The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(6)
“I can’t tell what I don’t know.” And even if she did know, she wouldn’t tell, she thought as she glared at the madman in the black derby, willing him to leave.
“Then you have made your choice,” said the jinni. With the speed of a falcon diving for prey, he swooped over Jean-Paul, clapping his hands on either side of his head. Jean-Paul struggled to free himself of the jinni’s grip, but before Elena could utter a second feckless spell, her husband crumpled to the ground.
CHAPTER THREE
The pungent fragrance of mimosa in bloom floated on the air. Acrid, stinging, prodding memories. Sidra shook free of the shimmer of sliding from one world to the next. She blinked and was overtaken by dread. Water doused the fire in her veins as her surroundings came into focus. Red roof tiles, palm trees stretching up to kiss a generous sun, and the vast stretch of a coastal horizon, one that touched sea to shore with her homeland. If her heart wished it, she could make her eyes see that long-abandoned continent in the distance. Instead, she wrapped her robe around her and turned away.
“I can’t believe he threw us both out!” Yvette shook off her gown where dirt from the dusty earth had collected on her hem. “My own grandfather.”
He’d seen something in the water. Sidra had taken the old king for a fool, but Oberon’s eyes saw more than he let on. What image swam in the font that made him send her here? And with the yellow-haired girl? Would she never be free of this chained fate with fools?
“Wow, would you look at that.” Yvette shaded her eyes and gazed out at the distant sea sparkling under the midday sun. “Where do you reckon we landed?”
Sidra didn’t need to guess. They’d been deposited on a hill twenty miles inland, one where the glimpse of the calm blue sea could break your heart if you lingered too long on the view. “We are in the south of your country.”
“Do you smell that? Roses and oranges, and—”
“Jasmine.” Sidra had almost forgotten the strange mix of the crosswind when it gathered up the scents of the fields at bud break and carried them to the hilltop. The scent had embedded itself in her memory like no other substance. The tether between the fragrance and grief inseverable no matter the years.
“Right, the flower fields. And the cathedral bell tower. The mountains. I know where we are now. We used to swing through here when I worked the carnival.” Yvette scrunched up her nose. “So, why did he send us to a village where they make perfume? What’s he expect us to do here?”
“We?” Damn that meddling Oberon. “There is no ‘we.’ Go back to your misty, damp home. You’re not needed here.”
“I haven’t learned how to slide between realms yet.” The girl crossed her arms and glared. Her skin glowed with temper. “So, you poof off. I don’t need your complaining, either.” Yvette gave her the once-over with her eyes. “Well, can you?”
Could she?
The bonds of the spell that had kept her confined inside the city couldn’t still have their hold on her, could they? She’d escaped. Slipped through the crevice of time and space. Clever that, smuggling herself into the Fée lands. Fate and fortune had seen her through to a safe place where she could curl up and forget. And, she’d hoped, be forgotten. But Oberon’s interference had brought her back to this place with its scented memories. Already they twined around her heart, making her suspect she’d been bound all over again.
“Well?” The girl rolled her eyes and began walking down the hill. “Thought so.”
“I can leave whenever I wish it.” But even Sidra knew her words were as hollow as winter gourds that rattled in the wind. She was caught at the ankle by the past and future. Returned to a place that had proved the birthplace of her downfall.
Yvette spun around. “You know, I was happy where we were. Best I’ve ever had it. I was just learning how to master my glamour. Until you ruined everything by getting us tossed out.” She pointed a finger. “You owe me now.”
Curse that girl and her family to Jahannam and back. She was right. Always the wheel of fate kept turning, tipping the balance from pauper to prince back to indebted fool.
The scrub bush poked between the straps of Sidra’s sandals, irritating her even more. “We don’t need to walk like mules through the brush,” she said. If it were mere sand, she would cherish the feel of the grains of warm quartz against her skin, but she didn’t like the scrape of sticks and prickly thorns.
Yvette yelled over her shoulder. “What are you going to do, fly us down to the village on a magic carpet?”
The thought of taking to the air was tempting, though she didn’t trust herself not to drop the girl headfirst on the steepest rooftop. And for good or ill she must have needed the blonde-haired one to see this unfortunate foretelling to its end. Otherwise, fate would have left her behind.
“No, girl,” she called. “Come take hold of my sleeve. There’s another way.”
Yvette hesitated before climbing back up the hill and grabbing a handful of silk. “You better not turn me into a bird again or I swear I’ll—”
Silencing the pest, if only for a brief shift in time and space, was a pleasure all its own. The transformation was nothing. Fire and smoke. Mist and air. It was what jinn were made of. The source of their being. The girl would feel nothing but light-headedness when she reanimated. But where to land? Was the apartment still safe? Was the old one still nearby?