A hollow, empty feeling settled beneath my breastbone. I didn’t know if I wanted a Happy Ever After with Finn - or anyone else - right now, but I had wanted a chance at Happy for Now with him. But the whole curse solution thing turned all that upside down; Happy for Now didn’t work when it was my child-bearing ability he wanted and not just me. Not to mention it all sounded even more depressingly premeditated now - particularly the fact that the whole set-up with Finn and Spellcrackers had been organised by his herd so he’d be in with a shot at getting me pregnant. I stared out of the window, looking at the heavy, grey rain clouds darkening the October sky, locked the hurt and disappointment away and tried to look at it logically. Okay, with the curse hanging over their heads, I could understand why - hell, if breaking the curse involved just me, then I wouldn’t even have to think about it - but it would mean bringing a child into the world for something other than its natural purpose. The magic is capricious and fickle at the best of times; throw in a curse and who knew what grief the child would have to bear.
And none of it the child’s own choosing.
It wasn’t a decision to be taken lightly.
Or by a committee.
And yeah, the whole philosophising bit still didn’t stop me being as pissed off as hell about the broodmare part I was supposed to play. Or the fact that Finn had agreed to it all before he’d even met me—
‘Fuck, Finn.’ I curled my hands into fists. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that they pimped you out as a stud?’
‘I’m a satyr, Gen!’ he said, exasperated. ‘We’re fertility fae, it’s what we do! We court whoever the herd elders decide - that’s the way it is. But if I hadn’t wanted to do this, either before or after I met you, I could’ve said no; it’s not like I’m the only satyr in London.’ His face hardened. ‘And I’m not the only fae in London either.’
Yeah, and didn’t I know it, what with dryads chasing me, and the early morning wake-up call from Randy Ricou.
‘So what you’re telling me,’ I said slowly, ‘is that I have to choose.’
‘Yes.’
That didn’t leave any wiggle-room for doubt, did it?
‘Look, I want you to choose me, Gen.’ He clasped my shoulders, hope sparking in his eyes. ‘But I saw the way you looked at Tavish, so’ - his eyes turned flat and bleak - ‘anyway, whoever you choose, you need to do it soon, otherwise the dryads will try and make the choice for you.’
‘That’s not a choice, Finn, that’s a fait accompli.’
‘Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.’ His hands tightened almost painfully on my shoulders. ‘Once you’ve made your choice and it’s official, then the dryad problem will go away.’
‘No, you don’t understand; it’s not the dryads doing the kidnapping and whatever that’s the fait accompli, it’s the whole thing. Having a child should be my choice, mine and the father’s, not a group decision taken by people I’ve never even met who want me to pick out a magical sperm donor from a line-up. But none of you will give me that choice, will you?’
‘No,’ he said, quietly, desolation echoing in his voice. ‘Not when it means we die out.’
I pulled away from him and sat down, rubbing my hands over my face, a sick, frightened feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want this, didn’t want the responsibility. Why couldn’t it be someone else’s? Why me? But of course the answer was easy; it was only me because I happened to be handy, no other reason.
‘Gen,’ Finn said sadly, crouching down in front of me, ‘even if all of London’s fae did give you that choice, I’m not sure the magic would.’
‘What?’ I looked up, startled.
‘Why do you think it keeps pushing us together like this?’ He took hold of my hands and the magic hummed as if in agreement. ‘So far it’s just being ... helpful, but it could change, you know that. The magic wants to survive as much as any of us, and it’s not just the magic dying that’s killing us; if we fade, so will the magic.’
My mother had faded.
My father found my mother at a fertility rite, got her pregnant, and then after I was born, she’d lost so much blood, he couldn’t stop her from fading. Or so the story goes. I’d believed it as a child, but now I realised no sidhe would willingly agree to have a vampire’s child - got her pregnant was just a pleasant euphemism. And I was the result. And while I might be my father’s daughter, I was still the valuable commodity he’d been determined to produce when he’d raped my mother - still the valuable commodity he’d traded to a psychotic vampire.
It’s not a story that dreams of happy families are made from.
Or one that had ever made me want to have my own children, even without a curse to contend with. But if the magic decided to encourage me ... Even if London’s fae left me alone, I might not be able to trust myself to make the right choice, a prospect that terrified me even more than everything else.
I looked down at where he clasped my hands. ‘What about the child?’ I said softly.
‘It’ll be a child, Gen. It’ll be loved and cared for, whoever its father is. You’ll see to that.’ His expression turned hopeful again. ‘Can we at least talk about it, maybe try and work out where we go from here?’
Part of me wanted to, but another part knew Finn’s ‘where do we go from here’ was him asking for a decision about him. And I wasn’t yet ready to make that decision - not to mention the real question hanging over me: what would happen if the curse attached itself to the child? That wasn’t one Finn - or, I suspected anyone else, for that matter - could or would answer. And magic aside, while they’d all got it into their heads that a sidhe-born child would break the curse, I wasn’t convinced ... But no matter where that left me, Finn or any of them, it wasn’t going to be resolved here and now.
