Sylvia turned up with breakfast. Only she wasn’t alone.
Johnny Depp was with her.
My mouth dropped open.
‘Ta da!’ She spread her arms wide. ‘Look who I found.’
Johnny Depp was with her! And he was dressed in his Captain Jack Sparrow pirate costume!
‘Hello, luv.’ He chucked me under the chin and made a high clicking noise. ‘How’s your ship sailing?’
I narrowed my eyes. That clicking was familiar. Damn, he wasn’t Johnny Depp but Fishface, a naiad—and the clicking was just him laughing.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, trying to remember his real name, ‘you’re here to court me.’
‘Got it in one, luv.’ He strolled in trailing the scent of ozone, and stood in the centre of my living room under my amber-and copper-beaded chandelier. He did a three-sixty as he admired the place—not that there was much to admire, but hey, he grinned and looked captivated enough that I almost wondered if he were thinking of moving in—
Half a dozen of the chandelier’s glass beads popped above him. His grinning mouth split into a yawn, his cheeks spread until thick fluted fins flared out to either side, his long pirate dreads morphed into a tall, spiny headcrest that tangled with the lower beads, and his costume disappeared, leaving him standing naked in all his scaly pale grey double glory.
I blinked. A six-foot-tall-in-his-webbed-clawed-feet naked naiad wasn’t the sort of sight you wanted to see before breakfast. Or brunch. Or anytime, really.
‘He really knows how to use both of them,’ Sylvia whispered in my ear. ‘He’s a virtual god once you get him between the sheets.’ She squeezed my arm. ‘Don’t mention I said so, though, his head’s big enough as it is.’ She patted my butt. ‘I love your outfit too, Genny. You look fabulous.’
‘Ri-ight,’ I said, wondering whether she’d just given me a personal recommendation, an invitation, or a ‘keep off my property’ warning.
A large folded towel appeared in Sylvia’s hand and she walked up to him and slapped it affectionately on his chest. ‘You still haven’t got the hang of Glamour yet, have you, Ricou?’ She gave me a look that said ‘he’s a lovable idiot really’, and sashayed into the kitchen area where she deposited a large takeaway bag and started unpacking it.
Ricou. Fishface’s real name was Ricou.
Ricou gave the towel a disgruntled look—it was bright pink and decorated with white cherry-tree blossoms—then wrapped it round his waist and secured it with the end of his whip-like tail. He stuck his webbed clawed hands on his hips and looked up at the beads. The membrane flickered over the black orbs of his eyes. ‘Nice Reveal spells, luv, you get them off old Gillie on the market?’
‘No,’ I said, pushing the door closed, ‘Bernie Mittle made them.’
‘Bernie does great work, but you might want to try old Gillie next time. She’s just as good, but she’s cheaper.’
‘You should listen to him, Genny.’ Sylvia gave a rustling laugh. ‘London’s expert on Which Witch for Which Spell, he is.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, then remembered about my cracked Ward and the rug-wrapped fanged occupant of my bedroom. ‘So who’s the best for good, cheap Wards?’
‘Fiddlesticks,’ Sylvia said, unpacking what looked like enough food to feed a whole forest of dryads, never mind the three of us. ‘I forgot about that. I meant to get you one when I was out. You could always use a blood-Ward for today and I’ll pick one up later. Ricky will tell you how, won’t you, babe?’
‘Sure thing, Blossom.’ He steepled his claws together and tapped his lipless mouth. ‘Blood-Wards are a tad primitive, but easy-peasy enough. Just draw a line in blood across all entrances and add your will to it. It’ll stop anyone crossing. ’Course, the real disadvantage is you have to give them a top-up before they run out, which could be anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days, so you can’t just go off and forget about them. Then there’s the physical side—there’s only so much blood and magic a body can offer up before it starts to run on empty.’ He did a wide grin-yawn of a smile. ‘But they’re handy for a quick, free fix.’
It did sound easy. ‘Okay, a couple of questions: do I have to stay inside the blood-Ward for it to work, and what about anyone else inside it; can they leave if they want to?’
‘Hmm.’ His headcrest quivered. ‘You can set the blood-Ward up so you can walk through it without breaking it, but it’s a bit more complicated the other way. ’Course, if you do set it up so’s they can walk out, then it’ll break when they cross it.’
