Текст книги "Home Improvement: Undead Edition"

Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод

Соавторы: Seanan McGuire,Rochelle Krich,Toni Kelner,Simon R. Green,E. e. Knight,S. J. Rozan,Charlaine Harris,Melissa Marr,Stacia Kane
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Full-Scale Demolition
SUZANNE MCLEOD

“The client’s got a pixie portal in her swimming pool?” I groaned and shot a frustrated look down at the four Warded cat carriers I’d tucked into the shade of Nelson’s Column. There were two sleeping pixies in each and it had taken me since dawn to catch the little monsters. It was now midday. The last thing I wanted was another pixie job. “Toni, please, ple-ease, tell me this is one of your windups?”

Toni, our office manager, laughed in my phone’s earpiece. “Sorry, not this time, Genny. And it’s an emergency job—” The trilling of the other line interrupted her. “Hang on, hon,” she said, and I heard her faint, “Spellcrackers.com, making magic safe, guaranteed. How may I help you?” before I tuned her out.

Catching pixies was sonot my favorite job. It made me feel like the wicked faerie who didn’t get invited to the christening, but who turned up anyway. And catching pixies in Trafalgar Square on Easter Saturday, in an early heat wave, with a full complement of tourists, schoolkids, and al fresco sandwich-snackers happily pointing their digital cameras and video phones my way . . .

Well, you get the picture.

I raked fingers through the ends of my hair where it stuck to my nape and contemplated the last pixie. It was squatting on the flank of one of the four bronze lions that guarded the base of Nelson’s Column, swishing its barbed tail like an angry cat. Its blue-gray scales shimmered in the sunlight, and its lipless snout was stretched in a taunting grin. No way was it going to make this easy. Then, as if to hammer that thought home, the pixie flapped its vestigial batlike wings, cartwheeled along the lion’s broad back, and jumped up to perch on the statue’s huge head.

The impromptu audience gathered below laughed and clapped and whooped. The two heritage wardens, who were doing crowd control around the column’s base, exchanged a long-suffering look. And in the background the ever-present rumble of traffic rose and fell like the murmur of the sea. Which was where the pixie was going back to after I’d caught it in my hot sticky fingers.

Despite the fascinated audience, pixies in Trafalgar Square were nothing new. The first one appeared back in 1845 as soon as they’d begun pumping water into the newly built fountains—the fountains had opened a portal straight to the Cornish sea—and the pixies had been slipping through ever since. A cautionary lesson to anyone thinking about digging a new garden pond. Get a witch to do a magical survey first, or you never know where you might be connecting to—or what might live there.

“Genny Taylor!”

At my shouted name, I looked down to find a petite girl of about my own age—twenty-four—at the front of the crowd. She had spiky black hair, a silver dumbbell through her left eyebrow, and a tattoo of red and black triangles on the side of her throat, and she was overdressed for the heat wave in Goth-style camo gear. She grinned, lifted the huge professional camera hanging round her neck, and snapped off a couple of shots. Damn, my persistent paparazzo was back. She’d been stalking me for a good couple of months (one of the joys of being the only sidhe fae in London), though only the gods knew why, as I sincerely doubted the media needed any more photos of me chasing pixies. YouTube already had half a dozen videos, from what I’d heard.

I shifted, giving her my back.

“Hi, hon.” Toni’s voice returned in my earpiece.

“What’s the story with the swimming pool anyway?” I asked.

“The client’s doing renovations,” Toni said. “One of the builders put an iron spike through the Ground Ward and fritzed it, and then some idiot left a hose running.”

“Great.” Repairing a Ground Ward added another hour to the job.

“Oh, wait till you hear the rest,” Toni said. “The husband’s an antiquities dealer, so the house is full of statues. Very old and very expensive statues. Hubby’s on a buying trip just now, and the client’s having forty fits in case something ends up broken.”

Pixies love statues. It’s what makes them dangerous.

