"Hmm... hmm..." As he watched Sally skip away while humming a melody, Jinn felt a chill running down his spine.
’What’s with her?’ He thought, looking down at the two gifts in his hands. ’Why is she going through so many emotional changes lately?’
"Could it be..." his eyes narrowed in realization before he shook his head. "Nah, it can’t be."
The children lost their enthusiasm and energy within a few hours, marking the end of the party. Tucking Kyle in his bed, Jinn cleaned up the mess in the room with Sally.
All the time the girl said nothing, but the smile on her face never vanished.
Once he was done cleaning the room, Jinn found sally and said, "I will go take a bath and settle in early. Have to leave early tomorrow."
It was a lie; Jinn wanted to rush to Agnes as fast as he could; he had already made her wait for so long.
The longer they waited, the chance of her getting exposed increased.
Sally did not suspect anything and accepted his explanation. Thıs text ıs hosted at 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵·𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮·𝓷𝓮𝓽
After the bath, Jinn lay down on his bed, but he stood up the next second, leaving an illusionary self conjured by his powers on the bed.
He left the room sneakily and walked up to the fourth floor, where Agnes was hiding. Without knocking, he sneaked in the room only to pause the next second.
Inside the room, a red-haired woman was lying in a weird pose, her hands in the air, and the moment their eyes met, the fire from her hands faded like someone had snuffed it out with water.
Jinn stared at the falling ashes in a daze, surrounded by several patches of ashes around the woman. He had no idea what to even say.
"Ah j— Jinn, how are you?" flustered at being caught in such a state, Agnes blurted the first thing that came to her mind.
She rigidly corrected her posture and sat up under Jinn’s blank stare.
In the end she could not take his judgmental gaze anymore and put all the blame on him. "Oh, come on! You left me here for so long. Without even giving any instruction manual, you told me to practice until you come back, what am I supposed to do?"
"So you chose to massacre the spiders to practice." Jinn closed the door behind him and helped the woman get up from the ground.
"They are spiders, what else do you do besides kill them?" Agnes justified her massacre as a deed for the greater good of the world.
"I’ve found a way for you to leave the city, but you’ll have to stay hidden for a while." Recalling the intensity of the search, Jinn made some adjustments in the plan.
"What will be your plans from here on? Now I finally understand why you did not want to join the order or those academies affiliated with them." Agnes asked. Everything that did not make sense to her before now felt like the most natural option.
She knew how dangerous it was to stay close to the church for him. The threat of being exposed will always loom on his shoulder.
But to her surprise, Jinn did not seem as bothered about those things as he was before.
"I will look for better ways to train our energy and a way to unlock the second chakra point for the next two years at the academy." He moved closer to the tall glass windows in the room and then spoke. "For that I will need to access information, which I can obtain at the Nightshade academy."
Agnes wanted to say something, but Jinn kept speaking: "Besides, even if I can get all that, I would still go to the academy."
The red-haired woman narrowed her eyes upon realizing what he wanted to say. "Did you change your plans?"
Jinn turned around and revealed his plans with a devious smirk, "I plan to get close to the church."
"What?" Agnes was baffled by the absurdity of the plans. "They will burn you alive."
"Only if they know I am a devilman." Jinn countered, "The best way to know about your enemy is... to learn directly from them."
Agnes stared in her eyes for a long while as the events of the past flashed before her eyes. ’If someone like me who has been with him since his birth could not tell what he hid from me, then there is a chance...’
With a sigh, she relented. "I believe in your jinn, but... please take care of yourself."
Her pleading tone made Jinn’s smile turn into a caring one, "you might not know this, but I am a very selfish man. So my safety is always my top priority."
The former matron was stunned for a second before she smacked his shoulder playfully. "What are we going to do now?"
"Now," Jinn raised his hand, and a gray fog wrapped itself around him, twisting and churning until it spat a round token in his extended hand from the narrow end.
"This again." Agnes whispered as she recognized the token, "This will help us warp through this place and leave the city?"
"No, the city gates are far from this place." Jinn sighed with a dejected look on his face. "We cannot leave using just one."
As if on cue, another token jumped out of the fog that had yet to disperse.
"Where are you pulling them out of?" Agnes asked curiously, staring at the two shiny tokens in his hands. They were silver in color and had a symbol in the shape of a demonic face carved on them.
"Whatever you wish, the devil will grant." Jinn tucked away one token and extended his free hand toward Agnes. "That saying is not just empty words."
Before she realized, her hand was in Jinn’s grasp. With two fingers and a thumb, Jinn snapped the token, and a bluish silver hue enveloped them.
Then the next second, their figures disappeared from the room, leaving a gust that sent the ashes of deceased spiders in every corner of the room.