The Cold Kiss of Death

by Suzanne McLeod

  Then I watched, my heart in my mouth, as the satyr lunged between the kelpie’s hammering forelegs, thrust up with his horns and gouged a bloody wound across the kelpie’s chest. The kelpie’s hooves struck down on the satyr’s back, knocking him down, but as the kelpie reared up again, the satyr rolled out from under the hooves and came up into a crouch. The kelpie thudded back down onto four legs, his broad chest heaving, sweat and blood combining in a pink froth on the green-black of his coat.

  The fight was awe-inspiring and terrifying, and I understood why their ancestors had been worshipped as gods or feared as demons. It was also fucking stupid, all the more so because I suspected they were fighting because of me - and by the looks of them, they weren’t going to stop until one or both were unconscious. Being fae, that could take a long, long time, and I had better ways of spending mine than watching two idiot fae pound each other into the sand. Like looking for a murderer! Bad enough I’d let myself get enticed by Tavish’s magic—

  ‘Stop!’ I yelled, but neither heard me.

  Fuck. I was too far away. Frustration rose inside me and the Knock-back Wards shifted uneasily - giving me an idea: maybe I could use them in some way? And even as I questioned it, the magic answered and I felt the weird sensation of a heavy metal bar being dropped into my hand. Almost without thinking, I lifted the bar above my shoulder, holding it like a spear. With the magic vibrating through me like high-voltage electricity I concentrated my will and threw it, aiming for a point in the sand between the two fae.

  I held my breath.

  Where the spear struck a padlocked door materialised into existence. Buzzing over its surface were the black and grey stripes of a Knock-back Ward. The satyr was on one side, the kelpie on the other, and neither appeared to notice the door. They lowered their heads and charged—

  —and as both crashed into the mirage of the door the release of magic exploded out, lifting me off my feet and knocking me back into the water. Again. I scrambled up again and looked towards the sudden stillness.

  The fight had stalled. Both fae lay groaning on the sand, the door an incongruous barrier between them.

  Smiling in grim satisfaction, I strode towards them, my nose flaring at the sharp, scorched smell that stung the air.

  Finn lay on his side, crimson blood staining his horns, deep grazes and cuts marring the smooth tanned skin of his back and shoulders. More blood and sand clogged the usually sleek sable hair that covered his lower body and flanks, and his hooves were ragged and torn.

  Tavish lay on his back, arms outstretched, in his human shape once again. His dreads were matted and tangled and bright crimson blood bubbled from the jagged wound across his chest.

  ‘What the fuck do the pair of you think you’re playing at?’ I yelled. ‘I came here for help, not to be half-drowned, and then end up refereeing a fucking fight!’

  Neither spoke. They just glowered at each other, their expressions equally closed.

  I kicked at the sand in frustration. ‘Right. So if either of you is going to help me, then do it. If not, then you can just fuck off back into the water, or wherever the hell you came from. But. Stop. Wasting. My. Time.’

  Turning my back on them, I stormed towards the camouflage tent. I knew how Tavish’s computers worked; I didn’t need him or anyone else for that. I lifted the fabric door and ducked under it—A wind as fierce as a hurricane blew against me, making me stumble. I grabbed hold of a wooden tent pole to keep from falling. My skin prickled with magic as hot air eddied round me, stripping the water from my dripping T-shirt and wet hair. I’d forgotten that Tavish had his threshold tagged with a Clean-Up spell. I waited until the magic cooled, telling me the spell was done, then stepped forward.

  And shifted from Between and back into the humans’ world.

  And back to my problems.

  Chapter Nine

  Tavish’s underground living area hadn’t changed since my last visit. The walls were grey blocks of rough granite, much like the RAF monument above, and the floor was flagged with smooth dark-grey slabs. To one side of the high-ceilinged space was a low black suede sofa. A black granite slab sat solidly in front of it on a huge white long-haired skin rug belonging to some animal that had never roamed the humans’ world. I’d never felt comfortable walking on the rug with shoes on, let alone with bare feet - something told me the granite slab wasn’t just there as a convenient coffee-table - so I skirted round it and headed for Tavish’s office. A glass wall divided it from the rest of the space.

