Текст книги "The Shifting Price of Prey"
Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 33 страниц)
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Gods, this is a mess,’ Finn muttered, before turning to face me with a determined expression. ‘Helen’s been staying at the Morrígan’s castle while we’ve been there. Not that we’re staying together. It’s a big place,’ he finished quickly.
Shock rocked through me and I sat abruptly back on the bed. Ugh! I hadn’t seen that coming. My own green-eyed monster reared up and snarled, surprising me with its strength. But my fury was more than just jealousy. Damn it. Helen the Witch-bitch was pure poison; even if he couldn’t admit that before, surely he couldn’t deny it now, not after what she’d done to him and their daughter.
I balled my hands, glared up at him. ‘How the hell could you let her near Nicky again, after what she did?’
He raked his hand through his hair. ‘Nicky doesn’t know. She doesn’t remember much about what happened, and she was brighter once Helen turned up, so I agreed not to tell her anything.’
I shot him a disbelieving look. ‘You agreed?’
‘Helen . . . yes, I agreed.’
In other words, it had been the Witch-bitch’s idea, and she’d somehow persuaded Finn to go along with it. Nothing had changed there then. After all, Helen had persuaded Finn to keep his daughter a secret from me in the first place, despite the fact that we were supposed to be on the fast track to providing Nicky with a curse-breaking baby half-brother. And how the hell was Nicky going to feel when she found out that both her parents had been lying to her by omission? If my own experience, right up until I was fourteen, was anything to go by – my vamp father had been an expert at that sort of leaving-out-the-important-stuff style of communication (such as, the princely vampire he planned to marry me off to just happened to be a psychotic sadistic murderer) – then I could pretty much guarantee Nicky would be shocked, angry and betrayed. Much like I felt now.
When the fuck was Finn going to learn to stand up for himself? And his daughter?
I blew out searing breath. ‘You haven’t forgotten what Helen did, have you?’
He frowned. ‘No, of course not.’
‘So the fact that she’s responsible for Nicky being pregnant, that she’s lied and deceived you throughout all the time you’ve known her, and she used her position as a police officer to try and ensure I ended up either dead or pregnant, or both, more than once– Oh, and let’s not forget she’s responsible for the death of my best friend and the continuation of the fertility curse. And you stilllet her stay?’
A puzzled look flickered over his face as if he couldn’t believe it himself. ‘I know . . .’ Then his expression settled to resignation and he held his arms out in surrender. ‘She’s Nicky’s mother, Gen. What was I supposed to do?’
‘Protect your daughter and keep her mother the fuck away from her.’
‘She can’t harm her, not with me there.’
‘She’s already harmed her, Finn! And it’s going to harm Nicky even more once she finds out the truth!’
‘Hell’s thorns, Gen. Don’t you think I haven’t thought about that? If I could’ve stopped Helen joining us, I would have. I’ve told her she had until after the baby’s born, then she had to leave.’
Right.So Helen got to Nicky first. By the time Finn had found out, it was too late. Or she’d made him think it was. Fuck. I wanted to scream with the anger and frustration, and yes, the hurt boiling up inside me.
‘You know she’s wanted by the police?’ I said flatly. ‘She can’t come back here unless she’s prepared to pay for her crimes.’ Though even being burned at the stake was way too good for the Witch-bitch.
‘Of course I do. And so does Helen. She’s not going to return here.’
Not if I had anything to do with it. ‘How long’s she been there?’
He looked down at the pot of violets. ‘A couple of days after we got there. Jack brought her in.’
Jack was Helen’s changeling son. And one of the Morrígan’s ravens. I narrowed my eyes. ‘So Helen was there before the Morrígan took you all out of sync? And you didn’t think to tell me this first?’
He half shook his head, then sighed. ‘I wanted to tell you from the beginning, but . . . hell, Helen said it wasn’t a good idea, and even my brothers said not to. That I should just keep it to myself. That you wouldn’t be happy’ – I wasn’t!– ‘That you wouldn’t understand’ – I didn’t!– ‘That if you thought there was something going on between me and Helen you might not be waiting when I got back’ – Got that right!– ‘Then when I did, they started bringing up Sylvia and Ricou.’
