The Shifting Price of Prey

Chapter Twenty-One

‘Hey!’ Finn’s moss-green eyes sparked emerald, faint lines creasing their corners as he smiled.

Stunned surprise laced with joy at seeing him again made my heart leap, then my anger and hurt boiled up. I started to demand what the hell he was thinking of turning up expecting a welcome as if we’d last seen each other yesterday—

Suspicion froze me. Finn was supposed to be in the Fair Lands with Nicky, his pregnant daughter, until she had her kid. He wasn’t due back for at least another two months. So he shouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t be here . . . Unless, while my inner radar pinged him as fae, this wasn’t Finn.

I curled my fingers around Ascalon’s ring, and narrowed my gaze. The sharp points of his horns standing a couple of inches above his dark blond hair were the only thing about him that said he was satyr and not human, but then he was wearing Finn’s usual clean-cut handsome Glamour. Or almost. The lines at his eyes were new, his face was thinner, and the angle of his jaw was more defined, making him look early thirties. Though, like any fae, how old he looked was irrelevant, the real Finn (who at a hundred and eight was one of the youngest in the satyr herd) had always looked around my age: twenty-five.

The fae’s smile faded, and something else . . . disappointment, wariness, or maybe a touch of anger . . . took its place. ‘I thought you’d be happy to see me, Gen.’

He sounded like Finn too. ‘How do I know you’re Finn?’

He frowned, then comprehension lit his face and he touched his palm to the Warded dome. It flashed bright vermilion and he hastily snatched his hand back.

Yeah, the Ward packs a punch. But then this guy was fae, he’d know that. So why the hell had he hurt himself like that?

‘Third time’s the charm, Gen,’ he said, holding his hand up; his palm was black where the Ward had seared his skin. ‘Except it wasn’t, was it?’ He gave me a lopsided grin. ‘Ricou said we were lucky not to kill each other. Remember?’

I did. Tavish had sicced me with a Chastity spell that manifested as a black handprint on my stomach. Finn had tried to remove the spell using his fertility magic. We’d been in the back of a luxury limo cocooned in our own little world by Privacy spells, and the knowledge than no one would interrupt us. If we hadn’t both ended up knocked out by the clashing spells the third time he’d tried, things would’ve gone a lot further than they did . . . And yeah, only Finn would know he’d said ‘Third time’s the charm’ right before our ‘lucky’ magical coitus interruptus.

The memory lodged a ball of hurt in my chest. Why the hell did he have to remind me of that particular moment; the last time we’d had fun and been happy together? Damn satyr could’ve picked any number of things.

‘Ricou can be a drama queen at times,’ I said flatly.

Finn’s shot me a searching look but all he said was, ‘So, you’re sure it’s me now?’

I wanted to say no. I wanted to shout at him to go away. But my curiosity spiked . . . or maybe a moment of errant masochism: I also wanted to know why he’d cut me off.

I stepped through the Ward, shivering as the recognition magic pricked goosebumps over my skin. There was one last check— skin to skin. Stealing myself for his touch, I stuck my hand out, ‘Nearly.’

He nodded and clasped my hand in his, taking a deep breath and rolling his shoulders like he was shrugging off a heavy cape. The mouth-watering smell of blackberries swam on the air and his familiar magic bloomed inside me. I gasped as it filled me, then swallowed back a scream as it ripped spiked thorns of desire through my core and almost took me to my knees before Finn gathered me to him.

‘Um. You okay, Gen?’

I leaned against him, not sure my legs would hold me, breathing in his warm berry scent, feeling his heart echoing my own heart’s fast thudding, and concentrated on crushing the need thrumming through my body. Bastard satyr had sicced me with enough of his sex-god energy to power-up a fertility rite. Boy, was I thankful that Mad Max’s Poultice spell had done its job. Damn fertility magic would’ve had me desperate and begging again. Especially as my libido thought Finn was exactly what it needed, and wanted nothing less than to act on the promise of pleasure still jumping along my nerve endings. Only no way was that going to happen, not when he’d cut me off.

Finally I fought myself back under control, and pushed away from him. ‘What the fuck was that for?’

‘Well, I wanted you to be sure it was me,’ he said sounding contrite, but a flicker of satisfaction crossed his face. ‘Sorry.’

Rage sparked. ‘No. You’re not.’

‘Hey, I am sorry, truly, Gen. I’ve . . .’ He lifted a hesitant hand as if to touch me, then let it fall. ‘Okay, yeah, maybe I took advantage. A bit. But I didn’t mean to hit you quite so hard. The magic’s been playing havoc with me recently, and I’ve . . . missed you. Forgive me?’

I’d missed him too. The feeling slammed into me, twisting through my anger. And I knew better than most how the magic could play tricks on you.

Finn’s mouth turned down. ‘Things haven’t been easy with Nicky, either. Not that that’s an excuse, but it hasn’t helped.’

Yep, I could imagine that coping with a pregnant teenage daughter wasn’t easy, especially one whose pregnancy had been forced on her by a deranged baby-making wizard. Not to mention Nicky ending up in the mad wizard’s clutches was down to her own mother, Finn’s ex and my Witch-bitch nemesis DI Helen Crane. Helen’s betrayal of him and their daughter was something else he’d had to deal with. The Witch-bitch was an evil piece of work if ever there was one.

I shoved my hands in my robe pockets, warring between wanting to hug him for the nasty stuff he’d ended up dealing with, and pounding on him for siccing his magic on me. For bringing back memories I’d buried. For cutting me off. But concern for Nicky, and for him, made me ask ‘How is Nicky?’

‘She’s fine.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘Well, not fine, but okay,’ he added, then the wariness darkened his green eyes again. ‘We need to talk, Gen.’

Yeah, we did. I clenched my hands in my pockets. ‘You’d better start then,’ I said, trying to keep my anger out of my voice.

Finn flinched, so obviously I wasn’t successful. He waved at my bedroom window. ‘Can we go inside, Gen?’

No. But the excited rustling coming from the silver birches silenced my kneejerk denial; we’d given the trees enough gossip already. And I did want to hear whatever he had to tell me.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But I have to go first then pull you through the Ward.’ Only we have to touch again. I’m not sure I’m ready. Or if I want to.

He nodded as if he’d heard my reluctant words or more likely noticed my hands were still shoved in my robe, then he cast an assessing eye over the dome. ‘Looks complicated.’

‘It is.’ I grimaced. ‘And sensitive.’

‘Sensitive?’

‘Yeah, it’s set to activate if it senses we’re under threat,’ I said, then as talking was easing the anger tensing my muscles I added grudgingly, ‘Turns out it can’t tell the difference between fear and excitement. The Ward went into lock-down after I signed up Harrods.’

Impressed delight lit his face. ‘You got the contract with Harrods?’

‘Yep.’

He grinned, leaned in as if he were going to kiss me then, as I shifted back, clasped my shoulders instead, giving them a congratulatory pat. ‘Way to go, Gen!’

‘Thanks.’ I’d worked hard to finalise that deal, and I was proud of it. Now I’d given the police the heads up about the source of the Harrods’ mutating Magic Mirror spell, it was going to be a nice little earner. I nodded at the dome. ‘It took us two days to get the Ward back on track.’

‘Us?’

‘Me, Sylvia and Ricou.’

‘Ah,’ he said, a muscle spasming in his jaw. ‘I’d heard you were living together. How’s that working out?’

An odd note in his voice made me frown. ‘Better than I thought it would. Why?’

He cast another look at my bedroom window. ‘Can we talk about it inside? Or is that a problem?’

‘Why should it be a problem?’

‘Not here, Gen,’ he insisted.

He sounded . . . jealous? Of Sylvia and Ricou? That was . . . weird. And way out of line. He was the one who’d stopped writing not me. I blew out a furious breath to calm myself then stepped back into the magical dome. The Ward slapped shut behind me. I turned, took a moment to focus, and shoved my left arm through the Ward’s plastic-feeling side. ‘You need to hold my hand with your left, and remember: stay calm.’

He stared at my hand as if I’d offered him raw meat to eat (something I’d never do, since Finn’s vegetarian) and it clicked he was glaring at Malik’s rose-shaped bruises circling my wrist, though why was beyond me; he knew they were there. I raised my brows and wiggled my fingers impatiently. He grasped them and I went to guide him through, then stopped him with a warning look. ‘Oh, one more thing, the Ward will strip away your Glamour, so you might want to make sure your clothes are real.’

‘I don’t make a habit of walking around undressed, Gen.’ Amusement glinted in his eyes, and for a moment the teasing, light-hearted Finn I loved was back. ‘At least not since that time you called my clothes along with a spell.’

‘That was nearly a year ago,’ I huffed, aggrieved. ‘And it was an accident.’ It had been our first Spellcrackers job together. I’d been mortified at my erratic magical ability that I hadn’t taken time to enjoy the naked Finn eye-candy. ‘And it only happened the once.’

‘Twice.’

Oh, yeah. Except the second time I’d given in to temptation and done it deliberately. Not that it got me anywhere; Finn had been even quicker at zapping his Glamour back in place than the first time.

I gave a louder huff, and tugged him towards me.

He stepped into the Ward. It held him, the power in it tasting and testing. The air around him flashed with emerald sparks, and I squinted against the glare as his Glamour peeled away in stages, as if it took time to reveal his true form. His T-shirt disappeared. His shoulders and chest broadened, the muscles hardening and becoming more defined. His jeans morphed into a pair of olive-coloured cargo trousers, loose enough to conceal the tail I’d glimpsed only once and which, like all satyrs, he was shy about. His features sharpened, taking on a feral edge, his hair turning from dark blond to a ruffled sable, his horns lengthening, curving and twisting sinuously a foot above his head. His eyes were the last to change: the softer moss-green of his irises flowing into the whites and shading them pale chartreuse as his pupils elongated and flattened into dark horizontal slits.

For a moment I caught my breath, stunned. I’d seen his true form before, but only when he’d been fighting, hurt or angry enough to lose his hold on his Glamour, and while his human shape was clean-cut handsome, now he was— well, jaw-droppingly gorgeous didn’t begin to cover it.

‘Like what you see, Gen?’ he said, grinning like a fertility fae who thought he was on to a sure thing.

Annoyance smacked into me and I shut my mouth. Damn satyr. He’d somehow fudged the Ward: his whole slow-Glamour-strip deliberate.

Before I could call him on it, a loud splash came from the pond behind me.

I swung round, adrenalin speeding my pulse as I dug a handful of dog biscuits from my robe’s pocket.

The pond’s occupant – a gigantic eel called Bertha – had risen five feet above the water’s surface and was doing her usual swaying snake-charmer’s dance. Briefly I wondered if I could make a run for the bedroom before she saw me, only my luck was out. She drew back in her ready-to-attack stance, her eyes flashing a malevolent acid-yellow, her mouth yawning wide to showcase her pointed teeth. Her extremely sharp and painful pointed teeth. Bertha and the pond might be eight feet away from me, but I had two sets of teeth marks in my right calf and a deep bite in my left buttock to prove that distance wasn’t a barrier. Not when Bertha hated me with a single-minded passion that went way past murderous. Which was sort of my fault. I’d stabbed her with a bull’s horn. She hadn’t been herself at the time, and I’d been acting in self-defence. But Bertha wasn’t big on extenuating circumstances. She wanted her pound of flesh— literally.

Going for distraction, I pelted her with half-a-dozen biscuits. Most of them fell uselessly into the pond, but one caught Bertha under her gills. She hissed.

‘Isn’t that Bertha, Ricou’s pet?’ Finn asked in a bemused voice.

‘Yep.’ I threw another biscuit. It bounced away in another lucky hit above her left eye.

‘What’s she doing in your pond?’

‘Stopping any unwanted visitors from using it as a gateway.’

Bertha shook her head, and slithered over the pond’s edge on to the grass.

‘Safer not to have the pond,’ he murmured.

‘Sylvia needs the water,’ I said. ‘Now she’s pregnant she’s drinking around twenty gallons a day and there are way too many additives in tap water.’ A biscuit hit Bertha’s nose: nearly on target. ‘And Bertha adores Sylvia, she’d never hurt her.’ Unlike me. The next biscuit sailed into Bertha’s open maw. She snapped her jaws shut and, radiating bliss, she wriggled back into the water and disappeared, leaving its surface black and ripple-free.

Relieved, I headed for the open window, ducked through the Ward and stuck my left arm out to Finn.

He shot a last puzzled glance at the pond, started to climb in after me, but froze halfway through and said in a soft voice, ‘You should’ve told me if I was interrupting, Gen.’

Crap. I’d forgotten about the rose petals.