The Bitter Seed of Magic (A Spellcrackers Novel) (5 page)

But if it
was
Clíona who wanted me here, why wasn’t she putting in an appearance?

‘What I really need is a clue,’ I said under my breath.

Something brushed against my hand, and when I looked down, the playful clouds were littered with black feathers.

Goosebumps pricked my flesh. I quickly scanned the dome but could see no one other than Angel. Carefully, I gathered a handful of feathers and waved them at her. ‘Don’t suppose you know anything about these?’ I asked, keeping my tone light.

She dashed over, bent down and peered into my face again. Something old and sly and dangerous shadowed the pale gold of her eyes and I froze, instinct turning my bones liquid with fear. A scream lodged in my throat and I had to force myself not to scuttle away and hide—

Then
It
was gone and I sagged in relief as she squealed with excitement, snatched the feathers and tossed them into the air. They morphed into a murder of black crows and soared up to join the cartoon cherubs in their zipping flight paths. She flexed her long wings, gathered up her yellow robe and skipped away again.

I huddled among the playful clouds, getting my adrenalin-spiked pulse back under control.
Damn.
Angel was little Miss Looney Tunes, but even she was preferable to whoever her hitchhiker was. Still, I’d got my clue, now I just had to decipher—

Something wet dripped down the bridge of my nose and I swiped at it. Blood? I sniffed. It was sweet and coppery, but it didn’t carry the liquorice undertone of 3V infection. So not mine then, thankfully.

I wiped my hand on my jeans and squinted up into the light. Slowly circling through the rosy-cheeked cherubs and the glossy blue-black crows like they were part of a gigantic cot mobile was a parade of soft toys: a plush polar bear, a mermaid with a glittering tail, and a fluffy rust-coloured bull passed over me as I watched. I flinched as blood splashed my face again. A beribboned unicorn and a copper-scaled dragon followed. I dodged the next splatter and frowned up as a pair of horses, one silver and one black, trotted before a well-stuffed brown teddy bear . . .

The crows were dive-bombing the toys, spearing them with their beaks, making them bleed.

The hair at the back of my neck stood on end.

Was this another clue, or just a gruesome game?

Suddenly Angel shrieked in anger and whirled down towards me. Heart racing, I jerked my arms up in defence, but before I could stop her, she punched her hand deep into my chest. Her eyes gazed into mine, the molten heat of her sun-bright pupils burning me as her magic seared my soul. Pain detonated in my centre as she ripped something from me and the world turned to grey mist, filled with gaping, hungry mouths and desperate, far-away screams—

—and then I was back in Disney Heaven, staring in shock as she lifted her hand triumphantly to display a squirming tangle of shiny entrails hanging from her fist. I clutched my stomach, convinced she’d gutted me, but as reality trickled through my horror, I realised my body was still whole and undamaged. I looked back at her, and the wriggling intestines resolved themselves into a nest of angry, hissing snakes.

‘It is a soul, child,’ a voice growled low in my ear, startling me even as I recognised the rank butcher’s shop breath accompanying it. ‘Not yours, you will be reassured to know.’

I was – but only by the information, not by the speaker. I twisted around to look warily at the large grey dog almost the size of a Great Dane looming at my shoulder. An unworldly glow emanated from its sleek coat like a silver aurora borealis as it regarded me steadily out of eerie grey eyes. The phouka, in her doggy guise, a.k.a. Clíona’s bitch.

Crap, this really wasn’t turning out to be such a good day.

‘O
h, look,’ I said flatly, ‘it’s Grianne, my faerie dogmother, come to join in the heavenly fun. Why am I not surprised?’

The phouka bared long black fangs a true dog would never have. ‘I have asked you before not to refer to me by that ridiculous mortal name. And this is not the time for levity.’

‘Damn.’ I bared my own teeth in a grin. ‘And there was me thinking I was supposed to laugh in the face of death. Got that one wrong, then.’

‘I am not here to kill you,’ the dog said with evident disappointment. ‘You are not with child, and my queen has given you a year and a day to find the answer you seek. Until then, you are safe from me.’

Yeah, like I was going to believe that. Next she’d be telling me that goblins had given up wearing bling.

