Nerves fluttered in my stomach as if I’d swallowed a flight of dragonflies.
Now I was here, I wasn’t sure it was such a great idea ...
Trouble was, Tavish and I had history—if you could call half-a-dozen casual dates history—but the possibility for more had always been there. Not that I’d wanted to end the fledgling relationship, but at the time my secrets were still just that— secret—and I’d been keeping my distance from other fae. I tapped my fingers indecisively on the top of the gate. I’d probably suffered more in the way of futile regrets and disappointment over the break-up than Tavish ever had, but dump any male—or female, for that matter—without a good explanation and their ego isn’t going to be happy. Dump a centuries-old kelpie, one of the wylde fae, and it wasn’t just his ego I needed to worry about.
But I had more important things to concern me than my past personal life, and the CCTV footage wasn’t the only reason I’d come to see Tavish.
London has three gates that join it to the Fair Lands, and Tavish is one of the gates’ guardians. If there was another sidhe in London, Tavish should know ... which meant he should know something about Tomas’ murderer. Even as I thought it, a shiver of awareness prickled my skin with goosebumps. He was home, and he knew I was here.
I took a guarded look round, checking no one was watching me too closely, and then clambered quickly over the gate on one side of the column. Magic clung to me as if I’d walked through a heavy mist. I jogged down the steps to the landing platform, then gripped the iron railing with one hand and crouched, peering into the water swirling a few inches below me. I could just see the top of the old archway, which had been bricked up in the late eighteen hundreds, when the Victoria Embankment had been built to hold back the river. Taking a deep breath, I reached down to touch the tail of the carved stone fish statue mounted on the centre of the arch, but before my fingers connected, I felt the hair rise on my body and I hesitated.
I stood up and turned to look back up at the road. Cosette the ghost was standing on the pavement, watching me from the other side of the gate, an odd, considering look on her childish face. Indecision wavered inside me; should I go up to see her? Then common sense took over; we still couldn’t communicate, so the best thing I could do was sort this mess out first. I gave her a nod and a wave, then turned back to face the river.
I reached down again and wrapped my fingers around the fish statue’s tail. The railing stayed hard beneath my other palm, but as the magic pressed solidly against me the traffic noise, the chill autumn wind and the ozone scent of the Thames disappeared. The world shiftedaround me, not as movement that could be felt, but something deeper, as if space itself was being reshaped. The magic took me out of the humans’ world.
And into Between.
Below me, the river was gone, replaced by an abyss so deep and dark my head spun with vertigo. Slowly I straightened, still staring down, unwilling—almost unable—to take my gaze from the chasm. There was something seductive about it; I felt as if I could launch myself into it and find what I sought ...
I forced myself to turn, to put my back to the emptiness. Betweenis the gap that links the humans’ world and the Fair Lands. It’s a dangerous place, the magic that fuels it is fierce and untamed, and persuasive enough that the legends about those who stray from the paths are full of wonder or terror or death.
Or nothing at all.
The sky, deepest blue and curved like a huge bowl overhead, brightened. A hot yellow sun blazed like a furnace and in seconds sweat slicked between my breasts and down my spine. Inside me, the Knock-back Wards I’d absorbed at the bakery flared, the magic lifting its nose like a dog snuffling around this new place. I dug inside the jacket pocket for a couple of liquorice torpedoes and stuffed them in my mouth. As soon as the sugar hit my system, I used the extra boost and willed the Knock-back Wards into quiet sleepiness. Mixing spells with the magic here, even those as basic as the Wards, could be a hit-and-miss affair: sometimes it worked, sometimes it was like putting a match to a touchpaper.
I scanned the area. Before me was a beach of golden sand that stretched further than I could see. On one side was a white cliff with a sand-coloured camouflage tent pitched at its base, shadowed by the overhang: Tavish’s home, or at least its current façade. On the other side of the beach was a glittering, mirror-dark sea, but the water was still and silent, and probably as deep as the abyss.
Tavish was in the water—in his human shape—but still in the water.
Damn, that sowasn’t a good start.
He was sitting at the water’s edge, half-submerged, with his back to me. I could see his long legs stretched out in the shallows, his arms braced behind him on the sand as he raised his face to the sun. The bottle-green dreads that streamed down his back looked like seaweed hung out to dry, the silver-beaded tips glinting in the sunlight. He didn’t acknowledge me. Ignoring the nerves still twisting in my stomach, I shrugged out of the jacket and sighed in relief as a cool breeze teased around me. I almost ditched the jeans too—the T-shirt Joseph had given me was long enough to pass as a baggy dress—but instead I just removed the baseball cap and ran my fingers through my shorter hair. I kicked off the old trainers and walked down the dozen steps to the beach. The sand was pleasantly warm beneath my feet, not as burning-hot as the fiery sun would suggest ... but this was Between. And expecting Betweento follow the rules of the humans’ world was a recipe for disaster.
When I was close enough to see Tavish’s delicate gills flare like black lace fans either side of his neck, but far enough away—from him and the water—that I almost felt safe, I stopped.
‘Hello, Tavish.’
‘Long time nae see, doll.’ He turned to look at me over his shoulder, his face breaking into a welcoming smile, his sharp-pointed teeth white against the darkness of his skin—not black, but the deepest green found where the sunlight just penetrates the depths of the sea. ‘But you took your ain sweet time getting here. I’ve been expecting you this last two days.’
I smiled back, couldn’t help myself as my magic exalted at the sight of him and the nerves inside me settled. I sat where I was, crossing my legs Indian-style, and trailed my fingers through the soft sand. Tavish might be centuries old—he’s cagey about how many—but like most fae he didn’t look like he’d reached thirty yet. He’s the most fae-looking of all those I know, and yet somehow he still easily passes for human without using a Glamour. His long, angular features, Roman-straight nose and almost pointed chin are a less delicate, more male face than my own, but with enough echoes of my own face that anyone can see the sidhe in his make-up. I’d often wondered if he wasn’t a lot older than anyone guessed, maybe even born in the Shining Times, when the sidhe would procreate with any living thing that attracted their attention. Only Tavish doesn’t have our cat-like pupils—or any pupils at all; his eyes are a brilliant silver with a rim of white, like the horse that is his other shape. He wasn’t so much handsome as compelling, alluring ...
I dragged my gaze from him, realising I was staring like a charm-struck human—one that would unwittingly follow the kelpie anywhere, even into the treacherous water—and made an effort to look at the rest of the scenery.
‘The place looks different,’ I said as an opener. ‘More tropical than your last.’
‘Aye, well, I fancied a wee change,’ he said, his accent soft and warm. ‘This time o’ year the Highlands can be a wee bit blowy, for all the heather colours the hills with nature’s own beauty.’
I waved back at the abyss. ‘So what happened with that?’
‘Hmph,’ he snorted, ‘t’was nae in the plan, though you’re in luck, for it had a hankering tae be this side of the steps, got itsel’ all decked out with one of those rope and plank bridges. It took me a heck of a while tae convince the magic tae move it over there.’