Fire & Water

by Alexis Hall

  It was times like these that I really saw the value of Archer’s whiteboard. Not so much because I had a set of complicated clues to deal with today, but because it was getting borderline impossible to keep track of who all the players were. Unfortunately, I didn’t have one in the flat, and I hadn’t quite reached the part of the movie where I was scribbling on my own walls and connecting newspaper clippings with bits of string. Instead, I dug a roughly A3 size piece of paper out of the recycling—I think it had been packaging for something Elise had ordered—and smoothed it out as well as I could on the coffee table. I wrote “Tears” in the middle and drew a circle around it. Then I scribbled down the names of everybody I thought was involved: The Merchant of Dreams, Nimue, King, Rose Red, Fisher. I added lines linking them with labels like “stole from”, “at war with”, “wants revenge on”. The supporting cast—Corin, Percy, the Werewolves, the Demons—went down one side. Those needed more labels, although if I’m honest, several of them just said “WTF/NFC/???”. Which was my private code for “the significance of this element is unknown to me at present.”

  I stepped back and looked at the crumpled, scrappy map I’d put together. Yeah, I wasn’t sure it helped. I could be fairly certain that King would be tied up going for Nimue, and the Merchant was officially working through me at the moment. Weirdly, it looked like Fisher might be my biggest problem right now—he’d shown that he knew who I was and, unlike everybody else on the board, he didn’t have anything to distract him. That was worth keeping an eye on. Note to self: watch out for spunky chicks with New York accents. One thing was pretty clear though, I was on a clock. It wouldn’t be long before somebody made a play for either me, or the Tears, or both. Either way, priority number one was to go make nice with Tara Vane-Tempest.

  Oh joy.

  I sent a quick text telling Elise where I was going—I hadn’t seen her in a while, but that wasn’t unusual; she quite often worked funny hours on account of how she never got tired or, near as I could tell, bored. That done, I set out for Safernoc.

  The journey turned out to be quite pleasant. Sure, the Vane-Tempests lived in the middle of this big haunted forest in the middle of Oxfordshire, but even spooky faery woodlands are pretty at midday in midsummer, and it was one of the few environments where my current mode of transportation wasn’t totally out of place. Even the crumbling wolf-statues at the gate and the mossed-over fountain had a kind of jolly, oldey-worldey air when you saw them in full daylight. Growing up, I’d never really been the sort of kid who liked visiting old buildings and bits of ruin—in fact I’m still pretty convinced that there aren’t any kids who like visiting old buildings and bits of ruin, just parents who like to think that there are—but looking at Safernoc House on a day like this made me almost see the appeal. There were gardens, crenellations, and a bunch of rooms where famous dead people had slept while journeying to York or hiding from Oliver Cromwell. It could almost have been a nice day out if it wasn’t also full of entitled, predatory shapeshifters.

  I ambled up to the door and knocked. An unobtrusive gentleman whose job title I could only guess at—Butler? Valet? Door-getting-guy?—answered and asked me what the hell I was doing there. Only in more polite words. I explained that I was a friend of Ms. Vane-Tempest’s, which was sort of half true. But I thought “I kind of know Ms. Vane-Tempest from a bunch of weird supernatural stuff we were both involved in and also I’m pretty sure she still wants to fuck me” would have been, wha’dyacallit? Indecorous. The door half-closed on me, and door-getting-guy muttered something to some other guy, who dashed off back into the house. There was more muttering when he got back, and door-getting-guy stood aside, a little snottily, I thought, for a man whose entire job was to pull on a bit of wood. The Marchioness, they told me, was in the white drawing room. I’d never lived in a house with so much as one drawing room, let alone one with enough drawing rooms that they had to be different colours so you could tell them apart.

  The white drawing room was decorated with the kind of tasteful understatement that you could only afford if you were tastelessly and overstatedly wealthy. Tara lounged on a sofa that looked more elegant than it did comfortable. She was wearing a stunning white dress that perfectly accented the furniture, because apparently in her world it was completely normal to have a different ensemble for every room in your fucking house.

