Fire & Water
Author: Alexis Hall
Date: 2019-11-08T20:21:51+00:00
Description: I like my women like I like my whiskey: embroiled in a magical war Ten years ago I fought for the Witch Queen of London in a mystical showdown against a King Arthur wannabe with a shaved head and a shotgun. Back then, the law did for him before he could do for us. I don’t think we’ll get that lucky again. As if the mother of all wizard battles wasn’t bad enough, fate or destiny or a god with a really messed-up sense of humor has dropped a weapon that could rewrite the universe right into the middle of London, and anybody with half a sniff of arcane power has rocked up to stake their claim on i

I like my women like I like my whiskey: embroiled in a magical war

Ten years ago I fought for the Witch Queen of London in a mystical showdown against a King Arthur wannabe with a shaved head and a shotgun. Back then, the law did for him before he could do for us.

I don’t think we’ll get that lucky again.

As if the mother of all wizard battles wasn’t bad enough, fate or destiny or a god with a really messed-up sense of humor has dropped a weapon that could rewrite the universe right into the middle of London, and anybody with half a sniff of arcane power has rocked up to stake their claim on it. Last time this happened, the city went to pieces. This time, it might just go to Hell.

Also, still dating a vampire. Still got an alpha werewolf trying to get in my pants. Still sharing a flat with a woman made of animated marble—only now apparently there are two of her. But you know what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same crap that’s been trying to kill you your entire life.

This book is approximately 96,000 words

One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

Also available from Alexis Hall
and Carina Press

Iron & Velvet

Shadows & Dreams

Also available from Alexis Hall

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter

Prosperity

Liberty & Other Stories

There Will Be Phlogiston

Glitterland

Waiting for the Flood

For Real

Pansies

Looking for Group

How to Bang a Billionaire

How to Blow It with a Billionaire

How to Belong with a Billionaire

Content Note

Fire & Water contains some violence.

Fire & Water

Alexis Hall

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Prologue

My name’s Kate Kane. I’m a private investigator operating out of a dingy office just off Bow Street. I’m technically half-faery, but I don’t like to bring it up on account of how I don’t really get on with my mother. It’s one of those classic generational things. She’s a blood-drenched embodiment of primal hunger who keeps taking over my body and I’ve got a body I don’t want taken over. I suppose that’s what you call an impasse.

Fifteen years ago, I was kidnapped by a cult of vampire wizards and rescued by my dickhead then-boyfriend, now dickhead ex-boyfriend. Six months ago, the dickhead’s new girlfriend, Sofia, was kidnapped by the same cult of vampire wizards, and we rescued her together. Which is progress, I guess. She turned out to be some kind of weird sun prophet thing, but none of us have any idea what that means. And right now, she’s got A-levels to think about.

Around the same time, I was also fighting like hell with my girlfriend, who was all upset because I’d killed one of her best friends, lied about it, and then got her dragged up in front of the secret vampire council that, like, runs Europe or something. Looking back, I guess she had a point. They do say honesty is important in relationships, so when you’ve killed someone’s friends you should really consider telling them about it.

Oh, and there was a thing where some terrifying vampire queen from before the dawn of recorded history woke up and started killing pretty much everything in an effort to find this smashed up burial urn. It turned out she’d been let loose by the same cult who’d tried to sacrifice me when I was seventeen. Small world, huh? Anyway, the deal was that they wanted to keep everyone distracted while they did whatever big ritual they were doing because...well, everything was on fire and trying to kill me so I’m still a bit shaky on the details. As far as we figured out, it was something about usurping the throne of Apollo and, honestly, I didn’t even realise he still had a throne because, y’know, ancient Greeks. Key word there being “ancient”.

Long story short, the bad guys managed to pull off part one of a two-part solstice ritual, but I dropped a burning building on their heads straight after so probably everything’s fine and probably a megalomaniac vampire isn’t about to become king of the universe.

Probably.

Chapter One

Weddings & Fairytales

I woke to the taste of wine and rose leaves, propped myself up on my elbows and winched my eyes open. Julian was perched on the end of my bed. She wasn’t one for staying the night—midnight to six is kind of peak time for vampires—which meant that she’d broken in again. We really needed to talk about that.

She grinned, all blue eyes and bright teeth. “Good morning, sweeting.”

“Should I just give you a key?”

She pounced onto the mattress and stretched out alongside me. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you weren’t pleased to see me.”

“It’s—” I checked my watch. Then I checked it again because I was pretty sure it was taking the piss. “It’s twenty-five to six. I’d have trouble being pleased to see anybody.”

“You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?”

I rubbed my temples. I’d almost certainly forgotten. At that time in the morning I forgot most things. Then I unforgot. “Fuck. Wedding.”

“Wedding.”

That would explain why she was in black tie. Not that she normally needed an excuse. In fact, by her regular standards a tuxedo was understated. Most of her daywear had epaulettes.

“Give me a minute.” I hauled myself out of bed. I really should have got my outfit sorted the night before, but Julian had been visiting, which had left me kind of distracted. Truth be told, I was a bit short on appropriate kit. I could do funerals—and it might have said something about my social life that for a decade at least my friends and acquaintances had been dropping dead faster than they’d been pairing off—but weddings fell right through the gap in my wardrobe.

I turned to Julian. “Is this a frock thing or a suit thing?”

“Do you even own a frock?”

“I have dresses. I have”—I took a mental inventory—“at least three dresses.”

Julian sat up, tucking her knees under her chin. “I apologise. Never again will I question your sartorial diversity or your essential femininity. But, honestly, nobody is going to be looking at you.”

I sighed. “Yeah, yeah, everybody’ll be looking at the bride. Brides.”

“Wretched, isn’t it?” Julian looked genuinely insulted. “What is the point of being a creature of unthinkable fiendish power and dangerous beauty if you can’t be the centre of attention?”

“You get to bang hot PIs. Well, relatively hot PIs. Well, me.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, sweeting. Of the forty-seven professional investigators I’ve had sex with since 1874, you certainly make the top ten.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. “Y’know what? I’ll take it.”

Having thrown every item of clothing I owned onto the bed, the floor, or Julian’s head, I went suit. It was more my style and, besides, the last time I’d worn a dress to an event it had wound up getting ruined in a high-speed unicorn chase. To my surprise, Julian actually let me get ready without trying to lure me into an impromptu undead shagathon. I was beginning to think she was genuinely concerned about being late, which was new territory for me since being late was her standing operating procedure. It came with the whole package of being an immortal flibbertigibbet.

We emerged from the bedroom to find Elise waiting for us. Like always, she was up, dressed and looking immaculate while I was still debating whether I could get away with substituting coffee for mouthwash. There was nothing that quite beat living with somebody who didn’t eat, sleep, or sweat, and had been purpose-built by a skeevy wizard to conform to unobtainable beauty norms, to make you feel extra specially shitty in the morning. She’d left a French press on the dining table for me. That and a banana. We needed to talk about the bananas.

“Good morning, Miss Kane,” she said, “and Miss Saint-Germain. I hope that you will have a lovely time today.”

I groaned. “Too early, Elise. But thanks.”

“I did not hear you enter.” Elise inclined her head slightly towards Julian. “Did you discorporate into smoke and drift through the window again?”

Julian got the kind of pouty that needs eight centuries of practice. “You make it sound so prosaic. I’ll have you know that I’ve seduced more maidens with the mist and shadows bit than you’ve met in your entire life.”

“Since I was only animated a year and a half ago and have spent much of the intervening time either in the care of a gestalt rat consciousness or standing in Miss Kane’s spare room, that is, indeed, likely.”

“Wow”—Julian blinked—“you really need to get out more.”

Elise perked up visibly. “Oh, yes, Miss Saint-Germain. Getting out is one of my favourite activities. Why, only yesterday I went to the shops to purchase groceries for Miss Kane and saw many fascinating things. In particular, I met a staircase that moved. It sat next to a staircase that did not move, but I believe there was no jealousy between them.”

I drank my coffee. I quietly ignored the banana. “You going to be okay at the office today?” I asked. It wasn’t going to win the Nobel Prize for chitchat but Julian was getting that I’m bored and want to say something insulting look.

Elise hadn’t quite got the hang of talking to multiple people at once. If I hadn’t been used to it, the way her head snapped round would have weirded me out. “I have been working with you for some while now. I believe my skills will be adequate to the task. I will file.”

“Better you than me.”

“Yes, Miss Kane. You are very bad at it.”

Julian, Elise and I left the flat at about the same time. Elise took off in my car. These days it was more our car, or possibly even her car, since it had been completely wrecked in a supernatural duel last year and she’d refused to let me junk it. As for Julian and me, we’d be going by limo, one of the many perks of dating the vampire prince of pleasure. Although honestly I was surprised that it had sat outside my flat this whole time without getting keyed.

“You know,” I said, “showing up like this could seriously upstage the happy couple.”

“We’ll park around the corner and walk in. I’m not a complete narcissist.” That wasn’t even a little bit true, but I let it slide.

I lay back against the absurdly expensive upholstery. I’d developed something of a taste for sleeping in cars during the narrow window between Elise taking over the driving and Elise discovering hardcore German thrash metal. “Whose wedding is this exactly?”

“Violet. She’s an ex.” Julian nestled against me. “She’s marrying the evil witch she dumped me for. But I’ll be on my best behaviour, and refrain from ripping anyone’s throat out.”

I wrapped an arm around her. “Aww, somebody’s jealous.” Which, now I thought about it, wasn’t really the way I wanted my girlfriend to be feeling about a woman she’d broken up with half a century ago.

“I was,” she conceded. “But I’m mostly over it. And anyway”—she arched up and kissed me gently on the cheek—“I moved on.”

That was mostly reassuring. But something was still bugging me. “Hang on, when you say ‘witch’...”

“Metaphorically. Sort of. She set me on fire with her mind once.”

“That sounds pretty witchy to me.”

“I believe she’s technically a pyrokinetic. They did all sorts of research on that kind of thing back in the fifties.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Who’s they?”

“Oh, you know, the usual people. And you do realise”—she gave me her brightest, most impenetrable smile—“that this is technically a date, darling. Not an interrogation.”

The limo whisked us through London and out towards the leafy groves of Hertfordshire. The wedding was in one of those hotels that used to be some posh house back in the day. Back when your average rich person lived in a place big enough that you could cast six seasons of an ITV drama just from their servants. At Julian’s instructions, we parked a couple of streets away and walked together up the long, gravel drive towards the wedding party.

When we got close enough to see the other guests, it became awkwardly obvious that I was going to be the youngest person there by a good few decades. That still meant everybody else was closer to my age than my girlfriend was, which...was kind of a headfuck if I thought about it. I tried not to think about it.

Julian unlinked her arm from mine. “Save me a seat, sweeting.”

“Woah, woah, woah—you’re leaving me?”

“I’m walking Violet down the aisle. Didn’t I explain?”

She had not explained. “Isn’t that kind of weird?”

“Well, her father died in the early eighties, so it would be even weirder if he did it.” She paused. “Although I suppose, technically, he’s no deader than I am.”

I ignored her transparent attempt to get around me by being cute. “And I’m supposed to—what—make polite conversation with a bunch of nonagenarians?”

Julian shrugged. “It’s a wedding, darling. Say how wonderful everybody looks and ask people how they know the brides.”

Before I could make it clear that I was not letting her ditch me at her ex-girlfriend’s wedding, she kissed me goodbye and danced away into the crowd, leaving me alone and surrounded by pensioners.

Welp. Fuck. I was bad at social functions at the best of times. My usual strategy was to find something to eat or drink, and try to look as comfortable as possible with the fact that nobody was talking to me. Unfortunately there wasn’t a wineglass or a canapé in sight: just a bunch of total strangers who I had nothing in common with except a tenuous connection to London’s exciting smorgasbord of paranormal bullshit.

Eventually some doors opened, and the crowd began filing in for the ceremony. I went with the flow and ended up in a long oak-panelled hall. From there I was directed to a chair beside a slight woman with short grey hair. I stuck my hat on the seat next to me and took the opportunity to practise my basic social interaction.

“So,” I said in my best I-am-relaxed-in-formal-environments voice. “How do you know the brides?”

“I used to work with them.”

“What’d you do?”

She smiled and tapped the side of her nose. “All very hush-hush.”

Of course it was. Sometimes I thought you couldn’t throw a brick in this town without a sinister occult conspiracy watching from the shadows and making a careful note about where it landed.

I glanced around the room. I’m not sure what I’d expected the guest list at the wedding of a pair of ninety-year-old lesbians to look like, but once you adjusted for the fact that almost everybody was over seventy it was a really mixed bunch. The group I was sitting with were mostly hard-edged types, the sort of people who wore suits even if they didn’t have to. Some of the guests on the other side of the hall looked like the Rolling Stones circa two thousand and ten and others looked like they’d walked straight out of the day centre my granddad used to go to. Now that I thought about it, it made sense that the sort of person who’d date the vampire prince of pleasure would run with an eclectic crowd.

I mean, if I was getting married the guests would include a celibate incubus, an undead drag queen, a living statue, my dad, who’s had his eyes stolen by faeries, the woman who stole him back from faeries, a teenage oracle who’d insist on bringing my arsehole ex, a pack of werewolves, assuming it wasn’t too working class for them, possibly the entire Witch Court of London—and that was way more people than I was comfortable caring about. If I’d made the same list eighteen months ago, it would’ve been dad, Jenny and a bottle of cheap Scotch. Mind you, in either case I’d have to be marrying somebody and that would involve some fairly radical changes to my lifestyle. Because, let’s face it, my longest adult relationship has been with my hat.

The ceremony was pretty—well—pretty much like a wedding ceremony. Violet came down the aisle first, with Julian. She was wearing the traditional white wedding dress, and she reminded me a lot of my gran, tall and confident with thick, curly hair. Her wife-to-be, the one who’d set Julian on fire sometime in the middle of the last century, came next. She was smaller, frailer, and walked with the help of a frame, a bald, tattooed man at her side. Her hair was stark white and waist length. She shuffled up the aisle slowly but defiantly.

They made a cute couple in a grandparenty sort of way. I wasn’t one for big public rituals, and weddings, in particular, tended to make my teeth itch—maybe it had something to do with the cheating spouses who had been paying my bills for the best part of a decade. In a lot of ways it made more sense this way around—any pair of twentysomething idiots can decide to get married, but these two had actually stuck together for sixty-odd years and in my book that was a way better excuse for a party than just being young and impulsive. They did the vows thing and the kissing thing, and then the whole wedding party tromped out for the reception.

Liberated from her aisle-walking duties, Julian sidled over to me and slipped her arm around my waist. “Having fun?”

“Are you taking the piss?”

She sighed with a level of showmanship you could only get if breathing was an optional extra. “Honestly, you can fight a killer filth monster in a sewer or face down a millennia-ancient vampire queen, but I take you to a party and you go all to pieces.”

“Moral of that story: don’t take me to parties.”

“But how else am I supposed to show off that hot PI I’m banging?”

“I can never tell if you’re trying to be nice or trying to be clever.”

“I’m trying to be nice.” She gave me a frankly smirky grin. “Being clever comes naturally.”

We made our way through the hotel into some kind of ballroom. The happy couple waited just inside the door, greeting the guests as we passed. I kissed Violet on the cheek, told her she looked lovely which, to be fair, she did. I kissed her wife—Melissa, I remembered from the vows—and she smiled at me. She had a pretty smile, a mix of fragility and intensity.

“Melissa!” Julian bounced up beside me and took her by the hand. “Congratulations. You look so wonderful today that I can almost forgive the many times you tried to murder me.”

Melissa’s eyes sparkled. “My memory isn’t what it was, but last time I checked you were beating me five to two.”

“Three of those hardly counted.” Julian turned to me. “Tell her, sweeting, when you drop somebody off a bridge, it’s only a murder attempt if there isn’t a river underneath it.”

I put my hands up. “You know, I’m sensing that this is more complicated than I want to get into. Also we’re holding up the line.”

“Hang on to this one, Jules,” said Violet, “she’s sensible.”

We moved away from the doorway and found our assigned table. A discreet carafe of blood sat at one place setting. I’d gone with the cauliflower and white truffle soup myself. The rest of the afternoon passed in a haze of speeches, slightly-too-fancy food, and dancing pensioners. I was honestly semi-tempted to corner Violet and compare dating-Julian notes. There were a bunch of things I’d have liked to ask and, while Julian had left not so much a string as a macramé bedspread of ex-lovers behind her, disconcertingly few of them were still alive and in a position to talk. But you can never pin down the bride at a wedding and, anyway, it would have been a slightly awkward conversation. So, Vi, how did you handle the way she tries to kill your former partners?

At some point, between the floofy meringue dessert that I ate for Julian and the coffee I was drinking very much for me, the woman I’d sat next to during the service joined us at our table.

“Your Highness.” She nodded coolly at Julian.

“Dame Claudia. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“We’ve been meaning to check in for a while. Things very nearly got out of hand last year.”

I looked from Julian to the Dame and back to Julian. If I found out they’d shagged in the seventies, I was going home.

Julian quirked an eyebrow. “Do we need to have the who-can-snap-whose-neck-like-a-matchstick conversation again?”

“Simply a polite word, Your Highness. We give your council a certain leeway to handle matters as it sees fit. This policy has been effective for some time, but we can make things difficult if we have to.”

“Did you not see where I was going with the whole matchstick thing?”

Dame Claudia bowed her head. “I am but a humble public servant.” She stood. “This has been productive as always, Your Highness. Good to meet you as well, Miss Kane.”

I watched as she went back to mingle. Having been in this business a decade, I really thought I’d have got to the point where mysterious people stopped being inexplicably pleased to see me. Especially when I hadn’t told them my name. “Umm...” I said when I was sure she’d gone. “Do you mind explaining who the hell that was?”

“Intelligence. Six, I think, could be five. They do so blur together, don’t you find? Violet was with SOE during the war, then when Atlee shut them down in ’46, she was recruited into some kind of secret magic spy conspiracy. They’re still around and Dame Claudia is in charge these days. They mostly leave us alone.” Julian was uncharacteristically serious for about half a second. “Between you and me, sweeting, I’m in no great hurry to find out what would happen if they didn’t.”

The coffee came back around. It wasn’t great—it never is at this sort of place. It’s like there’s some kind of cosmic rule: the posher the hotel, the worse the coffee. But I drank it anyway because, hey, it was free. Then did what I usually did at big formal events: stayed in my seat, avoided small talk and refused to dance. We ducked out a little early. I was getting tired of dealing with people I’d never met, and Julian was getting tired of dodging her ex-girlfriend’s ex-employers. Plus I was feeling pretty crappy about Elise being in the office all day without me. She worked like a machine, but that was no reason to treat her like one.

Except when it came to paperwork. My principles only went so far.

We hit the limo and I asked Julian to take me to Bow Street. For all my grumbling, I’d been to worse shindigs. After all, I wasn’t on trial for anything and nobody was trying to kill me or suck me into another universe. By my standards, I was calling that a win.

The car pulled up outside my office and I kissed Julian goodbye, which...took longer than it could have. Then I fixed my suit, retrieved my hat, and went up to check on what I laughably called my business. It’d been a slow couple of months. And come to think of it, so had the couple of months before that. I really needed to find another insanely wealthy supernatural being with a corpse on its doorstep and a money-is-no-object approach to crisis management.

Pushing open the door—it still had Kane & Archer on the frosted glass, a state of affairs that had transitioned from apathy to policy—I found Elise sitting behind my desk. She was wearing a pale blue trilby and scribbling in a spiral-bound notebook. The chair opposite her was occupied by a slight, angular figure, androgynous and tousle-haired. They turned as I walked in.

“Kate.”

“Merchant.” Their real name was Sheyne, or so they’d told me last year. At the time, we’d been having something that might have been a moment in a snowbound faery realm in the back of a cupboard. In any case, they usually went by the Merchant of Dreams, and given the many weird taboos that governed faery crap, it seemed best to call them that in public.

“I have been robbed.”

Elise sat up and tipped back the brim of her hat. “It seems a relatively straightforward case. But it is my understanding that those mysteries which seem most superficially perplexing are often those that prove easiest to solve, since the very elements that render them obscure to the untrained eye in truth offer a wealth of anchor points to which the trained observer can affix their investigation.” What with being made of stone, Elise technically didn’t need to breathe, and that meant she didn’t need to pause for breath. Which made it difficult when she got enthusiastic about something. “Conversely, a crime with a simple and uncluttered narrative presents the investigator with few points of ingress. A simple crime could, consequently, have been committed by anybody.”

“Summary, Elise?”

