She had never spent so much time in pubs in her life. A lady didn’t frequent pubs, of course. She defiantly took another sip of her ale, sending a mental piss off to her grandfather.
“I’ve never liked ale before, but it’s really quite perfect with the fish and chips, isn’t it?” She chose another chip and blissfully poured vinegar on it and doused it with more salt. “I could quite get used to this pub food.”
Christophe grinned and shook his head. “I’m corrupting you. Today ale and pub food, tomorrow who knows? Reality TV?”
“You know about reality TV? In Atlantis?”
“Riley told us about it. Another sign of the decline of humanity, if you ask me.” He nodded toward the bar. “There he is.”
She turned. It was him. “How could you know which one is Maeve’s cousin?”
He was right, though. “Yes, that’s Paul.”
“Not exactly a brilliant deduction. He’s the only Fae who walked behind the bar like he owned it.” He leaned forward. “You’ve got a little salt right there.”
Instead of wiping the corner of her mouth, he kissed it, and then he kissed her some more, and soon she was necking in a pub like a proper ninny.
“Stop,” she said, pulling away. “I have a reputation to uphold.”
“I look at it more like I have a reputation to destroy. Namely, yours.” A slow, wicked smile spread across his face. “Sex on a balcony in broad daylight, kissing in a pub—what’s next? The fall of the British aristocracy, I bet.”
“Shh!” She looked around, but nobody was paying them any attention, except for Paul, and he was too far away to have heard. “You’re too bad.”
“Nope. I’m just bad enough, and you love me.”
She sighed. “Yes, and you’re going to hold that against me, aren’t you?”
“Every chance I get.” He tilted his head toward the bar. “Why don’t you go find out what Paul knows, soften him up before I come over? I’ll stay here and rescue any of my chips you didn’t manage to steal.”
“I am a cat burglar,” she whispered.
She stole another chip and waved it just out of his reach before she slid out of the booth and headed for the bar.
“Hello, Lady Fiona,” Paul said, wiping down the already spotless bar. “Surprised to see you here.”
“Yes, I’m sorry I haven’t made it over more often. Dead-lines and such. You know how it is.” She smiled, inviting him to agree.
He didn’t.
He didn’t smile, either.
“I know you know about us now, Fiona,” he said, his formerly warm voice gone cold and hard. “What do you want?”
She allowed a little of his wintry coldness to seep into her own voice. “I want to talk to Maeve, Paul. She took a friend of mine when she poofed out of my house, and I want to be sure he’s all right.”
He turned to aim his stare at Christophe. “Your friend from Atlantis is fine. You can tell him that, and get out of my pub. Both of you. I’m in danger just from your presence.”
She glanced back at Christophe, and quicker than thought, he was standing next to her. She’d wanted him and he was there. Warmth spread through her veins, as though he superheated her blood simply with his presence. The soul-meld? Perhaps. A topic to be tabled until later, certainly.
“Where is she?”
“She’s in the Summer Lands, fool. You know that and you have no recourse.” Paul picked up a wickedly sharp knife and started slicing through limes like they were butter. “I like cutting things, Atlantean. How well can you bleed?”
“Are you threatening me?” Christophe’s voice was calm. A little bored, even. She could actually feel that he didn’t consider Paul to be the slightest small threat.
Christophe answered her unspoken question out loud. “Fae vary as dramatically in power as humans do in physical or mental ability. This one isn’t much of a power. Barely even much of a Fae.”
Paul’s hand tightened on the knife until his knuckles turned white, but he didn’t challenge Christophe. Instead, he sighed.
“Just leave. I can’t force you to do it, but if you don’t, I’m going to suffer for it. If you ever liked me at all, Fiona, please just leave.”
She stared at him, looking for any hint that this was yet another deception, like the bit with the knife, but all she saw was weariness and a hint of fear.
“Who is frightening you like this, Paul? Tell us and we can help you.”
He laughed, and it held genuine amusement and utter despair. “You can’t help me, Fiona. You can’t even help yourself. Get out of London while you can. Run. Run all the way to Atlantis. Swim, if you have to. He’s after you next. He’s going after the Siren and then he wants you, and I don’t even know why.”
Christophe reached over the bar and grabbed Paul by the collar and lifted him up and halfway over the polished wooden surface. “Who wants her? Tell me or die now, Fae.”
Paul looked down at the fruit staining the front of his shirt and then raised his head, and a corpse’s smile spread across his face. “Maeve’s brother, of course. Fairsby is Gideon na Feransel, Prince of the Unseelie Court, and he has decided to take a human bride. He’s after you, Fiona. You need to run.”
Christophe released him, and Paul slid back down his side of the bar until he was standing there, grinning at them, his eyes twin holes blazing in his pale face. “He has old business with you, too, Atlantean, or so he claims. You should both run.”
He started laughing, clutching his middle, insanity rising in the shrieking tones of his voice. “Run, run, run. Run, little human, but there’s no place to hide. The Siren is back, the wolves will fall, Atlantis will be destroyed. Run, run, run.”
Fiona grabbed Christophe’s hand and pulled him toward the door. She managed, only just barely, to keep from covering her ears with her hands to block out the horrible laughter. The mad refrain of “run, run, run” followed them out the door and at least fifty feet down the street.
That’s when the pub exploded behind them.
Chapter 34
The wave of heat and power almost preceded the noise, or at least smashed into them simultaneously, so that Fiona was flying through the air as if knocked aside by a giant’s hand before she realized what had happened. Through some miracle of balance or Atlantean magic, Christophe performed an amazing twisting somersault in midair and caught her before she crashed down on the concrete, headfirst.
Together, they sat up and stared at what was left of the Prancing Pony. Fire, smoke, and death.
“They’re going to think it was terrorism,” she said. “We need to leave. Slowly and inconspicuously.”
“I think it’s too late for that,” Christophe said, pointing.
A crowd was boiling up the street toward them. No, too big to be a crowd. More like a mob. But no ordinary mob. This one was utterly, completely, silent.
“They’re all shifters,” Christophe said, pulling Fiona back into the doorway of a shop. “Every single one. They’re shifters, and they’ve been enthralled.”
“So many? At once? That’s not possible,” she protested. Then realization dawned in spite of her brain still feeling dazed from the blast. “He’s got the Siren. This is a demonstration or a taunt, or something. Fairsby has the Siren and he’s already using it.”
Christophe’s face was grim. “Either that or Telios does. One of them must be behind the explosion in the pub, too. Whichever it is, he’s making some kind of point, and he’s making it here. We’re caught in the middle of it.”
Behind them, the shop owner locked the door. The old woman’s worried face appeared in the glass for an instant, and then she ran away, into the back of her shop, or possibly out a rear exit.
“We have to get out of here,” Fiona said. “You can’t fight that many shifters.”
“I won’t have to,” he said as the first ranks marched right past them. Every single shifter stared straight ahead, eyes blank and glazed over. “They’re not here for us.”