The Bitter Seed of Magic

by Suzanne McLeod

  The penny finally dropped, with a loud splash. She didn’t just want to help; she was a fully paid-up member of the ‘get the sidhe pregnant’ brigade. And with her daughter-in-law being part water fae …

  ‘Let me guess. Lady Meriel is one of your connections in the magical community?’

  She leaned forwards and patted my knee in what I was supposed to believe was motherly concern. ‘Lady Meriel appreciates that it is only natural for you to be worried about having a child under the circumstances, and that you are not going to make the decision to become pregnant until you’ve exhausted all other avenues. If I can help expedite those avenues for you, maybe it will make the final decision easier and quicker for you.’

  The limo slowed to a halt and I glanced out the window. Trafalgar Square again. The driver had to be deliberately going in circles so Victoria Harrier could take her time talking to me on Lady Meriel’s behalf. Figured. Absently I scowled at the crowd of tourists gathered round one of huge bronze lions. They were roaring with laughter at the pixie pack dancing a jig along the lion’s broad back. Automatically, I made a mental note: about a dozen of them. Another week and Trafalgar Square would be overrun and the council would be calling Spellcrackers to banish them. Pixies are sort of ugly-cute, even if they are a pain to catch, and I always got the job— Except this time I wouldn’t. Not now I’d resigned. A sick feeling roiled in my stomach. But it wasn’t only the loss of my job making me feel ill, it was the goddess’ command: You will give them a new life.

  If the fae knew that, I’d probably end up pregnant within the hour. Now that was a scary thought. But they didn’t, and ironically, it was thanks to the goddess’ totally wonderful gag clause.

  I grimaced and turned back to Victoria Harrier. ‘In that case, why don’t we start by looking into those other avenues now, seeing as I’m not going anywhere?’ I said, drily, and settled back against the seat – it was either that or force my way out of the limo. I was saving that option for later.

  ‘Perfect.’ She pulled a notepad and pen towards her, unable to hide the hint of triumph in her eyes. ‘Lady Meriel is concerned at the lack of information available to her. I’m told the kelpie, Tavish, who lives in the Thames has been absent since Hallowe’en. The consensus of opinion is that he’s gone to the Fair Lands to speak to Queen Clíona on your behalf. Has he had any success?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard.’

  She made a note. ‘I understand that your father is a vampire; have any of the fae commented that this could cause a problem, or made any objections?’

  I frowned. ‘Why does Lady Meriel want to know that?’

  She blinked at me as if surprised I was asking, then tapped her pen and said firmly, ‘Please answer the question, Ms Taylor.’

  ‘As far as I know they don’t care,’ I said slowly, curious as to what was going on.

  ‘Good.’ She made another note and underlined it. ‘Now, I think we should talk about your 3V infection.’ A vaguely familiar gleam lit her eyes for a moment, sending an uneasy tingle down my spine.

  ‘Well, it’s not exactly a secret any more, but I’m not sure it’s any more relevant than your last question.’

  ‘I believe it’s relevant to you, Ms Taylor. You have stated your reasons for not wanting a child are because of possible implications for the child’s future, an entirely understandable and commendable concern.’ She nodded in approval. ‘But as I told you, Ana, my daughter-in-law, also has 3V; she controls it using G-Zav’ – the vamp junkies’ methadone – ‘yet Ana is } expecting her sixth child – her sixth healthy child – and I can reassure you that all of my grandchildren are completely clear of 3V: there’s no sign of V1 , V2 or V3 in their blood at all. 3V is not passed on from mother to child in the womb. She’d be delighted to chat to you about it all, and it might help to put your mind at rest.’

  ‘I volunteer at HOPE,’ I said, ‘and believe me, it’s not the physical implications that worry …’ I trailed off as the picture of her happy, smiling, very pregnant daughter-in-law came back to me, and several things hit me at once. She had 3V. She was faeling. She was on G-Zav, had been for at least ten years – and while she wouldn’t have quite the same problems using G-Zav as a full-blood fae would, that was a major feat in itself. The only place she could get G-Zav was HOPE, and if any faeling was a regular there, I’d know them.

  And I didn’t know her.

  My tingle of unease grew fangs and took a bite out of me. I looked around the plush car at the expensive equipment: wealth and power and magic are as attractive to vamps as blood. This family had it all … and it was beginning to look like there was a distinct possibility there was a blood-sucking fanged cuckoo squatting in their well-feathered family nest. Not only that: I now realised what had been bothering me about Victoria Harrier and her faeling daughter-in-law. Witches and wizards were fanatical about their magical human lineages. Marrying a faeling would be well out of a wizard’s comfort zone.

  ‘Something’s worrying you now, isn’t it, Ms Taylor?’ Victoria Harrier’s probing question focused my attention back on her, and on the familiar gleam in her eyes.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I said. As she waited expectantly, I decided to test my theory and called my own magic. It uncurled from my centre, up and out into my fingers, dusting them with a golden glow. I reached out and clasped her face, pushing the golden magic into her as soon as our skin touched. She jerked with surprise, then relaxed into smiling compliance, her pupils lighting with pinpricks of gold as she succumbed easily to my Glamour.

  Too easily.

  Glamouring someone isn’t much different from a vamp mind-lock: the aim of both is to control the victim. Vamp mind-locks can be like magical Rohypnol – more humans end up as a quick snatch-and-suck than you’d think; they just don’t remember. Add in a side order of vamp mesma along with the mind-lock and vamps can play pick and mix with their victims’ senses and emotions, making them believe anything for a time. But siccing a mind-lock on a human outside of licensed premises is illegal, and can end in a one-way trip to the guillotine. I sincerely doubted Victoria Harrier, a well-known witch, had ever set foot inside a vamp club, licensed or otherwise.

  Of course, Glamouring a human was just as illegal and carried the same sharp-edged consequences.

  The hair at my nape rose in an ominous and not-so-subtle reminder of that as I gazed into Victoria’s adoring, Glamoured eyes. Tentatively, I checked the tangled net of her mind, dusting it with golden magic, and found just what that familiar gleam in her eyes had told me I would: a looping skein of hard blackness, worn smooth and even like a well-trodden path. No wonder she had succumbed so quickly; she was pre-programmed. Whoever the vamp was, he or she had been reinforcing their commands for years, which wasn’t a mind-shattering discovery after hearing the daughter-in-law’s history. But trying to remove the command would be mind-shattering; it was too deeply embedded. The much simpler option was to remove the vamp, but that was a job for later. For now, though, I just needed to take my Glamour back without disturbing anything.

  As I started to retreat, Victoria whimpered in distress and I stopped, fearing that despite being so careful, I’d overloaded her with Glamour. I started to pull back again, slower this time, feathering the magic and letting it trail gently from her mind. She moaned, a low sound of pleasure that echoed inside me, and her pupils expanded into bright orbs of gold. Fascinated, I leaned towards her and placed my lips on hers, tasting the adoration in her exhaled breath, drawing in the sweetness of that devotion, pulling the energy of her adulation into my own body and feeling it hit with a hot jolt of electric bliss that was both more than and less than sexual. I gasped against her mouth, trembling with the urge to pour my magic into her, to fill her until her mind worshipped only me, until her heart beat only for me, to take her and make her mine, and mine alone—

  I stilled, my mouth on hers, my hands cupping her face, savouring the delicious sensations as I teetered on the edge of temptation. Some part of me knew this was w
rong, very, very wrong, but there was another, deeper part of me that said this was what I needed … I pressed my lips against hers again, sighed, and drew my hands and my magic reluctantly away as I followed the smooth path made by the vampire.

  She moaned again, and this time I settled back in my own seat, my eyes fixed on the tinted windows and the world outside, giving her the semblance of privacy as her body surrendered to the commands entrenched in her mind, the ones my own magical invasion had triggered and curiously enhanced.

  I caught a glimpse of Nelson’s Column in the distance. We were still trundling luxuriously along in the traffic, the driver obliviously going round and round in circles until he was given the signal to take me home.

  ‘So, Ms Taylor, what do you say now you’ve had time to think about my suggestion?’ Victoria Harrier asked.

  I turned to find her sitting straight-backed, a slight flush to her cheeks, as calmly as if nothing untoward had happened. Of course, in her mind it hadn’t.

  ‘You know,’ I said slowly, ‘I think you might have a point about my 3V infection. I truly hadn’t thought about it in those terms before. Maybe I should speak to your daughter-in-law.’

  She gave a pleased smile. ‘We can visit Ana now if you like.’ She gestured out the limo’s window. ‘She lives in Trafalgar Square with her grandfather, the fossegrim.’

  Ana’s grandfather was the fossegrim? Shit – the old water fae was supposed to be totally and utterly insane. I’d been warned to stay away from him when I’d taken my first pixie eviction job for Spellcrackers. He’d come over from Norway with the very first Christmas tree after the Second World War: he’d been in love with the tree’s dryad and she’d died fighting in the Resistance. He’d been half-mad with grief, until he met a new lady love – but then he’d lost her too, to the curse. He’d gone on a killing spree in revenge, then holed up in the square’s fountains, where he’d been ever since. Ousting a blood-sucking fanged cuckoo out of their family nest was one thing, but no way did I want to run into the fossegrim, not without some sort of magical protection.

  I gave Victoria Harrier a wary smile. ‘Okay,’ I agreed, backpeddling fast, ‘but I think we’d better leave the socialising until after we’ve seen the ravens.’ And after I’ve had chance to check things out and come up with … some sort of plan.

  ‘Perfect,’ Victoria Harrier said, with a satisfied expression. ‘I’ll arrange it for tomorrow. Now how about we get you home, Ms Taylor.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Hang on,’ I muttered as my phone vibrated. I bumped the door to my flat closed with my hip, careful not to spill the cup of blood I’d just picked up from the Rosy Lea Café. With an annoyed sigh, I reactivated the protection Ward by banging my forehead against the painted wood; the Ward shimmered into life, a faint purple tinge on the white door. I dropped the ten-kilogram bag of salt – also from the Rosy Lea – next to the bucket beside the door and flexed my fingers, working out the cramps from carrying the salt up five flights of stairs. Life would be so much easier if I didn’t live in a converted Edwardian attic.

  ‘And life would be much easier if I didn’t have jealous witches, scheming fae, Machiavellian vamps, and The Mother of all goddesses to deal with on top of the fertility curse,’ I told the door, giving it a frustrated kick. I took a calming breath and muttered, ‘Stick to dealing with one problem at a time,’ and pulled my phone out.

  I had a text from Finn:

  I’m sorry. We need to talk. But not 2nite. I’ll CU 2morrow.

  Short and not so sweet. I stared at the text, puzzled. It wasn’t like Finn and his inner white knight to leave me to my own devices, particularly when he knew my plans involved the vamps. Irrational disappointment flashed in me that he wasn’t beating my door down, as I’d half-expected him to be, along with morbid curiosity about what he was doing … and whether it had something to do with Helen.

  Damn. I snapped my phone shut, put the cup down, hung my jacket up, tucked the police file Victoria Harrier had given me next to the bucket of salt, and mentally shelved Finn and the rest of the day’s dilemmas until later. I glanced at the clock: a little over four hours until sunset, so time enough for that long shower, a bite to eat and a bit of research before I headed off to Sucker Town and the vamp side of my problems.

  But first things first. I might be home, but that didn’t mean I was safe.

  I grabbed my drink and a handful of the salt already in the bucket and turned to look – and look – at my living room-cum-kitchen.

  And at the books.

  They were piled in knee-high stacks in my living room floor like a miniature village of tottering skyscrapers made of … well, stacks of books. Not being able to afford any furniture other than floor cushions was a definite advantage when it came to accommodating the fae’s curse-cracking research library, or at least the latest batch from the thousands of tomes they’d collected over the last sixty-odd years. The books had been arriving and disappearing on rotation ever since Tavish had told me about them and I’d insisted on checking them out for myself. Except I hadn’t been the one insisting, had I? It was him, or rather him and Malik, the other half of that annoying, over-protective little double act. Between the Sleeping Beauty spell and Malik’s mind-mojo, I was surprised they’d stopped at imposing the curse-cracking reading on me, and hadn’t just wrapped me up in the proverbial cotton wool and kept me under magical house arrest.

  It hit me that I didn’t need the books any more: the Librarian could have them all back.

