertigo set in the moment the river came into focus in the foreground. In a panic she flapped her wings.
Forced aloft by an updraft, she wobbled higher until she touched down on a narrow terrace surrounded by a stone balustrade. It wasn’t the direction she’d wanted to go, but at least there was room to hop about without fear of falling over the ledge. And the view! She could see the whole of the city from so high up. But which city? She hopped a little farther along, peeking out between the Gothic cutouts in the stone railing, until the lean outline of a metal tower arose in the distance. It pointed skyward, looming over the low profile of modern buildings and stone bridges. A wagging finger taking aim at a new age. It ought to have been an inspiring view, yet her heart pounded at the sight. The skyline was too familiar, too weighted with the threat of danger. She shouldn’t be there. She didn’t know why, and yet instinct told her to fly, to get away.
The sparrow spread her wings, ready to catch the wind and fly to safety, when a plume of white smoke flooded the terrace, stinging her nostrils with its burnt citrus scent. Her eyes watered and her throat clenched. She beat her wings, desperate to escape, but the string of red silk squeezed tight around her leg, holding her down. Surely, she would choke to death, a poor bird that’d lost her way, smothered by the polluted exhale of a city breathing in an industrial age.
The smoke grew thicker, tainted by the heavy perfume of frankincense. Dizzy from the scent, she flopped over on her side, certain she would die from lack of oxygen. Her eyes fluttered on the verge of closing for good as a dark-eyed woman stepped out of the smoke to stand over her.
“You’re not dying, Yvette,” the jinni said, straightening her red-and-gold garments. “Get up.”
The jinni nudged her tail feather with the toe of a worn sandal, blew a puff of hot breath over her tiny head, and uttered a foreign word full of hard consonants. A warm zephyr swept the sparrow up within a column of smoke that churned like a chimney fire, as a whirlwind of energy buoyed her off her feet. The feathers singed away, the beak receded, twig-light bones calcified and grew human-heavy, until Yvette stood once more as a spritely young woman, still in the red-and-black harlequin costume she’d worn when they’d hastily escaped from the cellar and les flics. She rubbed her sore arm as her mind expanded with all the memories that had been too big to hold in her tiny sparrow brain. And then she saw it again, the narrow tower in the distance pointing skyward.
Yvette gripped the balustrade with both hands. “No, no, no, not here!” she said, taking in the expanse of the city as the lights came on along the river. “Sidra, you have to take me somewhere else.”
The jinni, alarmed by the reaction, leaned over the railing, and she, too, gave a look of terror as she spotted the tower, the river, and the bustling street below, with its automobiles, bicyclettes, and wagons all vying for a path through the evening congestion. Beside her a stone gargoyle gazed placidly at the view. “We’re in the city of a thousand lights? I did not will this.” She turned on Yvette. “What have you done? I will turn you to ash for this, I swear it!”
“Me? I didn’t do anything. You turned me into a bird, remember. You could have killed me, you crazy desert witch.”
Sidra glared, radiating a heat wave of hatred. “I should have bound you and left you to the authorities. Let the drop of the blade take that useless head of yours. It’s obviously doing you no good where it is.”
The jinni pushed her sleeves up as if she meant to strike with magic. Yvette reached for her sharpened hairpin, the one she kept tucked in her sloppy pompadour for self-defense, but it wasn’t there. She backed away, pointing a warning finger. “Don’t you even think of turning me into anything else.”
“Missing something? Your mortal trinkets are of no use against me anyway. We’re not in prison anymore, girl.” The jinni waved her hand, a thin seam of mist trailing in the air.
Yvette cringed, waiting for the smiting move to sweep her off the balcony and into some pit of vipers. But it never came. She opened her eyes to find Sidra shaking her hands out and staring at them as if they had betrayed her. “Well, that’s interesting,” Yvette said, gripping the balustrade.
But she didn’t dare relax. Not yet. Jinn were tricky. Dangerous. And this one was a known murderer.
She’d been bolder around the jinni when they’d both been locked up inside Maison de Chêne, the prison for witches. There they’d been on equal footing, each stripped of magic while they awaited their fate. But here, alone on a ledge against the jinni, she was as helpless as she’d ever been. A stub witch with no more than a handful of parlor tricks.