Jinx (5 page)

N
early a whole year later, Jinx wasn’t any closer to learning magic. He hadn’t even found a way to get into the forbidden wing of the house. He hadn’t figured out how Sophie arrived, and he hadn’t seen any of the stuff that Simon must busy himself with when he locked himself behind the off-limits door—magical stuff, Jinx was sure. Whenever he hinted that Simon could at least let him in to
look
, Simon would tell him to go sweep out the loft. It was very frustrating.

Then one day Jinx was washing dishes when a cat burst out of the magical cat flap in the off-limits door, holding what looked like a glowing purple frog in its mouth. The door slammed open, and Simon came charging out. The cat went out the magic cat flap into the clearing, and Simon ran out after it.

The door to the south wing was standing wide open.

Jinx hurried to the window. Simon and the cat were running straight into the forest.

There was nothing to stop him. He slipped into the south wing and pulled the door shut behind him.

A cat came up and rubbed against his leg. Oh, the
cats
were allowed in here. Just not Jinx.

He was in a hallway about ten paces long that ended in a blank stone wall. On either side, facing each other, were two arched doorways. The one on the right led to a spiral staircase going up. Simon’s bedroom, probably.

Jinx opened the other door. He stared in fascination—he’d been right. This was where Simon did his magic.

The room was big, dimly lit by a high glass window. It was a mess. If Jinx had ever let the kitchen look this bad, Simon would have been furious. There was a workbench covered with open books, bundles of herbs, what looked like a small mummy, and a spilled pool of something the color of blood.

The floor was heaped with piles of books. A spider was industriously spinning a web between two stacks. A skull sat on top of one heap, and Jinx found himself nodding a polite greeting to it.

He stared around in wonder. Above the workbench were shelves with jars, bottles, and boxes. Stacked in between them were more piles of books—mostly leather bound, some of them scaly. Jinx thought they might be bound in real dragonskin. It all looked exactly as a wizard’s workroom ought to look, and Jinx could feel magic dripping all over everything.

A cat hopped up onto the workbench, walked through the red spill, and tracked red footprints across the open pages of a book.

Jinx turned the pages to hide the marks.

The pages began to smolder. Flames licked up at the edges. Jinx tried to beat them out with his hands and got burned. The book was turning pages by itself now, and they were all burning.

Jinx slammed the book shut. That put out the fire, but wisps of smoke curled up from the book, and it still looked like it had been on fire. Jinx looked for somewhere to stick it where it wouldn’t be noticed.

He picked up the skull and added the book to the pile underneath it. The skull winked an eye socket at him.

He ought to leave now. He really ought to leave. Before Simon came back. But he hadn’t seen everything yet. There was all that stuff on the shelves, for example.

There was a bottle shaped like a goblin’s head. Jinx tried to pick it up, but it was stuck to the shelf.

He reached for a box of carved wood. The carving showed people riding on an enormous beast. Jinx tried to open the box. The lid wouldn’t budge. He felt around for a catch. Nothing—it must be held shut by a spell. Drat—it was probably some really important magic. Reluctantly he put the box back on the shelf.

He heard footsteps out in the hall.

He froze. More footsteps.

“I didn’t know you were here,” said Simon.

His voice sounded unexpectedly friendly, and there was none of the jagged orange fury that usually surrounded Simon when he was angry. Jinx realized it wasn’t him Simon was speaking to.

“The exams ended early, so I thought I’d come by,” said Sophie. They were both in the hall just outside the workroom.

No more talking now—silver-sweet yuck. Jinx looked around the room desperately. They were in between Jinx and the kitchen. He couldn’t get out. The room still smelled of smoke from the burning book. They were going to notice it. He couldn’t see them from where he stood—they couldn’t see him. Yet. But all they had to do was look around the half-open door.

As silently as he could, Jinx ducked down and got under the workbench. It wasn’t much of a hiding place, but it was all the room had to offer. Simon would be furious if he found Jinx in here.

He looked at the window. Did it open? Even if it did, they’d hear him.

Out in the hall there were footsteps and—this was odd. They didn’t go toward the kitchen nor toward the tower. They seemed to go toward, and then past, the point where the hallway ended in a solid stone wall. Then Jinx heard voices from the room beyond. But there
was
no room beyond. The corridor ended in a blank wall, which it seemed Simon and Sophie had just walked through.

Jinx crept toward the door of the workroom and was just about to peer around it when Simon burst out of the wall and walked down the corridor.

“—probably some in the kitchen,” Simon said. He was speaking over his shoulder, his head turned away from Jinx.

Jinx jumped behind the door just in time.

“Is Jinx out there?” said Sophie. She came down the corridor too. “I must say hello to Jinx.”

Now they were both in the kitchen. Jinx peered around the doorway again. How had they walked through a stone wall? Fascinated, Jinx slid out into the corridor. Listening hard for any change in the sounds from the kitchen, he ran his hands over the blank wall. It was solid stone. He felt around for an invisible doorway. There wasn’t one—this was a smooth stone wall, just what it looked like. But somehow Simon and Sophie had walked through it. And Sophie had arrived at the house when Simon wasn’t expecting her. This wall had to be the answer to the secret of Sophie’s comings and goings.

And it might be a way Jinx could get out of the south wing without Simon seeing him.

But it felt and looked and smelled like a stone wall. Jinx almost smacked his hand against it in frustration, then realized that that would make a noise.

Jinx was trapped. He went back to the workroom and over to the window. Diamonds of thick, wavy glass were set into a lattice. He could see a latch, too high up for him to reach.

He’d have to hide under the workbench until Sophie and Simon went somewhere else. He crawled under it and sat down.

