The Shifting Price of Prey

Chapter Seventeen

Ah. ‘What wouldn’t work?’ I asked.

‘I told them you were still hung up on Finn. That you wouldn’t be interested in me and Ricou. But they wouldn’t have it.’

Finn. The cut-me-off-without-an-explanation-satyr-I-wasn’t-thinking-about.

I rubbed the ache blooming in my chest.

Sylvia’s green eyes filled with sympathy. ‘Just because he stopped writing, Genny,’ she said softly, ‘it might not mean what you think.’

I’d kept writing up until four weeks ago. Not because I was hung up on him but because he was my friend. And I wanted to know if he was okay. Even if he’d never got my letters, he knew there was no way I could contact him other than through his family so he’d have found a way to check why I seemed to be giving him the silent treatment . . . if we’d really been the friends, never mind the anything more, I’d thought we were.

Crap. I’d promised myself not to waste any more time on him.

‘Who are they, Syl?’

She gave me a long troubled look, obviously wondering whether to push me about a certain satyr. But that subject was done. To my mind, anyway— She started to speak and I jerked my hands up. ‘Syl, forget it. Forget him. Please. Just tell me who they are, and why they want you to seduce me?’

She shook her head, leaves rustling with a mix of frustration and irritation. ‘Goodness, who do you think, Genny? Our mothers!’

Right. The Ladies Meriel and Isabella: Head naiad and dryad respectively a.k.a. Ricou’s and Sylvia’s mothers. ‘Why do they want you to seduce me—’ I stopped as it all fell into place. ‘No, let me guess: Spellcrackers.’

‘Yes.’ Sylvia sighed, her shoulders drooping. ‘They said we might as well make ourselves useful since we both insisted on staying with you.’

Damn. I knew the satyr herd elders wanted Spellcrackers back but this was the first I’d heard the Ladies had their acquisitive eyes on the business. Well, they could all think again. Spellcrackers was mine, and would be until a certain satyr came back from the Fair Lands, which wouldn’t be for at least another two months.

I scowled at Sylvia. ‘You’ve been staying with me for three months. Why are the Ladies plotting now?’

‘Gosh, I don’t know. Mother wouldn’t tell me anything more unless I let her through the Wards. She said she wasn’t going to discuss matters of import while on a public roof for all to listen.’

I gaped. ‘You kept your mother standing outside?’

‘Of course I did.’ Her expression turned to a mix of despair and mutiny. ‘I’m not that stupid. You don’t know what she’s like.’

Actually, I did. Lady Isabella hadn’t been beyond kidnapping me as a way of making me do what she wanted in the past. That she hadn’t succeeded was not for want of trying.

‘If I’d let her in,’ Sylvia carried on, ‘she’d have had me locked up in my tree in a heartbeat. She’s on about it not being safe here for me and the baby again.’

‘Is she crazy? With all the protective Wards and magic here this place is safer than Buck House. Not to mention you can hardly move for all the dryads and their trees she’s got camped out around here. They’ve had to divert traffic round the huge elm that’s taken root outside the front door.’

‘I told her that, but she’s suddenly got this bee in her bonnet that “staying here is dangerous”. Of course, it’s really about that Ricou. She’s still furious that her grandchild is going to be half naiad, and how we’re never going to find a suitable tree. She only shut up about it when I agreed to have a go at seducing you.’

‘You made an agreement with your mother?’ Fae don’t make or break bargains lightly; the consequences are too unpredictable and can backfire on both parties even if the bargain is kept. I couldn’t care less about Lady Isabella, but I did care about Sylvia. ‘Why the hell did you do that, Syl?’

Her eyes went wide with shock. ‘Oh my gosh, no, it wasn’t that type of agreement, Genny.’ She held her hand up, fingers crossed. ‘Just the kid’s promise, the sort that doesn’t involve magic, you know?’

Relieved, I nodded. ‘You had me worried for a min.’

She smiled, then added coyly, ‘And, you know, you might have said yes. It would be so much fun.’ She paused, obviously waiting for me to have a change of orientation: Sylvia is nothing if not persistent. I gave her a look. ‘But, oh well, you didn’t, so now I’ve kept my promise, I’m off the hook. So’ – she grabbed the bottle of Cristall vodka – ‘how about I make you that special Bloody Mary?’

‘It’s okay, Syl.’ I took the bottle from her and put it down. ‘I’ll do it myself once I’ve finished. You go to bed. You and Baby Grace need your rest.’

‘I could always stay and watch?’ she said, giving me a hopeful look. ‘It gets a bit lonely with Ricou gone most of the time.’

Did she never give up? ‘No, you really couldn’t,’ I said firmly.

She pouted. ‘Spoilsport.’

‘Yep, that’s me.’ I opened the wardrobe door and gestured inside. ‘Goodnight, Sylvia.’

‘You know, Genny, you’re really not like sidhe are supposed to be—’

‘Please,’ I groaned, ‘not the sidhe sex myth again. Syl, I’m really not gagging for it.’ At least I wasn’t now, after Mad Max’s tough-love Poultice spell. And, thankfully, even before that Sylvia obviously hadn’t been hitting my hot buttons. ‘Now. Go. To. Bed.’

She gave me one last imploring look, which I pointedly ignored, then, with a loud guilt-inducing sigh, she ducked under the empty hanging rail and disappeared through the back of the wardrobe.

I grabbed the sheet I kept on the wardrobe shelf, closed the door and carefully draped it over the wardrobe’s front to stop any peeping eyes.

I stripped off. Not that I needed to be naked to do the cleansing ritual to get rid of the Magic Mirror spell I’d absorbed at Harrods; it was just more practical than neutralising my clothes afterwards. Crunching on half-a-dozen liquorice torpedoes, I sat crossed-legged inside the larger circle, opened the part of me that can see the magic, picked up my knife and pricked my left index finger. A bead of bright red blood welled up and I touched it and my will to the outer circle. The circle rose like a glass cake dome shot through with gold.

I gathered the hyperactive pinballs of magic inside me and taking a deep breath, tagged the pinballs to the salt block. They fizzled and spat like water on a hotplate as they hit the salt, then, as I hoped it would, the Magic Mirror spell dissolved into the usual thick grey sludge. The fetid smell of rotting vegetables filled the circle – confirmation, if I’d needed it, that the original spell had been altered with deliberate malice and wasn’t some sort of accident, same as the last few times I’d done this.

Only now, after my unusual preoccupation with my looks and Sylvia’s cleavage, I had an idea what might be responsible. That urge for plastic surgery hadn’t popped into my head on its own. A quick email to Hugh and bit of investigation by the Met’s Magic Squad, and Harrods’ mutating Magic Mirror spell problem should be sorted. Satisfied I’d got something to go on, I set the sludge-filled inner circle. It popped into place like an upside-down sieve made of fine gold mesh.

‘Now for the fun part.’

I focused on the sludge-covered salt, and cracked it.

The magic and the salt exploded, the sludge predictably erupting like a mini volcano. I threw my arms up in front of my face as the sludge splattered me, leaving me feeling cold, wet, and as if I’d been thoroughly slimed by a swamp-dragon’s parasitic wyrm.

‘And isn’t that an icky thought,’ I grumbled, flicking sludge off my fingers and watching as it dissipated into the ether. At least the sieve-like inner circle kept the actual salt from hitting me; the stuff stung like sand in a desert storm otherwise. The sludge was magical, so now the spell was neutralised the only physical clear-up involved was washing the salt down the drain in the bath, and stowing my blue plastic.

I tidied up, jumped in a hot shower then emailed Hugh about my suspicions.

The Magic Mirror spell problems at Harrods: think I know what’s causing it. The lingerie fitting rooms are filled with promo leaflets for a posh plastic surgery clinic (link to website below). I think they’re probably tagged with some sort of Dissatisfaction or Envy hex to encourage new customers to the clinic. Could be worth checking out?

I pressed send then headed for the kitchen to make my Bloody Mary nightcap.

The glass of ice was still waiting for me; Sylvia had thoughtfully bespelled it to stop it melting. I opened the fridge and wrinkled my nose at the fishy reek of the two dead mackerel; having a naiad as a flatmate has its smelly downsides. At least Sylvia likes her food cooked. Though I couldn’t really talk, I thought, as I snagged the carton of lamb’s blood and poured a pint into a cocktail shaker. I added a healthy measure of vodka then stuck my hand in the empty cut glass bowl next to the sink.

The glyphs etched around the bowl glowed pink as it conjured some blood-fruit: the magical answer to controlling my 3V infection. The blood-fruit meant I didn’t have to rely on G-Zav – the human vamp junkies’ methadone – which doesn’t work too well for fae, or need to Get Fanged by a vamp to get my regular dose of vamp venom. The bowl and its never-ending supply was a reward from Clíona after I’d helped her out. Seeing as my queenly grandmother wasn’t my biggest fan, the paranoid part of me kept expecting her to take it back, or use it to poison me, even though that would effectively break the bargain we’d made. So far, she’d stuck to her word.

Usually I got cherries – the bowl had a thing for Sylvia (with the whole fruity connection they had, she and the bowl gossiped like a pair of silver birches) – or sometimes blackberries, though they’d been noticeably absent since the satyr had stopped writing. Occasionally the bowl produced something weird, like today’s offering. A fruit, painted silvery gold like all blood-fruit, appeared. It was vaguely pear-shaped, but too knobbly, so I doubted it actually was one.

I poked it and guessed. ‘A pear?’

‘This is not a pear, but a quince, sacred to Aphrodite’ – the bowl’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone – ‘and you know who she is, don’t you?’

‘Yep,’ I said flatly, ‘the Goddess of Love.’

‘And of beauty and sexuality,’ the bowl added smugly. ‘The quince is also the fruit of love, marriage and fertility,’ it finished archly.

Of course it was. ‘What’s it taste like?’

‘What else but paradise?’

Gods save me from magical artefacts and their lame sense of humour.

‘Thanks,’ I muttered, knowing from past experience that saying anything else would get me something disgusting next time, like crab apples. I chopped the quince, popped the pieces into a mincer, cranked the handle (not having electricity sucks) and added the pulp to the blood in the cocktail shaker. I shook, poured the Bloody Mary into the glass and added a good shake of chilli flakes. They’d help disguise the quince if it tasted foul. And, after that paradise quip, I fully expected it to.

I sipped. Under the chilli the blood tasted bitter and astringent. Figured.

I moved to the full-length mirror propped next to my bedroom door (I’d shifted it out of my bedroom to stop Sylvia, and her lack of boundaries, from bursting in every time she wanted to use it) and dropped my towel. Might as well check the Magic Mirror spell was truly kaput.

I stared at my reflection with apprehension. Malik’s rose-coloured bruises still marked the front of my body from my breasts down to the faint Celtic knot tattoo which sat low on my left hip, the remains of the spell that had let me borrow Rosa’s vamp body. It was now as dead as she was. If not for them, I thought I looked pretty good. My curves might be not be as generous as Sylvia’s but I was healthy and in proportion. Big boobs would look odd, I decided. Relief filled me. The nasty influence of the Magic Mirror spell was definitely gone.

I chugged the rest of the blood-fruit Mary down, and stepped back.

Something crunched under my foot.

It was the fortune cookie the old Chinese woman had given me. I’d stowed it in my backpack.

Gingerly, I picked it up. It crumbled in my hand and a blank tarot card zoomed out to hover in front of me.

Pulse speeding with excitement, and a little trepidation, I hurriedly set a Privacy spell (there was too much wood around and no way did I want any of Sylvia’s mother’s spies hearing about this), swapped the glass for a knife and slashed my index finger.

‘I offer my blood solely in exchange for the answer to my questions. No harm to me or mine,’ I said, and touched the tarot card.

The little mouth latched onto my blood with gusto. Still no pain, other than a tiny tickle.

‘Tell me how to find that which is lost, and how to join that which is sundered, to release the fae’s fertility from the pendant and restore it back to them as it was before it was taken,’ I asked, repeating my original question.

The mouth stopped sucking. ‘Eh, why’s everyone so blummin’ impatient,’ a crotchety voice grumbled. ‘Blimey, can’t ye let a body have a few moments to drink in peace?’

‘Um, sure,’ I said, not sure if the voice was male or female. ‘Sorry.’

‘So ye should be, girlie. So ye blummin’ should be. Now keep yer mouth shut till I’m done.’ The mouth latched back on and I watched as my blood turned the card red from the bottom up.

An image appeared on the card.