Free Hammer of Witches by Shana Mlawski Page A

down her eyelids and onto her cheeks.
    I crawled closer to her on the bed. “Hey,” I said to her,softly. Demon or no, this person beside me was a little girl, and right now, this little girl was crying. “Hey, no. Please. Please don’t cry. Shh. What’s your name?”
    “Jinniyah,” the girl answered. She hiccuped back a new batch of tears. “How could he, Baltasar? Fourteen years! Fourteen years, and he left me all alone. Fourteen years, and I . . . I . . . I hate him!”
    And the girl collapsed into new sobs.
    Not knowing what else to do, I held onto the girl and let her cry. Amir al-Katib. Jinniyah’s necklace had once been in the man’s possession, maybe even forty years ago when Amir met Diego in Constantinople. And then, at the same time he left his son as an orphan on Diego’s doorstep, Amir had left this girl — this Jinniyah — too. That time, when my father had abandoned me, he had abandoned Jinniyah, as well.
    An odd sensation worked its way up my body. If that was true, then this girl was as good as my sister. Not knowing what to do with this information I shut my mouth and held her close, like I thought a brother should.

The next time I awoke, it was dusk. Sidelong shadows prowled the slanted lines of architecture above me, and music thumped in from under the floorboards: guitars and drums playing some gypsy dance I had heard once before.
    Jinniyah was bent in a bow on the floor, chanting something under her breath with her hands flat against the ground. Her knees rested on my bag, which she used as a pillow. Her flaming black hair waved gently on her head as she chanted, casting blackish lights across the attic’s walls.
    I kept watching her strange ritual as I reached for the tray waiting for me on the dresser. Despite my previous accident, there was still some cold, greasy soup left in my bowl, and for that I was grateful. I hadn’t eaten for more than a day now, and my stomach was quick to remind me of it.
    “I can warm it for you,” Jinniyah said, referring to my bowl of soup.
    I sat with it on the edge of the bed. “What were you doing?”
    “Praying,” was the answer. The girl floated over to me andcupped her hands under my bowl, her rings clinking against the ceramic as she touched it. Within seconds I could feel heat traveling from the bowl to my hands, and greasy yellow bubbles popped across the soup’s surface.
    “Thanks,” I said, blinking back my surprise. Careful not to drip any soup on to the covers, I balanced the warm bowl on my legs so I could remove the loaf of Serena’s bread from my bag. I ripped off a hunk for myself and handed a piece to Jinniyah. She sniffed it, picked a crumb off the top, and popped it into her mouth.
    “What are you?” I said at last, unable to think of a better way to ask it.
    The girl smiled in her grandmotherly way and pointed at her fiery black hair. “Ifritah. God made us out of subtle flame and smokeless fire. In Europe they sometimes call us genies. Like ‘genius,’ you know, because we’re all very smart.” The girl wagged a ringed finger at my face. “But don’t think I’m going to start granting you wishes! Only attention-starved genies do that, and I am not attention-starved!”
    “A fire genie,” I said, trying to make sense of it. “And that’s why the water hurt you before. Because you’re a fire spirit, and fire and water —”
    “Don’t mix,” Jinniyah finished. She picked another piece of bread off my loaf. “But don’t worry about all that water business. I’m fine now! We ifritah aren’t fragile like humans.” The girl put her arms in front of her with her wrists facing theceiling. The skin on the undersides of her arms was completely clear, with no signs of the burns that had previously scarred them.
    “So you’re immortal,” I remarked, and I slurped up some soup.
    “Uh-uh.” The girl shook her head at me. “We ifritah are good at healing, but you can kill us. Actually humans have