Bitter Seed of Magic (9781101553695)

by Mcleod, Suzanne

  ‘Inspector,’ I said conversationally, ‘if it turns out the dead girl isn’t fully human, do you really want the fae community’ – and by ‘fae community’ we both knew I meant Finn – ‘to know you delayed matters unnecessarily?’

  After a moment she turned, high spots of angry colour staining her cheeks. ‘Sergeant, you and Ms Taylor have made your points. If you can assure me of the undamaged retrieval of the spells, then I’ll authorise Spellcrackers.com to do so.’

  Relief flooded into me. ‘Thank you, Inspector.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, Ms Taylor. Just remove the spells, and then remove yourself.’ She turned on her heel and strode out.

  I narrowed my eyes at the circle. After dealing with Witch-bitch Crane, removing the spells was going to be the easy part.

  Wasn’t it?

  Chapter Three

  Ten minutes later, the authorisation forms were signed, my fee – hardly worth bothering with, if it weren’t for the principle – agreed, and the preparations nearly finished. Once DI Crane had capitulated, she’d gone into whirlwind mode; anyone would think she wanted rid of me!

  I watched as she reached inside her briefcase and carefully extracted a large padded velvet bag. Slipping the bag off, she held up an unframed mirror the size of a dinner plate. ‘This is a solid silver casting mirror, Ms Taylor. I have two of them; one for each of the spells.’ She leaned over and gently positioned the mirror on top of its padded pouch inside the circle. ‘They are extremely costly. Please try not to damage them.’

  I had no intention of even touching them; silver might well be the best way for witches to isolate magic – especially when you want to pick it apart at leisure – but it’s not the easiest to use when you’re allergic to it. My usual method – tagging unwanted spells to a salt block, then cracking the salt block along with the spell – was messy but effective, but it wasn’t going to leave much to investigate. I could think of other things I’d be more comfortable transferring the spells to, like synthetic spell-crystals, or a lump of wood, even a plastic bucket – after all, magic isn’t fussy; with enough focus, spells can be attached to anything – but the DI was the one running the show, so the silver casting mirrors were it.

  She stood up and waved a hand at the circle. The thick white candles standing at the five points – air, earth, fire, water and spirit – flickered into life, the red neon magic in the circle glittered like the Milky Way, and the smudge sticks of smouldering sage flared, their herbal smoke twisting up to gather, cloud-like, against the curved brick roof of the mortuary.

  ‘All ready for you, Ms Taylor,’ she said with a cheerful edge to her voice.

  I stifled a grimace. Never mind the mirrors; I wasn’t happy about the rest of the magic show either, something she was well aware of, judging by her sudden change in attitude.

  Trouble was, while magic might not be fussy – or something you can talk to or reason with – it definitely has a will of its own; and it tends to be unpredictable and capricious at times, especially around me. Being sidhe, and made of magic, has its disadvantages. Of course, witches are human – or at least their DNA doesn’t show the paternal sidhe side of their parentage – and they have their own disadvantage; they need all their textbook rituals in order to manipulate the magic. But, for me, all the DI’s extras just meant added complications.

  I waved my own hand at the circle. ‘Is all the paraphernalia really necessary?’

  ‘Ms Taylor,’ she said briskly, ‘we’re in the centre of London, one of the busiest cities in the world, and I am responsible for its magical Health and Safety, among other things. We have to take precautions against every eventuality, no matter how slight. So yes, “all the paraphernalia”, as you so charmingly put it, is necessary.’

  Probably true, though I was certain if she could get away with making things more difficult for me, she would. Needing more reassurance, I took stock of my audience. Constable Martin was staring studiously at nothing; she wasn’t going to grass up her boss. Hugh watched from near the mortuary’s entrance, his huge bulk almost blocking out the sunlight; he was on my side, but magic wasn’t his forte. The only other person around was on the opposite side of the circle: Doctor Craig, the doctor on police call.

  He was crouched down, scratching his almost unreadable bird-footprint notes on the yellow pad balanced on his tweed-trousered knee. His familiar bald pate, with its halo of grey curls parting over his jug-like ears, gleamed in the candlelight. He looked up, as if suddenly aware I was studying him, gave me a vague smile along with a quick head-to-toe assessment, then returned to his yellow pad. He was famous for his note-taking at HOPE, the Human Other and Preternatural Ethics clinic, where he was doing hands-on research into 3V (vampire venom virus) and where I volunteered, and both his presence and the obsessive, scratchy noise of his pen made me more at ease.

  He hit my internal radar as a straight human, though I knew he could see and sense magic, thanks to a touch of magical blood somewhere in his ancestry. And he’d always made it clear he’d be happier without the consultancy work he did for the police – making life better for the living was his thing – so no way was he in the DI’s pocket. And none of her preparations had fazed him.

  Thinking about Dr Craig’s ethos reminded me why I was here. I looked at the girl; she was dead, but finding out what killed her – whether it was the curse or something else – and stopping it from happening again could make others’ lives better, maybe even save some too. So worrying about DI Crane having it in for me was wasting time. I dug out half a dozen liquorice torpedoes and crunched them quickly: the sugar boost makes it easier to work the magic. I handed my jacket to Hugh for safekeeping, touched Grace’s gold pentacle for comfort and offered up a brief prayer for success to whatever gods might be listening.

  And stepped inside the circle.

  DI Crane muttered something vaguely Latin-sounding behind me, magic prickled over my skin and the circle sprung up around me with an audible crack, like the jaws of a swamp dragon snapping shut. The dome of magic loomed over me like a giant inside-out multi-mirrored disco ball, reflecting my distorted face back at me, and I saw myself blinking in shock. What the hell had she drawn her circle with? This wasn’t standard. It should have been a nice clear dome, like a huge soap-bubble blown by a child. I took a deep, calming breath—

  —it felt like I was trying to inhale a cactus—

  Silver!

  She’d put silver dust in the circle.

  Fuck! She hadn’t just loaded the circle for demons, but for vampires too. My pulse sped up and I looked past the myriad ethereal mirrors to see her watching me with narrowed eyes. Was the silver dust just a normal precaution . . . or had she used it deliberately, knowing my father was a vampire?

  I shelved the questions. Most of London’s fae knew I had a sucker for a father, so it wasn’t much of a secret, not now, and I didn’t have time to dwell on the Inspector’s possible motives. I wasn’t even sure I had time to deal with the spells before the silver knocked me unconscious.

  Concentrating on slowing my pulse and my breathing to minimise the silver’s effect, I knelt on the floor next to the dead girl. I gently took her damp hand in mine, double-checking she didn’t have any more than the two spells on her: flesh-to-flesh contact makes it easier to sense the magic. I frowned. Her skin was wrinkled from being in the water, but it was still soft and pliable; either rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet, or it had been and gone . . . only the body looked too undamaged to have been in the water long enough for rigor to have passed. Still, time and silver weren’t waiting for me.

  I released her hand and plunged both of mine into the mass of magic binding her, flinching as the dirty-white ropes writhed around my lower arms, feeling like cold slippery eels. Gritting my teeth, I ignored the rest of the circle’s distracting magic and focused on the rope spell. I called it and the ropes pulled away from the body with a nauseating sound like flesh being ripped from bone, and a sweet, rank smell assaulted my nostrils. Shud
dering, I gathered the bundle into my arms and tried not to think how they were starting to resemble a mass of rotten intestines; or how the more I pulled at the ropes, the more the girl’s body twisted and jerked like a fish struggling to escape a hook.

  An urgent gasp almost broke my focus. Annoyed, I frowned up at Dr Craig.

  ‘She’s bleeding,’ he shouted, pointing towards the girl’s head.

  Bleeding? I froze in shock. She couldn’t be bleeding, she was dead!

  Wasn’t she?

  But there was definitely a small puddle of blood spreading out from beneath her head.

  ‘Genny, you need to start resuscitating her,’ he ordered. ‘Inspector Crane, you need to open the—’

  The rest of his words were lost as I yanked at the last of the ropes and slid them down onto the nearest silver casting mirror, squashing them on with my hands and my will. A distant part of me registered the stinging burn in my palms, the sharp scrape of silver in my throat as I sucked air deep into my lungs, the brief dilation of the girl’s pupils as I leaned over her head, pinching her nose and tipping her chin. I fastened my mouth to hers and forced my own breath into her body. I averted my head, inhaled, then breathed into her mouth again; watching the girl’s chest rise—

  Why the hell didn’t DI Crane break the circle?

