‘Okay, but—’
The phone went dead.
I scowled at it, wondering if it was worth calling him back, then shook my head. He knew where I was, and for all his distraction he was an invested in the outcome of the tarot reading as I was. More so, really. So I should probably let him get on with his hacking.
I double-checked the new screenshot of the Emperor’s website against the previous one. Apart from the ‘Forum Mirabilis’ bit, there was nothing new. But the tarot cards said the Emperor’s werewolves were coming for me, and never mind the ‘heads up’ theory I’d given Tavish, I’d be stupid not to prepare for the worst. No way did I want to end up howling at the moon. Only I didn’t know much more about werewolves than Tavish and Katie had told me.
Time for some research.
I grabbed a blood donation bag, hooked myself up and pushed through the Ward on the front door and out onto the landing (where thankfully, the Wards hadn’t managed to nix the electricity). Checking the Buffer spell on my laptop was clear (with all the extra security around, a thief would have a hard time getting into the building, never mind stealing the laptop. Not to mention, computers were even more susceptible than mobiles when it came to getting fried by magic; Buffer spells only give so much protection), I pulled up the online witch archives. The information on werewolves was in the public section.
I clicked on ‘Therianthropic Metamorphosis’ and started reading.
Chapter Nineteen
Therianthropes are ‘Bitten’, ‘Changed by Ritual’, or ‘Born’.
If Bitten, the bite should be done the first day of a new moon for optimum success and can only be performed by an alpha in their beast (half and half) form. The hopeful victim gets their throat ripped out (called, appropriately enough a Death Bite) and it usually takes them until the full moon to recover. If they do. Only one in ten males, and one in a hundred females, survive, apparently. Though a quick side search via Google got me enough happy pictures of New Werewolf Celebrations to think the survival rates must be better than stated.
The only place the bite’s legal is Russia, for obvious reasons; the Russian secret service aren’t nicknamed the Silent Wolves for nothing. Bitten werewolves, both male and female, are infertile (a note said to see ‘Changed by Ritual’ for more on werewolf fertility levels). Werewolves prefer to live in dense forested areas. Aren’t sensitive to silver, as a lot of fiction states, but are allergic to wolfsbane, mistletoe and ergot, particularly when presented in tincture. They generally live a slightly longer than normal human lifespan, have high resistance to most diseases, but are as vulnerable to death or injury as any other in their human or animal forms. In their beast form (half and half) they can only be killed by removal of head or heart.
‘Good to know,’ I murmured, hoping if I did come across the Emperor’s wolves they wouldn’t be in their beast form, and made a note to get Tavish’s werewolf repellent out of the fridge.
I clicked on ‘Changed by Ritual’. It took me to the secure section of the archives; if I wanted to read it I needed a password. Clicking on the ‘Born’ link took me to the same protected page.
Curious, I texted Tavish and Katie on the off chance that one of them might reply, despite the late hour. Unsurprisingly, given Tavish’s earlier abrupt end to our phone call, it was Katie; only her password didn’t work. Instead, I got a security warning. I scowled at it, sent another text to Tavish, then after wasting fifteen minutes on Facebook’s Magikville, during which I managed to lose half my spellcaster points and ended up trading a golden goose for a dud magic frog. I gave up on my werewolf research, sealed my full blood bag and headed for the fridge.
As I reached for the door, my phone rang. The number on the screen was Sanguine Lifestyles; the vamp’s 24/7 ‘do anything’ service.
My heart thudded against my ribs.
‘Ms Taylor,’ a woman’s efficient-sounding voice said, ‘I have a message for you from Mr Malik al-Khan. He would like you to meet him at the Blue Heart, at midnight tomorrow. Can I tell him the time and date will be suitable for you?’
Tavish wanted me to stay away from Malik.
Part of me thought Tavish was right and really, with him on the Emperor’s case, I didn’t need to ‘date’ Malik for any more info. Only as I’d decided before, that wasn’t the only reason I needed to see him . . .
But the fae’s fertility had to be sorted; it had to take priority.
‘Ms Taylor?’ the woman’s voice prompted.
I should say no. I opened my mouth, but instead the words that came out were, ‘Thank you. That time and date will be suitable.’
She rang off and guilt twisted inside me as I opened the fridge. ‘The “date” with Malik isn’t till midnight tomorrow,’ I told the two dead mackerel, sliding the bag of blood in to join the one already there on the shelf below. ‘That gives me plenty of time to see what Tavish might or might not find out, so if need be, I can always call it off. All it would take is a phone call.’ The two mackerel eyed me balefully.
I sighed and reached past the fish to pick up a small black tub: Tavish’s werewolf repellent.
I opened it, took a wary sniff— the stuff ripped up my nose like a six-week-old corpse, and as it hit the back of my throat a coughing fit seized me. A couple of minutes later I managed to slam the lid back on, and swipe the tears from my eyes. Tavish wasn’t kidding when he said it didn’t smell so good. ‘I’d rather wear you two as earrings,’ I muttered, plonking the tub back next to the dead fish and closing the fridge with a shudder.
Crap. Katie was going to hate it, if the smell didn’t kill her first.
And there was no way I could wear it and work. Only I’d be stupid not to.
Damn it. If only I knew for sure she’d seen a werewolf on Primrose Hill. But to do that I’d need to look into Katie’s memory, which was a vamp power I didn’t have. And no way was I going to let any vamp near Katie, not after last time. But maybe Malik could dredge something up from my memory. I had seen that shadow after all—
An idea hit me. There was a way I could interrogate my own memory, and not only about the shadow, but about the peeping tom I’d seen looking in the nasty gnome’s window shortly before.
Sylvia had done a deal with a local witch company for groceries, and the fridge was set up to magically replenish itself as needed. It only allowed individual things through the Ward at any one time (which was how Tavish had sent me the icky werewolf-repellent), so was safe. But the witch company didn’t just deliver groceries; they did spells too. And they worked round the clock.
I texted a request for what I wanted, and got an almost instant, positive reply: ‘In stock and sent.’ Gotta love an efficient company.
I checked the fridge. On the top shelf, next to the black tub with its repellent, was a small box. The box had a cartoon picture of a smiling, sleeping woman with her head on a pillow of clouds. Printed on the box were the words: ‘Morpheus Memory Aid’. It was an off-the-shelf hypnopædia spell beloved by panicked students everywhere. I double-checked the blurb on the back of the box:
Named for Morpheus, the Greek God of Dreams, the Morpheus Memory Aid sleep-teaching spell is a worldwide favourite of students, lecturers, actors, singers, travellers, public speakers and politicians. Retain relevant facts with overnight ease. Learn a new language while you sleep. Mesmerise—
Hm, not quite what I remembered (no pun intended). I opened the box to find a tiny blue glass bottle, a matching blue sleep mask, and the instructions:
Drink before sleep while concentrating on the information you need to recall. The potion’s patented magics will work alongside your dreaming subconscious to completely focus on the required subject matter, then consolidate and commit every detail (including those normally discarded by our conscious self) in the hippocampus – the part of the brain concerned with memory.