‘That’s great, thanks,’ I said. It would work. I could leave, Malik would be protected, and when he woke up at sunset, or whenever, he could walk out … or I could trap him— which had its own possibilities.
‘Told you he was the best, didn’t I?’ Sylvia beamed proudly.
I got the subtext as I looked from one to the other: Sylvia pretending to be Carefree Caterer and Ricou doing his impression of Professor of Spells. To be honest, it was hard to miss: they had a thing going on, and Sylvia had very definitely been warning me off. Which made me wonder what the hell the pair of them were doing here supposedly courting me?
‘Look,’ I said, ‘nice as this little breakfast club is, I’ve got places to go, people to meet’—and no way do I want to play gooseberry—‘so you’ll both have to amuse yourselves without me today.’
‘Gosh, don’t worry about us, Genny. We’re both happy to do whatever.’
‘Yeah, luv.’ Ricou thumped his clawed fist proudly on his chest. ‘Ricou here will be honoured to escort you two ladies on the town.’
‘Now then, breakfast is served,’ Sylvia said brightly. ‘We’ve got some more blood’—she tapped a couple of the large cups—‘and pancakes with extra maple syrup—they’re mine, but I’m happy to share; a couple of bacon butties, because the waitress said they were your favourite, and some sashimi tuna and whole sardines for the waterbaby there.’ She waved at the half-dozen other cups and containers. ‘We also have coffee, tea, orange juice, custard doughnuts and a selection of vegetable crudities.’
I eyed the carrot and celery sticks sitting neatly alongside the broccoli and cauliflower florets, all complete with a sprinkling of sesame seed. Eew! That was the sort of rabbit food only Finn ate. And thinking of him … why hadn’t he returned my text? I left the raw stuff and picked up one of the bacon butties.
‘You can drop the act,’ I said, waving it to indicate the two of them, ‘and you can tell me what you’re doing courting me.’ I took a bite.
Ricou’s membranes flickered over his eyes nervously. Sylvia’s dress quivered, and a lone white petal fell to land next to her silver-sandalled feet.
‘Well,’ I said, after I’d swallowed, ‘who wants to go first?’
‘Ricou here won you in a poker game.’ He flexed his head-crest to free it from the beads, making them jangle. ‘Told you that, the last time we met, luv.’ He wandered over to the kitchen, snagged a sardine and threw it in the air, snapping his jaws with a loud smacking noise as he caught it.
‘He means he fixed it so he won.’ Sylvia dribbled the sickly syrup in a criss-cross pattern over her pancakes.
‘She’s a harsh one,’ Ricou said to his next sardine. ‘At least Ricou’s name was on the list.’
I choked on a mouthful of bacon butty. There was a list?
Sylvia absently thumped me on the back. ‘Gosh, but then Ricou here didn’t remove his name, did he?’
‘Ricou was told not to by the Lady Meriel, wasn’t he?’ He snapped at another sardine.
‘Fiddlesticks.’ She crushed her empty syrup packet and tossed it into the large takeaway bag. ‘Ricou’s a hundred and sixty-three, not three. He should be able to stand up for himself by now.’
What list?’ I gasped out in between coughs.
‘Ricou doesn’t see you standing up for yourself much, Blossom. You’re here, aren’t you? So it looks like Lady Isabella still has you tied to her stake.’
‘She does not!’ Sh
e jabbed her plastic fork at him. ‘I haven’t been staked since I was fifty!’
‘What list?’ I yelled.
Sylvia turned to me in surprise. ‘The list of who’s allowed to court you, of course.’
‘Only Blossom here isn’t on it.’ Ricou’s face-fins flared. He was either sulking or annoyed, or maybe both. ‘So she shouldn’t be here.’
‘She is here because Genny didn’t want anything to do with Algernon’s Twig Gang,’ Sylvia’s dress lost a whole shower of petals. ‘And I don’t blame her, not after they did their usual. Nasty bunch of sticks they are.’
Their usual?
Ricou dropped his fish and flung a scaly arm round Sylvia’s shoulders. He tapped her cycle helmet gently with his webby-clawed hand. ‘Aww, Blossom, don’t start shedding. I told them I’d strip their water if they tried their grab and grind tricks on you again and I meant it.’
Grab and grind? They’d tried to rape me to get me pregnant; I’d thought they’d done it because of the fertility curse. Now it sounded like it was more a nasty habitual perversion.