  Another breath; another slight lift of the girl’s chest.

  The ropes had to be some sort of Stasis spell, trapping the girl at the point of dying, maybe.

  Breathe again.

  For fuck’s sake, get a move on, Inspector.

  I clasped my hands together in a fist and raised them over my head, bringing them down on the girl’s chest with a hollow-sounding thud.

  DI Crane swam into my sight: she was on her knees outside the circle, sweat beading her forehead as she traced glyphs on the outside of the mirrored dome with panicked, jerky movements. Behind her, Constable Martin was gripping the inspector’s shoulders, her eyes closed in concentration; and looming behind both of them was Hugh’s worried red-dusted face, alongside half a dozen others.

  Crap, what the hell was wrong?

  I sucked in more air. The copper smell of blood mixed with the rank sweetness and masked the sharp scrape of silver.

  ‘I can’t break the circle,’ DI Crane shouted, her voice coming as if through a thick wall. ‘The silver—blood—sealed . . .’

  I fastened my mouth back on the girl’s as my mind raced to catch up: Silver to hold a vampire—fresh blood in the circle—Shit, maybe my vamp half was screwing with the circle’s containment magic?

  I breathed out.

  ‘You’ll have to crack it,’ she shouted.

  I briefly raised my head to take in more air, and focused on the magical dome of mirrors and the anxious group of police behind them. No way could I crack the dome; the mirrors might not be physical, but the salt and sand and bone in the circle were, and they would turn into enough shrapnel to flay the skin off anyone standing too close. I’d have to absorb the magical dome instead. Absorbing magic was never fun; absorbing sharp pieces of mirror, however metaphysical they might be, was going to be a fucking nightmare . . .

  —I lowered my mouth to the girl’s—

  She coughed and retched, filling my mouth with bitter-tasting liquid, and I swallowed reflexively, shock, disbelief and hope coursing through me.

  ‘She’s alive,’ I yelled.

  The circle had to open – now!

  I hurriedly but carefully rolled her over into the recovery position, then thrust out my arms, palms up, and called the magic. The candles guttered and snuffed out; a wind howled and buffeted my body; the dome of mirrors rattled, glowing red with reflected neon and blood . . . Time seemed to stand still as the Glamour spell peeled away from the girl and I saw her true face. No longer human-pretty, she had small, black bead-like eyes, a hooked beak of a nose, thin, almost nonexistent lips and a receding chin: a faeling, and one with corvid blood, going by the black feathers growing from her scalp. The feathers were stringy with blood, and the shape of her head was oddly uneven . . . Time started again, and the mirrors exploded into feather-winged flames and flew towards my heart like iron-tipped darts to a magnet.

  I had a moment to think, Oh crap! before they hit—

  —but the pain didn’t come—

  Instead, something grabbed me, and yanked me out of the circle.

  Chapter Four

  After an infinitely long moment of disorientation, the oddly light feeling in my bones told me that I’d been plucked out of the humans’ world and was now somewhere in Between.

  Between is the gap that links the humans’ world and the Fair Lands. And unlike those places, Between is still malleable enough that with enough power and will, you can mould it into whatever you desire. Of course, depending on the magic’s mood, its interpretation of your desires can be unpredictable at best, probably nightmarish at worst.

  Much like the owner of the pale gold eyes, with their vertical, cat-like pupils, into which I was looking. I recognised the eyes and their owner, of course – hard not to when she was the only sidhe I’d ever met. Not that recognising her was going to help much. She wasn’t exactly the type you could get any meaningful answers from, not being fully compos mentis. Which might account for her . . . outfit.

  Her head was crowned with a corona of yellow and white honeysuckle flowers, and long stems of golden heart-shaped leaves twined through the hip-length curls of her silver-blonde hair. Her dress was a flowing robe of yellow silk which billowed around her like sails in a nonexistent wind. That same wind riffled the feathers on the huge gold wings that spread out from her shoulders and framed her slender form. She looked like the love-child of a Rossetti painting and a Russian icon.

