The Cold Kiss of Death

by Suzanne McLeod

  ‘What about Finn?’ Grace said, then as I started to speak she added, ‘And you know I’m not talking about your job, Genny.’

  ‘Finn’s not interested in anything else,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Rubbish! Of course he is - why else would he keep quiet about your father and go up against the Witches’ Council if he wasn’t interested? He’s being careful and considerate, Genny,’ she said earnestly, reaching out to grasp my hands. ‘You told him this big, big secret, something that both you and he know could cause a major upset in your life. Maybe he thinks if he asked you out now, you’d think you had to say yes, just to keep him sweet.’

  Hope flickered inside me. Was she right? Had Finn decided not to ask me out any more because he thought I’d only be saying yes for the wrong reasons? And not because one half of my parentage repulsed or terrified him? It sort of fit with his usual white knight persona.

  ‘Of course,’ Grace carried on, ‘with him backing off like he has after hearing your secret, it means you’ve lost your trust in him too. Which is probably why you blew up at him earlier.’ She squeezed my hands. ‘You like him, Genny, a lot. You should talk to him and sort it all out.’

  She was right on both counts. I did like him, a lot ... and I didn’t trust him. How could I when I wasn’t sure what he wanted? But maybe if I talked to him?

  Then she lifted my left hand up between us in accusation; half-faded bruises encircled my wrist. ‘You’ve had these for over a month, Genny, and with your sidhe metabolism, you should’ve healed them in a couple of hours. I know its some sort of property mark.’ Her face screwed up in revulsion. ‘How can you think of having anything to do with that vamp after he did this to you?’

  Because I’ve finally accepted, regardless of what I want, or you want, I don’t have much choice. I need him, or some vamp anyway, and - not even trying to fool myself here - some part of me wants him. More importantly, once given, I know his word is his bond.

  Only I didn’t say it out loud; it wasn’t what Grace wanted to hear. But if she didn’t understand about Malik, she was right about talking to Finn. Oh, I wasn’t holding out as much hope on the relationship side as she was - not when I was about to do a deal with a vampire - but maybe he could help with the rest of my non-vamp problems ...

  ‘You’re right.’ I smiled ruefully. ‘I’ll have a chat with Finn, okay? Later on today at work.’

  ‘Good, now we’re getting somewhere!’ She wrapped her arms round me in a hug.

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ I said, hugging her back and breathing in her familiar floral perfume with its faint antiseptic tang. ‘I’m not ruling the vamp option out yet. And talking about going somewhere—’ I glanced up at the clock. Dawn was still a couple of hours away, but I was itching for my next G-Zav dose, and with the amount of amphetamine the pills contained, I wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon. ‘I’m going for a run.’

  ‘Run! It’s wet and cold and dark and—’ She gave a very un-doctor-like squeal of horror, but then, Grace is more a fair-weather type of girl, and she wouldn’t be seen dead in running shorts. ‘Well, if you’re not using it, I’m going to bed. I got enough exercise to last me a week after walking up those five flights of stairs.’

  ‘Exercise is good for you, Grace.’ Grinning, I bounced on the balls of my feet. ‘Isn’t that what you doctors are always saying?’

  She sniffed in disdain. ‘Bring doughnuts back, that’s all this doctor is saying.’

  Chapter Four

  It was snowing inside Tomas’ Bakery, a blizzard of dust-fine flour that whirled and eddied like a maelstrom, making the interior a complete white-out. I stood outside, pushed my hands through my hair and groaned. Tomas’ ex-girlfriend had sicced another of her malicious spells on him again. Now I was having visions of Tomas and whoever else might be inside slowly suffocating from a lungful of ground-up wheat. But even his ex couldn’t be that stupid, could she? Still, she’d gone too far this time. Tomas was going to have to stop being so nice and forgiving and report this to the police; if he didn’t, then I would. It wasn’t as if he’d done anything to deserve her vindictiveness either; he’d only gone out with the witch a couple of times, not jilted her at the altar. But Tomas was six foot of blond Nordic muscle-bound weightlifter, and a lot of the market witches had their eye on him. And trust me, bunny-boilers have nothing on witches when it comes to acting out their jealous fantasies.

