Fuck, she was just who I didn’t need right now!
I grabbed Angel’s hand, dropped Grianne’s shiny pebble into her palm and closed her fingers round it. ‘Travel safe,’ I murmured as she disappeared in a bright blinding blaze of silver-grey light.
Typical Grianne: flashy and efficient as ever.
And no doubt Angel was safely back in the Fair Lands before I’d even had time to blink.
I turned, still a little blinded by the dazzle, and said calmly, ‘Hello, Hannah.’ Obviously Malik hadn’t had time to deal with her yet - that whole ‘vamps don’t do daylight’ thing has its disadvantages - and just as obviously, Hannah had replaced the vamp-groupie look with a Chanel-inspired navy and white suit. She was also standing in the doorway, blocking my escape route. But though she might be a sorcerer, physically, she was still only human. A human I could take. Her magic? I wasn’t so sure about that.
‘Figured you’d turn up sooner or later after seeing your sorcerer’s handiwork here,’ I said drily.
‘I’m impressed, Genevieve.’ Her perfectly outlined lips smiled, but the expression in her coffee-brown eyes was more about smiting me on the spot. ‘I wasn’t aware you were capable of Transportation spells.’
I shrugged. ‘You learn something new every day.’
‘Ah. Well, it must be time for your next lesson then.’ She stepped aside. ‘Joseph?’
Malik’s doctor friend stepped into the room, his owl-like eyes blinking rapidly. He lifted his arm and aimed a gun straight at me...
Oh shit.
... and a sharp pain pricked my chest. I looked down to see a steel dart embedded in the swell of my left breast, then there were three darts, then too many to count as the world fractured around me into tiny unrecognisable pieces and I felt myself falling ...
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Is she dead, Doctor?’ I heard Hannah demand. I opened my eyes and found myself looking into the masked face of Doctor Joseph Wainwright, a.k.a. the bastard who had just shot me with a tranq gun. I glared at him, but he didn’t appear to notice, just carried on shining a bright pencil light into my pupils. I squeezed my lids tight shut, then opened them again, struggling to see beyond the blinding spot of light into the candlelit darkness that closed in behind his head. I could make out a brick roof arching overhead. On one side there was a high bricked-up archway with an open wooden door at one end, on the other a mural of some sort. I squinted, and a painting of a barren landscape with a distant, rocky mountain came into focus.
I frowned as I recognised the place from Hannah’s big-screen memory of Rosa lying in agonised state while the Earl killed the Ancient One. I was in the sorcerer’s lair, wherever that was, and no doubt the stone slab I was lying on was her proverbial sacrificial altar.
How lucky could I get?
Of course, I’d be even luckier if I could figure a way off the table, preferably before the sacrifice bit happened.
I slowly winked at the doctor.
He ignored me.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
Still nothing.
I realised he really couldn’t see me; I was having some out-of-body experience. Panic started bubbling and I pushed it down. Panicking wasn’t going to help.
‘Doctor?’ Hannah’s imperious question came again. ‘Is Genevieve dead?’
‘No, not quite.’ He adjusted his mask and looked at something next to him. ‘There’s still some brain activity.’
I followed his gaze. He’d got me hooked up to his machines again. One showed a faint green line winging across its screen, the other, the heart monitor maybe - I checked; yep, more electrodes stuck to my chest - wasn’t flashing up any numbers.
Damn. My heart wasn’t beating. And nothing hurt any more.
Not a good sign.
It was beginning to look like Doctor Joseph’s diagnosis was wrong. Mentally, I cheered him on. I might not be sure if he was a goodie or baddie, but if he was saving my life, he had my vote - even if he was only trying to revive me so Hannah could reverse the situation at her leisure. At least that way, I had a chance.
‘Hurry it along, Doctor, we’re on a tight schedule here,’ Hannah said impatiently.
I turned towards her and she didn’t notice; apparently seeing ghosts or spirits wasn’t one of her sorcerous powers. She stood almost within touching distance, dressed in a floor-sweeping black velvet robe, heavily embroidered in red with symbols I didn’t recognise and tied at the throat with matching red cord that ended in foot-long tassels. The outfit had to be her sorcerer’s robe, but it looked more like she’d dressed herself up in a pair of swanky curtains.
‘I’m going as quickly as I can,’ Joseph said, his voice filled with nervous tension. ‘Her metabolism is faster and more resistant than a human’s. And I have to balance out the morphine with the tranquilliser, they’re working against—’
‘Oh, do shut up and get on with it,’ she snapped. ‘Time is of the essence here.’
‘Why don’t you just stab the sidhe? It would be quicker,’ said another voice from somewhere near my feet.
Stab me? Wasn’t the doctor trying to save me?
I sat bolt upright, staring at the plump, curly-haired woman who was standing there. She popped a liquorice torpedo into her mouth from the white bag she was holding. Her robe was identical to Hannah’s, but where Hannah looked almost regal, she just looked dowdy; something not helped by the sullen expression on her fat face. Ex-Police Constable Janet Sims: my favourite security guard in Covent Garden. No wonder she wanted to stab me.
