Jinx (32 page)

“Why didn’t you take your life when you left? And the other bottles?”

“I didn’t know about the other bottles,” said Simon.

“How could you not know—”

“They were hidden. I never found that underground passage, never knew to look for it. I knew he’d killed people.”

“Did you see him kill people?”

A door slammed shut across Simon’s thoughts, so hard that Jinx flinched. “Enough talk. You need to rest.”

“What’s the difference between the dead people in the bottles and—us?”

“The difference between being dead and being alive.”

“Are the dead people in the bottles really completely dead?”

“They are now,” said Simon. His thoughts were making a cage around his words. “It wasn’t their lives that were bottled, it was their interrupted deaths. There’s power in that. He stole the moments of their deaths, and bottled them. He stopped them from going on.”

If you know that, Jinx thought, you must have known the bottles existed. “So when the bottles smashed, when I fell—”

“You set the deaths free.”

“So will they come back to life, those people who were in the bottles?”

“No,” said Simon. “But they will be free.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Simon. “You think I know everything?”

He lit a candle and held a glass phial over it in a clamp, turning it slowly. Jinx saw him reach for the powder in the mortar, and for things on the shelf that Jinx couldn’t see, and add them to the phial.

“You destroyed most of the Bonemaster’s power,” Simon said after a while. “It was well done.”

Praise from Simon was so rare that it took Jinx a minute to realize that that was what it was. “Well, I mostly had a lot of help,” Jinx said. “But why didn’t he bottle them alive?”

“Because it’s a much more complicated spell.”

“It requires a human sacrifice,” said Jinx.

Simon turned around fast. “Who told you that?”

“Isn’t that what deathforce magic is? And you did that spell on me!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Simon. “You were here. Did you see me sacrifice anybody?”

“Didn’t you sacrifice me?”

“Of course not. I told you.” Simon went back to fussing with his phial. “There’s a way around most things in magic, if you know how to look. That’s what Dame Glammer’s roots were for.”

And Jinx could see he was telling the truth.

“What do you think that other bottle was?” Jinx asked. “The one with all the ribbony smoke around it?”

“I have no idea,” said Simon. “But you were right not to touch it.”

Then you do have some idea
. So did Jinx. “I think it’s the Bonemaster’s life.”

“Perhaps,” said Simon.

“He’ll kill more people now, won’t he? To get his power back?”

“I intend to prevent that.”

But you didn’t prevent it before, Jinx thought. He remembered the green, bottle-shaped fear that everyone had of the Bonemaster. Usually different people had different-looking feelings, but this one was the same for everyone, as if—oh.

“Did you cast a spell, before, to make people afraid of the Bonemaster?” said Jinx.

“Of course not,” said Simon. “I simply told them about him.”

“You made up stories. Like that he could suck out your soul with a straw.”

“It’s more or less the truth. And it kept people away from him.”

“Then where did all those dead people come from?”

“Mostly they happened before,” said Simon.

The word
before
lay smack across the wall around Simon’s thoughts.

“Before you left?”

“Yes.”

“And after people heard your stories, it wasn’t so easy for him to catch people,” Jinx guessed. “What did you steal from him?”

Simon rapped a knuckle against the red-bound book that lay open on the workbench.

“But that’s the book you used to—”

“It’s the book he used to kill people with,” said Simon.

“The book
you
used to take my life.”

“And to put it back.”

“Can he still do the bottle spell now that he doesn’t have the book?”

“How should I know? It depends how good his memory is.”

“Why didn’t you kill him?” Jinx asked.

“You think I go around killing people?”

Jinx looked up at Calvin the Skull, resting near Simon’s elbow on the workbench. “Well, but if killing him could save a lot of people’s lives—”

“Or cost them. I don’t know whose death he’s tied to his own. Mine, naturally, that goes with the bottling—”

“You mean if you killed him, you’d die?”

“Probably. Along with I-don’t-know-who-else.” Simon dribbled something from a jar into the phial he was heating.

“Are you going to take your life out of the bottle now?” Jinx asked.

“Can’t. I need another wizard to give it back to me. The spell’s quite complicated.”

“The spell you just did on me.”

“Yes. I can’t do it on myself.”

“But there are other wizards in the Urwald.”

“Not any that I’d trust with my life.”

Jinx was beginning to see the shape of this. “Why can’t you teach Sophie to do the spell? She likes magic really.”

At the mention of Sophie, Simon’s thoughts turned all orangeish gray, like a log about to fall apart in the fire. “Because Sophie does not know my life is in a bottle, and I do not wish her to find out.”

“You don’t trust her?” Jinx was surprised.

Annoyance crackled around Simon’s head. “Of course I do. It’s just not the sort of thing you tell your wife.”

“Where
is
Sophie?”

“She left.”

“Did she go back to Samara?”

“Yes.”

“Is she coming back?”

“How should I know? Now if you—”

“Well, did she
say
she was coming back?”

“She said she has to think about things. Now if you’re quite finished interrogating me—”

“What kind of things?”

“Things. Sometimes women need to think about things. You’ll see—when you’re older, they’ll do it at you.”

“Things like whether she wants to stay married?”

“Jinx, this is not something I care to discuss.”

Jinx could tell from the shape of Simon’s thoughts that he’d guessed right, and that it would be best to drop the subject for now.

“So you want me to learn to do that spell,” said Jinx. “I’m not very good at magic.”