A few years ago, a pack of about thirty-odd pixies, high on candies filched from a coachload of schoolkids (sugar works wonders for amping up magic), managed to partially animate the exact same bronze lion I was looking at. The lion shook its head, roared, and snapped its jaws at the crowd for over an hour before the pixies’ magic finally wore off. So the Greater London Authority declared the pixies a health hazard, and Spellcrackers. com had won the contract to keep the pixie numbers down to acceptable levels.

“Thing is,” Toni said, breaking into my musings, “you’ll need to do the job on your own; everyone else is either down at Old Scotland Yard—” She paused, and we shared a moment’s silence about the tragedy, currently absorbing the media, of the two eleven-year-old boys who’d gone missing from an amusement arcade a week ago. Any witch with a touch of scrying ability was helping the police right now. So far no one had gotten lucky. “Or they’re off to the Spring Fertility Rite,” Toni finished. Easter is the witches’ big jamboree.

“No probs. Does the client know I’m doing the job?” Some humans didn’t want a fae in their home—either too scared or too bigoted—and while I can pass for human if I hide my catlike pupils, it’s never good business to fool the clients. Of course, I get other job requests that have nothing to do with crackingmagic and everything to do with some jerk’s sexual fantasy, so I find it pays to check.

“She asked for our pixie specialist.” Which was my “star billing” on the company website. “Plus I told her, but she’s worried enough that the Wicked Witch of the West could turn up on her doorstep and it wouldn’t be an issue.”

“Love you, too, Toni,” I said drily, digging the Pixnap—my favorite pixie-sedating cream—from my backpack.

She laughed. “Oh, and stay out of my stationery cupboard until you’ve gotten rid of all that pixie dust.”

“Hey, that was an accident,” I said in mock affront, rubbing the honeyscented cream into my hands and forearms. “And I tidied all your pens after they’d finished doing the tango.”

“Pixing my face wasn’t an accident.” Toni didn’t mean herface, but the Green Man plaque hanging behind our reception desk. I’d been experimenting with pixie dust, and animated him. Trouble was, he’d been carved from a dryad’s tree, and the pixie magic was taking its time wearing off. “He still winks every time I walk by,” she said in disgust.

“Sorry.” I stifled a chuckle. “At least he’s stopped telling everyone to come back tomorrow.”

She huffed, told me that she’d e-mail me the client’s details, and we said our good-byes.

I turned my attention back to the pixie, who was doing a furious jig on the lion’s head, and hauled myself up onto the bronze lion. Its metal back was scorching from the sun, and gritty from all the pixie dust. It really was way too hot for this. My Lycra running shorts and bra top had seemed a good idea at dawn, but now the black material was absorbing heat like a vamp sucking up blood, while the yellow plastic of the Hi-Vis waistcoat had welded itself to my spine. I sighed and shimmied along the lion’s back until I crouched on its shoulders.

“C’mon, little pixie,” I murmured, sliding my cream-covered hand up the lion’s metal mane. “Playtime’s over. Time to go home.”

The pixie’s snout peeled back to showcase a row of chitinous teeth, and warning clicks issued from its throat as it maniacally shook its head. I don’t speak pixie, but its meaning was pretty clear—

“Back off, my bite’s nastier than yours.”

“Yeah, don’t I know it,” I muttered.

And out the corner of my eye I saw Tavish’s broad shoulders shake with mirth. He was standing, well, posing really, on the fountain’s highest bowl, which put him about twenty feet up, so I could hardly miss him. And if that weren’t enough, he’d bespelled the water so it cascaded over him like a cloak of sun-trapped diamonds, making him look like some gorgeous, hedonistic river god. But then he was a kelpie, so the look was apt, even if his black cargo shorts sort of ruined it. Still, at least he waswearing shorts, and was in his human shape, so I counted that as a win.