Only I didn’t think she needed to. With a sort of horrified inevitability I looked down at myself. I might be sitting up, but my body wasn’t sitting up with me. It was laying stock-still, eyes closed, naked except for the electrodes and a funny-looking cap with a thicket of wires trailing from it back to the first machine. My face, neck, arms, chest and stomach were covered in scratches from my run-in with the dryads.
Okay, looked like the out-of-body experience had escalated to worse. I was dead - and not only that, I was a ghost too.
Fuck. I clenched my fists and built the wall higher against my panic.
My body was still there, and that meant I wasn’t truly gone, just separated.
So all I needed to do was to work out how to pull myself together again.
‘I told you, Janet,’ Hannah’s tone was long-suffering, ‘she might be sidhe fae, and she might heal quickly, but I can’t wait for that. I need to use the body straight away to get the Fabergé egg out of the bank.’
Use my body?
‘It’s bad enough I’m going to be walking round flat-chested’ - Hannah grimaced - ‘and looking like I’ve been attacked by a litter of angry cats without being incapacitated by a knife-wound in the heart. Although if this so-called doctor doesn’t hurry up, it’ll be his heart with a knife in it. Are you listening, Doctor?’
‘Yes.’ He pushed his glasses back up his nose, his finger trembling.
My mind clicked into place: so Hannah was planning on using the equivalent of my Disguise spell - except I was the one being evicted from my body, and she was gong to be the one walking round in my skin.
Fuck.
Janet walked up to Hannah and looked down at my prone self. ‘But I should be able to heal you now I’ve got Granny’s powers,’ she pouted. ‘Granny was always good at healing things.’ She rubbed her hands together eagerly. ‘That way I get to stab the sidhe slut here. I’ve always wanted to do that.’
No way was I going to let this happen - only I couldn’t see how to stop it.
‘Genny.’
I jerked towards the whisper, but couldn’t see anything.
‘Janet, dear,’ Hannah sniffed, ‘you’ve had Granny’s magic for a week now. So far, you’ve managed, what?’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘An invisibility shield that reflects in shop windows, an exploding flour-storm, and whatever that disgusting smelly spell was that you attached to Granny’s door - a spell which, incidentally, di
d nothing at all to stop dear Genevieve from getting into Granny’s flat while you were out buying children’s comics and nail polish.’
Her words registered in the part of my mind not panicking: Dumpy Janet was Witch Wilcox’s granddaughter? The one who was staying with her?
‘Fairycakes kept on whingeing and crying. It was bugging me.’ Janet’s mouth turned down. ‘And it’s not my fault the dryads were waiting for the sidhe slut.’
‘Of course it was,’ Hannah said briskly. ‘The only reason they were chasing her was because you couldn’t stop that addlebrained sidhe from killing your baker boyfriend. All you had to do was get her to bespell him, just enough to put pressure on Genevieve, but oh no, you decide to have your own little orgy, Genevieve ends up wanted for murder, London’s fae think she’s ready to break their curse and you put all my plans at risk.’
‘Genny,’ came the whisper again, closer this time, and a small, cold hand crept into mine and tugged. I looked down into the big dark eyes of Cosette, the ghost, and felt a shiver of fright crawl up my spine. ‘You need to come with me, Genny,’ she whispered.
Did I? She’d helped me twice before, and sitting here wasn’t getting me anywhere, was it? I slid off the stone slab and followed her - stepping over a line of red sand that marked the edge of a circle - towards a dark corner.
‘Do you know how many strings I’ve had to pull to sort that murder charge out?’ Hannah carried on. ‘And how many promises I’ve had to make? If you hadn’t made such an almighty mess of things, we’d have had this spell done days ago, instead of having to rush things at the last minute.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ came Janet’s sulky reply. ‘It all just got a bit out of hand.’
We reached the corner and stopped. It was just a corner. I was a little taken aback that it wasn’t some sort of help, or an escape route. I frowned down at Cosette. ‘What happens now?’
‘Now we watch,’ she said, amusement lighting her eyes. ‘Oh, and Genny, think some clothes on, please.’
Huh? I looked down and as I did, my missing jeans and T-shirt materialised around me.
Cosette patted my hand. ‘That’s a good girl.’ She didn’t sound like an eight-year-old, even one born a hundred years ago.
‘Start using your brain instead of worrying about who to let into your knickers,’ Hannah snapped at Janet. ‘If it wasn’t for the fact that you’re my little sister, I’d have offered your soul up to the demon long ago. And stop eating those bloody sweets; you don’t need them now. Granny’s magic is powerful enough without you adding sugar to it. You need to lose some of that fat you’re carrying round with you. Do that and you could have your pick of boyfriends instead of having to moon about after those ugly trolls all the time.’
‘Trolls are not ugly,’ Janet huffed.
Ugly! Pieces of the jigsaw started slotting together in my head.
‘You’re the Ancient One, aren’t you?’ I said to Cosette, looking down at her. ‘So what happened to the old crone look?’
‘You have a phobia about ghosts, Genny.’ Cosette gave me a knowing smile; it sat oddly on her little girl’s face. ‘I thought this would be a more acceptable manifestation with which to approach you.’
