The Bitter Seed of Magic (A Spellcrackers Novel) (14 page)

As I started to retreat, Victoria whimpered in distress and I stopped, fearing that despite being so careful, I’d overloaded her with Glamour. I started to pull back again, slower this time, feathering the magic and letting it trail gently from her mind. She moaned, a low sound of pleasure that echoed inside me, and her pupils expanded into bright orbs of gold. Fascinated, I leaned towards her and placed my lips on hers, tasting the adoration in her exhaled breath, drawing in the sweetness of that devotion, pulling the energy of her adulation into my own body and feeling it hit with a hot jolt of electric bliss that was both more than and less than sexual. I gasped against her mouth, trembling with the urge to pour my magic into her, to fill her until her mind worshipped only me, until her heart beat only for me, to take her and make her mine, and mine alone—

I stilled, my mouth on hers, my hands cupping her face, savouring the delicious sensations as I teetered on the edge of temptation. Some part of me knew this was wrong, very, very wrong, but there was another, deeper part of me that said this was what I needed . . . I pressed my lips against hers again, sighed, and drew my hands and my magic reluctantly away as I followed the smooth path made by the vampire.

She moaned again, and this time I settled back in my own seat, my eyes fixed on the tinted windows and the world outside, giving her the semblance of privacy as her body surrendered to the commands entrenched in her mind, the ones my own magical invasion had triggered and curiously enhanced.

I caught a glimpse of Nelson’s Column in the distance. We were still trundling luxuriously along in the traffic, the driver obliviously going round and round in circles until he was given the signal to take me home.

‘So, Ms Taylor, what do you say now you’ve had time to think about my suggestion?’ Victoria Harrier asked.

I turned to find her sitting straight-backed, a slight flush to her cheeks, as calmly as if nothing untoward had happened. Of course, in her mind it hadn’t.

‘You know,’ I said slowly, ‘I think you might have a point about my 3V infection. I truly hadn’t thought about it in those terms before. Maybe I should speak to your daughter-in-law.’

She gave a pleased smile. ‘We can visit Ana now if you like.’ She gestured out the limo’s window. ‘She lives in Trafalgar Square with her grandfather, the fossegrim.’

Ana’s grandfather was the fossegrim? Shit – the old water fae was supposed to be totally and utterly insane. I’d been warned to stay away from him when I’d taken my first pixie eviction job for Spellcrackers. He’d come over from Norway with the very first Christmas tree after the Second World War: he’d been in love with the tree’s dryad and she’d died fighting in the Resistance. He’d been half-mad with grief, until he met a new lady love – but then he’d lost her too, to the curse. He’d gone on a killing spree in revenge, then holed up in the square’s fountains, where he’d been ever since. Ousting a blood-sucking fanged cuckoo out of their family nest was one thing, but no way did I want to run into the fossegrim, not without some sort of magical protection.

I gave Victoria Harrier a wary smile. ‘Okay,’ I agreed, backpeddling fast, ‘but I think we’d better leave the socialising until after we’ve seen the ravens.’ And after I’ve had chance to check things out and come up with . . . some sort of plan.

‘Perfect,’ Victoria Harrier said, with a satisfied expression. ‘I’ll arrange it for tomorrow. Now how about we get you home, Ms Taylor.’

‘H
ang on,’ I muttered as my phone vibrated. I bumped the door to my flat closed with my hip, careful not to spill the cup of blood I’d just picked up from the Rosy Lea Café. With an annoyed sigh, I reactivated the protection Ward by banging my forehead against the painted wood; the Ward shimmered into life, a faint purple tinge on the white door. I dropped the ten-kilogram bag of salt – also from the Rosy Lea – next to the bucket beside the door and flexed my fingers, working out the cramps from carrying the salt up five flights of stairs. Life would be so much easier if I didn’t live in a converted Edwardian attic.

‘And life would be much easier if I didn’t have jealous witches, scheming fae, Machiavellian vamps, and The Mother of all goddesses to deal with on top of the fertility curse,’ I told the door, giving it a frustrated kick. I took a calming breath and muttered, ‘Stick to dealing with one problem at a time,’ and pulled my phone out.

I had a text from Finn:

Short and not so sweet. I stared at the text, puzzled. It wasn’t like Finn and his inner white knight to leave me to my own devices, particularly when he knew my plans involved the vamps. Irrational disappointment flashed in me that he wasn’t beating my door down, as I’d half-expected him to be, along with morbid curiosity about what he
was
doing . . . and whether it had something to do with Helen.

Damn. I snapped my phone shut, put the cup down, hung my jacket up, tucked the police file Victoria Harrier had given me next to the bucket of salt, and mentally shelved Finn and the rest of the day’s dilemmas until later. I glanced at the clock: a little over four hours until sunset, so time enough for that long shower, a bite to eat and a bit of research before I headed off to Sucker Town and the vamp side of my problems.

But first things first. I might be home, but that didn’t mean I was safe.

I grabbed my drink and a handful of the salt already in the bucket and turned to look – and
look
– at my living room-cum-kitchen.

And at the books.

They were piled in knee-high stacks on my living room floor like a miniature village of tottering skyscrapers made of . . . well, stacks of books. Not being able to afford any furniture other than floor cushions was a definite advantage when it came to accommodating the fae’s curse-
cracking
research library, or at least the latest batch from the thousands of tomes they’d collected over the last sixty-odd years. The books had been arriving and disappearing on rotation ever since Tavish had told me about them and I’d insisted on checking them out for myself. Except
I
hadn’t been the one insisting, had I? It was him, or rather him and Malik, the other half of that annoying, over-protective little double act. Between the Sleeping Beauty spell and Malik’s mind-mojo, I was surprised they’d stopped at imposing the curse-
cracking
reading on me, and hadn’t just wrapped me up in the proverbial cotton wool and kept me under magical house arrest.

It hit me that I didn’t need the books any more: the Librarian could have them all back.

I gave a loud whoop and, grinning happily, started to weave my way through the books to the kitchen, glancing through the open bedroom door as I did so. Spring sunshine was cutting bright rectangles on the wooden floor, which was thankfully clear; at least the books hadn’t migrated in there again. A lot of them were disturbing, eye-opening and literally nausea-inducing, so definitely not required bedtime reading. In the current piles were everything from an eleventh-century grimoire bound in sorcerer’s skin (a major
eew!
to read, even wearing three pairs of salted surgical gloves); a papal leaflet titled
Inquisitional Techniques and Demonic Exorcisms
, printed in 1573; a first edition of
Frankenstein
– author anonymous, of course; a pile of Walt Disney picture books;
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
in five different languages; half a dozen new paperback releases with nothing in common other than ‘Curse’ in the title; and—

A virulent green cover on one of the many unread piles caught my eye:
The Esoteric Practice of Malediction Prophecies
by Michael Nix. I reached out to pick it up—Then snatched my hand away as a flash of magic revealed that the snot seeping out from its spine was real.

‘Sneaky,’ I muttered. After the first ‘WTF?’ spell I’d unwittingly triggered – the one that transported me straight to Finn; luckily he’d been working the late shift at Spellcrackers, but even so, naked is
so
not the way to appear anywhere unannounced – I’d taken precautions. I looked up at my chandelier hanging from the vaulted roof and counted another row of blackened beads marring the long strings of amber – and copper-coloured glass drops. The Seek and Reveal spells embedded in the beads had cost me the equivalent of three months’ wages, even using my own crystals, but since it had exposed everything they’d sent – so far, at least – it was worth the expense. I narrowed my eyes at the snot-dripping book and scattered the handful of salt over it; it belched musty orange dust and I grabbed a tissue from my jacket pocket as I sneezed.

‘I can see you’re havin’ a fun day, doll.’ The amused burr came from the bedroom door behind me.

Startled, I turned too fast, and several book stacks ava-lanched like mismatched dominoes into a cluttered heap around me.

‘Tavish!’ I said, and my heart gave a happy little leap at seeing him. The feeling that all would be right now he was here brought a wide beam to my face. ‘When did you get back?’

