Fire & Water

by Alexis Hall

  Rose Red’s eyes narrowed. “Freelancing for whom?”

  “That’s...kind of complicated.”

  “Uncomplicate it.”

  “Arty King hired you to help him steal from the Merchant of Dreams. You screwed him over. I’m working for the Merchant and I need the Tears of Hypnos back before this turns into a gigantic shitstorm.”

  She was silent a while, scarlet nails tapping against the iron railing. “Do you even know what it is you’re chasing?”

  “Little bottle, shiny. Has some kind of unbelievable magical power.”

  She smiled. It was one of the evillest smiles I’ve seen in a good long while, and I’ve seen some pretty fucking evil smiles in my time. Then again, she probably practised. Check that. She definitely practised. She leaned closer, her lips brushing my ear. “Perhaps we will talk later,” she whispered. “For now, dance.”

  I took Elise by the hand and led her back down to the dancefloor. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I had a vague idea that this was going quite badly wrong. Taking her in my arms like something out of Strictly, I tried to whirl her across the hall. She didn’t whirl.

  “Miss Kane, I do not think this is—”

  I ignored her and vanished into the crowd. Found another partner. Another. The music wrapped around me like spiderwebs. Distantly, I wondered if I should stop, but I had nothing to hold on to. My mind was filled with smoke and mirrors; there was only the rhythm, and the endless turning of the dance.

  A hand closed around my arm, cold and solid. Elise again. Somebody slapped me and I looked up to see Kauri staring at me. His eyes were onyx set in gold, an unspoken promise of endless nights of forbidden pleasures. A trick of his bloodline, one he didn’t play quite as well as Julian, but it got my attention.

  “She’s fucking with your head, Kate. Snap out of it.”

  Between my mother’s constant presence, Nimue messing with my dreams, a decade and a half of dealing with psychic vampires, and a tendency to drink my problems, I was pretty used to feeling out of control. It didn’t mean I liked it.

  My brain was being pulled in too many directions at once, but I managed to stop dancing long enough to take stock of my surroundings. The floor was almost clear. The guests were standing in a circle around us like when kids used to fight in the playground.

  Rose Red glided towards us. “You are no longer amusing me.”

  That was fair. Most people got sick of my dancing after about three minutes. “I just came to talk.”

  “You infiltrated my kingdom and presented me with demands.” Purple smoke was beginning to spill across the floor. I was guessing she’d upgraded from narked to seriously hacked off.

  I put my hands up in a don’t-rip-the-messenger-to-bloody-fragments kind of way. “Hey, I’m really not here to fight.”

  Kauri stepped forwards. “Bitch, please. You are not going to stand there in your unbeat face and a frock you hot-glued out of a pair of cinema curtains and pull this do-not-defy-me bullshit.”

  “Why, Miss Parma Violet.” Rose Red raised an exquisitely sculpted eyebrow. “You are precisely what this evening needed. Something that tastes like chalk, smells like Grandma and hasn’t been popular for twenty years.”

  Kauri put a hand on his hip like the world’s campest gunslinger. “Says the lady who stole her look from a seventy-five-year-old kid’s cartoon.”

  “That reminds me. Freddie Mercury called. He wants his trousers back.”

  “Jane Fonda called. She said keep the wig. Nobody wants that shit anymore.”

  “Curious. Isn’t that what they said about your last Edinburgh run?”

  “Hey, I saw a review of your last gig too: Mirror mirror on the wall, I didn’t like this show at all.”

  Our hostess was silent a while. Then she laughed. It was a strangely sincere laugh from somebody so carefully put together. “You are welcome in my Kingdom, Miss Parma Violet.”

  I wasn’t sure if Rose Red had let me go or if it was just really hard to stay ensorcelled while two drag queens read each other to filth, but I was back in the game. “Any chance we could focus on the missing superweapon?”

  Rose Red waved a hand and what was left of the crowd went back to dancing. I wasn’t sure if I felt bad for interrupting their night out or annoyed at having provided them with an unplanned floor show. “Follow me.”

  She led us through the revelry into a tiny brick-lined chamber. It was empty except for a couple of mirrors and an I-shit-you-not glass coffin.

  “This was an installation piece,” she explained. “I hired a girl to lie in it. Really looked the part: white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony, all that.”

  Rose Red had a wistful air that I recognised.

  “About five four?” I asked. “Eyes like a baby deer? Has a way about her that says if you don’t save me nothing will?”

  She nodded.

  I kicked the coffin, hard. A thin pattern of cracks spread across the surface. “Fuck! Fucking Corin fucking Black. No offence”—I turned back to Rose Red—“but I really didn’t think she’d be your type.”

  “I never said we were screwing. She...fit.”

  I’d been around this block enough to recognise high-end mage bullshit. It was all wrapped up with the Dream and the courts and the way they got the world to believe the stories they told themselves. “And she took the Tears?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t know where she went?”

  “If I did, I’d cut her heart out myself.”

  I facepalmed. “You know, life would be a lot easier if people weren’t so pointlessly fucking vengeful about everything. Arty King steals from the Merchant, the Merchant swears vengeance. You steal from Arty King, Arty King swears vengeance. Corin steals from you, you swear vengeance. I know this is doing myself out of a job but, seriously, if you could all just let shit go everybody would live a lot longer.”

