Chapter 20 #2
“And rather unexpected, as I don’t lose things.
It went missing about the time you arrived.
Now don’t talk or this will smudge.” Zafir carefully applied the lip stain, one finger hooked beneath my chin to tilt my face up toward his.
I couldn’t decide where to look as he carefully dabbed my lips.
Our faces were only a few inches apart and it was so quiet that I heard each bubbling gurgle of the potions around us.
“Talk to me,” I breathed once he finished the lip stain. “I don’t like the quiet.”
He gently turned my head from side to side, analyzing his work. “What do you want to talk about? Stealing potions from your benefactor?”
He knew…so why hadn’t ordered me to hand them over? “Tell me about Julian. How am I supposed to charm him?”
“Just do whatever made your first husband propose to you.”
“Excellent suggestion. Tell me what worship center Julian frequents to bribe impoverished women into marrying him, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Right, right,” he muttered distractedly. “You already said you were coerced. In that case, just…just do whatever you normally do to attract men.”
I pulled back. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I have no experience. I kept my sister and myself alive by brewing illegal potions and selling them on the black market. I have no other talents, except maybe mediocre lockpicking and thieving skills.”
“You were serious about that?” Zafir leaned back as well, a furrow appearing on his face once more. “You mean to tell me that our entire plan revolves around you charming Julian, and you genuinely have no idea how to charm men?”
“Exactly. But it can’t be that hard. Women charm men all the time, and I got Julian to agree to see me already. We had a good time on our date to the bazaar and he invited me to go out again. So what I’m doing is clearly working.”
“It’s working much too slowly.” Zafir closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Nope. I figured I should be honest with the evil vizier who arrested me and is keeping me chained to him.”
“You’re the one who insisted on us staying chained! I didn’t—” Zafir broke off and blew out a long stream of air. “So I need to do your makeup every day and teach you how to charm men?”
“That depends. How much experience do you have charming men?” I bit my lip, trying and failing to hide my smile.
“Alia,” he growled. “This isn’t a laughing matter. You’re making this plan seem less and less feasible.”
“You could always give up on the notion of having your own genie to control. It would be a great deal easier for you.”
“It would be easier if you would be more charming and less acidic.” Zafir grabbed my jaw and continued to dab at my face with a brush.
“Maybe Julian likes acidic women.” I matched Zafir’s fiery glare with one of my own.
“Close your eyes,” Zafir ordered. “I need to do your eyeliner.”
I obeyed, gently closing my eyes so Zafir could apply the cool ink along the line where my eyelashes grew. He blew softly on my face to help the eyeliner dry.
“You’ve been eating oranges,” I told him.
He stood. “Be grateful it wasn’t garlic. There, you’re done. Now stand up. Apparently, we have some flirting lessons to do.”
“Now, how do you know what works?” I asked, nudging Zafir’s stool aside and standing.
“As difficult as it is to believe, I am a man.”
“So you want me to learn how to charm you? How scandalous. Julian made it sound like you didn’t have much experience.”
Zafir rolled his eyes up to the heavens as if he were praying for patience. “Men are far from complicated. What works on one man will most likely work on any man. I’m just teaching you general principles.”
“Carry on then. What am I supposed to do?”
“You…” Zafir looked me up and down and swallowed. “You need to show an interest in what he does for work.”
“As far as I know, Julian doesn’t work.”
“Show an interest in what he does for pleasure, then.”
“I did! You saw me at the bazaar last night. I was hanging on his every word, but he didn’t even kiss me.”
A vein throbbed in Zafir’s temple. “Of course he didn’t. You were both just pretending to be enamored with each other to irritate me.”
“Did it work?”
Zafir ran his hand through his hair. “This isn’t about me. It’s about Julian. No man would drop tens of thousands of dinars on a woman he barely knows to take her across the world. You need to make him obsessed with you.”
I threw up my hands. “Then this won’t work. He just isn’t interested enough in me. Maybe we need a new plan. Stealing things is more my style, anyway.”
“I’m sure this may come as a shock to you, but I don’t know an absurd number of fabulously wealthy men who are also easy to manipulate. Julian’s our best chance.”
I crossed my arms and paced across the room. “I don’t want to fail. What if we…” My eyes fell onto the recipe book of all the different potions. “What if we make a love potion? That’s within my skillset.”
“No potion can replicate or simulate genuine love. At best, I could attempt an infatuation elixir, but I’ve never done so before.”
“Infatuation is good enough for me. As long as I can keep his attention long enough to get him to fund the trip, I don’t care if it’s genuine love or not.” I began flipping pages in the book. “What does it require?”
