‘Will, do you know a Norebo Earlking?’
His brother frowned. ‘Short guy? With a strange accent?’
‘That’s him.’
‘Ma sold him some of Grandpa’s things when she needed money. I think he has a bunch of antique shops here and in Europe. Why?’
‘He asked me to send you his regards.’
‘Me?’ Will shrugged. ‘Ma didn’t sell him everything he was interested in. Maybe he wants to try his luck with us. He’s a strange bird. I could never figure out whether Ma liked him.’ Will rubbed his arm. He often touched his skin, as if to make sure the jade was really gone. Clara noticed it as well. Spirits . . .
Will got up and poured himself a glass of wine.
‘What should I do if he makes an offer? The cellar is full of old junk. It looks like our family hasn’t thrown anything away since this house was built. There’s barely enough space for the pictures we took off the walls. But Clara needs an office and . . .’ Will left the sentence unfinished, as though their parents’ spirits were listening from their empty rooms. Jacob ran his fingers over the initials he’d once carved into the tabletop. That knife had been his first secret possession.
‘Sell whatever you want,’ he said. ‘You can also use my room, if you like. I’m here so rarely, I can just sleep on the couch.’
‘Nonsense. You’ll keep your room.’ Will pushed a glass of wine towards him. ‘When are you going back?’
‘Tonight.’ Ignoring his brother’s disappointment was no longer as easy as it used to be. He was going to miss Will.
‘Is everything all right?’ Will looked at him anxiously. Fooling him definitely wasn’t as easy as it used to be.
‘Sure. It’s just hard work, living in two worlds.’ Jacob tried to make it sound like a joke, but Will’s face was still serious. He looked so much like their mother. Will even frowned the way she used to.
‘You should stay here. It’s too dangerous.’
Jacob looked down so his brother wouldn’t see him smile. Oh, little brother, it only became dangerous because of you. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said. ‘Definitely.’
He still was a decent enough liar. The odds were a thousand to one that the bottle’s inhabitant would kill him rather than save him. A thousand to one against you, Jacob. He’d beaten worse odds.
CHAPTER FOUR
DANGEROUS MEDICINE
Back. The rain that whipped into Jacob’s face as he stepped out of the tower seemed to be the same rain that had been running down his mother’s window. His eyes scanned the crumbled walls for the outline of a vixen, but all they spotted was a Heinzel, hungry and haggard, as they always were towards the end of winter. Where was she?
It was rare for Fox not to be waiting for him. She often sensed his return days in advance. Jacob, of course, immediately thought of traps, or the shotgun of a farmer protecting his chickens. Nonsense, Jacob. She was good at looking after herself, better than he was. And he wouldn’t have wanted her around when he opened the bottle, anyway.
After the noise of the other world, the silence surrounding him here seemed even more unreal than the Heinzel. It always took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness. The lights of the other world made forget how dark nights here could be. Jacob looked around. He needed a place where the bottle’s occupant wouldn’t grow all the way into the clouds. And Jacob couldn’t risk any damage to the tower, and the mirror inside.
The old chapel.
Like the tower, the chapel had been left untouched by the fire that had destroyed the castle. The building lay just beyond where the overgrown garden stretched down the slope of the hill. Jacob had to hack a path through it with his sabre. Mossy steps, crumbling statues, marble fountains filled with rotting leaves. A few headstones still stuck out from the unmowed grass: Arnold Fischbein, Luise Moor, Käthchen Grimm. The servants’ graves had been spared by the fire, while the mausoleum of the castle’s owners had been reduced to a circle of sooty stones.
The wooden doors of the chapel were so warped that Jacob barely managed to open them. The inside looked desolate. All the colourful glass windows were broken, and the wooden pews had long gone to heat a few draughty cottages. But the roof was still intact, and the nave was barely more than twelve feet high. This would have to do.
A Thumbling peered over the rim of the dried-up font as Jacob pulled the leather sheath off the bottle. The brown glass was so cold that it nearly burnt his fingers. Its occupant was not from the south, where Djinns could be found in the markets of every desert village. The medicine Jacob needed could be provided only by a northern Djinn. They were very rare and very vicious – which explained why the men who hunted them were often even more scarred than Chanute. The spirit Jacob was about to set free had given his captor such a fight that the man had died within hours of trapping it. Jacob had buried him himself.
He chased the Thumbling outside before his curiosity cost him his life. Then Jacob closed the doors.
‘They are all murderers, Jacob, never forget that!’ Chanute had warned him more than once about the northern Djinns. ‘They get locked up because they love to kill. And they know they have to spend the rest of their immortal existence serving every fool who gets hold of their bottle, so their only desire is to kill their master and take possession of the bottle themselves.’
Jacob stepped into the centre of the chapel.
The etched pattern on the neck of the bottle was what bound the Djinn inside. Jacob copied it on to the palm of his hand before he drew his knife. The only thing more dangerous than catching one of these spirits was letting him out again. But what did he have to lose?
The seal on the bottle was that of the judge who’d sentenced the Djinn to an eternity behind brown glass. Jacob used his knife to peel the wax off the top. Then he set the bottle on the flagstones and quickly stepped back.