The Shifting Price of Prey (34 page)

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

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!

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.’

C
ovent Garden to London Zoo is fifteen minutes by road. On a traffic-free day. But I’ve never known London to have a traffic-free day, so we
were in for a long, slow drive which I wasn’t looking forward to. Especially after it clicked with my hangover-fuddled brain exactly how we were getting there. Parked beneath the leafy canopy
of the large elm guarding my building’s main door was a Magic and Murder Squad police van. Built to accommodate trolls (obviously, since Taegrin was driving), they lack a certain human-sized
comfort.

Once we were safely buckled up (with me riding shotgun so I didn’t look like a suspect, but thanks to the adult booster seat and my dangling legs, looking like a seven-year-old instead),
it took Taegrin all of a minute to tell me what the score was. The Bangladeshi ambassador had agreed (presumably after his midnight meeting with the Prime Minster) to hand over his
bodyguard’s bloodstained kurta, so it could be used to scry for leads in the hope it would pinpoint the kidnap victims’ location. Hugh wanted me at the scrying, though as scrying was on
the list of things I couldn’t do, when I asked why, Taegrin didn’t know.

After that he was quick enough to realise I wasn’t up to sparkling conversation; the two-part Hot.D (short for Hair of the Dog) potion I’d rushed out and bought from the
Witches’ Market was probably a big clue.

I knocked back the first part, my mouth going dry at the chalky taste, and slumped on my booster seat waiting for the spell to take effect. Hot.D spells are meant to postpone any hangover for
twelve hours, but as the witch I’d bought it from said, ‘You ain’t human, dearie, so I ain’t guaranteeing nuthin’.’

Taegrin chatted quietly as the van trundled along about his weekend with Mr Travers. The pair had spent Sunday walking the Troll Trail on the Thames – a sort of troll spiritual pilgrimage
that involved crossing all the bridges, and included the occasional stop at participating ‘watering holes’ to sluice their blowholes. They’d set out at dawn from the Queen
Elizabeth II Suspension Bridge at Dartford (the last bridge before the sea), headed upriver and, even with the required ‘watering hole’ stops, had reached Battersea Bridge by
sunset.

‘That’s seventeen out of the hundred and one bridges, Genny,’ Taegrin said proudly. ‘Not bad going for a day’s trekking. Now we’re planning on how we’re
going to tackle the rest. We thought . . .’

The initial stupor phase of the Hot.D hit, and I listened with half an ear, watching the sun glint off the gold specks in Taegrin’s polished black skin, happy for them both and, since
I’d sort of introduced them last Hallowe’en, basking in a vague mother-hen-like delight that they’d found each other through me.

My pulse sped as the Hot.D kicked in with a caffeine shot.

I checked my phone.

Three missed calls from Hugh when he’d tried to contact me.

And a message from Malik.

My thumb hovered . . .

At some point before the vodka had induced its dreamless sleep, I’d sent him a text:

And here was his answer. I swallowed, heart thudding erratically against my ribs.
Only the caffeine
. Pressed the button:

I frowned. Why the hell was he telling me to talk to Mad Max?

I reread the message, disbelief closing my throat.

The words didn’t change.

He’d dumped me. By text. After what happened at the lake. Fury ripped through me. Okay, so I got that he’d ‘lost control’. That he was worried about his curse. And that
he’d discovered he could use my magic. I got that it all scared him. And I got he probably thought he was protecting me. But even if Malik did think that fucking ‘direct communication
was unwise’, he could at least call me and tell me in person. Not send a fucking text.

And if the bastard vamp thought that was the end of it, well, he really didn’t have a clue. I’d had enough of males doing what they thought was right. Or just doing whatever they
wanted. Or not giving me answers. It pissed me off. Not to mention this wasn’t only about him, or me, but about the fae’s trapped fertility. I resent my text, adding: