The Bitter Seed of Magic

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Hugh’s ‘talk’ about the note was in fact another round of statement-taking in one of the police vans, complete with a laptop-wielding WPC. We went over the memories the Morrígan had given me again, especially the one I’d had of the little blond-haired boy sliding down the slide in the playpark.

‘I’m pretty sure he’s Maxim’s son,’ I said, ‘and the “offspring” Helen Crane is talking about. But I don’t know who the boy is, or even how old he is. I meant to look up when kiddies’ slides were invented to see if that would give me a clue.’

‘I think I can help with that.’ The WPC looked up from her laptop. ‘From your description, Genny, my best guess is that the boy is in his mid-twenties to early thirties now.’ She smiled at me. ‘The slide wasn’t a clue—they’ve been around a lot longer—but the description of the lights was. I’m pretty sure they were halogens, which narrows it down.’

‘Mid-twenties to …?’ I frowned. ‘I bet Mad Max would want to keep his son near him, if he got him back.’ I flipped through the faces I knew at the Coffin Club and hit on one immediately. ‘Gareth Wilson,’ I exclaimed, ‘the human manager at the club—he’s about the right age, and he’s definitely a natural blond like Maxim.’

‘Check the records, Constable,’ Hugh said, ‘but I don’t want any contact with the club until I say so. I know it’s still five hours until sunset, but Maxim appears to be able to move around during the day in his dog shape.’ Hugh contemplated his large troll pen as if it had all the answers, then lifted serious grey eyes to me. ‘Maxim is unlikely to be very cooperative if it’s his son who is killing the faelings, Genny. I think it would be better if we approach the Oligarch privately first, to avoid any possibility of tipping Maxim and his son off and having both of them disappear on us.’ He gave me a quizzical look. ‘I know we haven’t really discussed your association with Malik al-Khan’—we definitely hadn’t, not when it was an association Hugh worried over like a mother hen—‘but do you have a way to contact him without me having to go through the normal channels?’

‘I’ve got something even better,’ I said, pulling a face as I told him about Malik being trapped in my bedroom. And Hugh was right. The logical way to get Mad Max to talk was to ask Malik as Oligarch to make Mad Max ‘cooperate’. But Malik’s own cooperation wasn’t necessarily a done deal.

For one, Mad Max didn’t owe Malik his Oath, and two: if there were no external humans involved, the vamps policed themselves. And if Mad Max (a vamp) and Helen (a witch) had something going on between them, it went against the centuries’ old détente between the two species. And then there was the third fact, that Malik had given his protection to London’s fae and faelings. Even if Mad Max’s son was a human, if Mad Max was part of what was going on, that would be a challenge to Malik’s own power-base as Head Fang. So in order to preempt any problems with either the Witches’ Council or the rest of the vamp families, Malik could justifiably rescind Mad Max’s Gift (a.k.a. rip his head off and burn him to ashes) and declare that an end to it.

Then there was the fact that Malik hadn’t exactly been forthcoming during our post-Coffin Club bedtime chat and had made it quite clear that he didn’t want me involved, so asking him to help wasn’t going to work. But finding some way of forcing him should … not only that, the situation gave me an idea of how to sort out my own problems with the beautiful, dictatorial vamp.

‘I think I can persuade Malik to cooperate,’ I told Hugh, ‘but I’ll need your help.’ Then I explained to him what I wanted, and about the flaw in his doppelgänger scheme, and how it could be fixed. And after a lot of concerned dust-puffing on Hugh’s part, we came up with a master plan: one that ensured Malik, as Oligarch, would assist the police; and meant that Hugh’s dopplegänger idea would work with or without the judicial red-tape; and as a bonus, also clubbed Malik’s ‘I Vampire, you Blood-Pet’ declaration on his arrogant buzz-cut head.

Then I let Juliet Martin take a syringe full of my blood as I chatted to Ricou, so she and Ricou could stir the Doppelgänger spell, and in place of the payment she offered, I asked her to write me a couple of letters on behalf of the Witches’ Council. Juliet finished up, and they both made a dash for the disused mortuary just as the rainstorm came.

I sat in the van mentally going over the plans, looking for any last-minute hitches in them, as huge raindrops ricocheted off the roof like bullets, and the leaden afternoon turned dark as night. Thunder rumbled and rolled ominously above me and the air charged with nature’s power … then as lightning struck silver fire across the heavens—

Finn was suddenly there, standing between the van’s open back doors and backlit by the storm like an avenging god out of Greek legend.

He’d lost his handsome human Glamour. Now he was taller, shoulders and chest broader and more heavily muscled, the angles of his face hard and feral, his horns curving up almost a foot above his head, their points lethal and sharp. My heart thudded—he was gorgeous, and terrifying, and awe-inspiring … and with the rain now sheeting down, it took me a stunned moment to realise that despite his eyes blazing emerald with rage, tears were streaming silently down his face.