Текст книги "The Shifting Price of Prey"
Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 33 страниц)
Chapter Fifteen
‘Nae yet, doll,’ Tavish said. ‘Could be I’ll find out more soon as I get into the Emperor’s website.’
Shock rocked me. Tavish is a techno-geek for hire – he’s rumoured to freelance for the Ministry of Defence – so for him not to have hacked the website meant it had some serious firewalls. ‘You haven’t got in yet?’
‘Aye, but ’twill nae take long,’ he added, determination roughening his voice. ‘So ’tis naught to worry about.’
‘Okay,’ I said, then it dawned on me why he’d been incommunicado. It wasn’t the body in the river, or not only that; the arrogant kelpie hadn’t wanted to admit the Emperor’s security had beaten him. Males and their egos! Good thing he’d won himself major kudos points by helping Katie. Though thinking of egotistical males– ‘Oh, yeah, there’s something else. Did you know the Fertility spell in the pendant is leaking?’
‘The spell is leaking?’ Genuine surprise sounded in his voice.
‘Yes, if I’m to believe Mad Max. I ran into him’ – well, his roundhouse kick anyway –‘and, long story short, that’s what he told me. I think it’s the cause of the problems I have whenever you use your magic, not a side-effect from that Chastity spell.’ I told him my theory about my abstinence combined with the leaking fertility magic inadvertently setting me up for my own impromptu fertility rite.
He snorted. ‘’Tis nae something I’d have imagined being the cause. Any times I’ve been part of the fertility rites, the magic is nae picky like that, ’tis more indiscriminate. And you ken the witch wore the pendant for all those years and she dinna have a problem with it.’
The witch was Witch-bitch Helen Crane. I sniffed. ‘As far as we know Helen didn’t have a problem with it, but she’s not around to ask.’ And it would just be like the evil Witch-bitch to have sicced the pendant with more than one nasty little spell. After all, she’d magically booby-trapped it, so no one who knew she had it, could snatch it from her without the fae’s fertility being lost for good. ‘Sure you don’t know anything? I don’t trust Mad Max to give me all the info.’
‘Aye, Maxim isnae the most trustworthy source,’ Tavish agreed, then added hesitantly, ‘but you could maybe ask Ana. She’s had a fair bit to do with the pendant over the years.’
We said our goodbyes and I chewed my lip, thinking over his suggestion.
Ana: my faeling niece, and Mad Max’s daughter. Her ‘fair bit to do’ with the pendant had been at the hands of the deranged baby-making wizard Dr Craig, who was the mastermind behind the ToLA case and with whom Witch-bitch Helen had been partners in crime. Helen had shared the pendant’s magic with him and poor Ana had been his first victim/experiment. Sadly she’d suffered his baby-making experiments more than once and of the four kids she’d given birth to, only one was actually hers – Freya (her daughter and Mad Max’s grandkid) – and now Ana was pregnant again with another of the evil doctor’s baby-making experiments. He and Helen made a matched pair.
I was glad I’d killed him.
Needless to say, anything to do with the Fertility pendant wasn’t Ana’s favourite topic. And while she’d been friendly when we’d met during the aftermath of the ToLA case, and was currently relying on me for regular donations of blood for Freya, that friendliness hadn’t lasted past our meeting. My hopes that I could get to know some of my sidhe-sided family had been destroyed like a crackedspell.
But hey, at least Ana didn’t want to kill me like the rest of my sidhe family, so I counted that as a win. And it wasn’t as if we had any friendship to upset if I asked her about my problems with the Fertility pendant. Not to mention I was in the right place to do so, since Trafalgar Square is Ana’s home.
Or at least, the entrance to her home is through the square’s left fountain, since she lives in Between.
Betweenis the space (unsurprisingly) between the Fair Lands and the humans’ world, and is malleable enough that anyone can create their own private out-of-this-world patch . . . if they have enough power and the magic likes them. Obviously I didn’t; I couldn’t even get into Betweenon my own, never mind set up home there.
I squashed the niggling frustration and envy that Ana, a faeling, could do the sort of magic most full-blooded fae would struggle with, when I couldn’t even castmy own Privacy spells but had to buy them instead, and phoned her. Okay, she probably didn’t want to talk about the Fertility pendant, but I didn’t want to take the chance that next time the magic decided I needed to get my rocks off, it would pick some poor unsuspecting human and I’d end up fucking him or her to death.
