She walked over to the silver-faced drinks cabinet and opened it. Lifting what looked like a squat-bellied brandy bottle, she saluted me. ‘I loved Gwen.’
I gave her a puzzled look. ‘Who’s Gwen?’
‘My mistress, the Ancient One, of course.’ She pulled at the cork stopper and it came out with a muted pop. ‘Oh, she wasn’t really the stereotypical skeletal crone; that was just a façade. Gwen was vibrant, beautiful, full of life ...’ She trailed off, frowning at the bottle’s label as if surprised to see it there.
‘So what does this memory have to do with you wanting the Fabergé egg?’ I asked flatly.
‘What?’ She looked back at me, then attempted a smile, but her mouth turned down instead of up. ‘The egg’s her back-up soul storage. Standard operating procedure, in case there’s no available body nearby. It’s valuable enough not to be damaged or thrown away, and at the worst she’d end up sitting in a vault or a display case for a while until I could release her—wasted time, of course, but better than turning up in Hell without your demon debt paid.’ She shuddered at the thought, then tipped the bottle up and drank straight from it. ‘Very unrefined, I know, but...’
I narrowed my eyes, still suspicious. ‘If the egg was that important to her, how did the Earl get it?’
‘My fault,’ she admitted. ‘The Earl decided to make me his pet sorcerer—after all, Gwen had taught me most of her spells by then. But I didn’t have the same protection as she did.’ She held up the back of her hand to me and waggled her finger; her death’s head ring winked its amber eyes at me. ‘It wasn’t until he grew tired of using me that I was able to sort things out in my mind and work out what I’d told him—what he’d made me give him.’ Her shoulders sagged. ‘After a while I managed to retrieve the ring, and then I was able to resist him to a degree, but the 3V infection meant I still had to do his bidding.’
She took another swig, and pointed the bottle at me. ‘I tried to get the egg back, but the bastard blood-sucker wasn’t stupid; he knew why I wanted it and he wasn’t about to allow me to bring Gwen back, not when he’d killed her once. So when he thought I was getting close, he gave it away—to you.’ She let out a snort of disgust. ‘Ironic really; all he wanted was you and your sidhe blood, and she would have served you up to him on a platter if he’d just been patient, but no, he couldn’t wait, and he killed her in a fit of temper.’
It was a good story—and most of it was probably true—but there was something wrong somewhere, and I couldn’t quite work it out. Why did Hannah want to bring her mistress back? As far as I could see she had everything sorted: enough money, the Earl gone, a way to manage her 3V—Darius—without being controlled, so other than her professed love ... One thing was clear, though: if the Earl killed the Ancient One a year ago, that meant Hannah had been caretaking Rosa and my Disguise spell ever since. Which meant she knew where Rosa’s body was.
‘Okay, Hannah, you’ve shown me your sad little scene, so what’s the deal?’
‘I don’t do deals, Genevieve,’ she remonstrated gently. ‘I only do favours.’
‘Uh-huh. What sort of favours?’
‘Of course,’ she said slyly, ‘I could show you which body is lying on that slab now, but somehow I think you’re smart enough to work that one out.’
Shock sparked through me and I closed my eyes for a moment. My bodywas there, in that room, wherever Rosa’s normally was— stupid! I’d never considered that my body might be anywhere else other than with me, even after I’d realised the spell didn’t just disguise me. Mentally I snorted. At least that explained why I couldn’t use magic, or why no one other than Hannah had ever recognised me as a sidhe when I was ‘Rosa’, not even Malik.
Hannah came over to me with a reassuring smile. ‘Oh don’t worry, there’s no harm can come to you, not now the Earl is gone.’ Her fingers tightened round the neck of the bottle. ‘He really was disgustingly perverted at times—another reason you should be grateful to me.’
Nausea roiled in my stomach as her words brought images slithering around the edges of my mind. I shoved them away; no way did I want to think about the Earl or what he might have done when my body was lying helpless ...
‘Gratitude isn’t what comes to mind when you’re holding my body hostage,’ I snapped.
‘Ah but I’m not—that would go against my ethos of not doing anything that would benefit me directly. It really isn’t a good idea to use the power for yourself when a demon has a lien on your soul; they’ve got this weird profit and loss sin-sheet thing going, so being in the black is just asking for trouble. So I can assure you that you are quite safe, and your own body will revert to you at dawn when the spell shuts down, just as it usually does.’ She tilted her head back as she drank, the pulse in her throat flashing like a distracting beacon, then carried on, ‘But Elizabetta really does want Rosa to take up her offer, and as I’ve offered to help her, I’ve something that might persuade you.’ She puckered her lips and blew me a kiss. The air filled with a spray of fine liquid that expanded outwards into fat black globules like in a slow-motion movie. They splattered against my face with the force of boiling tar and I screamed as my skin bubbled and blistered from the heat. More boiling fluid ran into my eyes, searing my retinas, and flooded into my mouth, scalding my tongue. The sulphurous taste of rotten eggs burnt the back of my throat and the fires of hell scorched down my gullet and bubbled like molten lava in my belly.
For a moment I was too shocked to think, then my mind lurched in horror as I realised what she’d done.
She’d impregnated me with demon acid.
Within seconds I could feel the embryo imps crawling inside me, biting, scratching, digging their miniscule claws and teeth and barbed tails into my organs, muscles, bones, brain ... tiny jagged pains flashed through me like hundreds of needles. Imps consumed their surrogate—and each other—in their vicious efforts to be birthed, a true ‘survival of the fittest’ competition. At least we weren’t talking Rosemary’s Baby here, no nine months of slowly stretching belly to lug around until the anti-Christ is born; just forty-eight hours until a newly formed imp entered the world if I—or rather, Rosa—was lucky.
I stared at her, still too horrified to speak.
‘Now don’t look at me like that, Genevieve,’ she tutted. ‘I know you’ve probably heard loads of horror stories, but the imps really are under your control, you know.’ She touched her index finger to my forehead and muttered in the guttural language; the imps quieted. ‘So long as you do as instructed they should stay reasonably quiescent, then Rosa’s body shouldn’t sustain too much damage—and remember, it does heal extremely quickly. Then tomorrow, when you’re back to your own self, I’d be happy to do you the favour of removing the imps from Rosa.’ She shrugged. ‘Or not, your choice—you could always leave them to follow their natural inclination, in which case both you and Rosa will be free of the magic that joins you. After all, if there’s no bodyleft, there can be no spell. That is what you want, isn’t it?’ She looked at me quizzically. ‘Although, reassuringly, I’ve always thought you too sentimental to take the callous way out of your problems.’
I licked my dry lips, almost heaving at the taste of sulphur that clung to them. ‘I take it the egg is in exchange for the imps’ removal,’ I said, glad my voice came out steady.
‘No, of course not; I’d be happy to do it as a favour for you.’ She rested her hands on my shoulders. I tried to shrug her off, not wanting her to touch me, then muffled my panic as my body refused to obey. ‘But my only worry is that without the egg,’ she carried on, smiling sadly, ‘and without the possibility of being able to release Gwen’s soul before tomorrow night, I might be too upset to work the necessary magics.’
Tomorrow night. All Hallow’s Eve.
Debt-collecting night for demons.
And that was what was wrong with her story. She didn’t want to release the Ancient’s One’s soul; she wanted to use it as payment.