‘My hero.’ Sylvia sniffed and patted his chest. Then she poked him hard. ‘But if you want to stay that way, then you’ll have to tell your mother to take you off the list, right?’
‘Nobody’s mother is taking anyone off the list,’ I dumped my bacon butty on the counter, too angry to eat, ‘because there is no list, not any more.’
‘What?’ they said in unison, turning to me.
I grabbed a napkin and wiped my hands, fixing them both with a quelling look. ‘If I decide to have a child, then it will be with willing, single partners only. I’m not getting together with someone who’s already dating. This is about cracking a curse, not breaking up people’s relationships. Whoever thought either of you’d be good candidates was wrong.’
Ricou’s headcrest zipped upright in alarm. ‘But the curse has to be broken. It’s not just the fae, there’s all the faelings too. I’ve got six halfling pups, and—’
‘You’ve got six kids?’ I interrupted, aghast.
‘Everyone on the list has children,’ Sylvia said flatly, ‘or faelings, anyway. It was one of the criteria, which was why I wasn’t on it. I’ve never sprouted any seedlings.’
There were criteria? ‘What are the others?’ I demanded.
‘Gosh, there’s only the two. They had to be under two hundred years old, and have to have at least one faeling, so that they have someone to fight for and they’re proven fertile.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I think there were about fifty-odd on the initial list, but by the time Tavish had finished there was only about a dozen left.’
‘Tavish organised the list?’ I asked sharply—although why that should surprise me was a mystery. Damn, interfering, arrogant kelpie.
‘’Course he did, luv.’ Ricou’s eye membranes flickered nervously again. ‘Tavish always organises everything. He’s the one who said who got to court you, and in what order. Him first, of course. The Ladies Meriel and Isabella wanted it done by lots or something, but he said no. And no one messes with Tavish.’
I frowned. Tavish seemed to be pulling everyone’s strings in an effort to be Daddy Number One … except Tavish had done a disappearing act even before the Morrígan had caught him. Why would he do that if he was first in line? And then there was the list he’d organised. If Ricou’s facts were right, everyone on it was under two hundred years old—except Tavish. Everyone had at least one faeling kid—except Tavish … or at least as far as I knew, but then obviously I’d been on a need-to-know-nothing basis since the very beginning … my eyes fixed on the wilting carrot sticks—
Everyone on the list had to have proven their fertility.
‘Here.’ Sylvia wrapped my hands round a cup. ‘Have some tea, Genny. It’ll perk you up.’
‘I don’t drink tea,’ I said slowly, looking at them both. Ricou’s eye membranes were fully down over his black orbs and his headcrest was flat to his head. Sylvia was fluffing out her skirt, refusing to meet my gaze. It didn’t take a genius to work out which path my thoughts were following. Finn’s and my relationship might not be exactly what London’s fae thought it was, but there was a relationship, and it wasn’t a secret.
‘Finn’s got a faeling child?’ I asked, surprised my voice came out normal when inside I wanted to scream.
Sylvia took the cup from my unresisting hand, sympathy clouding her glossy green eyes. ‘Yes.’
When the hell had he planned on telling me? I didn’t need to ask who the mother was, but I did, and Sylvia told me.
‘Helen Crane.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
‘ Finn’s waiting for you downstairs,’ Sylvia had said.
The echoing noise my boots made pounding down the five flights of stairs to the front door of my building seemed to mark angry time with my shocked, thudding heart. And as I exited onto the street, Ricou and Sylvia hovering attentively on my heels, the church bells of St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden joined in with a knowing, mocking clamour.
Finn and Helen had a child together.
A child was a big, big secret to keep from someone you intended to marry and expected to have another child with. Okay, so Finn and I weren’t getting married, but with the fertility curse ‘arranging’ things, it was what everyone, including him, expected us to do, even if the reason was less to do with yards of white satin and lace, the damn church bells and death do us part and everything to do with jumping the broom, the patter of tiny satyr hooves, and the fucking curse.
Marry in haste, repent at leisure.
Finn was waiting for me outside. My heart did a stupid little jump. It obviously hadn’t heard the latest newsflash about him being a bastard. But looking at Finn’s anxious face, he had—in fact, he looked like he’d bypassed the whole marrying bit and gone straight on to repentance. Good.