  She smiled at me. It was—y’know, I’m looking for a word that isn’t “wolfish,” and I’m coming up pretty blank. “I thought I’d see you sooner, Kate Kane.”

  “Been busy.” I tried to ignore the fact that her voice was like really expensive chocolate, and that her eyes were either undressing me or sizing me up for the kill or, more likely, both. “Kidnappings, trips to Hell, the usual.”

  “My, my.” Her gaze swept over me. She had a hungry look about her, but then Tara always had a hungry look about her. “You do have a lot of irons in the fire.”

  This was getting irritating. “Look. You know what I’m here for. You know why I need it. What’s it going to take?”

  Tara rose, all animal grace and power. “Do you really think”—she crossed the floor towards me—“that any member of my family”—she was very close now—“since the Norman conquest, has sullied their hands”—she took hold of my fingertips and raised them gently until they were almost level with her lips—“with trade?” She let go of me abruptly and stalked away, leaving me very distracted and more than a bit pissed off.

  “Can we please”—I tried not to think about...anything inappropriate—“cut the all the better to eat you with crap?”

  “You’re really going to tell me how to behave in my own home, when you know I have something you desperately need.” Tara hit the words desperately need in a way that I tried super hard not to respond to.

  I moistened my lips, and when I did, I tasted the barest hint of sex and sulphur. Gethsemane. Maybe going to confront a sexually aggressive werewolf supermodel the day after you let a lust demon get its hooks in your soul was a bad idea. “I just want”—fuck this was difficult—“to get the Tears so that I can stop a violent nutcase taking over London. That’s good for everybody.”

  “What do I care what wizards do in the city? My only concern is the borders between worlds.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sacred birthright. We walk the edges of all things, that the nightmares not consume, blah blah.” I’d heard this before. Like, a lot. “It’s bullshit. Hand over the bottle. It’s not yours, it belongs to the Merchant of Dreams. You have no right to keep it. Give it the fuck back.”

  I blinked, and she was in my face again. She was breathing in a steady, heavy rhythm, staring into my eyes with this expression that said she was really close to tearing my throat out. Pretending to be human had gone out the window, and right now it was pretty fucking clear that Tara was a wolf in a person suit. It shouldn’t have been quite that much of a turn-on. “You begin to bore me, Kate Kane.”

  I held her gaze. “Sorry I cut into your afternoon nap.”

  “Understand this,” she told me. “Nothing is more important to me or mine than our heritage. We take nothing more seriously. No amount of bluster will change that. We do not drop weapons that can weaken the fabric of the world into the hands of untrustworthy dabblers with neither selection nor breeding.”

  “You are such a fucking snob.”

  “I am a guardian.”

  “So’s Nim. But she actually worked for the job.”

  She made a low, animal noise. I was half afraid she was going to bite me. I half wanted her to. Instead she ran her hand up the side of my neck, and wound her fingers in my hair. It was gentle, but promised not to be. “You really do despise me, don’t you?”

  “I don’t like people who think they’re better than everyone else.”

  She literally laughed in my face. It was a funny mix of contempt and affection. “The sad thing is, I think you genuinely believe that.”

 
“Prove me wrong.”

  She put her free hand on my hip and drew me closer. It was kind of invasive. No, cut that, it was very invasive. And I was going to get her to stop any second now. Any second. Now. Stay with it, Kate. “Are you suggesting that I should do as you ask merely to show you...how nice I am?” She was one of those people who made the word nice sound incredibly menacing.

  “I’m saying...” What was I saying? Between the heat, the leftover traces of Gethsemane’s demonic influence, and Tara’s total disregard for personal space, I wasn’t really thinking straight. I summoned up as much resolve as I could, and shoved her away from me. “I’m saying that my client wants their shit back. I’m saying the law—the actual real people law, and the ancient horsecrap laws that you and the faeries seem to run on—is on our side, and there is really fuck all you can do about it. In a human court, you’re handling stolen goods, in faery court—well faeries don’t have courts, but right now you’re holding on to something that the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter sees as theirs.”

