‘Thanks, Finn,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it. And I’m okay now’—I gave a rueful smile—‘other than all this ...’ I waved at the monitors. ‘I’m hoping there’s some clue to be found on the recording.’
He hesitated, as if he was going to say something, then smoothed his hands over my shoulders. ‘Okay.’ He straightened, lips quirking in a half-smile. ‘I’ll watch with you.’
‘I didn’t realise you and Tavish knew each other,’ I said absently as I turned back to the screens. ‘You never mentioned it.’
‘I’ve known Tavish since I was a kid.’ Finn’s voice was quiet, thoughtful.
I leaned over and hit the rewind symbol on the monitor and the recording zoomed backwards. Time to see if anyone got to the bakery before me.
‘Where is Tavish, anyway?’
‘Probably playing with his food,’ he muttered. ‘There was a jumper two nights ago, off London Bridge. The body’s not surfaced yet.’
The hand clutching at my ankle when I’d been in Tavish’s sea came back to me. I frowned up at Finn. ‘Tavish abides by River Lore; he only takes those who want to die. You know that.’
‘Is that what he told you?’ His mouth turned down with derision. ‘Don’t be naïve, Gen. River Lore is just a nicety for the humans, and all he truly agreed was not to actually charm them into the water. He’s never given up his first claim on whoever he finds in the river. And anyway, he’s a kelpie; it’s part of who he is.’
‘What?’ I snorted. ‘Like you’re a fertility fae and I’m sidhe so it doesn’t matter what we want or what we care about, we just succumb to the magic?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then why should Tavish be any different?’
Finn shoved a hand through his hair. ‘He’s spent centuries being different, Gen. He can’t change that.’
‘Is that why you were throwing Stun spells at him? You thought you were saving me?’ I huffed in exasperation. ‘Will you stop doing your white knight thing, Finn—there’s no way Tavish would hurt me!’
‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, River Lore says he can take someone if they’ve killed, doesn’t matter whether they want to die or not. He won’t make allowances for you; he’s not going to care that it was a sucker and that you had no choice.’
‘Of course I had a choice, Finn—I just didn’t like the other option; being a vamp’s blood-bond for eternity isn’t my dream lifestyle.’ At least not since I was fourteen, I added silently to myself. I swung back round to face the monitors. ‘Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been in the water with Tavish before ... and that vampire wasn’t the first I’d killed,’ I finished quietly.
He didn’t say anything, just crossed his arms and withdrew into himself. I sighed, staring down at the diamond-chipped cuffs. Arguing with Finn wasn’t getting either of us anywhere, and we couldn’t seem to stop arguing either. The magic kept sparking between us, but something, Helen or my vampire parentage probably, was holding him back. Worse, I didn’t know why I just couldn’t resign myself to the fact there wasn’t going to be anything more between us than me working for him at Spellcrackers. Though even that looked like it wasn’t going to continue much longer. Snuffing out the little flicker of hope of something more I’d foolishly kept alive, I reached out, stopped the recording and set it playing forward again.
‘I don’t know what to say, Gen,’ Finn said, his voice soft, uncertain.
‘I’m not asking you to say anything, I was just telling you.’ I swallowed past the constriction in my throat. ‘It happened years ago, so it’s not important now.’ I’d been the stereotypical runaway, straight off the bus, and the vamp had been the clichéd predator, thinking he could use me as bait for a bigger prize, except, at the risk of another cliché, he discovered he’d bitten off more than he could safely swallow—Maybe we needed a change of subject. ‘Why would you think I’d be here with Tavish, anyway?’
‘What? Oh everyone knows that you and Tavish are ... courting.’
‘Tavish and I aren’t courting,’ I said, surprised, watching as I ran past the bakery, the florist’s lad turning round to stare after me. ‘We spent a bit of time together a while back, but I hadn’t seen him for at least six months until now.’
‘Gen, six months is nothing to a fae, and it doesn’t take much for gossip to start. The witches’re bad for tittle-tattle, but the fae are ten times worse. There’s not that many of us in London: the dryads, the naiads in Lake Serpentine, my own herd and the few solitary fae that hang out at the dragon’s eerie. They’re all as interested in what goes on with each other as anyone. You’re the only sidhe’—yeah and look how that was turning out—‘and you might not know any of them, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to ignore what you do.’
‘Aye, that’s true, doll.’ Tavish’s voice sounded behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder as he strolled towards me. The wound across his muscled chest had healed to no more than a faint shadow. He was dressed, sort of, in a long pair of orange silk harem pants, the beads in his hair coloured to match. He looked like he’d just walked off the set of The Arabian Nights.
‘Why are folk talking about us courting,’ I asked, wondering exactly what sort of mischief he’d been up to, ‘when we’re not and never have been?’
‘Which is what I told the Lady Meriel yesterday,’ he grinned, ‘when she was asking after you and wondering whether I’d seen you recently.’
I stared disbelievingly at him. ‘What’s it got to do with her?’
‘She’s a might bothered about the human’s death.’ He took a pair of surgical gloves from the box and snapped them on. ‘Understandable, really. She and her naiads are the easiest of London’s fae tae find.’
I frowned, puzzled. ‘What’s us courting or otherwise got to do with the human’s death?’
‘Nary a thing, doll.’ He leaned over me, his peat-whisky scent curling round me and causing my own magic to rise and heat to pool inside me. The diamond-chip cuffs flared, cutting it short. I squirmed slightly in my seat, wondering if he’d done it deliberately. He gave me an innocent look and I knew he had. Damn kelpie. I glared at him, but he just grinned, reminding me of the sharks swimming lazily through his screensavers. Then he punched a couple of keys on one of the keyboards; a monitor to the left switched to a local news programme. ‘But take a wee watch o’ this.’
The news showed a crowd held back by a row of human police in riot gear, some sort of protest. A group of Soulers, their long grey tabards emblazoned with red Crusader crosses, gathered to one side; the rest were mostly women, some with kids in tow, all jumping up and down, shouting and waving handmade placards.
The camera zoomed in on one placard: HANDS OFF OUR MEN, then panned along the rest: GO HOME FAIRY FREAKS. SOUL STEALERS. MAKE BRITAIN A FAERIE FREE ZONE.
Tavish pointed at the screen. ‘Lake Serpentine. The humans started throwing salt, then pouring bleach and petrol intae the water and setting fire tae it, until yon police came along and stopped them. There were a few casualties on both sides, but it’s mostly peaceful now.’
I leaned forward, hugging myself in disbelief. ‘This is insane.’
‘Aye, doll, insane it is. The newspapers sensationalised the human’s murder. It doesnae take much tae inflame a few bigoted people and the rest all follow like sheep,’ he muttered, almost echoing my thoughts of a few days previously. He pointed to another screen; it showed a load of naked men running into some water. ‘This is the other side o’ the coin: while one crowd screams and shouts tae banish us, this lot are up for partaking o’ some faerie sex themselves.’
It was more than insane. I pressed my fingers to my temples—my headache was beating against my skull now—and stared at all the screens. The florist’s boy came out and put out some buckets, stuck his lip out again and peered at himself in the shop window, then turned sharply to look down the empty street. The Soulers and the women waved their placards. Naked men splashed into the water. On another screen was a fire engine in some sort of park.