  Rose Red looked coolly down at me. “I suspect you would find that everybody would live longer, except the person who let shit go first.”

  She had a point. “Okay. Lay it on me. Did she take anything else? When did you last see her? Do you think she had any help?”

  “She took nothing apart from the vial. And I last saw her two days ago, shortly after rehearsals. We’d had a...confrontation.”

  I took a wild guess. “Fairest of them all?”

  “Yes.” She looked faintly embarrassed. “I sent one of my servants to hunt her down, but he didn’t come back.”

  “Who was the servant?”

  “A member of my court called Jack Hunter. Loyal, or so I thought.” She glanced away. “He hasn’t been seen since.”

  “Not from London, though?”

  “He’d want to go somewhere wild. Forested.”

  “It isn’t a lot to go on, but if she took this guy with her then there’s a good chance they’re still together. That or he’s dead. I’ll run down what I can but, let’s be very clear about this, nobody is getting handed over to anybody.”

  Rose Red lifted her chin haughtily. “Hunter is one of my people, and he answers to my justice.”

  “Fine, fine.” I sat on the coffin and put my head in my hands. “You can have Hunter. But—can you please explain to me what the fuck this weird magic juice is and why everybody keeps killing each other over it?”

  “It’s the stuff dreams are made of.”

  “Not helpful.”

  “Not supposed to be. We aren’t friends. If you think you can find Corin I won’t stop you, but I’ll be coming back for the Tears. So will King, so will Nimue, so will anybody else who thinks they can use them. I’d recommend picking a side.” She took a bite out of her apple.

  “Thanks for your concern. Hope next time we meet, we aren’t trying to murder each other.”

  “Don’t bank on it, honey.”

  Kauri
straightened up from where he’d been lounging. “Show was fucking gorgeous, Red. If you don’t get ripped apart in some epic wizard battle, come catch me at the Velvet while you’re in town.”

  Elise also made a polite goodbye and the three of us pushed out into the street. It was still relatively early. Going to a gig takes a while, but entering a gig, chewing out the organiser and then leaving immediately turned out to have been relatively quick, even with my little snip of lost time in the middle. I set off into the tunnel, but found that the others weren’t following.

  “If it is no difficulty, Miss Kane,” said Elise, “I should rather like to make an evening of it, as I believe they say.”

  I looked at her. She had put a lot of effort into her outfit, and realistically she was safer in most situations than I was on account of the whole indestructibility thing. Also, she wasn’t my fucking property and if she wanted to stay out all night at a pop-up cabaret experience, I had no power whatsoever to stop her.

  “You staying too?” I asked Kauri.

  “Hell yeah. The party’s just getting started and early nights weren’t my thing even when I was alive.”

  “Okay, well...you two have a nice time and—” There was no way I could put this without sounding like a patronising arse. “Could you make sure Elise gets home safely. Because I’m going to have to take the car, all public transport might be a little bit controlled by demons now, and she is technically only one-and-a-half.”

  Elise folded her hands demurely in front of her. “And to think, you never even bought me a cake.”

  “You don’t eat.”

  “But I enjoy celebration. And I understand that—as the popular idiom holds—it is the thought that counts.”

  Kauri slipped his arm through Elise’s. “We’ll be fine, Kate.”

  He was right. They’d be fine.

  They’d almost certainly be fine.

  There was a comfortable ninety-three percent chance they’d be fine.

  Before I could change my mind, I trudged back to the carpark. I suppose I could have gone with them—for reasons of fun as well as raging paranoia—but there was nothing like getting worked over by a sleazy club owner, savaged by angry demons, and mind controlled by a magic drag queen in the space of twenty-four hours to really put you out of the dance-’til-dawn mood.

  It was a funny time of night to be leaving the city centre—well after working hours but well before chucking out time. That explained why the carpark was so deserted. It didn’t explain why an attractive young woman in jeans and a leather jacket was leaning on a pillar very close to where we’d parked. I tried not making eye contact and hoping that the whole thing was a giant coincidence. Not that I’d really met many of those in my time.

  “You Kane?”

  Nope, not a coincidence. I stopped, turning slowly and making sure I could reach a knife if I had to. Not that I wanted to get too stab-happy in case she turned out to be an ordinary human. Or an ordinary enough human that sticking a pointy thing in her would be more than a minor inconvenience. “If I said who’s asking, you’d take it as a yes, wouldn’t you?”

  “I believe that we would.” She’d only said about eight words to me, but she was six different kinds of not from around here. Her accent was so thick it was like she’d walked straight out of an episode of The Sopranos.

  “And by we, you mean?” I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “Myself and the two gentlemen you’ll be able to see if you look to your left, and your right.”

  As directed, I looked to my left and to my right. And, as directed, saw two men. Gentlemen was pushing it. “Should I ask what this is about, or do you just want to bundle me into the back of a van now?”

  “I have to admit”—she stopped leaning, and came towards me, stilettos clicking on the concrete—“that would be easier for everybody involved. Especially you.”