‘Genny.’ Ana sounded oddly wary, almost as if she was expecting my call. Had Mad Max talked to her? Only as far as I knew she refused to have anything to do with her father, because he was a vamp.
I put on a bright voice. ‘Hey, I’m in the square, catching pixies, any chance we could have a chat?’
‘I’m not at home right now,’ she said flatly.
Not home? But it was nearly ten at night and she was going to give birth at any moment. Though she was an adult, so really not my call. ‘Oh, right. Mind if I ask you something, then?’
‘I’m busy, Genny—’
‘It’s about the Fertility pendant,’ I said, jumping in with both feet.
Silence, then a sharp, ‘What about it?’
‘I’ve been having a few problems with it and when I ran into Maxim last night he told me the spell in the pendant leaks. He said I could end up re-enacting my very own fertility rite if I’m not careful. And I really don’t want to end up picking up some poor human and doing him some damage because of it.’
She blew out a dismissive breath. ‘You don’t have to worry. Helen couldn’t stop the pendant leaking, but she bespelled it to focusthe leak. The magic fixes on anyone you know and find attractive enough that you want to have sex with them, who isn’t already in an ongoing sexual relationship.’
Oh. ‘Right, so I’m not going to see some hot guy on the Underground who happens to be single and want to jump his bones then?’
‘No, I shouldn’t think so. Helen didn’t want it causing her any hassles like that.’
No, she wouldn’t. Helen the Witch-bitch was all about protecting her own interests.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but it did sort of fixate on Maxim last night and I know he’s your dad, but really, there’s no way in hell I find him attractive.’ Not to mention the whole icky incest thing.
Another longer silence, then, ‘I’ll email you a recipe for a Purging Poultice spell which will help, but if you’re going to continue living with the pendant, the best way to keep the Fertility magic under control is to have sex on a regular basis.’
Not something I could guarantee doing right now . . . though the idea of ‘regular sex’ with Malik . . . was notsomething to think about in the middle of Trafalgar Square, not unless I wanted to take a dip in the cold fountain in the next five minutes. I sat straighter, got my excited libido under control and my mind back on track. ‘Thanks for the spell, Ana, but that doesn’t answer my question about Maxim.’
An annoyed huff came over the line. ‘My father and Helen know each other extremely well, remember, so the spell probably recognised him.’
It took a moment for what she meant to sink in. ‘Are you saying that Helen and Maxim have been—’
‘Yes,’ she interrupted, ‘for years. But I do notwant to discuss my father’s sex life.’
I didn’t want to either, but– Helen the Witch-bitch and Mad Max had been having an affair, or whatever, for years? Wow, I hadn’t seen that coming. Though thinking about it, I should have. I’d known they had a kid together: Jack. Helen had given him up at birth to be a sidhe changeling, and he was now one of the Morrígan’s ravens. He was the same age as me and Ana, and was another baby conceived by way of the Fertility pendant. But even knowing about Jack, and that Mad Max and Helen had got it together when she was a teenager, I’d always imagined it had been a one-off. If it wasn’t—
‘What about Finn?’ I asked, my indignation on his behalf breaking my self-imposed promise not to think about him since he’d cut me out of his life. ‘Helen jumped the broom with him for seven years. Was she still seeing your dad then?’
‘Seriously, Genny,’ Ana snapped, ‘I am notdiscussing it with you. And anyway, I don’t know. I don’t want anything to do with Maxim. He might be my father, but he’s a vampire. I don’t want him near me, or Freya. I never have done. It’s down to him that my mother is dead. She was looking for him when the other vampires took her. I don’t want the same happening to me, or, The Mother protect us, to Freya. Maxim will never be part of our lives. And if I didn’t need your blood for Freya, you wouldn’t be either. You’re too close to the vampires. It makes you dangerous.’
Well, that told me why my hopes of a happy family friendship had fizzled like a damp squib. Not that I could blame her really. Not when she was only trying to protect herself and her kid.
‘Look,’ Ana rushed on, ‘you wanted to know how to deal with the Fertility spell. I’ve told you. Either stop living with it or start having sex, I really don’t care. And whatever you do, don’t get it frustrated by getting all excited and then stopping. Oh, and its response will be stronger if you or the other person uses magic. Now I’m busy, so goodbye.’
