The Bitter Seed of Magic (A Spellcrackers Novel) (12 page)

I frowned. I should’ve done . . . only for some reason, I’d never thought about it. But then, curiosity about Helen’s son, along with a lot of other things I should’ve been finding out about, had been pushed out of my mind by the Valium effects of the Sleeping Beauty spell Tavish had sicced on me.

‘You’re right. I should’ve asked, and I’m sorry I didn’t.’ I gave him a rueful smile, and considered whether I should say I was sorry about Helen having a bad time, but I couldn’t; it would be a lie. But I felt I should make an effort . . . ‘Well, at least that explains why she’s such a—’ I stopped myself from saying bitch, and substituted a more politic, ‘Why she’s such an unhappy person all the time. And why she blings herself up like a Christmas tree with all those spells; she must have lost a lot of her magic when she gave birth to a wizard.’

‘She didn’t,’ Finn said, his expression verging on impatient. ‘She got to keep it when she gave him up.’

I gaped at him. ‘Really? I didn’t know that was possible.’

‘Apparently it is.’ He held up his hands, signalling an end to the subject. ‘Look, I’ll talk to Helen again, but she’s only one problem. There’s the rest of the fae to worry about, and after what happened yesterday with the dryad, it’s going to be more difficult keeping you safe.’

I sighed. Looked like flirty Finn had disappeared overnight while I’d been in gaol, leaving serious Finn, with all his white knight tendencies, back in charge.

‘Finn, I thought we’d got past this,’ I said, keeping my voice neutral. ‘I can look after myself, I’m not helpless.’

‘’Course not, but—’ Finn grasped my hands, and green and gold magic sparked between us. He shot a surprised look at it, then appeared to accept it.

I gritted my teeth, chanting
Helen, Helen, Helen
in my head, trying to ignore the thought that kissing him would be so much better than talking.

‘Look, Gen, I’m sorry I went on about Helen. I know it looks like I’m thinking more of her than you, but—Hell’s thorns, there’s things we should talk about, and I know you can look after yourself, but it’s not going to be easy dealing with the dryads, or the others. I can help. Why don’t we go somewhere quiet, and talk?’

Just as I was about to say an eager, unthinking yes, a loud cough brought my attention back to Victoria Harrier, who was standing next to the limo, not trying to hide either the interested expression on her face, or the fact that she was waiting.

Oops! I’d forgotten about her. Damn magic.

Finn’s talk was going to have to wait until later. Much later, like when I’d got hold of something to stop me throwing myself at him. Silently chanting
Helen, Helen
, I did a quick mental calculation. ‘Talking sounds good, but let’s say my place around nine-ish?’ I nodded towards Victoria Harrier. ‘I think she has to tell me the dos and don’ts to keep me on the straight and narrow.’

He cast a look at the lawyer, then gave a soft laugh. ‘Yeah, like you’ll take any notice of her.’ His thumbs skimmed over my knuckles and another cascade of magic sparked between us, only to fall flat on Helen’s name. ‘I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I follow you, and we can chat once she’s gone?’

I shook my head, still chanting desperately, ‘Nah, leave it till later. I want a shower’ –
boy, did I want a really long, really cold shower
– ‘and there’s other stuff I need to get out of the way first.’

‘Hey, tomorrow’s Saturday. It’s usually quiet, take the day off.’ His grin told me he was trying to make amends. ‘I’ll swing it with your boss, he’s really a nice guy.’

‘He is.’ I forced out a smile. I was getting heartily sick of chanting Helen’s name in my head. ‘But I can’t put this appointment off’ – I pulled my hands from his, the lure of his magic lessened and I sighed, relieved – ‘so nine, okay?’

‘Appointment?’ His grin faded. ‘Can’t you postpone it?’

‘Not really.’

‘C’mon, Gen?’

‘I have to do this today. I’m sorry, Finn.’ I gestured at Victoria Harrier standing patiently next to the idling limo. ‘And I have to go, the meter’s running, and she’s probably more expensive than a taxicab.’

‘Have to . . . ?’ Comprehension dawned on his face. ‘It’s the sucker, isn’t it?’ He clenched his fists in angry disgust. ‘’Course it is. And now you’re going to see him because he’s the one paying for the fancy lawyer and the fancy car—’

‘Hang on a minute!
I’m
the one paying for this!’

