The Shifting Price of Prey (17 page)

‘Aye, Maxim isnae the most trustworthy source,’ Tavish agreed, then added hesitantly, ‘but you could maybe ask Ana. She’s had a fair bit to do with the pendant over the
years.’

We said our goodbyes and I chewed my lip, thinking over his suggestion.

Ana: my faeling niece, and Mad Max’s daughter. Her ‘fair bit to do’ with the pendant had been at the hands of the deranged baby-making wizard Dr Craig, who was the mastermind
behind the ToLA case and with whom Witch-bitch Helen had been partners in crime. Helen had shared the pendant’s magic with him and poor Ana had been his first victim/experiment. Sadly
she’d suffered his baby-making experiments more than once and of the four kids she’d given birth to, only one was actually hers – Freya (her daughter and Mad Max’s grandkid)
– and now Ana was pregnant again with another of the evil doctor’s baby-making experiments. He and Helen made a matched pair.

I was glad I’d killed him.

Needless to say, anything to do with the Fertility pendant wasn’t Ana’s favourite topic. And while she’d been friendly when we’d met during the aftermath of the ToLA
case, and was currently relying on me for regular donations of blood for Freya, that friendliness hadn’t lasted past our meeting. My hopes that I could get to know some of my sidhe-sided
family had been destroyed like a
cracked
spell.

But hey, at least Ana didn’t want to kill me like the rest of my sidhe family, so I counted that as a win. And it wasn’t as if we had any friendship to upset if I asked her about my
problems with the Fertility pendant. Not to mention I was in the right place to do so, since Trafalgar Square is Ana’s home.

Or at least, the entrance to her home is through the square’s left fountain, since she lives in
Between.

Between
is the space (unsurprisingly) between the Fair Lands and the humans’ world, and is malleable enough that anyone can create their own private out-of-this-world patch . . .
if they have enough power and the magic likes them. Obviously I didn’t; I couldn’t even get into
Between
on my own, never mind set up home there.

I squashed the niggling frustration and envy that Ana, a faeling, could do the sort of magic most full-blooded fae would struggle with, when I couldn’t even
cast
my own Privacy
spells but had to buy them instead, and phoned her. Okay, she probably didn’t want to talk about the Fertility pendant, but I didn’t want to take the chance that next time the magic
decided I needed to get my rocks off, it would pick some poor unsuspecting human and I’d end up fucking him or her to death.

‘Genny.’ Ana sounded oddly wary, almost as if she was expecting my call. Had Mad Max talked to her? Only as far as I knew she refused to have anything to do with her father, because
he was a vamp.

I put on a bright voice. ‘Hey, I’m in the square, catching pixies, any chance we could have a chat?’

‘I’m not at home right now,’ she said flatly.

Not home? But it was nearly ten at night and she was going to give birth at any moment. Though she was an adult, so really not my call. ‘Oh, right. Mind if I ask you something,
then?’

‘I’m busy, Genny—’

‘It’s about the Fertility pendant,’ I said, jumping in with both feet.

Silence, then a sharp, ‘What about it?’

‘I’ve been having a few problems with it and when I ran into Maxim last night he told me the spell in the pendant leaks. He said I could end up re-enacting my very own fertility rite
if I’m not careful. And I really don’t want to end up picking up some poor human and doing him some damage because of it.’

She blew out a dismissive breath. ‘You don’t have to worry. Helen couldn’t stop the pendant leaking, but she bespelled it to
focus
the leak. The magic fixes on anyone
you know and find attractive enough that you want to have sex with them, who isn’t already in an ongoing sexual relationship.’

Oh. ‘Right, so I’m not going to see some hot guy on the Underground who happens to be single and want to jump his bones then?’

‘No, I shouldn’t think so. Helen didn’t want it causing her any hassles like that.’

No, she wouldn’t. Helen the Witch-bitch was all about protecting her own interests.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but it did sort of fixate on Maxim last night and I know he’s your dad, but really, there’s no way in hell I find him attractive.’ Not to
mention the whole icky incest thing.

Another longer silence, then, ‘I’ll email you a recipe for a Purging Poultice spell which will help, but if you’re going to continue living with the pendant, the best way to
keep the Fertility magic under control is to have sex on a regular basis.’

Not something I could guarantee doing right now . . . though the idea of ‘regular sex’ with Malik . . . was
not
something to think about in the middle of Trafalgar Square,
not unless I wanted to take a dip in the cold fountain in the next five minutes. I sat straighter, got my excited libido under control and my mind back on track. ‘Thanks for the spell, Ana,
but that doesn’t answer my question about Maxim.’

An annoyed huff came over the line. ‘My father and Helen know each other extremely well, remember, so the spell probably recognised him.’

It took a moment for what she meant to sink in. ‘Are you saying that Helen and Maxim have been—’

‘Yes,’ she interrupted, ‘for years. But I do
not
want to discuss my father’s sex life.’

I didn’t want to either, but— Helen the Witch-bitch and Mad Max had been having an affair, or whatever, for years? Wow, I hadn’t seen that coming. Though thinking about it, I
should have. I’d known they had a kid together: Jack. Helen had given him up at birth to be a sidhe changeling, and he was now one of the Morrígan’s ravens. He was the same age
as me and Ana, and was another baby conceived by way of the Fertility pendant. But even knowing about Jack, and that Mad Max and Helen had got it together when she was a teenager, I’d always
imagined it had been a one-off. If it wasn’t—

‘What about Finn?’ I asked, my indignation on his behalf breaking my self-imposed promise not to think about him since he’d cut me out of his life. ‘Helen jumped the
broom with him for seven years. Was she still seeing your dad then?’

‘Seriously, Genny,’ Ana snapped, ‘I am
not
discussing it with you. And anyway, I don’t know. I don’t want anything to do with Maxim. He might be my father,
but he’s a vampire. I don’t want him near me, or Freya. I never have done. It’s down to him that my mother is dead. She was looking for him when the other vampires took her. I
don’t want the same happening to me, or, The Mother protect us, to Freya. Maxim will never be part of our lives. And if I didn’t need your blood for Freya, you wouldn’t be either.
You’re too close to the vampires. It makes you dangerous.’

Well, that told me why my hopes of a happy family friendship had fizzled like a damp squib. Not that I could blame her really. Not when she was only trying to protect herself and her kid.

‘Look,’ Ana rushed on, ‘you wanted to know how to deal with the Fertility spell. I’ve told you. Either stop living with it or start having sex, I really don’t care.
And whatever you do, don’t get it frustrated by getting all excited and then stopping. Oh, and its response will be stronger if you or the other person uses magic. Now I’m busy, so
goodbye.’

The line went dead, leaving me staring morosely at the pixie who was now doing muscle-men poses on the lion’s head, despite only having an audience of three pigeons and a bag lady. The old
woman gave a desultory clap, and part of me wanted to go back a year or so to when catching pixies and getting booed by the crowds seemed like my only problem.

I sighed. Still, at least I now knew the Fertility spell wasn’t going to have me Glamouring passing strangers and forcing them to have sex. And that the only people I had to worry about
were friends I found attractive. Which had to be why it was only when Tavish used magic that I got all hot and bothered; I just wasn’t that into him.

My phone rang. A tiny flame of hope that it was Ana ringing back died as the display said ‘Katie’.

‘Hi, hon, what’s up?’

‘Hey, Genny. Sorry, but Harrods have got problems with their Magic Mirror spells in the lingerie changing rooms again.’

I groaned. ‘Thought I got it sorted this morning.’

‘No such luck,’ she said, commiserating.

I gave the last pixie a considering look. In the last couple of seconds he’d curled up like a cat on the lion’s head and was snoring away. I didn’t have to catch him –
pixies are only really a problem when a pack of them get together – so this one could wait for another day. And the one I’d already caught was easy enough to deal with; the delivery
service we used to ship the pixies back to Cornwall was nearby.

‘Okay,’ I said, sliding down off the bronze lion. ‘Tell Harrods

I’m on my way.’

Midnight. I got home to find my flat, as usual since Sylvia and Ricou had moved in, was pitch-black. They’d left the blackout blinds down again. I flipped the light
switch in a vain hope that the protective Wards hadn’t fried the electricity for the umpteenth time, but as usual nothing happened. Sighing, I bumped the front door shut with my hip, dropped
the bags of Spellcrackers files I’d lugged up the five flights of stairs and, as I waited for the Ward to release its sticky hold on me, pressed my forehead tiredly against the cool wood of
the door.

I’d gone for gold on this last trip to Harrods, stripping and
absorbing
the Magic Mirror spells from the whole store, not just the lingerie section, before the store’s
resident hedge-witch salt-washed the mirrors. They were going to leave them spell-free overnight as a test before recasting the spells. I’d
absorbed
, as an added precaution, to
dispose of it away from the store. The job itself had been relatively quick and easy – I’d been there for less than an hour – and other than feeling like I’d swallowed a set
of hyperactive pinballs for once the magic hadn’t hit me with any of its quirky side-effects. Or so I’d thought.

But the consequences had crept up on me. Without realising how I’d got there, I’d been staring fixedly at a mirror in the doorway of a Chinese restaurant, silently debating whether
my left eye was slightly larger than my right, and if I’d look prettier if the sharp angles of my chin were rounder. A tiny Asian woman, stereotypically old and wizened, had shuffled up to me
and pressed a fortune cookie into my palm, breaking my obsession with my looks. I’d thanked her. She treated me to a toothless grin, then shooed me on my way.

I’d kept my gaze on the pavement after that.

Now the damn stuff was nagging me to rush to the nearest mirror and check myself out.

Another quick look wouldn’t hurt.

I pushed away from the door, turned and headed towards my bedroom— and let out a strangled squeak as my nose ended up mashed into the rough bark of a small tree. Sylvia, my dryad
flatmate.

‘O
ops, sorry, Genny,’ Sylvia breathed, the rustling laughter in her voice belying the apology. ‘Didn’t hear you come
in.’

A crack like a snapping twig, and faint light bathed the living room. The light came from a football-sized globe. It was hovering inside my chandelier, making the long strands of amber- and
gold-glass beads sparkle as if they’d been sprinkled with fairy glitter. One of Sylvia’s Moonshine spells. Since I couldn’t
activate
it I preferred electricity, though
the spell
was
prettier.

Sylvia was pretty too. Her green eyes shone bright as spring buds, delicate branches with soft, arrow-shaped leaves curled down to her shoulders (she’d stopped pruning her scalp now she
was pregnant, needing the extra boost for the baby), and her diaphanous pink negligée floated around her knees as if shifting in a gentle wind. The negligée was embroidered–
appropriately, since her tree was
Prunus avium
– with tiny red cherries down the deep V of its neckline.

‘Damn it, Sylvia!’ I gingerly felt my nose for damage as I glared at her exposed chest. She heaved an appeasing sigh as she automatically ‘dressed’ herself in her usual
waking Glamour; the green-grey bark-like skin I’d run into morphed into the pale pink smooth flesh of her more usual ‘Hello Boys’ cleavage, near enough swallowing the
hen’s-egg-sized sapphire pendant she wore.

The pendant containing the fae’s trapped fertility.

All my problems stemmed from that innocent-looking sapphire.

And the damn thing still kept throwing new ones at me.

Though if it weren’t for that pendant I wouldn’t even be here and it looked good nestled between Sylvia’s generous breasts. Which were utterly fabulous, now I was taking the
time to look at them. Lush and firm and soft. I frowned at the oxymoron, wondering what her boobs would feel like. I’d been with girls before, when I’d been in Rosa’s vamp body;
it wasn’t my preferred choice sexually, but most vamps don’t usually discriminate and I’d been more interested in their venom-infected blood than their bodies, so I’d never
really taken much notice of another girl’s breasts. Only Sylvia’s were fascinating, not in a lusting-after-them way, but full and nicely rounded . . .