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Team
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Unsurprisingly, Yasmin’s forlorn hope of catching up on missed sleep was dashed. What rest she got was fitful, and Joseph collected her before dawn. They snuck out in smoke form together, resuming their natural shapes as the sun’s first rays hit the clock tower on the square. No special dew spangled the grass this morning. The town was picturesque but basically normal.
A two-block walk brought them to the address on Ivy Ozil’s license. Her house was a nice thatched cottage with a gorgeous tangle of red roses in its garden. It looked lived in but not run down.
“Lights are on in the kitchen,” Joseph said. “Someone’s here—three someones if my nose for energy isn’t mistaken.”
Yasmin’s nervousness rose. “Should we knock? Ask if they know what happened to Ivy?”
Joseph considered. “One stranger at the door might seem less threatening. I’ll hang back in vapor form. You can signal me if there’s trouble.”
She’d have preferred not to commit this social awkwardness alone. He was right, though, on top of which it was her wild hare they were following.
“Am I straight?” she asked, indicating her headscarf.
“Perfectly,” he confirmed, one hand lifting to smooth it.
The gesture caused other feelings to stir in her. His gaze held hers, its steadiness settling her. They’d faced graver dangers than knocking on a door. Why wouldn’t he assume she could handle this? To think otherwise would have been insulting.
This was a step forward in the faith he afforded her.
“Go on,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
She straightened her shoulders and went up the front walk.
A girl about three years old answered her triple knock. Garbed in what appeared to be Nessie-themed pajamas, she had straight black hair cut in bangs and an adorably somber face. She couldn’t have looked more like Ivy if she’d been popped out of a mold.
On seeing Yasmin, her soft green eyes went wide.
“Hello,” she said, swinging slightly from the—to her—high door knob. “Are you here to see Daddy?”
Yasmin crouched down to child level. “Actually, I’m here about your mother.”
“Don’t have one,” the girl informed her. “Daddy ’dopted me and ’canthus from the temple.”
Yasmin didn’t know what to say to that. Stumped, she straightened to full height.
“Acanthus! Get back here,” a stern male voice called from another room. The scold failed. An even younger child scampered barefoot into the alcove before the door. Dressed only in a diaper, he, too, was black-haired and green-eyed. Shrieking joyfully, he flapped his hands excitedly at Yasmin.
Maybe he was waving hello to her?
The man from the other room tried again. “Columbine, stop letting the cool air out.”
“Daddy, I’m not,” Columbine protested. “A lady knocked.”
This answer got action. A fair-haired man with a long blade nose came out to stare at her. He seemed harried, as if unused to wrangling children by himself. Yasmin couldn’t help noticing he resembled his offspring considerably less than the woman she’d come seeking.
“Please pardon the intrusion,” she began. “I’m hoping to track a djinniya named Ivy Ozil.”
“I’m Cedric Ozil,” he said. “No one named Ivy lives in this house.”
“Are you certain? This was the address I was given.”
“No adult female lives here at all.”
He seemed certain, but Yasmin wasn’t ready to give up. “I have a picture of her. Perhaps you could look at it.”
Cedric Ozil was polite enough to study the image she’d copied onto her scroll. “No,” he said, shaking his head firmly. “This isn’t anyone I know. Not a relative or an acquaintance. I’m afraid whoever told you she lived here was mistaken.”
“Forgive my asking, but could she possibly be the mother of your children? Your daughter mentioned they’re adopted.”
The man’s head jerked back angrily. “Demeter is their mother,” he snapped, referring to the goddess. By tradition, followers called her the mother of orphans. “You’d better leave before I call the Watch.”
Not wanting this, she curtseyed and stepped back. Cedric didn’t try to be polite as he slammed the door. Confused, Yasmin pinched her lower lip. Though she didn’t have definite proof, logic said Ivy was those children’s mother . . . and that as recently as two days ago she’d been Cedric’s wife. She shook her head. It took serious magic to erase someone that completely from the minds of people close to them.
She wasn’t sure what made her look up. Hope for divine inspiration, possibly. When she did, something shiny caught her eye. Tucked among the eaves was a disk the size of her open hand. Ever so faintly, it buzzed with spent magic. Though she knew she had no right to do so, she stretched on tiptoe to grab it. As soon as the object was in her grasp, and before she could be seen and stopped, she strode around the side of the house out of view of the front window.
Joseph materialized while she was examining her find.
“Did you hear?” she asked.
“Some. I flew a circuit around the house in case anyone approached. What have you got?”
“I believe it’s a cake made from wild magic—you know, the sparkly stuff the mists deposit. I found it hidden above the door.” She tried to snap or bend the disk by holding either side. The pressure had no effect. The thing wasn’t simply hard, it was damage resistant.
