“Hey, you were the one saying about how the Council treats you,” Anne said. “You told me enough times how they’d look down their noses at you for being an adept. Why not make them have to look up to you for a change?”
“Yeah, for how long?” Luna asked. “Because you’re right, I do know a bit about jinn. As in, I know what happens to the people who make a contract with one. You remember what the monkey’s paw does once its bearers run out of wishes?”
“Those other bearers didn’t have me.”
“They probably all told themselves that too,” Luna said. “But fine. Forget all that for a second. Let’s say it works. We get our jinn, set ourselves up as the big bad witch-queens of the British Isles. Is that the plan?”
“More or less.”
Luna nodded. “Then what?”
“Then we deal with the people who want to take us down. Like the Council, and Richard, and—”
“I mean after that,” Luna interrupted. “Then what?”
For the first time in the conversation, Anne looked honestly puzzled. “Does it matter?”
I heard Luna sigh slightly. “I suppose to you it doesn’t.”
“So?”
“I’ll admit it’s tempting,” Luna said. “And it would be one thing if it was just you. But I’m having trouble getting past the jinn.”
There was a note in Luna’s voice which it took me a second to recognise, then suddenly I understood. Luna had already made up her mind. Now she was trying to figure out how to get Anne to take no for an answer.
“The jinn is the reason I can do all this,” Anne said impatiently. “Look, stop getting hung up on that part, okay? I know what I’m doing.”
“That’s what Martin told me,” Luna said. “As in, those exact words. Usually with some comment about how dumb everyone else was to be scared of wishes when all you had to do was word them right. And he kept being cocky right up to the point where he made the wrong wish and went crazy. I was there, okay? I watched him screaming his lungs out, trying to rip out his own eyeballs. So don’t just brush me off when I have issues with this.”
“He was making wishes,” Anne said. “I don’t have to.” She opened up one hand; dark threads spun and coiled above her palm. “When you really bond with a jinn, you don’t need all that anymore. We act as one.”
“So what does the jinn get out of it?”
“Look, I don’t have time to play twenty questions. Are you in or not?”
“I’m . . . going to have to think about it.”
Anne’s back was to me so I couldn’t see her face, but all of a sudden, there was a dangerous note in her voice. “You’ll think about it?” She dropped her hand, but the dark threads didn’t disappear; they spun faster, growing. “This isn’t a telemarketing call.”
Uh-oh. I took one glance at the futures and stood up, making the movement big and noticeable. Reaching out with the fateweaver, I picked out a strand.
Anne paused. She turned her head slightly, then stopped. The dark threads twining around her shrank and disappeared. “Fine,” she said to Luna. “I’ll be in touch.” She walked past the counter and left. The door shut with a loud click.
Through the glass, I saw Luna’s shoulders slump, the tension going out of her.
* * *
—
I was waiting on the roof of the Arcana Emporium when Anne’s head poked up above the wall. “There you are!” she said. She looked cheerful; the flash of temper she’d shown down in the shop was gone. “I was wondering if you were going to stick around.”
“You were wondering if I’d stick around?” I said. “I’ve been trying to catch up with you for weeks. You are not an easy person to find these days.”
“What can I say? I’m a popular girl.” Anne sprang lightly up the last few rungs of the ladder and alighted on the roof. She looked around appreciatively. The Camden skyline stretched out around us, chimneys and TV aerials rising up like saplings over hills of tiles and brick. The sky was a dusky purple, a couple of faint stars struggling to make it through the city’s light pollution. “This brings back memories. So does she know you’re spying on her?”
“You’re not the only one who’s popular in the wrong places,” I said. “If Luna doesn’t see me, she doesn’t have to lie when the Keepers ask where I am.”
“Still holding her hand, huh? Don’t remember you doing that with me.” Anne stretched and turned along the line of the rooftops. “Come on then, let’s take a walk.”
I fell into step beside Anne, crossing over the dividing wall to the next building. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I did exactly that when you got attacked at Archway,” I said. “Or when you got kidnapped from your flat in Honor Oak. Or when you got kidnapped again a few years later. Or when—”
“Okay, okay, fine,” Anne said, waving a hand. “Is this your way of saying I owe you?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “But I do have a request. A while ago, you said you had a list.”
“Working my way down, one name at a time,” Anne said. “Why, you want someone put on there? I might do it if you ask nicely.”
“More like a rearrangement. I’m guessing right now Sagash is next?”
“Got it in one.”
I nodded. “Could you move him down to number two?”
“Who’s number one?”
“Levistus.”
“Well, well.” Anne looked at me appraisingly. “So you’re finally done playing nice.”
“Playing nice has not done me much good over the last few years.”
“Took you long enough to figure that out.” Anne stopped on the roof of an apartment building and drummed her fingers on a ventilator for a second before shrugging. “All right.”
That was easy, I thought. No, too easy. Which means . . . “You haven’t figured out how you’re going to get into Sagash’s shadow realm, have you?”
Anne gave me an unreadable look.
“Funny, I thought that jinn of yours could do anything.” I raised my eyebrows. “Maybe it’s limited by having to act through you? So it’s great at close-range effects, but more abstract stuff like gates—”
“It is great at close-range effects,” Anne said, her tone clearly indicating that she didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “Want a demonstration?”