The line went dead, leaving me staring morosely at the pixie who was now doing muscle-men poses on the lion’s head, despite only having an audience of three pigeons and a bag lady. The old woman gave a desultory clap, and part of me wanted to go back a year or so to when catching pixies and getting booed by the crowds seemed like my only problem.
I sighed. Still, at least I now knew the Fertility spell wasn’t going to have me Glamouring passing strangers and forcing them to have sex. And that the only people I had to worry about were friends I found attractive. Which had to be why it was only when Tavish used magic that I got all hot and bothered; I just wasn’t that into him.
My phone rang. A tiny flame of hope that it was Ana ringing back died as the display said ‘Katie’.
‘Hi, hon, what’s up?’
‘Hey, Genny. Sorry, but Harrods have got problems with their Magic Mirror spells in the lingerie changing rooms again.’
I groaned. ‘Thought I got it sorted this morning.’
‘No such luck,’ she said, commiserating.
I gave the last pixie a considering look. In the last couple of seconds he’d curled up like a cat on the lion’s head and was snoring away. I didn’t have to catch him – pixies are only really a problem when a pack of them get together – so this one could wait for another day. And the one I’d already caught was easy enough to deal with; the delivery service we used to ship the pixies back to Cornwall was nearby.
‘Okay,’ I said, sliding down off the bronze lion. ‘Tell Harrods I’m on my way.’
Midnight. I got home to find my flat, as usual since Sylvia and Ricou had moved in, was pitch-black. They’d left the blackout blinds down again. I flipped the light switch in a vain hope that the protective Wards hadn’t fried the electricity for the umpteenth time, but as usual nothing happened. Sighing, I bumped the front door shut with my hip, dropped the bags of Spellcrackers files I’d lugged up the five flights of stairs and, as I waited for the Ward to release its sticky hold on me, pressed my forehead tiredly against the cool wood of the door.
I’d gone for gold on this last trip to Harrods, stripping and absorbingthe Magic Mirror spells from the whole store, not just the lingerie section, before the store’s resident hedge-witch salt-washed the mirrors. They were going to leave them spell-free overnight as a test before recasting the spells. I’d absorbed, as an added precaution, to dispose of it away from the store. The job itself had been relatively quick and easy – I’d been there for less than an hour – and other than feeling like I’d swallowed a set of hyperactive pinballs for once the magic hadn’t hit me with any of its quirky side-effects. Or so I’d thought.
But the consequences had crept up on me. Without realising how I’d got there, I’d been staring fixedly at a mirror in the doorway of a Chinese restaurant, silently debating whether my left eye was slightly larger than my right, and if I’d look prettier if the sharp angles of my chin were rounder. A tiny Asian woman, stereotypically old and wizened, had shuffled up to me and pressed a fortune cookie into my palm, breaking my obsession with my looks. I’d thanked her. She treated me to a toothless grin, then shooed me on my way.
I’d kept my gaze on the pavement after that.
Now the damn stuff was nagging me to rush to the nearest mirror and check myself out.
Another quick look wouldn’t hurt.
I pushed away from the door, turned and headed towards my bedroom– and let out a strangled squeak as my nose ended up mashed into the rough bark of a small tree. Sylvia, my dryad flatmate.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Oops, sorry, Genny,’ Sylvia breathed, the rustling laughter in her voice belying the apology. ‘Didn’t hear you come in.’
A crack like a snapping twig, and faint light bathed the living room. The light came from a football-sized globe. It was hovering inside my chandelier, making the long strands of amber– and gold-glass beads sparkle as if they’d been sprinkled with fairy glitter. One of Sylvia’s Moonshine spells. Since I couldn’t activateit I preferred electricity, though the spell wasprettier.
Sylvia was pretty too. Her green eyes shone bright as spring buds, delicate branches with soft, arrow-shaped leaves curled down to her shoulders (she’d stopped pruning her scalp now she was pregnant, needing the extra boost for the baby), and her diaphanous pink negligée floated around her knees as if shifting in a gentle wind. The negligée was embroidered– appropriately, since her tree was Prunus avium– with tiny red cherries down the deep V of its neckline.
‘Damn it, Sylvia!’ I gingerly felt my nose for damage as I glared at her exposed chest. She heaved an appeasing sigh as she automatically ‘dressed’ herself in her usual waking Glamour; the green-grey bark-like skin I’d run into morphed into the pale pink smooth flesh of her more usual ‘Hello Boys’ cleavage, near enough swallowing the hen’s-egg-sized sapphire pendant she wore.
