Dylan’s hand reached for something in his robe, and he pulled out an hair accessory.

“You forgot it  last time.”  It’s my hairpin that I had lost when we fought with the blood-drainers back then.

“I—”. I suddenly forgot how to speak. The hairpin had been important to me, and he had kept it safe with him. I blushed at the gesture, but he broke the moment first.

“Let’s get out of here!” He grabbed my hand and led me through the market to the food street. The aroma of rich and steaming food made my hungry stomach growl.

“Do you want to eat something?” He asked me and took us to a food stall around the corner. We sat at a table as Dylan ordered some local dishes for us to eat. A young lad served us with the grilled lamb skewers and beef kefta along with two bowls of Bissara with the bread-loaf.

My mouth watered at the sight of warm food and I delved right into eating.

“It was a tunnel.” I said.

“Huh?”

“It’s at first a tunnel, then, the trees’ arc, the hallway, now, it’s the street archway that led me here.”  I explained while chewing on the tender meat. “Those passages act as a portal causing shift in space and time, and bring me to your dimension.”

“So, you have got it all figured out.” He sounded amused and asked the boy for two cups of spearmint tea.

“No, not entirely.” I put away the skewer and looked him dead in eye. “I still can’t tell what are you exactly.”

“Are you perhaps a djinn?” I asked him out of curiousity.

A Djinn is an entity made of smokeless flame of fire; an invisible being apart from the humans in Moroccan and Arabian folklore, often equivalent to a devil but not necessarily evil. Djinns are associated with King Solomon who used to command the powerful ones to perform the tasks for him and built his temple. It is said when Solomon died, the djinns couldn’t tell it for days and continued working under him until his staff finally broke and his body finally collapsed.

Dylan’s eyes darkened, and his sudden silence made my heart drop in stomach in fear.

I couldn’t have attracted a malevolent entity, could I? Could he have been one of Solomon’s djinn?

He slightly leaned over the table, holding my unwavering  gaze and said, “I am Shamharoush: The Sultan of Djinns.”

His serious expressions could’ve made fooled me had I not known him any better by now.

“I am Kandicha then.” I scoffed at him. Kandicha is a demoness in Moroccan folkore with the hooves of a goat or a camel who lures in men and kills them.

Dylan let out his wolfish laughter and said, “Someone is doing their homework.” He took the tea from the stall boy and handed me a cup.

“Of course, I do!” I defended myself. “Who knows what creature I might next encounter after those soul-eaters and blood-drainers?” I shuddered at the thought of encountering a sleep paralysis demon, Bought in Marrakech whose very idea gave me nightmares.

I put the empty teacup on the table and got down to business. “Enough of chit-chat, tell me what it exactly you are looking for here.” I demanded.

“A dagger.”

“What type of dagger?” I probed further.

“I don’t know. I Haven’t really thought about it yet.” He shrugged. I was already at the end of my wits, so I stood up at the table and said, “Let’s look for the dagger, so that I can go home sooner.”

“The sun is about to go down.” Dylan remarked. “We need to find a place to stay for the night before it gets dark here.”

I let out a sigh but knew that he was right. Having lost track of time during our conversation, we didn’t realize that it’s almost dusk and we needed a place to stay.

Dylan turned to the stall-owner and asked, “Brother, Is there an inn nearby?”

“The one across this street is full.” The man told us. “Others close down before the dark and don’t take in guests.” I was surprised that I could understand their language in this world, so I was able to communicate with them.

“Why? Is something wrong with this place?” I asked the man.

“The demon, Qandisha lurks in the shadows at night, so people here are generally cautious.” He explained. “It’s said that once she sets her eyes on a man, she takes him away no matter where he hides.”

Dylan and I exchanged glances with each other but said nothing to that man.

“There is the one down the two streets at the city’s outskirts.” The stall boy cut in as he came to collect the bill. However, he told us that this place isn’t doing well and didn’t know whether they take in the guests for the night or not.

Nevertheless, we thanked him and paid for the meal before leaving to look for the inn.

Midnight Inn Keeper

The inn was a small, dilapidated three-storey building cramped between the old abandoned house near the ruins. This part of the town was remote and desolate. If not for a few children playing on the streets with a rubber tyre and their mothers shouting to call them back inside before the dark, one might think that this place was altogether deserted.