She nodded. “Our client was tending their pawnbrokers in Seven Dials when three men burst in. They were armed with shotguns and wore stockings over their heads. They took only one item, a plaster bust of Napoleon that had been deposited six months previously by a Miss Corin Black. The bust was believed to contain a vial which itself contained a magical reagent called the Tears of Hypnos.”

“Oh, dicks, piss and bollocks.” I buried my head in my hands. The plaster bust of Napoleon had been the weird artefact Corin was looking for when we’d first met. The case had killed my partner and damn near ruined my life. Then the fucking thing had turned up again six months ago in connection to the wacky become-a-god ritual the evil vampire wizards were messing around with. Long story short, I’d never seen the Tears of Hypnos, or touched them, and didn’t really know what they were, but they had an annoying habit of popping up every now and then to shit all over everything I cared about.

“My understanding of these matters is limited,” Elise went on. “But our client assures me that it is unusual for people to be able to break the sanctity of their store. Normally they would”—she looked at her notes—“‘find their bodies twisted into blackened thorns and their souls entombed within the debtors’ prison in the realm of the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter.’ That this did not occur suggests they had protection. Further, their guns were loaded with iron shot, which also implies foreknowledge and some preparation. It has been a day since the robbery. Our client has not gone to the police, since the mundane authorities are not equipped to deal with supernatural agents and because—” She read again. “‘They are riddled with vampire spies.’”

The Merchant of Dreams glanced my way. “That’s the shape of it.”

“And you’re hiring us to...?”

“Retrieve my property and leave the thieves to me.”

I rested my hip against my desk. I really needed to talk to Elise about taking my chair. “Getting stuff back I’m okay with. Letting you do whatever it is you do to people who piss you off, that’s on the wrong side of legal.”

“What if they aren’t human?”

“Three guys with stockings on their heads? Does that scream ‘otherworldly menace’ to you?”

The Merchant of Dreams made a sort of generically mystical gesture. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy. And beyond heaven and earth there are more things still.”

“Tell you what. How about we focus on finding the thieves, and work out what to do about them when we know who they are?”

“Are you proposing a deal?” The Merchant grinned at me over steepled fingers.

I almost fell off my desk. “Oh, no, you don’t. Let’s get one thing crystal fucking clear. I’m happy to take this job. I’m happy to find your shit for you, but you’re going to sign a completely normal contract and pay me in completely normal money on a completely normal schedule. And there’ll be no deals, no bargains, no ‘I trade you my happiest memory for a handful of sunlight.’ We clear?”

“Oh, Kate,” said the Merchant, “why do you fight so hard against your heritage?”

I glared. “Because my heritage eats people and, near as I can tell, yours steals babies.”

The Merchant laughed. It was a deceptively pleasant laugh. The kind that said I am in no way secretly plotting your downfall. “Cash it is.”

“And not the stuff that turns to leaves when the sun comes up.”

“I would never have dreamed of it.”

“Then we’re good.”

Elise took the rest of the details, and I started the various bits of background work you needed to do if you wanted to track down a smash-and-grab. There’d be CCTV to sort out, witnesses to interview, and a whole lot of legwork. On top of that, there’d almost certainly be a police report—people didn’t bust into shops in busy commercial districts and leg it with bulky bits of ornamental tat without somebody calling the cops. I phoned around, looked through some databases and, after a couple of hours of finding not very much, Elise and I got in the car and made for Seven Dials.

Chapter Two

Bodies & Mirrors

The Merchant’s shop was one of those dodgy, green-fronted places with metal grilles permanently rolled down inside its dusty windows. It didn’t have much in the way of security and usually didn’t need it. The Merchant was a whole lot deeper into the faery bullshit than me, and inside their own realm they could screw you up so bad you’d wind up married to a bear on top of a glass mountain before you knew what hit you.

Elise had taken detailed descriptions of the robbers—in as much as you can get detailed descriptions of three averagely built men with their faces covered—which made it easy to get a lead on the way they’d gone. A good half-dozen shopkeepers had seen them making their getaway: they’d dashed out of the front door, crossed the road and jumped into the back of a white van. Nobody’d thought to take the registration and white vans weren’t exactly rare in the city, but the big advantage of living in a town with seven thousand CCTV cameras was that everything got caught on film at some point. I didn’t like relying on council footage, because it took forever to get hold of, but most shops and pubs had their own cameras these days and if you made enough of a nuisance of yourself they’d usually let you have a look. At least, my strategy was to make a nuisance of myself. As for Elise, she had this way about her that meant people got real helpful real quick.

Eventually, we found the van. Or at least we found a couple of places the van had been. We got it heading south down Drury Lane a couple of minutes after the robbery, coming off Waterloo Bridge a little while after that, then past a Tesco Metro and along the A302. Putting the whole journey together was a pain in the arse and took hours. Technically I had other options—the weird faery power I’d inherited from my mother would have let me track them by scent, or the wibbly magic equivalent. But it would also let her into my head and, after last year’s zany adventures in being possessed, I wasn’t really up for it. Plus these guys had been able to resist whatever the Merchant of Dreams normally threw at intruders, which suggested they had protection against that kind of thing anyway.

We spent the next day surveying carparks and garages in Southwark and finally tracked the van down to a multi-storey in Peckham Rye. By the time we found the actual vehicle, I was beginning to think giving my body over to a tireless spirit of the hunt wouldn’t have been so bad. Elise was, as far as I could tell, literally indefatigable. And seemed to genuinely enjoy the opportunity to explore the automobile storage facilities of South London, a detail I deduced from the way she said “I am so enjoying this opportunity to explore the automobile storage facilities of South London.”

I limped cautiously over to what we’d identified as the getaway van and peered through the side window. I didn’t see anything that looked like it would be useful. No handy maps with places circled on them or notepads saying 14:37—meet fence at safehouse on 23 Dontgetcaught Street. Well, bugger. I leaned against the door and lit a cigarette. Which I think was technically illegal, but fuck it.

Elise came to stand next to me. “I take your present activity as indicating your belief either that the case is solved and further action is therefore unnecessary, or that the trail has gone cold and further action is therefore futile. Am I correct?”

“Yeah, the second one.” There was still something bugging me, though. I hadn’t found any obvious clues in the van, but then I hadn’t entirely expected to. Honestly, I hadn’t expected to find the van at all—at least not neatly parked in a short stay carpark in Peckham.

“If you wanted to ditch a car,” I asked Elise, “where would you put it?”

“Would I be right, Miss Kane, if I were to suggest that you already have an answer to that question, and that my role in this conversation is primarily as a sounding board?”

“Okay, now I feel like a dick.”

“On the contrary, I am very interested in the process of investigation and am pleased to have the opportunity to learn from you.”

I tended to see myself less as a mentor and more as an object lesson. But it was honestly kind of nice to know somebody was getting something out of what I guess I could call my experience. I should probably have been less...more...just better to Archer. Except now it was too late for reasons of dead.

“The way I see it,” I said, “this place closes at half six. You don’t stick a van here if you want to keep it safe long-term, or if you’re planning to ditch it for good. Which means they were planning to come back here, and didn’t. Which means something went wrong.”

“What sort of something?”

“Couldn’t say. Got any thoughts?”

Elise beamed. “There are several possibilities, Miss Kane. Perhaps they were simply struck by moving vehicles on the way to wherever they were going. Perhaps they had arranged to meet with somebody, and that somebody betrayed them horribly. Perhaps they stumbled through a gateway into another reality and were unable to return. Perhaps...”

“Hang on.” I took one last drag of my cigarette and stamped it out. “Let’s go back to the horrible betrayal angle.”

“Do you think it plausible?”

“This thing we’re after...” I waved my hand, not quite sure how to explain. “It affects people. They wipe each other out for it. If this is going down anything like last time then there’s a good chance these guys went all Treasure of the Sierra Madre on each other.”

“I am afraid I am not familiar with the cultural artefact to which you are alluding.”

“Humphrey Bogart and a bunch of guys kill each other over a bag of gold dust. It blows away in the end. It’s all symbolic and shit.”

Elise lifted her eyebrows in mock outrage. “Spoilers, Miss Kane, spoilers.”

“Rosebud’s a sled, Darth Vader is Luke’s father, Sean Bean always dies. Now, how about we get back to the angry men with guns?”

“How do you feel we might best locate them?”

“We walk around until we find somewhere that looks like the sort of place something violent and permanent would happen to a gang of thieves.”

“Excellent.” Elise settled her trilby at a freshly rakish angle. “I have been meaning to further familiarise myself with the layout of the city. Though despite the criminal nature of these gentleman, I am saddened to think they have most likely been horribly murdered.”

We hit the streets. This was one of those bits of private investigatoring that made you feel either really cool or really frustrated. Because criminals have this annoying habit of hiding the fact that they’re criminals. And what that meant in practice was that Elise and I spent the best part of an hour walking up and down a perfectly ordinary row of shops trying to find the one that was ordinary in a subtly different way from all the others. It was hard to say what we were looking for exactly, but if three guys with shotguns got into a barney in the back of a fried chicken emporium on Friday, it wouldn’t have a sign outside saying Try our new gunfight special! This week only! but it also wouldn’t still be open for coleslaw and hot wings on Monday. Which left...well... I’d know it when I saw it.

I saw it.

Abandoned office space, rental notice in the window, scaffolding up the front, takeaway next door. Could be nothing, but worth a look. I moved in the least sidle-y way I could manage up to the front of the building, and peered in. It looked like somebody had decided to trick this place out as a glazier’s, got as far as “put mirrors everywhere” and then run out of steam. I was also about eighty-five percent sure I could see bloodstains on the floor.

The problem with this kind of case—the kind where the suspects had guns and vans instead of claws and fangs—was that there was a way, way bigger chance of the actual police getting involved than I was used to. Somebody shows up exsanguinated by a killer sewer monster, you can be fairly confident you aren’t going to get done for destroying vital evidence. Somebody shows up shot to death in Peckham and you’re on much more obstruction-of-justice-y ground. But what the hell, you’re only young once. Well, only in your midthirties once. I gloved up and picked the lock.

The interior was either the creepy sort of rundown or the rundown sort of creepy. No matter where I turned, my reflection was waiting for me, like I wasn’t sure what it would do if I turned away. I was half sure one of them winked at me. And in my line of work, you don’t write shit like that off. Rule 31: never assume it’s your imagination.

“Watch the mirrors,” I said.

Elise dutifully began scanning the walls. “What am I looking for?”

“Anything that might be looking back.”

With Elise on monster watch, I shifted my attention to the floor. Yep. Definitely blood. Also plaster powder. I followed both into the back room. Guess I’d found my thieves. And the bust for that matter. It was in pieces on the ground and they...honestly, they weren’t much better. Their faces were slashed to ribbons with long, straight cuts that didn’t seem to come from any obvious weapon. Thousands of tiny scratches covered their hands and arms, and I’d had way too much close contact with faerie not to know scourged-with-briars when I saw it. And if all of that didn’t scream “something horrible and wibbly came through a looking glass and killed them,” three of the mirrors were cracked from side to side. Because of course they were.

On the whole, mixed bag. Good news: not a job for the actual police. Bad news: whole building almost certainly some kind of magical death trap.

Here lies Kate Kane. Something creepy with mirrors. Beloved daughter, sorely missed.

Annoyingly, I had a job to do. Trying my best to ignore the something-wicked-this-way-comes vibe, I took a closer look at the bodies. Their guns were nearby and hadn’t been fired. It was possible they assumed that whatever attacked them wouldn’t be especially vulnerable to anti-faery ammo, but that seemed unlikely on account of how a big spray of iron pellets will ruin anyone’s day. More likely, whatever had happened had just been really, really quick.

One of the corpses had collapsed on top of something. I rolled him aside to see what it was, and it turned out to be a skull. A not-entirely-human-looking skull lined with mystical inscriptions.

“Got a soul box here,” I called out. Honestly, the damn things were like buses. You could go years without seeing any, and then two turn up within six months of each other. Corin had used one last year to protect herself from the Morrigan, and chances were these guys had been using it for something similar. That explained why they’d been immune to the Merchant’s usual brand of defensive fuckery, and also why they’d been in such a hurry to get back to this place. You didn’t leave your immortal spirit in a magic box made of severed demon head for any longer than you absolutely had to.

Elise came in from the main room. “Is it...occupied?”

I wasn’t really sure how I could tell, but it didn’t seem to be. “Best guess, they stashed their souls in here while they hit the pawnbroker. Then they came back to put themselves together, and somebody jumped them.”

“Somebody from the mirrors?”

I nodded and went back to the victims. Their faces had been pretty much shredded, but a couple of them had some major ink. Some major ink showing a knight in black armour leaning on a sword. And all at once, I knew exactly who these guys were and who they worked for.

Shit. I grabbed the soul box and made for the door.

“Are we done, Miss Kane?”

“Good as. Whatever we’re looking for isn’t here, and these guys are well past anything the Merchant can do to them.” I wasn’t completely sure that last bit was true, but I didn’t think it was a good time to be debating the retributive power of fae enchantments over the spirits of the departed.

Instead, we hightailed it back to the office. I called the crime scene in to the police from the car. I’d probably disturbed a bunch of shit I shouldn’t have disturbed but unless the Met had started putting terrifying otherworldly monsters into the National DNA Database, I wasn’t likely to be getting in the way of their investigation.

Civic duty done, I had one more call to make. This was going to be more difficult. There was this whole deal where one of my ex-girlfriends was the mystical queen of London, and a little under a year ago I’d had to swear fealty to her to get her help rescuing Julian from this...look, it was complicated. Anyway, point is she was hard to reach—if I wanted to contact her directly I had to do a big fiddly ritual, and the alternative was to leave a message with some call centre in East London in the hope she’d get back to me. Since right now I was in a car with a phone, and without the time to embark on a mystical geocaching expedition, I went call centre.

From the other end of the line, I heard a ringing, then static, then a click.

“Rachel,” I began, “I need to talk to Nim.”

“You’re through to Avalon Taxis.” That wasn’t Rachel. It was a man, for a start. A man with a broad cockney accent. “How can I help you?”

Fuck. I hung up. This was bad.

This was really bad.

“Is something wrong, Miss Kane?” asked Elise.

“Yeah, I think we’re in a shooting war.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Rachel’s not picking up, and the guys who hit the Merchant worked for Arty King.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know the name.”

I shoved my phone back in my pocket. “No reason you should. Long story short: he’s a skinhead wizard gangster with a thing for fire who fought Nim for the soul of the city about ten years ago. It got really fucking nasty.” Curse your bloodline to the tenth generation nasty. Nail your wrists to a table nasty. Nim and me had been through a lot together back then, and though we’d broken up since, it’d left me with this highly inconvenient sense of residual loyalty.

“But I presume you defeated him?”

“Not exactly.” I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “Nim kind of won by default. Fighting wizards isn’t like fighting vampires or faeries. They’re real people with legal identities, and that kind of cuts both ways. He was far more into the actual-physical-violence thing than Nim was, and he ended up doing a ten stretch for GBH.”

“That seems an ignominious way to lose a mystical shadow war.”

I blew out an aggressive sigh. “Maybe, but what makes fighting wizards so piss awful is you can never tell. You think you’ve got them exactly where you want them and it turns out the whole time you’ve been playing your part in some fucked up story they’re telling the universe.”

“I’m not sure I understand, Miss Kane.”

“That makes two of us. But what I do understand is that he’s a violent arsehole who wants Nim to die painfully, and he’s back.”

And there was me hoping I’d make it a whole six months without getting drawn into a sodding great supernatural shitstorm.

When we got in, I stuffed the soul box in my desk. It meant taking a couple of my emergency scotch bottles out, but my non-emergency stash had been getting low anyway. Then I flopped into my chair, leaned back and shut my eyes. It had been a mixed couple of days. In the plus column, I’d done at least part of the job I was hired to do in that I’d found the thieves and, for that matter, the remains of the bust which was technically the item that was stolen. The only thing missing was the unknowably powerful magical reagent that had been inside it.

I was half tempted to go to the Merchant and call it quits. They’d made it pretty clear they wanted the thieves way more than they wanted their stuff back, and if Arty King was making a comeback then setting a pissed off half-faery on his arse would only increase my life expectancy. Which was, honestly, a fucked up thing to be considering, and might have been evidence I’d spent too much time hanging out with vampires. Archer taught me better than this: you don’t ditch a job unfinished and you don’t use your client as a shield in a possibly metaphorical wizard conflict. Okay, he didn’t say that exactly but I’m sure he would have if it’d come up.

Besides, there was still part of me that couldn’t help poking a mystery. Arty King, or at least the Arty King I’d known ten years ago, wasn’t the kind of guy to whack his own men for the sake of misdirection. That meant there was another player out there—somebody powerful enough to risk crossing Arty King but not so powerful they’d take him on directly.

I opened my eyes. “Looks like we’re going on a witch hunt.”

“Literally or metaphorically?” Elise cocked her head to one side. “Although, giving the matter some consideration, I am not certain which variety I am least willing to participate in.”

“A literal witch hunt. Whatever killed those men might have been all dressed up with mirrors and mysticism, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a robbery. When you get right down to it, it’s just one magic crook ripping off another magic crook.”

“Shall I get the whiteboard, Miss Kane?”

I nodded, and poured myself a drink of my newly promoted non-emergency scotch.

Elise’s enthusiasm for the whiteboard was on the charming edge of creepy. She’d told me once it liked to be involved, which I’d carefully blanked in case she decided to share any more of the private thoughts of my office furniture. Once everything was set up, I started making lists. Arty King’s associates. Mages I’d known who worked with mirrors. People who’d gone after the Tears the last time and weren’t definitively dead.

King’s gang had the same structure as Nimue’s court—four lieutenants to go with four elements or four points of the compass or something. They’d gone silent when he was banged up, but if the man on the phone was anything to go by they were back in a big way. Then there were the rest of his hangers-on, a bunch of small and not-so-small-time criminals, some of them mystically inclined, others just scary bastards who were a bit too quick with the claw hammer.

The other lists, the ones with the, y’know, suspects on them, were much shorter. There was Henry Percy, the vampire wizard who I’d tangled with last year. He had a reason to want the Tears (because ritual) and, on top of that, the freaky glass monster guarding his house suggested he could work some kind of mirror shenanigans. But I’d left him unconscious in a burning building which, hopefully, meant he was out of the picture. There was a good chance Corin was involved again, but she was strictly work-for-hire and as far as I knew had no actual magical powers. And that was pretty much it. Turns out my knowledge of merciless but cautious mirror sorcerers was far from encyclopaedic.

If I was going to make any progress, I needed to talk to somebody who knew way more about wizards than I did. In fact, for preference, I needed to talk to somebody who knew way more about wizards than I did and had an inside line on how Arty King’s gang worked, and who would have been in a position to fuck them over.

“Elise,” I said. “If I was about to do something suicidally stupid and reckless, you’d stop me, right?”

“I would attempt to stop you, Miss Kane. I doubt that I would be successful.”

“That’s what I thought.” I pulled out my phone and hit redial.

Ringing. Static. “Avalon Taxis. How can I help you?”

“I need to have a word with your boss.”

“That a fact?”

“That’s business. You robbed my client. Then somebody robbed you. Figure you know who it was.”

There was a moment of silence at the other end. “We’ll send a cab.”

The line went dead.

“I assume this is the moment at which I am supposed to tell you not to do this?” Elise didn’t wait for a reply; she crossed the room calmly and stood in the doorway.

“It’s only a meeting.”

“With a person who you know for a fact wishes to harm a person that you are mystically compelled to protect?”

Stupid magical oaths. Stupid fealty. Not that I needed magical compulsion to take Nim’s side in this particular fight, and I’d given King’s men plenty of reasons to hate me last time around. “Look, these guys were ambushed by somebody who knew where they’d be. Chances are, that somebody has our client’s property. Simplest all round if we go straight to the source and ask who screwed them over.”

“I am not leaving this doorway until you reconsider.”

“Do we need to go over the whole employer/employee thing again?”

Elise folded her arms. “I am quite adamant.”

“Okay, okay.” I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender. Then I rushed her. The plan was to sort of slide around her or past her or something, but I guess I’d underestimated either my own width or Elise’s general immovability. I wound up wrapped around her in a flailing mess. It was a workplace harassment suit waiting to happen.

“Perhaps,” she said when I had disentangled myself, “you would at least permit me to accompany you?”

“These people are dangerous.”

She tilted her head at me. “Of the two of us, which is impervious to physical injury?”

And, once again, she had a point. “Fine. You can come with me, but not to the actual meeting because it’s that kind of deal. And I don’t want Arty King getting interested in you. If anybody can work out how to hurt you, it’s him.”