I stared at him. My own dysfunctional family wasn’t any better than Finn’s. But at least they didn’t try to run my love life for me. Oh, wait, they did. They’d stuck me with the Fertility spell and all its problems. Fuck. ‘I don’t have a clue what to say, Finn.’
He took my hands in his. ‘Gen, I want you to know there’s nothing going on with Helen. I don’t spend any more time alone with her than I can help, and I don’t want to. But she likes to play happy families with Nicky, and she’s using it to . . .’ He trailed off, colour staining his cheeks. Embarrassment?‘It makes things difficult,’ he finished lamely.
Why the fuck would he be embarrassed if nothing was going on? Something broke inside me. I’d had enough. I couldn’t listen to him tell me any more about the Witch-bitch. He’d always had a blind spot where she was concerned. The suspicious part of me thought she’d sicced him with some sort of spell, in fact he’d sort of admitted that she had, which just made his continuing acceptance of their relationship worse. And if he couldn’t break away from her, especially now, then I was done.
I jerked my hands from his. ‘You need to leave, Finn.’ His brows knitted. ‘Leave?’
‘Yes.’ I strode from the bedroom through the living room to the front door and yanked it open. ‘Now.’
He followed me, an earnest frown on his face. ‘You truly want me to go, Gen?’
Part of me wanted to say no. I didn’t want to lose Finn. He was my friend. And he had a place in my heart. But his Witch-bitch ex was as toxic as nuclear slag. Almost everything bad was down to her, and no way did I want her to get her evil claws back into Finn and Nicky. But I couldn’t stop him from letting her. He had to do that himself. And if she was part of their lives– If he let her staypart of their lives, his life, then I couldn’t stay his friend.
Whatever had broken inside me turned jagged, my throat ached and tears stung my eyes.
I looked at him straight. ‘Yes. I want you to go.’
‘Is this because of that sucker? Are you seeing him?’
Fury filled me and I opened my mouth, ready to tell him, hell, no! Then, at a nudge from the magic, my rage muted and I snapped it shut. Was this about Malik? Okay, yeah, I wanted both of them. And I knew there was no way I could have my cake and eat it with the two of them. And truth was, I didn’t want to. Sharing might be Sylvia and Ricou’s thing, but, right now, it wasn’t mine. So I’d known a choice was always going to have to be made. And that choosing one would mean losing the other.
But Finn playing happy families with Helen meant the end of Finn and me, even if Malik hadn’t been in the picture. So yeah, Finn’s half-arsed confession was making my choice easier, but it wasn’t the reason I was telling him to go.
‘This is about you and Helen,’ I said flatly, ‘which you’d realise if you took the time to think about what you’ve just told me.’
‘Gen, he’s a sucker. A sucker who can order you around against your will. Or have you forgotten?’
‘I haven’t forgotten anything. Like I haven’t forgotten how Malik gave his protection to every fae and faeling in London when I asked, and wanted nothing in return. Or how he was the one who put himself in danger helping me during the demon attack last Hallowe’en—’
‘I would have come if I could, Gen,’ Finn interrupted, his expression stricken. ‘You know that.’
‘Yeah, I do,’ I snapped, my anger mounting again. ‘But you couldn’t, could you? And why was that? Oh yeah, because Helenstopped you.’
‘Because I would’ve broken her circle. She was working to keep the demon contained.’
She was working to let the demon kill me, you mean.Rage rushed through me. I grabbed his arm and shoved him through the Ward on the flat’s door.
‘And I haven’t forgotten,’ I shouted, ‘that without Helen, Nicky, your daughter, wouldn’t be pregnant and Grace, my best friend, wouldn’t be fucking dead in my place.’
He stood on the landing outside, eyes wide with shock, then he shuddered as if casting off a heavy coat. ‘Gen. You’re right. I’m sorry—’
I slammed the door in his face.