When I was fourteen and a runaway, Clíona had sent the phouka to terminate me. According to Clíona, my father’s vamp DNA taints my gene pool, and makes me an abomination – even though my mother’s magical genetics means I’m pure sidhe through and through. No way was Clíona about to let me pass that taint on, curse or no curse. Only back then, things hadn’t quite gone the phouka’s way. Instead of killing me, she’d run into an opportunist vamp and I’d ended up saving her, which meant she’d ended up obligated to me for her life. So she’d reluctantly given me a reprieve. But if she could find a way for me to end up dead without getting her paws dirty, she would.

I jerked my head, indicating Angel, who was poking at the hissing snakes. ‘So whose soul is it?’

‘It is the sorcerer’s soul. Eating it was not a wise choice, child.’

‘I’m not sure “wise” or “choice” came into it at the time,’ I said, hiding the relief that washed through me at her words.

Consuming the sorcerer’s soul at Hallowe’en had been one of those act-now-and-live-with-the-evil-indigestion-later kind of things. The lack of immediate nasty consequences, together with the desperate need to find a way to
crack
the curse, had pushed it to the bottom of my to-do list, but now it looked like I could cross it off. It also looked like I owed Angel one.

‘Chomping the sorcerer’s soul was more an instinctive kind of revenge thing,’ I said blandly, ‘payback for the evil bitch sacrificing me.’
See? I have teeth too, oh dogmother.

‘I have already told you, child. I am not here to kill you.’ The phouka’s ears twitched in disapproval, the air wavered around her and Grianne took her human form. She sat next to me, dressed in one of her usual silvery-grey Grecian numbers. Her long, sharp features aligned in a haughty frown. ‘My responsibility here is only to my charge.’

I gestured at Angel who had ripped off the head of one of the snakes and was busy sniffing it. ‘So who is little Miss Bloodthirsty?’

Angel went to pop the snake’s head in her mouth—

—and Grianne barked sharply. ‘Please do not eat that, Angel.’

Angel stopped, a mutinous look in her eyes.

‘Why not allow your new creations to dispose of it?’ Grianne said, her voice taking on a placatory tone I’d never heard before. ‘I believe it would be good quarry for their hunters’ instincts.’

Angel’s face scrunched as she chewed over the idea, rather than the snake’s head, then she grinned, squealed and flung the head upwards. Between one blink and the next, the tiny cherubs had grown sharp red horns in place of their halos, their wings had turned black and pitchforks had materialised in their fists. One little red devil shot forward, expertly speared the head on its fork and brandished it high, taunting the others, before zooming out of the dome. The rest whirred in an eager, hopeful mob around Angel. As I watched, she tore off another snake’s head and threw it up with happy glee.

Devilled sorcerer’s soul.
Hopefully they were taking it somewhere hot. ‘Is Angel her real name?’ I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

‘She was first named for Our Mother’ – Grianne’s grey eyes stayed fixed on her charge – ‘but it was not a prudent choice, as the goddess quickly took her for Her own, and to call her by that name is to risk Her answering.’

I suppressed a shudder as I recalled the
something
I’d seen looking out at me from Angel’s eyes. Had that been Her – Danu, The Mother? And if Angel was once named for Danu, then why were we in Disney Heaven, with its clichéd image of the Christian God? Somehow that didn’t seem overly tactful, or prudent. If I were Angel, I’d be wary of pissing off a goddess who was likely to appear and answer my prayers in person. But then again, if I had Danu hitchhiking in my mind whenever She felt like it, then maybe I wouldn’t see Her as a higher – and much scarier – being. It explained a lot, though: the combination of Danu and Grianne was enough to make anyone barking mad.

‘Clíona renamed her Rhiannon, but she has not answered to that name for a long while,’ Grianne continued, with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Now she goes only by those names she chooses herself, and she has been Angel since you returned her to us. It would not be a problem, but she also insists on manifesting wings. At least she has not yet mastered them enough for flight, and we hope this phase will pass before she does. It is difficult enough to keep track of her as it is.’

‘So,’ I said, pushing away an overly affectionate cloud hovering near my face, ‘who is she?’

‘Clíona’s youngest daughter.’

No wonder Clíona had been so hot for me to find her and send her home! Having her youngest daughter safe was obviously more important than her erstwhile goal to eradicate me and my vamp-tainted blood. I filed the information away; maybe I could use it somehow to make Clíona take back her death promise if I became pregnant (unlikely), or refused her offer of sanctuary (very likely) . . .

