Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

‘So, the Emperor’s got a couple of pet werewolves I need to watch out for,’ I said, digging out a Phone Privacy spell as a group of teens climbed onto the column’s plinth to get a closer look at the pixie, now dancing a passable jig. Their giggles and chatter cut out as I activated the crystal. ‘Any ideas why the tarot card didn’t show them, and why it gave the Emperor a knife instead?’

‘’Tis possible the werewolves are nae important to our question, doll, and the knife is. But how ’tis difficult to say, with only one card revealed.’

Right. ‘So when can I expect the other four to reappear?’

‘Och, when she’s got something more to tell.’

‘She?’

‘The spirit in the cards, doll. Who else?’

I had a sudden duh moment. Of course. ‘But why’s it taking her so long?’

‘Told you. Answers are nae always there for the taking. She has to search.’

I frowned. ‘She didn’t for the first card? That was instant.’

‘Aye, well, you ken I had already asked. ’Twas why I wanted you to have the reading there and then. The cards were after reminding me you were the key.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘so why did the eagle in the card cut the reading short, as if it was holding back info?’

‘Ah, her readings are always a bit abrupt, some things are nae always clear even to her, or a question’s asked she needs to look into.’

In other words, wait and see. ‘So if she’s out looking for answers, how do you know we can trust the spirit?’

‘Och, dinna fash yerself, doll, the cards are sidhe made. Means the spirit’s bound to tell the truth of her findings.’

Disbelief flashed in me. ‘Call me paranoid, but that doesn’t exactly reassure me, Tavish. Sidhe might not lie, but they don’t always tell the truth.’

‘The spirit’s never steered me wrong yet, doll.’

‘Fine,’ I said, deciding I’d reserve judgement. ‘So the knife’s important, but we don’t know why. But you don’t think the werewolves are?’

‘Hmph. Nae to the question’s answer. But you’re likely to be dealing with this Emperor, so they’ll be a consideration. I take it Malik al-Khan dinna say anything about werewolves?’

‘Nope,’ I said, ‘all I got out of him was that there’s a vamp called the Emperor; he’s badass’ – as are most überpowerful vamps, so nothing new there – ‘and he’s not the Autarch by another name.’ I shuddered. ‘But I’ll ask next time I see him.’ On our date. When he confirms it. I stifled my impatience. ‘So anything else helpful you can tell me about this Emperor?’

‘Nae yet, doll,’ Tavish said. ‘Could be I’ll find out more soon as I get into the Emperor’s website.’

Shock rocked me. Tavish is a techno-geek for hire – he’s rumoured to freelance for the Ministry of Defence – so for him not to have hacked the website meant it had some serious firewalls. ‘You haven’t got in yet?’

‘Aye, but ’twill nae take long,’ he added, determination roughening his voice. ‘So ’tis naught to worry about.’

‘Okay,’ I said, then it dawned on me why he’d been incommunicado. It wasn’t the body in the river, or not only that; the arrogant kelpie hadn’t wanted to admit the Emperor’s security had beaten him. Males and their egos! Good thing he’d won himself major kudos points by helping Katie. Though thinking of egotistical males— ‘Oh, yeah, there’s something else. Did you know the Fertility spell in the pendant is leaking?’

‘The spell is leaking?’ Genuine surprise sounded in his voice.

‘Yes, if I’m to believe Mad Max. I ran into him’ – well, his roundhouse kick anyway – ‘and, long story short, that’s what he told me. I think it’s the cause of the problems I have whenever you use your magic, not a side-effect from that Chastity spell.’ I told him my theory about my abstinence combined with the leaking fertility magic inadvertently setting me up for my own impromptu fertility rite.

He snorted. ‘’Tis nae something I’d have imagined being the cause. Any times I’ve been part of the fertility rites, the magic is nae picky like that, ’tis more indiscriminate. And you ken the witch wore the pendant for all those years and she dinna have a problem with it.’

The witch was Witch-bitch Helen Crane. I sniffed. ‘As far as we know Helen didn’t have a problem with it, but she’s not around to ask.’ And it would just be like the evil Witch-bitch to have sicced the pendant with more than one nasty little spell. After all, she’d magically booby-trapped it, so no one who knew she had it, could snatch it from her without the fae’s fertility being lost for good. ‘Sure you don’t know anything? I don’t trust Mad Max to give me all the info.’

‘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?’