Текст книги "The Cold Kiss of Death"
Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 23 страниц)
Chapter Nine
Tavish’s underground living area hadn’t changed since my last visit. The walls were grey blocks of rough granite, much like the RAF monument above, and the floor was flagged with smooth dark-grey slabs. To one side of the high-ceilinged space was a low black suede sofa. A black granite slab sat solidly in front of it on a huge white long-haired skin rug belonging to some animal that had never roamed the humans’ world. I’d never felt comfortable walking on the rug with shoes on, let alone with bare feet—something told me the granite slab wasn’t just there as a convenient coffee-table—so I skirted round it and headed for Tavish’s office. A glass wall divided it from the rest of the space.
The glass wasn’t just a stylish break between his living and working areas. When I looked, the complicated Buffer spell that protected all his computers from getting zapped by magic lit the glass up like a sun-flare. And there was a lot of gear to protect: a three-high by five-wide bank of flat-screen computer monitors curved around a selection of keyboards and rollerball mice posed on flexi-stalks. It looked like a cross between a giant’s electronic bouquet and a hacker’s mega-expensive wet dream.
I pulled open the glass door; the low background hum of the electronics buzzed against my ears and I swallowed back the flat taste of the ionised, recycled air. Most of the monitors were playing sections of one large screensaver—a coral reef with darting shoals of tropical fish, and a pair of sharp-toothed sharks swimming lazily from one screen to another—but the monitor front and centre was paused on the CCTV footage showing ‘me’ standing in front of Tomas’ bakery talking to the florist’s boy.
My stomach did an anxious little jump at seeing it again. I hooked one leg under me and settled into the leather chair, reaching for the nearest keyboard—
‘Tavish says to remember the bracelets and the gloves,’ Finn said quietly from behind me.
I stopped, hand in mid-air. ‘Thanks,’ I said and snagged a pair of the extra-thick surgical gloves from the box under the desk. I snapped them on and pulled them up over my wrists, then gingerly picked up two silver cuffs from the tray next to the box. They were half an inch wide and peppered with industrial-grade diamond chips. I clasped them round my wrists on top of the gloves so the silver didn’t burn my skin. The cuffs and gloves were probably overkill—seeing as each computer had its own individual Buffer spell glowing away—but I wasn’t going to take the chance of frying their hard drives by not wearing the magical inhibitors. Tavish might like me, but not that much.
‘Are you okay?’ Finn’s voice held concern.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, still simmering with annoyance over the fight between him and Tavish.
‘You don’t look fine, Gen.’
I glanced down at the baggy T-shirt that was all I was wearing—Joseph’s boxers had been too large for me, and none of the fetish underwear in the mirrored wardrobes had appealed. Tavish’s Clean-Up spell had dried and de-sanded the T-shirt, but that was it. I sighed. Okay, I didn’t look so good, but hey, what did he expect after all I’d been through? Explosion and deep sea swimming anyone?
I turned to look at Finn. He was leaning against the wall next to the monitors, his arms loosely crossed. His horns had shortened to a couple of inches above his dark blond hair and his sharp feral features were Glamoured back to his more usual clean-cut human handsome. There were no signs of his recent fight; his black chinos and black dress shirt with its thin electric-blue stripes and—I checked—highly polished black boots looked like he’d just taken them from his wardrobe, which he probably had, using magic.
I shrugged. ‘Not all of us have the ability to callfresh clothes whenever we want to.’
‘I’m not talking about the clothes, Gen.’ He came over to crouch by the side of my chair. ‘I’m talking about this.’ He gently touched a pink patch of skin on my forearm. A tingle slipped inside me before the cuffs glowed and shut it down. ‘You’ve been injured.’ Anxiety shaded the moss-green of his eyes.
‘I’ll heal good as new in a few days,’ I said firmly, still furious that he hadn’t thought to check I was okay before he’d started chucking Stun spells around. I narrowed my eyes. ‘What are you doing here, anyway, besides your little spat with Tavish out there?’