  Tara brushed a strand of hair away from her face, and raised an eyebrow. “You’re here for the Witch Queen. Don’t pretend that you aren’t.”

  “I’m here for my client, who’s probably going to sell the Tears to Nimue, but that’s their problem, not yours.”

  She approached me again. What part of a violent shove in the other direction did the woman not understand? This time, she put her hand against my cheek, turning my head slightly like she was appraising a horse. “You know your problem, Kate Kane?”

  I did, but I wasn’t about to dignify that one with an answer. People had been telling me what my problem was since I was six.

  “You’re loyal,” she continued. “But you have no idea who to be loyal to. To your client? A covetous fae-blooded trickster who you must know is trying to ensnare you. Or the Witch Queen? Who has done nothing for you but ask you to fight in her wars. Or perhaps to your vampire lover? At least you know that she’s a self-centred bloodsucking fiend.” She was close again. Take-a-hint close. “Things are simpler here. There is family. There is pack. There is the chase.”

  I had to admit that when she put it like that, it did sound pretty appealing. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the loyalty-pack-family stuff that sounded appealing so much as the hot werewolf in evening wear. “Okay,” I tried. “This is important to me. It’s important to a whole lot of people. Fine, you don’t do trades. Great. I must be able to do something.”

  She put her lips by my ear. I could feel her breath on my neck. Still wasn’t totally sure she wouldn’t go for my throat. “And what kind of something might you be able to do?” Her voice was husky, rich and inviting.

  “Hold on.” I backed up fast. “Has this whole thing been a cheap sex ploy?”

  She did her best to look innocent. Nimue aside, very few of the women in my life have any ability to look innocent. “I did tell you I was all about the chase.”

  “So, what, you’ll let me get the weapon that will save a close friend and a lot of innocent people from a brutal death at the hands of a magic skinhead and his satanic granny, but only if I fuck you?”

  “You make it sound so vulgar. And anyway, that wasn’t what I was saying at all.”

  It was totally what she was saying. “Well?”

  “I simply mean,” she explained, “that you are asking me to do you a favour, but you haven’t been particularly...friendly towards me.”

  Yeah. That was basically the same thing. I went to sit down. She lounged next to me. Not aggressively next to me, but on the same sofa in a make-sure-you-know-whose-territory-this-is kind of a way. I stared at her. “Do you have any idea how much of a child you’re being right now?”

  “Don’t be like that. I just know how to go after what I want.”

  “So do I. The way I see it, we can go through this whole big rigmarole where you kick me out, I break in, you put me in the dungeon again, I escape again and then either I swipe the Tears on the way or somebody else grabs them while we’re both distracted, or we sort this out right now like grownups.”

  Tara reclined, stretching out in a way that gave me a very good view of all the reasons I was a fool not to take the “bang her” option. “You seem to be arguing that we should both give in and accept that this is only going one way.”

  I looked at her. At that fabulous white dress on that fabulous white sofa in this fabulous white drawing room on this fabulous summer morning. If I didn’t have a girlfriend and the last vestiges of my self-respect, I’d have been really tempted to say, for want of a better word, fuck it. Unfortunately I had both of those things. “You know what?” I got up. “I tried, I failed. Lock your doors, Tara, because somebody is going to come for that stuff. It might be the Merchant. It might be some weird magic vampire. It might be me. Catch you on the flip side.”

  I walked out. At least, I started walking out. Tara caught me by the arm. “Why so hasty?” She always had to have the last word, didn’t she?

  “Because”—I turned back around—“I am through playing your pointless rich-girl games.”

  She glared at me. Then she raised a hand and one of her many flunkies appeared unobtrusively at the door.

  “My Lady?”

  “Bring me the artefact.”

  The servant bowed, vanished, and reappeared a moment later holding the little crystal vial of the Tears of Hypnos. Tara took it from him, and held it in front of me.

  “You want it?” she said. “Take it.”

  This was a trap. This was so obviously a trap. And I did love me an obvious trap. I grabbed the bottle.

