The Glamourist (The Vine Witch)

  ALSO BY LUANNE G. SMITH

  The Vine Witch Series

  The Vine Witch

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Luanne G. Smith

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542019613

  ISBN-10: 1542019613

  Cover design by Micaela Alcaino

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  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 witch
es. 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.

  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.”

  “I can leave right now, if I want.”

  “No, girl, you can’t. The thing you desired with every ounce of your heart is here, and until you find it and satisfy your wish, you cannot leave.” Sidra shivered, a thing Yvette had never seen her do before. “In the meantime, that bottle cannot be found in my possession,” she went on. “Not while my powers are dimmed.”

  “So, you want me to stash it for you?” Normally she’d be happy to continue tormenting the moody desert witch, but there was something different in Sidra’s eyes this time. Something desperate. Fearful even. It strummed a sympathetic chord inside Yvette, layers and layers beneath the tough facade she’d built up from years of living on the streets. She knew the feeling of offering something of value to someone, only to have it broken from lack of care.

  Yvette closed her fingers over the bottle and slipped it inside her costume. “I guess I owe you for helping me escape. I’ll keep it safe, if that’s what you want.”

  Sidra gave a firm nod, her relief obvious. The jinni seemed to consider the matter settled, as if a debt had been paid. Standing aside a horned gargoyle, she scoured the skyline and pointed to a hill on the far side of the city where a domed roof rose above the summit. “You’re not too late. The one you’re looking for is still there.”

  Yvette’s mouth watered with fear. She didn’t know what dream the jinni had seen in the flames, but watching her correctly pick out the neighborhood atop the butte where she was born told her the vision had been rooted in truth. Or as near a version of the truth as she’d ever known. She understood partly why she’d been swept back to the city. Perhaps she had wished to return from some deep place inside. Before Sidra turned her into a sparrow, she’d seen proper magic done by a proper witch, and for the first time in her life she’d wanted that for herself. Magic was in her blood, always had been, tingling on her skin at the tips of her fingers, in the roots of her hair, and along her spine. And yet she’d never been anything but a failure at spells. There’d never been anyone to show her how to do them properly or teach her how to channel the restless energy that seemed to flow through her. No one who cared, anyway.

  But now that she’d seen a vine witch wield her magic and knew what was possible, Yvette wanted power for herself more keenly than she ever had before. That was the thought she’d folded up and tucked away in her heart just before she’d been caught in the jinni’s sorcery.

  Yvette leaned over the railing, scanning the city as the streetlights twinkled against a purple sky. The image ga
ve her the courage to confess. “I want to learn magic for myself, is all. I want to know what kind of witch I was supposed to be before everything went to shit and I ended up in that prison.”

  Across from her, a fat gargoyle stuck its tongue out and rested its head in its hands.

  “That, girl, is why I decided not to kill you.” The jinni side-eyed Yvette as if waiting for her to flare up and then smiled when it didn’t happen. “There is no greater journey than following one’s fate,” she said, her voice softened, perhaps on reflection of her own circumstance. “Even if it’s to be found in this stinking place.”

  “It’s been three years,” Yvette said, finally gazing at the white-domed cathedral on the butte in the distance.

  “A blink in time.”

  “There’s usually some hell-broth on the boil at a little café at the top of the hill, if you’re hungry. That is, if you want to come with me.”

  The jinni shook her head and pointed her chin in the opposite direction toward the south bank of the river. “My path is that way. In the maze of narrow streets where I can disappear.”

  “So that’s it? We crash-land in the city together and then go our separate ways? How will I return your bottle to you?”

  Sidra adjusted her shawl so it covered the top of her head. “For whatever reason, fate has bound us together. We will find each other again. This I do not doubt. Until then, take care with that bottle or I will curse you and your children, and your children’s children, to an eternal blistering hell of torment, as though a thousand fire ants feast on your brain.”

  “Honestly, it’s a wonder you haven’t got more friends.”

  Sidra showed her teeth—half grimace, half smile. The gold scrolling engraved in the ivory gleamed in its secret incantation.

  “Not one scratch,” answered the jinni. And with that she climbed onto the ledge of the balustrade and shimmered into a screen of smoke that vanished over the head of a pouting gargoyle, leaving Yvette alone to contemplate her own way down.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Elena and Jean-Paul arrived in the city on the afternoon train, leaving themselves just enough time to forward their luggage before hailing one of the now ubiquitous motorized cabs. They were headed to the campus of ancient buildings on the south side of the north bridge, summoned there by the Ministry of Lineages and Licenses. The address written in bold type at the top of the telegram clearly stated Elena was to report to 333 rue de Courbé. After double-checking the number above the door, she tucked the summons back in her purse and tried to hide her nervousness with a tight, confident smile.