He shot me an answering grin, his sharp-pointed teeth gleaming white against the deep green-black of his skin. As his eyes crinkled, the rim of white surrounding the beautiful, brilliant silver of his pupil-less eyes vanished. The grin softened the angular planes of his long face: Tavish isn’t so much handsome – with his Roman nose and pointed chin, his face is a less delicate version of my own, showing the sidhe part of his make-up – but like the kelpie-horse that is his other shape, he is compelling, alluring—

I started to step towards him, then sneezed again, and as I blew my nose, I realised I’d been staring at Tavish like a Charm-struck human. I wiped the silly grin off my face and gave him an irritated glare. ‘You’re doing it deliberately, aren’t you?’

His own grin faded as he placed his hand on his chest. ‘Ach, doll, but it sorrows my heart tae lose your smile.’

I stifled the urge to go to him and throw my arms round him. Damn, I’d had enough of this magical attraction stuff with Finn; I didn’t need it with Tavish too. Suddenly wary, I clutched at the cup with one hand and balled the tissue in my other, needing something real to hold on to. ‘I’ll lose more than my smile if I let myself fall for your charms, kelpie,’ I said flatly.

He threw his head back with a snorting laugh and I glimpsed the delicate black-lace gills flaring either side of his throat. ‘Aye, doll, perhaps – but I wait for the day when you nae longer wish tae resist me, when we shall ride intae the depths together.’ He sobered as the turquoise swirling in the depths of his silver eyes lit an answering curl of desire inside me. ‘And ’twill be a glorious pleasure for us both, my lady.’

I looked down and nudged a couple of books with the toe of my trainer, willing the desire away. Tavish was wylde fae, a kelpie, a soul-taster, and capricious, like the magic – not to mention dangerous, if he was talking about riding into the depths. But he was also my friend. So was it a warning? Trouble was, asking outright wouldn’t get me the answer, just like it was pointless confronting him about the bracelet, or anything else. He could talk round corners for England if he chose to: at my best guess, he’d been doing it for more than a millennium.

‘If wishes were horses, we could all ride away on them,’ I murmured, recalling one of my father’s sayings.

‘If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets,’ he replied cheerfully.

And the fishes would be caught
. Hmm.

‘You’re looking guid, doll,’ he said, still showing his teeth.

I shot him a sceptical look. I’d spent the night in a police cell; there was no way I looked ‘guid’. Then I realised he wasn’t looking at me, or rather my body’s shell, but at my soul. And it probably did look all shiny and bright to him now the black tint of the sorcerer’s soul was gone. So why wasn’t he asking how I’d got rid of it? Unless, of course, I wasn’t the only one chatting to Malik in his dreamscapes – was that why Tavish was here now? Had the two of them been plotting again? Not that any of that explained his outfit, which was unusual, even for him.

He was dressed Elizabethan-style, his starched white neck-ruff a stark contrast to his green-black skin. His dreadlocks were piled into a spiky topknot, and the beads intertwined with the dreads were a brilliant aquamarine, matching the silk lining of his pantaloons.

‘Nice outfit.’ I raised my brows. ‘Did you escape from a fancy dress party or something?’

He twirled his hand in a flourish of lace as he bowed from the waist, keeping his eyes on mine, and I had the strangest feeling
he
was wary of
me
. ‘The queen had hersel’ a hankering tae return tae earlier times, and her court has dutifully obliged her.’

‘Are you telling me that Queen Clíona can turn back time?’ I asked, astonished. ‘By several hundred years?’

He straightened and gave me a thoughtful look. ‘Am I telling you that? I dinna ken, doll – ’tis always possible, for time is nae fixed in the Fair Lands as ’tis here in the humans’ world.’ He looked back over his shoulder and I thought I saw the flicker of candlelight instead of sunshine behind him . . . then it was gone. ‘I returned here tae you at this time as I desired tae do, but who kens where or when in the humans’ world I would be if I hadnae made my choice?’

‘That doesn’t really answer the question, Tavish.’

‘Maebe there’s nae answer to be had.’

An idea started to form in my mind. Was he just being tricky, or was he telling me something I needed to know that he couldn’t divulge? I left the idea to find its own shape and said, ‘So, what’s Clíona been saying?’

‘Her offer of sanctuary is as before, doll, and she’s nae telt me of any change.’

She hadn’t told
him
of any change, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t ready to tell someone –
me
– otherwise. Was that why he was here? To arrange for me to see her? Maybe after my trip to Disney Heaven—