Now, I was here to ask about another child: Helen’s changeling child, in the hope that the answer would help me find the sidhe who’d murdered Tomas.
I pulled my hands from Finn’s and straightened in the chair. ‘What happened when you and Helen went to see the florist’s lad last night?’
‘Hell’s thorns, Gen! Why won’t you talk to me?’
‘Because I’m not ready to.’ I pressed my hands flat on my knees, focusing on the snags in my jeans where I’d fallen over, keeping everything else - fear, hurt, anger and frustration - all bottled up. ‘And because right now,’ I carried on, ‘we have other things to worry about, like finding the sidhe who’s already killed once. What happened with the boy last night?’
‘Okay,’ he said, almost to himself, ‘okay, if you’re not ready, we can do this later.’ His brows drew together into a thoughtful frown. ‘The florist’s boy, yes ... we went to see him, only he wasn’t there. His dad said he was off to some concert or other with a mate. Helen’s got someone checking into it.’
Damn. The boy was a dead end. Now for the other question. I kept my gaze on my hands, not wanting to see his face. ‘I’ve just seen the phouka,’ I said, my voice neutral. ‘Helen gave a child to the sidhe. A changeling.’
He inhaled sharply, then he rose and retreated to sit behind his desk.
I looked up at him. His face was closed, all expression banished, leaving just a handsome mask. As I had expected. A dull pain twisted inside me, then I had a sudden - horrible - thought: was it his child?
But his next words denied it. ‘That is not for me to discuss.’ His voice was as blank as his face.
‘Well, you’re going to have to discuss it, Finn,’ I said, determined. ‘Someone’s used her blood and her connection to the child to open a gate between here and the Fair Lands. That same someone has let another sidhe into London.’
‘She wouldn’t do that.’ A line creased between his brows. ‘In fact, I’m not even sure she’d know how to.’
‘I’m not saying she would, but it’s her blood, Finn. Who else would have access to it?’
He grabbed his phone, pressed a button and clamped it to his ear. After a few seconds, he asked, ‘Helen, when was the last time you used blood in a s
pell?’
I pressed my lips together; nice to see his ex was on speed-dial, and that she answered him almost faster than the speed of light.
‘No, I need the answer first, then I’ll tell you.’ He snagged a pen and pulled his pad towards him. ‘That was the Seek-Out spell you did at Old Scotland Yard, wasn’t it? And before that?’ He listened. ‘More than a month ago, right. And what about the Witches’ Council Blood Bank?’
I raised my eyebrows. The council kept a Blood Bank for spells?
‘Okay.’ His face turned thoughtful. ‘Who would have access to it?’ He scribbled a couple of names on the pad in front of him. ‘Yes.’ He met my gaze briefly and admitted, ‘She’s with me.’
Damn, he just had to tell her, didn’t he? On the other hand, he couldn’t lie outright, and if he’d been evasive she’d have twigged.
‘No, I will not - and neither will you, not until after I ring you back, okay?’ His knuckles whitened as he gripped his pen. ‘Helen, it’s to do with what happened in the past, with the changeling.’ Another longer pause, then, ‘Five minutes, no more, and I’ll phone you back.’
He thumbed the phone off and looked at me, his eyes unreadable. ‘She says there’s no blood stored at the police station; they use it too infrequently. They call in a police doctor as and when they need it. So there’s no possibility of anyone stealing it from there.’
‘And the witches’ Blood Bank?’
‘The council takes donations from all working witches for use in the more complicated spells; it’s easier than trying to get them all together at casting time. Helen gives once a month.’
I could see the benefits. Most Witches’ Council spells took a whole coven - thirteen witches - which was why they were so damned expensive. ‘When did she last donate?’ I asked.
He tapped his pen. ‘A week ago yesterday.’
Yes! Now we were getting somewhere. I jerked my head towards the scribbles in front of him. ‘Who’s got access?’
He flipped the pad round to face me. ‘These three are the administrators.’
I didn’t recognise the first two, but the third—‘Sandra Wilcox is one of my neighbours.’
‘I know, and she’s also a highly respected member of the Witches’ Council, and not only that, she’s over eighty years old. Somehow I can’t see her stealing blood and persuading a sidhe to kill someone.’
‘She’s also a paranoid old witch who’s been campaigning like mad for the last month to get me evicted. Can Helen check and see if her blood’s still there?’
‘It won’t be. Blood is destroyed if it’s not used within five days. It loses its potency.’
‘Destroyed by the administrators, no doubt,’ I said drily. ‘So the old witch could’ve used it and no one would be any the wiser.’ I stood. ‘I’m going over there to find out what she knows.’
‘Gen, I’m really not sure that’s a good idea. Let me fill Helen in and she can arrange to talk to her.’