I glared over at him. He gave me a happy thumbs-up, and the beads threading his long dreads flashed from silver to a gleaming turquoise. I glared harder. Bad enough having an audience without being critiqued by another fae, however hot he was. Though to be fair, Tavish didn’t work for Spellcrackers, but he’d still offered to help when he’d strolled into the square five minutes after I’d arrived. I almost hadn’t been surprised. He’d been turning up more and more on my outside jobs. If he’d been human I’d have expected the date question—hell, I was more than interested enough that if he’d been human I wouldn’t have waited for him to ask. But he was wylde fae, likely older than the last millennium, tricky, capricious, and dangerous. And while I might be sidhe fae, I’d spent the last ten years living with humans. It was always possible I’d got my attraction wires crossed, and I didn’t want to end up Charm-struck at the bottom of the River Thames.

The crowd whooped, drawing my attention back to the pixie, who was now striking muscleman poses. I inched my hand closer. The pixie tensed, webbed feet gripping the hot metal as it unfurled its useless wings. I froze. I hadn’t safely caught all its pals to have this last one do itself an injury because I’d spooked it. After a moment, its wings dropped, and, holding my breath, I made a grab for its nearest limb, relieved as my fingers closed around its scaly left leg. It let out an ear-piercing screech that almost drowned out the crowd’s disappointed boos, then mercifully went quiet as it sniffed the honey in the Pixnap and sank its teeth into my forearm. Gritting my own teeth against the dull pain, and carefully cradling the suddenly dozy pixie, I slid off the bronze lion and tucked the pixie in with its pals.

Now for the cleanup.

I opened the metaphysical part of me that can seethe magic and looked. Almost everything in the square, including some of the audience, lit up as if it had been scattered with multicolored sugar sprinkles: pixie dust. Some of the dust was old and faint, some brighter and more recent. Cleaning this up was one of the reasons why I’d gotten the job at Spellcrackers despite my lack of spell– castingability. (The other was my dubious celebrity quality.) It would take a coven of witches a good four or five hours to callall the pixie dust and neutralizeit. And they’d have to enclose Trafalgar Square in a circle to do it. Way too expensive. The other, quicker way would be to crackthe dust, but crackingmagic doesn’t just destroy the spell, and pitted bronze lions, broken pavement, and exploding pixies weren’t included in the contract. Whereas I could do my party trick: suck the dust up like a magical vacuum cleaner, and neutralizeit back at the office.

I sat and made myself comfortable next to the cat carriers, then dug out a spell-crystal and some licorice torpedoes from my backpack. Chewing on the candy for a quick magical boost, I activated the Look-Away veil in the crystal . . .

And calledthe pixie dust.

It flew to me like iron filings to a magnet, clumping in colorful patches on my skin. The patches rustled and tickled like dry grass in a wind. Weird, but not entirely unpleasant. But then the not-so-fun part kicked in: the pixie-dust sprinkles twisted into tiny fishhooks that pierced my flesh painlessly and jerked my limbs around as if I were a disjointed marionette. To anyone who couldn’t see, I probably looked like I was convulsing. The usual nausea roiled in my stomach, and I closed my eyes, concentrating on straightening the hooks and dropping them into the metaphysical bag inside me.

“Well now, doll, that’s as fine a sight as any I’ve seen for a long while.” Tavish’s soft burr snapped my head up.

He was crouched next to me, appreciation in the solid pewter color of his eyes. Apart from his Roman-straight nose, his long, angular features weren’t classically handsome, but he was striking, and captivating, and alluring. Though, caution warned me, a lot of his allure was probably down to his kelpie Charm.

I scowled and pushed my sweaty hair back from my face. “Tavish, I look like something the cat’s dragged in after a fight with birthday cake.”

He blinked, his eyes changing from pewter to a pale, translucent blue, and then he gave me a lingering head-to-toe assessment. “Aye, doll, so you do,” he agreed prosaically, the delicate black-lace gills on either side of his neck fanning wide. “But that’s nae but your shell; your soul is shining with magic like a sun-kissed rainbow brightening the cold depths of the sea.”