  Damn. Just what I didn’t need after the night I’d had.

  Not that the night was officially over yet; there was still nearly an hour before sunrise. But an hour’s hard running had worked off the amphetamine so I’d come for Grace’s doughnuts. The bakery is down a side street crammed in between a secondhand book shop and a fancy florist’s, and on my usual morning run route. When I’d sprinted past it earlier nothing out of the ordinary had snagged my attention, but now I realised what had been missing. There was no smell of baking bread. I should’ve noticed that; Tomas had asked me to sort out so many of his ex’s nasty little spells over the last couple of weeks that I’d made a permanent date to pop in at the end of my run whether I wanted doughnuts or not. But the conversation with Grace, my other problems and what I was going to say to Finn when I saw him had been on constant replay in my mind as I’d been pounding the pavements ... I blew out an annoyed breath at myself for missing something so obvious, and focused on the bakery.

  The dizzying flour-storm shone with magic, as if each individual grain had been tagged with whatever spell was causing the blizzard. I needed to find the heart of the spell to crack it but the stuff glittered so much I couldn’t see past it. I closed my eyes briefly and upped my concentration, but the centre of the spell was still too elusive; whatever magic animated the flour was hidden within it. I frowned, trying to think—

  ‘You’re that faerie, aren’t you?’ A lad around seventeen poked his spiky head of black hair out of the florist’s. ‘I saw you earlier when you ran past.’

  I picked my way through the obstacle course of black-painted metal buckets and cardboard boxes packed with sweet-scented blooms to speak to him. ‘Do you know if anyone’s in there?’ I pointed at the open bakery door.

  ‘Tomas is. He waved at me when the boss dropped me off with the flowers.’ The lad’s tongue slipped out to taste the silver hoop piercing his bottom lip. ‘Oh, and there was this woman, she went in just before all the flour started flying around.’ He came out and stood next to me, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of his baggy cargo pants. ‘Then I heard some shouting and yelling like they were fighting, then there was this big noise like someone falling over, then it went all quiet.’ His tone was offhand, as if the whole thing bored him, or maybe he was just trying to be cool. ‘Haven’t seen neither of them since.’

  I pressed my lips together. What if Tomas’ ex really had done something stupid and he was lying in there hurt? Tomas was a friend; not only that, he was soft as faerie moss. No way would he defend himself against a woman, never mind that when magic’s involved all the muscle in the world isn’t going to help. I reached for my phone, then realised I’d left it at home. Damn gremlins and their hex.

  ‘Ring the police,’ I told the lad, ‘and tell them just what you’ve told me. Tell them there’s a witch involved, and to send the magic squad, you got that?’

  He bent and snapped open a pocket near his knee and pulled out a tiny silver phone attached by a chain. ‘Sure, if you say so.’

  I gave him the number and he punched it in. ‘You going in there?’ he sniffed.

  Was I? I had a moment’s hesitation, then decided waiting outside wasn’t for me, not if I could do something. ‘Yeah, just tell whoever gets here first that I’m in there too, okay?’

  ‘Sure.’ He twisted his lip-hoop with a nail-bitten finger. ‘Gotta sort the delivery until the boss gets back anyway.’

  I pulled off my sweatshirt and dunked it in the water in one of his black flower buckets, then caught the lad staring intently at me, phone clamped to his ear. I
ignored him - after all, I’d just stripped down to a black Lycra cropped top in front of him, and okay, I’m more the slender-verging-on-skinny type, nowhere near as endowed as a Page Three model, but hey, put any half-naked female in front of most teenage lads and staring’s what happens.

