Syren by Angie Sage Read Free Book Online Page B

Ma Custard’s place, and some of them were very expensive indeed—enough to buy Ma Custard’s entire stock of licorice snakes, Banana Bears and probably most of the FizzBom specials too. Merrin’s mouth began to water, and he dribbled licorice spit down the front of his gray Manuscriptorium robes. He grinned and popped another Banana Bear into his mouth. Decision made—that was exactly what he would do: he would take the gold bottle to the jewelry shop and sell it, then he would go straight to Ma Custard’s and buy up her entire stock of snakes and bears. That would show the old bat. (Merrin’s licorice-snake consumption had outrun his Manuscriptorium wages, and Ma Custard had informed him that she did not do credit.)
    Curiosity began to get the better of Merrin, and he wondered what the scent in the bottle smelled like. If it smelled really nice, he thought, he could charge even more. Heinspected the brilliant blue wax that sealed the stopper; it would be easy enough to melt the wax in the candle flame and reseal it—no one would know. He stabbed at the seal with a grimy thumbnail and began to scrape it away. Soon most of the wax lay in grubby curls in his lap and the smooth silver that had been hidden under the wax was shining in the candlelight. Merrin took the little stopper between his finger and thumb and pulled. It came out with a small sigh.
    Merrin raised the gold bottle to his nose and sniffed. It didn’t smell very nice. In fact, it smelled distinctly un nice. However, he was not to know that jinn are not known for smelling sweet—and many of them make a point of smelling fairly disgusting. In fact, the jinnee that dwelled in the gold bottle clutched in Merrin’s sticky hand did not smell too bad, as jinn go—a subtle mixture of burned pumpkin mixed with a touch of cow dung. But Merrin felt disappointed in his scent bottle. Just to make sure it really did smell so bad, he put the bottle right up to his left nostril and sniffed hard—and the jinnee was sucked up his nose. It was not a good moment for either of them.
    The jinnee probably had the worst of it. It had waited in its bottle for many hundreds of years, dreaming of the magnificentmoment when it would be released. It had dreamed of the sweet, cool air of a spring morning on a mountainside, just like the last time it had been released by an unsuspecting shepherd, not long before some scheming no-good witch had tricked it into the smallest bottle in which it was possible to fit a jinnee. Since it had been Awakened by Aunt Zelda, the jinnee had been in a frenzy of anticipation, imagining an endless variety of fantastic release scenarios. Probably the only one it had not imagined was being sucked up Merrin Meredith’s nose.
    It wasn’t nice up Merrin’s nose. Without going into too many unpleasant details, it was dark, damp and there was not a lot of space for a jinnee longing to expand. And the noise was atrocious—even in the center of an enchanted whirlwind, the jinnee had never heard anything like the howls that filled the tiny cave it had been dragged into. But suddenly, to the accompanying sound of the most enormous sneeze, the jinnee was let out, propelled from the cave like a bullet from a gun. With a scream of exhilaration it hit the open air and shot across the tiny room in a flash of yellow light, where it bounced off the wall and was hurled deep into a pile of ancient dust. Merrin stared in absolute amazement and not a little pride—he hadnever seen a booger like that .
    Merrin’s pride quickly evaporated and his amazement turned to fear as a large, glowing yellow splodge emerged from the pile of dust—the booger in the dust was growing . A squeak of terror escaped him as the mass spread and, like a pan of milk boiling and bubbling, began rising up and up. Now the mass began to spin, pulling itself upward as it swirled and grew, glowing ever brighter, drowning the warm candlelight and filling the tiny chamber with a dazzling yellow