Fearless Read Free Page B

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.
    The smoke that rose from the mouth was silvery-grey, like the scales of a fish. The wisps formed fingers, an arm, a shoulder. The fingers felt the cold air and clenched into a fist. From the shoulders grew a barbed neck like a lizard’s.
    Careful, Jacob!
    He ducked into the smoke still rising from the bottle. Above him, a skull with a low forehead and stringy hair was taking shape. A mouth opened. The groan it uttered made the chapel shudder like the haunches of a frightened animal. The cracked windows burst, and Jacob breathed the dust of broken glass. Coloured shards rained down on him while the spirit above him opened his eyes. They were white, like the eyes of a blind man, and the pupils were like black bullet holes. Their lurking glance found Jacob just as he got hold of the bottle and closed his fingers firmly around its neck.
    The huge body ducked like a cat ready to pounce.
    ‘Will you look at that!’ The Djinn sounded hoarse, as though he had lost his voice in his glassy prison. ‘And who are you? Where’s the other one, the one who captured me?’
    He leant down towards Jacob. ‘Is he dead? I remember breaking his ribs. But that is nothing compared to what I will do to that judge. I’ve been picturing it all these years. I will pluck him apart like a flower. I will pick my teeth with his bones and blow my nose on his skin.’
    His hoarse rage flooded through the chapel, and the pattern on Jacob’s hands grew icy crystals.
    ‘Enough of the boasting!’ Jacob shouted up at the spirit. ‘You will do none of those things. You will serve me until I grow tired of you, or I will take you to one of the prisons where they store your kind like bottled wine.’
    The Djinn brushed the filthy hair from his forehead. Each strand was made of flexible glass and was