As far as I could tell, no one was home, but I’d just as soon not round a corner and have a flaming fist thrust through my head.
I called out again but no one answered, so the three of us proceeded down the exposed brick hallway and into the guts of the building.
If you’ve never visited a witches’ coven before, let me set the scene for you. First of all, forget about black cats and bubbling cauldrons and flying monkeys—a modern day coven is more like a student flat than the pages of a Meg and Mog story. The women (and occasionally men) who occupy these places live pretty much like the rest of us do, so expect to find a fitted kitchen with modern appliances and a bathroom with contemporary plumbing. No pissing in a pot for witches, at least not since Thomas Crapper gave us the U-bend.
I stuck my head into a side room and found a library filled with ancient tomes, some standing on shelves, others splayed out on the ground, covers bowed, pages dog-eared, spines cracked. No sign of Stella, though. I called out one more time.
‘Jake Fletcher here. I come in peace.’
The kitchen was empty, the bedrooms, too. The familiar was elsewhere. And yet the place wasn’t entirely void of magic. Far from it, in fact.
‘This place… it’s so rich with mana that I feel as if I’m treading water,’ said the fae.
I wasn’t able to sense magic in the same way he could, but even a one-trick spell-slinger like me could feel a heaviness to the place, a sensation like a warm coat hung across my shoulders.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked the fae, noting the newfound spring in his step.
‘Fantastic,’ he replied wearing a smile so broad he looked like an emoticon. ‘I can’t tell you how good it feels to be away from the smoke and the soup of electronic signals you have out there. How do you stand it?’
I shrugged. ‘What was it Sammy J said? When a man is tired of London, he’s tired of life.’
‘But you aren’t alive.’
‘That only adds to my point doesn’t it? If a dead man’s willing to stick it out in this city, it must have something going for it.’
‘I’ll have to take your word on that.’ He wiped a hand down his face and looked at the pink mess on his palm. ‘If it’s all right with you, I’m going to clean this muck off my face.’
‘Knock yourself out,’ I said, pointing the way to the bathroom. ‘Just don’t try legging it out the window unless you want to get yourself cut in half by a magical guillotine.’
We parted ways as Frank and I headed to the core of the coven: a large common room sparsely furnished with a few knick-knacks and a couple of bits of old furniture. In one corner sat a weathered rocking chair, and against the far wall, a knackered couch worn past the point of distress and peppered with rips. A metre-square slab of black slate was affixed to the floor in front of an open fireplace with a surround patterned by twisting flowers (something witchy like deadly nightshade I think, or maybe plain old garden weeds—I’m no botanist). Upon the black slate was a pentagram inside a circle, drawn in white chalk flecked with shavings of silver. The artist was absent, however. The London Coven was categorically deserted.
‘What do you reckon, Frank? Do we hole up here and wait for Stella to show or look for somewhere else to hide His Majesty?’
But Frank wasn’t listening, he was too busy traipsing around the room like a stiff-legged Frankenstein, having a nose of the place. Without meaning to, he tripped the five-pointed star drawn upon the slate, breaking the seal and triggering a dormant spell. From the pentagram sprang Stella Familiar, shimmering like stardust.
‘Hello, Jake.’
Frank leapt back about three feet, while I reversed a distinctly more manly two.
‘Stella?’
But the person I was speaking to wasn’t a person at all, merely an illusion that played out like a pre-recorded hologram.
I turned to my partner. ‘How did she know I’d be the one to break in?’
‘Because you’re the only person I know foolish enough to invade the London Coven,’ she said, anticipating my question.
‘Well, how about that,’ I said, marvelling at Stella’s foresight as well as the intricacy of her magic. ‘A custom-made simulacrum, just for little old me.’
Frank looked a bit put out.
‘Don’t take it personally, pal,’ I said. ‘You weren’t even on the scene last time me and the magic lady did a job together. I’ll introduce the pair of you soon enough.’