  I gave a loud whoop and, grinning happily, started to weave my way through the books to the kitchen, glancing through the open bedroom door as I did so. Spring sunshine was cutting bright rectangles on the wooden floor, which was thankfully clear; at least the books hadn’t migrated in there again. A lot of them were disturbing, eye-opening and literally nausea-inducing, so definitely not required bedtime reading. In the current piles were everything from an eleventh-century grimoire bound in sorcerer’s skin (a major eew! to read, even wearing three pairs of salted surgical gloves); a papal leaflet titled Inquisitional Techniques and Demonic Exorcisms, printed in 1573; a first edition of Frankenstein – author anonymous, of course; a pile of Walt Disney picture books; Grimm’s Fairy Tales in five different languages; half a dozen new paperback releases with nothing in common other than ‘Curse’ in the title; and—

  A virulent green cover on one of the many unread piles caught my eye: The Esoteric Practice of Malediction Prophecies by Michael Nix. I reached out to pick it up— Then snatched my hand away as a flash of magic revealed that the snot seeping out from its spine was real.

  ‘Sneaky,’ I muttered. After the first ‘WTF?’ spell I’d unwittingly triggered – the one that transported me straight to Finn; luckily he’d been working the late shift at Spellcrackers, but even so, naked is so not the way to appear anywhere unannounced – I’d taken precautions. I looked up at my chandelier hanging from the vaulted roof and counted another row of blackened beads marring the long strings of amber- and copper-coloured glass drops. The Seek and Reveal spells embedded in the beads had cost me the equivalent of three months’ wages, even using my own crystals, but since it had exposed everything they’d sent – so far, at least – it was worth the expense. I narrowed my eyes at the snot-dripping book and scattered the handful of salt over it; it belched musty orange dust and I grabbed a tissue from my jacket pocket as I sneezed.

  ‘I can see you’re havin’ a fun day, doll.’ The amused burr came from the bedroom door behind me.

  Startled, I turned too fast, and several book stacks avalanched like mismatched dominoes into a cluttered heap around me.

  ‘Tavish!’ I said, and my heart gave a happy little leap at seeing him. The feeling that all would be right now he was here brought a wide beam to my face. ‘When did you get back?’

  He shot me an answering grin, his sharp-pointed teeth gleaming white against the deep green-black of his skin. As his eyes crinkled, the rim of white surrounding the bea
utiful, brilliant silver of his pupil-less eyes vanished. The grin softened the angular planes of his long face: Tavish isn’t so much handsome – with his Roman nose and pointed chin, his face is a less delicate version of my own, showing the sidhe part of his make-up – but like the kelpie-horse that is his other shape, he is compelling, alluring—

  I started to step towards him, then sneezed again, and as I blew my nose, I realised I’d been staring at Tavish like a Charm-struck human. I wiped the silly grin off my face and gave him an irritated glare. ‘You’re doing it deliberately, aren’t you?’

  His own grin faded as he placed his hand on his chest. ‘Ach, doll, but it sorrows my heart tae lose your smile.’

  I stifled the urge to go to him and throw my arms round him. Damn, I’d had enough of this magical attraction stuff with Finn; I didn’t need it with Tavish too. Suddenly wary, I clutched at the cup with one hand and balled the tissue in my other, needing something real to hold on to. ‘I’ll lose more than my smile if I let myself fall for your charms, kelpie,’ I said flatly.

  He threw his head back with a snorting laugh and I glimpsed the delicate black-lace gills flaring either side of his throat. ‘Aye, doll, perhaps – but I wait for the day when you nae longer wish tae resist me, when we shall ride intae the depths together.’ He sobered as the turquoise swirling in the depths of his silver eyes lit an answering curl of desire inside me. ‘And ’twill be a glorious pleasure for us both, my lady.’

  I looked down and nudged a couple of books with the toe of my trainer, willing the desire away. Tavish was wylde fae, a kelpie, a soul-taster, and capricious, like the magic – not to mention dangerous, if he was talking about riding into the depths. But he was also my friend. So was it a warning? Trouble was, asking outright wouldn’t get me the answer, just like it was pointless confronting him about the bracelet, or anything else. He could talk round corners for England if he chose to: at my best guess, he’d been doing it for more than a millennium.