Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

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.

‘Oops, 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 . . .

‘Genny?’

. . . whereas mine were way smaller. Tiny even. In fact, I was virtually flat-chested. I could never get a cleavage like Sylvia’s, not even with a padded bra. Maybe I could get a pair of those silicone chicken breast thingies . . . or there was always plastic surgery . . . hmm, that might be the easiest, especially with my quick healing . . . and now I was earning more I could probably afford—

‘Genny!’

I jerked my gaze from Sylvia’s boobs to her exasperated face. ‘What?’

‘Why are you staring at my chest?’

‘I’m not.’

She gave me a ‘pull the other one’ look. ‘You were!’

Shit, she was right. Embarrassed heat stung my cheeks. What the fuck was wrong with me? Mentally I shook my head, shoving stupid thoughts about plastic surgery where they belonged.

‘Sorry, Syl,’ I said, stepping back, ‘I was just admiring . . .’ I waved my hand vaguely at her.

‘Gosh, ’s’okay, Genny.’ She smiled, a pleased glint in her eyes. ‘My boobies are glorious, aren’t they? They’re even bigger now I’m pregnant, and Ricou loves them. Says they’re—’

‘Don’t wanna know, Syl!’ I quickly held my hands up before she hit me with TMI about her and Ricou’s love life. Something she was fond of doing. Dryads don’t do personal boundaries well. ‘What were you standing around in the dark for anyway?’

‘Waiting up for you, of course,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But, gosh, I really didn’t expect you to be so late, and I was tired, so I was just having a little nap.’ She looked down, and slowly lifted one foot then the other as she carefully pulled the net of hair-like roots out of the wooden floorboards. The scent of green, growing things filled the room. ‘Baby Grace has been kicking like a lumberjack in hob-nailed boots all day,’ she added, snagging my hand and placing it on her barely there bump with a contented smile.

Baby Grace. Joy and happiness spread like warm honey through me. Baby Grace was the one wonderful thing to come out of the sacrifice my friend Grace had made to save me last Hallowe’en. I’d unintentionally trapped her soul in her pentacle necklace, but once I’d realised I’d let her go, and her soul had moved on into Sylvia’s baby. I wasn’t clear if Grace was being reborn, reincarnated, or how it all worked, but for me Sylvia’s baby having Grace’s soul made her and her mother even more special.

‘That’s my gorgeous girl,’ I murmured, grinning as Baby Grace said hello in her usual enthusiastic way. Then I quickly modified the grin to a sympathetic grimace as Sylvia shot me a narrowed look, one that heralded another lecture about babies and bladders. ‘You really shouldn’t be waiting up for me, Syl. C’mon, off to bed with you,’ I said, gently trying to steer her towards the oak wardrobe hulking near my bedroom door.

Through the back of the wardrobe was Sylvia and Ricou’s own private patch of Between ; their magically created living space outside the humans’ world. Whoever introduced Sylvia to the Narnia books had a lot to answer for; if it hadn’t been for them, my protest that my one-bedroom attic flat was too small for us all to share, and that the pregnant pair should live somewhere safer and more comfortable, would’ve held water. Though, truthfully, while having Sylvia and Ricou as flatmates, was strange at times and not without its complications, it was great.

Sylvia pouted. ‘But I wanted to talk to you, Genny. And look, I’ve got all your stuff ready.’ The light globe brightened to full-moon strength as she draped an arm over my shoulders and waved a graceful hand at the floor where there was a large sheet of blue plastic.

The blue plastic was my magic neutralising gear. The sheet was marked with two circles, a large eight foot one with a smaller three foot one offset inside. I’d drawn the circles with a mix of ground amber, dried unicorn faeces and my own blood after dissolving juiced-up ricepaper runes – very expensive, very elaborate, ricepaper runes – into the mixture to power it up. The magical ink meant I didn’t have to use the traditional sand and salt (cheap, but hell to cart around and messy to clean up) or buy one of the rare etched-by-dwarves silver and copper circle chains (easier to carry, but even with the inbuilt protections they’re a magnet for thieves). And though pricy to make, my blue plastic spell-neutraliser kit was worthless to anyone else since it was keyed only to me. I was quietly proud of it – the result of hours of painstaking trial and error – and was thinking of patenting it, once I’d worked out how to bring the cost of the runes down.

If I could cast my own spells, my life would be so much easier.

I shoved the constant frustration away and gave Sylvia a quick hug. ‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’

‘Gosh, no worries, Genny.’ Sylvia grinned happily. ‘It’s the least I can do. And, look, I’ve even put salt out for you.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ I said again, eyeing the six-inch block of salt sitting in the smaller circle. Sylvia hated salt, always saying that just thinking about it clogged up her sap, so she really was being helpful . . . so helpful that my ‘what’s she after’ antennae started twitching.