You might be wondering what Stella looks like, and given that she was made by a trio of witches, you could be forgiven for thinking green, wrinkly and warty. If that’s the case, get ready to have your hair blown back, because Stella Familiar is a looker. Built with a perpetually camera-ready face and hair so thick you could swing from it, Stella has the kind of rarified body you mostly see stepping from the back of slick black limousines. The woman looks more like a catwalk model than London’s first line of defence against the Devil’s unholy minions, but don’t let that fool you—she could kick your arse from here to Timbuktu and not put a hair out of place doing it.
Stella’s fancy out-of-office message went on. ‘I can only assume things are desperate for you to have broken into my house and put your sticky finger all over my pentagram—’
‘You don’t know the half of it, darling.’
‘—but I’m afraid I’m currently unavailable.
‘You what?’
‘Right now I’m on a pilgrimage in a faraway land, communing with Galaeta, the First Witch.’
‘Are you joking me?’
‘Rest assured that my duties are being looked after in my absence—’
‘Okay, here we go…’
‘—by the Academy of Myth Management.’
And with that, Stella was gone.
‘That’s it? No contact number? Fuck.’
‘Is something the matter?’ asked the Arcadian, sauntering into the room shirtless and towelling his chiselled blue face. ‘Who are Myth Management?’
‘They’re a bureau who maintain the balance between this world and the ones beyond. I’ve done some consultancy work for them before. Bit of an old boys’ club, but good at what they do.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘Nothing much, only that they were blown sky-high recently when a Greek god tried to muscle his way into the city.’
‘They’re gone?’
‘Might as well be. They won’t be operational for months, maybe even years.’
The Arcadian’s mouth fell open. ‘We don’t have that long.’
Frank rolled his eyes in a, No shit, way.
The fae paced the room, old floorboards groaning sympathetically beneath his feet. ‘Is there anyone else who can help?’
‘None that I know of. Or none who’ll help us, anyway.’
The fae collapsed on the dented couch. ‘So we’re fucked?’
It wasn’t a particularly regal way of putting it, but it was bang on the money.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Getting to Know You
I had Frank fetch the kid a tub of something sweet from Stella’s freezer, then the pair of us sat either side of him on the couch.
‘This is magnificent,’ said the fae, stress-eating his little heart out.
‘Pretty good, right?’
‘Good? It’s ambrosia.’
He ate the stuff like he was stuffing a musket.
‘If you like that, you should try the one with the little chocolate fish in it.’
I waited until the last of the ice cream was gone then made this suggestion: ‘What about going back to Arcadia? If all the people chasing you are here, why stick around? Why not go home?’
I sort of knew there must have been a reason the kid hadn’t already gone with that option, but I needed to hear it.
‘I can’t go back. My people, the unseelie fae… we were banished from our homeland.’
Of course. Why else would they abandon Arcadia? Mixing blood with the Vengari was only a means to an end, a way to survi
ve in the Big Smoke. Given the choice, they’d naturally kick their feet up in the pastoral utopia they called home.
‘Banished by who?’ I asked.
The kid took the kind of breath you take before telling a painful and lengthy story. ‘It wasn’t long after we left your world that the discord began. There were those in the Seelie Court who believed we needed to concentrate our future efforts on finding a way to return to Britain, and those who felt we should be satisfied where we were.’
‘About that: what were you doing sniffing around our manor anyway?’
‘Looking for babies. We stole them, raised them, enslaved them. It is a practice I always abhorred, but one that was embraced by my family, who relied on human labour to build and maintain their palaces.’
Palaces, plural. I dread to think how many kids were snatched to make sure the Arcadian and his evil ilk got to live in the lap of luxury.
‘Back to the banishing,’ I prompted, eager to get to the part of the story where his folks received their comeuppance.
The kid went on, his voice thick with regret. ‘Over the centuries the discord grew deeper and a rift formed. There were the common people who wished to leave human slavery in the past, and those determined to cling to tradition: the monarchy and the aristocracy. Eventually, it led to a revolution.’
‘And let me guess; the hoi-polloi won out?’