I heard the sound of an engine in the street and looked out the window as a cab bearing the logo of Avalon Taxis (which, I couldn’t help noticing was an actual sword in an actual stone—some wizards have no subtlety) pulled up outside. Well, this was it. As a final precaution I fired a quick text to Julian. She wasn’t exactly reliable but she hated it when I went running off nearly getting killed without giving her a heads up.

Taking strange taxi to meet psycho wizard gangster. Send cavalry if not home by midnight.

I probably wouldn’t need it. She’d probably be too late if I did. But I felt weirdly better knowing she was out there.

Chapter Three

Faces & Names

The cab took us through the city in silence. I’d have made a crack about it being the first time I’d had a taxi driver keep quiet for a whole journey, but truth is the chatty cabby thing is kind of a myth. It was after sunset by the time we got where we were going, which turned out to be a swanky North London club called the Undertow. The place was new, but from what I remembered of King’s gang, his man in the north was this sleazy promoter type by the name of Lake. Then again, I thought I remembered him and King having a big falling out over a woman, so maybe he’d been replaced.

“You’re waiting here,” I told Elise. “Give me ten and, if I’m not back, come looking for me.”

I got out the cab and made my way into the club. The guy on the door let me off the cover charge—guess he knew I was coming—and I found myself in a world of neon blue light and dance music that thudded like a heartbeat. And not in a metaphorical way. I was pretty sure King wouldn’t show up himself because, let’s face it, we both had good reason to think the meeting was a set-up. Nobody had told me exactly where to go or what to do but I’d been to enough nightclub-based mystical showdowns to know the score. I was here to meet a flunky and it was a pretty good bet he’d be in some roped-off VIP area draped in hot, drunk women.

And, sure enough, there was Lake. Blond and square-jawed and with the easy smile of a man who either loves everybody or doesn’t give a crap about anybody. He’d aged since we last met. The girls he was sitting with hadn’t. I mean, because they were different girls, not that they were the same girls and hadn’t aged. He was still a sleazebag, is what I’m saying. I went over, doing my best to look confident but non-confrontational. Or non-confrontational but not non-threatening. Basically, I was going for something that said “I’m not going to start anything, and you shouldn’t either.” I wasn’t totally sure I nailed it.

“Here to talk.” Not my most original opener, but it did the job.

He looked up. Still smiling. “I know you. You’re in the army of dykes.”

“I can see why you’re so popular with the ladies.”

“Booze, drugs and a massive dick are why I’m popular with the ladies.” He extricated his arms from his entourage and leaned forward. “Now what do you want?”

“You stole something from my client. Somebody stole it from you. Tell me who it was so I can go after them.”

“Out of the goodness of your heart?” He had yeah right face on.

“Out of doing my job. And you’re going to help me because it’s that or let somebody get away with stealing from you.”

His air of smug prickery didn’t falter but the rhythm of the club shifted in a way that made my ears pop. It wasn’t exactly reassuring. I knew I was pushing my luck here, but at this point I was kind of low on options. I was gambling on King and his men not being able to deal with whatever had gone wrong with the robbery and fight Nim at the same time. Of course, the trouble with gambling was that you quite often lost.

“Do you think,” asked Lake, “that I am a fucking moron? Your boss and my boss are at war and you waltz in here, tell me I can’t handle my own fucking business and expect me to be fucking grateful.”

“Look—” I made a no-need-for-anyone-to-get-stabbed gesture. “I thought we could maybe help each other out on this. I’m not working for Nim. I’m working for myself.”

“Don’t try to bullshit a seer, love. I can taste the oaths on you from here.”

Well, bollocks. I hadn’t factored that in. Stupid fealty making me supernaturally bound to do something I was going to do anyway. Guess that meant it was time to play bait the psycho. “Suit yourself. But the way I see it, nobody would have dared steal from Arty King before he went inside.”

Lake folded his hands. Rested his chin on two fingertips. “You have ten seconds to reconsider trying to play me.”

“I’m just calling it how I see it. The Arty King from ten years ago wouldn’t have needed outside help to hold up a faery shop keeper. He wouldn’t have let three of his boys get their faces ripped off and he wouldn’t have let whoever did it get away with it. Right now, he’s looking weak as piss. Give me a name and it all goes away.”

Lake waved a hand. Three figures loomed out of the darkness of the club. One of them looked so much like Elise that I actually thought it was her for a moment. But she was dressed differently—far more provocatively than Elise preferred. Not only that, her whole manner was different. She seemed like she meant business. Violent business, not sex business. Although honestly it was kind of touch and go. At least from where I was standing.

I gave Lake my best “I’m not angry I’m disappointed” look. “Is this your way of saying you’re not going for it?”

The Elise-alike glanced at her boss. He nodded.

I had about three options here. I could try to run, but that would make this trip a complete waste of time. I could go full faery princess, but unleashing my mother in a crowded nightclub would turn the whole thing into a bloodbath and I was really trying to have less of those. Which left option three.

Two of Lake’s men flanked me. I slipped sideways and struck one of them in the jaw while the other closed in. Spinning back around, I hit him in the neck with the edge of my hand. Then cold fingers closed around my arm and that was pretty much it. I’d felt Elise’s strength before, but she’d never been actively trying to hurt me. Her double, on the other hand, was. It was like being trapped in stone which, y’know, go figure. And this was where option three got nasty because I was about to take one hell of a beating.

I took one hell of a beating.

When they were done I was in a heap on the floor, wheezing and spitting blood, with a whole new collection of interesting bruises. My ribs might have been cracked as well. I painfully craned my neck to see Lake standing over me.

“You’ve got some fucking nerve,” he said.

I stayed down. It was that kind of deal.

“You’re looking for Rose Red. And when you find him, show him your face and tell him it’s a message. Tell the little cocksucker that he’ll get his soon enough.”

“Fuck you.”

He kicked me in the ribs again for good measure. Then one of his men hauled me up by my collar, dragged me out of the club and threw me into the street. The real Elise was standing on the kerb waiting for me. She rushed over and helped me to my feet.

“Miss Kane!”

I leaned against her. “It’s fine, Elise. All part of the plan.”

“This seems an unusual plan.”

“Fastest way to get the information. People like that need to feel like they’re winning.”

She was quiet a moment. And then said, “Unless there is some nuance I have not understood, it appears that, in this instance, the feeling was justified.”

“Yeah, it’s a nuance thing.” I poked my tongue around my mouth, checking for loose teeth. “I lost the who-gets-punched-most competition. But I got the information I needed and all he got was to save face.”

“I still do not think it was wise to put yourself in harm’s way, Miss Kane.”

I laughed, then winced as my lip split open. “I spend so much time in harm’s way, I’m thinking of setting up a forwarding address. Really, I’m half-faery, I heal fast, I’m fine. And I got a name.”

“He told you who betrayed them?”

“He said to look into Rose Red.”

“I do not believe I’m familiar with the individual.”

I almost was, but I couldn’t put my finger on it right at that moment. Then again, my fingers had been stamped on fairly recently. I reached for my phone. Unfortunately, it turned out that the all-over fist massage had been as bad for my personal electronics as it was for me. Good thing I’d got into the habit of keeping backups at the office. I swear if I ever hold on to a handset for more than eight months, I’m going to buy it a birthday cake.

“I’ll look it up when we get home,” I said.

First rule of surviving a magical shadow war: avoid privately operated, culturally significant modes of transport. Ideally avoid any form of public transport but, right now, it was lie on the floor and bleed or get a bus and hope it didn’t turn out to be somebody’s metaphor.

It took us a fair while to get back to the office but I didn’t really care. We got stared at a bit because I looked like I’d just been beaten up by a gangster wizard and his minions, but I was kind of used to that. The being stared at, that is. You’d be amazed how much attention you get with a vampire bite.

I hobbled upstairs, hanging off Elise’s shoulder, and went straight to our first aid cabinet for the bandages and the emergency vodka. I could have done with a lie down, but the problem with hunt-the-McGuffin cases is that taking a break is a recipe for falling even further behind than you already are. Worse still, I had a nasty feeling the whole case was going to turn out the same way it had last time: everybody involved winding up dead or insane or imprisoned in a silver cage on the other side of the sky. I poured myself a shot—it was mostly for the pain, but it was also just getting on for that time of day.

I slumped into my chair, pulled the spare phone from among the knives and empty bottles in my desk drawer, switched the SIM, and sent Julian a quick text. Still alive, phone not so lucky. A few seconds later, a message came back: Wonderful. I don’t think you’d wear dead as well as I do, sweeting. It made me smile—which I immediately regretted, because my jaw wasn’t on board.

Pocketing the phone, I swivelled round and looked out the window. The old stone of Bow Street was lit with the electric glow of a London night. I was making progress, but I knew how this went. I’d spend the next three weeks diving down rabbit holes and chasing wild geese and, before you could say “near limitless source of mystical power” the city would be full of ambitious wizards from halfway round the world, a bunch of my friends would be dead, and I’d get sold out at the last second by someone I never saw coming. The smart thing to do would be to walk away.

Oh, who was I kidding? I turned back to the desk, booted up my computer, and Googled Rose Red.

Well, that was easier than expected. It’s always a good day on the job when the answer to your question is “a truly fabulous drag queen.” Rose Red turned out to be the stage name of a Brighton-based performer who ran a pop-up cabaret experience called the Enchanted Kingdom, all moody lighting, lip-sync and mirrors.

She’d had pretty good reviews in Edinburgh, but I could find more or less nothing in the way of contact details or tour information. That figured—if she was some kind of sorcerer, she’d be living under the radar, or as under the radar as you could get if your job was to stand in a spotlight for money. It was time to hit up my contacts.

I called Kauri.

It rang a couple of times and then I was greeted by a cheerful Kiwi accent. “Kate! To what do I owe this completely unexpected phone call from my good friend who in no way only contacts me when she wants something?”

“Hey, I’m a busy lady.”

“All right, busy lady, lay it on me.”

“Rose Red.”

Kauri laughed. “Good act. Second best in the business.”

“Who’s the best?”

The line was silent a second. “You know, I’m quite insulted you even asked.”

“How do I get to the Enchanted Kingdom?”

The line was silent again. “Oh my God, are you actually ringing me up for a party invitation?”

“It’s work.”

“That doesn’t make it better. If anything, that makes it worse.”

“Fine. I’m a terrible person. But I’m a terrible person who needs your help.”

“You’re lucky I’m bored, immortal and sickening. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night. Wear something that won’t embarrass me.”

“My current plan is cashmere, pearls and go fuck yourself.”

“Sounds good, but maybe go easy on the cashmere and pearls.”

We hammered out the details, I failed hard at small talk, and then we hung up. And that was me officially done for the day. What with the legwork and getting my head kicked in, I was pretty much ready to pass out in my chair.

I got Elise to drive me home, made myself a cup of Bovril, and slumped in front of the TV. Elise stood next to the sofa for a little while—she still hadn’t really got into the habit of sitting, but I got the impression she was being there for me. Which made it very hard to not to bring up the thing I in no way wanted to bring up.

“Elise,” I began. “The guy who made you?”

She paused Sharpe’s Peril and turned to me. “Yes?”

“You’ve never really said anything about him.”

“I am not sure there is a great deal to say. He created me; I displeased him.”

Despite my job, I’ve never been that great at reading people unless they gave me big obvious signals like trying to shag me or murder me. And Elise was hard to read at the best of times, what with the whole animated statue thing. But I’d known her for a while now, and I’d known weird supernatural beings for a whole lot longer, and the trick with people who weren’t human was that when something really got to them the mask slipped. Vampires got deader. Wolves got wilder. Faeries flipped the fuck out. And Elise just...stopped.

“If...” I really wasn’t sure how to phrase this. “If I thought I had a lead on him. If I thought there were others...”

Elise was silent for a moment. “I would want to know, Miss Kane. If that is what you were asking.”

“That’s pretty much what I was asking. One of King’s men has a woman working for him who looks exactly like you. She’s got the same too-strong-can’t-be-hurt thing going for her as well.”

“Oh.”

I patted her arm, in what I hoped was a consoling way. Truth was, we were both pretending to be ordinary people. “It’s your call from here. I can drop it. I can try to speak to her. You could try to speak to her.”

She was silent again. For even longer this time. “May I think about this?”

“Whatever you need, Elise.”

And then I went to bed. Sometimes it was all you could do.

Chapter Four

Bathrooms & Battles

The Dream of the sun beat down on the Dream of a city. I stood in a white room beside a white bed. In the bed, a woman I thought I recognised was wired to white machines that gave off white noise. Outside, I could hear the crackling of flames.

Well, fuck. I really thought I was done with this shit.

I leaned closer to look at her. There wasn’t much to look at—what wasn’t bandages was bruises. Whoever it was, somebody had come after her hard, hard and personal. A nimbus of blue light flickered around her head, like the glow from a dying phone.

Nimue took my hand. She wasn’t there. Then she was. That was normal here. “We don’t have much time.”

“What the shit is going on?” I turned to face her, half fearing she’d vanish again when I did.

“King hit us in the east.” Slowly, she looked down at the bed. “Rachel was my eyes. This will be harder without her.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

Nimue’s shoulders hunched. The sense of power that normally surrounded her dimmed. “King needed to stop her seeing and speaking. He hurt her badly.”

Somewhere in the distance, I heard gunshots. “What can I do?”

“You’re looking for a weapon. Bring it to me.”

I stared at her and for a moment there was nothing in the Dream but the two of us. Nimue bathed in sunlight, a goddess from a pagan past. “Nim,” I said. It was hard to speak to her when she was like this. “This thing gets people killed. And it belongs to my client, not to me.”

“It belongs to whoever takes it. And you swore an oath. You wanted something from me, remember?”

Sometimes I really wasn’t sure if I was talking to my friend, my ex, or an unyielding sorcerer-queen arisen from the collective unconscious of humanity. But now wasn’t the time to think too hard about that. “I’ll do what I can.”

“This is going to get bad, Kate. Really bad.”

“So what else is new?”

She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. I shut my eyes and let the heat rush over me.

I woke up. It was still uncomfortably warm. The newspapers were saying we were headed for the hottest summer on record, but then they’d said that last year as well. Since Kauri wasn’t getting me into the Enchanted Kingdom until the evening and every other lead had gone dry, I was stuck with a day to kill. On the plus side, that meant I had some time to recover from having had the utter shit kicked out of me. On the down side, it meant I was going to be lying around feeling like there was something really important I should be getting on with, but being completely unable to get on with it.

The morning after a beating was always the worst. The adrenaline and endorphins were gone, and all that was left was the stiffness, the aches, and the horrible shooting pains every time I poked myself in the ribs. New plan: stop poking myself in the ribs.

I got gingerly out of bed, and grabbed the coffee and the banana that Elise had left for me. It looked like the window had closed on the banana thing, and I was going to have an immortal being making sure I got my daily dose of squishy, stringy good-source-of-potassium until the day I died. Elise had gone into the office to do the stuff that made the invoicing work and the bills get paid. Chances were, even if I tried to go in, she’d send me home. Yes, I was technically the boss but she’d get all concerned and I’d get all guilty and then I’d get annoyed at her for making me feel guilty and that would put me over my daily emotion limit.

Only a little reluctantly, I decided I’d give the recuperation thing a try. I lay myself very carefully down on the sofa and put Sharpe’s Peril back on, but I’d lost track of the plot on account of the whole awkward “by the way there’s more of you” conversation last night. Something something war something something attractive woman something something pit of cobras. I checked my phone and realised it was only ten thirty. Wow, I was bad at this. Getting better sucked.

Since Sean Bean wasn’t cutting it, I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling for a bit. Given how much I resented getting up in the mornings I’d really thought that my circadian rhythms would jump at the opportunity for bonus circadianing or whatever. But no. I just felt uncomfortable and restless. Debedding, I decided to keep busy by getting on with the kind of household tasks I was usually too lazy to do myself and too embarrassed to get Elise to do for me. I’d scrubbed exactly half the bath when I decided that domesticity, on balance, could go fuck itself.

I got my hat and my coat and went into town, figuring that while I wasn’t well enough for the more running-jumping-punching bits of the job, I could at least fill my client in on where we were. And, yes, I could have phoned but I’d been alone in the flat for a bit under three hours and I was losing my goddamn mind. Elise had taken the car, I was in no state to limp to Seven Dials and every bus, train and taxi in the city was at risk of being co-opted into a secret battle for divine kingship. But if it was risk getting caught up in a nexus of mystical conflict or finish cleaning the bath, I’d go nexus every time. And logic said that most journeys on public transport would not end with the lights going out and a suddenly empty train carriage pulling into a station that doesn’t exist.

Twenty minutes later, the lights went out and my suddenly empty train carriage pulled into a station that didn’t exist.

Here lies Kate Kane: really walked into that one. Beloved daughter. Sorely missed.

The trick in this kind of situation was not to do anything hasty, which was a mixed blessing because, on the one hand, haste wasn’t really a thing I could do right now but, on the other, caution and foresight weren’t things I could do, well, ever. Also the underground is, and this may surprise you, underground, so when it gets dark, it gets proper, absolute dark. And while I could have used the light on my phone, it would have been a really good way to say “come murder me” to anything lurking out there. No getting around it. This was a trust-your-senses-use-your-mother’s-instincts situation. I fucking hated those.

Dropping into a crouch, I put my fingertips to the cold lacquer floor and listened. Whispers in the shadows. Not “I’m on the Tube, bit of a delay” whispers. More “this place is haunted as fuck” whispers. An incessant weeping like a child in a BBC drama about sad Victorians. The distant crackling of flames and heavy footfalls, growing closer. Yeah, I really needed to get out of here.

I inched my way along the carriage to the doors. I’d spent enough time on the Tube that I could basically have found my way around with my eyes closed anyway: seats, holdy-on pole, second holdy-on pole, open door button that never works, doors. Or, in this case, empty space. Whatever had brought me here didn’t want to keep me trapped, but did want to have easy access to me. It was kind of the definition of good news/bad news.

Taking great care to mind the gap between the train and the platform, I crawled out. To my right, a lighter sparked, illuminating a hunched figure in a reflective Transport for London jacket.

“Jacob?” I called out. Sure, it could have been a different Tube worker carrying out an occult ritual in an abandoned station at quarter to twelve on Tuesday. But what were the chances?

“Kate.” He calmly finished lighting his circle of candles.

I like to think of myself as a woman of few words but Jacob—Nim’s man in the west—made me look like I was played by Prunella Scales in an eighties sitcom.

“Sooooo,” I tried. “Any idea what I’m doing here?”

“Nim sent you.”

Stupid fealty. It was moments like these that I really had to remind myself that Nim was a fundamentally good person, because if I didn’t I’d feel really fucking used. “What for?”

He pointed past me. “That.”

I turned to see the tunnel behind me erupt into a wall of something that was definitely hellfire. Which, if you’ve never seen it, is basically fire but about twelve percent fierier and two hundred percent hellier. Out of the flames walked a seemingly ordinary pensioner.

Well, fuck. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: never tangle with seemingly ordinary pensioners. At best they’re monstrously powerful otherworldly entities with agendas you have no hope of comprehending. At worst they’re the sorts of people who’ve done the sorts of things you have to do to reach eighty despite being neck deep in blood, chaos and witchcraft.

And I had a good idea who this one was.

“You’ve made this far harder than it had to be,” she said. “And that vexes me something awful.”

I glanced at Jacob. But he had his eyes closed, which I hoped meant he was doing something magical and important. Although, to be honest, if I had to describe Jacob to someone, top bants wouldn’t be the first thing I mentioned. I tried banting for him. “I see Arty’s still having his nan fight his battles for him.”

“That’s the problem with your lot. You don’t understand family.”

“I think I was raised with different values. We ate dinner in front of the TV and didn’t kneecap people.”

Nana King shuffled forward a few steps. “You think you’re so high and mighty, don’t you, girl? You and your pretender queen.”

This was getting difficult. Everything I’d heard about Arty King’s grandmother said she was just as much of a cold stone psycho as he was. But beating up an old lady in an abandoned Tube station didn’t sit right with me. “Okay,” I said. “It seems like we’ve got off on the wrong foot. How about you go your way, we go ours, and nobody gets stabbed in the heart or burned to death?”

Between the candles and the fire, I wasn’t really picking up fine details but I didn’t like the way the shadows moved across Nana King’s face.

“You messed with me and mine, love. You can go right to Hell.” Something in her tone suggested she didn’t mean that metaphorically. She turned and walked slowly back into the flames. Jacob spoke a word in one of the many wizard languages I didn’t understand and a cold, nauseating wind that smelled of ozone and formaldehyde came rushing down the tunnel. I jumped out of the way far faster than my body could really cope with and looked up in time to see an army of withered, corpse-like spirits riding the darkness like foam on the crest of a wave.