‘Not up front, you’re not, Gen.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘And to get someone like her to drop everything, you’d need to be.’

He was right, even if I was planning on footing the bill in the end (however long it took; a thought that had me wincing) – not that I was going to stand there and argue about it with him. Irate, I pushed past him. ‘Look, I’ll see you later.’

He caught my wrist and pulled me back. ‘Gen, it doesn’t matter what he’s told you. All suckers are dangerous.’

I jerked easily from his hold. Turns out anger works as well as chanting Helen’s name. ‘Right now, Finn, the suckers are the least of my worries. There’s no vamp in London who’d even say hello to me – or to any other fae or faeling – without Malik’s permission.’

‘Hell’s thorns, Gen!’ Consternation clouded his face. ‘There’s no way any vamp can guarantee that sort of blanket protection—’

‘He’s running London, so yes, he can. That’s the way vamps work. They either toe the line or their ashes feed the fishes. You know that.’

‘Feeding . . . Gods, I should’ve realised—
That’s
why you started to fade this morning – he’s been taking too much blood. Gen, I can’t let you do this; it has to stop—’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Finn,’ I stated, keeping my voice level. Of course I wasn’t feeding Malik – hell, I hadn’t even
seen
him until last night. But maybe I had been overdoing it on the donations. It was something to think about later, but—‘And even if you did, it’s still none of your business.’

‘I’m your boss, Gen, so it
is
my business if you can’t do your job because you’re too weak.’

Damn.
‘It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?’ I tried to ignore the hurt, furious that I hadn’t even seen it coming this time, and dug out my
Spellcrackers.com
ID card, grabbed his hand and slapped it on his palm. ‘I resign,’ I said. ‘As of now.’

He looked down in shock for a moment, then he held the ID card back out to me. ‘I’m sorry, Gen. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘No, you shouldn’t.’ I glared at the ID card. I loved my job.

‘I’m worried about you, that’s all,’ he said, sounding defensive. He grabbed my hand, put the card in my shaking palm. ‘Look, take it back.’

I hesitated, wanting to curl my fingers round the thin bit of plastic . . . but I didn’t want my job held to ransom every time I did something he didn’t like.

‘Don’t do this, Gen,’ Finn pleaded, ‘not over some sucker. He doesn’t care about you; all he’s doing is using you.’

No
, he
isn’t
– it was them – London’s fae, Clíona, the goddess – they were the ones using me, or wanting to anyway, with the damned fertility curse egging them on. But Finn was one of the good guys. My fingers started to curl—

—and something sharp tugged inside me, made me almost scream with pleasure – magic.

I shot a look at Finn, caught a spark of emerald in the deep moss-green of his eyes, and realised he’d done it deliberately. Anger flashed white-hot: I’d had enough of everyone trying to force me to do what they wanted.

I dropped the card, then turned and walked towards the limo, ducked my head and climbed inside.

Victoria Harrier got in after me. ‘Are you ready to go?’ she asked calmly.

I nodded. The door clicked shut, cutting out Finn’s calls to come back. Within seconds the limo was moving, and we were enveloped in quiet, air-conditioned luxury. Outside the tinted windows, London seemed far away. Tears pricked the back of my eyes and I swallowed down the ache in my throat. Time enough for a pity party later.

After the killer was found and the curse was
cracked
.

‘W
as that a good idea, resigning like that, Ms Taylor?’ Victoria Harrier asked a few moments later, breaking the silence.

I stopped staring blindly out of the window and finally noticed the inside of the limo. Victoria Harrier sat kitty-corner across from me on the back seat. The usual limo bar area had been replaced with a James Bond-style mobile office: a couple of high-end laptops, a ‘does-everything’ printer, three telephones on cradles and various other gadgets sat next to neat piles of stationery and files. I
looked
: Buffer spells protected every electrical item. More spell-crystals were stuck to the doors and the opaque smoked-glass screen that partitioned off the driver: no doubt for privacy. It was all just as fancy – and expensive – as Finn suspected.

‘If you’re worried about your fee, I’m good for it’ – sooner or later – ‘but since you’re Malik al-Khan’s lawyer, he’s probably already guaranteed it.’ I recalled my earlier suspicions. ‘Although I am curious about why a witch is working for a vampire – I thought the Witches’ Council’s ancient tenets forbade it?’