The pendant containing the fae’s trapped fertility.
All my problems stemmed from that innocent-looking sapphire.
And the damn thing still kept throwing new ones at me.
Though if it weren’t for that pendant I wouldn’t even be here and it looked good nestled between Sylvia’s generous breasts. Which were utterly fabulous, now I was taking the time to look at them. Lush and firm and soft. I frowned at the oxymoron, wondering what her boobs would feel like. I’d been with girls before, when I’d been in Rosa’s vamp body; it wasn’t my preferred choice sexually, but most vamps don’t usually discriminate and I’d been more interested in their venom-infected blood than their bodies, so I’d never really taken much notice of another girl’s breasts. Only Sylvia’s were fascinating, not in a lusting-after-them way, but full and nicely rounded . . .
‘Genny?’
. . . whereas mine were way smaller. Tiny even. In fact, I was virtually flat-chested. I could never get a cleavage like Sylvia’s, not even with a padded bra. Maybe I could get a pair of those silicone chicken breast thingies . . . or there was always plastic surgery . . . hmm, that might be the easiest, especially with my quick healing . . . and now I was earning more I could probably afford—
‘Genny!’
I jerked my gaze from Sylvia’s boobs to her exasperated face. ‘What?’
‘Why are you staring at my chest?’
‘I’m not.’
She gave me a ‘pull the other one’ look. ‘You were!’
Shit, she was right. Embarrassed heat stung my cheeks. What the fuck was wrong with me? Mentally I shook my head, shoving stupid thoughts about plastic surgery where they belonged.
‘Sorry, Syl,’ I said, stepping back, ‘I was just admiring . . .’ I waved my hand vaguely at her.
‘Gosh, ’s’okay, Genny.’ She smiled, a pleased glint in her eyes. ‘My boobies are glorious, aren’t they? They’re even bigger now I’m pregnant, and Ricou loves them. Says they’re—’
‘Don’t wanna know, Syl!’ I quickly held my hands up before she hit me with TMI about her and Ricou’s love life. Something she was fond of doing. Dryads don’t do personal boundaries well. ‘What were you standing around in the dark for anyway?’
‘Waiting up for you, of course,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But, gosh, I really didn’t expect you to be so late, and I was tired, so I was just having a little nap.’ She looked down, and slowly lifted one foot then the other as she carefully pulled the net of hair-like roots out of the wooden floorboards. The scent of green, growing things filled the room. ‘Baby Grace has been kicking like a lumberjack in hob-nailed boots all day,’ she added, snagging my hand and placing it on her barely there bump with a contented smile.
Baby Grace. Joy and happiness spread like warm honey through me. Baby Grace was the one wonderful thing to come out of the sacrifice my friend Grace had made to save me last Hallowe’en. I’d unintentionally trapped her soul in her pentacle necklace, but once I’d realised I’d let her go, and her soul had moved on into Sylvia’s baby. I wasn’t clear if Grace was being reborn, reincarnated, or how it all worked, but for me Sylvia’s baby having Grace’s soul made her and her mother even more special.
‘That’s my gorgeous girl,’ I murmured, grinning as Baby Grace said hello in her usual enthusiastic way. Then I quickly modified the grin to a sympathetic grimace as Sylvia shot me a narrowed look, one that heralded another lecture about babies and bladders. ‘You really shouldn’t be waiting up for me, Syl. C’mon, off to bed with you,’ I said, gently trying to steer her towards the oak wardrobe hulking near my bedroom door.
Through the back of the wardrobe was Sylvia and Ricou’s own private patch of Between; their magically created living space outside the humans’ world. Whoever introduced Sylvia to the Narnia books had a lot to answer for; if it hadn’t been for them, my protest that my one-bedroom attic flat was too small for us all to share, and that the pregnant pair should live somewhere safer and more comfortable, would’ve held water. Though, truthfully, while having Sylvia and Ricou as flatmates, was strange at times and not without its complications, it was great.
Sylvia pouted. ‘But I wanted to talk to you, Genny. And look, I’ve got all your stuff ready.’ The light globe brightened to full-moon strength as she draped an arm over my shoulders and waved a graceful hand at the floor where there was a large sheet of blue plastic.
