The Haunted Sultan (Skeleton Key) by Gillian Zane, Skeleton Key

thing? I wouldn’t want something like this being free to do whatever it wants,” Owen added.
    “Very smart you are.” The Sultan looked at Owen and Sierra and nodded. “It would not be a spell. It would be an object. The Peri, they cannot move around without this object. It is their prison.”
    “Okay, so if you suspect it was your brother who sent the Peri, did you receive a trinket from him, a present, anything like that?” Sierra asked.
    “I keep my new domicile secret from anyone but my trusted advisors. My brother did not know of my whereabouts. He could not send me a gift,” the Sultan said indignantly.
    “They had to find you somehow. It could have been anything, right? Did you receive anything as a gift, even if it was from someone local?” Owen asked.
    “Yes. I believe so. A young man. He was a very pretty one, I invite to many parties I host. He presented a token of his affection, said it would remind me of my homeland.”
    “That could be it. Where is it?” Sierra asked.
    The Sultan spun around, moving quickly through the room. He looked behind the drapes and even under a bench, until finally he held up an ornate vase.
    “This,” he said.
    “Now what? Do we break it, or maybe cast a spell?” Sierra asked.
    “I do not know.” The Sultan looked desperately at Sierra.
    “These Peris, what are they? Maybe if you explain exactly what they are, we’ll get a better idea of how it can be stopped,” Owen urged the Sultan.
    “A Peri, to the Turks is what an American would call a fairy or spirit. But, no…no, wait that is not right. This is much darker. Much evil compared to the stories I have heard. I believe this is a spirit of the Jinn. Maybe that is why it is so powerful.”
    “Jinn, I don’t know much about them, only the old tales from my family, and what I have read in the Quran, which isn’t much. My family converted when they came to the US,” Sierra said thoughtfully. “I always thought of them as genies, like the cartoon.”
    “I know not what a cartoon is, but it must be terrible,” the Sultan shivered. “A jinni is terrible. My grandmother would whisper stories about them before I slept to give us nightmares.”
    “She sounds like a winner,” Owen said under his breath.
    “She wanted strong men in the family,” he shrugged. “The jinn are the opposite of the angels, made from smoke, and can be very evil if they choose to be. Men have tried to use the jinn and their magic but they are treacherous and dangerous. They often do what benefits themselves and it usually is selfish and in the pursuit of power. But they can be restricted, imprisoned in an object, forced to do the bidding of the man who controls them. If it is my brother he is long dead, but the jinni is still imprisoned here.”
    “Okay, which tells us a lot, but not how to kill them.” Owen looked at the vase in his hand as if he wanted to smash it on the ground. Sierra reached out a hand and touched his arm. He nodded, to let her know he wasn’t going to be a fool, and placed the vase on the mantel of a nearby fireplace.
    “Do you know how they are controlled? Maybe we can control it and force it back to wherever it came from,” Sierra mused.
    “To control it takes trainings in the arts of meditation and belief. To control a member of the jinn is to have it assist you, or grant you boons. If you err in the summoning, they destroy everything around you.”
    “So, it is like the folklore, they grant wishes, is this what your brother did? He wished for your destruction?”
    “The story is too complex for that, not how you describe it. More like a pact or a deal.” The Sultan shook his head at Sierra as if he couldn’t explain this.
    “You mean a genie in a lamp is what modern day people think of this thing? But it’s really more of a devil, making deals in exchange for something?” Owen asked mystified.
    “Yes, that sounds right,” Sierra said thoughtfully. “A deal with the devil. Rubbing a lamp and a