Before they could reach Nana King, she vanished, the fires billowing around her with renewed hellishness. Just as I was thinking we’d scared her off, new figures appeared in the inferno—human-looking, but moving with an urgent, animal hunger and baying in a distinctly demony way.

And this was why I never felt properly dressed unless I was armed.

I pressed myself against the tunnel wall as Jacob’s ghosts and Nana King’s minions tore into each other in a scene that, what with all the skulls, horns and burning, wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of an early nineties death metal album. Truthfully, I didn’t have much of a sense of what was going on here, mystically speaking, but I’d been in similar situations before and most of the time the important thing was to protect the guy in the magic circle. Because if you were sitting down chanting while actual monsters were trying to rip your actual face off, it was a safe bet that whatever you were chanting about really, really mattered.

Team Dead were making a pretty decent stand against Team Diabolism, but it was hard to hold a position when you were made of ectoplasm and regrets. A man with goat’s horns and eagle’s talons broke through the line and made straight for Jacob. Ignoring the pain in my everything, I drew the sanctified steel blade from my right forearm and threw myself at him. We went down heavy and rolled across the platform, clawing and slashing at each other—I mean, he was clawing, I was slashing. Long story short, I slashed better than he clawed, and got up only to run straight into the next one, a frenzied-looking woman who seemed perfectly human except for the fact her knees bent backwards and, as I discovered when her fingers closed round my throat and she lifted me off my feet, she was way stronger than she should have been.

Something I’ve learned over the years about the lift-and-slam school of fighting is that it’s really vulnerable to a dagger in the elbow. She dropped me and retreated, but I landed badly, which gave a third demon—something tall and pale, trailing what might have been a coat or might have been wings—the chance to slip past me and the ghosts, and break the edge of Jacob’s circle. I’d seen Jacob in action before and I knew how badly he could fuck you up if you were either alive or undead, but I wasn’t sure how much protection he had against...and it suddenly occurred to me that I also wasn’t sure what demons were. Look. It’s my job to investigate this stuff, not write papers on it.

The candles flared blue and the whole place got way colder. There was obviously some dark necromancy shit happening here, but I wasn’t sure if it meant Jacob was totally fine and had everything in hand or if he was desperately throwing whatever he had at an enemy that could easily kill him. I didn’t want to get all micromanagey on the battle but I figured this was one of those situations where over-helping was way preferable to under-helping. I rushed over as best I could with my ever-growing collection of ouchies and rammed my knife directly between two bony ridges on the demon’s back that I really hoped were shoulder blades.

It did not seem to appreciate this and swung to face me, hissing and baring way too many teeth, most of them longer than my actual knife. This was very much a “strike first and don’t fuck it up” kind of deal, but before I could get my stab on, the creature was swallowed by blue fire. There was a fair bit of thrashing, quite a lot of inhuman screaming and then it withered away to dust and ashes. Standing over its remains, Jacob looked at once utterly terrifying and utterly fucked. His whole body was wreathed in corpsefire, and I could feel the life, heat and hope leeching out of the air around him, but he had that “oh, I have over-reached myself” vibe that, frankly, mages got way too often.

“Go,” he said. “Tell Nimue we have lost the deep places.”

“I’m not a big fan of leaving people.” Although, to be fair, I also wasn’t a big fan of getting killed.

He gave me a grim smile. “This train terminates here. Leave now or stay forever.”

Well, when he put it like that. “Okay, let’s say I’ve come round on the leave plan. How do I actually get out?”

Jacob pointed at a patch of darkness and a maintenance door opened where I was pretty damn convinced there hadn’t been a maintenance door previously. I fucking hated doors that I was pretty damn convinced hadn’t been there previously but you know what I hated even more? Being eternally trapped in an abandoned Tube station full of demons.

I pegged it.

Chapter Five

Sofia & Me

I emerged from the spooky tunnel of not getting murdered into a large, brightly lit hall under the gaze of a surprisingly chilled out Egyptian pharaoh. A statue of one, at least. And it probably says something about my life that this is the sort of thing I have to clarify. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed the door had disappeared behind me—because of course it had—and a quick glance at my surroundings confirmed that nothing was immediately trying to send me to literal hell in a metaphorical handbasket. That moment of calm gave me precisely enough time to realise that I had zero clue what had happened to Jacob. I’d got a pretty distinct valiant last stand vibe from everything he’d been doing but, set against that, dude was a necromancer. If anybody would do well in a certain death situation, it’d be him.

I still had no fucking idea where I was, mind. Although the casual appearance of a clump of politely indifferent tourists suggested that I hadn’t gone back in time or been teleported to actual Cairo. Chances were, I hadn’t left London. More likely, I was in one of those massive, internationally renowned museums full of shit we nicked from other countries.

Putting my knives away as quickly and discreetly as I could manage, I did my best to look like it was the most normal thing in the world to be limping around an Egyptological exhibition in a battered fedora and a suit with a severe case of demonic wear-and-tear. I’d never been the biggest fan of culture in general, which came in handy now because it meant most of my childhood experience of museums had involved looking for the quickest way out of them. When in doubt, follow the signs to the gift shop. And, sure enough, in a few minutes I was in the fresh air and the blazing sun, making my unsteady way between the what-were-they-compensating-for pillars and down the unnecessary steps because fuck you Victorians.

Once I got onto Great Russell Street, I collapsed into a chair outside a Starbucks I wasn’t patronising. I had a feeling it was going to be really important to tell Nim what had happened—whatever that was—but my only way of contacting her right now was in my dreams and short of trying to pass out where I was, and getting arrested for vagrancy or at least chucked out of Starbucks, that wasn’t entirely an option. The most sensible thing for me to do was forget the mage war for ten minutes and go see the Merchant like I’d originally planned. Especially since, despite all the getting diverted to lost stations and popping up in random museums, I was still only about half a mile from Seven Dials. And this time, I was walking.

The pawnshop was empty when I got there. Thinking about it, I’d never seen it have an actual customer. But then again I suppose promises, dreams and incredibly rare occult artefacts wasn’t exactly a volume business.

Sheyne was watching me from behind the counter. “You are bleeding on my floor.”

“Good to know you care.”

“Have you found my property yet?”

“Good to know you don’t care that much. I found the men who took it.”

The Merchant smiled, thin-lipped and too many teeth. “Who?”

“They’re dead.”

“Wasn’t the question, my dear.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. This was about to go either very well or very badly. “It’s like this. Right now, the guy who had your shop hit is fighting a war against the Witch Queen of London. His name’s Arty King. He’s a trigger-happy thug and fully paid up wizard. Honestly, if you wanted to go after him, it would really help me out, but you should know what you’re getting into.”

“That was a very forthright answer.” The Merchant raised a finger to their lips. “Do you think I’m trying to trap you?”

“It’s nothing personal. But I want to be incredibly sure that I don’t come out of this owing anybody any favours.”

“You are too wary of your nature. And of mine.”

“Where my mother’s concerned, there’s no such thing as too wary.”

“She is a difficult one. But no, you have nothing to fear from me. My decision regarding Mr. King will be mine alone, and it shall be neither a trade nor a gift. I still expect you to retrieve my property, but it will be on the terms we discussed, you will be paid in the coin of the realm and we will owe one another no further obligation.”

“Thanks.” I gave the Merchant a kind of noncommittal nod. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Please do.”

The heat hit me again as soon as I left the shop. Being the child of the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter came with a bunch of perks of which a really fantastic aircon system was probably the least interesting but the most practical. I was half tempted to go back inside but—and maybe I was being paranoid—I was pretty sure the Merchant of Dreams wouldn’t even give cool air away for free.

I leaned against the window and lit a cigarette. I’d just started to enjoy the carcinogens when my phone buzzed. A text from Sofia. It said: Can we talk it’s about Patrick and ended with a blank-faced emoji that I thought indicated worry.

I’d got sort of close to Sofia, Patrick’s new girlfriend, over the past few months. Since Archer died, I hadn’t really done the friends thing and, even if I had, I wouldn’t have chosen someone fifteen years younger than me who’d spent the best part of a year convinced I was trying to steal her boyfriend. But, now she was over that, I think she liked having somebody around who’d gone through the whole immortal beloved, mysterious destiny thing. Because let’s face it, there weren’t many of us out there. Or if there were, we didn’t have a very good support network.

I texted back to tell her I was free this afternoon and we arranged to meet at this crappy cafe up the road from her college. This left me with a bit of a logistical problem because Sofia, and for that matter my flat, were about three hours away on foot. If I was lucky, Jacob would be keeping the demon thing contained and the Tube would be fine. But if I was unlucky he was already dead, and I would be dragged screaming into a fiery pit for all eternity the moment I swiped my Oyster card. And, luck-wise, I hadn’t really been having the best day, or indeed week. Or year. Or life. And, maybe, the fact the two rival witch-monarchs were fighting over the Tube meant that the buses would be safe, but yeah. No. That left walking and Boris bikes, and I wasn’t in any fit state to do either. Which brought my options down to 1) ring Elise like she was my mum and I’d missed the last train back from a party, 2) lie in the street and wait to die, or 3) I was going to really regret three.

I went back inside.

“Forget something, Kate Kane?” The Merchant smirked at me from behind the counter.

I looked at the suspiciously clean floor. “About that blood I left in here,” I began.

“I’ve taken care of it for you.”

“Save it for the tourists. You’ve got something that belongs to me. You can give it back or you can trade me for it.”

Their eyes brightened. “So you do want to make a deal.”

“I don’t, but I have to, which I’m guessing is the way you like it.”

“Aren’t we having a perspicacious morning?” They grinned gleamingly. “Now, how can this humble merchant serve you?”

I gritted my teeth. “I need transport.”

“Transport, you say?”

The Merchant sounded way too happy and I ran a rapid mental inventory of all the ways they could use a vague request to fuck me over. There were a lot of ways. “I need access to a vehicle—specifically a vehicle, not any modification to my body, soul or any other part of me—that can get me around London about as effectively as a car would and won’t randomly carry me off into another reality, or need to be fed something weird like the blood of strangers or the tears of virgins. And that is not intended to be an exhaustive list. It should take passengers and not make me look like a total knob end. I’ll need it all summer.”

“And you expect all of this for a single drop of blood?”

“Oh, please, I’m half-faery and I’m dating a vampire. I know what blood is worth. This is a bargain and you know it.”

“Then”—the Merchant chuckled softly—“we have a deal, my dear.”

There was a pause. I’d kind of expected them to do something magic-y.

“Is that it?” I asked.

They waggled their fingers in a gesture I found, frankly, sarcastic. “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.”

“Fine.” I sighed. “Thank you. Where is it?”

“Outside.”

I left. I came back in again. “Okay. How did you go from ‘don’t make me look like a knob end’ to ‘actual fucking horse and carriage’?”

“Were I the sort to give free advice,” murmured the Merchant, “I might suggest that you use less subjective language in future.”

“They’ve got plumes on their heads.”

“And at no extra charge.”

I scowled. “You are taking the piss.”

“I am exactly as I appear to be. Perhaps you should try it.”

Rule Number What The Fuck Were You Thinking Kate: never make deals with faeries. I slunk out of the pawnbrokers and climbed sheepishly into the—and there was no other word for it—fairytale carriage that was still waiting patiently by the kerb. There was no driver, and no obvious way to control it, but the moment I got in, it started moving. I chose to believe that it would take me where I wanted to go. And, hey, it did.

I wasn’t exactly a stranger to feeling like a total idiot, but getting out of a silver and ebony coach decorated with elaborate scrollwork and drawn by a pair of thoroughbred horses—one pure black, the other pure white, both with bells on their harnesses—in front of the kind of North London café that served buttered white bread as a side dish and chips with everything was a whole new level of pillockdom. Pulling my hat down over my face, I hurried inside and ordered a mug of coffee that, true to my expectations, was basically warmish, brownish water.

Sofia rocked up on her bicycle at around three. She was wearing a pretty, yellow sundress and, I was glad to see, seemed fairly upbeat. Discovering you have weird magical powers, nearly dying and then having to go straight back to your A-levels can really take a toll.

I waited with my coffee-themed hot-water-beverage while she went to the counter to order. The first couple of times we’d hung out I’d offered to pay for her on account of being the mature, responsible one with the actual job, but that had given the whole arrangement too much of a sexual grooming vibe. I’ve never been super invested in what strangers think of me, but I do try to avoid giving the impression that I’m a child molester.

“Let me guess,” I said when she finally sat down. “It’s over, he can’t be with you because he’s dangerous, and after all the terrible things that happened to you last year it’s best if you never see each other again, and you shouldn’t come and look for him because you’ll only get hurt?”

To my surprise, Sofia shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s more...” She paused, took a sip of tea, looking a little embarrassed. “There’s this new boy. He joined our college in January because he used to be at a private school but—hang on, are you okay? What happened to your face? And is that your, um, are those your horses outside?”

“Complicated faery magic, wizard bullshit, you know how it is. Tell me about the new boy?”

“Well, he used to go to Charterhouse but his parents couldn’t keep up with the fees, so now he’s finishing his A-levels with us and...”

“And Patrick is having a crazy jealous freakout because you said six words to him after a maths lesson?”

She gave me a look. “Kate.”

“Sorry, sorry.” I took a deep breath. “You are your own person and I respect your right to make your own choices about your relationship no matter how much I feel that you are making the same gigantic, avoidable mistakes that I made when I was your age.”

“As apologies go, that’s pretty awful.”

“Do you seriously want me to apologise for my apology?”

That made her giggle. “But you’d probably do that really badly as well.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to sit here listening to me apologise for the poor quality of my apology about my apology.” I sat back and tried to look approachable, which I had no idea how to do. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Well, you weren’t completely wrong. About Patrick, I mean. He is a bit jealous. But I think he might sort of have a reason to be?”

Halle-fucking-lujah. Except no. Mature, nonjudgemental. This was about giving her the support I never had, not sticking it to my ex. Well, not too much about sticking it to my ex. Okay, okay, only a little bit about sticking it to my ex. “You mean you”—I could barely believe I was saying it—“like this boy?”

I wasn’t just too old for this conversation. I’d been too old for it for a decade.

She shrugged. Actually goddamned blushed. “He’s nice, and he’s normal, and he wants to be a doctor like I do and he plays the harp and he thinks I’m funny and he knows I have a boyfriend and I’m not sure if he’s even really into me in that way and I’m just...”

Holy shit. Over the last few months, I’d found the best strategy for dealing with this sort of thing was to treat Sofia like a suspect. Look focused, use her own language, ask open questions. “Just what?” I asked in my best I’m-on-your-side voice.

“I just don’t know what’s right anymore. I know you don’t like Patrick, but he saved my life—”

“Hang on. Somebody saving your life doesn’t mean you owe them anything. Technically you saved my life and... I’m not going to finish that sentence because there’s no way it won’t end up creepy.”

She smiled. “I know, and I didn’t mean it like that, not really. But I’m all he thinks about and he used to be all I’d think about too but now it’s all different and...” She stopped dead again, staring down into her tea.

This was going to be awkward. Patrick was still a sticking point between us, and the infuriating, ironic, hypocritical thing was that I wanted to do the same high-handed bullshit I was angry with him for doing to me. I wanted to tell her to walk the fuck away because the boy was dangerous, and not in a mysterious, sexy, my-life-is-one-of-darkness way but in a he-will-make-you-miserable-and-tank-your-self-esteem way. Except not only would that have been a total dick move, it also wouldn’t have worked.

Finally, I said, “Different is normal. I’m sure people like me tell you this every day of your damned life, but you’re going to change a lot in the next few years. And the thing is, Patrick just...can’t.”

“I know that. I know I’ll get old and he’ll still be young, but we’ve talked about it and I know he’ll love me forever.”

I just about managed not to club myself to death with the salt shaker. “That’s the thing. It isn’t about when you’re old and grey and he’s young and beautiful. It’s about when you’re twenty-six and a doctor. And he’s still the boy from biology class.” She was getting that I-don’t-like-how-mean-you’re-being look so I pressed on in a backing off sort of way. “And this isn’t only about Patrick. It’s how vampires work. Once they work out who they are, they never change.”

I’d never really said any of that out loud before and, now that I had, I felt almost sorry for Patrick. For all of them, really, watching the world go by without them until they had no choice but to lash out in anger like the Morrigan, or wall themselves off like Aeglica Thrice-Risen, or make mad plans to become gods, or spend their unlives drunk on whatever pleasure they could find. I slid my already slightly battered but thankfully still functional phone out of my pocket and surreptitiously texted Julian. Thinking of you.

Sofia sat quietly for a long while. A staff member who couldn’t really be called a “waiter” so much as a “bloke who worked in a cafe” brought her a bowl of chips, which she picked at idly. “It’s just,” she said at last, “it’s just not supposed to be like this. When you love somebody.”

“Pretty sure love isn’t supposed to be like anything. That’s why it causes so much trouble.”

Sofia giggled again. She had an annoyingly charming giggle. No wonder the seventeen-year-old boys were all crazy for her. “Was that supposed to be comforting? Because it’s up there with your apology.”

“What I’m saying”—I paused to steal a chip—“is that love is different things to different people. Hell, more than that, it’s different things to the same person. When I was...”

Sofia was smirking now. “When you were my age?”

“Yes. When I was your age I felt the same way about Patrick as you do. Confused and crazy, with everything all tangled up in my head. Fifteen years ago, I thought it was love. Now I think it wasn’t. Now I think it was just this hundred-and-something-year-old creep messing with the head of a teenage lesbian who didn’t know who she was or what she wanted. And when you get...”

“To your age?”

I grinned. “Maybe you’ll feel the same and maybe you won’t. And maybe this other guy, whatever his name is...”

“Samuel.”

“Right. Maybe you feel something for him. And maybe it’s like what you feel for Patrick. But maybe it isn’t. And maybe you’ll call it love, and maybe you won’t. But whatever happens, it’s okay.”

I think I’d finally cracked it because she gave me this sweet little smile. “Thanks, Kate.”

“Unless,” I went on, “you get murdered by vampires or sucked into Hell or consumed from the inside by a power you don’t know how to control.”

Her face fell.

“Um. But almost certainly none of those things will happen.”

“Nice recovery.”

“Sorry, I’m kind of new at this. And basically the worst person in the world to go to for relationship advice.”

“No, it’s good. Maybe don’t predict my death next time.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Now,” said Sofia sternly, “what really happened to your face?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

She gave me what I suspected was her best hard stare. It wasn’t particularly intimidating but I appreciated the effort. “That’s exactly the kind of answer you keep telling me I shouldn’t accept.”

“Yeah, but you’re not supposed to listen to me. You’re a teenager.”

“Stop stereotyping me and tell me what’s going on.”

Well, I hadn’t seen this coming, but she was right. I got myself a refill of barely acceptable coffee substitute and explained the situation. I wound up explaining it in quite a lot of detail, because while the tough-talking woman-of-few-words act was a great way to pick up chicks, it was a really bad way to keep vulnerable teenagers away from dangerous situations. The last time the city’s magical community had gone to war, both sides had tried to hoover up whatever stray mystically empowered entities they could find. I hoped that this time they’d got past that stage already and moved on to blowing the shit out of each other with fireballs and killer ick monsters from beyond the stars. Because if they hadn’t, then Sofia was a prime recruitment target, what with the visions and the being-the-delphic-oracle-somehow and the weird glowy sun thing she’d done that one time, so she really needed a heads up. But, given her previous comments, I made an extra special effort to avoid explaining the many and horrible ways the people involved could kill her.

We finished up and she biked off soon after. As for me, it was getting on for early evening and I had a pop-up cabaret night to get ready for. I’d been concerned that I might have to make a trip to Brighton, but apparently the Enchanted Kingdom—which was one of these super exclusive gigs where you only found out the details on the day, and then only if you were in the know—was already here and had been for the last month. That made sense in terms of “had opportunity to rip people apart in Peckham,” but much less sense in terms of “reasonable things to do after screwing over Arty King.” Anyway, I wasn’t about to complain, especially since my current transport options were quadrupedal.

I took the carriage home, changed, and ran down my mental checklist of things I should be freaking the hell out about. It turned out to be a depressingly long list, what with Nim doing cameos in my dreams again, demons taking over the underground, the Merchant seeming pretty keen on getting me closer to my mother’s side of the family, me putting myself slap bang in the middle of Arty King’s radar, and still needing to track down the artefact that got my partner killed and was also part of a ritual that might get me killed. I’d say I needed a new line of work, but half of this was crap I wasn’t even getting paid for.

