The Bitter Seed of Magic

Chapter Nineteen

The entrance foyer was done up in twisted funeral-parlour chic: black-panelled wood, thick black carpet, artistically arranged white lilies exuding their overly sweet scent, and plush white velvet seats. A multitude of tiny UV spotlights—the reason why everything I wore, including my underwear, was black—dispelled the gloom slightly and picked out the white velvet ropes that marked a glowing zigzag path to the ticket booth.

A pair of long-haired Irish wolfhounds sat with their ears pricked forwards, pink tongues lolling out the sides of their mouths as they stared at me out of disconcertingly pale blue eyes; the UV spots tinted their grey-white coats silver. I gave the dogs a wide berth. Not that I don’t like dogs, but like everyone else, I’d heard the rumours: they were either vamps, or controlled by the vamps. After all, having a load of comatose suckers lying around in glitzy coffins with only humans to defend them is just asking for trouble from some of the more militant pro-humans groups. Even after several visits I still didn’t know which of the doggy rumours were true.

I headed into the zigzag ropes, checking out the life-sized coffin-shaped screens for a glimpse of Darius as they flashed pictures of the club’s vamps ‘lying in state’. He wasn’t being featured, which meant he was in his room. I reached the ticket booth—coffin-shaped, of course—to find Gareth, the club’s human manager, sitting slumped inside, idly flicking through a magazine: Bite Monthly. He was dressed as usual in the club’s undertaker uniform, with his black-banded top hat sitting on the shelf behind him. The dour outfit didn’t go with his blond surfer-boy good looks.

‘Thought you’d be busier at this time,’ I said, holding out the entrance fee.

‘Members don’t turn up ’til the vamps start gettin’ lively.’ He frowned at the money, but didn’t take it. ‘It’s after five.’ He gave me a look almost as disconcerting as the dogs’. ‘Only members get in after five, Ms Taylor. Them’s the rules.’

‘C’mon, Gareth. One: I’m not human, so the rules don’t apply; and two: you know why I’m here, and I’ll be in and out in fifteen minutes tops.’

‘Can’t do it.’ He pointed up at the security cameras. ‘Council inspector checks them weekly. We’d lose our tourist licence, and I’d lose my sponsorship.’ He opened wide and touched his tongue to his implanted fangs. ‘Ain’t no chance of gettin’ these for real if your sponsor refuses you the Gift. None of the others’ll take you on then.’ He shut his mouth with a snap. ‘You wanna go in now, then you gotta be a member.’

I gripped my backpack strap, frustration pricking me. Getting a vamp to officially sponsor you for the Gift is the Dream Win: the odds-on lottery chance at joining the ranks of the immortal bloodsuckers. Of course, getting the sponsor is less about the lottery as having the right looks, attitude and earning potential that makes a fang-fan an attractive proposition as a future baby bloodsucker. After all, the vamp sponsor and his newly Gifted neophyte will be spending the next fifty to hundred years in co-dependency before the younger vamp gains his autonomy and cuts his bloody apron strings, so no vamp in their right mind is going to offer the Gift to someone who isn’t a thousand and ten per cent loyal.

Arguing with Gareth was a waste of time. ‘How much for the membership?’ I asked flatly.

‘Won’t cost you nothing but blood.’ He pulled out a form from under his magazine and slid it towards me. ‘Just sign on the dotted line.’

Blood might be the price, but it didn’t mean I had to pay it. ‘Fine, give me two wristbands, then.’

‘I’m only supposed to give them to members after they’ve donated, so the vamps don’t take too much.’

‘Licensing laws say wristbands are to be given to anyone who asks, Gareth; you know that.’

‘Yeah, well. Not many of them ask beforehand.’ He hesitated, then pulled out a couple of white silicone wristbands from a large goldfish bowl behind him and tossed them on the form. They glowed under the UV light.

I slipped them on and pulled the form towards me. The details were already filled in; all it needed was the date and my signature. I looked up in surprise.

‘Yesterday was your day to visit.’ Gareth gave me a pen. ‘When you didn’t turn up at lunchtime today, I guessed you’d be in to see your boy tonight. And I was bored. It’s dead round here just now.’

‘Ha, ha,’ I muttered, then read down the form. A name next to one section snagged my attention—

Malik al-Khan.

‘Owner?’ I jabbed the pen in annoyance. ‘That is so wrong.’

‘It can’t be.’ Gareth frowned. ‘I got it off the blood-families’ database. It’s where I got all your personal info, and it lists Malik al-Khan as your owner.’

Ri-ight, a database: well, that clarified everything … and nothing. ‘It’s not the database that’s wrong, it’s the concept,’ I explained through gritted teeth, although going by Gareth’s ‘uh-huh’ look, it wasn’t a concept that bothered him. ‘And how the hell did my details get on the database in the first place?’

‘Someone put them there,’ he said, deadpan.

Yeah, obvious or what? But who? Somehow updating a database didn’t seem like Malik’s sort of thing. Then the hairs on the back of my neck rose as I realised the form was filled out in my birth name: Genevieve Nataliya Zakharinova. I gripped the pen, knuckles going white, shocked at seeing it there.

Damn. This visit was a nightmare waiting to happen.

