The Bitter Seed of Magic

Chapter Fifty-Two

The third chime cut out halfway through, strangled before it could finish.

Crap. Someone had frozen the spell. Time had stopped again.

I swallowed back my frustration and as the dizziness receded, looked up warily to find three people next to my suddenly very tiny, very fragile-feeling circle.

Dr Craig didn’t look much different from the way I normally saw him at HOPE: tweed trousers, white doctor’s coat, stethoscope round his neck, yellow notepad under his arm, and his grey curls ringing his fish-belly-pale bald scalp and parting around his jug-handled ears. Of course, that was if I ignored the long furry orange-coloured cape-thing that he was wearing over the doctor’s coat. And the thick gold chain that clasped it round his neck. He looked like he was auditioning for Caveman Doctor of the Year, and it wasn’t a look that suited him. Not to mention that if he was here, then he wasn’t in a silver-lined cell at Old Scotland Yard, and Hugh didn’t know he was a baddie. Fuck.

Standing beside him was a thickset witch dressed in an over-tight nurse’s uniform. Her cottage-loaf bun of grey hair looked like it had been stapled to her head, and her face didn’t look like it had ever cracked a smile.

Good to know he’s got his own Nurse Ratched.

Behind them both was a faeling who could only be Nicky. Neat hooves peeped out below the hem of the white frilly nightdress she was wearing. Her features were a softer version of Helen’s beautiful patrician ones. Her horns curved to sharp triangular points about six inches above her head, and her hair was truly her proverbial crowning glory: sleek sable tresses fell almost to her waist—the same colour as Finn’s in his true guise. Seeing her made my heart ache for Finn. She shouldn’t be here; she should be safe with him.

Instead, she was smiling: that same wide, eerie Stepford beam that the rest of the girls in the circle had on their faces. I looked, trying to see the spell again, but as with the other girls, I couldn’t pinpoint any magic on her.

‘Hello, Genny,’ Dr Craig said genially, as if I wasn’t huddled like a stranded turtle on the floor by his feet. ‘I was hoping we’d meet again soon. I was expecting you to visit earlier.’

‘Yeah, something came up,’ I said drily.

‘Craig,’ Helen shouted imperiously from the other side of the large, gloomy room, ‘I want a word with you. Please.’ Dr Craig turned, regarded her for a few seconds, then said, ‘Helen, I’m glad to see you’ve considered your daughter’s health and returned.’ As he moved, I caught sight of her glaring from inside her circle. A worried-looking Jack hovered behind her. He caught my eye, and shrugged. I frowned at him: he was supposed to have kept her out of this. Movement in the circle of hospital beds caught my eye: two other nurses were moving from one Stepford mum-to-be to the next, obviously checking up on them. The mums-to-be ignored them; instead they were all craning their necks my way. And they were all still smiling that same blank eerie smile as Nicky.

‘I want a trade, Craig,’ Helen shouted again. ‘The sidhe for my daughter. I’ve told her what you want to do, and she agrees to it.’

Liar! But I kept that to myself.

But Dr Craig obviously thought Helen was lying too, since he ignored her and turned back to me with a smile just as creepy, if not as bland, as the Stepfords’. ‘Genny, why don’t you get up and we can have a nice chat about things.’ He said it like he expected me to agree.

Odd. Maybe he thought whatever spell he was using on the Stepfords would work on me … except I still couldn’t see anything.

He kept on smiling and speaking, and I realised I heard him use that same tone of voice on patients at HOPE. I shut him out, and gauged the distance between me and his legs. His rubber-soled shoes were only about a foot away from my nose. It was too far to reach out … but if I launched myself at him, I could touch him skin to skin and maybe catch his mind in my Glamour—

—and get zapped by the Stun spell Nurse Ratched was ready to sling my way.

Shit. If only he was nearer, instead of a foot away.

His furry cape suddenly brushed the dome of my small circle. I blinked in surprise.

Neither of us had moved, but his shoe was right there, its rubber sole now an inch away from my blood smeared on the flagstones.

I swallowed, feeling almost sick with exhilaration and cast a thankful glance at the suits of armour: the magic was listening to me. I’d wanted him nearer, and nearer he was. I felt like whooping in delight, but instead I shot my uninjured arm out through the blood-Ward and pushed it under the cuff of his tweed trouser leg. I wrapped my fingers round his ankle, touching bare flesh, and shoved my magic into him. A bolt of gold fire shot up from my hand like a skyrocket and hit the gold chain round his neck; it exploded into a chrysanthemum-head of sun-bright magic—

—and pain sliced through my mind like someone had chopped the top of my skull off with an axe.

And before I could retreat into my tiny circle, he reached down, grasped my wrist and yanked me out. ‘Naughty, naughty,’ he said chidingly, as I knelt there, gasping like a landed fish, desperately wondering what the chain was Warded with, and what the hell I was going to do for an encore.

‘You’ve got the sidhe, Craig,’ Helen yelled, sounding just as desperate as I felt, ‘now let me have my daughter.’

‘Very well, Helen.’ He turned to the smiling Nicky. ‘Nicola, please go to your mother now.’

She started trotting towards Helen, hooves striking off the stone floor, her smile unchanging.

I gaped. Was he really just going to let her go?

Helen evidently thought so, as she broke her circle and started hurrying towards Nicky, a big concerned smile on her face.

Unease shifted in me. I craned my head …

Nicky grabbed the frilly nightdress, bunching it up round her thighs, showing well-muscled, tanned calves and long, lean thighs coated with sleek hair the same sable colour as her head. She started to run towards her smiling mother.

Something was wrong.

Helen’s smile dimmed.

‘Helen,’ I shouted, ‘get back in the circle—

Nicky leapt the last few steps, kicking out as she did, and one precisely placed hoof caught her mother in the stomach. Helen doubled over and dropped like a broken broomstick to the stone-flagged floor. Another hoof caught her in the kidneys. Nicky circled round to Helen’s front and aimed a dainty hoof at her mother’s head—

‘Stop her,’ I screamed, reaching out and grabbing Dr Craig’s orange furry cape—

And everything stopped as if I’d pressed the pause button on a DVD: Nicky with her hoof in mid-air— Nurse Ratched with the Stun spell ready to throw— The Stepfords, all smiling creepily in my direction— Dr Craig standing half turned away from me—

Musty air shivered over me, and the rank scent of charred meat choked in my throat, then a huge translucent figure winked into being, superimposing itself like a badly scratched hologram over Dr Craig.