‘Right,’ I said, after we shared a quiet moment, ‘did anyone else think the ambassador’s henchies were a bit off? Sort of predatory?’
‘I asked around, but seems like you were the only one, Genny.’ She grabbed a pink-iced doughnut topped with a cherry. ‘Could be you just freaked them out.’
The only people I usually freaked out were those who didn’t have a nearby fae community; usually some place, like the Midlands, where too much heavy industry made it uncomfortable living for most fae.
‘The ambassador didn’t seem freaked by me,’ I said.
She picked the cherry off and popped it in her mouth. ‘True. But unfortunately it doesn’t give us any sort of clue to go on. What we need is for him to come to his senses and give up whatever information he or his security staff are holding back. My instinct says it’s the clue to why the victims were snatched.’
‘Think there’s anything I can do? See if I can get him to chat to me off the record?’
She ate her doughnut, munching thoughtfully. ‘It could work, but only if the DI thinks it’s a good idea. I’ll run it by him. If he says yes, maybe you could go and see the ambassador once we’re finished here. Any idea when you’ll be done?’
I headed back out into the hallway and contemplated the long, high stack of leaflet boxes. Each box glowed faintly pink in my sight. Mentally I did the calculations. ‘Individually, it’ll probably take another seven or eight hours. Or I can call them in groups, which will be an hour, two tops.’ I gave her a questioning look.
Mary shook her head. ‘Sorry, Genny, much as I’d love to say go for it, this one needs to be done individually.’
‘Okay,’ I said, resolving it would be done in the eight hours or less. I was going to make sure of it. That timescale would see us out of here at around ten. Plenty of opportunity after that for an ‘unofficial’ visit to the ambassador, if Hugh authorised it, to see if there was any way I could help the kidnap victims. And still leave me enough time to rush home and get ready for my ‘date’ with Malik.
‘I’d better get on with it, then.’ I gave Mary a determined smile, grabbed an empty crystal and smacked my hand on the nearest box.
‘Great. I’ll go and check on the rest of the girls,’ she said, then strode off down the hall.
Seven and a half hours later, I sighed in relief as I picked up the tape-cutter knife and opened the last box.
Something white zoomed out to hover in front of my face.
A tarot card.
I snatched up the tape-cutter and ran my finger along its serrated edge. Blood welled, scenting the air with copper and honey, and I pressed the bloodied tip to the blank card. The little mouth latched on, sucking up like a starved vamp. Like before, it tickled, but didn’t hurt. Unlike before, I stayed silent until the mouth stopped feeding.
The image appeared on the card. A tall, thin minaret tower, with a covered lookout encircling its top, watching over a building with a shining gold-domed roof. At the building’s base, tiny figures were running around in panic as they tried to keep from being barbecued by the flames and lightning shooting down from the night sky.
The sixteenth card: the Tower. Symbolising change, crisis, and chaos. Unsurprisingly, as the building depicted was the minaret at London’s Central Mosque, the one near Regent’s Park, where the Bangladeshi ambassador was praying for the safe return of his wife and child. Not that I needed the card to tell me the ambassador was in trouble. But the card did tell me that he and the kidnap victims’ all had something to do with finding the fae’s lost fertility.
Now that was surprising, shocking even. But before I had chance to process the idea, the little mouth stopped feeding.
Heart thudding with anticipation, I repeated my original question. ‘Tell me how to find that which is lost, and how to join that which is sundered, to release the fae’s fertility from the pendant and restore it back to them as it was before it was taken.’
One of the tiny figures jumped out of the card to land on the stack of leaflet boxes. It was the ambassador in his crumpled business suit and orange and black striped tie.
‘He knows! He will tell you! For a price! The beasts are coming! They come for you!’
Right. Nothing new there. Maybe time for another open question. ‘What does the Emperor want with me?’
‘He seeks Janan!’
Hmm, a nice specific answer, just not an overly informative one. Still, a name was good. ‘Who is Janan? Where do I find Janan?’
‘Janan is Beloved of Malak al-Maut! Janan will come to you!’
Janan will come to me? ‘Who is Malak al-Maut? When will Janan come to me? Why does the Emperor seek Janan?’
‘Malak al-Maut is to be revered. Janan will come when the time is nigh! The Emperor seeks to use Janan!’
Revered? Time is nigh? Sounded way too End Of The World for my liking, especially with all the fire and lighting shooting through the sky. ‘How does the Emperor intend to use Janan?’
A jagged fork of lightning struck the minaret, setting the mosque on fire and illuminating a huge (compared to the rest of the card’s tiny figures) wolf standing in the shadows. The wolf stalked to the edge of the card, the whites of its human eyes stark in its grey-brown furred face, and growled, the sound raising the hair on my nape. The ambassador turned and fled back into the card, rushing straight into the heart of the small inferno. The wolf – werewolf – chased him.
And the card flared into bright flames then exploded into ashes that dissipated into the ether.
Fifty minutes later, my taxi rumbled to a halt at the entrance to London’s Central Mosque.
I peered out of the window and was relieved to see that the mosque wasn’t on fire and that the golden dome was shining serenely against a backdrop of twilit grey sky, unmarred by shooting flames or jagged forks of lightning. Not that I’d really expected any of that, but it had crossed my mind that the ambassador and the mosque might be under a physical attack rather than a metaphorical one.
Of course, that could all change now I was here.
The word from Hugh, via Mary, when I’d asked if I could talk to the ambassador, had been that the diplomatic situation was too delicate without it being fully authorised by someone much higher up the food chain, and then they’d want to know why. Which meant filling them in on the tarot cards and the fae’s trapped fertility. Something I was pretty sure the fae would object to. I got the unspoken message. If I wanted to find out what the ambassador and his missing wife and child had to do with the fae’s problems, I was ostensibly on my own. Plausible deniability meant that if my visit ended with the shit hitting the fan, the only one it would stick to was me.
So I’d skipped out of the Harley Street crime scene and grabbed the taxi here, giving Mary the excuse (that she could repeat, if need be) I had to rush for a date.
It wasn’t a lie. I did have a date – at midnight, with Malik.
And I did have to rush. I checked the time – ten forty: I had an hour and twenty minutes. It should be enough time to have an ambassadorial chat, head home, get ready and then walk to the Blue Heart vamp club in Leicester Square. Only knowing my luck and London’s traffic, it probably wasn’t.
I offered the driver an extra tenner on top to let me use his phone. After a brief haggle, he agreed one handsfree call for twenty quid; not that he wasn’t trusting, or was trying to rip me off, of course. Oh no, he was just worried my magic touch would nix his phone.