Page 36 of Waves
Hand to my throbbing forehead, I glared at her. “You burnt me alive! That can hardly count.”
Lizza shoved the bottle my way with a glare that said I wasn’t getting a peek at her grimoire if I didn’t comply. Reluctantly, I uncorked the thing with pop and gave it a swirl. An unfortunate scent drifted up to me. One akin to dead leaves. Rather than dwelling on it, I gulped the contents, trying to swallow them before they hit my tongue.
I was unsuccessful.
Sahar handed me her teacup, which I took and gratefully used the hot liquid to burn away any remaining taste buds. Tasting things was overrated anyway, particularly when Lizza was nearby.
Once I’d emptied the cup and replaced it on the table, Lizza plopped a giant spell book onto my lap, one that was as heavy as a boulder.
“We can check?—”
“Wait,” Sahar interrupted. “Didn’t that siren say a djinni was chasing her?”
In the chaos of witnessing that girl’s writhing death, in the absolutely soul-wrenching panic of being unable to stop it, I’d somehow forgotten. Balancing the heavy gook on my thighs, I twisted in my seat to stare at my adviser. “Yes. She was.”
Nodding thoughtfully, Sahar said, “Okay then. Let’s review what we know. I spoke to Ugo about everything this morning in order to get his perspective. He said the girl spoke about three wishes. A castle. Hair or something? And gold.”
“Yes,” I nodded, her words jogging my memory.
“But half-djinn only have three wishes,” Lizza piped in as she yanked a scroll from her bag, the end clutched in her hand as the rest of it unspooled across the floor. “He’d have been magically impotent at that point.”
“Wishes cost a nightmare…could the pursuit have had to do with a nightmare?”
“All this assumes that girl was speaking truth,” Lizza grumbled before glancing over the spelled parchment in her hand. “She might have been a liar. Or…maybe the fellow used a disguise spell and pretended to be a djinni.”
“My sister used to use those,” I commented vaguely as I stared at the curtains, trying to make sense of what was true and ignore how my throat still burned from the remnants of the potion.
“Common tactic for criminals, ‘specially those who rob carriages on land,” Lizza mused.
“That doesn’t explain the castle,” Sahar stated.
“Illusion spell?” My mage instantly offered another option. “Those are easy enough, especially if the person you’re showing is an empty nut.” She rapped on the side of her skull to illustrate her point.
“But Keelan and Avia saw a strange castle recently, didn’t you?” Sahar turned a thoughtful gaze toward me, creases near her eyes deepening as she tried to work through what might be real and unreal.
The haunted castle appeared in my mind instantly, its unnaturally perfect form. The box of abandoned sand dollars was nearby. The ominous feeling cast over the entire place. A shiver scratched at the base of my spine, and I tried to suppress it. Keelan must have mentioned it to his mother. “But that’s so far south it’s near Nowhere. By the Umra Desert.” That woman, Laranda, couldn’t have come that far… Except, she hadn’t said how long she’d been hiding.
That was a long way to flee from a bandit. Or an impotent half djinni.
My lungs compressed, breath tight and expectant, because it definitely seemed like djinn magic. If the castle had beenbuilt and not magicked, it would never have been so perfect. And someone surely would have heard about it. Known about the construction. Word would have traveled, and people would have gone to that shell palace seeking work. None of that had happened.
I played with the ends of my hair as I thought, staring down at the open book on my lap and not seeing a single word.
“Sard!” I stood, and the heavy grimoire smashed into the tops of my feet, sending pain shooting up my body. But I hardly noticed the throbbing ache because my shock was much more potent, as harsh as a fist to the face. Lizza and Sahar both stared at me like I’d gone mad. “Her hair. She mentioned a fourth wish. I guess her hair hadn’t changed colors like a normal siren. She wished for that.”
Their mute shock was a deafening roar in my head as my pulse pounded in my ears.
Four wishes.
Four.
Not three.
That meant we weren’t dealing with a half djinni.
We were dealing with a full-blooded one who had unlimited wishes and paid no price for magic.
“Why would he chase down and kill that girl?” Sahar’s voice finally cracked the shell of our silence. “She had nothing of value on her. And when I examined her body…I don’t recall a ring.”