Chapter Six

Carparks & Cabaret

Kauri showed up around eight, by which time Elise had been back home for a while. I’d sort of forgotten to invite her out with us, but since I don’t really do friends or social occasions I was pretty rusty on shit like, y’know, basic courtesy. Thankfully, Elise was fine about it. But, then again, she was fine about most things. Maybe she had a fundamentally forgiving nature, but sometimes I worried she genuinely hadn’t learned to be angry yet.

In any case, she was excited at the idea of a pop-up cabaret experience despite, or perhaps because of, my complete inability to explain what it actually was. As we made our way downstairs, I realised that once again I was underdressed. I’d gone with my usual doing-something-in-the-evening-for-once ensemble of jeans, shirt and blazer, while Kauri, even without his full get-up, was dazzling in killer heels and a leather jacket, his eyes a magical riot of purple and gold. Elise, for reasons I didn’t really understand, had gone with crazy eighties hair, fingerless gloves, and a denim-on-denim combo that I kind of hated her for being able to pull off.

Turning my back firmly on the carriage, which was glittering in the twilight in a way that seemed frankly pointed, I marched over to the car.

“So,” said Kauri, “are we going to pretend that you haven’t got an accessory from Goth Barbie’s Dream Wedding parked outside your house?”

“Yes. Yes we are.”

Elise stood still a moment, regarding the coach suspiciously. “I do hope this is not a clandestine attempt to replace the car, Miss Kane. It will be most unhappy without us and I understand that horses are extremely difficult to refuel.”

“It’s temporary.” I yanked the door open. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

We all piled in. To the car. Not to the magical pimp wagon that the Merchant of Dreams had saddled me with. Elise was still on driving duty and I somehow got stuck in the back. It was kind of depressing how over the last year I’d gone from “nobody drives but me” to “I don’t even get shotgun.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Little underground place.” Kauri twisted round in his seat. “Like, literally underground. Near Waterloo. Nice venue if you’re into arches, brickwork and tunnels.”

Elise sat up slightly straighter. “Yes. I think I am.”

“This sounds sewery.” I was less pleased. I’d had more than enough sewers to last me at least the rest of the decade.

“It would be fair after the literal shit you dragged me through last time. But, no. I’m not that kind of girl. You’ll see.”

We ditched the car in the carpark at Waterloo and made our way past the station, down a staircase, and through a tunnel that was covered in the sort of graffiti that’s allowed to be there because it makes everything look cool and urban, as opposed to the sort of graffiti you got around my way, which wasn’t allowed to be there because cool and urban had to be restricted to pre-approved parts of town. Some of it was even bordering on okay. There was this one mural of two neon-yellow skeletons kissing which kind of worked for me. Not that I thought I’d ever take my dating-the-dead experiments quite that far.

We entered the club itself through a low door on the right, and found ourselves in...well...it was an enchanted kingdom. Clue was in the name I suppose. The whole place had this vibe that was one part nightclub, one part bomb shelter, one part haunted forest. It was washed in a bluish-green light that seemed to come from nowhere, and I could have sworn I saw honest-to-god crows flapping about. After last year, I was about as big a fan of crows as I was of sewers. Seriously, corvidae could go fuck themselves.

“So,” said Kauri with the nonchalant air of somebody who came to avant-garde events in tunnels under the city most days of most weeks, “here’s the deal: bunch of different rooms, bunch of different stuff. Knock yourselves out. I have to get this”—he pointed in a way that encompassed his entire body—“onto a dancefloor before the ugly sisters get all the best princes.” He spiralled away into the crowd in a swirl of glitter and shadow. One of the things I appreciated about Kauri was that he wasn’t afraid to be supernaturally fabulous.

Elise stuck close to my side as I pushed inside. We passed a tiny performance space where a man in a black-and-gold frock coat and a fox mask performed a dreamlike aerial routine to a hypnotic baseline. Next was a tunnel packed with dancing bodies, which I guessed was where Kauri had gone—a classic club space, all flashing lights and writhing.

As we moved on, the music started to shift: less dancey and trancey, more classical and violinsy. Up ahead, the venue opened out into, well, it was still a tunnel, but it was a bigger tunnel with a vaulted ceiling. The atmosphere in here was different again. Kind of a you-shall-go-to-the-ball feeling. Behind us, people were grinding to digital sex; here they were whirling the night away to a genuine string quartet. The—I wasn’t really sure what to call them—guests? Dancers? Clubbers? Anyway, they were a mixed bag. Some of them looked like they’d walked off the set of a costume drama, others like they’d walked in off the street. And I had a feeling that if I was going to find Rose Red, I was going to find her here. I was right.

She was standing on the mezzanine level gazing down at the crowd, looking beautiful and terrible, with wine-dark lips and deep black eyes, her hair bound up with a spike-tipped crown. Her gown was a vision in deep crimson, with a sharp collar that rose in knife-edges behind her head and a train that flowed behind her like a river of blood and darkness. She held an apple in her left hand which, I’ll be honest, I thought was a bit much.

Once upon a time, and I can’t believe I just said that in this context, I’d have felt awkward pushing my way across the dancefloor and up the stairs, but I’d got pretty used to balls on account of having been tangled up with a bunch of unbelievably posh werewolves for the past year and a bit. Also I’d brought an immovable statue with me, which made it really hard for people to get in your way.

Rose Red saw us coming, and swept across the platform to greet us. She looked...narked. “You were not invited.” What with the heels, she had a good couple of inches on me, and I was suddenly aware that I was standing quite close to the edge of a rather rickety iron ledge.

“I’m a plus one.”

“If Nimue wants to speak to me, she can come herself.”

Why did they always assume I was there for Nim? I mean, apart from the whole pledged-her-my-loyalty-unto-death thing. “Right now I’m freelancing.”

Rose Red’s eyes narrowed. “Freelancing for whom?”

“That’s...kind of complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it.”

“Arty King hired you to help him steal from the Merchant of Dreams. You screwed him over. I’m working for the Merchant and I need the Tears of Hypnos back before this turns into a gigantic shitstorm.”

She was silent a while, scarlet nails tapping against the iron railing. “Do you even know what it is you’re chasing?”

“Little bottle, shiny. Has some kind of unbelievable magical power.”

She smiled. It was one of the evillest smiles I’ve seen in a good long while, and I’ve seen some pretty fucking evil smiles in my time. Then again, she probably practised. Check that. She definitely practised. She leaned closer, her lips brushing my ear. “Perhaps we will talk later,” she whispered. “For now, dance.”

I took Elise by the hand and led her back down to the dancefloor. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I had a vague idea that this was going quite badly wrong. Taking her in my arms like something out of Strictly, I tried to whirl her across the hall. She didn’t whirl.

“Miss Kane, I do not think this is—”

I ignored her and vanished into the crowd. Found another partner. Another. The music wrapped around me like spiderwebs. Distantly, I wondered if I should stop, but I had nothing to hold on to. My mind was filled with smoke and mirrors; there was only the rhythm, and the endless turning of the dance.

A hand closed around my arm, cold and solid. Elise again. Somebody slapped me and I looked up to see Kauri staring at me. His eyes were onyx set in gold, an unspoken promise of endless nights of forbidden pleasures. A trick of his bloodline, one he didn’t play quite as well as Julian, but it got my attention.

“She’s fucking with your head, Kate. Snap out of it.”

Between my mother’s constant presence, Nimue messing with my dreams, a decade and a half of dealing with psychic vampires, and a tendency to drink my problems, I was pretty used to feeling out of control. It didn’t mean I liked it.

My brain was being pulled in too many directions at once, but I managed to stop dancing long enough to take stock of my surroundings. The floor was almost clear. The guests were standing in a circle around us like when kids used to fight in the playground.

Rose Red glided towards us. “You are no longer amusing me.”

That was fair. Most people got sick of my dancing after about three minutes. “I just came to talk.”

“You infiltrated my kingdom and presented me with demands.” Purple smoke was beginning to spill across the floor. I was guessing she’d upgraded from narked to seriously hacked off.

I put my hands up in a don’t-rip-the-messenger-to-bloody-fragments kind of way. “Hey, I’m really not here to fight.”

Kauri stepped forwards. “Bitch, please. You are not going to stand there in your unbeat face and a frock you hot-glued out of a pair of cinema curtains and pull this do-not-defy-me bullshit.”

“Why, Miss Parma Violet.” Rose Red raised an exquisitely sculpted eyebrow. “You are precisely what this evening needed. Something that tastes like chalk, smells like Grandma and hasn’t been popular for twenty years.”

Kauri put a hand on his hip like the world’s campest gunslinger. “Says the lady who stole her look from a seventy-five-year-old kid’s cartoon.”

“That reminds me. Freddie Mercury called. He wants his trousers back.”

“Jane Fonda called. She said keep the wig. Nobody wants that shit anymore.”

“Curious. Isn’t that what they said about your last Edinburgh run?”

“Hey, I saw a review of your last gig too: Mirror mirror on the wall, I didn’t like this show at all.”

Our hostess was silent a while. Then she laughed. It was a strangely sincere laugh from somebody so carefully put together. “You are welcome in my Kingdom, Miss Parma Violet.”

I wasn’t sure if Rose Red had let me go or if it was just really hard to stay ensorcelled while two drag queens read each other to filth, but I was back in the game. “Any chance we could focus on the missing superweapon?”

Rose Red waved a hand and what was left of the crowd went back to dancing. I wasn’t sure if I felt bad for interrupting their night out or annoyed at having provided them with an unplanned floor show. “Follow me.”

She led us through the revelry into a tiny brick-lined chamber. It was empty except for a couple of mirrors and an I-shit-you-not glass coffin.

“This was an installation piece,” she explained. “I hired a girl to lie in it. Really looked the part: white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony, all that.”

Rose Red had a wistful air that I recognised.

“About five four?” I asked. “Eyes like a baby deer? Has a way about her that says if you don’t save me nothing will?”

She nodded.

I kicked the coffin, hard. A thin pattern of cracks spread across the surface. “Fuck! Fucking Corin fucking Black. No offence”—I turned back to Rose Red—“but I really didn’t think she’d be your type.”

“I never said we were screwing. She...fit.”

I’d been around this block enough to recognise high-end mage bullshit. It was all wrapped up with the Dream and the courts and the way they got the world to believe the stories they told themselves. “And she took the Tears?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know where she went?”

“If I did, I’d cut her heart out myself.”

I facepalmed. “You know, life would be a lot easier if people weren’t so pointlessly fucking vengeful about everything. Arty King steals from the Merchant, the Merchant swears vengeance. You steal from Arty King, Arty King swears vengeance. Corin steals from you, you swear vengeance. I know this is doing myself out of a job but, seriously, if you could all just let shit go everybody would live a lot longer.”

Rose Red looked coolly down at me. “I suspect you would find that everybody would live longer, except the person who let shit go first.”

She had a point. “Okay. Lay it on me. Did she take anything else? When did you last see her? Do you think she had any help?”

“She took nothing apart from the vial. And I last saw her two days ago, shortly after rehearsals. We’d had a...confrontation.”

I took a wild guess. “Fairest of them all?”

“Yes.” She looked faintly embarrassed. “I sent one of my servants to hunt her down, but he didn’t come back.”

“Who was the servant?”

“A member of my court called Jack Hunter. Loyal, or so I thought.” She glanced away. “He hasn’t been seen since.”

“Not from London, though?”

“He’d want to go somewhere wild. Forested.”

“It isn’t a lot to go on, but if she took this guy with her then there’s a good chance they’re still together. That or he’s dead. I’ll run down what I can but, let’s be very clear about this, nobody is getting handed over to anybody.”

Rose Red lifted her chin haughtily. “Hunter is one of my people, and he answers to my justice.”

“Fine, fine.” I sat on the coffin and put my head in my hands. “You can have Hunter. But—can you please explain to me what the fuck this weird magic juice is and why everybody keeps killing each other over it?”

“It’s the stuff dreams are made of.”

“Not helpful.”

“Not supposed to be. We aren’t friends. If you think you can find Corin I won’t stop you, but I’ll be coming back for the Tears. So will King, so will Nimue, so will anybody else who thinks they can use them. I’d recommend picking a side.” She took a bite out of her apple.

“Thanks for your concern. Hope next time we meet, we aren’t trying to murder each other.”

“Don’t bank on it, honey.”

Kauri straightened up from where he’d been lounging. “Show was fucking gorgeous, Red. If you don’t get ripped apart in some epic wizard battle, come catch me at the Velvet while you’re in town.”

Elise also made a polite goodbye and the three of us pushed out into the street. It was still relatively early. Going to a gig takes a while, but entering a gig, chewing out the organiser and then leaving immediately turned out to have been relatively quick, even with my little snip of lost time in the middle. I set off into the tunnel, but found that the others weren’t following.

“If it is no difficulty, Miss Kane,” said Elise, “I should rather like to make an evening of it, as I believe they say.”

I looked at her. She had put a lot of effort into her outfit, and realistically she was safer in most situations than I was on account of the whole indestructibility thing. Also, she wasn’t my fucking property and if she wanted to stay out all night at a pop-up cabaret experience, I had no power whatsoever to stop her.

“You staying too?” I asked Kauri.

“Hell yeah. The party’s just getting started and early nights weren’t my thing even when I was alive.”

“Okay, well...you two have a nice time and—” There was no way I could put this without sounding like a patronising arse. “Could you make sure Elise gets home safely. Because I’m going to have to take the car, all public transport might be a little bit controlled by demons now, and she is technically only one-and-a-half.”

Elise folded her hands demurely in front of her. “And to think, you never even bought me a cake.”

“You don’t eat.”

“But I enjoy celebration. And I understand that—as the popular idiom holds—it is the thought that counts.”

Kauri slipped his arm through Elise’s. “We’ll be fine, Kate.”

He was right. They’d be fine.

They’d almost certainly be fine.

There was a comfortable ninety-three percent chance they’d be fine.

Before I could change my mind, I trudged back to the carpark. I suppose I could have gone with them—for reasons of fun as well as raging paranoia—but there was nothing like getting worked over by a sleazy club owner, savaged by angry demons, and mind controlled by a magic drag queen in the space of twenty-four hours to really put you out of the dance-’til-dawn mood.

It was a funny time of night to be leaving the city centre—well after working hours but well before chucking out time. That explained why the carpark was so deserted. It didn’t explain why an attractive young woman in jeans and a leather jacket was leaning on a pillar very close to where we’d parked. I tried not making eye contact and hoping that the whole thing was a giant coincidence. Not that I’d really met many of those in my time.

“You Kane?”

Nope, not a coincidence. I stopped, turning slowly and making sure I could reach a knife if I had to. Not that I wanted to get too stab-happy in case she turned out to be an ordinary human. Or an ordinary enough human that sticking a pointy thing in her would be more than a minor inconvenience. “If I said who’s asking, you’d take it as a yes, wouldn’t you?”

“I believe that we would.” She’d only said about eight words to me, but she was six different kinds of not from around here. Her accent was so thick it was like she’d walked straight out of an episode of The Sopranos.

“And by we, you mean?” I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Myself and the two gentlemen you’ll be able to see if you look to your left, and your right.”

As directed, I looked to my left and to my right. And, as directed, saw two men. Gentlemen was pushing it. “Should I ask what this is about, or do you just want to bundle me into the back of a van now?”

“I have to admit”—she stopped leaning, and came towards me, stilettos clicking on the concrete—“that would be easier for everybody involved. Especially you.”

Okay. I was too tired for this. And at the risk of jumping to stereotypical conclusions about Americans, I thought the odds were good that these guys had guns.

I sighed and got in the van.

Chapter Seven

Promises & Threats

It wasn’t quite a bag-on-the-head job but it was the next best thing. I’d love to pretend that I could do the Sherlock Holmes bit and be all “we drove for two miles, turned left twice and right four times” and deduce that we could only be in one small part of Hackney Marsh. But I couldn’t.

We got out of the van...somewhere. Suburbs, most likely? Would have been a nice place if I hadn’t been getting kidnapped at the time.

The girl and her goons led me into a nondescript house and through into an equally nondescript sitting room. Nondescript apart from the fact that it absolutely reeked of blood. Well, that was reassuring.

In one shadowy corner, a figure waited in a leather armchair. I was directed to the sofa. What with the abduction and the smell, I wasn’t hugely inclined to sit around shooting the breeze, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

“Okay,” I said. “Who the hell are you?”

The man sighed. “I’m afraid that’s the wrong question.”

“Then what’s the right question?”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

I could already tell I wasn’t going to enjoy this conversation. I tried again. “How about you answer the question I actually asked?”

“My name is Fisher. I’m here for the artefact.”

“Don’t have it.”

“I know. But I also know that you’re looking for it. I hope to persuade you to bring it to me.”

I glanced around. To be honest, I was kind of getting mixed messages. Right now nobody looked like they were about to break my fingers or cut my ears off, but they also gave the impression that those options were still on the table. And then there was the blood thing. I could have stolen a bit of my mother’s power to track it better, but if I was sitting on top of a pile of poorly stashed bodies, I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact I’d noticed.

Rule 19: never admit you’ve spotted a corpse unless you’re certain you’re not about to join it.

“Tell me,” Fisher continued, “do you even know what it is you are seeking?”

“The stuff dreams are made of.”

There was a low chuckle from the darkness. It seemed pained. “True. The Tears of Hypnos are the stuff of the Dream itself. They blur the boundaries between what is and what may be. In the right hands, with the right resources, they allow the magician to reshape reality.”

Huh. That explained a few things. Like all the murders. And how they could help Henry Percy become a god. And why everyone and their dog was after this shit. “And you want me to give them to you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, then in that case I’ll absolutely do everything you say.”

The girl shot me a look from the doorway. “You’re kinda becoming an irritant, lady.”

Fisher raised a hand. “Peace. Our guest has every reason to be suspicious.”

Too fucking right I did. “Too fucking right I do.”

“Hey!” Fisher’s ladygoon pushed herself off the wall and swaggered in. “Your mother never teach you how to talk in polite company?”

I was flat out done with this, so I got up and got loomy. “Last time I checked, polite company didn’t throw people in vans in the middle of the night.”

“You want to sit the hell down right now.” She leaned in, flames flickering at the tips of her fingers.

Should’ve guessed. Once in my life I’d have liked to meet a hot-headed mage who specialised in, I don’t know, telling the future or controlling pigeons or the sort of complicated rituals that took twenty years to research and twelve hours to cast. But, no. It’s always fire.

In any case, the light made it easier to see my host. Silver-haired but not that old. Perhaps late forties or early fifties. He had kind of a wolfish look about him and this sense of banked power. “Stand down, Mallory. There will be no violence here, from anybody.”

“She needs to learn some respect.” Mallory still clearly felt “all up in my grill” was where things were at.

Fisher curled his fingers into his palm like a kid crushing a butterfly and Mallory’s fire whoomfed out. “She is not the one forgetting her place.”

I figured it was a good idea to sit back down. I’d never seen a mage turn off somebody else’s power like that, though with Nim it might have been a courtesy thing. Still, to be on the safe side I was putting Fisher firmly in my do-not-fuck-with category.

“Now, perhaps I can make my case.” Fisher shifted slightly in his chair, making the leather creak. “Your Queen is young and, worse, she is in the middle of a war. Bring the Tears to her and she will be forced to use them as a weapon.”

I didn’t believe for one second that Nimue would do anything to threaten her city. Then again, Arty King might not leave her any choice. “And you’d be so much better?”

He reached over and switched on a lamp. There was something off about the way he moved, too stiff and too careful. When I could see him clearly, I realised he was bleeding. I realised he was bleeding quite a lot. His jacket was soaked through on the right hand side, as if he’d been stabbed or shot somewhere he shouldn’t have survived being stabbed or shot. At least that explained the smell.

“Um,” I said. “You really want to get that looked at.”

“You see why I need the artefact.”

“I see why you need to go to a hospital.”

Fisher folded his arm back over the wound. “It is older than it looks and it will not mend on its own. The Tears will heal it. Little else can.”

Needless to say, I wasn’t sure what to make of this. It could have been a really elaborate bluff, but a bluff that involved either mortally wounding yourself or finding a way to fake an injury so completely that you could fool the daughter of the Queen of the Wild Hunt was one step too elaborate. Even for the sort of man who dragged you off the street to talk mysteriously at you from the shadows.

He seemed genuinely in pain. And if he was trying to manipulate me into doing his bidding, playing on my famous sense of sympathy and fair play seemed a funny way to go about it. If he’d done the bare minimum of research, he’d have just sent me a pretty sociopath in a little black dress and had the Tears by teatime.

“No offence”—I leaned forward, elbows on my knees—“but this seems kind of a crappy deal. I sell out a friend I took a magic oath to protect and you give me...as far as I can tell: nothing.”

“I can give you liberty.”

“Un-vague that for me.”