  The angelic love-child raised her hands and suddenly we were standing in brilliant sunshine. Tiny cartoon-like cherubs, complete with rosy cheeks, golden wings and glittering halos, zipped around our heads like sugar-hyped garden fairies, white fluffy clouds nipped our ankles like a litter of playful puppies and the scent of honey, cinnamon and sweetened vanilla fragranced the air. Above us curved a twenty-foot-high dome of magic, painted the sapphire blue of a clear summer sky. Etched into the blue was the smiling image of a benign old man with a long white beard.

  I’d been beamed up to Disney Heaven. Lucky me.

  The angelic sidhe looked to be in her late teens (although since she was virtually immortal, gauging her physical age by her looks was a guessing game I was never going to win) and she was staring at me with the expectant look of a young child who knows she’s done something clever and is eagerly waiting for the pay-off: adult amazement.

  I got the hint: I was supposed to do something – only I didn’t know what . . . I flashed back to the last (and only) time I’d met her: I’d been knocked out by magic, and as I’d come round she’d been leaning over me. That time she’d been dressed up like an angel from a colouring book: Cinderella’s Christmas Spectacular, and so I’d called her ‘Angel’ when she’d refused to tell me her real name. Obviously the Disney Heaven scene was meant to jog my memory, and it did. It was also starting to scare the crap out of me. I couldn’t begin to imagine how much juice it took to make this huge patch of make-believe exist, let alone to bring me here. Nor what an über-powerful sidhe who had the mental age of a five-year-old could do if she decided to throw a tantrum . . . like the one about to hit any moment now, judging by the speed at which her expression was turning sulky.

  ‘You’re supposed to say the magic words.’ She stamped her foot. ‘You said them last time!’

  Last time? I dredged my memory, then crossed my fingers behind my back. ‘Does this mean I’m dead?’ I said, hoping the words weren’t prophetic.

  She gave a delighted giggle and clapped her hands. ‘Do you feel dead?’ she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

  It was the same answer she’d given before – so we were obviously following a script. Trouble was, my copy was blank. I ad-libbed, ‘Not really. But then I didn’t fe
el dead the last few times it happened either.’

  Her laugh cut out and she peered closer, a small frown marring her delicate features, then she lifted her hand and poked her finger at my forehead. A jolt of raw power knocked me flat on my butt. ‘Bad!’ she exclaimed, her bottom lip sticking out in a sullen pout. Then she twirled away, humming tunelessly.

  I sat there, winded. ‘Nice to see you too, Angel,’ I muttered, wondering what the hell she could possibly want with me. Or maybe it wasn’t her that wanted me?

  Angel was one of Clíona’s Ladies. She’d gone AWOL from the Fair Lands last Hallowe’en and ended up in London. Clíona had been desperate to get her back, so in exchange for some information I’d needed, I’d found Angel and returned her safely to Clíona. In gratitude Clíona had granted me a boon: an offer of sanctuary at her court, the offer open for a year and a day, so long as I didn’t ‘bear a child’. Of course, if I did get pregnant then she’d kill me. Faerie gifts are to die for.

  But if it was Clíona who wanted me here, why wasn’t she putting in an appearance?

  ‘What I really need is a clue,’ I said under my breath.

  Something brushed against my hand, and when I looked down, the playful clouds were littered with black feathers.

  Goosebumps pricked my flesh. I quickly scanned the dome but could see no one other than Angel. Carefully, I gathered a handful of feathers and waved them at her. ‘Don’t suppose you know anything about these?’ I asked, keeping my tone light.

  She dashed over, bent down and peered into my face again. Something old and sly and dangerous shadowed the pale gold of her eyes and I froze, instinct turning my bones liquid with fear. A scream lodged in my throat and I had to force myself not to scuttle away and hide—

  Then It was gone and I sagged in relief as she squealed with excitement, snatched the feathers and tossed them into the air. They morphed into a murder of black crows and soared up to join the cartoon cherubs in their zipping flight paths. She flexed her long wings, gathered up her yellow robe and skipped away again.