The kid nodded ruefully. ‘We were branded Unseelie and evicted from our palaces, and now here we are, hiding underground and climbing into bed with blood-suckers. Anything to claw back the power that was taken from us.’
‘Except you don’t play that game. Why is that?’
‘Call me old-fashioned, but I believe exploiting the rights of others to further my own ends is wrong.’
I smiled. ‘I guess the apple sometimes does fall far from the tree, eh?’
We sat on the couch immersed in that thought; a dead man sandwich with a fairy filling. The kid was shivering, and not just because of the ice cream he’d munched his way through. I hadn’t realised on account of being a ghost, but the coven was cold through to its bones. Since it seemed like this fireside chat might go on for a bit, I decided to cosy things up by tossing a spell into the hearth. A lively spark arced into the pile of dry wood contained in the firebox and caught with a satisfying woof. The virgin flames curled and swayed, flicking this way and that as they bathed us in their warmth.
‘Clever trick,’ said the kid.
‘It’s literally the only bit of magic I know besides the stuff that got us in here.’
And even then it had taken me years of sleepless nights and singed eyebrows to perfect.
‘We haven’t spoken about Tali for a while,’ I said, moving the conversation along.
The kid turned to me ever so slowly. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Lots of things, but the main one I keep coming back to is how did you two meet? How does a fairy prince end up romancing a London call girl?’
Frank leaned in, ears pinned back. He was a real sap when it came to this kind of stuff. You know he once told me that Pretty Woman was his favourite film? Not sure I was supposed to share that, but there you go.
‘It began not long after we arrived here,’ said the Arcadian, sharing his meet-cute. ‘I was in disguise, taking a tour of the city—avoiding my parents, really—when my feet carried me into a hotel; one of those upmarket affairs with a view of the river and a rooftop pool. I was drinking on my own at the bar when I found her, or rather, she found me.’
‘Let me guess, she asked if you were looking for a good time?’
He laughed. ‘Something like that.’
‘Only, the hard-sell didn’t last too long.’
‘It did not. We talked about our lives—as much as we were willing to share right then—and really got to know each other. It turned out we had a lot in common.’
‘The son of a king and a streetwalker?’
‘Tali was more than that,’ he snapped. ‘Much more.’
Frank buzzed his lips, desperate for me to stop interrupting and let the kid finish his story.
‘I’m sorry, go on.’
The kid shook off a frown. ‘Our roots were very different, but we’d both been dealt a rough hand in life. I was being forced into an unwanted marriage by my family, while Tali had been disowned by hers. We were two loners, drifting aimlessly, but we’d finally found something we could hold onto. Each other.’
Frank practically had love hearts in his eyes, the big Jessie.
‘So that was that—you met in a hotel bar and fell in love?’
‘Not straight away, no.’
‘Right. I mean, obviously it must have taken longer than that.’
He smiled. ‘Yes. We didn’t actually say the words until later that night.’
I had to hand it to the kid, he could spin a yarn.
‘Mooooore,’ Frank mooed.
The Arcadian laughed and picked up where he’d left off. ‘After some more conversation, Tali let me know she’d seen through my disguise, so I decided to drop the pretence and reveal my true nature. Frequenting a common bar seemed ill-fitting after that, so I suggested we head to a place I knew that better suited the mood: a pub by the name of The Beehive.’
‘The ‘Hive!’
‘Oh, so you’ve heard of it?’
Had I bloody heard of it? I’d been there once already since I took Tali’s case. If just one of the piss-heads that propped up Lenny’s bar had mentioned an Arcadian coming in with a high-class human escort on his arm, we might not be in this mess right now.
‘Yes, I’ve heard of it,’ I replied, keeping my lid on.
‘We played darts that night,’ the kid said, reminiscing. ‘We had fun. So much fun. We were at the end of a game when I bet Tali she couldn’t score a bullseye. She told me if she did I’d have to marry her. I agreed, and she took the shot between her legs, doubled over, upside down.
