The Bitter Seed of Magic s-3 Read online

  I breathed out.

  ‘You’ll have to crack it,’ she shouted.

  I briefly raised my head to take in more air, and focused on the magical dome of mirrors and the anxious group of police behind them. No way could I crack the dome; the mirrors might not be physical, but the salt and sand and bone in the circle were, and they would turn into enough shrapnel to flay the skin off anyone standing too close. I’d have to absorb the magical dome instead. Absorbing magic was never fun; absorbing sharp pieces of mirror, however metaphysical they might be, was going to be a fucking nightmare …

  —I lowered my mouth to the girl’s—

  She coughed and retched, filling my mouth with bitter-tasting liquid, and I swallowed reflexively, shock, disbelief and hope coursing through me.

  ‘She’s alive,’ I yelled.

  The circle had to open—now!

  I hurriedly but carefully rolled her over into the recovery position, then thrust out my arms, palms up, and called the magic. The candles guttered and snuffed out; a wind howled and buffeted my body; the dome of mirrors rattled, glowing red with reflected neon and blood … Time seemed to stand still as the Glamour spell peeled away from the girl and I saw her true face. No longer human-pretty, she had small, black bead-like eyes, a hooked beak of a nose, thin, almost nonexistent lips and a receding chin: a faeling, and one with corvid blood, going by the black feathers growing from her scalp. The feathers were stringy with blood, and the shape of her head was oddly uneven … Time started again, and the mirrors exploded into feather-winged flames and flew towards my heart like iron-tipped darts to a magnet.

  I had a moment to think, Oh crap! before they hit—

  —but the pain didn’t come—

  Instead, something grabbed me, and yanked me out of the circle.

  Chapter Four

  After an infinitely long moment of disorientation, the oddly light feeling in my bones told me that I’d been plucked out of the humans’ world and was now somewhere in Between.

  Between is the gap that links the humans’ world and the Fair Lands. And unlike those places, Between is still malleable enough that with enough power and will, you can mould it into whatever you desire. Of course, depending on the magic’s mood, its interpretation of your desires can be unpredictable at best, probably nightmarish at worst.

  Much like the owner of the pale gold eyes, with their vertical, cat-like pupils, into which I was looking. I recognised the eyes and their owner, of course—hard not to when she was the only sidhe I’d ever met. Not that recognising her was going to help much. She wasn’t exactly the type you could get any meaningful answers from, not being fully compos mentis. Which might account for her … outfit.

  Her head was crowned with a corona of yellow and white honeysuckle flowers, and long stems of golden heart-shaped leaves twined through the hip-length curls of her silver-blonde hair. Her dress was a flowing robe of yellow silk which billowed around her like sails in a nonexistent wind. That same wind riffled the feathers on the huge gold wings that spread out from her shoulders and framed her slender form. She looked like the love-child of a Rossetti painting and a Russian icon.

  The angelic love-child raised her hands and suddenly we were standing in brilliant sunshine. Tiny cartoon-like cherubs, complete with rosy cheeks, golden wings and glittering halos, zipped around our heads like sugar-hyped garden fairies, white fluffy clouds nipped our ankles like a litter of playful puppies and the scent of honey, cinnamon and sweetened vanilla fragranced the air. Above us curved a twenty-foot-high dome of magic, painted the sapphire blue of a clear summer sky. Etched into the blue was the smiling image of a benign old man with a long white beard.

  I’d been beamed up to Disney Heaven. Lucky me.

  The angelic sidhe looked to be in her late teens (although since she was virtually immortal, gauging her physical age by her looks was a guessing game I was never going to win) and she was staring at me with the expectant look of a young child who knows she’s done something clever and is eagerly waiting for the pay-off: adult amazement.

  I got the hint: I was supposed to do something—only I didn’t know what … I flashed back to the last (and only) time I’d met her: I’d been knocked out by magic, and as I’d come round she’d been leaning over me. That time she’d been dressed up like an angel from a colouring book: Cinderella’s Christmas Spectacular, and so I’d called her ‘Angel’ when she’d refused to tell me her real name. Obviously the Disney Heaven scene was meant to jog my memory, and it did. It was also starting to scare the crap out of me. I couldn’t begin to imagine how much juice it took to make this huge patch of make-believe exist, let alone to bring me here. Nor what an über-powerful sidhe who had the mental age of a five-year-old could do if she decided to throw a tantrum … like the one about to hit any moment now, judging by the speed at which her expression was turning sulky.