Except that Finn wasn’t the only person waiting for me.
‘Ms Taylor,’ Victoria Harrier, my solicitor called, hurrying up to me and beaming her polished steel smile that was the opposite of Finn’s anxiety. ‘I was just about to phone you. Our appointment with the Raven Master is at noon and we don’t want to be late. Traffic can be horrendous sometimes.’
‘Gen?’ Finn shot an unhappy look at Victoria Harrier, then said, ‘We really need to talk.’
Victoria Harrier held up a brown envelope. ‘Ms Taylor, I have the autopsy report on the dead faeling here.’ She indicated her black limo idling at the kerb and the uniformed chauffeur holding open the back door. ‘I thought we might look over it on the way.’
I could read an autopsy report, or find out about my supposed friend-and-almost-lover’s secret child. Choices. Choices.
I smiled at Victoria Harrier, took the envelope and touched my hand to her cheek and sent a careful order into her mind. ‘Would you mind travelling in the front with your chauffeur, Ms Harrier, while I talk to Mr Panos in the back? We need to talk about the curse and our relationship. You’re very happy about that.’
Her eyes glazed slightly, then she smiled back happily. ‘Of course, Ms Taylor.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘oh, and if we get there, and we’re not finished chatting, please don’t disturb us.’ She nodded and trotted cheerfully off to the limo. Guilt pricked me, but the knowledge that she was in the pro get-the-sidhe-pregnant camp trimmed my remorse to an acceptable level.
I turned to Ricou and Sylvia, still hovering attentively on my heels. Sylvia was making a show of adjusting her pink cycle helmet and pointedly ignoring what I’d just done. Ricou, a.k.a. Professor of Spells, was now wearing a slightly rumpled Johnny Depp Glamour, one with a loud-checked jacket, dark glasses and a trilby—Sylvia’s current favourite, apparently, from among the multitude of Glamour spell tattoos that decorated the insides of both his scaly arms. He was also watching me over the top of the sunglasses with an assessing expression. Was he going to be a problem? ‘Look, why don’t you two … hang out together for a bit or something?’
‘Gosh, what a good idea.
’ Sylvia grabbed Ricou’s hand. ‘Come on, lover boy, I know just the place. See you later, Genny.’
I looked at Finn and indicated the car. ‘You want to talk, don’t you?’ Because I was damn sure I did.
He nodded sharply and we got in. I touched the chauffeur’s hand and (surprisingly easily) gave him the same orders as Victoria Harrier, then the limo door shut with a soft clunk, cutting off the noise, bustle and bells of Covent Garden and enclosing us in the cosseted smell of leather and luxury. The limo looked similar to the previous day’s, with its L-shaped seat, the blacked-out screen between us and the driver and the half-dozen Privacy-spell crystals dotted around, except this one still had the bar installed instead of the James Bond-type office. Briefly I wondered if maybe I’d fried some of her equipment in the other limo, then put it from my mind. Finn had taken the back seat, and if my little mind-control party piece had Ricou reassessing me, it had etched the worry lines deeper into Finn’s face.
‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, what are you playing at? The woman’s a witch! Using magic like that could get you the death sentence.’
As the limo moved quietly into the busy traffic I flattened my palms on the leather seat and studied him, to give my anger and hurt a chance to cool down. He was in his usual human-looking Glamour, and he looked good. His dark blond hair waved to his shoulders, his sharp, triangular horns were tight to his head and almost hidden. His brown suit was dark enough that it was verging on black. The suit looked dressier than usual, and fitted his athletic, muscular body like it was hand-tailored. His fine cotton shirt was open at his throat, the soft cream contrasting nicely with the darker tan of his skin. It dawned on me he looked more than good: he always looked great, but today he’d made an extra effort … maybe the bastard thought it would gain him points. My hands curled into tight fists in anger. It didn’t.
‘When were you going to tell me about your child, Finn?’ I said, forcing my voice into calmness. ‘The one you fathered with Helen? After all, it’s not like we’ve known each other very long, right? I mean it’s only been—what? Ten fucking months?’ Okay, so maybe I wasn’t as calm as I could be. ‘And it’s not like we don’t work together on a daily basis or anything, is it, Finn? Or that we didn’t talk about you having kids with Helen only yesterday, did we?’
The Bitter Seed of Magic s-3 Page 22