The Shifting Price of Prey [4] Read online

  Which was when Tavish had stopped hitting on me.

  His reluctance hurt. Though, with the curse hanging around like an impatient Grim Reaper bent on eradicating London’s fae, I could understand why he’d faked fancying me. And it wasn’t as if I wanted us to be an item: Tavish is hot, and there’s a definite chemistry between us, at least on my side, but all my heart truly felt for him was friendship.

  Of course, there was another reason why Tavish’s ardour might have cooled . . . stabbing him in the gut with a five-foot bull’s horn, and leaving him to the Morrígan’s tender ministrations probably hadn’t endeared me to him.

  But whatever the reason I was no longer on his ‘SILF’ list, I didn’t want to complicate things for either of us by ‘swimming in his lake’, so I’d kept my confusion to myself and pretended the inconvenient and frustrating ‘side-effect’ had faded, in the hope that it actually would.

  I blinked as Tavish suddenly appeared on the other side of the desk, shedding the Invisibility spell he’d been wearing, then did a double take. When he’d gone invisible and piggybacked after me into the gnome’s house, he’d been sporting his usual Sam-Spade-pinstriped-suit-and-Fedora work outfit. Now he was poured into a black unitard, pewter-coloured cobwebs decorating the super-tight Lyrca covering every part of him, including his head, hands and feet. He should’ve looked ridiculous in the costume; instead it left nothing to my libido’s imagination and he looked . . . disturbingly jumpable— Down, girl! Briefly I closed my eyes. How the hell had he even got himself into it, not to mention—

  ‘Tavish, why are you dressed up as a bad-ass Spider-Man?’

  He stripped his hood off and the lacy gills either side of his neck snapped open like black fans. He shook out his green-black dreads; they writhed around his shoulders as if objecting to being contained, beads flashing from cobweb pewter to a clear sun-drenched turquoise.

  ‘Och, doll,’ he said, giving me his shark’s grin, serrated teeth white against the green-black of his skin. ‘The fancy dress shop dinna have a Cat-Man costume, so what else should I be wearing to be all sneaky and stealthy?’

  Having him ‘work’ with/for me was like employing a two-year-old sometimes; still, most of my clients loved his ‘eccentricities’. I shot him an exasperated look. ‘You were invisible. It didn’t matter what you wore.’

  ‘Maybe. But where’s the fun in that? And look.’ Tavish lifted his hand and shot a stream of magic at the high ceiling. It expanded into thin filaments, attached, and then with a leap he was above me, crouched upside down on the ceiling, giving me an excellent view of his, oh-so-gorgeous arse.

  Crap! Either I was as bad as the dirty-minded gnome, or Tavish’s magical pheromones were hitting a new high. I was going to have to find a way of getting rid of the damn side-effect, and soon. I dragged my attention back to the dead fairy then decided that staring at his appendage probably wasn’t the ideal way to cool down my libido.

  I fished a bottle of water out of my backpack, took a long drink. Spidey impersonation aside, at least now Tavish had finished his search I’d find out if he’d dug up any incriminating evidence on Mr Lecherous Lampy.

  ‘Any luck?’ I asked, sitting down.

  ‘Nae a glint, doll,’ he said, disappointing me. He dropped silently down, lifted the gnome’s heavy throne-style chair as if it weighed nothing, set it next to mine and slumped into it. His long, angled features took on a despondent air. ‘’Tis near like an untouched tomb upstairs, all inch-thick dust and empty, echoey rooms. Gnomes don’t care too much for air twixt them and their earth.’

  The huge ginger tom growled, subjecting Tavish to the same evil-feline stare it had me. Either it didn’t like Tavish talking about its master, or maybe a giant Spider-Man looked like a tasty banquet. Tavish snorted, baring his teeth at it. The cat decided its paws needed cleaning.

  I huffed. Figured Tavish would be more intimidating than me. ‘So if there’s nothing to be found, what’s next to investigate?’

  His gills closed as if in defeat. ‘’Tis the nature of others to die.’ He plucked a slowly wriggling slug off the silver-foiled potato, held it up. ‘All of them live too short a life: slugs, garden fairies, humans, even the lesser fae.’ He dropped the slug into the tea then raised his eyes to mine; his were now a solid murky grey. ‘You’re nae but a youngster, doll, but you’ll discover it soon enough. They’re nae like us, the rest all fade too easily.