  ‘You’re supposed to say the magic words.’ She stamped her foot. ‘You said them last time!’

  Last time? I dredged my memory, then crossed my fingers behind my back. ‘Does this mean I’m dead?’ I said, hoping the words weren’t prophetic.

  She gave a delighted giggle and clapped her hands. ‘Do you feel dead?’ she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

  It was the same answer she’d given before—so we were obviously following a script. Trouble was, my copy was blank. I ad-libbed, ‘Not really. But then I didn’t feel dead the last few times it happened either.’

  Her laugh cut out and she peered closer, a small frown marring her delicate features, then she lifted her hand and poked her finger at my forehead. A jolt of raw power knocked me flat on my butt. ‘Bad!’ she exclaimed, her bottom lip sticking out in a sullen pout. Then she twirled away, humming tunelessly.

  I sat there, winded. ‘Nice to see you too, Angel,’ I muttered, wondering what the hell she could possibly want with me. Or maybe it wasn’t her that wanted me?

  Angel was one of Clíona’s Ladies. She’d gone AWOL from the Fair Lands last Hallowe’en and ended up in London. Clíona had been desperate to get her back, so in exchange for some information I’d needed, I’d found Angel and returned her safely to Clíona. In gratitude Clíona had granted me a boon: an offer of sanctuary at her court, the offer open for a year and a day, so long as I didn’t ‘bear a child’. Of course, if I did get pregnant then she’d kill me. Faerie gifts are to die for.

  But if it was Clíona who wanted me here, why wasn’t she putting in an appearance?

  ‘What I really need is a clue,’ I said under my breath.

  Something brushed against my hand, and when I looked down, the playful clouds were littered with black feathers.

  Goosebumps pricked my flesh. I quickly scanned the dome but could see no one other than Angel. Carefully, I gathered a handful of feathers and waved them at her. ‘Don’t suppose you know anything about these?’ I asked, keeping my tone light.

  She dashed over, bent down and peered into my face again. Something old and sly and dangerous shadowed the pale gold of her eyes and I froze, instinct turning my bones liquid with fear. A scream lodged in my throat and I had to force myself not to scuttle away and hide—

  Then It was gone and I sagged in relief as she squealed with excitement, snatched the feathers and tossed them into the air. They morphed into a murder of black crows and soared up to join the cartoon cherubs in their zipping flight paths. She flexed her long wings, gathered up her yellow robe and skipped away again.

  I huddled among the playful clouds, getting my adrenalin-spiked pulse back under control. Damn. Angel was little Miss Looney Tunes, but even she was preferable to whoever her hitchhiker was. Still, I’d got my clue, now I just had to decipher—

  Something wet dripped down the bridge of my nose and I swiped at it. Blood? I sniffed. It was sweet and coppery, but it didn’t carry the liquorice undertone of 3V infection. So not mine then, thankfully.

  I wiped my hand on my jeans and squinted up into the light. Slowly circling through the rosy-cheeke
d cherubs and the glossy blue-black crows like they were part of a gigantic cot mobile was a parade of soft toys: a plush polar bear, a mermaid with a glittering tail, and a fluffy rust-coloured bull passed over me as I watched. I flinched as blood splashed my face again. A beribboned unicorn and a copper-scaled dragon followed. I dodged the next splatter and frowned up as a pair of horses, one silver and one black, trotted before a well-stuffed brown teddy bear …

  The crows were dive-bombing the toys, spearing them with their beaks, making them bleed.

  The hair at the back of my neck stood on end.

  Was this another clue, or just a gruesome game?

  Suddenly Angel shrieked in anger and whirled down towards me. Heart racing, I jerked my arms up in defence, but before I could stop her, she punched her hand deep into my chest. Her eyes gazed into mine, the molten heat of her sun-bright pupils burning me as her magic seared my soul. Pain detonated in my centre as she ripped something from me and the world turned to grey mist, filled with gaping, hungry mouths and desperate, far-away screams—

  —and then I was back in Disney Heaven, staring in shock as she lifted her hand triumphantly to display a squirming tangle of shiny entrails hanging from her fist. I clutched my stomach, convinced she’d gutted me, but as reality trickled through my horror, I realised my body was still whole and undamaged. I looked back at her, and the wriggling intestines resolved themselves into a nest of angry, hissing snakes.

  ‘It is a soul, child,’ a voice growled low in my ear, startling me even as I recognised the rank butcher’s shop breath accompanying it. ‘Not yours, you will be reassured to know.’

  I was—but only by the information, not by the speaker. I twisted around to look warily at the large grey dog almost the size of a Great Dane looming at my shoulder. An unworldly glow emanated from its sleek coat like a silver aurora borealis as it regarded me steadily out of eerie grey eyes. The phouka, in her doggy guise, a.k.a. Clíona’s bitch.

  Crap, this really wasn’t turning out to be such a good day.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Oh, look,’ I said flatly, ‘it’s Grianne, my faerie dogmother, come to join in the heavenly fun. Why am I not surprised?’

  The phouka bared long black fangs a true dog would never have. ‘I have asked you before not to refer to me by that ridiculous mortal name. And this is not the time for levity.’

  ‘Damn.’ I bared my own teeth in a grin. ‘And there was me thinking I was supposed to laugh in the face of death. Got that one wrong, then.’

  ‘I am not here to kill you,’ the dog said with evident disappointment. ‘You are not with child, and my queen has given you a year and a day to find the answer you seek. Until then, you are safe from me.’

  Yeah, like I was going to believe that. Next she’d be telling me that goblins had given up wearing bling.

  When I was fourteen and a runaway, Clíona had sent the phouka to terminate me. According to Clíona, my father’s vamp DNA taints my gene pool, and makes me an abomination—even though my mother’s magical genetics means I’m pure sidhe through and through. No way was Clíona about to let me pass that taint on, curse or no curse. Only back then, things hadn’t quite gone the phouka’s way. Instead of killing me, she’d run into an opportunist vamp and I’d ended up saving her, which meant she’d ended up obligated to me for her life. So she’d reluctantly given me a reprieve. But if she could find a way for me to end up dead without getting her paws dirty, she would.

  I jerked my head, indicating Angel, who was poking at the hissing snakes. ‘So whose soul is it?’

  ‘It is the sorcerer’s soul. Eating it was not a wise choice, child.’

  ‘I’m not sure “wise” or “choice” came into it at the time,’ I said, hiding the relief that washed through me at her words.

  Consuming the sorcerer’s soul at Hallowe’en had been one of those act-now-and-live-with-the-evil-indigestion-later kind of things. The lack of immediate nasty consequences, together with the desperate need to find a way to crack the curse, had pushed it to the bottom of my to-do list, but now it looked like I could cross it off. It also looked like I owed Angel one.

  ‘Chomping the sorcerer’s soul was more an instinctive kind of revenge thing,’ I said blandly, ‘payback for the evil bitch sacrificing me.’ See? I have teeth too, oh dogmother.

  ‘I have already told you, child. I am not here to kill you.’ The phouka’s ears twitched in disapproval, the air wavered around her and Grianne took her human form. She sat next to me, dressed in one of her usual silvery-grey Grecian numbers. Her long, sharp features aligned in a haughty frown. ‘My responsibility here is only to my charge.’

  I gestured at Angel who had ripped off the head of one of the snakes and was busy sniffing it. ‘So who is little Miss Bloodthirsty?’

  Angel went to pop the snake’s head in her mouth—

  — and Grianne barked sharply. ‘Please do not eat that, Angel.’

  Angel?

  Angel stopped, a mutinous look in her eyes.

  ‘Why not allow your new creations to dispose of it?’ Grianne said, her voice taking on a placatory tone I’d never heard before. ‘I believe it would be good quarry for their hunters’ instincts.’