“Work with me this once and your oath-tie to the Witch Queen of London will be severed.”

“Yeah, fucking people over does kind of sever ties. But it has consequences.”

“I’m sorry. I chose my words poorly. I meant to say that what a Queen has done a King can undo. I have the power to release you from whatever binds you to Nimue. And without the sanctions that fall upon oath-breakers.”

This was beginning to sound like the interest-free-credit of mystical bargains. Betray now, pay later. Although, I had to admit it was tempting. Don’t get me wrong, I cared about Nim. I really cared about Nim. If I had to choose between giving her a weapon that could blow up the city and letting Arty King take her down, I’d give her the weapon every time. But I had enough trouble committing to a Netflix subscription. I really wasn’t okay with eternal fealty.

“A one-time trade, Miss Kane,” he murmured. “And you walk away free.”

I looked at him. Either the man was what they’d call inscrutable, or I was really bad at scruting. “And what’s the stick?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“That’s the carrot. What’s the stick?”

Fisher pressed a hand to his side, his eyes closing for a moment. “I am a civilised man. No matter what you decide, you will walk out of here today. But only today. I will have what I want, with you or without you.”

Well, at least he’d been honest. I stood up. “So, this has been fun, and thanks for the ambiguous promises and veiled threats. But I’m afraid I have this policy where I don’t do deals with anyone who looks even a little bit like the Devil.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Mallory and the minions escorted me out, and then it was back into the van. I thought about asking them to drop me off somewhere specific but this was less of a lift and more of a dump. They chucked me out somewhere around Battersea. Which at least wasn’t the river.

It did, however, leave me at a bit of a loose end for the rest of the evening. The thought of going home was pretty miserable since Elise was still out and I didn’t want to be alone with a bottle and my bruises. I risked the night bus to Brewer Street. No demons. Just the usual crowd you got on late night public transport, which, honestly, was only about ten percent better.

By the time I got there, it was a bit before two but the Velvet was still open. Ashriel, Julian’s celibate incubus lieutenant, was lazily watching the door, although it was getting to the point where the job was barely necessary. I nodded at him.

He eyeballed me. “What happened to you?”

“The usual. Angry magic gangsters. Disappearing train. Legions of Hell.”

“Rough. She’s upstairs.”

Inside the club was a loud, pulsing mix of sweat and sex. I crossed the velvet rope and headed up to the VIP area where Julian held court with the kittens, her loosely defined collection of exhibitionist girl-on-girl pleasure junkies. Whatever you thought about Julian, you had to admit the lady knew what she liked.

When she saw me, she sat up, a smile spreading across her slightly bloodstained lips. The kittens disentangled themselves, gathered what little clothing they’d been wearing and crept away—they’d been around long enough to know the deal.

“Sweeting,” Julian purred, “you look positively...”

“Fucked?”

“No, but I hope to rectify that.”

It should have been creepy that Julian found my injuries a turn-on, but truth was she found almost everything a turn-on. “Can we have a brief chat about the things trying to kill me first?”

She stretched back out on her chaise longue. “I take a very dim view of people trying to kill you.”

“I know.” I slid in under Julian’s feet. She’d gone for a kind of Louis XIV vibe tonight with lots of lace and brocade, and satin-bowed shoes. I tugged them off and stroked her stockinged calves. “Basically there’s about a hundred and ninety four different wizard factions coming down on the city. Things are getting kind of apocalyptic.”

She nudged me gently with her toes. “You could leave the magicians to fight amongst themselves. It doesn’t affect us.”

I’d been kicking the same idea around myself—ever since I’d realised what I’d stumbled back into. Except when Julian said it didn’t affect us, what she really meant was it didn’t affect her. Because I did have a horse in this race. Nim was my girl. Had been since I first came to London. Things hadn’t worked out between us romance-wise, but she was still one of my oldest friends in the city. One of the few who weren’t dead yet. I couldn’t hang her out to dry.

Could I?

Julian slithered out from under me and turned my face towards hers. Her eyes were that endless, perfect blue like a wild ocean. “You’re in your head,” she said. “Let me take you out of it.”

She kissed me, and I tasted wine and rose leaves and eternity. Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought I was exactly in the mood but, thing about Julian—she was the mood.

When I opened my eyes again, she was stretched full length on top of me, her fingers already at work on my clothes. For once, she was relatively careful. With me, at least. Not so much the ensemble. My blazer just about made it, but I heard my shirt rip. In some distant way, I was annoyed—it was one of my better ones—but then Julian got her hands on me, and everything was blotted out by the glide of skin against skin.

“My poor darling.” She surveyed my collection of scrapes and bruises, and the sorry attempt I’d made to bandage up my shoulder. “You have been in the wars.”

“Yes. There is a literal war going on right now. You know, the—”

“Shhhh. Let me kiss it better.”

“What, the war?”

“All of it.” Julian’s eyes shone impossibly blue. The deepest places of the sky or the sea. “Everything that’s hurting you.”

She bent her head and put her lips to a gash across my ribs—could have been anything, really, stray talon, gangster boot, casual van-bundling injury—and I gasped at the fresh sting. But, with Julian, pain was just another thing to feel. Not that I was usually the biggest fan of feeling things, but right now, it was way better than thinking.

I let her have it: the noise and the questions and shitty mess that was my life right now. And in return she gave me her teeth and her fingers and pleasure, sharp as blood, deep as shadows, that covered me and consumed me, and was its own forever.

Chapter Eight

Hunters & Prey

Fire raged through the Dream of a city. I smelled burning hair and burning flesh. A hand came to rest on my shoulder, and I turned to see a masked woman in green.

I’d met this lady before—mostly I’d been fighting her in an endless dream-battle that put a real crimp in my sleep patterns. Back then I’d had a sword, but I’d lost it in the real world and somehow that meant I didn’t have it here either. I think the wizards called that synchronicity. I called it a pisser.

“Pretty sure I should be trying to kill you.”

She smiled. Put a finger to her lips. Her hair fell past her shoulders in loose, green coils.

“Seriously, who are you?”

“An ally.”

“Didn’t I shove a sword through your neck last time we met?”

“I can be forgiving.”

The flames drew closer. My skin felt tight and it was getting harder to breathe.

“The city is burning,” she said. “Nimue will need me.”

The flames closed in.

I woke in a sweat. Even without nearly burning to death in my dreams, the weather was stifling. The cold and the wet I could deal with on account of having been born in this damned country, but the heat did me in. Groping for my phone, I realised it was about half five, which was in that exact window between too late to go back to sleep and too early to get up. Seriously, fuck that window. To make matters worse, in the hours of unconsciousness I’d managed, I hadn’t even been able to get in touch with Nim.

You had one job, Kate, and it was a job you could literally do in your sleep.

I flipped the duvet to the cool side, well, cooler side, well, less drenched side, settled on my back and closed my eyes. Honestly, trying to psychically hit up my ex-girlfriend using wibbly primordial dream magic that I’ve never got around to asking anybody to explain to me was a bit of a reach. But what else was I going to do for the next couple of hours?

Fire raged through the Dream of a city. I smelled burning hair and burning flesh. I was on the platform at Covent Garden station and everywhere I turned were flames. The air was furnace hot, searing my lungs and stinging my lips as I struggled to breathe.

Well, this had a gone-horribly-wrong vibe.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and the world cooled. “What are you doing here, Kate?”

I turned and it was definitely Nimue this time: grey hoodie, dark hair, eyes that could hold the whole world. And, just for a moment, she looked tired.

“Got a message from Jacob,” I said. “We’ve lost the deep places. Whatever that means.”

She looked down, suddenly smaller in the firelight. “It means we have lost half the city. It means I can no longer call on the shadows or control what stays buried. It means Jacob...”

Dream silences were a whole new level of uncomfortable.

“He was alive when I last saw him.” Alive and surrounded by an entire demonic army if we were being technical, but this felt like an accentuate-the-positive kind of conversation. “I’d have—I mean—I tried to help but he told me to get out.”

“He knew I needed you for other things.” Nim stood a little taller, looking more mystic queeny by the second. “And he may yet live, necromancers have a number of tricks at their disposal. Even so, he is beyond my reach for now.”

Were we getting our arses kicked? This felt uncomfortably like we were getting our arses kicked. “What about the others?”

“King is strongest in the south, but Michelle thrives on fire and chaos. We are holding. The games in the north are subtler and King’s man there is reckless, and does not have his full trust.”

Yeah, he’d recklessly cracked several of my ribs and then recklessly told me exactly where I could find the Tears of Hypnos. “You think Gabriel can take him?”

“It’s more complicated than that, but yes.”

“Last time I counted, that still leaves us two—one down.”

The flames died and a mist rolled in. And we stood for a moment in silver nothingness.

“This is war, Kate,” Nimue told me. “Even winning is loss.”

I woke up again. It was still too hot and I was still too sweaty. Peeling myself out of the sheets, I showered, dressed and, after ten minutes of feeling slightly better, was hotter and sweatier than ever. So sexy.

Elise, as usual, was already up and fresh as a daisy. She was kneeling at my coffee table, building something big and gothic out of matchsticks.

“Am I getting really oblivious in my old age?” I asked doubtfully, “or did we not have that yesterday.”

“We did not. I began assembling it after I returned home from Miss Red’s party.”

“You came home from a club and your first thought was I know, I’ll glue some wood together?”

She glanced up, giving me what I was coming to recognise as her “I am not sure why you made that comment but I think it is peculiar and fear you may be mocking me” look. “Oh, no, Miss Kane. That would be a very strange thing to do. In actuality, I had been intending to begin this project for some time. The plans and materials have been in my room since May.”

“You had plans to make—” Nope, I had nothing. I gestured vaguely. “This?”

“It is a scale model of the Palace of Versailles circa 1873. It is quite complex. I would certainly not wish to embark upon it without plans.”

I took my coffee and my banana.

It was still early, which I frankly resented, but Corin’s trail was going cold fast and I’d lost enough time with my recent kidnapping. If I was lucky, she’d still be lying low. If I wasn’t, she’d already have ditched the goods and got the hell out of dodge.

I pried Elise away from Versailles and she drove us to the office. She went for mellow Norwegian electronica over her usual hardcore German thrash metal, which made me immediately suspicious.

“Are you worried about me, Elise?” I asked, forgoing my habitual car nap.

“I am often worried about you, Miss Kane. You have a dangerous profession and persist in making a number of unhealthy lifestyle choices.”

“Look, I’m eating the fucking bananas, okay?”

“Very true, but you smoke, drink to excess, and walk alone into the lairs of people and entities who want to kill you. You should also eat more oily fish or get more sunlight.” She paused thoughtfully. “Although it bewilders me that these two activities have such similar effects on biological entities.”

“I’ve been a biological entity for thirty-something years and I haven’t stopped entity-ing yet.”

“That you have yet to actually die is what I believe they refer to as a low bar.”

“I like my bars like I like my women. Low.”

“While I understand that the ‘I like my blank like I like my men-stroke-women. Blank’ construction is a time-honoured form of innuendo, I am not certain it makes sense in this context.”

“I’m not certain your face makes sense in this context.”

“Ah.” Elise brightened. “Am I correct in thinking that the expected response is ‘I am not certain your mum makes sense in this context?’ But given your mother is a terrifying supernatural being of whom we both avoid speaking I am, perhaps, ironically not convinced that it makes sense in this context.”

I pulled my hat down over my eyes, pretty sure I’d been beaten, though not entirely sure what I’d been beaten at.

We tootled along with Royksopp wibbling ambiently in the background.

Eventually, Elise cleared her throat, or rather she said “Ahem ahem,” which was as close as she could get without mucous membranes. My honed PI instincts told me this meant she wanted my attention.

“Spit it out, Elise. I know something’s bothering you.”

“I am concerned about Miss Black. I seem to recall that your last encounter was rather difficult.”

Rather difficult in this context meant rescued me from a dungeon she’d also kind of got me thrown into, kissed me in the shower despite almost certainly knowing I was seeing somebody and then pulled a gun on me, leaving me to clean up a supernatural massacre that, by the way, she’d also played a key role in starting. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“There is no need to use your sarcastic voice, Miss Kane.”

“Sorry.” I sighed. “Corin Black is the last thing I need right now. But I don’t see we’ve got much choice.”

“Do you have any idea how we are to find her? Surely, she could be anywhere.”

“Could be, but I think it’s a shorter list than you might think. Once Corin latches on to you, she doesn’t let go until you stop being useful. I’d bet good money she’s still with Hunter. Which means they’ll be hiding out somewhere wild. Which should be fairly easy to narrow down in an urban area.”

“Could they not have fled the city entirely?”

“They could, but I don’t think it’s likely.” I sat up and adjusted my hat. Elise didn’t seem to care about little things like eye contact and not having a fedora over your face but since most people did I thought it best not to lose the habit. “The only reason she wants the Tears is because everybody else does. No matter who thinks they’ve hired her, she’s going to auction them off to the highest bidder, exactly like last time. And the best way to do that is to stay in town.”

“So we will be looking for wild places in London?”

“That’s the plan.”

We spent the morning shortlisting locations that a nature-wizard would take a femme fatale who had just pulled off a dangerous heist by consciously re-enacting a Snow White narrative. Y’know, like you do. Eventually we got it down to three: Highgate Wood, Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest. With three locations and only two of us, I sent Elise to Highgate and took Epping for myself, with whoever finished first sweeping round to Hampstead. Given that we were, y’know, chasing somebody, we had to cover all the bases fast and, at the back of my mind, I was also very aware that if Corin felt outnumbered she was that much more likely to get murdery.

To be honest, I’d probably bagsied the best lead. The weird thing about London—well okay, there are lots of weird things about London, but most of the little weird things about London come back to one particular weird thing about London, which is that it’s been around for fucking ever. And that means it has all kinds of really peculiar stuff in it. Including surprisingly enormous areas that are officially classified as ancient woodland. Areas that are officially classified as ancient woodland and contain an actual hunting lodge built by Henry VIII. An actual hunting lodge built by Henry VIII that happened to be mysteriously closed for unexplained reasons. Frankly, if I was a fairytale hunter-wizard on the run with a damsel in distress, it’d be the first place I’d go.

Elise took the car and I, to my complete lack of surprise, found that the fairytale carriage had anticipated my needs and was already waiting outside the office. I gave the horses a stern “I’ll be really pissed off if you’re reading my mind” look and climbed in. I ditched the damn thing, or—since it seemed to go where it wanted which, spookily, always happened to be where I wanted—the damned thing ditched me in the car park of a Premier Inn, leaving me to head across the fields on foot.

It was still a blazingly hot day, so it felt nice to get somewhere at least vaguely grassy. The hunting lodge was just off the road—this boxy, white-washed building I was inclined to overlook. And, yes, partly that was because it wasn’t very interesting, but you didn’t hang out in a world full of wizards and faeries for as long as I had without getting mighty suspicious of things that obviously wanted you to ignore them. There was legit glamour going on here—the place had that why-is-nobody-reacting-to-this vibe that you got when somebody was using magic to dick with people’s heads.

I ambled around the outside. The lodge was supposedly a low-key tourist attraction, which meant that I could at least get away with casing the joint without looking too suspicious, but if I had to break in there was no getting around the fact that I was clearly visible from a picnic area and a minor A road. If I was lucky, the nothing-to-see-here mojo that was protecting the house would protect me as well. If I wasn’t lucky, this was going to take some serious explaining.

Leaning casually against the back door, I tried the handle. It wasn’t conveniently unlocked but a major advantage of authentic sixteenth-century home security was that it was pretty damn basic. It wasn’t one of my top ten most subtle moments, but a shove and a snap got me in.

I recognised the kitchen from my pre-break-in Googling. According to the website, it was usually laid out so visitors could see what life was like back in ye olden times, but there was no sign of that at the moment. In fact, there were quite a lot of signs that it was being used to prepare real food that real people were really eating.

An eerie silence covered the building, which was pretty much what you’d expect from an enchanted hunting lodge. I crept through the kitchen and towards the stairs, keeping alert for signs of movement. Nothing. But then I was looking for a professional thief and a fairytale huntsman, so that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

The second floor looked even less like the website than the kitchen had. There were no incidental displays of Tudor pipes or cheery signs explaining how the king used to eat roast chickens in the foyer or how deer used to frolic up the A1096. The stairwell opened into a comfortable sitting room, where rustic-looking chairs sat by a large, empty fireplace, and a five-hundred year old deer head looked forlornly down at me.

I moved cautiously forward. Not cautiously enough.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Kate.” Corin’s voice came from behind me.

Damn, she was good. I turned around slowly, hands in the air. She had a crossbow pointed right at my heart. The look in her eyes said she was terrified. The look in her eyes was lying. “Where’s the Tears of Hypnos, Corin?”

Her lips trembled. Her hands didn’t. “Jack took them. He said he knew somebody who would pay for them so that we could get away.”

“Corin, just...don’t.” It was irrational, but even though I knew the woman was essentially a scorpion in a pretty frock, everything inside me screamed that I should trust her. A couple of incidents last year had made me wonder if she didn’t have something backing her up, something that smelled like sulphur and traded in deception. Something that made you forget things you knew to be true. That or I really, really wanted to do her.

Her lashes fluttered anxiously. “I—I don’t know what else I can say.”

“You can say where Jack is. You can say who he’s selling the Tears to. You can say why you came back to town. And finally, and most importantly, you can say, ‘I’m putting the crossbow down now.’”

She knelt and laid the weapon gently on the floor. Then she hurried towards me, her face a picture of remorse, her eyes brimming with tears. “Oh, Kate”—she took my hands gently in hers—“I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened.”

Don’t kiss her. Don’t kiss her. I closed my eyes. It helped a bit. “No, you’re not sorry. You’re a thief and a murderer and you care about nothing except yourself.” I had to say it aloud, or I wouldn’t have been able to remember it.

“I’ve done so many terrible things. I understand if you can’t forgive me.” She stepped closer, laying her head against me. And this was how the game worked. How it always worked. She’d carry on swearing black was white and the sky was the sea until it was easier to believe she was right than that she’d commit so hard to a lie.

I pushed her away, even though I could feel her whole body shaking. “Tell me,” I growled, “what I want to know.”

She collapsed, tears spilling prettily down her cheeks. The part of my brain that was still paying attention noticed the way she’d managed to land right between me and the crossbow. “It’s...it’s the man who broke me out of prison last year. The vampire, I mean. He said he’d kill me. Jack’s gone to meet him. I didn’t want to come back, Kate, really I didn’t. But I had to. I had to or he’d have—”

“Shut up.” If she wasn’t completely messing with me, then the clusterfuck had suddenly got a whole lot clusterier and fuckier. The vampire who’d sprung her from prison was the same bastard who’d tried to sacrifice me last year. I’d kind of hoped the burning building I’d dropped on his head would keep him out of action for more than ten minutes.

Corin stayed curled up on the floor. She was very still, like a frightened child, or a snake waiting to strike. “What are you going to do with me now?”

It was a good question.

What I wasn’t going to do was make any sudden moves, because I knew from painful experience that if I genuinely scared her, instead of pretend-please-let-your-guard-down scaring her, she wouldn’t hesitate to crossbow me in the face.

Over several painful previous encounters, I’d discovered that the trick with Corin was to work out which bits of the truth she was using to make her lies more convincing. Maybe Jack had the Tears or maybe she did, maybe Percy was really her buyer, maybe he wasn’t. But the one thing I was as sure about as you could be with Corin was that Jack wasn’t here. Everything she’d said boiled down to “you don’t want me, you want the other guy,” and if she’d had backup in the building it would have been all “please someone save me from the scary lesbian.”

Which left me with one play. “You’re coming with me,” I said, “and we’re going to find Jack.”

Corin got carefully to her feet. I saw her hands hover over the crossbow for about half a second, but she must have felt it wasn’t worth the risk. Of course, the fact she was considering shooting me in the first place meant I’d at least vaguely succeeded in messing up her plans. That was something else I’d learned about dealing with Corin: you either had to go along with her or scare her, but if you did either one too much it got you killed.

She led me downstairs and out of the lodge, then up the road and deeper into the forest. Urban woodland is always weird, because you only have to walk a few meters from the street to feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere. There was this sense of being caught between a primal, magical world on one side and a main road through Loughton on the other. The contrast made my mother’s legacy feel at once immediate and distant. If Corin made a break for it now it would be a serious contender for the biggest mistake she’d ever made, because I was fairly sure that I wouldn’t be able to resist a chase through the forest. But, in the end, she didn’t even try to run. Perhaps she knew me too well.

We walked for well over half an hour, mostly in silence. At one point we passed a lake, and Corin stopped for a moment and stared out over the water with a look of enigmatic melancholy. I genuinely wasn’t sure if she was contemplating the beauty of nature or thinking about throwing herself in. I had to hand it to her, she committed completely to her part. Whatever it was. Sometimes I wondered if she knew herself.