‘Hell’s thorns, Gen,’ he said, exasperated. ‘What do you think I’m doing here? You’ve been missing since Tuesday morning; I’ve been worried about you.’
‘And now I’m not missing any more.’ I tilted my head enquiringly. ‘Are you here to help, or is there some other reason?’
A puzzled line creased between his brows. ‘Of course I’m here to help, why else?’
‘Oh, maybe so you can tell Detective Inspector Helen Crane, your ex-witch wife, where I am so she can come and arrest me?’ I said, not keeping the suspicion out of my voice.
‘Helen’s a police officer, Gen.’ He straightened, his face closing up. ‘She has to go by the evidence.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Disappointment twisted through me. Of course he’d take her side; it didn’t seem to matter that she might be looking at the evidence through blinkered eyes gone green with jealousy. I turned back to the monitors, clicked on the play button and started the CCTV footage rolling. The monitor-me stuck her hands on her hips outside the bakery and looked around.
‘She doesn’t need to arrest me anyway,’ I said after a moment. ‘I’ve got an alibi, someone who can prove I wasn’t with Tomas when he was killed.’
‘Who?’ Finn’s reflection appeared in the screen. I blinked as another reflection, Cosette’s, shadowed his. I swivelled the chair round to look and my knees bumped into Finn’s legs he was so close, but she wasn’t there. Damn, it was bad enough being haunted by a ghost without letting my imagination run away with me.
‘Who’s your alibi?’ Finn asked again.
I frowned up at him, then opened my mouth to say Malik—Then I didn’t as my mind hit a snag I hadn’t considered before. Not only was Malik laid out with his injuries right now, but naming a vamp as my alibi was going to be like waving a bloody flag in the face of the Witches’ Council. It was one of those ‘damned if I do and damned if I don’t’ things. Shit.
‘It’s a sucker, isn’t it?’ Accusation sharpened Finn’s voice. ‘Gods, Gen, why?’
I sighed. ‘I wasn’t withhim, Finn, he was following me. But it does mean he can vouch for my movements after I got home.’
He pushed his fingers through his hair, a worried line creasing between his brows. ‘You weren’t actually with him in person when the human was killed?’
‘No,’ I said, turning back to watch the screens. ‘I was running. ’
On the monitor the florist’s boy came out of the shop and I picked my way past his flower buckets to talk to him.
‘The problem, Gen,’ Finn said, ‘is that even if you’d been with this vampire, I’m not sure how it would work as an alibi now. There’s been a lot of speculation in the newspapers, and quite a lot of the anti-fae prejudices have resurfaced.’ He paused. ‘Even the barrister I spoke to isn’t hopeful. He said that because you’re fae, he’d be happier if you’d been in a room with half a dozen goblins watching you, to testify you didn’t use any magic. He thinks that all it would need is the prosecution to suggest you could kill like that without physically being there ...’ He trailed off.
On the recording I stripped off my sweatshirt and dunked it in a bucket, then disappeared inside the bakery—walking into the trap.
‘So unless the real murderer puts in an appearance, I’m already tried, judged and convicted,’ I finished for him. ‘Looks like your ex has done a bang-up job,’ I added bitterly.
‘You disappearing didn’t help, Gen,’ he returned angrily.
‘Finn,’ I snapped, ‘Helen’s got it in for me because of you. You might think your relationship with her is over, but she doesn’t, and I’m the one that’s getting the short end of a very vindictive stick.’ I clenched my fists, my fingers sweating inside the plastic gloves. ‘You need to sort it out with her.’
He swung the chair round again and leaned down, dismay flickering in his eyes. ‘It isover between Helen and me, Gen, but it’s complicated. I didn’t realise it would affect you as it has.’ He dipped his head. ‘My apologies, my Lady.’
I stared at him, incredulous. ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing with all this “my Lady” crap, but you can forget it.’ I turned back to watch the monitors. ‘And just for the record, “complicated” is not an excuse, it’s a way of life.’