  Angel’s face scrunched as she chewed over the idea, rather than the snake’s head, then she grinned, squealed and flung the head upwards. Between one blink and the next, the tiny cherubs had grown sharp red horns in place of their halos, their wings had turned black and pitchforks had materialised in their fists. One little red devil shot forward, expertly speared the head on its fork and brandished it high, taunting the others, before zooming out of the dome. The rest whirred in an eager, hopeful mob around Angel. As I watched, she tore off another snake’s head and threw it up with happy glee.

  Devilled sorcerer’s soul. Hopefully they were taking it somewhere hot. ‘Is Angel her real name?’ I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

  ‘She was first named for Our Mother’—Grianne’s grey eyes stayed fixed on her charge—‘but it was not a prudent choice, as the goddess quickly took her for Her own, and to call her by that name is to risk Her answering.’

  I suppressed a shudder as I recalled the something I’d seen looking out at me from Angel’s eyes. Had that been Her—Danu, The Mother? And if Angel was once named for Danu, then why were we in Disney Heaven, with its clichéd image of the Christian God? Somehow that didn’t seem overly tactful, or prudent. If I were Angel, I’d be wary of pissing off a goddess who was likely to appear and answer my prayers in person. But then again, if I had Danu hitchhiking in my mind whenever She felt like it, then maybe I wouldn’t see Her as a higher—and much scarier—being. It explained a lot, though: the combination of Danu and Grianne was enough to make anyone barking mad.

  ‘Clíona renamed her Rhiannon, but she has not answered to that name for a long while,’ Grianne continued, with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Now she goes only by those names she chooses herself, and she has been Angel since you returned her to us. It would not be a problem, but she also insists on manifesting wings. At least she has not yet mastered them enough for flight, and we hope this phase will pass before she does. It is difficult enough to keep track of her as it is.’

  ‘So,’ I said, pushing away an overly affectionate cloud hovering near my face, ‘who is she?’

  ‘Clíona’s youngest daughter.’

  No wonder Clíona had been so hot for me to find her and send her home! Having her youngest daughter safe was obviously more important than her erstwhile goal to eradicate me and my vamp-tainted blood. I filed the information away; maybe I could use it somehow to make Clíona take back her death promise if I became pregnant (unlikely), or refused her offer of sanctuary (very likely) …

  Grianne rested her chin on her hands. ‘She has been watching you since you helped her.’

  I snorted. ‘You can tell Clíona from me that stalking is illegal.’ Not to mention skin-crawlingly creepy.

  ‘It is Angel who watches you. She has conju
red your image in every mirror, pool of water or silver surface at court. Sometimes she spends all night observing you sleep.’

  ‘What? So the whole court’s spying on me—all the time?’

  ‘They can do so, if they have a mind to.’

  Great. I was the star in my very own magical Big Brother/ Truman Show. My life was now complete.

  ‘But there are not many who find you entertaining.’ Grianne’s mouth turned down. ‘You work, you eat, you sleep, you read. It appears you lead an uneventful life.’

  ‘“Star” to “has-been” in five seconds flat,’ I said drily. ‘My ego bleeds.’

  ‘That is, until this morning.’ Her lip curled, either in either amusement or disgust; I was never sure with Grianne.

  I grimaced. ‘Guess a murder always ups the ratings.’ Another drop of blood stained my jeans. ‘And talking of that, it’s been interesting catching up, Grianne, but sitting here chatting isn’t helping the poor corvid faeling who’s just died, so maybe you could get to the point as to why I’m here, or, you know, just send me back?’

  ‘You used to enjoy our talks, child,’ she said, sounding unusually wistful, but her gaze was still fixed on Angel. I doubted she was much for listening.

  ‘If by “talks”, you mean “lectures”’—on and on, about all things fae—‘and by “enjoy”, you mean “suffer”, then yes, I did. Get to the point, Grianne.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said briskly, ‘you should know that Clíona came to regret what she had wrought with the droch guidhe, so she petitioned Our Mother for a way to undo it. Our Mother decreed there should be a child for a child, and Angel is that child. She was created to break the curse.’

  Whoa. I stared at her, questions jamming my mind to a standstill until the important one finally popped out. ‘So why isn’t the curse broken?’