  I wrapped the sweatshirt round my head as a face-mask, shivering as cold water trickled over my shoulders. Breathing shallowly through the wet cotton, hands stretched out in front, I launched blindly into the flour-blizzard. The magic buzzed around me in a way that had my stomach roiling with nausea and I briefly wondered if the spell was doing more than animating a sack-load of flour. I walked slowly forward, going by memory, sliding my feet cautiously from side to side so as not to trip over any prone bodies. Half a dozen steps had me bumping into the counter. I felt my way along it, the flour-storm itching over my skin like tiny insistent insects trying to burrow beneath my flesh.

  I gritted my teeth at the mental image and stifled the urge to scratch.

  The end of the counter took me by surprise and I stumbled. I did the foot-slide-and-walk thing again, thankfully finding nothing, until I reached where my spatial memory told me the door to the bakery kitchen should be. I slapped my hands against it, feeling around for the handle, then shuffled back to pull the door open. The light filtering through my sweatshirt brightened. I stepped through the door and the sudden absence of the itching sensation had me hoping I’d left the flour-storm behind. I dragged the wet, flour-caked material from my head and dropped it. White-gold light hit my face and instinctively I squeezed my eyes shut. Then as I blinked away the negative afterimage, the bright-blurred edges of the kitchen gradually resolved themselves into something recognisable and my mind finally caught up with what my eyes where looking at.

  Tomas lay flat on his back on the long stainless-steel table that he used for making the bread.

  He was naked.

  He was evidently very excited.

  And just as evidently, very, very dead.

  Chapter Five

  Tomas lay on his back, his hips thrust upwards, arms outstretched, head thrown back, mouth and eyes wide open, his pupils fashioned into gold-bright orbs by magic, a grotesque statue sculpted rigid at the ultimate high of sexual pleasure.

  Shock had me staring with disbelief.

  Tomas hadn’t been killed by a jealous witch.

  The French call the pleasure of orgasm le petit mort, the small death. Tomas’ death hadn’t been small - but then, humans are too fragile to survive the full force of faerie sex outside of the Fair Lands.

  The white-gold light shimmered over his body, lining his pumped-up muscles with hard contours, and a detached part of me could see why the market witches had been battling over him with their broomsticks. Then sadness and anger washed away the shock and I moved towards him, an insane glimmer of hope telling me to touch him, that maybe he wasn’t dead, maybe this wasn’t real, maybe it was all just some elaborate illusion. I reached out and gently placed my forefinger to his forehead. Golden mist curled like rising smoke from his open mouth and spilled the scent of honeysuckle into the air.

  Honeysuckle is the scent of my own Glamour, my own magic.

  Horror rushed through me, raising the little hairs on my body. My heart thudded against my ribs. I took an involuntary step back, and another, then yelped, high-pitched, as the hot prickle of a Ward hit my shoulders. I turned and looked. The doorway was still open behind me, the flour-storm a swirling white curtain, but a Ward now vibrated up from the threshold like rising heat; a basic, bought-off-the-shelf Knock-back Ward, the sort that usually had big warning signs that read Danger - Keep Out. Someone wanted to make sure I was caught red-handed and still clutching the smoking gun when the police arrived.

  ‘Fucking bastard!’

  I shoved the questions of who and why and how away. There was nothing I could do for Tomas, however much I wished there was, but there was still his ex, or whoever the woman was, to find. I walked through the kitchen carefully. Glass-fronted ovens lined one wall, small blue-tinged flames dancing in their huge stainless-steel cavities. Two commercial-sized food mixers were bolted to the floor, flat paddles jacked up above their industrial-sized bowls. And half a dozen large metal flour barrels were stacked under a high rectangular window next to the bolted and padlocked back door. I eyed the barrels. They were big enough for someone to hide in, but my gut and the fact there were more Knock-back Wards vibrating on both the back door and the high window told me the woman was long gone.

  Rats and traps came to mind.

  And escaping wasn’t going to be an easy option.