  The glass wasn’t just a stylish break between his living and working areas. When I looked, the complicated Buffer spell that protected all his computers from getting zapped by magic lit the glass up like a sun-flare. And there was a lot of gear to protect: a three-high by five-wide bank of flat-screen computer monitors curved around a selection of keyboards and rollerball mice posed on flexi-stalks. It looked like a cross between a giant’s electronic bouquet and a hacker’s mega-expensive wet dream.

  I pulled open the glass door; the low background hum of the electronics buzzed against my ears and I swallowed back the flat taste of the ionised, recycled air. Most of the monitors were playing sections of one large screensaver - a coral reef with darting shoals of tropical fish, and a pair of sharp-toothed sharks swimming lazily from one screen to another - but the monitor front and centre was paused on the CCTV footage showing ‘me’ standing in front of Tomas’ bakery talking to the florist’s boy.

  My stomach did an anxious little jump at seeing it again. I hooked one leg under me and settled into the leather chair, reaching for the nearest keyboard—

  ‘Tavish says to remember the bracelets and the gloves,’ Finn said quietly from behind me.

  I stopped, hand in mid-air. ‘Thanks,’ I said and snagged a pair of the extra-thick surgical gloves from the box under the desk. I snapped them on and pulled them up over my wrists, then gingerly picked up two silver cuffs from the tray next to the box. They were half an inch wide and peppered with industrial-grade diamond chips. I clasped them round my wrists on top of the gloves so the silver didn’t burn my skin. The cuffs and gloves were probably overkill - seeing as each computer had its own individual Buffer spell glowing away - but I wasn’t going to take the chance of frying their hard drives by not wearing the magical inhibitors. Tavish might like me, but not that much.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Finn’s voice held concern.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, still simmering with annoyance over the fight between him and Tavish.

  ‘You don’t look fine, Gen.’

  I glanced down at the baggy T-shirt that was all I was wearing - Joseph’s boxers had been too large for me, and none of the fetish underwear in the mirrored wardrobes had appealed. Tavish’s Clean-Up spell had dried and de-sanded the T-shirt, but that was it. I sighed. Okay, I didn’t look so good, but hey, what did he expect after all I’d been through? Explosion and deep sea swimming anyone?

  I turned to look at Finn. He was leaning against the wall next to the monitors, his arms loosely crossed. His horns had shortened to a couple of inches above his dark blond hair and his sharp feral features were Glamoured back to his more usual clean-cut human handsome. There were no signs of his recent fight; his black chinos and black dress shirt with its thin electric-blue stripes and - I checked - highly polished black boots looked like he’d just taken them from his wardrobe, which he probably had, using magic.

  I shrugged. ‘Not all of us have the ability to call fresh clothes whenever we want to.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the clothes, Gen.’ He came over to crouch by the side of my chair. ‘I’m talking about this.’ He gently touched a pink patch of skin on my forearm. A tingle slipped inside me before the cuffs glowed and shut it down. ‘You’ve been injured.’ Anxiety shaded the moss-green of his eyes.

  ‘I’ll heal good as new in a few days,’ I said firmly, still furious that he hadn’t thought to check I was okay before he’d started chucking Stun spells around. I narrowed my eyes. ‘What are
you doing here, anyway, besides your little spat with Tavish out there?’

  ‘Hell’s thorns, Gen,’ he said, exasperated. ‘What do you think I’m doing here? You’ve been missing since Tuesday morning; I’ve been worried about you.’

  ‘And now I’m not missing any more.’ I tilted my head enquiringly. ‘Are you here to help, or is there some other reason?’

  A puzzled line creased between his brows. ‘Of course I’m here to help, why else?’

