The Shifting Price of Prey

Chapter Thirty-Three

‘Yeah.’ I gave him a considering look. ‘Malik wants it kept quiet. Says it’s dangerous and I agree with him.’

Tavish snorted. ‘Well, you’re nae wrong, doll. But I ken we decided ’twas best you stayed away from him and the rest, till we know what’s what with this Emperor.’

Yeah, well I decided it wasn’t best, Mr Grumpy. And as I wasn’t about to debate it with him, I hit him with my next attack. ‘Oh, and thanks for telling me there was silver in that werewolf repellent.’

His gills snapped shut in embarrassment. ‘Aye, well, you were nae meant to use more than a wee drop. ’Twould nae have harmed you then.’

As I’d thought. Still, he should’ve told me. I shot him another scowl to show I hadn’t quite forgiven him yet, then filled him in on the Tower card and my visit to see the Bangladeshi ambassador; the werewolves having something to do with the kidnap victims; the Emperor wanting Janan, the Bonder of Souls; and that given my quick trip home it didn’t look like Malik was going to help me get to the Emperor, since it looked like there was a throwdown in the offing between the Emperor and the Autarch. I finished with, ‘So apart from the long-term problems that a vamp takeover bid could cause all of us, we’re no closer to finding the Emperor or what he wants in return for the info about releasing the fae’s fertility from the pendant.’

‘Hmph. I’ll be chatting again to the vampire, doll, and see what this vampire takeover business ’tis about. ’Tis maybe naught but a storm in a teacup, but so long as they keep to their agreements’– the beads on his dreads flashed a warning red – ‘it doesnae matter who’s in charge. So dinna fash yourself about the blood-suckers.’

I stared at him. I was going to worry about the blood-suckers. Malik, and a few others who were my friends. And I did think it mattered who was in charge. But Tavish and I obviously lived in different worlds, and I wasn’t going to waste my breath arguing with him about it. I already knew he and Malik were allies, not friends, only drawn together by what the other could offer . . .

Damn it, that was it. Malik wanted Tavish’s help in killing Bastien – an idea I was fully behind. Only I’d always had in the back of my mind that with Bastien gone, Malik would be the new Head Fang, not some evil interloper like the Emperor. And Tavish wanted me protected until the fae’s fertility problem was solved . . . which was why Malik had sent me home. Into Tavish’s waiting arms.

Crap. The annoying pair had double-teamed me again, first with Tavish’s text, which I didn’t get to see, and then with their little chat while I was out of it. Maybe I should just save time and trouble for all of us, and buy the bubble wrap myself.

‘So that’s it?’ I glowered at Tavish. ‘You’re going to talk to Malik and I just have to wait for the next card to turn up?’

‘Och, doll, ’tis the best thing.’ He patted my hand. ‘Safer too, what with the Emperor’s werewolves running about. And ’twill all sort itself out once the last two cards turn up and the reading’s complete; the spirit in the cards hasnae failed me yet.’

Yeah, but there’s always a first time. I gritted my teeth. ‘What about the Emperor’s website? Have you hacked it yet?’

His dreads twisted with frustration. ‘’Twill nae be long now, doll, but I do have a wee thing of interest to show you.’ An electronic tablet appeared with a small audible pop to hover in front of us. Tavish plucked it out of the air, tapped the screen and handed it to me.

It showed the home page for a plant nursery:

Bodmin Moor Plant and Herb Nursery ~ Specialists in mediaeval and modern herbs, herbaceous perennials and rare bulbs ~ Growing since 1775.

I cut Tavish a bemused look. ‘Um, why am I looking at this?’

Tavish reached over and tapped ‘News’.

A picture of Katie’s ‘boyfriend’, Marc, filled the screen. He was standing next to a slightly older man, both of them smiling for the camera, holding up three cards with gold coins stuck in the middle of them. The caption read:

Nurseryman Carlson Fowey and his nephew Marc Fowey with the three prestigious Royal Horticultural Society gold medals awarded at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show; the first year Marc has taken full responsibility for the nursery’s exhibits at the show.

I wasn’t enlightened. I frowned at Tavish. ‘You going to fill me in?’

‘You told me that the lad, Marc, here, was spying on you at the gnome’s,’ he said. ‘This is why. He was there to do business. Apparently, one of the gnome’s cats was sitting on the windowsill and the lad went to speak to it, glanced through the window and saw you, got a mite curious and then a wee bit embarrassed when you caught him watching. So he rushed off instead of keeping his appointment with the gnome.’

Hm. ‘And you believe him?’

‘Aye, doll, his tale is true enough. The nursery does business with many of the gnomes, nae just Gnome Lampy.’

I pursed my lips at the smiling Marc and his medals, reluctantly remembering that Katie had mentioned he worked with plants. I couldn’t deny his story was plausible, given that whole ‘the simplest explanation is usually the one’, only unease still niggled at me. Marc and his uncle were doing business with the gnome, who was in no way a nice guy. Though, really, the gnome was pretty much stereotypical, albeit a tad more obnoxious than most. So my unease was probably just my ‘Katie paranoia’ kicking in.