“It could be a spell anchor.” Joseph leaned closer so he could see. “Or a delivery system for a charm. Obviously, it used to have more charge.”
She showed him the other side.
The surface held a carved wave pattern reminiscent of the one embroidered on Dimitriou’s sheets. What looked like a boat oar lay crosswise over it.
“Huh,” he said. “I recognize this sign. It’s an old pictogram for Lethe, the mythical river that separates this world from the afterlife.”
“The River of Forgetting.”
“Yes. The dead drink from it as a means of relinquishing earthly attachments. The oar symbolizes the ferryman.” He traced the symbols cautiously. “This is very clever. A whole town’s memories have been erased, thanks to specks of magic that should have dissipated within hours of depositing. I wouldn’t know how to turn what the mists leave behind into a stable form like this.”
“Neither would I. Then again, the locals have had generations to learn the trick. The other day, I watched a postal clerk sprinkle magic he’d collected to animate postcards. That’s a simple charm compared to this, but he must make it last long enough for the card to reach its recipient.”
Joseph tapped pursed lips. “I suppose the forgetting spell didn’t affect us because it had already shot its load.”
“Should I put this back, do you think? I don’t believe it can cause more harm, and we don’t want whoever set it to discover it’s missing. I could waft it back magically. Cedric won’t notice I haven’t left the property.”
“Yes,” Joseph said. “That seems a safe precaution.”
Once she’d returned the disk, he put his hand on her shoulder. “Before we leave, I want to show you something. When I flew around the cottage, I discovered an . . . oddity in the back yard.”
She followed him there, ducking below the windows the same as him. The rear garden provided cover for them to stand. The plantings were as pretty as those in front, with shady fruit trees and vibrant flower beds. She had no trouble imagining Ivy out here, showing her kids how to weed and water among the butterflies. How sad that the people she loved forgot her! Yasmin’s eyes pricked, but she blinked the sting away. She couldn’t let emotion blind her—not when there might be clues to uncover.
“Here,” Joseph said, hunkering down beside a stone bench to point.
“It’s a hole.”
“It’s a pair of holes. The second one’s over there. I’m no gardener, but it appears as if two young trees have been removed, roots and all.” He grinned at her confusion. “I know. I thought it was nothing too until I spotted this.”
Yasmin bent closer.
Gingerly, Joseph pulled a half-buried pebble from the dirt. Except it wasn’t a pebble, or not an ordinary one. It was a gem from a ruby tree. A stem and two browning leaves were still attached to it.
“That’s from the same kind of tree Dimitriou says landed spontaneously next to his front entrance!”
“Yes, it is,” Joseph agreed quietly. “And if you were a magic seed blown across the In-Betweens, where would you choose to sprout? My money is on the garden of a loving mother with a green thumb and a beautiful family.”
“So the ruby trees were Ivy’s. Probably, at least. Dimitriou isn’t hurting for money, but maybe his ego demanded the special seeds choose him. Or he could have stolen them to impress Safiye. Either way, if Ivy knew he took the trees and tried to get them back, he’d have a motive for killing her.”
“We don’t know for sure she’s dead. Or that Dimitriou placed the forgetting charm. Come to think of it, if he killed her, why hasn’t he turned ifrit? A soul’s shift from light to dark is difficult to hide.”
“My brother Ramis managed it.”
“For limited periods. And your family is very gifted. Dimitriou strikes me as average on the magic scale.”
Yasmin rubbed a knuckle across her lips. He struck her that way too. “Can you contact the Ministry of Justice? They’ll listen to you even if our evidence is slim. You could let them know we suspect Dimitriou might have harmed this woman.”
“You’re assuming I can get messages out any more reliably than you. Also, unfortunately, me appearing too friendly with the current administration is awkward at this moment.”
Before Yasmin could press him to explain, he stiffened and looked up. Curious, she lifted her head too. An unidentifiable djinni smoked across the sky in a rush. The gray-tailed cloud moved swiftly, disappearing behind a line of palms within a few seconds.
“I think that was Dimitriou,” Joseph said.
“You could tell with him zipping by like that?”
“Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but the smoke was headed toward his estate. It could be someone on his staff. What urgent errand would they be on, I wonder? Unless Dimitriou is an earlier riser than we thought.”
He craned in the direction they’d initially spied the traveler.
“The mists are that way,” Yasmin said. “I remember from our flyover.”
“The actual end of the world drop-off?”
She nodded in confirmation.
A frown twisted Joseph’s mouth. “I have no idea if that’s significant.”
“Me, either,” Yasmin said.
The shiver that gripped her nape implied it meant nothing good.