The Shifting Price of Prey [4] Read online

  ‘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 activate it I preferred electricity, though the spell was prettier.

  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 drawn the 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 keyed only 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 cast my 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.’

  Ah. ‘What wouldn’t work?’ I asked.

  ‘I told them you were still hung up on Finn. That you wouldn’t be interested in me and Ricou. But they wouldn’t have it.’

  Finn. The cut-me-off-without-an-explanation-satyr-I-wasn’t-thinking-about.

  I rubbed the ache blooming in my chest.

  Sylvia’s green eyes filled with sympathy. ‘Just because he stopped writing, Genny,’ she said softly, ‘it might not mean what you think.’

  I’d kept writing up until four weeks ago. Not because I was hung up on him but because he was my friend. And I wanted to know if he was okay. Even if he’d never got my letters, he knew there was no way I could contact him other than through his family so he’d have found a way to check why I seemed to be giving him the silent treatment . . . if we’d really been the friends, never mind the anything more, I’d thought we were.

  Crap. I’d promised myself not to waste any more time on him.

  ‘Who are they, Syl?’

  She gave me a long troubled look, obviously wondering whether to push me about a certain satyr. But that subject was done. To my mind, anyway— She started to speak and I jerked my hands up. ‘Syl, forget it. Forget him. Please. Just tell me who they are, and why they want you to seduce me?’

  She shook her head, leaves rustling with a mix of frustration and irritation. ‘Goodness, who do you think, Genny? Our mothers!’

  Right. The Ladies Meriel and Isabella: Head naiad and dryad respectively a.k.a. Ricou’s and Sylvia’s mothers. ‘Why do they want you to seduce me—’ I stopped as it all fell into place. ‘No, let me guess: Spellcrackers.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sylvia sighed, her shoulders drooping. ‘They said we might as well make ourselves useful since we both insisted on staying with you.’

  Damn. I knew the satyr herd elders wanted Spellcrackers back but this was the first I’d heard the Ladies had their acquisitive eyes on the business. Well, they could all think again. Spellcrackers was mine, and would be until a certain satyr came back from the Fair Lands, which wouldn’t be for at least another two months.

  I scowled at Sylvia. ‘You’ve been staying with me for three months. Why are the Ladies plotting now?’

  ‘Gosh, I don’t know. Mother wouldn’t tell me anything more unless I let her through the Wards. She said she wasn’t going to discuss matters of import while on a public roof for all to listen.’

  I gaped. ‘You kept your mother standing outside?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ Her expression turned to a mix of despair and mutiny. ‘I’m not that stupid. You don’t know what she’s like.’

  Actually, I did. Lady Isabella hadn’t been beyond kidnapping me as a way of making me do what she wanted in the past. That she hadn’t succeeded was not for want of trying.

  ‘If I’d let her in,’ Sylvia carried on, ‘she’d have had me locked up in my tree in a heartbeat. She’s on about it not being safe here for me and the baby again.’

  ‘Is she crazy? With all the protective Wards and magic here this place is safer than Buck House. Not to mention you can hardly move for all the dryads and their trees she’s got camped out around here. They’ve had to divert traffic round the huge elm that’s taken root outside the front door.’

  ‘I told her that, but she’s suddenly got this bee in her bonnet that “staying here is dangerous”. Of course, it’s really about that Ricou. She’s still furious that her grandchild is going to be half naiad, and how we’re never going to find a suitable tree. She only shut up about it when I agreed to have a go at seducing you.’

  ‘You made an agreement with your mother?’ Fae don’t make or break bargains lightly; the consequences are too unpredictable and can backfire on both parties even if the bargain is kept. I couldn’t care less about Lady Isabella, but I did care about Sylvia. ‘Why the hell did you do that, Syl?’

  Her eyes went wide with shock. ‘Oh my gosh, no, it wasn’t that type of agreement, Genny.’ She held her hand up, fingers crossed. ‘Just the kid’s promise, the sort that doesn’t involve magic, you know?’