Finally we came out on a narrow road opposite an inn.

Corin paused, seeming genuinely shaken. She always seemed genuinely shaken. She always seemed genuinely everything. It was what made her so hard to deal with. “Something isn’t right,” she whispered. “He isn’t here. He’s left me.”

I didn’t think that was likely. Nobody left Corin. At least not without losing more than they could afford to first. But things did look a bit suss. It was still a while before noon, and there were only a few cars around. A few very expensive looking cars. “I think your man might be in trouble.”

She was silent for a moment. Perhaps I was projecting but I thought I could see some very quick, very cold calculations going on behind those big dark eyes. “We should...but then—I don’t—what can we do?”

I took her by the hand and tugged her out of the treeline. “We can go in and see what’s going on.”

She struggled weakly. I thought it was mostly for show but that road led to a pointless tangle of I-know-that-she-knows-that-I-know-that-she-knows. If I was right about the cars, then I had a decent idea who’d intercepted Hunter’s mission, and Corin would be keen not to see them.

I pushed open the door of the inn, dragging my not-exactly-captive through behind me. A small, delicate sign said that the building had been booked out for a private function. The people who had booked it were mostly not small or delicate. The room was full of Sloanes, most of them women and all of them—I was one hundred percent certain—werewolves. My amazing detective instincts told me that the ragged man who was currently being watched by two haughty ladies in Ascot hats and summer dresses might very well be the guy I was after.

But then, I was only after him because I thought he had my client’s property, and now...

“Looking for something, Kate Kane?” The voice came from a corner table. It was a good voice, rich and sultry, and posh in all the right ways. Unfortunately it was attached to Tara Vane-Tempest, who was one of the most infuriating, controlling and single-minded women I’d ever fantasised about. Sorry, met. She was dangling a little glass vial from her fingertips.

“Thanks for keeping that for me.”

She snatched it back up into her hand. “Thanks for bringing me the girl.” She indicated Corin. They’d had a thing last year that had ended in a big mess of dungeons, stolen cars, and midnight getaways. And Tara wasn’t the forgiving sort.

I stepped sideways, putting my hands in the air and doing my best to make it clear that I was on nobody’s side except my own. “I’m just here for the Tears. What’s between you and her is between you and her.”

“Oh, really?” She leaned forwards. “And what’s your claim on this little bottle of chaos?”

“Mine? None. My client owns it.”

Corin slinked out from behind me. “That’s not true, it was mine. I—I pawned it, that’s all. And I meant to keep up the repayments, really I did. But I had to go away for a while, you see, and by the time I came back my ticket had already expired, and I would have bought it but it had been stolen, so I looked for the person who had it and at last I found them and...” She gave the two of us the big eyes treatment. And what big eyes she had.

“It’s true.” That was Jack Hunter. Although I doubted Tara would think his word was worth that much. “She needed the Tears to pay off a debt. She’ll die if they don’t get to Henry Percy tonight.”

Tara growled. I’d been hanging out with werewolves for a while now, but I never really got used to how animalistic they could sound if they really wanted to. “I have a feeling,” she said, “that she’ll be fine. She has a way of being fine.” She rose gracefully and stalked over to where Corin was trembling. “If I were you, I’d run. Right now. Tell Percy that the Big Bad Wolf took his present, yah?”

Corin nodded. Shivered. Seemed to be trying to speak. Wiped something from her eye that looked like a tear. Then ran, the door slamming behind her.

“Any chance you could hand me that bottle now?” I asked. It was a bit of a long shot, but I figured it was worth a go.

“Let’s see.” Tara came towards me. She got... I’d have said uncomfortably close, but I was pretty comfortable with it. “Will I hand over a weapon which could tear down the barriers my family has been oath-bound to protect for a thousand years?” She tapped her chin with her finger in an exaggerated pondering gesture. “You know, I think I might just hang onto it.”

This, right here, was the problem with werewolves. They fundamentally believed that they had a sacred duty to tell the rest of us what to do on account of some pact they made a millennium ago, and they weren’t afraid to strong-arm anybody who disagreed with them. Or, to put it another way: this, right here, was the problem with werewolves—they were dicks. “Pretty sure you don’t get to keep other people’s stuff.”

“What is it they say about possession and the law?”

“That it’s against the law to take another person’s possessions?”

“Don’t push me, Kate Kane.”

I looked around. At some point—I wasn’t sure when—I’d wound up surrounded. Because that was how werewolves worked. Most of the time they didn’t look especially threatening, like a bunch of posh kids off on a jolly. Then suddenly they’d get all creepy-synchronised and start moving with too much grace and not enough noise, and you’d remember that deep down they were a pack of wild animals that would rip you to fucking pieces if you let them.

One of the wolves broke ranks. A sandy-haired man with a grey pullover knotted casually by its sleeves around slim but muscular shoulders. Henry. Thank fuck. We’d met before and he was basically the only member of the family that was actually nice to me. “If I might, Bunny?”

Tara glared at him, but let him speak.

“The Merchant of Dreams is a scion of the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter, whose territory borders our own. If this artefact is truly their property, keeping it from them might make us an enemy we don’t want.”

“One shopkeeper?” This comment came from somebody who I suspected was called Tuffie or Smudge. I should really learn to get these people sorted out.

“One shopkeeper”—Henry frowned—“and the fey lord that they embody.”

Tara wheeled back to face me. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“You speak for your client. Is that their position? We hand over the Tears or else we earn the enmity of the Cold and the Dark?”

“Hey, I’m an investigator, not an ambassador.” I shrugged. “All I know is that the Merchant wants this thing back. They’re kind of into their property rights. Because, y’know, Merchant.”

Tara tossed back her golden mane. “Then we’re done, yah? Your client knows who and where we are. If they have a claim to the Tears of Hypnos, they can come and make it.”

She was kind of right. I couldn’t make promises or threats on behalf of the Merchant of Dreams. In PI school they taught us it was unprofessional to drag your clients into open, supernatural warfare. “What about him?” I indicated Hunter.

“Not our problem, Kate Kane. We came for the weapon. We have it.”

The wolves swept out, leaving me and the mage alone in a rather nice little pub on the outskirts of Epping Forest. Pulling up a chair, I sat down opposite him and surveyed the menu. It was getting on for lunch time and all this chasing shadows had left me hungry.

My companion was slumped in his seat looking five kinds of dejected.

“So”—I glanced over at him—“you want anything?”

Chapter Nine

Finding & Losing

Hunter hadn’t really felt breaking for lunch after a werewolf attack set the right tone, but I eventually persuaded him that there was literally nothing we could do right now, that he was completely fucked if he went back to Rose Red, and that at times like these, getting something to eat was about the only uncomplicatedly sensible option you had.

Overall he wasn’t a terrible lunch partner. I could see why Corin had gone for him. He had the build of an MMA fighter and a kind of vacant honesty in his face that suggested he’d jump at the chance to rescue a pretty girl. He confirmed what I already suspected—Corin had duped him into helping her steal the Tears of Hypnos with a sort-of-true-ish-maybe line about needing them to pay off a scary angry vampire who was going to kill her if she didn’t. She’d sent him to make the meet and while he’d been scouting the location he’d been caught by the Vane-Tempests, because although a magic woodsman working for a fairytale queen was pretty good at moving quietly through the forest, werewolves were better.

It had passed noon by now and Percy hadn’t shown. Either he was never coming in the first place, or the whole crawling-with-werewolves thing had put him off. However you sliced it, there wasn’t much more for me to do here. I asked Hunter if he wanted a lift anywhere, but he didn’t. Honestly I wasn’t sure what he’d do with himself now—running back to a cross-dressing Witch Queen who had a mystical mandate to be petty and vindictive seemed like a bad plan. Perhaps he’d live wild in the woods for a bit. Yes, if we’re being picky Rose Red had asked me to bring Hunter back to the Enchanted Kingdom but, fuck her, she wasn’t paying my bills. I hopped in my outrageous fairytale carriage and headed for home. On the way, I texted Elise that I’d found Corin and she could stop traipsing around the greener bits of London. It was hard to read tone from a text, but her reply seemed a bit disappointed.

As for the case—the actual case I was at least theoretically getting paid money for working on—it had got to one of those frustrating points where I’d technically done what I was hired to do, but only in a way that would leave the client unsatisfied. The problem was that a lot of people didn’t seem to see the difference between an investigator and a kind of... I don’t know...general troubleshooter, like that bald bloke on The Apprentice. As far as I was concerned, my job was to find stuff out, not to do anything about it, but clients had a nasty way of seeing things differently. They hire you to find something, they expect you to physically put it in their hand before they accept that you’ve done your job.

Back at the flat, I settled down on the sofa and rang the Merchant.

“What can I do for you?” Their voice had an edge of irony to it.

“It’s me. Your thingummy is at Safernoc Hall with the wolves. This is as far as I can go because stealing from werewolves is still stealing and that’s still against the law.”

“I want my property, Kate.”

“I know. And if you want me to negotiate for you, I can do that. But breaking into a wolf’s lair isn’t part of the job.”

“Then I would be grateful if you talked to them for me.”

I stopped. I was probably being paranoid. “Sure, but let’s be clear: still not making any faery bargains.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. But one day, my dear, you might want to learn the trick of dealing with the devil.”

I was walking into something, wasn’t I? “Which is what?”

“Be the devil. You’re a changeling, Kate. Act like one. Go to the wolves, tell them that you speak with my voice, with the voice of the Cold and Dark and the voice of the Deepwild. You might even enjoy it.”

“You know there’s no way that’s happening.”

“I know many things, sweet child. That is far from being one of them. But handle this by whatever method you think best.”

That was easy. Well, easy-ish—I still had to find a way to talk a pack of arrogant wolves into giving a bottle of pure magical power to a faery-blooded pawnbroker they had no reason to trust. And, right now, I had no idea how to handle that one. It was what Sherlock Holmes would have called a three pipe problem. Except I didn’t smoke a pipe and a three fag problem had really different connotations.

In any case, having made the mistake of sitting on the sofa, I now realised there was no way I could get off it. I guess this was what I got for spending the last few days getting the crap kicked out of me, fighting demons, going clubbing, getting mind controlled, getting kidnapped, banging a vampire, nearly burning to death in my dreams and running around a forest with a pretty sociopath.

When I opened my eyes again it was way later than it had any right to be and Nimue was standing over me. That girl really needed to learn to knock.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen her in person for months. Funny how easy it was to lose track of that kind of thing when somebody kept doing cameos in your dreams. Although, now I thought about it, she always had a way of slipping out of your mind when you weren’t paying attention. She looked exhausted. Like literally used-up-nothing-left exhausted. No visible injuries, but from what I knew about the way Nimue worked, her enemies wouldn’t get near her—at least not physically—unless things were going terrifyingly badly. Then again, she wouldn’t have been here at all if things weren’t pretty fucked.

“What do you need?” I asked, struggling into a less horizontal position.

She sat down next to me. I’d never got used to the way she could switch from being this unstoppable mystical queen one second to this regular flesh-and-blood person the next. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

“You’re fighting a war, Nim.” I put an arm around her. “I get that you don’t have time to make social calls.”

She sat in silence a moment, then said. “King’s got Phoebe.”

It took me a moment to place the name. “Gabriel’s daughter?”

She nodded.

Oh, fuck. I was suddenly feeling a lot more awake. This had been the one front of the mage war I hadn’t been keeping an eye on. “What can I do?”

She stood up again. I’m not exactly Miss In-Tune-With-People’s-Feelings, but even I could tell there was a tension here. For a moment, just a moment, the room stilled and I felt a sense of power rolling off of her. Then it died. “Where are you with the Tears?”

“I don’t have them.”

“But you know where they are?”

I couldn’t really deny that. Although since I knew that they were in a mansion full of werewolves, the information was pretty close to useless. “You know I’ve been hired to get them for somebody else, right?”

Nim gave me a look that was so far beyond disappointed I wasn’t sure I had a word for it. “We’re talking about a kid’s life, Kate.”

Yeah, that was kind of a trump card. “Do you think we can rescue her?”

“Maybe.” She looked uncertain. I wasn’t used to her looking uncertain. A few years ago this had been much simpler—there’d been less children caught up in it for a start. “Or we could trade.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “Trade? You can’t give your worst enemy a weapon that can break the universe.”

She stood there, all kind of drawn into herself. “Using them would take time. Phoebe doesn’t have time.”

And again it looked like she was hovering between two worlds. I got up and took her by the shoulders, somehow resisting the temptation to shake her. “Nim,” I said. “You know this is a bad idea. Even if we could give King what he wants, we shouldn’t, because the man is a fucking psychopath.”

“You’ve got a better plan?” She sounded half angry, half hopeful.

I didn’t have a better plan. But I had a different plan. “Let me track her,” I said. “Show me where they took her from. I’ll follow. King knows he’s got you over a barrel, and if we work fast he won’t see me coming.”

“Is that...” She stopped, seeming to struggle again. “Would that be safe?”

“For who?”

“For you? For her? For anyone?”

Honestly? No. Mystically tracking shit meant getting way closer to my mother’s side of the fence than I was comfortable with. I only gave my body to a bloodthirsty maniac from another dimension when it was really fucking important. But that wasn’t what Nim needed to hear. “It’s safer than the alternative. Which is trusting somebody completely untrustworthy who you know for a fact wants you dead.”

Nim said nothing. She tucked her hands into the sleeves of her hoodie. Seeing her like that made me feel a bunch of difficult things and, let’s be very clear, I don’t even like feeling easy things.

“Come on,” I said. “I get you don’t want to ask me to do this, but you blatantly came because you knew I could and you needed me to.”

There was another silence, even longer than the first.

Then Nim reached up and took my hand. “Follow me.”

There was a black cab waiting by the kerb. There was always a black cab waiting for Nimue. It was part of her whole vibe. And about half an hour later I was standing in front of a primary school in Edgware. According to Nim, Phoebe had gone missing from just outside. The teacher on duty had seen her talking to a sweet-looking little old lady a few minutes before she disappeared. Which could have been a coincidence but more likely meant that not only were we dealing with an actual literal kidnapping, we were dealing with an actual literal kidnapping orchestrated by Arty King’s terrifying amoral hellgranny.

Still, it gave me something to hunt. I closed my eyes and reached out for my mother’s instincts. I felt my heartbeat slow, and the stone and steel of the city fell away to reveal the wild and savage land that lay inches beneath its surface. I tasted blood and sweat, I smelled sulphur and lavender, crayons and fresh grass. There was weakness here, the weakness of prey, and a weakness of a different sort that smelled wrong and tasted wrong and that my every instinct said I should flee from or destroy.

I followed the trail. A sharp and bitter road that took me down rocky paths where metal creatures moved without purpose, and all that lived and was wild scurried in dark places and wriggled in cracks in the stone world of the thinking creatures. I followed the trail. South and east, along well-used paths. Crowds or herds or flocks. Life amidst the stones that walked or flew or crawled. I hunted. Miles passed beneath me. The trail was muddled, crisscrossed with others, hundreds of others or thousands. This place was wrong, all wrong. Frozen where it should move, changing where it should not. I followed the trail. Miles passed, across an iron path where great beasts ran unthinking and unchoosing and all impossible, abominable, shackled and unforgiving. I followed the trail. The hunt was all. The hunt and the kill and the wild and the hateful cracking of the stone.

A path. A path like the other paths, but closer now. Dark now. Hunted long. Over. Creatures pass me. Quicken. They know what they see, feel it if they do not know it. Yellow walls line the way. Red and yellow walls. Glass covered with metal. In the Deepwild, my mother tasted blood. Somewhere a voice that was my own called to me. Said the kill was not tonight. Said I had another purpose. I stopped, caught the scent on the air. Sulphur and lavender, crayons and grass, and now another scent: oil and steel and fire and ash. There was danger here.

In the Deepwild my mother whispered to me. Said that I should not stop. Said that I had to be quick, to be cruel. To kill my enemies and lick their blood from my hands. I closed my eyes and listened to my heartbeat. Slow. Needed to think. Needed to be able to think. I tasted blood and smelled fear. The voice that was mine grew louder. I looked around with human eyes but hunter-sharp. I bit my tongue and made myself remember the names of things. Street. House. Window. I was on a street of terraced, yellow-brick houses behind high red-brick walls. The first thing I had to do was keep moving. If I stopped, looked like I was casing the place, I’d be putting Phoebe in danger. I walked on.

It was a sweltering night, and several of the houses had windows open, including the one the trail led to. That was pretty much the only lucky break I was going to get, though. Open windows meant this was a second storey job. I sauntered to the end of the road, doing my level best to look casual and trying not to dwell on the fact that a child would die if I fucked this up. I waited for a quiet moment, which didn’t take long what with how late it had got, and climbed a wall. Time for some good old-fashioned roof-crawling. It wasn’t the best way to be sneaky, but it was better than approaching from the street. I worked my way along the terrace. While I make a big thing about how subtlety isn’t in my repertoire, I can actually be pretty stealthy when I have to be. It’s part of the whole queen-of-the-hunt package. Also, PI.

I got to the roof I was looking for and waited, listened. There were people moving underneath me. I let my senses sharpen, tiles cool under my hands, night air warm against my face. Three people. One in an upstairs room, still. Another on that floor, restless and moving. One downstairs, slower and more patient. I crept to the edge of the gutter and lowered myself down, found my footing on a window ledge and hauled myself through. Inside was a mixture of bedroom and box room. Football posters from the early nineties poked out from behind piles of spare bedding and packs of toilet roll. Phoebe was in here as well, lying in bed looking worryingly Sleeping Beautyish.

I poked her. “We’re getting out of here,” I whispered. “Come on.”

She didn’t stir. She was alive—my senses were still in smelling-fear-hearing-heartbeats mode, and she definitely still had one. This was going to be difficult. A conscious person, particularly a small conscious person, I could probably have wangled out of the window, but I wasn’t sure about an unconscious one. I picked her up and turned back the way I’d come.

Yeah, this wasn’t going to work.

I put her down gently and ran through my options. I was really hoping that it wasn’t going to come down to fighting my way out. Also, Phoebe hadn’t woken up, which suggested she was either a really heavy sleeper, or she was drugged, or she was enchanted. Given the situation, I was going with enchanted. On the plus side, as long as I could keep myself between her and the bad guys, she’d last longer than I did. Admittedly, it wasn’t much of a plus side.

I could hear whoever-it-was moving outside. Since I was trapped in a tiny room with a comatose tween and an impractically large stockpile of bog roll, the only advantage left to me was surprise, and that was evaporating pretty fast. I crept up to the door. Listened. Waited. Footsteps came closer—a light tread, whoever it was would be quick. I let them pass by the room.

Door open. Through, grab the collar, shaved head or would have gone for the hair. Hammer fist to the temple, then down and trap the wrist because the fucker had a gun. One arm on the throat, choke if you can. Get the weapon away. Now.

Fire.

I leapt back, burned. A shotgun dropped to the floor. Across the landing of a tiny terraced house in East London, I squared off against Arty King.

He was tall, with the kind of taut, lean frame you got when your daily workout was beating people’s heads in. His face was what I guess they call chiselled, with strong cheekbones and these deep-set eyes that said “I’m going to buy you a drink, and we’ll be mates, but if you fuck with me I will shove a meathook through your jaw and hang you up in my garage.” Also, right now, his whole body was on fire.

“Oh, you are fucking kidding me,” he said.

There was a gun within jumping distance, but I’d never been a big fan of them. Also, if I shot him there’d be that whole murder-trial-prison thing. “I’m just here for the girl.”

King said nothing. He stretched out a hand and sent a jet of flame leaping through the air towards me. I twisted to one side, but the wall and the stairwell between them left no space to dodge. Dropping to the ground, I brought my leg up and sprang forwards. There wasn’t really a plan here, but since he could throw fire and I couldn’t, it was pretty important to close the distance. I came up and hit him in the solar plexus with my full weight. He fell backwards, still burning underneath me. I knelt on his chest, my trousers beginning to smoulder, and punched him hard in the face. His hand closed over my wrist, and I felt my skin begin to blister.

Then there was a touch on my shoulder, and the flames cooled. A silver mist coiled around me and a strange calm came over me. I stepped back. Arty King got to his feet, spat blood and glared. I could feel Nimue by my side, though why she only ever showed up after I’d done all the dangerous bits, I’d never been able to work out. I guess it was a mystical monarch thing.

“You got some balls at last, eh?” snarled King.

“We’re just here for the girl,” I said again.

“What, you think you can bust in and wreck my Nan’s house, and I’ll let you walk away?”

