slow, quiet susurration that ebbed and flowed like waves rushing up to a beach.
Edging deeper into the doorway recess, he peeked through the space between the wall and the curtain. He could see the client, the one who had chosen Abnevi, still dressed in his billowy costume and seated upon the tail of his purple cape, cross-legged beside the immense brass water pipe. His glittering mask lay at his side. His blond hair hung over his eyes in an oily fringe, and under it the stripe of a black blindfold circled his head, like a crown fallen low. The rhythmic whooshing came as he pulled on the pipe, inhaling and then leaning back to exhale, his mouth open, slack, drool glistening like a snail’s path from the corner of it down to his collar. Barely a wisp of bluish smoke emerged from the chimney of his mouth. Abnevi was nowhere in sight on that side of the hookah. Diverus touched a finger to the curtain and drew it back farther. The tiered body of the hookah filled the middle of the chamber. A grayish fog emerging from its top led his eye around the curtain to the far side.
Abnevi lay in the long, inscribed lacquer box, beneath the curious fingers of bone. His eyes were closed so that he would not see what Diverus now looked upon—what neither of the chamber’s occupants saw. The fog congealed above Abnevi, into manifest horror. Perched upon the bony tines like a creature of prey, the thing was yet insubstantial—a translucent, ribbed torso that glistened in the candlelight like a grub; it overlooked the sleeping boy. A bluish vapor rose out of Abnevi’s face toward it. The skin of his cheeks rippled as if seen through heat, and the body twitched once, twice, as if tugged at from above. Diverus didn’t think he made a sound, but the apparition’s head drew up abruptly. It faced him. Two horrible white orbs fixed upon his position—milky eyes hard as alabaster. The jagged black hole of its mouth spiraled shut, snipping the stream of vapor, which snapped as if sprung, back into Abnevi. He bucked once more forcefully than before. The creature trembled, fluttered, and with an outraged screech flung itself off the tines and collapsed all in a moment, reeling into the hookah so fast that Diverus wasn’t sure if he’d seen it go in or it had simply evaporated.
Oblivious of any change in the situation, the blindfolded stupefied client leaned forward again and inhaled from the hookah. He choked suddenly. Then he dropped the mouthpiece, clutched his throat with one hand, his chest with the other, and fell sideways. He pawed at the blindfold and drew a dagger from his waistband, waving it as if to ward off something in the air above him. He spasmed, gave one final creaking gasp, and lay still. A darker, greasy smoke trailed from his mouth.
Diverus dropped the curtain and stepped back—bumping against someone else, who said “Oof” as he struck her.
He spun about, and there stood Eskie, glaring at him. “What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed. “Do you want to be drowned in the laundry?” He might have answered, forgetting himself, if she hadn’t gone on. “If you interrupt the process, you could kill someone, the boy or the client. Afrits have been known to turn and devour everyone in the room.”
“Afrits?” It was a word Bogrevil had used earlier.
“That which resides in the hookah. A dem—but you spoke. You spoke!”
He hadn’t meant to. Unaccustomed to his own voice, he hadn’t realized what he’d done, but Eskie had.
“You’ve been able to speak all the time, haven’t you? You kept this hidden, pretending to be the fool Bogrevil believes of you.”
He cleared his throat. Having not spoken for so long, his voice was coarse, barely a whisper. “An idiot is what I was before I arrived here,” he replied somewhat defensively. “He sees what he wants. What he was told he’d purchased.”
“But you pretend to be mute.”
He gestured his head as if to say, What should I have done? Then he asked, “What is an afrit?”
“A spirit, a demon. These ones are tied to water, the ones Bogrevil serves. And caverns—they are not accustomed to living in light.”
He knit his brow. “He serves them?”
She nodded. “His very survival depends upon his service to their kind. I know nothing of how he came to be so indentured. That is something he never speaks of. But he provides them