  Relieved, I nodded. ‘You had me worried for a min.’

  She smiled, then added coyly, ‘And, you know, you might have said yes. It would be so much fun.’ She paused, obviously waiting for me to have a change of orientation: Sylvia is nothing if not persistent. I gave her a look. ‘But, oh well, you didn’t, so now I’ve kept my promise, I’m off the hook. So’ – she grabbed the bottle of Cristall vodka – ‘how about I make you that special Bloody Mary?’

  ‘It’s okay, Syl.’ I took the bottle from her and put it down. ‘I’ll do it myself once I’ve finished. You go to bed. You and Baby Grace need your rest.’

  ‘I could always stay and watch?’ she said, giving me a hopeful look. ‘It gets a bit lonely with Ricou gone most of the time.’

  Did she never give up? ‘No, you really couldn’t,’ I said firmly.

  She pouted. ‘Spoilsport.’

  ‘Yep, that’s me.’ I opened the wardrobe door and gestured inside. ‘Goodnight, Sylvia.’

  ‘You know, Genny, you’re really not like sidhe are supposed to be—’

  ‘Please,’ I groaned, ‘not the sidhe sex myth again. Syl, I’m really not gagging for it.’ At least I wasn’t now, after Mad Max’s tough-love Poultice spell. And, thankfully, even before that Sylvia obviously hadn’t been hitting my hot buttons. ‘Now. Go. To. Bed.’

  She gave me one last imploring look, which I pointedly ignored, then, with a loud guilt-inducing sigh, she ducked under the empty hanging rail and disappeared through
the back of the wardrobe.

  I grabbed the sheet I kept on the wardrobe shelf, closed the door and carefully draped it over the wardrobe’s front to stop any peeping eyes.

  I stripped off. Not that I needed to be naked to do the cleansing ritual to get rid of the Magic Mirror spell I’d absorbed at Harrods; it was just more practical than neutralising my clothes afterwards. Crunching on half-a-dozen liquorice torpedoes, I sat crossed-legged inside the larger circle, opened the part of me that can see the magic, picked up my knife and pricked my left index finger. A bead of bright red blood welled up and I touched it and my will to the outer circle. The circle rose like a glass cake dome shot through with gold.

  I gathered the hyperactive pinballs of magic inside me and taking a deep breath, tagged the pinballs to the salt block. They fizzled and spat like water on a hotplate as they hit the salt, then, as I hoped it would, the Magic Mirror spell dissolved into the usual thick grey sludge. The fetid smell of rotting vegetables filled the circle – confirmation, if I’d needed it, that the original spell had been altered with deliberate malice and wasn’t some sort of accident, same as the last few times I’d done this.

  Only now, after my unusual preoccupation with my looks and Sylvia’s cleavage, I had an idea what might be responsible. That urge for plastic surgery hadn’t popped into my head on its own. A quick email to Hugh and bit of investigation by the Met’s Magic Squad, and Harrods’ mutating Magic Mirror spell problem should be sorted. Satisfied I’d got something to go on, I set the sludge-filled inner circle. It popped into place like an upside-down sieve made of fine gold mesh.

  ‘Now for the fun part.’

  I focused on the sludge-covered salt, and cracked it.

  The magic and the salt exploded, the sludge predictably erupting like a mini volcano. I threw my arms up in front of my face as the sludge splattered me, leaving me feeling cold, wet, and as if I’d been thoroughly slimed by a swamp-dragon’s parasitic wyrm.

  ‘And isn’t that an icky thought,’ I grumbled, flicking sludge off my fingers and watching as it dissipated into the ether. At least the sieve-like inner circle kept the actual salt from hitting me; the stuff stung like sand in a desert storm otherwise. The sludge was magical, so now the spell was neutralised the only physical clear-up involved was washing the salt down the drain in the bath, and stowing my blue plastic.