The Shifting Price of Prey (44 page)

The bull-headed figure pointed an admonishing pink-lacquered finger at her. ‘I’ll have you know fifty smackers is peanuts, luv,’ he said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.
The Spandex was as tight as it looked. Or maybe he was a she. ‘Why, the King of the Dark Elves himself forked out a thousand times that for the honour of chasing me.’

‘He’s not worth it,’ the centaur on the left said, sneering through his moustache. ‘You fancy a ride, witch, then I’m the one to put your money on. Old Mini over
there lives up to his name.’

‘Yes, indeed!’ The other centaur looked down his nose at the pink-Spandexed minotaur. ‘I can categorically say that with Mini, what you see is certainly not what you get.
That’s nothing but a distasteful plastic extension.’

O
-kay!

Mini the Minotaur stuck both hands on his pink-covered hips, thrust them out and shrilled, ‘I’ll have you know Major-Me is a truly fully-functioning part of me.’

The leprechaun gave us a tired look from under bushy green eyebrows. ‘Bespelled,’ he murmured.

‘O’Keefe!’ Mini cuffed him on his pointy ear and squeaked,

‘Shut up!’

‘What’s bespelled?’ Dessa asked.

O’Keefe jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at Mini. ‘His strap-on.’

I choked, swallowing back a laugh.

‘A bespelled strap-on?’ Taegrin growled. ‘More like an offensive weapon.’

Mary rounded on me, accusation in her eyes. ‘Nothing interesting!’

I widened my own eyes in mock innocence. ‘How was I to know you had a thing for ginormous strap-ons?’

Her scowl promised retribution. ‘Right,’ she said briskly, turning to address the stallholders and holding up her badge. ‘We’re looking for an Irish wolfhound. His
name’s Max.’

The silence was deafening. And no Mad Max rushed up, wagging his doggy tail in greeting.

‘We know he’s here,’ she carried on, showing them the scrying crystal, which was now glowing a deep blue, indicating Mad Max should be near enough to see if not actually touch.
‘So who wants to tell me what they know?’

The two centaurs snorted and suddenly seemed to find their hooves extremely interesting. Mini produced an industrial-sized file from nowhere and proceeded to give his pink-painted nails an
unneeded manicure. O’Keefe stared at us for a long moment, bushy green brows drawn down, then he hawked and spat a huge gob of mucus. Its trail left a rainbow-like arc shimmering in the air
as it flew an impressive ten feet to his right and splattered in front of tent five. Multi-coloured phlegm illuminated something lying on the grass, which, now it’d been pointed so
disgustingly out, was easy enough to see glittering in the hot sunlight.

Before Mary could stop me, I jogged over, checking the
something
for spells – none – as I did, and scooped it up. I turned, dangling my find from my finger. ‘And here
we have an obvious clue.’

‘What is it?’ Taegrin rumbled.

‘Max’s doggy choke-chain collar,’ I said. ‘Complete with his diamond-encrusted dog-tags.’

Dessa frowned at Mary. ‘Think it’s a plant, or did he manage to drop it for us to find, Sarge?’

‘Hmm.’ Mary tapped her radio on. It crackled to life. ‘How close is that backup, Constable?’

‘Search group three is here now, ma’am,’ the constable’s tinny voice replied. ‘The others shouldn’t be long. And DI Munro’s on his way from Trafalgar
Square. ETA: thirty minutes.’

As she finished speaking, three more WPCs and Constable Lamber, his mottled beige headridge dusty, appeared in the circle of tents. They all cast quick hairy eyeball at the exhibitions, nodded
to Mary, and joined Dessa and Constable Taegrin, waiting for instructions. The centaurs and Mini eyed them with professional disinterest but, as they obviously weren’t customers, dismissed
them. O’Keefe, the leprechaun, just hunched deeper over his book.

Mary strode over, looked at the dog-tag I held, then at the tent with its closed sign behind me. ‘It’s probably a trap.’

Whether it was or not didn’t matter; it wasn’t like we were walking into it on our own, not with half the Met’s Magic and Murder Squad about to put in an appearance. I
shrugged. ‘We’ll find out for sure when we check it out.’