The rage drained out of me, leaving me empty and hollow. Pain flooded in to take its place. I sank to the floor, hands over my mouth, until the sound of his footsteps faded.
Then I let my tears fall.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘What’s it this time: nose, boobs or hips?’
I focused on Mary’s – Detective Sergeant Mary Martin’s – reflection in the full-length mirror in front of us. I’d been so wrapped up in my frustration and anger, and, yes, grief, over Finn, I hadn’t noticed her come up next to me.
Behind us, the mirror showed a plush office decorated in warm creams and oatmeal, and accented with enough pink to make it patently feminine without turning it into Barbie’s living room. The office was one of many in the upscale plastic surgeon’s expensive home-cum-consulting rooms, and was closer to a modern take on a Georgian drawing room than a doctor’s surgery. But then if victims feel reassured and relaxed in their surroundings, it makes them easier to fleece.
Currently, the only victims around were the filing cabinets (heavily disguised as a splay-legged oak sideboard). The cabinets were being disembowelled by two WPCs wearing white paper jumpsuits, with matching shower caps and bootees, who were systematically tagging and bagging their contents. The same thing was happening throughout the rest of the exclusive Harley Street address where another ten witches – who along with Mary, made a full coven – were busily gathering evidence.
And there was a ton of evidence to gather. Virtually every leaflet (of which there were thousands still in unopened storage boxes), every magazine and every reflective surface (from the numerous mirrors, through the framed pictures of satisfied customers, right down to the polished brass doorknobs) was tagged with some sort of Dissatisfaction hex.
The place must’ve been like the eighth circle of hell to work in.
My email to Hugh about the source of Harrods’ mutating Magic Mirror spell had set ‘Operation Nip Tuck’ in motion, and the unsuspecting doctor had received a six a.m. raid from Mary and her girls in blue.
Mary placed a hand on my shoulder, making my own evidence-gathering jumpsuit crackle. ‘So, you going to answer me, Genny, or do I have to drag you into the Skin Stripper?’
I gave her a half-smile. ‘’S’okay, I haven’t picked up another hex.’ The things were virulent, and throughout the morning we’d all spent time mirror-staring and angsting over our hex-induced bodily imperfections, the cure for which was a stint in the torturous Skin Stripper. ‘Just miles away.’
Mary gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. ‘Ah. Time for a break, then. Come on, I’ll buy you coffee.’
We headed out into the hall, our paper booties scuffing quietly on the thick carpet as we moved past the leaflet boxes stacked along the wall and into the office set up as a temporary canteen. The Ward on the doorway slipped over me like the tickle of feathers.
As per procedure, the room had been physically emptied (even the carpet removed), ritually swept and magically cleansed, then Warded off from the rest of the house. The Skin Stripper was set up in the middle of the floorboards; a three-foot copper tray, surrounded by a tall circular frame off which hung a glyph-covered shower curtain (to preserve a witch’s modesty) and a modified shower head which rained salt, not water, on the tray’s occupant. Candles flickered in each corner of the room filling the air with the scent of sage, cloves and lemon balm, and along one wall were trolleys containing the Evidence Holding crystals. Against another wall was a stack of picnic-sized cool boxes with ‘Property of Metropolitan Magic and Murder’ stencilled in blue. We had enough food and drink to keep us going for another couple of days, if needed. Same as any other magical evidence-gathering investigation, the whole building had been Warded shut, and until all the active spells were locked up in the Holding crystals, police procedure said that none of us were getting out.
Personally, I wasn’t planning on any of us staying longer than absolutely necessary.
But then speed was one reason why Hugh had called me in as a police consultant. While it took a witch a good five minutes to transfer a spell from its original carrier to an Evidence Holding crystal, it was as quick as snapping my fingers for me. And, of course, the second reason was that I could identify any Magic Mirror spells similar to those used at Harrods.
