Suzanne McLeod - The Cold Kiss of Death

Gotta give Hannah her due, her favours were to die for.

And thinking of favours, I realised I knew how to solve the Rosa problem. All I had to do was give Malik the info he’d been following me for. I quietly said, ‘Hannah Ashby knows where Rosa’s body is. She’s the one who’s been controlling the spell since the Ancient One died.’

‘ Thank you, Genevieve ,’ Malik’s voice came again in my mind. ‘ I will arrange to deal with both the sorcerer and Rosa. ’

Great, two solutions for the price of one. I crossed them off my list and added the Fabergé egg—with a mental footnote that flagged Neil Banner’s dubious interest—though quite what I could do about the Ancient One’s soul the egg contained, I wasn’t yet sure.

‘I’ve told you, our bean sidhe’s nae weakling.’ Tavish’s voice held equal measures of pride and concern. ‘You hae only tae look at what she did when the bastard Earl had a go at her and the satyr last month.’

I frowned: the vampire and the kelpie were chatting together like old friends, or at least old acquaintances. It made for a curious, surprising situation. And they were discussing me as if they’d done it all before, and more than once at that.

Their voices faded as I chased the thoughts darting back and forth in my mind like the shoals of tiny fish. Tomas’ murder and finding the sidhe responsible slipped through my mental fingers, and the one I caught was Hannah’s big-screen memory of the Earl talking to the Ancient One just before he killed her.

The prohibition was to end on her twenty-third birthday, but with the witches involved, now she will still be out of my reach.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the words at the time, but some sort of ‘prohibition’ explained why London’s vamps hadn’t pursued a vulnerable teenage sidhe when the opportunity presented herself on their doorstep. And whilst I’d spent the last ten years being übercareful, all it would have taken was a couple of weeks’ captivity and the venom cravings would’ve been so bad I’d have been begging the nearest vamp to sink his or her fangs in me ...

Then of course, I’d got the job at Spellcrackers.com just over a year ago, a few days before my twenty-third birthday. I’d been as happy as a blinged-up goblin; not only did the job involve magic, but because it was a witch company, the job came with the witches’ protection. No wonder the Earl had been angry. The prohibition might have ended, but I was still out of his reach .

And there weren’t many vamps powerful enough to force the Earl—and the rest of London’s blood-families—into a prohibition in the first place, so it wasn’t such a leap that Malik was involved—but why would Malik do such a deal? Especially when he’d told me himself he’d coveted my blood since I was four years old? Why hadn’t he just come after me and snatched me up? I was infected and he’d obviously known where I was all this time.

I opened my mouth to ask him—then my thoughts snagged on the sidhe queen’s droch guidhe and the fae’s need of a baby-making machine, and I got my answer. London’s fae—presumably through Tavish—had somehow stopped him. But if they had, the surprise of it was that the dryads or some other fae hadn’t decided to kidnap and impregnate me before now.

A fourteen-year-old sidhe is much easier to control than a twenty-four-year-old.

But Tavish was one of only four fae I’d spoken to in all the time I’d been in London, and I’d been so concerned about keeping my part-vamp parentage a secret that it had never really struck me as odd. Now, as I thought about it, it was nearly as odd as spending ten years relatively unmolested by vampires.

Until you added in a flipside to the prohibition.

With the sidhe queen’s curse hanging over their heads, what, or who, could make London’s fae agree to stay away from me?

Had to be the queen, of course, since she was ultimately the one calling the shots.

Suspicion crept on black-tipped claws into my mind. And who was her ambassador? Grianne, my not-so-friendly faerie dogmother—

I looked up at the dawn-streaked sky.

—who I was due to meet as the sun was cresting.

Early birds catching worms, or in this case answers to prohibitions, curses and murders, came to mind.

I sat up and looked round the room, hoping to find some clothes ...

Only I wasn’t the only one looking around.

My pulse jumped and I stilled.

Someone was watching me from the dive-hole in the glass floor. He—my eyes flicked downwards, yes definitely a he—had his top half in the room, pale-grey scaly forearms flat on the floor, webbed, clawed hands clasped together, while his blue-grey legs and long, whip-like tail floated in the water below. His wide lipless mouth yawned in a grin, showcasing rows of tiny, sharp green teeth, and the opaque membrane covering his eyes slipped up, leaving gleaming black orbs reflecting back the room’s soft green light.

I lifted the tattered sheet and tucked it under my arms, blinking at him in amazement. What the hell was a naiad doing in Tavish’s bedroom? And even as I asked myself, the answer popped up, pretty much as quickly as the naiad had: the sidhe queen’s stupid curse. I did a quick check through the glass floor of the room to see if there were any more of the naiad’s pals lurking outside in the water, but he seemed to be on his own.

He nodded at me, the thick fluted fins on either side of his head flaring outwards, then he put his webbed claws flat on the floor and started to push himself up and out of the dive-hole.

I shot out my hand and said firmly, ‘Hold it right there, fishface. No way do you get to come in unannounced and uninvited.’

The naiad’s elbows locked and he stopped. ‘Fishface, luv?’ His lipless mouth appeared to have no problem forming the words. ‘What sort of half-assed greeting is that?’

‘The only sort you’re going to get when you pop up naked and unwanted in my bedroom,’ I snapped.

‘Your bedroom?’ His spiny headcrest lifted up in what looked like surprise. ‘This is the kelpie’s bedroom.’

‘Ever heard of possession?’ I said. ‘The kelpie’s not here and I am, therefore it’s currently mine.’ I waved my hand in a ‘get lost’ motion at him. ‘You want to see him, you can go round the front way.’

‘There’s a bloody big sand-dune out there, luv. It looks like he’s imported half the bleeding Sahara, and I’m a naiad, not a bleeding camel-toed horse.’ He made a high clicking noise and I realised he was laughing.

‘Fine, I’ll remember to tell him that after you’ve made yourself scarce.’

‘S’okay, it’s you I’ve come to see anyway.’ He hauled himself out and stood dripping, legs apart, headcrest brushing against the curve of the ceiling, his tail trailing back into the dive-hole. ‘Word has it you’re in the market for a firionnach , bean sidhe , so us naiads had a little game of poker and, lucky for you, luv’—he thumped his chest with a closed claw—‘Ricou here plays a mean game of five-card stud.’

‘You won me in a poker game?’ I blurted out in affronted disbelief.

‘Yep. Bleeding great, ain’t it?’ His mouth did the grin-yawn thing again. ‘So, before all the official rigmarole with the Lady Meriel, I thought I’d swim over and let you have a look at my credentials.’ He looked down and carefully took hold of himself, one webbed claw around each of his overly excited credentials. ‘There you go, double your money’s worth, luv.’ His fluted face-fins flared proudly. ‘Just to prove I’m full-blood naiad and not some halfling pup.’

Two! Okay, so I’d heard the rumours, but—I stared, I couldn’t help myself, it was that whole car-crash thing ...