Beside him on the floor was a green-glazed jar. Jinx hadn’t noticed it before in the mess. There were some sort of red markings on the outside of it. Curious, he pulled at the lid of the jar—it came off easily.

Fiery pain stabbed into Jinx’s hand.

A swarm of wasps buzzed out of the jar. In an instant they were all over Jinx. Jinx leaped to his feet, hitting his head on the workbench, and swatted at the wasps with his hands. He got stung in the hand again. Then one stung him in the neck and one on the leg.

Then, suddenly, he couldn’t move.

“I thought something smelled wrong in here.”

Jagged orange anger. Jinx couldn’t turn around to face Simon. Neither his arms nor his legs would move. His neck and hands still seemed to have some freedom, but with wasps crawling all over him, Jinx felt it was best to stay completely still.

“Didn’t I tell you not to come in here? I’m sure I did.” The sharp edges of Simon’s anger cut his words neatly apart.

Jinx felt a wasp walking across his upper lip and decided it wouldn’t be safe to say anything.

Sophie’s footsteps sounded in the hall. “Simon! What have you done to that poor boy?”

Simon didn’t answer. Jinx could feel them both staring at his back now, and he would have liked to be anywhere else in the world.

“Simon, you’ve frozen him,” said Sophie.

“No, I haven’t. I’ve told you before, it’s very difficult to work spells on living human beings.”

“Then why isn’t he moving?”

“I’ve frozen his clothes.”

That was it, Jinx realized. His clothes weren’t
frozen
, because they weren’t cold, but they were as inflexible as iron. A wasp crawled up his left cheek and waved its antennae before his eye.

“You’ve no right to work magic on the boy.”

“Right. Or on anybody or anything,” said Simon crisply. “I know.”

“Simon—”

“There are dangerous things in this room. He needs to stay away from them.”

Simon’s tone made it clear that the most dangerous thing in the room was Simon. Jinx was trying to think up a perfectly reasonable explanation for what he was doing in Simon’s workroom—something involving the cats, possibly. But he couldn’t open his mouth to speak—there were wasps crawling on it.

“It’s human nature to explore,” said Sophie. “You can’t fault him for that.”

“Actually, I can. And if you want to keep sticking your nose into my business, perhaps you should come and live here.”

“I don’t want to live here,” said Sophie. “It’s too cold. And don’t make fun of my nose.”

A wasp crept down Jinx’s neck and into the stiffened collar of his shirt.

“I did not say anything about your nose.”

“You did, you said—”

“That was just an expression!”

There was a wasp on Jinx’s nose now. It was the one that had been looking him in the eye—it had marched across his cheek, and now he was staring at it cross-eyed. The one that had crawled into his shirt was stalking across his collarbone, each footstep sharp with the anticipation of another sting. The stings he’d already gotten throbbed. Earnestly Jinx willed Sophie to stop bickering with Simon and remember Jinx—he was pretty sure Simon would never unfreeze Jinx if Sophie didn’t make him.

“Simon, would you please unfreeze that child,” said Sophie.

There was a pause that felt something like a shrug.

“Seeing as you ask nicely,” said Simon.

Jinx’s clothes hung limp on him again. He stayed in exactly the same position as before. No point in upsetting the wasps.

“He’s still not moving,” said Sophie. She came toward him. “Jinx, are you all r—Ow! Simon, this child is covered with wasps!”

“He must have opened the wasp jar,” said Simon.

“You keep wasps in a jar?”

“Not exactly,” said Simon, in an it’s-too-complicated-to-explain tone.

“Take these wasps off this child at once!”

There was another pause, and Jinx felt Simon giving his wife a long, slow stare, with rage boiling out of it.

“All right,
please
take the wasps off the child,” said Sophie. “
Would
you please.”

The wasps flew up off Jinx—even the one in his shirt came buzzing out—and then they vanished.

“Why did you open this jar, Jinx?” Sophie asked, stooping to pick it up. “It says ‘Danger.’”

“That’s just human nature,” Simon said.

“I didn’t hear it say anything,” said Jinx.

“You didn’t what?” Sophie held up the jar and shook it at Jinx. “It says ‘Danger’ right on it in red letters.” She turned to Simon. “Are you telling me this child can’t read?”

Jinx was taken aback by the white-hot flame of anger she sent at Simon.

“People don’t read in the Urwald,” said Simon.

“You’re as bad as the rest of them! Hiding knowledge! And this isn’t exactly the Urwald!”

“Of course it’s the Urwald,” said Simon bitterly. “You think I would have been allowed to put my house anywhere else?”

“Wizards read,” said Sophie. “You could read before you ever came to Samara, looking for all your magical answers.
Knowledge is power
.” She threw the three words at him like a challenge, and they hung in the air between them, hovering on an updraft of fury.

The room rippled with anger, and even though none of it was directed at Jinx now, it still made his stomach hurt. The words
knowledge is power
stood out at the front of both of their minds, and Jinx sensed that those words were prickly and too hot to touch.

“You think I’m as bad as them,” said Simon at last. “And
they
think I’m worse.”

“Of course I don’t,” said Sophie. Her voice was all shaky. “But if you don’t teach the boy to read—well, that’s just what they would do. They think innocence is so charming when it’s on other people.”

Jinx didn’t know anything about this reading stuff. He wished Sophie would tell Simon to teach him
magic
instead. But there was no way she’d do that. She barely approved of Simon knowing magic.

“You owe him something. You brought him here, you took him from his people—”

“They were going to kill him,” said Simon.

“They what?”

“Were going to kill him.”

Sophie turned to Jinx. “Is that true, Jinx?”

Jinx still hadn’t moved. He felt as if he had wasps on him. He would probably feel for weeks as if he had wasps on him. Probably forever.

“What did you do to him? He can’t talk!”