Aunt Snaky’s lips lifted in a long hiss. “How long will it be until the kelpie is arriving?” She had fangs. And going by her expression, she obviously expected me to dissolve into hysterics and tell her everything I knew. Which wasn’t much. Yet. My horror turned to icy determination. I wished, and not for the first frustrated time, that I could cast my own spells and solve the situation with some sort of magic, but I couldn’t. So instead I needed to find out where the kids were and, more important, work out how to save them.
“How long?” Aunt Snaky said impatiently.
“Ten minutes,” I said, and then not really expecting an answer, I asked, “Where are the boys?”
“They’re still alive. Just,” Dora said, surprising me, her eyes darting momentarily toward the shark-infested pool.
They were in the pool? How was that possible? And was my impression that Dora wasn’t happy about things right, or was that just my own wishful thinking? I narrowed my eyes at her. “What does ‘just alive’ mean?” When she shrugged, I hit her with the next question: “What do you want Tavish for?”
“The kelpie is to retrieve something,” Aunt Snaky said. “If he will agree, you will not be harmed.”
Yeah, and I’m the queen of the goblins. “Retrieve what?”
“Theodora, bring the girl.” A dry rustle whispered under the sound of the pool’s waves as she turned and slithered along the corridor toward the stairs.
So, I was Tavish’s incentive. Not that it mattered, since no way was I going to let him swap me for two little kids. And what did they want him to retrieve? Although another look at the swimming pool gave me a clue: Tavish was in his element in the water; if the boys were—what? imprisoned, trapped, or maybe hiding?—in the pool, then more than likely it was them.
Dora gave me a rictuslike smile—with no fangs; maybe her almost lamia comment meant she still had to eat her first kid before she fully metamorphosed?—and indicated I should follow. As the only other way out was the portal in the pool, and the sharks didn’t look any friendlier than Aunt Snaky, I followed.
“So, was the magazine story, the pixies and all this, just a scam to get me here?” I asked, belatedly wishing I’d listened to my paranoia.
“No, it’s all true,” Dora said, a flicker of misery crossing her face. “I really am an heiress, and I did just get married.”
Was the misery real? “You know,” I said in a low voice, “if your aunt’s coercing you in some way, I can help you, and we can save the boys.”
“You can’t. I thought you could . . .” She looked down at her camera screen, her fingers convulsed, then she said accusingly, “But you can’t even cast the simplest spell, can you?” She was right, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t try something. “No, I might not want this, but I’ve got no choice. I’m my aunt’s heiress, and I’m not talking about money. I’ve got plenty of that.”
“There are always choices,” I said quietly.
“Yeah, like what?” she muttered derisively. “Oh, and don’t be fooled by Auntie”—she gave the lamia’s swaying back a defeated look—“she might move slow, but her skin’s as tough as old boots and I’ve seen her kill a swamp dragon with one flick of her tail.”
Swamp dragons are huge, the size of a double-decker bus.
“At least tell me where the boys are?” I asked urgently, hoping she couldn’t see how rattled I was.
“I told you,” she almost growled, “they’re in the pool.” She shoved past me, ignoring my question as to how they were in the pool, and stomped after her aunt.
By the time we reached the entrance hallway—lamias are apparently akin to snails when it comes to stairs—Tavish was shouting and banging his fists on the front door.
Dora hurried to open it.
I hung back and made a grab for the hefty sledgehammer I’d seen earlier—it was big enough to do damage to a mountain troll, so hopefully it would make a dent in a lamia—but before my fingers touched it, Auntie’s scaly tail whipped out, clamped around my middle, and pinned my arms in place. Then I was suddenly lifted and plonked down on my butt about six feet back from the open front door. I struggled and kicked, but despite my efforts, I couldn’t escape my snaky straitjacket.
“Be still, girl.” Aunt Snaky squeezed me, and pain bloomed down my arms.
Worried she’d break bones, I stopped wriggling and cast a searching look around.
Dora was almost hiding behind the open front door, white-knuckled hands gripping her camera. No help there. Tavish was outside under the colonnaded porch. He was a dark shape against the deep purple haze of the early evening sky, his eyes swirling bright silver, and his dreads dripping with glittering water—no, I looked, not water, but power. And it wasn’t the sky that was hazy, but the Ward; it wasn’t the sucker one from earlier, but something much heftier. Crap, that wasn’t going to be easy to crack.
“The missing boys are in the swimming pool,” I shouted at Tavish, “and it’s got a pixie portal in it.”
“Quiet, girl.” Aunt Snaky shook me.
“Oh, and there’s three sharks,” I gasped.
“Guid to know, doll.” Tavish smiled, teeth white and sharp and equally sharklike against his green-black skin. “Tell me what you are wanting, Malia?”
“I will return this one to you,” Aunt Snaky said, “if you agree to retrieve the children for me. One of the boys is a wizard; he has taken himself and his friend out of our reach.”
So they are hiding in the pool, not trapped. Clever little wizard.
Tavish obviously thought so too, as he laughed and visibly relaxed. “Then we dinna have anything to bargain with, Malia. You are already shedding. ’Twill nae be much longer before you slip your skin, and you’ll nae manage to hold this Ward, nor the one enclosing the square, once your madness comes upon you.” He crossed his arms. “So, I’ll be waiting until then to retrieve the children.”
Sounded like a plan . . .
“Do you not worry for your sidhe?” she asked.
Tavish gave me a considering look. “She’s nae a child, and her soul is too dark to serve as your food.”
I’ve got a dark soul? Whatever happened to being a rainbow? Still, good to know Tavish wasn’t going to fall for Auntie’s ransom demands, and that I wasn’t on Auntie’s menu.
“Especially when your own blood is handy.” Tavish waved at Dora, still huddling almost behind the door.
But Dora was? Pity whispered through me. No wonder she was miserable.
Oddly Dora lifted her camera, shut her eyes, and snapped a couple of shots of Tavish. “The boys will be dead before the ritual is completed,” she said in a distant voice. “You will be too late to save them.”
“Tell me, lass,” he said softly.
The camera flashed again. “If you pass the threshold before the ritual starts, their future changes.”
“What to?”
Her eyes snapped open as she lowered the camera and said with a touch of exasperation, “I can’t see it until it changes; you know that.”
I groaned in disbelief. “Tavish, she’s lying to make you agree.”
Tavish lifted his gaze to mine, and then his eyes flickered to Auntie behind me. “Now I ken why you’re here, Malia, and why this time you risk all to take other than your own kin. Your lassie here has inherited the gift of prophecy given to you by Zeus.”