When we went inside the inn, two men were drinking at the table who gave us a strange look as we walked past them to the counter where the owner was busy with her ledger.

I had not expected the innkeeper to be a beautiful, young woman in mid-twenties struggling to manage such a run-down place in her husband’s stead. She caught me staring at her face and cleared her throat as a sign to get straight to the business.

“Two rooms for the night.” Dylan told her, but she looked sideways at the men who shouted at her for another jar of wine.

“We are closed for the night.” She told us in a cold demeanor.

For someone who’s trying to do business at the inn, she had rather a sullen and unwelcoming look on her face. Had Dylan not insisted on getting the rooms before the dark and offered to give her more money, she would have turned us away under the pretense of being full for the night.

The inn-lady gave us two rooms upstairs that were adjacent to each other and faced the main street. It was a shabby place, and it was apparent that the business was not doing well. Aside from us, the inn-lady, a potboy and the two men drinking downstairs, there’s no other visitor.

I went inside my room that had a small bed in the middle and a chair and table in the corner. The window opened to the quiet side-street and gave a good view of the setting sun behind the old buildings.

I sat on the window’s ledge and watched the sunset paint the Moroccan sky and its buildings in the scarlet hue of red. The silent streets and the somber air of the night after the darkness that devoured the last bit of twilight, and an occasional distant bark of the dog made me feel unsettled at the quiet inn.

I closed the window deciding to rest when a gentle knock came on the door. I went to answer the door and saw the Inn-lady holding a candle lamp and a blanket in her hand.

“It’s dark and cold outside, so I brought these things for you.” She came inside and put these things down on the table.

“If you need something, pull the string next to your bed to ring the bell and I’ll be there.” Then, she said, “Don’t wander around at night by yourself. It’s not safe in here.”

“Is it because of that demoness?” I asked her. She had been running this inn for few years at such a remote place, so she must have seen or heard something.

“Demoness?” She frowned. “There is nothing vicious than a human’s heart in this world.”

She subconsciously touched her forearm, and I noticed some scars and bruises on her arm hidden underneath the sleeve. I wondered whether she got them from her husband or those men, but I couldn’t ask her such a personal question out of propriety.

“It is such a pity that once a paragon of a warrior for colonial resistance is reduced to a mere seductress. Man, since history, has villainized the woman who threatens his dominance.”

 She then turned towards me and said, “I shall take my leave. You should rest.”

She left the room, and I lay down in bed staring up at the ceiling in idle thoughts since there’s nothing to do and I didn’t have my phone on me either. The silence at the inn was suffocating, crushing breath and sanity, but I closed my eyes and tried the old method of counting sheep to fall asleep.

Around midnight, I woke up to the feeling of dry throat and being thirsty but did not see water jar anywhere in the room, so I slipped out and went downstairs to get water from the kitchen. The wooden boards that creaked under my weight with each shifting step created a haunting feeling as if the inn was also stretching and groaning in its sleep.

I went to find the kitchen but stopped when I saw the potboy cutting and chopping something with his machete. I quietly went inside in the kitchen as not to disturb him, but he still caught me without even turning his head to look back.

“Do you need something?” He asked bringing down his machete to cut the meat neatly.

“I need some water.” I looking around the kitchen for the water pot until he pointed towards the second shelf.

“Didn’t master tell you to ring the bell instead of coming down yourself?” He questioned, and I became suspicious of his mannerisms as a servant at the inn.

“I did, but you did not hear it, so I had to come down and get it myself.” I lied to throw him off, but he remained unfazed.

Therefore, to intimidate him, I said, “Did not your Master teach you how to serve the guests?” I threatened, and the potboy put down his knife and turned around to apologize to me.

He picked the water jar from the shelf and gave it to me asking me to ring the bell next time if I need something otherwise he’d be scolded. I took the jar from him and returned to my room with it. It was hardly quarter past two when the clomping footsteps in the dead silence of the night roused me out of the sleep.

I ignored it at first and tried to roll back to sleep, but the footsteps lingered outside my room and stopped right at the door.

‘Could it be the inn-lady?’ I slipped out of the bed to check and opened the door to look both ways in the balcony walkway but saw no one outside. However, when I closed the door to go back to bed, someone knocked at the door causing me to still in fear.