Kelpies are soul-tasters; they taste the souls of those who are dying. Of course sometimes the souls aren’t actually dying until after the kelpie has Charmed them into the water. But Tavish abides by River Lore—has done so for a couple of hundred years—so he no longer Charms humans into the Thames, and of those he finds in the river, he tastes only those who have killed or want to die.

“Great,” I said, unsure whether to be pleased my soul looked pretty (although maybe that should be tasty), or irrationally annoyed because he’d admitted I didn’t look so good. “Any chance of you helping this rainbow up? I’ve got the pixies to pack off back to Cornwall and another job to go to.”

“Nae problem, doll.” He grasped my hand and pulled me up hard enough that my nose ended up pressed against his neck. I sucked in a startled breath. Boy, did he smell good: like oranges and peat-mellowed whisky. And his pulse was thudding temptingly close under the hot smooth skin of his throat. I almost succumbed to an urge to lick it, but my sensible head took charge, and reluctantly I pushed him back. He gave me a satisfied look, as if he knew exactly what I’d been thinking, but as I narrowed my gaze, his forehead creased in concern and he said, “I heard a lassie shouting for you from the crowd, was there maybe some trouble or t’other I couldnae see?”

I shook my head. “Nah, just an annoying paparazzo.”

“A photographer?” His concern sharpened as he scrutinized the square. “Is she still here?”

“No,” I said, frowning. “Why?”

He was silent for a moment before turning back to me with a frustrated look. “Those newsy folk are nae but pests,” he said, and then with a soft snort of dismissal he changed the subject. “So, this next job you’re going to, will you be fancying a wee bit o’ company?” He flashed me a grin. “I ken ’tis the witches’ special night, and I wouldnae want you being lonely, doll.”

Anticipation flared inside me, and I straightened my attraction wires: we weren’t talking about him tasting my soul here, but other much more earthly pleasures. But having him tagging along on a job wasn’t a good idea . . . he’d be way too distracting.

“Appreciate the offer, Tavish,” I said, promising myself: another time . . . maybe, “but I’m good.”

“Aye doll, I ken you are, but ’tis myself I’m worried about.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

“Well, after you were for saving my life”—he placed a hand over his heart—“there’s nary a day goes by that I dinna feel lost and rudderless if I’m nae by your side.”

I shot him a quelling look. “Tavish, removing that death curse from you does notmean I saved your life. The guy that sicced it on you didn’t die, so it hadn’t taken hold.”

The beads on his dreads clicked a denial. “Nae, doll, you’ve a responsibility for me after that.”

“Pull the other one,” I said drily. “You’re not Chinese, and neither am I.”

“Och, well.” He threw out his arms and heaved a sad-sounding sigh, and I couldn’t help notice how his muscles shifted nicely under his green-black skin, which of course, was what he intended. At least I wasn’t drooling. Yet. He smiled, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “If you’re nae agreeing with me over that, then maybe you’ll be wanting to be irresponsible with me?” He leaned down and dropped a hard, hot, glorious kiss on my lips, and a delicious spiral of lust coiled deep inside me. “Call me.”

THREE HOURS LATER,my taxi turned into Belgrave Square. I could still feel Tavish’s kiss like a promise on my lips, but his Call mewas reverberating through my mind to an indecisive beat. Should I? A big, bigpart of me wanted to, but he was still wylde fae, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be long before I’d end up way out of my depth with him . . . I tucked his enticing voice away to deal with after the job, and scanned my surroundings.

Elegant, imposing, and über-expensive nineteenth-century town houses, many of them home to more foreign embassies and Important Places than I could count on two hands, lined all four sides of the square. The houses guarded a well-stocked, well-manicured, and private central garden. The place bristled with flags, diplomatic cars, and enough magical security that my skin felt as if it were trying to rip itself from my flesh and crawl away, which was maybe why the place was strangely devoid of people, even for a late Saturday afternoon.

Why was someone who lived here hiring Spellcrackers.com? Not that we’re not the best, but hey, anyone who could afford to buy a house here could keep a whole coven of witches on retainer. It didn’t make sense.

