“What are you talking about?” he blusters. “I don’t know what a conjury is!” His eyes are wide with panic. Ah, so the old man isn’t quite as oblivious to the middle world as we thought. He must have been previously warned by someone.

“We don’t mean you any harm,” Paheli replies, her voice calm. Soothing, even.

He gives us a suspicious look. “You think I will believe you when you say that? I don’t make talismans anymore. Stop bothering me!”

“If you had really stopped making these so-called talismans, baba, they wouldn’t have burned your shop down,” Valentina says, and the old man flinches.

“They? Who are they? How did they find out? I was so careful!” The man licks his dry lips and his eyes well up.

“They are the ones who walk unseen amongst humans. You must have felt them? Their creatures can smell human conjury,” Paheli says. Her voice gentles. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

The man wipes his tears with shaking hands. “What am I supposed to do now? My home is gone. The place I have lived in for sixty years is gone. Everything that remained of my wife is gone.”

We don’t know how to comfort him; our sense of home is tethered more to a person than to a place.

“Well, what do you want with me?” Old Mahmoud asks when reason returns to him. “Are you here to threaten me? I’m telling you, I’m not as weak as you think.”

Paheli purses her lips, perhaps gathering her thoughts. “You must have realized by now that we’re not as human as you are,” she says. The old man shakes his head, denying her words and our existence. “We need you to create a conjury for us.”

“My home was burned down because of these conjuries you keep mentioning. I’m never making them one again!” The old man stands up, but his legs are unsteady, so he sits back down.

“Your words would have more weight if this table weren’t covered with paper conjury,” Talei says sweetly.

“These are just talismans to keep my family safe!” the old man insists.

Paper conjuries won’t work for us. They broadcast their identity with the purple aura; there’s no way Baarish would pick one up willingly, and there’s little chance of us tricking him into doing so.

“Do you have anything other than these paper conjuries?” Paheli asks.

“They’re not conjuries, I’m telling you. These are talismans to keep my family safe.” Old Mahmoud regains his hostility. “Why should I help you?”

“Without us, you’d be dead right now, old man,” Valentina replies. “If we hadn’t told the old woman to call your son, you’d have returned home yesterday, and those who burned your store would have burned you.”