I shuddered. She was right; the chest wounds had been bad enough - if I’d met her ghost with its yellowed skull and maggot-filled eyes ...
‘I will explain,’ she continued, ‘but first we must watch the proceedings.’
‘Well, each to their own,’ Hannah was saying, drawing my attention back to the squabbling women, ‘but I’ll tell you what, after we’ve finished you can have a look at Darius, my pet vamp. I’m not going to need him any more after tonight, so you might as well have him.’
‘I don’t want your cast-offs,’ Janet pouted.
‘Sure you do,’ Hannah said firmly. ‘Darius is almost as big as a troll anyway, so he’ll be right up your street.’ She arched a perfectly drawn brow at Joseph. ‘Now, Doctor, are we done yet?’
‘She’s dead,’ Joseph said quietly, turning away to fiddle with a medical trolley next to his machines.
‘Right, now stay out the way, but don’t leave the circle, and remember what I told you. Make sure you do it, otherwise come midnight yours will be one of the souls going to the demon.’
Joseph crossed himself, his face pale.
It looked like he might be a goodie, which begged the question how in hell had Hannah got her claws in him?
Hannah loosened her robe and let it fall to the ground, leaving her wearing nothing but a gold locket on a chain around her neck. She stepped up to the altar and used a small step-stool to climb up and onto me, swinging a leg over until she was straddling my thighs. She stared down for a minute then cupped her own full breasts and sighed. ‘I’m going to miss my curves’ - she gave my own smaller breasts a prod - ‘but thank goodness for silicone.’
Shock slammed into me as I realised she wasn’t just going to be borrowing my body. She was taking it over.
Permanently.
Hannah lifted her arms and removed the gold locket, opened it and placed it on my stomach, where it sat like a frozen butterfly. She waved at Janet, who hurried over, holding out a black embroidered cushion like a tray. ‘Your athame, Mistress.’
‘It’s not an athame, Janet,’ Hannah rebuked her. ‘It’s a very special knife, forged by the northern dwarves from cold iron and silver.’ She picked it up and ran a finger carefully along the thin blade. ‘It was tempered in dragon’s breath. The handle is carved from a unicorn’s horn, and this’ - she smiled as she stroked the oval of clear amber set in its handle - ‘this is a dragon’s tear.’
‘A Bonder of Souls,’ whispered Cosette in awe. ‘Wherever did she discover that?’
I narrowed my eyes. The last time I’d seen the knife, other than my dreams, I’d been four years old. ‘She stole it,’ I said flatly. ‘From Malik al-Khan.’
‘Ah, of course - that is how he tied your soul to his when you were a child. I was curious about how he’d done so.’
I eyed her with suspicion. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘Any knowledge is available if you’re prepared to pay the price,’ she murmured, her gaze fixed on Hannah.
Ri-ght, the demon information service. Figured!
Hannah held up the knife and started chanting in the same guttural language I’d heard her use before. Then she leaned forward and carved three interconnecting crescent moons in the centre of my chest.
I recognised them at once: Cosette had the same marks on her own small chest - only now I was beginning to suspect she might have put them there herself, and not, as I’d always thought, had them inflicted on her.
I watched, tense and powerless, as blood, glinting like wet rubies in the flickering candlelight, seeped into the marks carved on my chest. Hannah offered the knife to my blood and it rushed up the silver blade, turning it crimson. Then she held the knife over the locket and I watched as the blood drained down and pooled inside its open wings.
‘Your soul to gold, Genevieve,’ she chanted, kissing the knife and leaving a smear of blood on her lips, ‘my soul to your flesh,’ as she bent and touched her bloody lips to my mouth, ‘your flesh and my soul to join.’ Then she gripped the knife in both hands, held it out in front of her and reversed the blade. She took a deep breath and plunged it into her body, under her ribs and up into her heart.
Screaming, she threw her head back as if in ecstasy, hands still clutching the knife as blood dripped down between her fingers, then, after a moment, she wrenched the knife from her chest and let it drop as she half-fell, half-lowered herself onto me to press her mouth to mine, her body twitching in its death throes.
Joseph turned away, his face pale.
Janet stared avidly, her mouth parted, her bag of sweets clutched in her fist, forgotten.
Beside me, Cosette watched just as avidly. ‘She always was a good student, that one,’ she said, her dark eyes lit with something almost like pride.
Ange
r flooded into me, washing away the shock and panic. I bent down to look her in the eyes. ‘Right, now that your erstwhile pupil is happily stealing my body, want to tell me what I’m supposed to do to stop her?’
‘You can’t stop her, Genny,’ Cosette said, holding up a hand to silence me, ‘but you might be able to reclaim your body.’
‘How?’ I demanded.
‘You’ll need to expel her soul and rebond your own into your body.’
‘And somehow I just know that’s going to be easier said than done. Any hints?’
‘Use your connections.’
‘Short, sweet and cryptic doesn’t do it for me,’ I said. ‘Want to tell me how in more practical terms?’
The Cold Kiss of Death Page 32