Toni had told me not to worry about whywhen I’d asked her, just to sort out the pixie problem the builders had caused. Which meant my destination was easy enough to spot, even without the address Toni had e-mailed to my phone. It was the only house with a yellow rubbish chute hanging from a fourth-floor window. A haze of dust clung to its smart front, and a large, new-looking skip was parked outside and hemmed in by temporary fencing. If that hadn’t given it away, then the fancy sign advertising the builders’ company would have. As I got out of the taxi I had an errant urge to write Spellcrackers wuz hereacross it. I resisted. Instead I stacked the half-dozen cat carriers I’d brought under the colonnaded portico with the cheerful help of the taxi driver, and, once she was gone, I straightened my black trouser suit and cased the joint . . . sorry, job.

The Ward, shimmering like a diaphanous lavender curtain over the front door, was a standard-issue “sucker” one, as it’s called in the trade. Once invited in, then you could pass back and forth over the threshold until the invitation was rescinded, much like the vamps it was colloquially named for. (Of course, once you’ve freely given your blood to a vamp, then there’s no rescinding that particular threshold invitation, which is why all the vamp clubs have to charge entrance fees by law.) The Ward seemed a bit low-key for such an expensive end of town, but with builders, and the rest of the square’s defenses, it was adequate.

I hitched my backpack higher, dug out my ID, and rang the bell. The person who answered wasn’t the butler/builder/security I expected, but she was familiar, from her spiky black hair, the red and black ink almost encircling her throat, right down to the huge professional camera still slung around her neck. The petite paparazzo, a.k.a. my stalker.

“Sorry, no offense,” I said, hiding my irritation behind a neutral tone, “but if this is an expensive way of getting an exclusive, I’m not interested.”

“Hey, I know all the gear looks suspicious,” she grinned, “but I’m not a pap. I have enough problems with them myself.” She stuck out her hand. “Theodora Christakis.”

My inner radar automatically pegged her as straight human. But the Witches’ Market in Covent Garden sells all sorts of spells, legal or otherwise, and skin-to-skin contact is an easy way to tagsomeone. I lookedat her outstretched hand, but she was clean. I still didn’t take it, and she dropped her own.

“So, if you’re not a pap, Mrs. Christakis,” I said, “why have you been stalking me?” Okay, maybe I wasn’t hiding my irritation quite that much.

She laughed, and I caught a glimpse of the silver ball piercing her tongue. “I haven’t actually been stalking you, Ms. Taylor, or not much anyway.” She paused. “I design graphics for computer games; taking pictures helps”—she pointed her camera at me, but the frown on my face obviously deterred her from snapping—“and your bones are slightly longer, proportionally, than a human’s, so they make for interesting lines.”

It all sounded plausible enough, but my bullshit antenna was still twitching.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got any interesting ID, Mrs. Christakis?” I said flatly.

She disappeared into the hallway for a moment, then thrust a passport, a computer game, and a glossy magazine at me. “Is this interesting enough?”

The magazine showed a bride and groom laughing against a backdrop of rocky beach and sparkling, aquamarine sea. He was dark-haired, darksuited, and tall, or looked it since his bride was petite. She was draped in an off-the-shoulder Grecian-style dress of red and yellow silk, with red and yellow veils covering her short black hair. Both bride and groom wore delicate gold crowns joined by a twisted red and yellow ribbon, which echoed the faint red and black ink that snaked over the bride’s bare shoulder. A silver dumbbell pierced her eyebrow. The magazine was dated three months ago, and the headline read: WORLD EXCLUSIVE: CYPRIOT HEIRESS THEODORA BELUS WEDS ANTIQUITIES EXPERT SPYRIDON CHRISTAKIS ON THE SUN-DRENCHED ISLAND OF APHRODITE.

“Check out page fifteen,” Theodora said.