  Her hand closed over my wrist. There were a lot of ways this could go and I thought I’d like about half of them and regret about two thirds. “Just one thing.”

  “Which part of I’m not fucking you did I make unclear?”

  “The part where you meant it.” Nobody could beat a werewolf for a predatory smile. “But that wasn’t what I was referring to. I told you this isn’t a trade, but it is a peace offering. The pack does not want war with the cold and dark, and we know how much the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter values his-her property. Let it be known in faerie that we made them this gesture of respect.”

  “I’m not—” I wasn’t sure what I wasn’t, but it was my instinct to deny everything faerie related if I could possible help it. “If that’s what it takes.”

  Tara gave me a smoky, challenging look. “No more games, Kate Kane. My grandmother would have us destroy the Tears and risk the wrath of the ice and the shadow. My cousin would have me hand them over to you and your various patrons as a sign of our friendship. I am choosing to trust that he is correct, that we would be wiser to have you and your queen and your client as allies rather than enemies. I hope sincerely that you will prove him right. That you will prove me right.”

  She let me go and I held up my prize to give it a closer look. It seemed like such a small thing for so many people to have been killed over. “You know I’m still not sleeping with you?”

  “Not yet. But you forget how patient a wolf can be.”

  I was still pretty sure that there was going to be a catch. “And what exactly do you get out of this?” I seemed to be saying that a lot. “It seems like a lot to give up for goodwill.”

  “I told you, my family has never been in trade. There is nothing quite so vulgar as the idea that a gift requires payment. I am doing this for you, Kate Kane, but you stand for your mother, your client and your queen. That is how bonds are formed, that is how alliances are made.”

  I really was not happy with how many different people I was apparently standing in for now. Most days being me was something I could only barely do right. “And what about that sacred duty you’re always on about?”

  “What about it?” Tara looked genuinely perplexed. “I’m not playing with you. I’m trusting you. You tell me that this will be safe in your poss
ession and that what I gain by passing it over outweighs what I might lose by surrendering it. I am choosing to believe you.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that, and while I was trying to figure it out, she closed the distance between us again. “That doesn’t really answer the question.”

  She gently closed my fingers around the vial and guided my hand towards my pocket. “You spend so much time with vampires, witches”—she sniffed my hair—“devils if I’m not mistaken. All of them are deceivers by nature. We are not. You will always know what I want. You will always know where I am. Take the weapon. Fix your little magicians’ war. And when you do, think of me.”

  I took my hand out of my pocket and gently pushed her a couple of steps backwards. “Thanks?”

  “Don’t fuck this up,” she said. “I wasn’t joking about the risks.”

  Great. No pressure. The flunky appeared at my shoulder, providing an extremely subtle indication that it was time for me to leave. I left.

  The ride home was as pleasant as the ride in. Apart from the knowledge that I was carrying a bottle of magical juice that could—actually I still wasn’t really sure what it could do apart from “anything,” and “tear down the boundaries between realities,” whatever the hell that meant—I had that mixed feeling that wasn’t quite satisfaction and wasn’t quite anxiety. The chilled-but-on-edge sense you got when things were about to be completely fine or completely the opposite. At least Tara had...what had she done, exactly? She’d made it pretty clear that getting in my pants was high on her list of priorities, but I didn’t think it came above the whole we-walk-the-ways-between-the-worlds thing. Either she was a lot more scared of the Merchant and their patron than she was letting on, or she meant it when she said she thought I’d be okay to take this thing. God, I hoped she was right. Absolute worst-case scenario, I handed it over to Nim and she was all bwahahahaha, now I shall rule the universe. But I really didn’t think she had it in her. Second worst-case scenario I just fucking lost it. That’d happened to me before, but last time it had been because Corin screwed me over. This time I had one hundred percent less femme fatale in my life and one hundred percent more quirky indestructible sidekick. Third worst-case scenario, King or Fisher or a leftover arm of Henry Percy’s vampire cult kicked down my door and tried to kill me. And, sigh, what did it say about my life that housebreaking and attempted murder were third on my list of concerns for the immediate future.