‘Did I not just check outside and saw no one?’ I thought to myself. ‘How come someone is at the door?’

I hesitated to answer it, but the knocking came again, and I had to open the door to see who was pulling petty tricks on me at night. I opened the door, and in the faint glow of candlelight, I saw Dylan standing in the doorway holding a candlestick in his hand.

“Why are you wandering around like a ghost at night?” I groaned at him.

“I have just heard the footsteps outside. Was it you?” He asked me, and I became confused.

“No, I thought it’s you.”

“It wasn’t me either.” He told me. “This place is remote. It is better to be careful since bandits lurk around here at night.”

I nodded in understanding and locked the door before going back to bed to sleep. However, hardly an hour passed that I was startled awake by the sound of running foot falls on the roof.

‘What was that?’ I sat up in bed and looked up at the ceiling in horrid.

 The sound of running soon stopped creating an eerie silence in the inn, but then the thudding footsteps appeared outside my room again, and I swore to kill Dylan if it was him.

I opened my door and saw the Inn-lady standing outside his room in a flimsy white nightgown and open hair, holding a candle in her hand and talking to him.

“W-What are you two doing at this hour?” I looked at them in surprise. I didn’t mean to intrude on their little rendezvous, but I never took Dylan for someone who is interested in the married women.

The inn-lady snapped her head in my direction, almost breaking her neck and scowled at me for disturbing them. Her face distorted; her beautiful features twisted into an ugly expression of contempt.

“Didn’t I tell you not to go outside?” She warned. My gaze dropped to her feet underneath the nightgown, and I paled in horror when I looked at her furry hooves.

 “You, humans just don’t listen.” Her tone had become murderous.

“GET BACK INSIDE!” Dylan shouted.

The next moment, she flew towards me screaming in rage. I slammed the door shut as Dylan threw his dagger in her direction but missed her by a hair’s breadth and struck the doorframe.

The door started rattling, and I pushed myself against the door to keep it shut with all might.

‘What did I get myself in?’ I cursed at myself as the woman continued banging at the door.

“DON’T OPEN THE DOOR!” Dylan barked at me.

I heard her shrieks and screams outside the room, then, after few seconds, there’s complete silence in the inn. I slowly back treaded from the door while keeping my eyes on it.

Cold sweat broke out on my brow, and I jumped when someone started knocking at the door again.

“It’s me, Dylan.” The person had said it, but I refused to believe it easily. “Rhea?” It’s indeed his voice this time.

 “Open the door! It is really me.” He persuaded, but I neither moved nor answered him fearing that it could still be her using his voice.

“You stabbed a blood-drainer pretending to be me in the woods. We fought together to take them down, but I got wounded.” He reminded me, but when he still got no reply, he said,

“I’ll stay by the door and guard it. You can return to bed and rest.”

I felt conflicted between opening the door for him and going back to bed but decided to sit in the chair on guard and kept my eyes on the door all night.

I had fallen asleep on the chair when the rooster’s crow woke me up at the dawn. I stretched my limbs and got up from the chair to check outside. I opened the door and saw Dylan resting against the wall with crossed arms holding his sword.

“You’re up!” He stood up and turned around to see me.

“Let’s find your dagger so that I can go back.” I told him. “I want to leave this place already.”

We went downstairs and found the inn empty. The potboy was also gone, and I didn’t see two male guests either after the last night’s commotion.

“Did those men leave last night?” I asked Dylan, growing uneasy.

“They were Qandisha’s original target. She had killed them before coming to see me.” His revelation made horrified at the thought of what the potboy could have been chopping in the kitchen last night.

“You killed her, did not you?” I asked fearing how many men she must have ruthlessly killed.

“She ran off before I could subdue her. She’s injured after the fight, so will stay low to recover first.”

“Did you just let her off?” I refused to believe that a man of his strength failed to subdue her.

“Those men have violated a young girl.” Dylan spoke coldly. “Sooner or later, they would have faced their retribution. You don’t have to feel guilty about them.”

He left the inn first which made me question whether he let go of Qandisha on purpose and help her in killing those men.

I couldn’t tell right from wrong but had wanted to find that damn dagger to get out of here.