  His words seeped into my heart like acid trickling through half-healed cracks. My friend Grace had died. She’d sacrificed herself to save me. I missed her . . . and every day suffered the loss and pain and anger that she was gone too soon. Tavish’s eyes carried the same suffering. I’d never seen him like this.

  It pushed my worries about the gnome away and I reached out, grasping his hand. ‘Who did you lose?’

  He blew out a soft sigh. ‘Och, ’tis nothing, doll. ’Tis maudlin, I am, for nae other reason than the wee dead mannie here, taken afore his time.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s more than that.’

  He looked down at our joined fingers then nodded as if he’d come to a decision. ‘We’re nae any closer to finding the way to release the fae’s fertility.’

  Trepidation fluttered in my stomach. When I’d recovered the fae’s stolen fertility it was trapped inside a sapphire pendant. I’d given the pendant to my friend Sylvia, a dryad, for safekeeping, and now she and Ricou, her naiad partner, were expecting the first full-blood fae in eighty years. They were ecstatic.

  The rest of the lesser fae not so much.

  Oh, they were overjoyed for the coming baby (though some weren’t happy about its mix), but with the fae’s fertility still trapped in the pendant no one else could conceive without wearing the thing and, being a cautious lot, no one expected Sylvia to take the pendant off until after her baby was born. The practicalities of the situation were awkward. Much more terrifying was the threat the pendant could be lost or stolen again, condemning them all to die.

  Tavish squeezed my hand, expression intense. ‘You’re the key to sorting it all, doll, you ken you always have been.’

  Yeah, and didn’t I know it. It was my sidhe queen grandmother, Clíona, who’d laid the original curse – that they should also know the grief in her heart – on London’s fae eighty-odd years ago, in revenge for the fae not protecting her mortal son from the vampires. Later, in a fit of remorse, Clíona had secretly ‘borrowed’ the fae’s fertility (evidently her feelings of remorse only went so far) in an attempt to break the curse by having another child. My mother.

  Long story short. My mother’s birth didn’t break the curse, and as a result of Clíona’s continuing ‘attempts’ to ‘put things right’ without dropping herself in the shit big-time, the pendant with the fae’s fertility was lost. It was found just long enough to enable my conception, and then stolen.

  Now, thanks in part to my family connection with it, I’d recovered the pendant.

  It should have been the happy ending everyone wanted. Trouble was the pendant carried only half of the spell trapping the fertility and before the fertility could be released, the other half still had to be found. Until it was, Clíona’s original curse was just on hold, not broken. All the fae had to go on was a riddle from the Morrígan:

  That which was taken, must be recovered.

  That which is lost, must be found.

  That which is sundered, must be joined.

  Half-arsed as it was, the riddle wasn’t hard to work out: the fertility had been taken, and was now recovered. The rest of the trap was lost, we had to find it and join the two halves together then, hey presto, the fae’s fertility would be restored. Except no one knew what the other half of the trap was, never mind where it was. Just once it would be great if the goddess-in-the-know had handed over specifics like a picture, or maybe even a map with a big red X marking the spot. But the Morrígan obviously hadn’t been feeling that helpful. So Tavish and the rest of London’s fae had been searching, magically and mundanel
y, to find it. So far all they’d found was a big fat nothing.

  Of course the sensible thing would be to ask Clíona what they were looking for. Only sense doesn’t come into it when all the parties involved have been refusing even to acknowledge each other for more than half a century. I’d have asked her myself if not for the fact I was ‘an abominable stain on her royal sidhe bloodline’ and she was determined to be rid of me. That she hadn’t succeeded in killing me off yet was due in no small part to Tavish. Something else I owed him for.

  I frowned at him. ‘Thought you said you’d had some foretelling that if I helped search I could screw things up; that the fae’s fertility could end up trapped or lost permanently, and if that happened the curse would never be broken?’

  ‘Aye, I did.’

  ‘What’s changed then?’ I asked.

  ‘Nae a thing, doll.’

  ‘So why now?’