The screen in front of me looked down on an empty, rain-blurred street. The stack of cardboard boxes outside the florist’s was doing a precarious Tower of Pisa lean to one side. The door to the baker’s stood open. The shop window was a blur of white. As I listened to Finn’s quiet breathing behind me I watched the empty street, wishing something would appear on the screen that would solve everything—the murder, Finn, the vamps, and all the other problems screwing up my life—so my own life could stop being so damn complicated. I almost laughed out loud. No way was that ever going to happen! In reality my life had never been that normal anyway.
‘No one could find you,’ he said. I heard the question in his voice, but ignored it. The chair moved as he gripped the back of it. ‘Helen even had a chapter of coven witches cast a Seek-and-Find spell. It came up negative.’
Strange ... I tapped my fingers on the chair arm, thinking. On the monitor the florist’s lad picked up a couple of boxes from the leaning stack and carried them into his shop. A Seek-and-Find spell, with the power of a coven chapter behind it—‘When did they cast it?’
‘Not till late last night. Helen had to wait for a warrant, and budgetary approval.’
“Last night” I’d still been out of it, doped up on morphine under Joseph’s medical care. Still, the spell should have found me; so why hadn’t it?
‘I watched the coven cast, Gen,’ Finn said. ‘When they couldn’t find you, that’s when I realised you had to be in Between. The spell wouldn’t be able to locate you if you were ...’
Of course, Betweenwas out of this world. Literally. Except I hadn’t been—
‘... here with Tavish,’ Finn finished almost with a growl.
‘What?’ I said, irritated at his tone. ‘Why the hell would you think I was here anyway?’
‘I phoned the bastard and asked if he knew where you were,’ he said tersely. ‘He swore he didn’t.’
‘That’s because he didn’t.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose; my 3V headache was making its reappearance. ‘If he made you think otherwise, he was more likely doing his usual and yanking your—’ I stopped; satyrs are touchy about their tails, for some weird reason. ‘He was just doing his mischief-making thing,’ I carried on. Finn had to know what Tavish could be like since he’d just waltzed straight into his home—even if it appeared the pair of them had some sort of jealous rivalry going on over me. Something I wasn’t too impressed with! ‘I got here not long before you turned up and decided to go all postal!’ The florist’s lad stuck his lip out, admiring his silver ring in the shop window, then turned to look behind him at the empty street. ‘And why the hell were you lobbing Stun spells about anyway?’
‘So where were you then?’ Finn ignored my question.
I pursed my lips, still annoyed. ‘Staying with a friend.’
‘What’s going on, Gen?’ he demanded. ‘Why’d you disappear like that without even a phone call?’
I snorted in disbelief. ‘It’s difficult to use the phone when you’re unconscious.’
Finn jerked me round to face him. ‘What do you mean, unconscious?’
‘Un-con-scious,’ I said sarcastically. ‘It’s what happens when you get blown up, or haven’t you been watching the news?’
‘But you didn’t get blown up, Gen.’ Confusion crossed his face. ‘You were seen running away before the explosion—’
‘What?’ I grabbed his arms. ‘Who by?’
‘Him!’ He pointed at the screen. ‘The boy in the shop next door. His statement says you went in to sort things out with the baker and left shortly after, and then the place exploded. There’s nothing on the recording to back him up, but he’s so adamant about it that Helen thinks you used some sort of Compulsion or Memory-Altering spell on him.’
Crap! I hadn’t—not to mention I couldn’t afford any spell that expensive—but Malik had—or at least, not a spell ... he’d mind-locked the boy when he’d stopped him phoning the police as I’d asked.
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t,’ I said, not sure if I was pissed off that Finn thought I’d deliberately disappeared after the explosion or mollified that he was now looking gutted that he hadn’t turned up at my sickbed laden with fruit and flowers.
Then remembering that Grace had advised me to talk to him ... I did just that.
I filled him in on most of what had happened, leaving out certain things—like the blood-flush, and where exactlyI’d been, of course. ‘So the first I really knew about anything was when I came round earlier today,’ I finally finished.