I did. It stated that Theodora was the owner of Herophile Futures, a blue-chip company producing computer games featuring modern-day wars between ancient Greek gods. The game she’d given me was Quest for the Aegis of Athena.

I also checked her passport. Other than the fact that her legal first name was Herophile (and who would want to be called that?), Theodora was who she said she was.

And it was a job.

I packed my paranoia into my backpack and handed her the things back. “Very colorful dress, Mrs. Christakis. Thank you.”

She grimaced. “Not my choice, unfortunately, but you can’t argue with the old traditions.” She stood aside and motioned me in. “Or at least, I can’t. Oh, and call me Dora. ‘Mrs. Christakis’ reminds me too much of my mother-in-law.”

“Sure,” I said, and transferred my cat carriers inside.

The entrance hallway was high and wide, with double doors leading off either side and an ornate marble-and-iron staircase sweeping upward. The walls were bare of pictures, the black-and-white marble floor was partially covered by drop cloths, and the only lighting was a couple of dangling bulbs. Next to a door at the back of the hall was a crisscrossed stack of toolboxes, a pyramid of paint cans, and three huge sledgehammers lined up by height. The builders were either toddlers, or neat freaks. Unsurprisingly, the place smelled of paint and the nose-stinging reek of turpentine, and I had a brief, regretful thought that my best black suit was going to end up trashed.

The double doors to the left were open, and the room beyond snagged my attention. It was haphazardly peopled with life-size statues of muscled, naked men in various athletic poses, and half-dressed women cradling fruit or pouring water. Scattered among the statues were marble busts, plaques, stone animals, and half a dozen knee-high stacks of shining silver and copper platters. It was like looking into a museum’s messy storeroom, or the White Queen’s lair, if she’d been Greek. Not to mention that the room was obviously pixie heaven.

I looked. And everything lit up with the telltale colorful sprinkles of pixie dust, but most of it was faint and old, with only a few brighter, newer patches. My paranoia peeked out of my backpack.

“We’re renovating the whole house”—Dora smiled and pointed up the stairs—“so we’re camping out on the second floor just now, but if you’d like something to eat or drink before you start, then you’re very welcome.”

As if on cue, a gray-haired woman in a black head scarf, who looked as if she were a hundred and suffering from eczema going by her wrinkled, scaly face, leaned over the banisters above. She waved a ladle large enough it could be classified as a weapon and shouted something (which was all Greek to me) in a strident, demanding tone. Dora repeated her offer of hospitality in a dutiful-sounding voice. I told her no thanks, and she shouted back in the same language (obviously it was all Greek to her too, except she understood it). The woman threw her hands in the air in disgust or despair and disappeared.

“Malia, my aunt. She refuses to believe that women work outside the home”—Dora rolled her eyes—“and therefore you must be a guest, and I am shirking my responsibility by not letting her stuff you full of food.”

The aunt’s stereotypical Greek appearance had almost settled my paranoia, although I still had questions. “So,” I said, “how long have you had your pixie problem?”

“With all the building work going on, I’m not sure when they first appeared.” Dora’s reply was a bit too casual. “I’ve seen them in Trafalgar Square, and thought they were cute.” She stopped and gave me a rueful grimace. “Look, to be honest, I’m using them in a new game, so it was handy having them around. Only then one of my husband’s more expensive statues got broken, and he’s due back next week, so, well, it’s time for the pixies to go.”

Made sense, but—“What about the local witches? Have you consulted with them at all?”

“I did,” she said, and frowned, “but the local coven wanted to use Stun spells and nets.” (Which was another way of solving the problem—with a low survival rate for the pixies.) “But I want it done humanely”—she smoothed her hand over her camera—“which is the way Spellcrackers does it, isn’t it?”

“It is, yes.” Humane to the pixies anyway; my arms still itched from their bites. Not that I’d want to catch them any other way. And after all, like all fae, I’m fast-healing, a bonus of being virtually immortal. So Dora’s answers meant I was good to go, other than my last niggle of unease: “Where are the pixies?” I asked her.