‘I’m
your
lawyer, Ms Taylor.’ She pressed a button and a table slid out in front of her. She reached for one of the laptops and powered it up. ‘I’ve never worked for Mr al-Khan. I haven’t met him, or spoken to him, and I hope I never do. I detest vampires and everything about them.’

I looked at her, amazed. ‘Then why did Sanguine Lifestyles hire you?’

‘You have my services because I’m one of the best criminal defence lawyers in Britain,’ she said briskly. ‘I have excellent contacts within the justice establishment, and I have quite some influence within the Witches’ Council, something I was able to use to your advantage when it came to dealing with DI Crane.’

‘Yeah, I get that,’ I said, ‘and I never expected you’d be anything less. But then, I thought Malik was paying your bill.’

‘Sanguine Lifestyles approached one of my colleagues,’ she said, her fingers tapping the keys. ‘My colleague is a first-rate lawyer, and he does a tremendous amount of very lucrative work for the vampires. He mentioned the job, and I convinced him to pass it on to me. My reputation is as good – maybe even better – than my colleague’s, and once I’d explained the circumstances to him, he was happy to agree.’

‘What circumstances?’ I asked flatly, wondering whether I should be worried that my lawyer had shanghaied me when she clearly realised I didn’t detest vampires quite as much as she did.

She turned the laptop around. The screen showed a smiling family portrait: an attractive man – the father, presumably – in his mid-forties, delicate-looking blonde wife probably in her late twenties or early thirties (going by her kids), although she looked younger. Three boys, I guessed around ten, nine, and eight, all with their dad’s brown hair and serious smile, a pale, waif-like girl of about seven with curling blonde hair like her mother’s, another child, maybe three years old, with a wild crown of brown curls, and a very obvious bump under Mum’s clingy dress. Five and a half kids seemed like half a dozen too many to me, but then, I didn’t even want
one
, so who was I to know?

‘My son Oliver, his wife Ana and their children: Charles, Edward, Andrea, James and little Henry,’ she said fondly. Oliver bore such a distinct resemblance to her that her words were more confirmation than anything else. It also confirmed that as the son of a witch, Oliver was a wizard.

‘Nice-looking family,’ I said, waiting with apprehension for the tale that obviously went with the picture.

‘My daughter-in-law, Ana, is a faeling,’ she said. ‘Her mother was a water fae.’

Damn. The wife was a faeling, which meant the kids were too, and all of them susceptible to the curse. I studied the picture again: there didn’t appear to be a pair of gills, a flipper or a fishy eye in sight, so she and the kids seemed to have inherited more human genes than fae. My dread went up another notch as I wondered which one had fallen victim to the vamps.

‘When Ana was fourteen,’ Victoria Harrier carried on, touching the screen with a gentle fingertip, ‘her mother disappeared, on the way home from work one night. She was found in the Thames three weeks later.’

‘Vampires,’ I said redundantly.

‘Yes. I looked up the police report later. It was horrific reading. There were at least six of them; they drained her dry, then tossed her away like an empty drink can.’ She looked down, clasping her hands together as she composed herself for a minute, then carried on, ‘Ana understandably went a little wild after that, substituting anger for her grief, except—’ She stopped, and drew in a calming breath. She smoothed her skirt down over her knees, then resumed talking. ‘You know about the curse, Ms Taylor, so you can imagine how well a fourteen-year-old’s attempt at fighting back turned out.’

Actually, I could, and I was amazed Ana had not only survived, but had ended up with a husband and a large brood of kids. I’d have bet on her living a short, painful life as some vamp’s blood-slave. Maybe she’d been lucky.

‘Oliver – my son – found Ana in one of those blood-brothels in Sucker Town.’ Her lip curled, although I don’t think she realised it. ‘Blood-houses, I think they call them. She was sixteen. She’d been there more than two years by then. Oliver’s very quixotic in nature. He set out to save this beautiful, sweet, damaged girl; he got her out of Sucker Town, into rehab at the HOPE clinic, and then of course he fell head over heels in love with her. A year later they were married.’ She smiled proudly at the laptop screen. ‘That was taken not long ago to mark their ninth wedding anniversary.’

‘The vamps at the blood-house just let her go?’ I exclaimed in astonishment.

‘Of course,’ she said, closing the laptop with a smug snap. ‘Oliver was working with the law firm responsible for updating the licensing laws for vampire premises. He didn’t give the owners of the blood-house any choice in the matter.’