Slowly, I sat up and hugged my knees, and listened for an answer. But none came. The silence stretched, thinning out until the soft slap of the water and the background hum of the magic disappeared and there was nothing but the waiting thud of my pulse. And I finally admitted to myself that ‘not seeing him again’ wasn’t what I wanted. But as for the rest, right now the only thing I was offering him was ...
‘Thank you,’ I murmured, knowing he would hear me.
‘Although, next time you decide to kill me,’ I added, a touch more caustically, ‘perhaps you could try a less violent option.’
‘ I do not intend there to be a next time, Genevieve.’ His words slipped with sorrow and regret into my mind.
I lay back and returned to contemplating the fading stars above me. The net of calming green magic crept up and when I didn’t rebuff it, gently tucked itself around me like a soft, warm blanket.
‘Aye, but killing the host body ’twas a chancy thing tae do, vampire.’ Tavish’s burr sounded disapproving. ‘Especially as Genevieve’s soul took its own sweet time coming back.’
I sighed; at least I’d survived. But had Rosa’s body? She was a vamp, so it was likely, but ... I sent a prayer to whatever god was listening that it/she had, and reminded myself that she was on my problems-to-deal-with list. Still, Malik’s drastic sword-option had solved the Rosa’s body being consumed by impspart of the whole ‘Rosa’ problem.
‘Even if the body Genevieve occupied had survived the imps’ physical onslaught,’ Malik said, tension in his voice, ‘it was always possible her mind would have been destroyed. Genevieve was already influenced by Rosa’s persona, and Rosa’s mind was unstable long before the sorcerer’s manipulations.’
Gotta give Hannah her due, her favourswere to die for.
And thinking of favours, I realised I knew how to solve the Rosa problem. All I had to do was give Malik the info he’d been following me for. I quietly said, ‘Hannah Ashby knows where Rosa’s body is. She’s the one who’s been controlling the spell since the Ancient One died.’
‘ Thank you, Genevieve,’ Malik’s voice came again in my mind. ‘ I will arrange to deal with both the sorcerer and Rosa.’
Great, two solutions for the price of one. I crossed them off my list and added the Fabergé egg—with a mental footnote that flagged Neil Banner’s dubious interest—though quite what I could do about the Ancient One’s soul the egg contained, I wasn’t yet sure.
‘I’ve told you, our bean sidhe’snae weakling.’ Tavish’s voice held equal measures of pride and concern. ‘You hae only tae look at what she did when the bastard Earl had a go at her and the satyr last month.’
I frowned: the vampire and the kelpie were chatting together like old friends, or at least old acquaintances. It made for a curious, surprising situation. And they were discussing me as if they’d done it all before, and more than once at that.
Their voices faded as I chased the thoughts darting back and forth in my mind like the shoals of tiny fish. Tomas’ murder and finding the sidhe responsible slipped through my mental fingers, and the one I caught was Hannah’s big-screen memory of the Earl talking to the Ancient One just before he killed her.
The prohibition was to end on her twenty-third birthday, but with the witches involved, now she will still be out of my reach.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the words at the time, but some sort of ‘prohibition’ explained why London’s vamps hadn’tpursued a vulnerable teenage sidhe when the opportunity presented herself on their doorstep. And whilst I’d spent the last ten years being übercareful, all it would have taken was a couple of weeks’ captivity and the venom cravings would’ve been so bad I’d have been begging the nearest vamp to sink his or her fangs in me ...
Then of course, I’d got the job at Spellcrackers.com just over a year ago, a few days before my twenty-third birthday. I’d been as happy as a blinged-up goblin; not only did the job involve magic, but because it was a witch company, the job came with the witches’ protection. No wonder the Earl had been angry. The prohibition might have ended, but I was still out of his reach.
And there weren’t many vamps powerful enough to force the Earl—and the rest of London’s blood-families—into a prohibition in the first place, so it wasn’t such a leap that Malik was involved—but why would Malik do such a deal? Especially when he’d told me himself he’d coveted my blood since I was four years old? Why hadn’t he just come after me and snatched me up? I was infected and he’d obviously known where I was all this time.
I opened my mouth to ask him—then my thoughts snagged on the sidhe queen’s droch guidheand the fae’s needof a baby-making machine, and I got my answer. London’s fae—presumably through Tavish—had somehow stopped him. But if they had, the surprise of it was that the dryads or some other fae hadn’t decided to kidnap and impregnate me before now.
A fourteen-year-old sidhe is much easier to control than a twenty-four-year-old.
But Tavish was one of only four fae I’d spoken to in all the time I’d been in London, and I’d been so concerned about keeping my part-vamp parentage a secret that it had never really struck me as odd. Now, as I thought about it, it was nearly as odd as spending ten years relatively unmolested by vampires.
Until you added in a flipside to the prohibition.
With the sidhe queen’s curse hanging over their heads, what, or who, could make London’s fae agree to stay away from me?
Had to be the queen, of course, since she was ultimately the one calling the shots.
Suspicion crept on black-tipped claws into my mind. And who was her ambassador? Grianne, my not-so-friendly faerie dogmother—
I looked up at the dawn-streaked sky.
—who I was due to meet as the sun was cresting.
Early birds catching worms, or in this case answers to prohibitions, curses and murders,came to mind.
I sat up and looked round the room, hoping to find some clothes ...
Only I wasn’t the only one looking around.
My pulse jumped and I stilled.
Someone was watching me from the dive-hole in the glass floor. He—my eyes flicked downwards, yes definitely a he—had his top half in the room, pale-grey scaly forearms flat on the floor, webbed, clawed hands clasped together, while his blue-grey legs and long, whip-like tail floated in the water below. His wide lipless mouth yawned in a grin, showcasing rows of tiny, sharp green teeth, and the opaque membrane covering his eyes slipped up, leaving gleaming black orbs reflecting back the room’s soft green light.
I lifted the tattered sheet and tucked it under my arms, blinking at him in amazement. What the hell was a naiad doing in Tavish’s bedroom? And even as I asked myself, the answer popped up, pretty much as quickly as the naiad had: the sidhe queen’s stupid curse. I did a quick check through the glass floor of the room to see if there were any more of the naiad’s pals lurking outside in the water, but he seemed to be on his own.
He nodded at me, the thick fluted fins on either side of his head flaring outwards, then he put his webbed claws flat on the floor and started to push himself up and out of the dive-hole.
I shot out my hand and said firmly, ‘Hold it right there, fishface. No way do you get to come in unannounced and uninvited.’
The naiad’s elbows locked and he stopped. ‘Fishface, luv?’ His lipless mouth appeared to have no problem forming the words. ‘What sort of half-assed greeting is that?’
‘The only sort you’re going to get when you pop up naked and unwanted in my bedroom,’ I snapped.
‘Your bedroom?’ His spiny headcrest lifted up in what looked like surprise. ‘This is the kelpie’s bedroom.’