Grianne rested her chin on her hands. ‘She has been watching you since you helped her.’

I snorted. ‘You can tell Clíona from me that stalking is illegal.’ Not to mention skin-crawlingly creepy.

‘It is Angel who watches you. She has conjured your image in every mirror, pool of water or silver surface at court. Sometimes she spends all night observing you sleep.’

‘What? So the whole court’s spying on me – all the time?’

‘They can do so, if they have a mind to.’

Great. I was the star in my very own magical
Big Brother/ Truman Show
. My life was now complete.

‘But there are not many who find you entertaining.’ Grianne’s mouth turned down. ‘You work, you eat, you sleep, you read. It appears you lead an uneventful life.’

‘“Star” to “has-been” in five seconds flat,’ I said drily. ‘My ego bleeds.’

‘That is, until this morning.’ Her lip curled, in either amusement or disgust; I was never sure with Grianne.

I grimaced. ‘Guess a murder always ups the ratings.’ Another drop of blood stained my jeans. ‘And talking of that, it’s been
interesting
catching up, Grianne, but sitting here chatting isn’t helping the poor corvid faeling who’s just died, so maybe you could get to the point as to why I’m here, or, you know, just send me back?’

‘You used to enjoy our talks, child,’ she said, sounding unusually wistful, but her gaze was still fixed on Angel. I doubted she was much for listening.

‘If by “talks”, you mean “lectures”’ –
on and on, about all things fae
– ‘and by “enjoy”, you mean “suffer”, then yes, I did. Get to the point, Grianne.’

‘Of course,’ she said briskly, ‘you should know that Clíona came to regret what she had wrought with the
droch guidhe
, so she petitioned Our Mother for a way to undo it. Our Mother decreed there should be a child for a child, and Angel is that child. She was created to break the curse.’

Whoa.
I stared at her, questions jamming my mind to a standstill until the important one finally popped out. ‘So why isn’t the curse broken?’

‘Our Mother’s decree did not come with any specific commands other than to give birth to the child.’

Of course it didn’t.
Gods and goddesses don’t do instruction leaflets – that would be way too easy. Although
a child for a child
sounded like it meant some sort of . . .

‘Birth is not the only path that Clíona has trodden seeking an end to this,’ she said. ‘Death has been another.’

. . .
sacrifice
.

‘It did not break the curse either,’ she finished in the same brisk tone.

‘Do London’s fae know about all this?’ I demanded.

She briefly turned her eerie eyes on me. ‘Have you asked them what they know, child?’

Have I—? Surprise hit me like a stampeding troll. Crap. I hadn’t. In fact, the only fae I’d talked to about the curse were Finn and Tavish the kelpie, and if I was honest, they hadn’t exactly been long conversations. As for the rest of London’s fae, I definitely hadn’t tried to talk to them about
anything
; all I’d done was hole up in my flat with the ton of books they’d collected over the last eighty-odd years in their efforts to find a solution.

Fuck.
Why the hell would I do that?

‘As I have already told you, you lead an uneventful life. This is not what Clíona intended when she gifted you this time to break the
droch guidhe
.’

I really needed to find out what was going on. I jumped up. ‘Okay, message received. You can send me back now.’

‘I would, but it was not I who brought you here.’ She pointed at Angel, who was still humming as she smiled up at the blue-painted sky. All the devil/cherubs and hissing snakes were gone now, but the crows were still attacking the toys. They appeared to be concentrating on some more than others, but with all the bloodstained stuffing flying about, it was difficult to be sure. ‘Angel was watching your trials with the faeling and the human police,’ Grianne said, ‘and as soon as the circle opened, she
called
you to her. I only followed in her wake.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘
She
being Angel, or The Mother?’

‘I do not know, child.’

Great. I was either here at the whim of Miss Looney Tunes, which could mean I was stuck here, or The Mother, which might be much worse. There was only one way to find out. I took a deep breath, arranged my face in what I hoped was a suitably deferential smile (just in case I was addressing The Mother), and strode over to Angel. ‘I really would like to go back now, please,’ I said, ‘if you could arrange it? Or if there’s something you think I should know, then please could you tell me?’