Mary opened a cool box and handed me an orange juice. ‘Let me guess,’ she said, ‘you’ve got man trouble, or should I say, satyr trouble.’
I raised my brows. ‘I’m that transparent?’
She smiled. ‘I’d love to say no, and that it’s my superb powers of deduction at work. But yeah, you are, especially since Sylvia texted me.’
‘Damn gossiping dryad.’ I jabbed the straw into the drink carton. ‘It’ll be all over London now.’
Mary shot me an admonishing look as she fiddled with the coffee flask. ‘Sylvia won’t say anything; she was just worried about you.’
I snorted. ‘I meant Robur. Sylvia hadn’t got up when I left, so the only way she knows about Finn is if the Wardrobe Freak told her.’
‘Ah.’ She added milk and ten lumps of sugar to her cup. It was excessive even for a witch. Still, Mary was using enough power on the job that she wasn’t likely to suffer sugar-abuse bloating any time soon. ‘Anything I can do?’
I drained the juice box and crumpled it. ‘Lock up DI Helen Crane and throw away the key,’ I said sourly.
‘Wish I could.’ She shook her head in regret. ‘The problems she’s left us with are never-ending, both down the Yard and in the Witches’ Council.’
‘I’m more pissed off about the problems she’s causing now,’ I said, helping myself to a BLT. I’d been relieved to find the cool boxes contained a good supply of the sandwiches and orange juice at break time, since all I’d been allowed to bring in with me was my phone and some liquorice torpedoes (we were all nude under the jumpsuits; good thing it was summer and the paper was the thick, reinforced type). ‘The Witch-bitch has only gone and hitched herself back up with Finn and Nicky in the Fair Lands.’
Mary grimaced. ‘Ugh. That’s a bugger, isn’t it?’
‘Yep. And when he told me, I chucked him out. So he’s probably back there now, trapped in the Witch-bitch’s nasty, sticky web, where I’ve fat chance of doing anything about it.’ I ripped open the sandwich and tossed the packet in the bin in self-disgust. Some friend I was.
She frowned. ‘You’re not responsible for his decision, Genny.’
I pursed my lips. ‘I know. But I’m pretty sure the Witch-bitch has him tagged with a Love spell or a Trust Me crossed with a Compulsion.’
‘Wouldn’t put it past her,’ Mary agreed. ‘But he’d have to be stupid not to realise it after all this time. Those things need to be topped-up to keep working and from what I’ve heard it’s been a while since those two have been a couple.’
‘They’ve got Nicky,’ I said, ‘so they’ll have had enough contact for the Witch-bitch to keep her claws in him.’
‘You’re making excuses for him, Genny,’ she said gently.
I shrugged in defensive acknowledgement. ‘He’s a friend.’
‘And you want him to be more?’
Part of me still did, yes. But it wasn’t that part driving my need to see Finn safe. ‘Not so much now, but that doesn’t mean I want him tied to that bitch.’ Irritably, I picked the lettuce out of my sandwich.
Mary gave me her pensive-cop face as she sipped her coffee. ‘You know we’ve got bacon rolls, don’t you?’
‘BLT’s come with healthy salad stuff,’ I explained deadpan, as I squidged the bread back together.
‘That you don’t eat,’ she replied drily.
‘Hey, I eat the tomatoes.’ I pulled out a slice to demonstrate and popped it in my mouth.
‘Only ’cause they’re smothered in mayonnaise.’ Mary grinned, topped up her coffee, added another three lumps of sugar and stirred. ‘And you know you’re just feeling guilty for throwing Finn out in a fit of temper instead of convincing him of Helen’s evil nature.’
I was. I cut her a frown. ‘You taken a psych course or something recently?’
She gave me a mock-stern look. ‘So, you also know you’ll never convince him she’s evil unless he wants you to?’
Didn’t stop me wanting to try. Or better still, find the Witch-bitch, hitting her over the head with her broomstick and putting us all out of her misery. I sank my teeth into the sandwich, tearing off a large bite.
Mary poked me on the shoulder. ‘So ring him. If nothing else it’ll get the guilt out of your system.’
‘He’s probably back in the Fair Lands by now,’ I mumbled after I’d swallowed.
‘Leave a message then,’ she said. ‘Calling him is for your benefit, not his, capiche?’
I chewed thoughtfully. Mary was right. Finn and the Witch-bitch Helen and their relationship weren’t my problem to sort out, even if I had wanted me and Finn to be more than friends. But leaving him a message to let him know I wasstill his friend and here for him, if or when he came back, would at least make me feel less like I’d thrown him to the wolves.
I dug my phone out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
My phone was dead.
Pushing away ominous thoughts about what that said about my and Finn’s friendship, I squinted at the small cherry-red crystal stuck to the back. Sure enough there was a black starburst crack at its heart; I’d fried the Buffer spell at some point. I sighed and showed Mary. ‘Third time today. First one went soon as I unplugged the damn phone from the charger then, even wearing gloves, my backup did the same. I dropped them off at the office to get fixed. This one’s a spare.’
Mary nodded. ‘Electronics and magic, always iffy, especially with a good dose of high emotions.’
I sniffed. Not to mention I was iffy with magic in the first place.
‘Those Buffers Sylvia makes are good if a bit expensive,’ Mary offered with more sympathy than a fried phone warranted. But then she’d heard me moan about my lack of magical ability more than once.
‘They were Sylvia’s Buffers.’
‘Ahh. You wereangry.’
‘Yep.’ And upset, I added silently. I’d call Finn later, once we’d finished here. After all, it wasn’t like he was around to answer.
‘Want me to let your office know you’re fried?’ Mary asked.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
She fished her phone out and sent a text. ‘Done.’
I nodded, then as she scrolled through her messages, asked, ‘So, any news on the zoo kidnap victims yet?’
‘No.’ Frustration turned her brown eyes almost black. ‘We’re going through all the textbook motions, calling for informants to come forward, etc., but other than the usual crazies, so far that’s a bust. And there’s been no ransom demand of any sort. Which, since they were snatched yesterday morning, the negotiator says there should’ve been by now.’
‘Think it’s an inside job?’
‘Difficult to say without speaking to the victims’ families and associates. Which is hard with the Bangladeshi ambassador still claiming diplomatic immunity.’ Her grip on her cup tightened in exasperation. ‘Apparently he’s spending his time praying for his wife and child’s safety at London’s Central Mosque. Which is all well and good, but if he’d let us help, we might have a shot at finding them.’
‘So, no luck getting that bloodstained kurta the bodyguard was wearing for a scrying?’
‘No. The DI’s put in a written request, but they’ve not even come back with an acknowledgement. Even more worrying is that his security refuse to give us anything to use as a focus, not even some of the kid’s toys.’
‘You were going to try a psychic scry?’ I asked, surprised. Psychic scrying was way harder and less successful than standard scrying, which used hair, nail clippings, blood or other bodily fluids.
‘We were hoping to do a combined. The kid’s only six, so something’s bound to have ended up in his mouth at some point. I still find Emily chewing on things.’ Emily, Mary’s daughter, was nine. ‘It was a long shot, but anything’s worth doing in these situations.’ She gave a wry twist of her lips but I could see the worry etching into her soul; abducted children were always the hardest cases for everyone to deal with, even more so for parents. All that horrific imagining of ‘things that could happen’ combined with the natural protective urges really take a toll.
‘Right,’ I said, after we shared a quiet moment, ‘did anyone else think the ambassador’s henchies were a bit off? Sort of predatory?’
‘I asked around, but seems like you were the only one, Genny.’ She grabbed a pink-iced doughnut topped with a cherry. ‘Could be you just freaked them out.’
The only people I usually freaked out were those who didn’t have a nearby fae community; usually some place, like the Midlands, where too much heavy industry made it uncomfortable living for most fae.
‘The ambassador didn’t seem freaked by me,’ I said.