  ‘Genevieve.’ My name slid like sorrow and silk over my skin, making me shiver. Mesma. I recognised his voice with its not-quite-English accent and, heart thudding in my chest like a cornered cat’s, I turned to look at him.

  Malik stood just inside the kitchen, the flour-storm behind him dimmed by the shadows shifting round him. His black hair curled into the darkness of his long leather coat, and the coat itself merged into the blackness of the clothes he wore beneath. I’d seen him draw those same shadows into himself, using them to hide himself from sight. He studied me, his skin gleaming pale as the shadows dissipated, his obsidian eyes enigmatic; his part-Asian heritage obvious in their shape. Once I’d thought his face perfect, pretty even, but he’d played with my mind and my perceptions and now with only the edge of prettiness left, he was more beautiful, more male, and more frightening than my imagination had let me remember.

  I frowned. Something wasn’t right; not the fact that I was frightened - vamps are predators, and being wary of them is just common sense - but this feeling was ... different. Then I realised that thinking about coming to some arrangement with him was nothing compared to contemplating it while he was standing in front of me like some dark angel. Damn. Maybe Grace was right yet again and I was just kidding myself that I could negotiate with him on my own terms when the 3V and my attraction to him meant I probably didn’t have my own best interests at heart.

  Mentally I shored up my resolve and said, ‘Malik al-Khan,’ grateful my voice came out dry as dust.

  He inclined his head, an elegant movement that echoed the past. And going by the power I’d seen him wield he had a good five hundred years of past too, maybe more, for all that he appeared to be around my age, twenty-four. Like all vamps, he looked the same now as when he’d accepted the Gift. An unfelt breeze ruffled his hair and lifted the edges of his coat, dislodging the faint patina of white that covered him, and I glanced down at the flour still stuck to my own damp clothes and sighed.

  Vamps get all the best magic tricks.

  His eyes flicked to the body that lay on the baker’s table between us. ‘It was unwise of you to enter and not wait for the police.’

  ‘Yeah well, I’d sort of come to that conclusion myself.’ I grimaced. ‘I don’t suppose you can tell if there’s a witch or anyone else hiding around here somewhere, can you?’

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘There has been no witch here, in this part of the shop, for a day, possibly more, and no one now other than us and the dead man.’

  Okay, so Tomas’ ex wasn’t around, and the barrels held only flour. Then another thought clicked. Malik had been following me; had he overheard the boy talking? ‘The lad outside said he’d seen a woman come in and heard some sort of fight?’ I narrowed my eyes in question.

  ‘He lied.’

  ‘Ri-ight.’ I pursed my lips. Good old vamp super-senses, better at spotting a fib at fifty paces than any polygraph machine ever would be. ‘He’s part of the set-up then?’

  ‘Not necessarily; there was some confusion in his mind.’ He pushed back the fall of dark hair from his forehead. ‘As I said, Genevieve, it was unwise of you to enter.’

  Confusion? Caused by some sort of spell? Still, back to being the trapped rat and now with a scary vampire in tow. So not the way I wanted to start my day. Still. I looked sadly at Tomas; his day had started a hell of a lot worse than mine, so I r
eally was the better off. Until the police got here, at least.

  I frowned at Malik. Why had he followed me in? ‘You do realise that there are Wards stopping us getting out, and that the police will be here any minute, don’t you?’

  ‘I informed the boy that the police would not be required.’ He turned his head as if listening, giving me the sculptured line of his profile. ‘He believes you will deal with any problems and has put it from his thoughts.’

  My pulse sped up. He’d mind-locked the boy, given him instructions. The vamp trick isn’t illegal - just as any other form of hypnotism isn’t - so long as no crime results. It meant there were no police rushing to arrest me. Or to rescue me. One of those good news, bad news things. Still, at least it bought me some time. Tomas was dead. Someone had used him to frame me and - I clenched my fists - I was going to find out who it was, and why. My eyes moved suspiciously to the vampire standing like a beautiful statue not three feet away.