‘C’mon, Finn,’ I sighed, ‘no way am I going to let my fate hang on two witches, not when both of them are fully-paid-up members of the Get Rid of the Sidhe Club. And Helen’s got every reason to keep this under wraps, ’cause she’s hardly likely to want giving up her child to the sidhe to become public knowledge, is she?’
‘Helen will do her job—’
‘Phone her then, Finn, if that’s what you want. I know you have faith in her. But I don’t, so I’m going over there now, and if that means a whole division of police turn up, so much the better. That way there’ll be no sweeping things under the carpet.’
I turned on my heel and left.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Five days isn’t a long time to be away from home, but I’d missed it. Shoving that less-than-cheerful thought aside, I looked, and looked, around the communal hallway and up the stairs, checking for any new spells that might be lying in wait. Nothing. I pushed the main door shut without activating the Ward; the police needed to get in, after all. Taking a deep breath, I inhaled beeswax and faint musty earth - the scents of the goblin cleaner and Mr Travers, my landlord - almost buried beneath the less pleasant reek of Witch Wilcox’s garlic and bleach-laced Back-off spell: garlic for vamps, bleach for fae, so Tavish had told me.
The spell was going to be a problem. How was I supposed to knock on the old witch’s door if I couldn’t get near it? Still, determination had to count for something. And if the sidhe was with her, better I got her back to Grianne before the police turned up, even if it meant I’d probably spend the next few days sitting in a cell waiting for Grianne’s queen to sort it all.
I ran quietly up the stairs and stopped a couple of steps shy of the third-floor landing and looked again.
Sure enough, the anemone spell’s violet-coloured tentacles undulated over the landing. As I studied it, the dark gaping mouth in the centre of the anemone thing puckered up to a small round hole and then expanded, blowing me something that looked disturbingly like a kiss. Damn! The spell had been hanging around long enough to develop a sense of humour! I really hated it when the magic did that - I usually ended up being the butt of its jokes.
‘Well, if it isn’t the little sex-deprived bean sidhe,’ a rough voice drawled. ‘We’ve been waiting for you to turn up. Got ourselves a nice little party all planned.’
Adrenalin flooded my body as I looked up towards the voice. A male, a purple bandana tied round his clipped head, was leaning over the banister; he was the dryad who’d chased me from outside The Clink museum: Bandana. He grinned, revealing teeth stained brown from bark-chews, his eyes glinting the anaemic yellow of dying autumn leaves.
I went for the important question, keeping my voice light and slightly bored. ‘Who’s invited to this party then?’
‘A couple of close friends.’ He rubbed his jaw, leaving streaks of pale green where he’d scratched away his surface skin. Then he leaned further out, looking down through the narrow gap that separated the stairs from the landing. ‘I think you might have met them in passing.’
I looked down quickly. The lanky turban-headed dryad was making his way up towards me, his red turban bobbing with each long stride, and following him was a straw Panama above a pair of wide pinstripe-suited shoulders. Yep, friends all right; though not mine, obviously. Panama stopped to catch his breath, then squinted up.
‘Hi.’ He gave me a fat-fingered wave. ‘Nowhere for you to run to now, bean sidhe,’ he said, much too happily. ‘I liked the blonde bimbo look better, but then, this isn’t about looks, is it?’
‘Not where you’re concerned, Shorty,’ I said sweetly.
His face screwed up in anger and he started thudding up the stairs again. Red Turban hooked a long arm round Shorty’s stocky neck and yanked him to a halt. ‘Cool it,’ he said in a surprisingly high voice. ‘The bean sidhe is not to be damaged, remember.’
Good to know they planned to pull their punches. Shame for them I had no intention of reciprocating the go-easy policy.
Red Turban released Shorty and looked up at me, his expression cold. Then he patted Shorty on the back and said, ‘I can show you plenty of other ways to get maximum enjoyment out of her body, whatever it looks like.’
Not if I can help it, you won’t! I thought, determined. Red Turban’s twin popped his blue-turbaned head over the banister above me and gave me an equally cold stare. Ambushed! How lucky was I? Then another dryad - this one in a yellow beanie hat - sneered as he hung over the banister next to Blue Turban and Bandana. So, five of them in total.
A low rustle, like leaves shifting in the wind, filled the stairwell. Crap, now they were talking together - not that I needed to understand what they were saying to work out their objective, not when they’d got me cornered and outnumbered.
This was so not good.
My gut twisted with nervous tension as I tried to come up with some sort of plan. The police would be here soon, and hopefully Finn. If I could hold the dryads off until they arrived ... I had two options - up or down - and neither looked
promising, not when up meant getting past the witch’s anemone spell—
I turned to face the two below me and the rustling rose in volume. Red Turban tapped Shorty on his Panama hat again and up they came, Red Turban’s long legs eating the stairs two at a time, Shorty puffing red-faced behind him.
A creaking noise above had me itching to look up, but I ignored it, concentrating on the two below. I was only going to get one chance at this; either it worked, or I was in serious trouble. I grabbed the banister and braced myself. Time stretched as I took a calming breath.
The Cold Kiss of Death Page 30