I turned to Tavish. ‘So, there’s nothing to worry about?’

‘Aye, but to be sure, I’ve asked a body I ken, who stays down that way, to check out this nursery.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ I said grudgingly, relieved and glad at least that he’d helped in this— until his next words.

‘Och, and I told Katie’s mother all about it. I ken you wouldnae want her worrying.’

I stiffened. ‘Tell me you told Katie too? Before you told her mum?’

His ‘why would I do that?’ expression said it all. He hadn’t. Perfect.

Tavish gave me a sharp-toothed smile that told me he’d dropped me in it with Katie deliberately – a joke, payback for some slight, or just him being ornery – then he said he’d let me know as soon as he had any news, and left.

As soon as he’d gone I grabbed my phones from the landing outside . . . and discovered about twenty texts from Katie, starting with the expected snippy one which informed me Marc had already told her about the ‘gnome mix-up’, before Tavish had done his ‘Sam Spade’ thing, which he wouldn’t have had to do if he’d just spoken to her first. Oh, and some friend I was, getting Tavish to do my dirty business, and blab to her mum, instead of trusting her to know that she’d have told her mum anyway.

Damn. I was going to have to do some serious grovelling. Still her aggrieved tone let up a bit with the rest of the texts, all updates about Spellcrackers –things were all ‘running like clockwork’, which was good news, despite making me feel oddly redundant. The childish part of me wanted Spellcrackers to fall to pieces without me, to show no one else could run it as well. Mentally I slapped myself, saying I should be grateful that everyone was super-efficient at their jobs.

Katie’s next text had my jaw dropping in shock.

Finn’s just walked in the office!!!! Did you know he was coming back? Why didn’t you tell me?

The text was sent mid-afternoon. I stared at it, heart pounding, thoughts and questions bouncing like balls I couldn’t catch till I snagged the important one: if Finn was still here I had a chance to talk some sense into him about the Witch-bitch Helen.

I called him.

His phone went straight to voicemail.

I started to call Finn’s brother, then stopped as I remembered the herd were on my shit list. Instead I read the rest of Katie’s tests. They told me what I wanted to know: Finn had turned up looking for me, discovered I was holed-up all day with the police at the Harley Street crime scene, poked around the office for a couple of hours, then said he had to go back to the Fair Lands. He’d asked Katie to tell me he’d be back soon.

‘Soon!’ I spluttered at the phone. ‘When the hell is soon? Tomorrow? Next week? When?’ And why the hell couldn’t the aggravating satyr tell me that himself— Maybe he had. Frantic, I scrolled through the rest of my messages—

And found the one, sent late afternoon, from Malik:

My apologies, Genevieve. I am unable to meet you at midnight. I would be grateful if we could rearrange our meeting for sunset. Malik.

‘My’ answer to him, five minutes later, was as he’d told me:

Any meeting must be private at office or not at all.

Stunned, I stared at the text until the pieces snapped into place. Finn had been at Spellcrackers. My phones had been at Spellcrackers. Finn, if he was about, was always the one who fixed the phones . . .

Damn interfering satyr had sent ‘my’ answer to Malik. And if I needed any more confirmation, four other texts – all Spellcrackers’ business calls – had been answered too. But just because Spellcrackers didn’t deal with vamps, and even if he hated suckers, and Malik in particular, it didn’t give Finn the right.

‘Back less than a day and you’re already up to your old tricks,’ I ground out.

Furious, I texted him, not caring he wouldn’t get it until whenever the fuck ‘soon’ was!

You have no right to answer my texts. No right to make arbitrary, high-handed decisions on my behalf, about my work or my personal life. Oh, and yes, Malik *is* my personal life.

Fuming I jabbed send.

Stupid, irritating males – all of them – trying to run my life for me.

Half an hour later, I’d showered, eaten the BLT sandwich I’d found in the fridge (thanks to Sylvia’s magical delivery service), drunk my nightly blood-fruit Mary, and my rage had muted to a pensive simmer. I checked on Bertha again. She was still swimming back and forth, doing her vigilant-periscope patrol, no doubt hoping I was going to reappear so she could get a bite in.

I sighed, not sure what I could do about the vengeful eel. She was here to stay, for at least until Sylvia had her baby, so I had six more months of dodging and running across my own roof ahead. I lay back in bed, staring at the white, sloping attic walls of my bedroom, and twisted Ascalon’s emerald ring on my finger.

I’d called Malik.

My calls went straight to voicemail.