And? screamed Frank’s mile-wide eyes.
‘And... bullseye.’ He clapped his hand to his heart as if pierced by Cupid’s arrow.
Hell of a shot. I wondered for a moment if Tali had something up her sleeve besides a killer throwing arm.
‘No magic involved?’
‘None,’ he assured me. ‘At least not the kind you’re talking about.’
It was a sweet tale, spoken by a sweet kid. I was starting to understand why Tali was so reluctant to let him go. Why she was prepared to move Heaven and Earth to get him back.
‘Is that a tear I see in your jaded eye?’ asked the kid, a smile teasing the corners of his lips.
I swiped a sleeve across my face. ‘The fire’s drying my eyeballs out, that’s all.’
Being as Frank had no tongue to speak with, it sounded as if he was talking with a mouthful of sticky Brie, but the words, ‘Youuuu’re ghoooost,’ came through loud and clear.
‘Shut up, meat bag,’ I shot back, giving him a quick cuff to the canister for pointing out the impossibility of my deceit.
When I looked back to the kid I expected him to still be wearing the smirk, but it was already gone.
‘I miss her. I miss what we had.’
‘I know, but come on, a part of you must have known this was doomed from the start. Look at what you had stacked against you: your family, the Vengari, the city itself. How were you ever going to make it work?’
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘With Tali by my side, nothing seemed impossible.’
A lump rose in his throat, quickly swallowed down. What he was going through I could only imagine. His love for Tali had been so bright, so pure, but it had brought about her end. An end he should have shared but was too frightened to face. And now here he was, a hunted man, loathed by everyone.
I saw myself in him. A young me. Naive. Lovestruck. Damned. Sure, he’d made mistakes, but for the right reasons. The kid was prepared to give up everything to be with Tali: his tribe, his crown, his power. All of it, flushed down the crapper. I could respect that. But r
espect wasn’t going to fix this problem. The Vengari and the fae would do anything to get him to the altar and cement their pact. And if that happened… maybe the kid was right. Maybe death was the better option.
‘Couldn’t we just stay here until the familiar returns?’ he said, shaking me from my thoughts. ‘Surely no one in their right mind would break into a witches’ coven... no offence.’
‘Some taken.’
I mulled over his proposition, as did Frank. Or maybe he was dreaming of a piping hot plate of cow brains—the two looks were pretty much indistinguishable from one another.
‘We can’t stay here,’ I said, having marinaded on the idea. ‘Stella could be on her pilgrimage for a long while yet. Plenty of time for your stalkers to scope this place out.’
They only had to draw a line between me and Stella—known accomplices—and we’d be facing a home invasion in no time.
‘Then there’s nowhere left to go,’ said the Arcadian. ‘It’s over.’
‘Not until the fat lady sings it ain’t. Come on, kid, do you really want to spend the rest of your life stuck in this hole?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Then let’s go,’ I cried, shooting to my feet. ‘Forget about hiding. Let’s find a way to deal with this mess and put an end to it.’
He laughed a laugh of disbelief. ‘You really think I’m safer out there than in here?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. All I know is, we can’t just sit on our arses and wish this mess away. We have to keep moving. If I managed to chase you down, imagine how easy it’ll be for a whole clan to get their claws in you.’
‘So what are you proposing? Flee the city?’
‘Nah, that plan’s totally up the spout now.’
The fae hammered his knees with his fists. ‘I need to get out of here. I can’t survive in London. If you don’t want to help, at least show me the way back to the train station so I can make my own way.’
‘You haven’t thought this through. The vamps have a tonne of manpower at their disposal. They’ll have every exit out of the city stitched up now they know you’re a flight risk.’
It was easy to forget that the Vengari were legion. Given their low profile, you could be fooled into thinking they were thin on the ground, but the fact was, they were an infestation. The kind you don’t see. The kind that hides in the cracks and crevices.
Deadly Departed: A Supernatural Thriller (Fletcher & Fletcher, Paranormal Investigators Book 2) Page 20