‘Gods, Gen, I’m sorry. If I’d realised you’d been that badly hurt’—he brushed a strand of hair away from my face, remorse darkening his eyes—‘I wouldn’t have been so angry, or stupid. You know I’ll help you all I can, don’t you?’
A tense knot I hadn’t known was there loosened inside me and I realised now I wasn’t feeling quite so scared, or alone. And what about Helen?said a snide little voice in my head. It’s pointless bringing her up again, I thought, and silenced it.
‘Thanks, Finn,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it. And I’m okay now’—I gave a rueful smile—‘other than all this ...’ I waved at the monitors. ‘I’m hoping there’s some clue to be found on the recording.’
He hesitated, as if he was going to say something, then smoothed his hands over my shoulders. ‘Okay.’ He straightened, lips quirking in a half-smile. ‘I’ll watch with you.’
‘I didn’t realise you and Tavish knew each other,’ I said absently as I turned back to the screens. ‘You never mentioned it.’
‘I’ve known Tavish since I was a kid.’ Finn’s voice was quiet, thoughtful.
I leaned over and hit the rewind symbol on the monitor and the recording zoomed backwards. Time to see if anyone got to the bakery before me.
‘Where is Tavish, anyway?’
‘Probably playing with his food,’ he muttered. ‘There was a jumper two nights ago, off London Bridge. The body’s not surfaced yet.’
The hand clutching at my ankle when I’d been in Tavish’s sea came back to me. I frowned up at Finn. ‘Tavish abides by River Lore; he only takes those who want to die. You know that.’
‘Is that what he told you?’ His mouth turned down with derision. ‘Don’t be naïve, Gen. River Lore is just a nicety for the humans, and all he truly agreed was not to actually charm them into the water. He’s never given up his first claim on whoever he finds in the river. And anyway, he’s a kelpie; it’s part of who he is.’
‘What?’ I snorted. ‘Like you’re a fertility fae and I’m sidhe so it doesn’t matter what we want or what we care about, we just succumb to the magic?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then why should Tavish be any different?’
Finn shoved a hand through his hair. ‘He’s spent centuries being different, Gen. He can’t change that.’
‘Is that why you were throwing Stun spells at him? You thought you were saving me?’ I huffed in exasperation. ‘Will you stop doing your white knight thing, Finn—there’s no way Tavish would hurt me!’
‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, River Lore says he can take someone if they’ve killed, doesn’t matter whether they want to die or not. He won’t make allowances for you; he’s not going to care that it was a sucker and that you had no choice.’
‘Of course I had a choice, Finn—I just didn’t like the other option; being a vamp’s blood-bond for eternity isn’t my dream lifestyle.’ At least not since I was fourteen, I added silently to myself. I swung back round to face the monitors. ‘Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been in the water with Tavish before ... and that vampire wasn’t the first I’d killed,’ I finished quietly.
He didn’t say anything, just crossed his arms and withdrew into himself. I sighed, staring down at the diamond-chipped cuffs. Arguing with Finn wasn’t getting either of us anywhere, and we couldn’t seem to stop arguing either. The magic kept sparking between us, but something, Helen or my vampire parentage probably, was holding him back. Worse, I didn’t know why I just couldn’t resign myself to the fact there wasn’t going to be anything more between us than me working for him at Spellcrackers. Though even that looked like it wasn’t going to continue much longer. Snuffing out the little flicker of hope of something more I’d foolishly kept alive, I reached out, stopped the recording and set it playing forward again.
‘I don’t know what to say, Gen,’ Finn said, his voice soft, uncertain.
‘I’m not asking you to say anything, I was just telling you.’ I swallowed past the constriction in my throat. ‘It happened years ago, so it’s not important now.’ I’d been the stereotypical runaway, straight off the bus, and the vamp had been the clichéd predator, thinking he could use me as bait for a bigger prize, except, at the risk of another cliché, he discovered he’d bitten off more than he could safely swallow—Maybe we needed a change of subject. ‘Why would you think I’d be here with Tavish, anyway?’