I scratched a signature on the form and shoved it back at Gareth. ‘Right, you’ve got your signature for the camera. Now can I go in?’

‘Minnie Mouse?’ he spluttered. ‘You can’t put that—’

‘You filled the wrong name out on the form, Gareth, so I can put anything I want—’

A dog growled.

We both turned; one of the dogs from the entrance had moved and now sat not far from the booth. It stared up at us from its disturbing eyes, lips drawn back to display impressive canines, a pair of diamond-encrusted dog-tags swinging on a choke chain round its neck.

‘That is a dog, isn’t it?’ I asked, suspicion flaring as I looked. A round dish on the counter filled with what looked like water glittered with magic, but the dog still looked like a dog, and I still didn’t get any vibes suggesting it might be something—or someone—else.

‘’Course he’s a dog! Those rumours about them being vamps ain’t true, y’know, they’re just put around to keep the crazies away.’ A puzzled expression crossed Gareth’s face as he scanned the entrance behind me. ‘Dunno what he’s growlin’ at though, ain’t nothing there.’ He waved the dog away. ‘Go on, Max, back to the door.’ The dog didn’t move. Gareth shrugged and turned back to me. ‘Anyway, Ms Mouse, your membership still needs to be sealed for the cameras, then you can go in.’ He knocked on the counter top three times. When nothing happened, he sighed and disappeared beneath it, emerging after a few moments holding a tiny Monitor goblin. He wasn’t much more than twelve inches high even with the tuft of silver-white hair. The goblin’s head lolled as Gareth sat him on the counter between us. His navy-blue workman’s boilersuit swamped his tiny frame and made him look like a grey, wrinkled doll dressed in toddler’s play clothes. Tiny diamond earrings sparkled in his rabbit-like ears.

‘Abraham, new member needs checking out,’ Gareth said quietly, then gestured at me. ‘Give him your hand so he can do his stuff.’

Goblins, like trolls, are impervious to magic, but unlike trolls, goblins are the ultimate magic detectors; they can spot a vamp mind-lock at twenty paces, and they can sense if someone’s under the influence of a vamp’s mesma with just a brief touch. They’re also the ultimate ‘letter of the law’ followers: once a goblin’s agreed a job and been paid, nothing can corrupt them, which is the main reason goblins are so popular with humans who do business with the vamps. And it’s why the Monitors act as gatekeepers for the vamp clubs: the law states vamps can’t use mesma or magical persuasions to force humans to enter any premises licensed for vampiric activities. Being checked out by a Monitor goblin makes the punters feel safe. Of course, there are other ways of persuading people that have nothing to do with mesma or magic, which is something the law doesn’t account for.

I ran my finger down my nose in the respectful goblin greeting, then held my hand out, palm up. The goblin adjusted his miniature black wraparounds with the precise movements of someone utterly drunk and trying to hide it, then returned my greeting. ‘St’early?’ he queried to Gareth.

‘Abraham, it’s not too early, and she ain’t human. The vamps can’t mind-lock sidhes, so it’s just for the cameras anyway.’

‘S’okays …’ He belched, his chin falling to his chest, and a sour reek filled the air.

I jerked my hand away, incredulous. ‘Are you mad? Don’t you know how risky it is having a goblin milked up on methane above ground during the day? What if he gets hit by sunlight?’

‘Hey, no worries!’ Gareth beckoned me to put my hand back. ‘Abes ain’t gonna explode or nothing: the windows’re all specially coated for the vamps. What works for them works for the gobs too.’ He gently prodded the goblin, then wrapped the goblin’s knobbly fingers round a small wooden seal stick. ‘C’mon, Abes, do your stuff.’

‘Handmiss,’ Abraham slurred.

Frowning, I offered it again and Abraham dipped a finger in the water-dish, reached out and brushed my palm with a butterfly’s touch, so light and quick that I almost didn’t feel his sharp claw slice my skin. He pressed the seal into my blood, then leaned drunkenly forwards and stamped the form next to my/Minnie’s signature.

I stood looking at the neat diamond design he’d cut into my palm, stunned and amazed at how fast he’d been, and at what he’d actually done. ‘Okay,’ I said slowly, ‘since when did you start using blood along with magic to seal the forms?’

‘One of the vamps thought it’d be a good gimmick, and the members love it,’ Gareth said, picking Abraham up and strapping him into a child’s high chair next to his own seat. He held up his own hand; a similar diamond shape glowed blue-white on his palm. ‘Invisible ink’s made from tonic water, the UV lights make it glow, and a spell tags it in place. It’s like getting your hand stamped with that indelible ink the other clubs use, only some members don’t want nobody knowing they’ve been to a vamp club’—his lip curled with contempt—‘so it suits all round.’

Crap. ‘How long does it last for?’

‘Long enough, Ms Taylor,’ a deep voice said next to me.

I jerked round at the voice, my pulse jumping in my throat, wondering for a mad moment if it was the dog speaking.

A vampire was standing a couple of feet away, an avuncular smile on his handsome fortysomething face—a fang-free smile, of course, a neat trick the older vamps practise: Fyodor Andreevich Zakharin, head honcho of the White Diamond vamps.