  Okay. I was too tired for this. And at the risk of jumping to stereotypical conclusions about Americans, I thought the odds were good that these guys had guns.

  I sighed and got in the van.

  Chapter Seven

  Promises & Threats

  It wasn’t quite a bag-on-the-head job but it was the next best thing. I’d love to pretend that I could do the Sherlock Holmes bit and be all “we drove for two miles, turned left twice and right four times” and deduce that we could only be in one small part of Hackney Marsh. But I couldn’t.

  We got out of the van...somewhere. Suburbs, most likely? Would have been a nice place if I hadn’t been getting kidnapped at the time.

  The girl and her goons led me into a nondescript house and through into an equally nondescript sitting room. Nondescript apart from the fact that it absolutely reeked of blood. Well, that was reassuring.

  In one shadowy corner, a figure waited in a leather armchair. I was directed to the sofa. What with the abduction and the smell, I wasn’t hugely inclined to sit around shooting the breeze, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

  “Okay,” I said. “Who the hell are you?”

  The man sighed. “I’m afraid that’s the wrong question.”

  “Then what’s the right question?”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  I could already tell I wasn’t going to enjoy this conversation. I tried again. “How about you answer the question I actually asked?”

  “My name is Fisher. I’m here for the artefact.”

  “Don’t have it.”

  “I know. But I also know that you’re looking for it. I hope to persuade you to bring it to me.”

  I glanced around. To be honest, I was kind of getting mixed messages. Right now nobody looked like they were about to break my fingers or cut my ears off, but they also gave the impression that those options were still on the table. And then there was the blood thing. I could have stolen a bit of my mother’s power to track it better, but if I was sitting on top of a pile of poorly stashed bodies, I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact I’d noticed.

  Rule 19: never admit you’ve spotted a corpse unless you’re certain you’re not about to join it.

  “Tell me,” Fisher continued, “do you even know what it is you are seeking?”

  “The stuff dreams are made of.”

  There was a low chuckle from the darkness. It seemed pained. “True. The Tears of Hypnos are the stuff of the Dream itself. They blur the boundaries between what is and what may be. In the right hands, with the right resources, they allow the magician to reshape reality.”

  Huh. That explained a few things. Like all the murders. And how they could help Henry Percy become a god. And why everyone and their dog was after this shit. “And you want me to give them to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, then in that case I’ll absolutely do everything you say.”

  The girl shot me a look from the doorway. “You’re kinda becoming an irritant, lady.”

  Fisher raised a hand. “Peace. Our guest has every reason to be suspicious.”

  Too fucking right I did. “Too fucking right I do.”

  “Hey!” Fisher’s ladygoon pushed herself off the wall and swaggered in. “Your mother never teach you how to talk in polite company?”

  I was flat out done with this, so I got up and got loomy. “Last time I checked, polite company didn’t throw people in vans in the middle of the night.”

  “You want to sit the hell down right now.” She leaned in, flames flickering at the tips of her fingers.

  Should’ve guessed. Once in my life I’d have liked to meet a hot-headed mage who specialised in, I don’t know, telling the future or controlling pigeons or the sort of complicated rituals that took twenty years to research and twelve hours to cast. But, no. It’s always fire.

  In any case, the light made it easier to see my host. Silver-haired but not that old. Perhaps late for
ties or early fifties. He had kind of a wolfish look about him and this sense of banked power. “Stand down, Mallory. There will be no violence here, from anybody.”

  “She needs to learn some respect.” Mallory still clearly felt “all up in my grill” was where things were at.

  Fisher curled his fingers into his palm like a kid crushing a butterfly and Mallory’s fire whoomfed out. “She is not the one forgetting her place.”

  I figured it was a good idea to sit back down. I’d never seen a mage turn off somebody else’s power like that, though with Nim it might have been a courtesy thing. Still, to be on the safe side I was putting Fisher firmly in my do-not-fuck-with category.

  “Now, perhaps I can make my case.” Fisher shifted slightly in his chair, making the leather creak. “Your Queen is young and, worse, she is in the middle of a war. Bring the Tears to her and she will be forced to use them as a weapon.”

  I didn’t believe for one second that Nimue would do anything to threaten her city. Then again, Arty King might not leave her any choice. “And you’d be so much better?”

  He reached over and switched on a lamp. There was something off about the way he moved, too stiff and too careful. When I could see him clearly, I realised he was bleeding. I realised he was bleeding quite a lot. His jacket was soaked through on the right hand side, as if he’d been stabbed or shot somewhere he shouldn’t have survived being stabbed or shot. At least that explained the smell.

  “Um,” I said. “You really want to get that looked at.”

  “You see why I need the artefact.”

  “I see why you need to go to a hospital.”

  Fisher folded his arm back over the wound. “It is older than it looks and it will not mend on its own. The Tears will heal it. Little else can.”

  Needless to say, I wasn’t sure what to make of this. It could have been a really elaborate bluff, but a bluff that involved either mortally wounding yourself or finding a way to fake an injury so completely that you could fool the daughter of the Queen of the Wild Hunt was one step too elaborate. Even for the sort of man who dragged you off the street to talk mysteriously at you from the shadows.