‘What? Oh everyone knows that you and Tavish are ... courting.’
‘Tavish and I aren’t courting,’ I said, surprised, watching as I ran past the bakery, the florist’s lad turning round to stare after me. ‘We spent a bit of time together a while back, but I hadn’t seen him for at least six months until now.’
‘Gen, six months is nothing to a fae, and it doesn’t take much for gossip to start. The witches’re bad for tittle-tattle, but the fae are ten times worse. There’s not that many of us in London: the dryads, the naiads in Lake Serpentine, my own herd and the few solitary fae that hang out at the dragon’s eerie. They’re all as interested in what goes on with each other as anyone. You’re the only sidhe’– yeah and look how that was turning out—‘and you might not know any of them, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to ignore what you do.’
‘Aye, that’s true, doll.’ Tavish’s voice sounded behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder as he strolled towards me. The wound across his muscled chest had healed to no more than a faint shadow. He was dressed, sort of, in a long pair of orange silk harem pants, the beads in his hair coloured to match. He looked like he’d just walked off the set of The Arabian Nights.
‘Why are folk talking about us courting,’ I asked, wondering exactly what sort of mischief he’d been up to, ‘when we’re not and never have been?’
‘Which is what I told the Lady Meriel yesterday,’ he grinned, ‘when she was asking after you and wondering whether I’d seen you recently.’
I stared disbelievingly at him. ‘What’s it got to do with her?’
‘She’s a might bothered about the human’s death.’ He took a pair of surgical gloves from the box and snapped them on. ‘Understandable, really. She and her naiads are the easiest of London’s fae tae find.’
I frowned, puzzled. ‘What’s us courting or otherwise got to do with the human’s death?’
‘Nary a thing, doll.’ He leaned over me, his peat-whisky scent curling round me and causing my own magic to rise and heat to pool inside me. The diamond-chip cuffs flared, cutting it short. I squirmed slightly in my seat, wondering if he’d done it deliberately. He gave me an innocent look and I knew he had. Damn kelpie. I glared at him, but he just grinned, reminding me of the sharks swimming lazily through his screensavers. Then he punched a couple of keys on one of the keyboards; a monitor to the left switched to a local news programme. ‘But take a wee watch o’ this.’
The news showed a crowd held back by a row of human police in riot gear, some sort of protest. A group of Soulers, their long grey tabards emblazoned with red Crusader crosses, gathered to one side; the rest were mostly women, some with kids in tow, all jumping up and down, shouting and waving handmade placards.
The camera zoomed in on one placard: HANDS OFF OUR MEN, then panned along the rest: GO HOME FAIRY FREAKS. SOUL STEALERS. MAKE BRITAIN A FAERIE FREE ZONE.
Tavish pointed at the screen. ‘Lake Serpentine. The humans started throwing salt, then pouring bleach and petrol intae the water and setting fire tae it, until yon police came along and stopped them. There were a few casualties on both sides, but it’s mostly peaceful now.’
I leaned forward, hugging myself in disbelief. ‘This is insane.’
‘Aye, doll, insane it is. The newspapers sensationalised the human’s murder. It doesnae take much tae inflame a few bigoted people and the rest all follow like sheep,’ he muttered, almost echoing my thoughts of a few days previously. He pointed to another screen; it showed a load of naked men running into some water. ‘This is the other side o’ the coin: while one crowd screams and shouts tae banish us, this lot are up for partaking o’ some faerie sex themselves.’
It was more than insane. I pressed my fingers to my temples—my headache was beating against my skull now—and stared at all the screens. The florist’s boy came out and put out some buckets, stuck his lip out again and peered at himself in the shop window, then turned sharply to look down the empty street. The Soulers and the women waved their placards. Naked men splashed into the water. On another screen was a fire engine in some sort of park.
‘What’s that about?’ I pointed at the fire crew hosing down some trees.
‘A gang took a torch to the trees in Green Park,’ Finn said, and I looked over my shoulder at him. ‘Luckily none of the dryads were in residence.’ His lips pressed together in a grim line.