She looked at me, indecision warring in her brown eyes. ‘What’s supposed to be in the tent?’

I took a couple of steps back to the tent doorway and flipped the closed signed over. It showed a picture of a golden bow and arrow, and a crystal ball. Written along the outer edge of the bow
in fancy gold script was:
Divine Love with Cupid
.

I waggled my brows. ‘So wanna go see a god about a dog?’

Mary rolled her eyes at me, then said, ‘Let’s do it.’

D
espite Mary’s easy agreement, and my saying that whatever trap might be inside Cupid’s tent had probably been scrapped long ago thanks
to the very obvious police presence, it still took a long, toe-tapping fifteen minutes for Mary to organise our backup to her satisfaction. She also took time to organise a search of all the other
tents, inside and out, and to interrogate the leprechaun and the others for any extra intel on ‘Cupid’. But, much to Mary’s annoyance, all of them to a minotaur claimed
they’d never set eyes on the ‘Divine Love god’.

Though they did reveal Mad Max had trotted past them, tail wagging happily, into Cupid’s tent about an hour or so before we’d turned up. No one had been with him. Or, at least, they
hadn’t noticed anyone. Not that any of them had been paying attention. So for all they knew Max the doggy could’ve had a whole army with him hidden beneath a See-Me-Not veil. And no,
none of them had looked up either; so no one had seen any eagle, or any other birds, other than the swan maidens. Stellar witnesses they were not.

Once Mary was sure they had no more beans to spill, she deemed us – us being Mary, me, Dessa and Taegrin – ready to beard the love god in his tent.

‘Right, no messing about this time, Genny,’ Mary told me as Dessa unzipped the tent’s entrance, Taegrin on standby to enter first. ‘Tell me what we can expect of
Cupid.’

‘Far as I remember, he’s a cambion.’

Cambions are born of a witch and an incubus, or a wizard (a witch’s son with a human) and succubus. The actual pairing could vary. And since cambions have long been considered
‘another type of witch’ (something the witches themselves have always been careful not to dispute, lest it reflect badly on their own ‘human’ classification) cambions
benefited greatly from the witches big ‘human rights’ thing in the eighties. Of course, the real difference between a cambion and a witch or wizard, apart from their parentage, is their
appetite for sex magic and their gift for prophecy. Which sort of explained why this cambion called himself Cupid and was telling fortunes.

Mary gave me a resigned look. ‘So this guy’s not only a comedian, but a
bona fide
magician like Merlin?’

‘Yep,’ I agreed.

‘Cambions are demons,’ Dessa suddenly piped up.

We both stared at her, shocked.

‘Half-demons anyway,’ she amended as she crossed herself.

‘Incubi and succubi are minor demons,’ Mary replied in a neutral tone, ‘but cambions, like us witches and wizards, have been classified as human since the
Malleus
Maleficarum
was discredited back in the eighteenth century. Do you want to sit this one out, Dessa?’

‘No!’ She shook her head vehemently and adjusted her stab vest. ‘This is my job.’

‘Right,’ Mary said, after a few moments’ silence that told me, without any need of a cambion’s prophetic abilities, that Dessa could look forward to an uncomfortable chat
in her near future. ‘The tent’s surrounded,’ Mary carried on, ‘so whoever’s in there isn’t going anywhere.’ She paused, extended her stun baton with a
sharp snap (she’d still refused to give me one, much to my disgust), and motioned to Taegrin. ‘Lead the way, constable.’

Taegrin lifted the tent flap and led the way. Mary, Dessa and I followed.

Straight into an illusion.

Years ago, before the lesser fae sealed the gates to the Fair Lands, and barred the sidhe from London, the Carnival Fantastique was famous for its illusions. The sidhe would take any idea and,
using nothing but magic would build illusions so powerful that folk told stories of climbing towers in fairytale castles, feasting in mediaeval banqueting halls, swimming through tropical seas,
dallying in enchanted woods, hiking up snowy mountains and many more. Now, with the sidhe locked out, most illusions were cast by half-rate magicians, and were as rough and shaky as the wooden
scaffolding their fairytale towers were built on.

