Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

Whatever had broken inside me turned jagged, my throat ached and tears stung my eyes.

I looked at him straight. ‘Yes. I want you to go.’

‘Is this because of that sucker? Are you seeing him?’

Fury filled me and I opened my mouth, ready to tell him, hell, no! Then, at a nudge from the magic, my rage muted and I snapped it shut. Was this about Malik? Okay, yeah, I wanted both of them. And I knew there was no way I could have my cake and eat it with the two of them. And truth was, I didn’t want to. Sharing might be Sylvia and Ricou’s thing, but, right now, it wasn’t mine. So I’d known a choice was always going to have to be made. And that choosing one would mean losing the other.

But Finn playing happy families with Helen meant the end of Finn and me, even if Malik hadn’t been in the picture. So yeah, Finn’s half-arsed confession was making my choice easier, but it wasn’t the reason I was telling him to go.

‘This is about you and Helen,’ I said flatly, ‘which you’d realise if you took the time to think about what you’ve just told me.’

‘Gen, he’s a sucker. A sucker who can order you around against your will. Or have you forgotten?’

‘I haven’t forgotten anything. Like I haven’t forgotten how Malik gave his protection to every fae and faeling in London when I asked, and wanted nothing in return. Or how he was the one who put himself in danger helping me during the demon attack last Hallowe’en—’

‘I would have come if I could, Gen,’ Finn interrupted, his expression stricken. ‘You know that.’

‘Yeah, I do,’ I snapped, my anger mounting again. ‘But you couldn’t, could you? And why was that? Oh yeah, because Helen stopped you.’

‘Because I would’ve broken her circle. She was working to keep the demon contained.’

She was working to let the demon kill me, you mean. Rage rushed through me. I grabbed his arm and shoved him through the Ward on the flat’s door.

‘And I haven’t forgotten,’ I shouted, ‘that without Helen, Nicky, your daughter, wouldn’t be pregnant and Grace, my best friend, wouldn’t be fucking dead in my place.’

He stood on the landing outside, eyes wide with shock, then he shuddered as if casting off a heavy coat. ‘Gen. You’re right. I’m sorry—’

I slammed the door in his face.

The rage drained out of me, leaving me empty and hollow. Pain flooded in to take its place. I sank to the floor, hands over my mouth, until the sound of his footsteps faded.

Then I let my tears fall.

‘What’s it this time: nose, boobs or hips?’

I focused on Mary’s – Detective Sergeant Mary Martin’s – reflection in the full-length mirror in front of us. I’d been so wrapped up in my frustration and anger, and, yes, grief, over Finn, I hadn’t noticed her come up next to me.

Behind us, the mirror showed a plush office decorated in warm creams and oatmeal, and accented with enough pink to make it patently feminine without turning it into Barbie’s living room. The office was one of many in the upscale plastic surgeon’s expensive home-cum-consulting rooms, and was closer to a modern take on a Georgian drawing room than a doctor’s surgery. But then if victims feel reassured and relaxed in their surroundings, it makes them easier to fleece.

Currently, the only victims around were the filing cabinets (heavily disguised as a splay-legged oak sideboard). The cabinets were being disembowelled by two WPCs wearing white paper jumpsuits, with matching shower caps and bootees, who were systematically tagging and bagging their contents. The same thing was happening throughout the rest of the exclusive Harley Street address where another ten witches – who along with Mary, made a full coven – were busily gathering evidence.

And there was a ton of evidence to gather. Virtually every leaflet (of which there were thousands still in unopened storage boxes), every magazine and every reflective surface (from the numerous mirrors, through the framed pictures of satisfied customers, right down to the polished brass doorknobs) was tagged with some sort of Dissatisfaction hex.

The place must’ve been like the eighth circle of hell to work in.

My email to Hugh about the source of Harrods’ mutating Magic Mirror spell had set ‘Operation Nip Tuck’ in motion, and the unsuspecting doctor had received a six a.m. raid from Mary and her girls in blue.

Mary placed a hand on my shoulder, making my own evidence-gathering jumpsuit crackle. ‘So, you going to answer me, Genny, or do I have to drag you into the Skin Stripper?’

I gave her a half-smile. ‘’S’okay, I haven’t picked up another hex.’ The things were virulent, and throughout the morning we’d all spent time mirror-staring and angsting over our hex-induced bodily imperfections, the cure for which was a stint in the torturous Skin Stripper. ‘Just miles away.’

Mary gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. ‘Ah. Time for a break, then. Come on, I’ll buy you coffee.’

We headed out into the hall, our paper booties scuffing quietly on the thick carpet as we moved past the leaflet boxes stacked along the wall and into the office set up as a temporary canteen. The Ward on the doorway slipped over me like the tickle of feathers.

As per procedure, the room had been physically emptied (even the carpet removed), ritually swept and magically cleansed, then Warded off from the rest of the house. The Skin Stripper was set up in the middle of the floorboards; a three-foot copper tray, surrounded by a tall circular frame off which hung a glyph-covered shower curtain (to preserve a witch’s modesty) and a modified shower head which rained salt, not water, on the tray’s occupant. Candles flickered in each corner of the room filling the air with the scent of sage, cloves and lemon balm, and along one wall were trolleys containing the Evidence Holding crystals. Against another wall was a stack of picnic-sized cool boxes with ‘Property of Metropolitan Magic and Murder’ stencilled in blue. We had enough food and drink to keep us going for another couple of days, if needed. Same as any other magical evidence-gathering investigation, the whole building had been Warded shut, and until all the active spells were locked up in the Holding crystals, police procedure said that none of us were getting out.

Personally, I wasn’t planning on any of us staying longer than absolutely necessary.

But then speed was one reason why Hugh had called me in as a police consultant. While it took a witch a good five minutes to transfer a spell from its original carrier to an Evidence Holding crystal, it was as quick as snapping my fingers for me. And, of course, the second reason was that I could identify any Magic Mirror spells similar to those used at Harrods.

Mary opened a cool box and handed me an orange juice. ‘Let me guess,’ she said, ‘you’ve got man trouble, or should I say, satyr trouble.’

I raised my brows. ‘I’m that transparent?’

She smiled. ‘I’d love to say no, and that it’s my superb powers of deduction at work. But yeah, you are, especially since Sylvia texted me.’

‘Damn gossiping dryad.’ I jabbed the straw into the drink carton. ‘It’ll be all over London now.’

Mary shot me an admonishing look as she fiddled with the coffee flask. ‘Sylvia won’t say anything; she was just worried about you.’

I snorted. ‘I meant Robur. Sylvia hadn’t got up when I left, so the only way she knows about Finn is if the Wardrobe Freak told her.’

‘Ah.’ She added milk and ten lumps of sugar to her cup. It was excessive even for a witch. Still, Mary was using enough power on the job that she wasn’t likely to suffer sugar-abuse bloating any time soon. ‘Anything I can do?’