  ‘We’re running out of ideas.’ Frustration turned his beads black.

  ‘So you’re prepared to risk me helping, even though it could all go wrong?’

  ‘Aye, but only in a small way. One I dinna think will cause any harm.’

  I took a swig of water as dread settled like iron chains over my shoulders. I didn’t want to get sucked back into it all again. But if I was honest, the fae’s fertility problems weren’t something I could or even should turn my back on. It was my family who’d started the whole ‘stolen fertility’ ball rolling, way back when. And I wasn’t the one hurting in all this. The fae were. And as Tavish said, I was the key. If he needed my help, however small—

  ‘Okay,’ I told him briskly. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nae much, doll,’ Tavish said, the relief flooding his eyes making me glad I’d said yes. ‘Just give me some honest answers.’

  It sounded too easy. ‘Sure. When do you want to talk?’

  ‘Now, of course.’

  I looked at the ginger tom sitting on the desk, and at all the other cats in the cluttered room; sleeping, washing, or watching us like we were a play put on for their amusement. ‘What about the gnome?’

  ‘Och, he’s nae thinking of interrupting you. I’ve seen to that.’

  I sent out my own Spidey senses . . . the gnome’s presence, from the direction of the kitchen, pinged against my inner radar. He was fast asleep, no doubt Tavish-induced. Plus, with the Privacy spell in operation, it wasn’t like the gnome would be an issue even if he did wake up. And now Tavish had made the decision to ask for my help, I could see he was impatient to get on with it.

  ‘Fire away, then,’ I said.

  ‘’Twill be better with Compulsion?’ He gave me a cautious look. ‘If you agree?’

  He’d asked, which made all the difference. I nodded and held my hand out. He traced a finger along my lifeline, the greyness in his eyes bleeding away until they were silver, shimmering with intensity. ‘So, doll, who or what is it you want?’

  The Compulsion pricked me and my mouth answered without hesitation. ‘Spellcrackers. I want to keep it.’

  Surprise stung me. Spellcrackers was my company now. Sort of. My boss stint was temporary and I was going to have to give it up. Something I’d thought I was okay with. Until now.

  ‘So, you’re wanting to stay the boss of Spellcrackers’ – he gave me a probing look – ‘where’s that leave Finn?’

  Finn.

  My friend. My ex-boss. My—

  Bone-deep hurt and angry disillusionment threatened to explode out of me. I shoved it back down, slammed it back in its box. I didn’t know what else Finn was.

  Three months ago I thought I did. I thought, along with being friends and working together, we were finally going to be more to each other. We’d been heading that way ever since we’d met, more than a year ago, despite everything keeping us apart.

  Then I’d found the fae’s stolen fertility.

  And we should’ve had our chance.

  But Finn’s teenage daughter, Nicky, was one of the victims of the ToLA case, an awful consequence of which was that she was pregnant. Finn had, of course, gone with Nicky to the Fair Lands to be with her until her baby was safely born.

  He’d asked me to go with him. I’d reluctantly said no.

  Part of me, the part that wanted Finn and damn everything else, had desperately regretted that no. But I knew it had been the right thing to do. He needed to be there for Nicky without me. We needed that breathing space. And after all Finn’s declarations about not wanting me just for my curse-breaking abilities, that my vamp genes didn’t matter despite him hating vamps with a vengeance, I needed to be sure he’d wanted me for me. Without that time apart, a tiny bit of me would always wonder if Finn and I were really meant to be.

  Now I knew.

  Two letters, then nothing. No messages, no excuses, just nothing— He’d cut me off. Something that had sliced my heart into tiny pieces. And, now I’d stuck it back together, Finn was someone I’d promised myself not to even think about, let alone waste any more tears over . . .

  A quiet warning snort from Tavish made me look down.

  I loosened my grip on the half-full plastic bottle I’d almost crushed. It popped back into shape with a sharp cracking sound. My mouth twisted down as I tried to give him a wry smile. I took a breath and locked my hurt, anger and all thoughts of a certain fickle satyr away.

  ‘You know I haven’t heard from him,’ I said, my tone flat.

  Tavish’s expression sharpened. ‘So, when he returns, you’ll be giving Spellcrackers back?’

  I didn’t want to, but— ‘Of course, it belongs to him and the satyr herd.’

  ‘I ken the herd elders are already asking for it. You nae think of just giving it up?’

  The herd elders weren’t so much asking as demanding I do exactly that.

  Their point: it was their money invested in the company and they’d only signed it over to me as a sweetener to get me to make little curse-breaking baby satyrs with Finn. Now their fertility was found, albeit still trapped, I wasn’t needed, and they wanted their investment back. Immediately. Only my gut told me that if I gave Spellcrackers up now Finn would lose out too. So I’d give Spellcrackers back to him, and only him. What he did then was his choice. I might be hurt and angry, and hugely pissed off at his fickleness but that didn’t mean I was ready to stitch him up. Or that I was stupid.

  I picked at the broken tab on my water bottle. ‘It’s pretty convenient that Finn stops communicating right at the time the herd starts putting pressure on me.’

  ‘Aye. That it is.’

  Good to know I wasn’t the only one with suspicions. Not that my suspicions meant the cut-me-off-without-an-explanation satyr’s silence was forgivable.

  ‘But is being the boss at Spellcrackers truly what your heart wants above all else, doll?’

  Tavish’s quiet question diverted my thoughts back to the matter at hand. Spellcrackers was just a company, after all; and yeah, financially I needed to work, preferably doing something I loved and was good at, but it wasn’t like I wouldn’t have my old job back when I gave up the reins . . . except I wouldn’t be the one calling the shots any more. That, I realised, was what I truly wanted.

  ‘No, not Spellcrackers as such,’ I clarified. ‘But what it represents. I want to be the one in control of my life. No other people making decisions for me or thinking they can force me into doing what they want.’ Which really, after everything, wasn’t so much of a surprise. ‘I want to make my own choices, on my own terms.’

  Tavish was silent for a long moment, then something shifted in the depths of his eyes like a fish sliding beneath shadowed waters. ‘’Tis a big ask, doll.’

  Impossible more like. ‘Yeah.’ I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. ‘But what does what I want have to do with releasing the fae’s fertility?’

  ‘Told you, doll,’ Tavish said briskly. ‘You’re the key, but you’re nae wanting to find the spell, so the magic’s nae keen on helping.’

  I considered that. ‘So, if I de
cide I want it, the magic will help me find it?’

  He shook his head. ‘’Tis nae quite that simple. The magic’s a tricky mistress. You know that.’

  I did. Magic wasn’t something you could talk or reason with, yet it still had a mind of its own. Sometimes, when I’d needed it, it had helped me in the past.

  ‘She likes you,’ Tavish said softly.

  ‘She?’

  ‘The magic.’

  ‘Why are you calling it “she”?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘Isn’t it more like a natural . . . force or something?’

  He smiled, turquoise eyes dancing. ‘We all come from The Mother, and she was the first to come from the magic. So what else would the magic be? But now’s nae the time for debating, doll. We want to find the spell, you want to keep Spellcrackers and be your own boss. Help me and I’ll help you, with that anyways.’

  ‘Tavish,’ I said, more than a little insulted. ‘I don’t need to be bribed.’

  ‘Och, I ken, but a little incentive never harms a body, now does it?’

  ‘Fine, I’m not going to say no.’ I shot him a grateful smile. Having him go to bat for me with the satyrs staking their claim was a bonus. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Ask the one who knows.’ He flicked his fingers and a pack of cards, larger than normal playing size, appeared on the desk in front of me.

  ‘Tarot cards?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye.’

  Curiosity flickered. I hadn’t known he did readings.

  ‘Pick them up and hold them in your left hand, doll.’ I slid the water bottle on to the table and did as he said. No magic tingled; the cards felt like ordinary card, and oddly both sides were plain white. He took hold of my right hand, lacing our fingers together. ‘Don’t let go, nae for anything?’ he warned. I nodded, and his gills fanned wide either side of his throat, his eyes turning the deep cobalt blue of a midnight sea. Magic, needle-sharp, pierced me, twisting a storm of desire at my core. I gasped, squirmed on the chair before I could stop. Again he didn’t seem to notice. I clutched at the cards, ignoring the feelings. The need would pass. It always did.