Zafir snapped the book closed and I only just got my fingers out in time. “I’m not going to drug a Parliament member’s son with an untested potion just because you’re terrible at flirting.”
I frowned. “You’re literally trying to teach me how to seduce and manipulate said employer’s son. How is using a potion any different? This’ll just speed up the process.”
“It’s still illegal, and I won’t administer an untested potion to an unsuspecting man. I’d lose my position, and I won’t risk my career for you or anyone else.” He shoved the book back onto a shelf, high enough so I wouldn’t be able to reach it without a stool.
I watched him return to the potion he’d been experimenting with.
“Zafir?” I asked sweetly.
“What?”
“Part of your work involves research, doesn’t it?”
He scribbled a few words into his notes. “Yes, it does.”
“What if you made an infatuation elixir as an experiment to conduct some research? Then you could take notes and you won’t have to administer anything to anyone.”
He turned a baleful eye onto me. “What, and turn a blind eye to you stealing it so you can drug him? Where did you hide the other potions you took from me?”
I raised one shoulder. “In the highly unlikely situation that a potion was stolen from you, you’d still be innocent.”
He pursed his lips. “But it would still be untested and I won’t do that. I don’t know the side effects. It could be harmful.”
Zafir and his rules would be the death of me. “But you could make it, couldn’t you?”
“I could, but every potion needs to be tested.”
“Then I’ll try it. I volunteer. Give it to me right before I see Julian and I’ll drink it.”
He frowned. “That would be foolhardy in the extreme.”
“But why?”
“For any number of reasons. There might be side effects you aren’t prepared for. It might not be strong enough. Or too strong. It might interact with other—”
“For the love—” I snarled, pacing back and forth in front of his desk. What use was having an alchemist who specialized in potions if he was unwilling to brew any useful ones?
I changed tactics. “Don’t you want to find the lamp and control a genie?”
“You already know I do.”
I spread my hands. “This might be the only chance you have to find one. You wouldn’t want to squander it because I’m not good enough at flirting.”
Zafir stubbornly went back to scribbling yet more notes. “You’re trying to manipulate me. It won’t work.”
I slid my hand with the genie’s mark branding my wrist across his desk.
His gaze flicked over it then focused on his work again.
I softened my voice. “I’m not manipulating you.
I’m asking for your help so I can manipulate Julian.
One tiny potion, that’s all I’m asking. Or you can let me make it myself. I’ve brewed illegal potions before.”
That caught his attention. “Absolutely not. I don’t let anyone touch my potion ingredients or bottles or burners or—”
“I would only do that if you were unwilling. I’m sure you are much more skilled than I am,” I said in a warm, flattering voice.
“It would still be untested—” Zafir began, but I interrupted.
“I said you could test it on me.”
He was shaking his head again. “Impossible.”
Zafir only knew how to say no to things. “Why? Why is it impossible?”
“Men and women require different potions because of biological differences in how their brains and bodies are affected. We’d have to test it on a man.”
“What if you sampled it, then?”
Zafir’s lip curled in disgust. “I’d rather drink poison.”
“Oh, come on; it’s perfect,” I went on. “You can try it out here to make sure it’s safe, and I would know anything you said or did was purely for scientific research.”
Zafir tapped his fingernail on the desk.
“All potions wear off eventually,” I wheedled. “We’d have a few hours where we could take notes about the potion’s effects, then it would be tested and you would have no guilt if a dose somehow found its way into Julian’s drink.”
He hesitated.
“It would be good research,” I told him. “You would learn a lot.”
“I’ll consider it” was all I got out of Zafir as he bent his head over his work again.
“I’ll look up the recipe to make sure we have everything,” I offered, pulling a stepstool over so I could retrieve the book. Before I even touched it, Zafir had jumped up and snatched the book back down.
“I’m perfectly capable of keeping inventory of my own supplies.”
“When will you make it?”
Zafir left out a long-suffering sigh. “Will you leave me alone to work after I make it?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.” Zafir flipped through the book.
While most pages had worn edges or slight smudges on the corners, the recipe for the infatuation potion for men looked as though it had never been touched.
His finger scanned down the list of ingredients.
“I have everything we need, and it appears to be a relatively quick potion to make.”
“I’ll help,” I offered.
“Fine. You wash this flask,” Zafir told me, thrusting a wide-bottomed bottle with a narrow neck into my hands.
“Are you trying to get rid of me so I don’t get in your way?”
“Yes.”
“Will it make you work faster?”
Zafir’s eye twitched. “Yes.”
“Fine, then.”