  ‘Oh, maybe so you can tell Detective Inspector Helen Crane, your ex-witch wife, where I am so she can come and arrest me?’ I said, not keeping the suspicion out of my voice.

  ‘Helen’s a police officer, Gen.’ He straightened, his face closing up. ‘She has to go by the evidence.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Disappointment twisted through me. Of course he’d take her side; it didn’t seem to matter that she might be looking at the evidence through blinkered eyes gone green with jealousy. I turned back to the monitors, clicked on the play button and started the CCTV footage rolling. The monitor-me stuck her hands on her hips outside the bakery and looked around.

  ‘She doesn’t need to arrest me anyway,’ I said after a moment. ‘I’ve got an alibi, someone who can prove I wasn’t with Tomas when he was killed.’

  ‘Who?’ Finn’s reflection appeared in the screen. I blinked as another reflection, Cosette’s, shadowed his. I swivelled the chair round to look and my knees bumped into Finn’s legs he was so close, but she wasn’t there. Damn, it was bad enough being haunted by a ghost without letting my imagination run away with me.

  ‘Who’s your alibi?’ Finn asked again.

  I frowned up at him, then opened my mouth to say Malik—Then I didn’t as my mind hit a snag I hadn’t considered before. Not only was Malik laid out with his injuries right now, but naming a vamp as my alibi was going to be like waving a bloody flag in the face of the Witches’ Council. It was one of those ‘damned if I do and damned if I don’t’ things. Shit.

  ‘It’s a sucker, isn’t it?’ Accusation sharpened Finn’s voice. ‘Gods, Gen, why?’

  I sighed. ‘I wasn’t with him, Finn, he was following me. But it does mean he can vouch for my movements after I got home.’

  He pushed his fingers through his hair, a worried line creasing between his brows. ‘You weren’t actually with him in person when the human was killed?’

  ‘No,’ I said, turning back to watch the screens. ‘I was running. ’>

  On the monitor the florist’s boy came out of the shop and I picked my way past his flower buckets to talk to him.

  ‘The problem, Gen,’ Finn said, ‘is that even if you’d been with this vampire, I’m not sure how it would work as an alibi now. There’s been a lot of speculation in the newspapers, and quite a lot of the anti-fae prejudices have resurfaced.’ He paused. ‘Even the barrister I spoke to isn’t hopeful. He said that because you’re fae, he’d be happier if you’d been in a room with half a dozen goblins watching you, to testify you didn’t use any magic. He thinks that all it would need is the prosecution to suggest you could kill like that without physically being there ...’ He trailed off.

  On the recording I stripped off my sweatshirt and dunked it in a bucket, then disappeared inside the bakery - walking into the trap.

  ‘So unless the real murderer puts in an appearance, I’m already tried, judged and convicted,’ I finished for him. ‘Looks like your ex has done a bang-up job,’ I added bitterly.

  ‘You disappearing didn’t help, Gen,’ he returned angrily.

  ‘Finn,’ I snapped, ‘Helen’s got it in for me because of you. You might think your relationship with her is over, but she doesn’t, and I’m the one that’s getting the short end of a very vindictive stick.’ I clenched my fists, my fingers sweating inside the plastic gloves. ‘You need to sort it out with her.’

  He swung the chair round again and leaned down, dismay flickering in his eyes. ‘It is over between Helen and me, Gen, but it’s complicated. I didn’t realise it would affect you as it has.’ He dipped his head. ‘My apologies, my Lady.’

  I stared at him, incredulous. ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing with all this “my Lady” crap, but you can forget it.’ I turned back to watch the monitors. ‘And just for the record, “complicated” is not an excuse, it’s a way of life.’