And something hovered at the edge of my mind—
‘And you being nae around hasnae helped, doll,’ Tavish added, derailing my thoughts. ‘Then the police-witch wouldnae hae been askin’ everyone tae look for you.’
And now I was found.
I looked across at Finn. He frowned back at me, but didn’t say anything. If I gave myself up, would it stop all this? Or had it already gained too much momentum? Even if giving myself up did stop the unrest, who knew how long it would be before Malik was well enough to testify? And while I was sitting in jail—or worse—no one would be looking for the real murderer.
What if it wasn’t all a set-up, but just a coincidence?
What if, despite Tavish’s assurance no gate had been opened, there was another sidhe in London?
Set-up or not, what if they killed again?
I waved at the screens. ‘You’re showing me this for a reason, aren’t you?’
Tavish swivelled the chair round so I faced him, as Finn had done. He braced his arms on the armrests and leaned over me, his eyes serious, his dreads swinging down over his shoulders. ‘Aye doll, you cannae hide away much longer. This needs tae be brought tae a close. There’s the usual solution being proposed tae appease the human justice. You offer up an Ùmaidhtae take your place. Mayhap it’ll mean a few years spent in the Fair Lands—’
‘Seriously, that is not an option, Tavish,’ I sniffed. ‘No way am I sundering flesh, let alone part of my soul, to animate a temporary changeling just to get its head chopped off, and in case you haven’t heard, I’ve got 3V, so I’d be out of my mind within six months, not to mention I’ve never even been to the Fair Lands.’
‘Or,’ Tavish carried on as if I hadn’t interrupted him, ‘you could stay in Between.’
I dropped my head back. ‘Still the same problem, Tavish.’
‘No, there’s not, Gen,’ Finn butted in. ‘You’re not the first fae to have salaich sìol; that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’
‘Dinna fash yersel’ aboot that now, lad.’ Tavish waved a dismissive hand at Finn, but kept his eyes on me. ‘T’would only be a solution if you’d killed the human as they think you have. But there’s nae human death darkening your soul.’
I looked at him suspiciously. ‘What?’
He grinned, teeth sharp and white. ‘Well, you dinna think I wanted tae swim just for my aen pleasure, did you?’
Crap. He’d been testing me. ‘You could’ve asked,’ I scowled.
‘But there’s nae joy in just askin’, doll, not when I could hae a wee taste o’ your soul.’
‘Fuck you.’ I glared back at him.
‘Any time, doll, I’ve told you. An-y time!’
Movement drew my attention back to Finn; he was staring at me, surprise on his face, and I realised he’d thought Tavish and I had been doing more than just courting. All around him the monitors reflected ghost screens in the glass ... and the memory of the florist’s boy admiring himself came back to me. I swung the chair back round, dislodging Tavish’s hold, and reversed the CCTV film, starting it from where I was racing by on my run.
‘Look,’ I said, excitement sparking inside me, ‘see how the boy uses the window to check out his appearance? And then when I run by he sees my reflection and turns to watch.’ I fast-forwarded on. ‘Now look: he’s admiring himself again, and then he turns round because he’s seen someone, but there’s no one there. The street’s empty. See how his head whips back to check the reflection.’ I paused the recording and squinted at the screen. ‘There issomeone else there, look.’
Tavish leaned over my shoulder. ‘Aye, doll, seems so, and they’re using magic tae hide, but whatever spell they’ve used, they’ve nae cast it correctly. They’ve nae remembered their mirror image.’
I smiled in triumph, pointing at the screen. ‘Any chance you can zoom in on the reflection?’
‘Maybe.’ Tavish swung the chair back round and grasped my arm, pulling me onto my feet. ‘I’ll work at it.’ He sat, staring intently at the screen, fingers flying over the keyboard. ‘Only thing is, doll, it may not be enough tae clear your name.’
‘Clearing my name can wait,’ I said, determined. ‘I’m more interested in finding the killer before they go on to their next victim, and that footage might tell us who it is.’