The blue plastic was my magic neutralising gear. The sheet was marked with two circles, a large eight foot one with a smaller three foot one offset inside. I’d drawnthe circles with a mix of ground amber, dried unicorn faeces and my own blood after dissolving juiced-up ricepaper runes – very expensive, very elaborate, ricepaper runes – into the mixture to power it up. The magical ink meant I didn’t have to use the traditional sand and salt (cheap, but hell to cart around and messy to clean up) or buy one of the rare etched-by-dwarves silver and copper circle chains (easier to carry, but even with the inbuilt protections they’re a magnet for thieves). And though pricy to make, my blue plastic spell-neutraliser kit was worthless to anyone else since it was keyedonly to me. I was quietly proud of it – the result of hours of painstaking trial and error – and was thinking of patenting it, once I’d worked out how to bring the cost of the runes down.
If I could castmy own spells, my life would be so much easier.
I shoved the constant frustration away and gave Sylvia a quick hug. ‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’
‘Gosh, no worries, Genny.’ Sylvia grinned happily. ‘It’s the least I can do. And, look, I’ve even put salt out for you.’
‘Oh, thanks,’ I said again, eyeing the six-inch block of salt sitting in the smaller circle. Sylvia hated salt, always saying that just thinking about it clogged up her sap, so she really was being helpful . . . so helpful that my ‘what’s she after’ antennae started twitching.
She stroked a finger down the lapel of my jacket. ‘This is new, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
She tilted her head curiously. ‘What happened to the clothes you were wearing?’
‘Got damaged when I tangled with a spell.’ Not a lie, but way better than telling her Malik ripped them off me. The last thing I wanted was an interrogation about my love life, however well intentioned.
‘Goodness. Must have been a hard one.’
An image of Malik naked flashed in my mind. Oh boy!I swallowed, then managed a weak, ‘Yep. It was.’
‘Still, the jacket is nice. Not your usual colour, but the lilac suits you. Now why don’t I help you out of it’ – she grasped the jacket and I let her tug it off, only just managing not to jump as her hand trailed down my spine and came to rest on my hip – ‘and while you’re doing your spell– cracking, I’ll mix you up an extra-special Bloody Mary and we can have a lovely cosy chat, just us girls together.’ She chuckled low in my ear, squeezed my butt then headed for the fridge.
I watched her, thoughtful. As passes go, it was about as subtle as if she’d flashed me a neon sign. Question was, why? I might have thought it was because of my boob-staring, if not for the salt.
Not that I was too surprised. Sylvia didn’t have any gender preference when it came to sex, other than her own, which seeing she was co-sexual and had all the accessories she needed was whatever she wanted it to be. She preferred to be female, though a few months ago, when her mother had sent Sylvia to court me in order to break the curse and she discovered my partner choice was male, she’d offered to ‘change’. But that was then. Now she was pregnant and happy, or so I’d thought, with Ricou.
She turned, a highball glass filled with ice in her hand. ‘Gosh, haven’t you started yet, Genny?’ She rattled the glass. ‘Hurry up, otherwise this will melt.’
‘I’m wondering why I’m getting the special treatment?’
A gleam lit her green eyes. ‘Maybe I just want to see you naked.’
Right. ‘What about Ricou?’
‘Oh, gosh, he’d like to see you naked too.’ She smiled a little too widely. ‘But he’s out on search duty.’ Her fingers closed around the sapphire pendant nestled in her cleavage.
Ricou was feeling guilty that he was going to be a dad again, when the rest of the fae were still in fertility limbo. Consequently he was spending a lot of time searching for a way to release the trapped fertility, and not a lot with Sylvia.
‘So, you’re hitting on me because you’re feeling lonely?’ A possibility, but doubtful given the way she was clutching the pendant so hard her knuckles were turning white.
‘Golly, of course not,’ she said, banging the glass down with frustration. ‘No. I’m hitting on you because I like you, Genny. And anyway, Ricou and I always share.’
‘So you’re interested in a threesome deal?’
‘If you are?’ she said hopefully.
Crap, maybe she really was serious. ‘Um, Syl, you know I like you, and Ricou too, but I thought you realised neither of you is my type.’ Not to mention she was pregnant, so was this really the time to expand their relationship to include anyone else?
‘Fiddlesticks!’ She threw her hands in the air. ‘I knew this wouldn’t work.’