“You’ll get better. Age helps. Sometimes.” Simon took the phial off the flame and poured steaming liquid into a cup.

Maybe Jinx
was
getting better at magic. Like the way he’d been able to draw on the Urwald’s power, just recently. Except that after that—

“I couldn’t do magic in Dame Glammer’s house.”

“Wizards’ magic does not work in witches’ cottages.”

“Why not?”

“How should I know? Ask a witch.”

Jinx thought of something else. “The Bonemaster was really worried when he heard you’d been injured. Was that because if you die, your bottled life won’t be as powerful?”

“You told him I was injured?” Angry little lightning bolts.

Elfwyn had actually told, because of her curse. Jinx decided not to say this. “Not intentionally.”

“That was a foolish thing to do.”

“Sorry,” said Jinx, since it was less trouble than arguing.

He didn’t think it would be tactful to add that he’d thought Simon was evil at the time.

“Is my life tied to yours, then? Would I die if you died?” he asked.

“In the first place, no. Because your life is no longer in the bottle. And in the second place, no. Because I happen to understand the bottle spell a great deal better than the Bonemaster does. And in the third place, no. Because the curse is only triggered if the apprentice kills the master.”

“I would never have—”

“I know that, of course.” Simon even managed to sound irritated at Jinx for not wanting to kill him. “But a great many apprentices have tried to kill a great many wizards. That’s why the spell was originally constructed as it was.”

So Simon had changed the spell, Jinx thought. And used roots, and made it not involve a human sacrifice. And now Jinx had to learn to do it in reverse—to put Simon’s life back inside him, so that there would be no chance of the Bonemaster ever getting his hands on it again. Jinx had trouble even with easy spells. He really doubted he would ever be able to do this one. And do it right, without killing Simon. The thought was both frightening and exhausting. Why did it have to be him?

“Because I was just a life lost in the forest,” Jinx answered himself.

“What, you think I would have just left you to the trolls if I didn’t have a use for you?” Simon jiggled the liquid in the cup, cooling it.

“But you didn’t even teach me to read, at first.”

“Well.” Embarrassment, of all things, in a little lavender cloud. “I never really thought of making a wizard of you, but then
she
kept saying you were clever.”

So I was meant for something else, Jinx thought. To do work that you could easily do yourself with a few spells? To be better company than the cats? Or just to be a living life trapped in a bottle? Jinx didn’t know.

Simon came over to Jinx and knelt down, the cup in his hand. “Drink this.”

The potion was bright green. “What is it?”

“A sleeping potion,” said Simon. “It’s not that easy to get over being dead. You need to rest and give yourself time to heal.”

“It doesn’t look anything like the sleeping potion we made for the Bonemaster.” It didn’t smell like it either. It smelled quite pleasant, like autumn leaves.

“Mine is a vegetarian recipe. No bat wings.”

“Ours didn’t work,” said Jinx, remembering how the Bonemaster had caught them at the top of the cliff.

“I’m sure he didn’t take it,” said Simon.

“But Elfwyn hid it in the drink she always gave him every day.”

“Which he certainly never drank. He wouldn’t. The Bonemaster’s not an easy wizard to fool.”

Jinx tried to take the cup, but his hand didn’t want to do what he told it to. It flopped around and wouldn’t close. That scared him.

“You’ll be fine when you wake up,” said Simon.

He held the cup to Jinx’s lips.

It could be anything, really. Simon wouldn’t poison him, not if he was telling the truth about what he wanted Jinx to do. But the potion could be something to put Jinx under Simon’s control, take away his power to choose—there were potions that could do that.

Would Simon do that? Even now that Jinx had his magic back and could (sort of) read minds, he didn’t know. But on the whole he thought not—not right now, not when Simon was so relieved to see Jinx alive. Jinx examined all the clouds around Simon’s head. There was no guilt now. There was that warm blue cloud. And there was the wall, and everything that lay behind it.

Jinx drank the potion. It didn’t taste bad at all.

He burrowed into the warm blue cloud and fell asleep.

J
inx awoke in the first gray light of dawn. He went out to the kitchen. Elfwyn was sitting by the fire, surrounded by cats. When she saw Jinx, she jumped up and hugged him.

“Where is everyone?” said Jinx.

“Reven’s asleep, up in your tower. And Simon’s back there somewhere.” Elfwyn gestured toward the south wing. “He just got home last night.”

“What do you mean? We all got back yesterday.” Jinx went to get some cider.

“Simon and my grandmother left again, after we did the spell on you. They went to strengthen the wards Simon put around the Bonemaster’s island. They spent a couple days doing that. And then I guess my grandmother went home.”

“A couple days? But—”

“You were asleep for three days.”

“That’s ridiculous. Nobody can be asleep for three days.”

“You were.”

Jinx didn’t believe her. “Was I really?”

“Yes.” And since it was a question, it must be true.

That explained why his mouth was so dry. He drank the cider down in one long gulp. “I thought your grandmother was friends with the Bonemaster.”

“Of course she isn’t. Who could be?”

Jinx didn’t argue the point. “So you didn’t go home with your grandmother?”

“No, well, I’d already been to visit her,” said Elfwyn. She sat down at the table and scooped a cat up into her lap.

“Yes, but—”

“I told you, I don’t want to live with her. I like it here. It’s such a lovely clearing. And I milked the goats!”

“Don’t you have goats in your clearing?”

“No, we have stupid cows. And Simon’s really nice when you get used to him—”