“Mostly up on the third floor,” Dora said. “But your office mentioned you’d probably need to close the portal in the swimming pool first.” I nodded. It was standard operating procedure: pointless rounding them up before you’d stopped more coming through. Dora led me to the door at the end of the hallway, “It’s down here, in the basement,” and then she added in a rush, “I’m not sure, but there might be a bit of a problem.”

I bit back a sigh. I hated it when clients didn’t tell you everything going in; it always made my job harder. But at least that explained where my last doubt was coming from.

I gave her my best professional smile. “Why don’t you show me, then?”

She opened the door to reveal a modern glass-and-chrome stairway that clashed with the rest of the house and the half-finished mural of ancient ruins and olive trees that decorated the stairwell wall. As we descended, the sound of crashing waves assaulted my ears and the salty scent of open water cut with the rank smell of death slapped me in the face. Either Dora had a hell of a wave pool down here, or she was right, and there was definitely a problem.

We reached the bottom of the stairs, walked along a long opaque-glass corridor, and at the end she opened another door.

The sound of the sea intensified.

I walked through the door with a feeling of trepidation. I just knew this wasn’t going to be good.

The room and the swimming pool were both bigger than I’d expected. The pool was fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, and eighteen feet at the deep end, going by the markings stenciled onto the very obvious white squares on the walls, which ruined the whole illusion of the painted panoramic vistas. And judging by the way the pool’s edges wavered with magic, instead of the pixie portal being the usual, easily closed hole about the size of a dinner plate, this portal was the size of the pool. Which explained why the waves were rolling toward us like we were on a beach in the Mediterranean, why the expanse of sandy-colored terra-cotta tiles (which was almost as large at the pool) was littered with dead fish and seaweed, and why there were three shark fins cutting an ominous figure eight in the pool’s sea-dark water.

I stared, stunned, then walked to the water’s edge. “How long’s it been like this?” I asked, pleased my voice came out calm.

“Maybe a week?” Dora pulled a face. “Bruno, the mural painter, has been off sick, so no one’s been down here. I didn’t realize it was like this myself until not long ago, otherwise I’d have said when I phoned. You can sort it, can’t you?”

No way in hell. This was way out of my league, but—I forced my mouth back into my professional smile. “I’m going to need some help with this.” I dug out my phone. This needed a coven, but they were all at the Spring Rites, or scrying for the missing boys . . .

But there was someone who could help. Someone who was in his element in water, and who’d told me to call him. Tavish. Okay, so this probably wasn’t the sort of call he was expecting . . .

He answered on the first ring. Keen.“Hello, doll,” he said in his soft burr.

“Hey,” I said, brightly, “I’ve got a bit of a fishy problem here. A big one. Sharks.”

“Dinna let them bite you, doll.”

“Ha, ha,” I said. “But seriously, Tavish, there are sharks here, and I’m not about to start reenacting Jaws.”

“ ’Tis nae the sharks I’m fussed about. Tell the lamia: ten minutes. And see if you can find out where the children are.” The phone went dead.

I stared at it, my mind whirling. Why did Tavish sound like he knew what was going on? What children? And who was the lamia? I transferred my stare to Dora, who, though she had her eyes squeezed shut, had her camera up and was snapping pictures like her life depended on it, and the paranoia in my backpack jumped out and sucker-punched me. “What’s going on, Dora?” I demanded.

“What did he say, girl?” the heavy accented voice came from behind me.

I jerked around to see Dora’s Aunt Malia. The old woman was blocking the doorway in the opaque glass wall. Now that she was under the brighter lights of the pool room, I could see that it wasn’t wrinkles and eczema causing her face to look disfigured and scaly, but actual scales. She had to be the lamia. Of course, the big tipoff came when I looked down. Flowing out from under her heavy black dress was the tree-trunkthick, red-and-black body of a gigantic snake. I froze, and while the scared part of my mind was screaming Run!the rest was rifling through my mental “lamia” file for any useful information.