“Amunet,” Keir hissed, too preoccupied to remember that wasn’t my name.
The female jinni moved toward me through the sand like a serpent,leaving a trail behind her, until she was standing beside my shoulder. “We won’t ask for anything great.”
“Our price is simple,” agreed the male on the left, coming to my other side.
The grinning jinni said, “We just want what’s in your hand.”
I looked down at my empty hands and frowned. “I have nothing.”
“Not now,” he amended. “But later.”
“No,” Keir said instantly. “It’s too dangerous. Too open-ended.”
I agreed. But I tried to think of what I could possibly hold that would be of any value to the jinn. Food, maybe a weapon, clothes.
The amulet.
If Zarqa’s fortune was true, I would hold that at some point. I didn’t know what it was or what it did, but if that was what the jinn were after, I definitely shouldn’t give it to them. If I agreed to this, I wouldn’t be able to say no.
Unless…
Out of fire were you born… To both must you return.
Maybe this was part of Zarqa’s fortune. The jinn were beings of sand andfire. Maybe I was supposed to agree to this bargain.
“When?” I inquired. “When will you ask for this?”
The grinning jinni’s fiery hair blew toward me, and I flinched against the heat. “When you hold what we want.”
“I need more.”
“You won’t get it, child.”
The female jinni by my shoulder said, “This is our deal. Take it.”
“If we leave you here,” the jinni to my left added, “you will never find your qareen. Then you and the Shifter will die.”
The grinning jinni asked, “Do we have a deal?”
I was starting to get dizzy from turning my head so much. Licking my dry lips, I clarified, “You will save all of us from the Mirror Realm. In exchange for what’s in my hand. Mine and no one else’s.”
“That is the deal.”
I lifted my eyes to Keir’s, and he shook his head.
“If we die, Rade dies,” I reminded him. Keir swallowed hard and fell silent.
I tried to assure myself the deal might not last long enough to benefit the jinn. If they got us out of the Mirror Realm, the Kaldfolk would kill me for my betrayal anyway. Then I wouldn’t have time to find, let alone hold, the amulet—or anything else.
But whether or not this plan hurt me in the end, I had to save Rade and Keir.
“I accept.”
The grinning jinni smiled so wide, the void of his mouth cut clear across his face. “See you soon, child.” Instantly, the bodies of sand collapsed back to the earth in a pile, as if they’d never been there at all.
Keir flashed me a troubled look, but there was no time to speak of what had just transpired. The ground roiled beneath us, rippling like waves. I threw my arms out to try to keep my balance, and Keir caught my hand.
The sand caved in.