But going by the illusion the four of us were now standing in, half rate, rough and shaky didn’t apply. As hard as I
focused
, I still couldn’t see the tent beneath the
magical sheen of the illusionary room.

The room itself was straight out of an Elizabethan-era castle: flagged stone floor and dark wood-panelled walls, candles flickering in sconces, fire burning merrily in the huge walk-in
fireplace, the smell of herbs and woodsmoke scenting the air, and a massive four-poster bed with velvet drapes and enough tassels, fringes, and cushions to fill a hearth-witch’s haberdashery
shop. And on the table next to the bed waited a golden flagon and five golden goblets.

We were expected.

Not really a surprise considering we were visiting a prophetic Cupid.

Cupid himself was half-reclining on the four-poster, the silk sheets artfully arranged to preserve his modesty. But he wasn’t the stereotypical winged, curly haired cherub of legend. This
god of love was definitely the grown-up adult version. The firelight licked golden shadows over his long, leanly muscled and obviously (apart from those pesky sheets) naked body, his hair was dark,
sleek and cut short to his head, a mediaeval-looking gold chain hung around his neck and draped down to his navel, and he regarded us arrogantly with cool blue green eyes.

I squinted in the dim light as I realised both the grown-up Cupid and the room looked vaguely familiar.

‘Ooh, my,’ Mary murmured in astonishment. ‘That’s—’

‘Jonathan Rhys Meyers,’ Dessa said, her gaze fixed unwaveringly on the figure in the bed. ‘Got everything he’s done on DVD. I loved him as Steerpike in
Gormenghast
. But his new Tudors series is the one I’ve been watching lately.’

Recognition clicked. Cupid had cast himself as the young Henry VIII!

And Dessa had the hots for the actor playing him . . . which meant the illusion wasn’t by chance.

Which also meant Cupid/Jonathan/Henry – Hell, I was sticking with Henry; it suited him – had plucked his illusion from Dessa’s thoughts. Except cambions couldn’t do that.
But there was something that could. A Wishing Web. I’d never been in one, but I’d read up on them for the Carnival – the spell woven in the web picked up on a person’s
subconscious fantasies. The Carnival had approved three applications, all for kids under eight, and they’d been set only to trigger for specific wishes. No one in their right mind would
license one for adults; their deepest, darkest fantasies are far too dangerous.

I upped my focus. Now I was
looking
for it I could see the dark emerald lines of the spell stretching through the dim room in all directions, hidden beneath the sheen of the illusion.
It wasn’t so much a web, but more as if thin laser-like beams randomly crossed the room at all angles. Each emerald laser beam bristled with tiny sticky fibres. Fibres that were floating
around us like fine cactus spines, and in Dessa’s case had already dug themselves into her skin.

Hence, the Jonathan Rhys Meyers scenario.

Crap. I needed to find the Web’s power source, and shut it down—

‘Ladies!’ Henry shifted one long lean leg so the sheet slipped a couple of enticing inches lower, patted the bed next to him and held his hand out. ‘Will you not join me?
Please?’

—hopefully before the fucking orgy started (no pun intended).

‘Oh, boy!’ Dessa took a step towards him.

I grasped Dessa’s upper arm. ‘Oh no you don’t.’

‘Hey, single mum here,’ she growled, jerking her arm back and catching me by surprise in the stomach. I doubled over, wheezing. She packed a punch, even though the stab vest I was
wearing took the brunt. ‘I gotta take whatever opportunities I can get,’ Dessa muttered, starting forward again.

I straightened, grabbing for her wrist and pulling her round to face me. Her eyes were glazed, pupils fully dilated, almost eclipsing her dark brown irises, her mouth slack. ‘Believe
me,’ I gasped, clamping my hand round her other wrist as she tried to shove me away again, ‘this isn’t an opportunity you want, Dessa. He’s not real. And you’re
working, remember?’

‘Who cares,’ she snapped, still struggling.

‘A little help here, please,’ I called, then my stomach sank as I caught sight of Mary and Taegrin. They both stood still as stones, beatific expressions on their faces as they
stared up at . . . whatever. Damn it. Mary I could understand, but what the hell was in the illusion that it could affect a troll?