She picked the cherry off and popped it in her mouth. ‘True. But unfortunately it doesn’t give us any sort of clue to go on. What we need is for him to come to his senses and give up whatever information he or his security staff are holding back. My instinct says it’s the clue to why the victims were snatched.’
‘Think there’s anything I can do? See if I can get him to chat to me off the record?’
She ate her doughnut, munching thoughtfully. ‘It could work, but only if the DI thinks it’s a good idea. I’ll run it by him. If he says yes, maybe you could go and see the ambassador once we’re finished here. Any idea when you’ll be done?’
I headed back out into the hallway and contemplated the long, high stack of leaflet boxes. Each box glowed faintly pink in my sight. Mentally I did the calculations. ‘Individually, it’ll probably take another seven or eight hours. Or I can callthem in groups, which will be an hour, two tops.’ I gave her a questioning look.
Mary shook her head. ‘Sorry, Genny, much as I’d love to say go for it, this one needs to be done individually.’
‘Okay,’ I said, resolving it would be done in the eight hours or less. I was going to make sure of it. That timescale would see us out of here at around ten. Plenty of opportunity after that for an ‘unofficial’ visit to the ambassador, if Hugh authorised it, to see if there was any way I could help the kidnap victims. And still leave me enough time to rush home and get ready for my ‘date’ with Malik.
‘I’d better get on with it, then.’ I gave Mary a determined smile, grabbed an empty crystal and smacked my hand on the nearest box.
‘Great. I’ll go and check on the rest of the girls,’ she said, then strode off down the hall.
Seven and a half hours later, I sighed in relief as I picked up the tape-cutter knife and opened the last box.
Something white zoomed out to hover in front of my face.
A tarot card.
I snatched up the tape-cutter and ran my finger along its serrated edge. Blood welled, scenting the air with copper and honey, and I pressed the bloodied tip to the blank card. The little mouth latched on, sucking up like a starved vamp. Like before, it tickled, but didn’t hurt. Unlike before, I stayed silent until the mouth stopped feeding.
The image appeared on the card. A tall, thin minaret tower, with a covered lookout encircling its top, watching over a building with a shining gold-domed roof. At the building’s base, tiny figures were running around in panic as they tried to keep from being barbecued by the flames and lightning shooting down from the night sky.
The sixteenth card: the Tower. Symbolising change, crisis, and chaos. Unsurprisingly, as the building depicted was the minaret at London’s Central Mosque, the one near Regent’s Park, where the Bangladeshi ambassador was praying for the safe return of his wife and child. Not that I needed the card to tell me the ambassador was in trouble. But the card did tell me that he and the kidnap victims’ all had something to do with finding the fae’s lost fertility.
Now that was surprising, shocking even. But before I had chance to process the idea, the little mouth stopped feeding.
Heart thudding with anticipation, I repeated my original question. ‘Tell me how to find that which is lost, and how to join that which is sundered, to release the fae’s fertility from the pendant and restore it back to them as it was before it was taken.’
One of the tiny figures jumped out of the card to land on the stack of leaflet boxes. It was the ambassador in his crumpled business suit and orange and black striped tie.
‘He knows! He will tell you! For a price! The beasts are coming! They come for you!’
Right. Nothing new there. Maybe time for another open question.‘What does the Emperor want with me?’
‘He seeks Janan!’
Hmm, a nice specific answer, just not an overly informative one. Still, a name was good.‘Who is Janan? Where do I find Janan?’
‘Janan is Beloved of Malak al-Maut! Janan will come to you!’
Janan will come to me?‘Who is Malak al-Maut? When will Janan come to me? Why does the Emperor seek Janan?’
‘Malak al-Maut is to be revered. Janan will come when the time is nigh! The Emperor seeks to use Janan!’
Revered? Time is nigh?Sounded way too End Of The World for my liking, especially with all the fire and lighting shooting through the sky. ‘How does the Emperor intend to use Janan?’
A jagged fork of lightning struck the minaret, setting the mosque on fire and illuminating a huge (compared to the rest of the card’s tiny figures) wolf standing in the shadows. The wolf stalked to the edge of the card, the whites of its human eyes stark in its grey-brown furred face, and growled, the sound raising the hair on my nape. The ambassador turned and fled back into the card, rushing straight into the heart of the small inferno. The wolf – werewolf– chased him.
And the card flared into bright flames then exploded into ashes that dissipated into the ether.
Fifty minutes later, my taxi rumbled to a halt at the entrance to London’s Central Mosque.
I peered out of the window and was relieved to see that the mosque wasn’t on fire and that the golden dome was shining serenely against a backdrop of twilit grey sky, unmarred by shooting flames or jagged forks of lightning. Not that I’d really expected any of that, but it had crossed my mind that the ambassador and the mosque might be under a physical attack rather than a metaphorical one.
Of course, that could all change now I was here.
The word from Hugh, via Mary, when I’d asked if I could talk to the ambassador, had been that the diplomatic situation was too delicate without it being fully authorised by someone much higher up the food chain, and then they’d want to know why. Which meant filling them in on the tarot cards and the fae’s trapped fertility. Something I was pretty sure the fae would object to. I got the unspoken message. If I wanted to find out what the ambassador and his missing wife and child had to do with the fae’s problems, I was ostensibly on my own. Plausible deniability meant that if my visit ended with the shit hitting the fan, the only one it would stick to was me.
So I’d skipped out of the Harley Street crime scene and grabbed the taxi here, giving Mary the excuse (that she could repeat, if need be) I had to rush for a date.
It wasn’t a lie. I did have a date – at midnight, with Malik.
And I did have to rush. I checked the time – ten forty: I had an hour and twenty minutes. It should be enough time to have an ambassadorial chat, head home, get ready and then walk to the Blue Heart vamp club in Leicester Square. Only knowing my luck and London’s traffic, it probably wasn’t.
I offered the driver an extra tenner on top to let me use his phone. After a brief haggle, he agreed one handsfree call for twenty quid; not that he wasn’t trusting, or was trying to rip me off, of course. Oh no, he was just worried my magic touch would nix his phone.
Yeah, and trolls keep cats as pets.
I gave him the number and we both listened for the pickup.
‘Malik al-Khan.’
My heart gave its usual leap at the sound of his remote, not-quite-English accent.
‘Hi,’ I said brightly, conscious of the driver’s avid curiosity (which I suspected was another reason he’d refused to hand over his phone). ‘It’s me. I just wanted to let you know I’ve had an urgent appointment come up, so may end up running a bit late for our meeting at midnight.’
There was a pause and I suddenly wondered if I should’ve given him a heads up that ‘me’ meant me, or if I was going to end up embarrassed when Malik asked who was calling. Relief flashed through me as he said, ‘Genevieve,’ then continued in a slightly perplexed tone, ‘Why are you calling from another’s phone?’
‘Mine’s fried,’ I said, ‘so the taxi driver’s letting me use his. For a fee. Handsfree,’ I finished flatly, partly as a tacit warning, but also as the bitch in me wanted to see the disappointment in the driver’s eyes.
‘That is . . . generous of him.’ The thread of amusement in Malik’s cool voice almost surprised a snort from me. ‘Where is this urgent appointment?’
‘London’s Central Mosque. It’s in connection with the situation we discussed the other night.’
‘Then thank you for letting me know, Genevieve. I will see you later.’
The phone went dead.
I blinked. I’d been sort of thinking about asking for his help, like maybe he could send out a search party if I was more than an hour late. Evidently that wasn’t to be. Still, at least he knew where I was. And why. Which was some sort of failsafe. And my own disconcertion at the call’s quick end was nothing compared to the driver’s dissatisfaction. No doubt he’d been hoping for some juicy gossip to sell to the papers.
But I’d be stupid to rely only on Malik as a backup, so, after another haggle, I grudgingly gave the driver sixteen pounds and thirty-nine pence (the rest of my cash) and he sent a text to Tavish for me:
