The Shifting Price of Prey (19 page)

‘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.

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.

A
blood-red moon hung between two Romo-Greco-style pillars, frowning down at a grey-brown wolf which was baying up at the moon, and a dog with a
stick in its mouth. The ground was covered with snow, apart from a black-cinder path leading between the two beasts and into the distance. A nebulous dark shape was clawing its way onto the path
from the crimson-coloured river running along the front of the card.

The Moon. Symbolising feelings of uncertainty, of being haunted by the past, and associated with dreams, fantasies and mysteries. Well, it got that right; my past was haunting me in the shape of
the Autarch and the Fertility pendant; Malik had the dreams and fantasies nailed, and the Emperor was certainly a mystery. And if I needed any more convincing, the moon was shadowed by a black
sickle shape, matching the black gem in Malik’s ring; the dog was a silvery-grey Irish wolfhound, like Mad Max in his doggy persona; and the wolf was a werewolf with distinctive green
starburst-patterned human eyes. Which left the dark thing in the river. Wasn’t it supposed to be a crayfish? Though since it was meant to represent ‘fears that come out of the
abyss’, the dark shape had it covered.

The card stopped sucking on my finger and I repeated my original question.

The wolf howled at the moon and leaped out of the card on to my arm. I tried not to flinch as its sharp prehensile paws dug into my flesh.

‘He knows! He will tell you! For a price!’

‘Is he the Emperor?’ I asked, double-checking.

‘Yes.’

‘Is the Emperor a vampire?’

‘Yes.’

Good to have what I knew confirmed. ‘Can you tell me where to find him?’

‘No.’

‘Can you tell me what price he wants?’

‘No.’

Figured. Rather than get a straight yes or no again, I risked an open question. ‘What can you tell me?’

‘They are coming.’

Informative. Not. ‘Who are they?’ I asked. ‘And why are they coming?’

‘They are the beasts. They come for you.’

My pulse sped. ‘Why do they come for me?’

The Irish wolfhound barked and dropped the stick he was holding, then jumped out of the card. Snapping at the wolf’s heels, the dog chased it back into the card. As the two hit the snowy
scene the moon flashed bright as a halogen light and illuminated the shape that was clawing its way out of the river. It was a monstrous grey and black striped cat, bigger than both wolfhound and
wolf.

As a pictorial manifestation of ‘fears that come out of the abyss’, the cat had a crayfish beat hands down. It opened its jaws wide, showcasing huge sabre-tooth fangs, then shook
itself, spraying bloody droplets over the snow-covered ground as well as the stick the dog had dropped— no, not a stick but a silver dagger, half-buried. It looked similar to the one the
Emperor had been holding in the first tarot card, only now I could see some of the handle. It was carved twisted bone and eerily familiar—

The cat screamed and the card disintegrated into a mini snowstorm. The crimson-tinged flakes drifted down to melt like ice on my skin.

I stood stunned. I was pretty sure the dagger’s handle was carved from a unicorn’s horn. The last time I’d seen a dagger like that was during the demon attack at
Hallowe’en. It couldn’t be the same knife; that one had gone to hell with the demon. But this one looked similar enough that I wondered if it had the same power— a Bonder of
Souls.

Only, why would the tarot cards show it first with the Emperor, then with Mad Max’s doggy persona? And should I be more worried about the knife, or that the Emperor’s beasts were
coming for me? Or maybe they were already here; Katie thought she’d seen a werewolf after all. And I’d been so fixed on the flasher/watcher/shapeshifter being the Autarch that I
hadn’t believed her.

Damn it. Katie.

If the werewolf had been at the Primrose Hill park to sniff me out, then there was a good chance it had sniffed Katie out too. Tavish might say there was nothing in the old wives’ tale
about werewolves chasing virgins, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t go after her to get at me.

I yanked my robe on and called Tavish.