Damn. I needed to talk to him. No way was I going to wait for second-hand info from Tavish. But talking to Malik was impossible when the vamp wouldn’t return my calls. And, with dawn fast approaching, hunting him down to talk in person wasn’t an option. At least not until after sunset, sixteen or so hours away. Frustrated, I rubbed my wrist and the hidden bracelet there: the quickest, easiest way to talk to Malik would be in the Dreamscape, but to do that I needed his ring, which I still didn’t have—

An idea struck. Maybe I could use another Morpheus Memory Aid to gatecrash his dreams – like I had when he’d been dreaming about the sanguine lemurs – and then somehow twist the dream so I could talk to him?

Only it was a crap idea. Turning up in his dreams by accident was one thing . . . but jumping into them deliberately? An apology probably wasn’t going to cut it.

Except right now he owed me. He was the one who’d sent me back without talking things through. If we were going to have any sort of relationship, he knew he couldn’t do that. No way was I going to be the princess in the ivory tower. Not to mention I’d told him I’d help. Help did not mean sitting things out on the sidelines. Especially when he had a fight on his hands and I needed info about the fae’s fertility from the vamp he was up against. And especially not when Malik could use the power in my blood.

He was a kickarse vamp already, add in my own power and I doubted even Bastien or a millennia-and-a-half-old Emperor could stand in Malik’s way.

‘Easier to ask forgiveness,’ I muttered, and ordered another Morpheus Memory Aid spell.

In the time it took to walk from my bedroom to the fridge, the box was waiting for me next to Ricou’s smelly fish.

I took the spell back to bed, thumped my pillows into submission, and finally admitted what had been staring me in the face.

Malik could do magic.

And, okay, he’d got a power boost from my blood, but having the power didn’t mean you knew what to do with it. You had to learn how to use it before you could cast spells (though, if you were me, learning was a complete waste of time). Malik had drawn a Blood-Ward circle, which was basic enough that I could do it, and then he’d cast a Privacy spell, a simple enough magic, though not so simple that I could stir one myself. But hey, a vamp of Malik’s age could possibly manage it. But then he’d gone and pulled that complex Translocation spell out of thin air. Like it was nothing.

And the only way he could have done that was if he’d studied magic.

No one studies magic unless they have an ability to use it and, other than sorcerers who trade their souls for their magical powers, the only way you get magical ability is from one or both of your parents.

Like Mad Max. He’d inherited his magical abilities from his sidhe mother. And my own half-sister, Brigitta, had taught him to use them.

So, if Malik knew how to do complex magic (even if he needed a boost from my blood to actually do it), it followed that he’d been born with that ability.

So, it also followed that before Malik had become a vamp—

He hadn’t been fully human.

With that oddly disturbing thought, I snapped the sleep mask on and chugged back the sickly strawberry-sweet Morpheus Memory Aid potion in the hope I’d find him in my dreams.

My dreams were a bust. Full of huge amorphous grey beasts chasing me through Regent’s Park, and every time their sharp fangs snapped at my heels, I jerked awake, terror pounding my heart in my chest. Only to fall back asleep minutes later to be chased again. Classic nightmare with added werewolves. A frustrating side-effect of the damn Morpheus Memory Aid. In the end I did the only thing possible: I snagged a bottle of vodka out of the freezer compartment and took it to bed with me.

A banging noise woke me from a deep, dreamless (thankfully), alcohol-assisted sleep.

Hot summer sun streamed in through my bedroom window, reflecting squares of light and shade high up on the sloping walls. The angle told me it was still early morning.

The banging came again.

‘There is a troll knocking on the front door,’ Robur the dryad’s eerie voice boomed out of my bedside table drawer. I jerked upright and the empty vodka bottle thudded to the wooden floorboards, clinking against the other one already there. It takes a lot of alcohol to affect my fast sidhe metabolism.

‘Why does everyone have to make so much noise?’ I muttered, grabbing my head.

‘It is the shiny black troll with the gold specks.’ Robur’s voice was, if anything, even louder. Payback for the lemon polish incident. ‘The one who is stepping out with your landlord, Mr Travers. I discern from the wood beetles who inhabit the dresser in Mr Travers’ kitchen that the troll has his police uniform on and appears to be on official business.’

The pounding hit a new, urgent note.

‘Please hurry before he scratches the wood.’ Robur’s piercing words hammered into my fragile morning-after skull.

I pulled on my robe and hurried, as directed, to the door. I yanked it open as the large troll who was stooped down outside banged again. Luckily for me, his huge black fist bounced off the Ward (invisible to him, as all magic is to trolls) and sent purple ripples up and down the open doorway.

Constable Taegrin of the London Metropolitan Police’s Magic and Murder Squad gave me an apologetic look. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Genny.’ A small black cloud of anxious dust puffed from his headridge and settled on his shiny bald pate and the shoulders of his stab vest. ‘But Detective Inspector Munro was worried; you’ve been ignoring your phone.’

I had a vague memory of stuffing my phone in the fridge when I’d grabbed the second bottle of vodka after waking from another fleeing-from-monsters nightmare. Crap.

‘He wants you back at the kidnap scene at London Zoo,’ Taegrin continued. ‘I was nearest, so he’s sent me to pick you up.’