The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(2)

Sidra lifted her robe to check that she wasn’t manacled. But there was no chain, no restraint on her magic. “What have you done?”

“Don’t go blaming me. Maybe you’re too old to do proper magic anymore.”

Sidra’s forehead creased with worry as she stared at the tower. “I vowed never to return to this stinking city. Prophets protect me, I should not be in this place.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have magicked us here.”

The jinni’s lip lifted in a snarl, revealing an ivory eyetooth engraved with gold. “I am not the one who brought us here.”

“Well, we didn’t just land here randomly, did we?”

Sidra adjusted her silken shawl, rattling the gold bracelets on her wrists as she thought about it. “No, we didn’t,” she said and leaned against the railing so that her profile matched the gargoyle’s. She stared out over the city, eyes glittering like black diamonds, as she scoured the rooftops below.

Yvette, still watchful for any sudden move, wondered what the jinni was on about. Sidra might yet toss her over the railing, but the jinni’s genuine puzzlement suggested she was safe for the moment.

Sidra clicked her tongue as she thought out loud. “You smuggled something in your heart,” she said, finding a thread of logic worth following. “Something you desired above all else. At the moment I did the transformation. It must have gotten caught in the magic. That must be what carried us here.” Sidra spun on her. “You stole a wish!”

“Did not.”

“Did.”

“Oh là là, is it a crime to want something now?”

The jinni shook her finger in Yvette’s face, then marched to the end of the terrace, her silk robes billowing out behind her. There she reached over the balustrade, where an abandoned bird’s nest sat tucked below a decorative stone scroll. She plucked it loose and cradled it in her hand, still managing to cast a stern look at Yvette. “We’ll see now the value of your heart’s desire.”

“What’s a bird’s nest got to do with it?”

Sidra folded her robes around her and sat on the terrace with her legs crossed. She pointed a finger. “Sit and close that mouth of yours.”

Yvette feared a trap but had no choice. Even from five feet away, anger radiated off the desert sorceress, making Yvette feel as small and defenseless as she’d been as a girl on the streets below years earlier. She sat in front of the jinni and folded her legs.

Sidra held the nest in her hand and blew gently across the dried sticks and grass that had been woven together with instinct and care. Fluffs of feathery down stirred inside the shallow depression as the nest caught fire. The flame spread but didn’t consume the small nest or feathers inside. The nest glowed orange as the fire danced in a circle in the jinni’s hand. Sidra’s eyes followed the flickering light like one might read a newspaper.

“How’d you do that? I thought your magic went out.”

“Not out, only dimmed. Now hush. One’s fate must not be trivialized by idle talk. Not even yours.”

One’s fate?

Sidra’s head tilted to the side, and her eyes narrowed as she squinted at some vision. What did it mean? Yvette chewed nervously on her thumbnail, waiting to see if the jinni intended to throw her over the side of the building after all.

“It’s as I suspected,” Sidra said, placing the nest on the ground, unharmed from the flame. “It was your desire that brought us to this city of infidels.”

Yvette shook her head. “I didn’t. I swear!”

“The fire does not lie.” Sidra stood and nudged her chin. “Get up.”

“Why, what are you going to do?” Yvette looked quickly around for a door. Surely there must be an escape.

“Stand, girl. I need to give you something.” The jinni reached in the silken folds of her robe and brought out a small perfume bottle made of green glass with an intricate overlay of gold in a leaf pattern. A crystal bird served as a stopper. Exquisite. The sort of thing found in the bourgeoise shops along the rue de Valeur. Sidra placed the bottle in Yvette’s left hand.

“What’d I do to deserve this?”

Sidra scoffed. “Nothing. And it’s not yours to keep. But you stole a wish, so now you must do this thing for me.”

Always the tit for tat with these jinn. “I told you I didn’t—”

“Do not deny it. Your heart was pointed here when we escaped, and now you’ve dragged me to these dirty streets as well.”

“I don’t know why you keep going on about it. You’re a jinni, for heaven’s sake. Poof off if you don’t like it here.”

Sidra advanced, her hands balled into fists. “You know nothing about the rules of magic.”

“No, but I know what this is worth,” she said, holding up the bottle in a way that suggested she might drop it at any moment if Sidra didn’t back off.

“Do not test me, sharmoota! That bottle is worth ten thousand of your heart’s filthy desires.”

Yvette tossed the bottle in the air so that it flipped once, then deftly caught it in her right palm. “Then why give it to me?”

The jinni reached out a panicked hand. “I’ve no time to explain, but because of your reckless wish I am now confined inside the city boundaries. I cannot leave. And neither can you.”