The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(20)
“Right, that’s enough of that,” Elena said to herself. She held her palm up and whispered, “Pepper black, sniff and sneeze, deliver your sting as a swarm of bees.”
The crushed pepper lifted from her hand as the illusion spell took shape. A moment later a hive of swarming bees descended upon the thief, stinging him from head to backside. The cat mewed in apparent approval. And as the woman sat up to see what had driven off her attacker, lowering her arms to reveal her face, the astonishing accuracy of Elena’s intuition struck home.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Cochon!” Yvette shook her fist at the man as he ran away. Her head stung and her arm would likely be left with a bruise, but she was otherwise in one piece. Turning, she meant to wave a quick thanks to the woman who’d scared off her attacker, then run to the top of the lane before anyone had a chance to recognize her. Instead she clutched her velvet wrap around her, feeling shabby and poor standing in the long shadow of the witch before her.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Yvette wavered on her feet, still dizzy from the smack to her temple, as a trickle of blood wove its way through the roots of her hair.
“I could ask the same of you,” Elena said. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you badly?”
“I’ve had worse.”
Yvette wiped a smear of blood away when the trickle got too close to her eye. She looked past Elena, suspicious of the coincidence of finding her old cellmate on the street, then spotted the cat waving his tail and licking a paw. So, that’s where he’d gone this morning after leaving her to wake up alone in the belly of the beast. Instead of dragging a dead mouse home, he’d gone and fetched a proper witch. Some cat.
“Better if we do this up here,” Yvette said, nudging her chin away from the people at the café tables still chattering and laughing about the odd woman who demanded a handful of pepper. The cat tromped behind her, proud as can be.
Halfway up the lane, Yvette ducked into the mouth of a private courtyard. She leaned against the wall as Elena caught up.
“How’d you do that?” she asked, thinking of the bees and the way they’d attacked the man out of nowhere.
Elena smiled as though impressed with her own spell. “It was only an illusion, but the pepper gave it some real bite.” She took some green leaves from her purse and rubbed them between her fingers. “Do you want to tell me why that man attacked you?”
“I have no idea why. Crazy lunatic. I was checking the trash bins for something to eat. Don’t look at me like that; I’ve been out here for a whole month already. Today even the throwaways were rotten, so I skipped down here to swipe some leftovers off a plate before the waiter could clear the table. My mugger must have followed. He grabbed me from behind and threw me against the wall. Don’t know what he was on about. Kept telling me to give him some key. When I said I didn’t have one, he hit me.”
“May I?”
“Sure, go on,” she said, remembering how Elena had saved her sore feet once before with a bit of leaf and a spell.
She let Elena dab the oily substance from the crushed leaves on her hairline. It stung at first, but once Elena recited her incantation, nearly all the pain subsided. All except for that nagging prickle of envy at not being able to do the same magic for herself.
When she finished dabbing at the cut, Elena checked up and down the lane. “So are you going to tell me what you’re doing back in the city? Sidra was supposed to take you somewhere safe.”
The trickle of blood dried, and Yvette’s head stopped throbbing. “Something went wrong.” A row of stone steps led up to a locked gate guarding the narrow close. Yvette climbed halfway up and sat down. She explained about the stolen wish and her desire to find her mother and her magic and how she hadn’t found the courage to confront Tante Isadora until yesterday. “Something changed. I got this fluttering inside. Felt like one of those big moths you see at night banging its wings against a streetlight. Like I had to go to the cabaret, even though I knew it would be dangerous. And I think it was because the wish was waiting for you.”
The vine witch narrowed her eyes. “How do you mean?”
Yvette removed the book from under her velvet cloak and held it out.
“What is it?”
“A book from my mother. Her book of spells, I think. Or maybe a diary. Or a list of debts? I have no idea.”
“I thought you said you never knew your mother.”
“Didn’t. But she left this for me. For when I turned sixteen. Tante had kept the book for me that whole time, only I’d left the city before she could hand it over. Because of, you know.” A couple strode by on the lane below, and Yvette ducked her head so she wouldn’t be seen. “Because I’d stabbed that man. And let me tell you, he was just as crazy as the guy who did this. It was self-defense, same as this time, but no one ever listens to that part. I’m starting to think my magic talent is being a human magnet for lunatics.”
It wasn’t the first time Yvette had the thought or the first time she’d said the words out loud, but after this latest attack out of the blue, she was beginning to actually believe something was wrong with her.
“What makes you think your wish was waiting for me?”
She watched as Elena held a hand to her midsection as she spoke. The same place she’d felt the strange compulsion too. “Because you’re a proper witch. Book smart. You know how magic works. So maybe my wish couldn’t come true until you showed up to sort out what these pages say. And maybe even”—Yvette bit her lip—“maybe even teach me how to sort them out too.”