The Shifting Price of Prey [4] Read online

  I took a calming breath and told Tavish about the flasher Katie and I’d seen. ‘Think it’s related?’

  ‘Could be, doll.’

  I shared Katie’s worries that the werewolves could end up hunting her because she was a virgin. ‘Is she in any danger?’

  ‘Och, dinna fash yerself about that. ’Tis an old story from the Shining Times, and I doubt there’s a werewolf alive who remembers it, never mind kens the truth of it.’

  The Shining Times supposedly came after the dinosaurs but before man first struck cold iron. Which didn’t pin it down much. Though if anyone would know, it was probably Tavish. Rumour has it he’s a couple of millennia old, but he’s always been cagey about his age, and with his angular, almost classic sidhe, features I’ve often wondered if he’s older. Maybe even born in the Shining Times. Which was when the sidhe and magic and the humans’ world first came together, and the sidhe procreated with any living thing that took their fancy – like humans, animals, trees, and even the elements – bringing whole new species into being. Including werewolves, by the sounds of it.

  I frowned. ‘Are you saying that werewolves came from the sidhe? Like the rest of the fae?’

  Tavish’s snort over the phone was faintly derisive. ‘Nae,’tis different magics that birthed the shifters. And ’tis long lost now.’

  ‘So Katie’s not in danger?’

  ‘Nae more than from any Other. And ’tis unlikely these werewolves will bother with the wee girlie, but we dinna ken what this Emperor vamp is like. So to be sure I’ll stir up a scent potion from wolfsbane and mistletoe for her. And for you too, doll. ’Twill encourage the beasts to keep their distance.’

  Great. Katie could be in danger because of me. Again. ‘Okay, thanks, that puts my mind at rest.’ A bit, anyway.

  ‘Mind, ’twill nae smell too good.’

  I blew out a breath. ‘Doesn’t matter if it helps keep her safe.’

  ‘Aye. And ’twill give her something to hang her worries on too, so they dinna bother her as much.’

  Like the vamp-repelling kit he’d given her. I told him she’d shown it me, and that I was grateful he’d done that for her.

  ‘Och, she’s a good wee girlie, ’twas a pleasure to do, no thanks needed, doll.’

  ‘So, the Emperor’s got a couple of pet werewolves I need to watch out for,’ I said, digging out a Phone Privacy spell as a group of teens climbed onto the column’s plinth to get a closer look at the pixie, now dancing a passable jig. Their giggles and chatter cut out as I activated the crystal. ‘Any ideas why the tarot card didn’t show them, and why it gave the Emperor a knife instead?’

  ‘’Tis possible the werewolves are nae important to our question, doll, and the knife is. But how ’tis difficult to say, with only one card revealed.’

  Right. ‘So when can I expect the other four to reappear?’

  ‘Och, when she’s got something more to tell.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘The spirit in the cards, doll. Who else?’

  I had a sudden duh moment. Of course. ‘But why’s it taking her so long?’

  ‘Told you. Answers are nae always there for the taking. She has to search.’

  I frowned. ‘She didn’t for the first card? That was instant.’

  ‘Aye, well, you ken I had already asked. ’Twas why I wanted you to have the reading there and then. The cards were after reminding me you were the key.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘so why did the eagle in the card cut the reading short, as if it was holding back info?’

  ‘Ah, her readings are always a bit abrupt, some things are nae always clear even to her, or a question’s asked she needs to look into.’

  In other words, wait and see. ‘So if she’s out looking for answers, how do you know we can trust the spirit?’

  ‘Och, dinna fash yerself, doll, the cards are sidhe made. Means the spirit’s bound to tell the truth of her findings.’

  Disbelief flashed in me. ‘Call me paranoid, but that doesn’t exactly reassure me, Tavish. Sidhe might not lie, but they don’t always tell the truth.’

  ‘The spirit’s never steered me wrong yet, doll.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, deciding I’d reserve judgement. ‘So the knife’s important, but we don’t know why. But you don’t think the werewolves are?’

  ‘Hmph. Nae to the question’s answer. But you’re likely to be dealing with this Emperor, so they’ll be a consideration. I take it Malik al-Khan dinna say anything about werewolves?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said, ‘all I got out of him was that there’s a vamp called the Emperor; he’s badass’ – as are most überpowerful vamps, so nothing new there – ‘and he’s not the Autarch by another name.’ I shuddered. ‘But I’ll ask next time I see him.’ On our date. When he confirms it. I stifled my impatience. ‘So anything else helpful you can tell me about this Emperor?’

  ‘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 cracked spell.

  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.

  Between is 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 Between on 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 cast my 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 focus the 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 not something 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 not want 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 not discussing 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 do
or 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 absorbing the 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.