  The screen in front of me looked down on an empty, rain-blurred street. The stack of cardboard boxes outside the florist’s was doing a precarious Tower of Pisa lean to one side. The door to the baker’s stood open. The shop window was a blur of white. As I listened to Finn’s quiet breathing behind me I watched the empty street, wishing something would appear on the screen that would solve everything - the murder, Finn, the vamps, and all the other problems screwing up my life - so my own life could stop being so damn complicated. I almost laughed out loud. No way was that ever going to happen! In reality my life had never been that normal anyway.

  ‘No one could find you,’ he said. I heard the question in his voice, but ignored it. The chair moved as he gripped the back of it. ‘Helen even had a chapter of coven witches cast a Seek-and-Find spell. It came up negative.’

  Strange ... I tapped my fingers on the chair arm, thinking. On the monitor the florist’s lad picked up a couple of boxes from the leaning stack and carried them into his shop. A Seek-and-Find spell, with the power of a coven chapter behind it—‘When did they cast it?’

  ‘Not till late last night. Helen had to wait for a warrant, and budgetary approval.’

  “Last night” I’d still been out of it, doped up on morphine under Joseph’s medical care. Still, the spell should have found me; so why hadn’t it?

  ‘I watched the coven cast, Gen,’ Finn said. ‘When they couldn’t find you, that’s when I realised you had to be in Between. The spell wouldn’t be able to locate you if you were ...’

  Of course, Between was out of this world. Literally. Except I hadn’t been—

  ‘... here with Tavish,’ Finn finished almost with a growl.

  ‘What?’ I said, irritated at his tone. ‘Why the hell would you think I was here anyway?’

  ‘I phoned the bastard and asked if he knew where you were,’ he said tersely. ‘He swore he didn’t.’

  ‘That’s because he didn’t.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose; my 3V headache was making its reappearance. ‘If he made you think otherwise, he was more likely doing his usual and yanking your—’ I stopped; satyrs are touchy about their tails, for some weird reason. ‘He was just doing his mischief-making thing,’ I carried on. Finn had to know what Tavish could be like since he’d just waltzed straight into his home - even if it appeared the pair of them had some sort of jealous rivalry going on over me. Something I wasn’t too impressed with! ‘I got here not long before you turned up and decided to go all postal!’ The florist’s lad stuck his lip out, admiring his silver ring in the shop window, then turned to look behind him at the empty street. ‘And why the hell were you lobbing Stun spells about anyway?’

  ‘So where were you then?’ Finn ignored my question.

  I pursed my lips, still annoyed. ‘Staying with a friend.’

  ‘What’s going on, Gen?’ he demanded. ‘Why’d you disappear like that without even a phone call?’

  I snorted in disbelief. ‘It’s difficult to use the phone when you’re unconscious.’>

  Finn jerked me round to face him. ‘What do you mean, unconscious?’

  ‘Un-con-scious,’ I said sarcastically. ‘It’s what happens when you get blown up, or haven’t you been watching the news?’

  ‘But you didn’t get blown up, Gen.’ Confusion crossed his face. ‘You were seen running away before the explosion—’

  ‘What?’ I grabbed his arms. ‘Who by?’

  ‘Him!’ He pointed at the screen. ‘The boy in the shop next door. His statement says you went in to sort things out with the baker and left shortly after, and then the place exploded. There’s nothing on the recording to back him up, but he’s so adama
nt about it that Helen thinks you used some sort of Compulsion or Memory-Altering spell on him.’

  Crap! I hadn’t - not to mention I couldn’t afford any spell that expensive - but Malik had - or at least, not a spell ... he’d mind-locked the boy when he’d stopped him phoning the police as I’d asked.

  ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t,’ I said, not sure if I was pissed off that Finn thought I’d deliberately disappeared after the explosion or mollified that he was now looking gutted that he hadn’t turned up at my sickbed laden with fruit and flowers.

  Then remembering that Grace had advised me to talk to him ... I did just that.

  I filled him in on most of what had happened, leaving out certain things - like the blood-flush, and where exactly I’d been, of course. ‘So the first I really knew about anything was when I came round earlier today,’ I finally finished.