“I don’t think you have a choice.” That was Nimue. Until she spoke, I hadn’t been entirely sure anyone else could see her. “My eyes are on you now, and your power will not avail you.”

He looked from me, to Nim, back to me. “Oh, you fucking little... You got yourself a fucking perfect knight, didn’t you?”

I was pretty sure I’d never been anybody’s perfect anything, but I wasn’t going to argue that right now. “We’re taking the child, King. And you aren’t going to stop us.”

“You can have her.” A new voice, this time from behind me. “Arty won’t stop you, will you, love?”

I turned, and there was Nana King, all blue-rinse and wrinkles. She smelled of lavender and home baking and the faintest hint of sulphur.

“Go on,” she went on. “Go get the kid.”

I bent down and picked up the shotgun. It was an empty gesture at this point, but walking away and leaving a weapon on the floor would have been a rookie move. Then I backed slowly into the bedroom, scooped up Phoebe’s still-unconscious body, and carried her back onto the landing.

“Take her if you want.” Nana King smiled sweetly. “Won’t help you.”

Nimue laid a hand on the girl’s forehead. “You didn’t?”

“Give young Arty what he wants, or her spirit stays in the pit of fire.”

Nim tensed. “Release her. Or...” she petered out.

“You worthless sack of shit.” Arty King was staring at us roughly the way you’d stare at somebody telling an anti-Semitic joke at a Bar Mitzvah. “You haven’t got the guts to come for me, have you? Get out of this house, and if any of your little band of carpet-munchers comes this way again, I’ll break her wrists, strap her to a kitchen table, and start getting creative with the bolt cutters. Understand?”

The old lady hobbled over to her grandson and patted him gently on the arm. “He takes care of his nan, he does.”

I really wasn’t sure this was a win. All the same, I carried Phoebe out of the house to where, true to form, there was a black cab waiting for us. For me, really. Nim was gone—had never really been here.

Chapter Ten

Burgers & Devils

Back at the flat I laid Phoebe’s body out in my room. Looking at it from one perspective, the rescue mission had been fifty percent successful. But I didn’t think Nim could go to one of her most trusted advisers and say “Good news! We got half your daughter back!”

The two of us sat together on the end of the bed. Nim wasn’t saying anything, but she didn’t have to. However shitty I felt for my part in this, I knew she was feeling about four hundred and six times worse. I took her hand and tried to give off here-for-you type signals. Last time we’d fought Arty King we’d been a whole lot younger and stupider, and he’d been about two degrees less of a psychopath. This time around we had way more to lose and he had way less. And Nim, unlike me and Humphrey Bogart, was good at being noble. She’d lay down her life in a heartbeat if she thought it was what her city needed, and she expected her followers—yours truly included—to do the same. But she wouldn’t be able to let innocent people, even one innocent person, pay the price for her throne. That unwavering sense of good-person-ness was the only thing that made owing her my supernaturally enforced loyalty even remotely bearable, but I was also beginning to see that there could come a time when it got her killed.

“Nim...” I began. I had no idea how to finish the sentence. I wasn’t even sure what sort of idea I wanted to get across. That we were depending on her and had faith in her? That it was okay if this was all too much and she didn’t want to do it anymore? You could only really say one of those things at once. “Whatever happens,” I tried, “whatever happens I’ve got your back.”

She leaned her head against my shoulder. “I know. It’s just. I can’t think.”

“You don’t have to, not right now.” I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “Get some rest and we’ll talk about it in the morning. And remember that no matter what goes down in the next few days, things would be way worse without you here.”

I laid Nimue on the bed next to Phoebe. It looked like she’d fallen asleep, but whether she was resting, or if she’d gone to do that fighting-a-mystical-war-in-her-dreams thing that took up so much of her time, I couldn’t say. I left the two of them where they were, and went to crash out on the sofa.

Well, we were fucked.

This might come as a surprise, but I’m not normally Miss Massive-Social-Responsibility. I’ve never done voluntary work. I blank people who come up to me with clipboards and sincere expressions. I only buy the Big Issue if I’m feeling unusually upbeat. But Nim’s crusade to make the world slightly less shitty by stopping bad things screwing with the lives of not-especially-bad people was the nearest I had to a cause I believed in. If we couldn’t save Phoebe, she’d be through. Then again, if we couldn’t stop Arty King, we’d all be through. Forgiveness wasn’t the man’s style.

Okay, Kate. Think about this logically. You need to rescue a girl’s soul from some kind of evil Satan-granny. There are options here. They’re all profoundly terrible options but they’re options. In any line of work you built up a few contacts—Archer’s wife knew about six million accountants, Nim’s dad knew a whole lot of cabbies. As for me, I knew at least three people who had personally lived in Hell.

I left Nim behind, locked up, and took the carriage to Brewer Street.

It was pretty late by most standards, but getting on for peak business hours for nightclubs owned by hedonistic vampires. I skipped the queue, because skipping the queue was a major perk of fucking the owner, and because this time I wasn’t even going in. Ashriel eyed me from his position by the door.

“Inside, upstairs,” he said. “And you look even more like shit than last time.”

“Thanks. But actually I’m here for you.”

He straightened up and eyed me suspiciously. “You know, sometimes, I really wish you only wanted me for my body.” He smiled, and I must have been looking especially pathetic that evening because he followed up immediately with “Sorry. What do you need?”

I jerked my head in a “can we please not talk in front of a line of pissed clubgoers” gesture, and Ashriel handed the door over to another one of Julian’s many minions. We walked back to the carriage and got in.

“Should I?” he began.

“No,” I said.

We just sat for a bit. Sharing wasn’t my thing. Asking for help wasn’t my thing. Also I was fucking knackered. “You heard of a man called Arty King?” I asked at last.

“Gangster-wizard? Got into a fight with your friend the Witch Queen a few years back?”

“That’s the one. You know anything about his grandmother?”

Ashriel visibly paled. “Maybe. What’s her name?”

That, I hadn’t thought to find out. “Nan?” I suggested. “Nana King?”

“I remember a Vera King. Back in the fifties, maybe even the sixties. Scary woman.”

“How scary?”

“She fucked Gethsemane and got away with it. She was serious business, proper bad news, one of the ones that you did not mess with.” He rested a foot on one of the opposite seats, slightly messing up the velvet, not that I cared. “Believe me, the community has a blacklist and she was on it. She was smart, powerful, ruthless. One of the only people I’ve met who could make a soul box.”

Well, that was good to know. “She’s got a kid. I mean, she’s got a kid’s soul. She’s keeping it hostage somehow. Said it was in a pit of fire?”

Ashriel sucked in a breath through his teeth. “That’s fucked up.”

“Kind of hoping you’d be able to help?”

“I am helping. Stay away from her.”

I stared straight ahead, trying to ignore the fact I was staring at the back of a pair of woobly magic steeds. “We’re talking about a child here, Ash. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as cynical as the next faery-blooded lesbian paranormal detective for hire, but this is an actual little girl. One I’ve even met a couple of times.”

“It’s not that simple.” He leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “I’ve stayed away from this stuff for centuries. Worked really hard to not be what I used to be because I didn’t like the way it...look, this isn’t your shit to deal with, but what you’re asking for means getting down and dirty in the Lake of Fire. And that’s something I can’t do.”

I didn’t know much about Ashriel’s whole celibate incubus deal, but from what I understood about the way demons worked, for one of them to give up feeding souls to the inferno was kind of like a human giving up smack, food and reality TV in the same week. I looked at him. “Can you at least point me at somebody who can?”

“You’re really set on this?” He gave me a glance through his long, golden lashes. He was an incubus so it partly said I am gorgeous and you want to do me, but it mostly said this is a gigantic mistake. “What am I even saying? Of course you are; you’re pointlessly stubborn even when there aren’t children to rescue. Gethsemane and the Angel can both help. Don’t go to the Angel unless you absolutely have to, because you will regret it for the rest of eternity. Gethsemane might go easier on you because I suspect they’d like another shot at Vera King. Just remember that dicking about with Hell is mythically inadvisable.”

“I’ll be all right. Mythically inadvisable is my middle name. Names. Are my middle names. You get where I’m going with that.”

He pushed open the carriage door. “Julian will be really cross with me if you get your soul devoured.”

“She’ll get over it.”

I let Ashriel get back to work, and went looking for one of the metropolis’s less affable sex demons. Gethsemane spent most of the day hanging out at this massive branch of Foyles on the Charing Cross Road—apparently bookshops were a good place to pick people up if you knew what you were doing. At this time of night, they would have moved on. Ashriel had suggested a couple of places, and I decided I’d try my luck at the McDonald’s up the road. It had that not-where-you’d expect vibe that Gethsemane seemed to like and, besides, I could murder a Big Mac.

There was no queue, so I placed my order and then leaned back on the counter looking for likely victims. By the time my large-meal-with-a-milkshake-because-I-hate-my-arteries-and-want-to-die-young had arrived, I’d spotted one. Skinny guy, picking at a Filet-O-Fish and a portion of fries. I waited, took a bite of my burger. About forty-seven seconds after I’d started my stakeout, a cute little nerd girl with a tight black bob and enormous librarian glasses walked into him. Literally walked into him. Her fries went everywhere, so did his.

“Sorry!” she said in a tone of distractingly endearing embarrassment. “Wasn’t looking where I was going.” She waved her phone by way of explanation. “Somebody Is Wrong on the Internet.”

“It’s fine.” He started hurriedly picking up the scattered chips and popping them back onto his red plastic tray. The girl did the same, and as they scrabbled about their fingers brushed ever so accidentally. “Do you...” he stumbled. “Do you want to sit down?”

She did, it seemed. “Thanks. Sorry. Heeeey...cool!” She pointed at his T-shirt, which was black with a kind of upside-down spiky horseshoe thing on it. “Lok-tar ogar!”

“Umm...” He gave an awkward laugh. “For the Horde.”

She gave a smile that managed to be innocent and wicked simultaneously. “Except I’m afraid we have to be mortal enemies. I’m secretly a gnome warlock.”

“N-no, it’s okay. My main raiding guild is Horde but I’ve got alts on both sides.”

“Oh wow. I’ve never been in a proper raiding guild. I, y’know, I thought I’d really enjoy it but I wasn’t sure I’d be good enough.”

The guy was getting actively perky. “It’s really fun. You should try it. What server do you play on?”

Okay, this was stopping now. I made a really bad attempt at looking casual, and half-strolled-half-jogged over to their table. “Hi!” I said to the girl who I really hoped was secretly a soul-devouring monster, and not a perfectly innocent young woman on a night out. “Haven’t seen you in ages. How’s your boyfriend? Is he still...” I searched for something that would sound threatening but not obviously pushing it. “Trying to break into the UFC?” Okay not too obviously pushing it.

The girl smiled and shot me a look so venomous that I was convinced I’d called it right. A stranger would have just been confused. “Hi!” she threw back. “This is Kate, she’s an old friend who really likes to embarrass me in front of guys.”

“Yeah, it’s exactly like that. So look. I’m glad I ran into you because I wanted to talk to you about Vera King. You know Vera, who we know from...work?”

She gazed at me, and suddenly her eyes didn’t look human at all. They were all promises and secrets and horrible temptations. She made you want to crawl with her into a dark place and fuck until you died. Not an innocent nerd-girl on a night out, then. “Okay, we’ll talk.” She turned back to the boy in the significant T-shirt. “I’m really sorry, but me and Kate have a lot of catching up to do. I feel really bad about spilling everything all over you like that and...well...” She fished a pen from somewhere about her person and scribbled a number down on a napkin. “Like the song says, call me maybe?” She gave a sweet, vulnerable, geeky, apologetic smile and watched with a hopeful look on her face as the guy cleared up his meal and walked away.

“I probably shouldn’t ask this,” I asked, “but what are you planning on doing with him.”

“Nothing he doesn’t want me to.”

I shivered. A sick, cold shiver. I said nothing.

“Don’t give me that.” Gethsemane pushed her glasses up her nose and smirked at me. “You’re here right now because you want something from me. So you can cut the righteous champion of the innocent act, it doesn’t look good on you.” A smile again, exactly that hint of the devil I found so hard to resist in a girl.

“Vera King. She’s holding somebody’s soul and I need it back. I was told you could help.”

“And what’s in it for me?”

“Revenge.”

She popped an unwanted chip into her mouth. “That does sound tempting. But I’ve got a feeling that I want revenge much less than you want what you want.”

“I can walk away from this right now.” It was a lie and she knew it.

“I’m trying to work out if you’d be far more fun or far less fun if you stopped pretending to be a good person.”

I facepalmed. “Why is everybody talking as if it’s this totally absurd thing to want to get a child out of Hell?”

“Oh, we’re talking about a child, are we?” Gethsemane leaned forward, her whole posture changing. Now she looked genuinely predatory. “That should most certainly be worth something.”

Well fuck. “Fine.” There was no point being coy about this. “Lay it out for me, what do you want?”

Gethsemane’s eyes gleamed. “I’m a succubus, Kate. What do you think I want?”

“To trade my soul to Hell so you can suffer less unbearable torment?”

“You make it sound so mercenary.”

“I’m not fucking you.”

She laughed. “You underestimate me. Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that it would be...pleasurable.” She gave me a look that was way too sultry for somebody in dorky glasses. “But, your one-woman crusade to cockblock me aside, I really don’t have difficulty getting laid.”

“You still haven’t told me what the deal is.”

“That isn’t how it works.”

“Then how does it work?”

Gethsemane grinned up at me. She still had this brain-screwing mix of innocence and evil about her. “Hell is like Heaven,” she said. “We don’t make deals. Ask, and you shall receive. But you have to ask humbly, and in supplication.”

“And when you ask what’s in it for you?”

“I want you to ask me nicely.”

God, succubi could be so sleazy. Which, thinking about it, was kind of their job description. Alright Kate, do your best. I reached out and took her hand. “Gethsemane, I need this. Help me. Please.”

She darted forwards and kissed me. It was surprisingly chaste for a sex demon, just a peck on the lips, but there was a nasty feeling of violation that went with it. Like you’d done something you could never go back from. Note to self: don’t make these kinds of decisions at this time in the morning.

Silently, she rose, and led me out of the McDonald’s and onto the Charing Cross Road. After a while, it became pretty clear that she wasn’t going to let go of my hand.

“Umm,” I began, “where are we going?”

She laughed. “Where do you think?”

This wasn’t good. “I’d kind of assumed you’d be able to... I don’t know, swing something? Talk to someone? Get onto a friend of a friend?”

“And where would be the fun in that?”

We passed a really absurd number of bookshops, souvenir shops, and quirky independent clothiers until we arrived at an incongruous-looking building about a hundred years older than the ones around it. London is full of places like this—things that used to be churches or whatever and are now bars or nightclubs or trendy art venues. Ninety-five percent of them didn’t have mystical portals to other realities in the basement. Something told me that here we were dealing with the other five percent. We stopped in front of a graffiti-covered green door, and Gethsemane traced her fingers over some of the markings. It swung open, revealing a dingy concrete staircase that smelled faintly of urine.

Well, this was going to be a barrel of laughs.

We went down into the dark. Gethsemane’s hand was warm in mine, and as we descended I began to hear whispers behind me and feel fingers running gently up my spine. My heart quickened and the scent of piss gave way to a heady scent of sweat and sex. I really hoped that this wasn’t a trap.

Here lies Kate Kane, fucked to death in a cellar because she thought it was a good idea to trust a succubus. Beloved daughter, sorely missed.

It was getting hotter. Not in a fire-licking-your-feet way, in a short-summer-nights way. There was a flickering, reddish light coming from somewhere up ahead. These not in Kansas anymore moments were beginning to really hack me off.

“What’s the plan?”

Gethsemane had dropped the nerdgirl disguise and gone back to what I figured was their natural form—tall and androgynous with waist-length, pale gold hair. “Vera King got where she is by playing the Lords of Hell against one another. She has enemies.”

“And that helps us how?”

“You’ll see.”

We reached the foot of the stairs and came out into a vast, richly decorated hall. The place was packed. People—and by people, I mean a whole lot of different sorts of...things, some that looked like regular humans, some that really didn’t—were fucking in clusters and piles all over the place. Not one of them looked like they were enjoying it. There was real despair in the air, a clawing, awful, hungry need. It was like that movie where Michael Fassbender wanks a lot and looks really sad about it. But with everybody. Forever.

“What the...” I’d have said “the fuck” but it seemed a bit too appropriate.

“Welcome,” purred Gethsemane, “to the Palace of Lust.”

Chapter Eleven

Hellfire & Damnation

So it turned out that Hell was a pretty shitty place to be. The way Gethsemane explained it, the whole thing was divided up between seven factions, who lined up pretty much how you’d expect. I’ve always been a bit iffy on the whole concept of sin on account of how arseholes have been using it to control people since 34 AD, and also on account of how the one time I met an actual angel he totally tried to kill me. But having seen the Palace of Lust, the whole thing made a lot more sense. If it had been a kinky, sex-positive playground filled with hot demon babes in leather and corsets, then I’d have said that the Devil had been getting some seriously unfair press for the past several thousand years. It wasn’t. It was about lust in its rawest and most horrible sense, an endless wanting that was never satisfied. It was sex with none of the stuff that made it good; no joy or pleasure or passion, just an empty hunger that fed on itself. An eternity of repetitive, mindless motion with nothing to look forward to and no hope of satisfaction. The air was full of moaning and panting and sobbing desperation.

Hell: making the best things suck since the dawn of creation.

Gethsemane took me through the Palace of Depressing Vanilla Miseryfucking and out onto a kind of parapet overlooking an enormous funnel-shaped pit that went down a lot further than I liked to think about. We were headed for this huge spiky fortress, all iron and rust and smoke belching out of blackened chimneys.

“Should I even ask?” I asked.

“The Palace of Wrath. If your girl’s soul is being held anywhere, it’s being held there. We need to persuade somebody to let it out.”

A thought occurred. “And you need me here because?”

“Leverage.”

Another thought occurred. “Over who?”

“You’re learning.”

I really needed to stop getting into bed with random supernatural entities. I also really needed to start picking metaphors that didn’t have a sexual undertone.

As we got closer to the scary metal death fortress, I began to feel myself getting twitchy and irritable. It wasn’t a great feeling, but I’d take it over the skeevy sex palace any day of the week. We pushed our way through a throng of what I guessed were either demons or the damned. Hell was pretty crowded—there was probably a pithy quote about it in some poem I hadn’t read. My right hand went to my wrist, where I was still keeping a sanctified steel dagger. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice said that I could just knife Gethsemane and fight my way to the fortress. Another, saner voice said that would be a completely pointless thing to do.

We passed underneath a huge arch with winged demon chicks perched all over it, and I noticed the crowd beginning to thin out. That nagging sense of really wanting to hurt something really kind of right now got a whole lot more naggy. Things also got a lot louder. To one side I saw a tall, lithe creature with barbed talons rip into something that looked upsettingly human. All around me people were screaming, swearing, spitting curses. We hurried the fuck up. I couldn’t help but notice that Gethsemane looked genuinely nervous—I suppose where they came from the tormented souls weren’t going to shank you in a corridor. As for me, I was feeling disturbingly good about the situation. Maybe it was my mother’s influence, maybe it was because I had a dangerous job and was used to watching out for people who might go for me. Mostly, though, I think the Palace of Wrath freaked me out less than the Palace of Lust because as far as I was concerned violence was supposed to be horrible.

The palace gates were open. I say open, they were off their hinges. It looked like they’d been guarded at one point, but the guards were dead—or as close to dead as you could be in a place like this. Neither of them were moving, their bodies lying in pools of blood, or something like it. We stepped over them and pressed inside. Where the path leading up to the fortress had been this godawful cacophony, inside was eerily quiet, like you were expecting an ambush at any moment. Blood caked the floors and spattered the walls. Gethsemane was definitely hurrying now. Through empty corridors, down a gore-slicked spiral staircase to a dank stone chamber. Something moved in the darkness, something hunched and wretched, but with a quickness about it that I thought was very likely to be dangerous.

I was right. It moved with a grace and speed that it shouldn’t really have been capable of but then, hey, demon. It pounced on Gethsemane, bearing them to the ground and pinning them with its hands around their throat.

“You should not be here,” it whispered. Its voice was rough and ragged. “Should not have come. Should have stayed in the other tower.”

Without thinking I lunged forwards, wrenched the creature up, the sanctified blade at its throat. It wasn’t a rescue attempt. I was just angry. The thing struggled, and the part of me that this place was filling with hatred liked that it struggled.

“Kate, this is Mooncalf. Mooncalf, this is Kate.” Gethsemane took a shaky breath—they were out of their element here and the longer we stayed the more it was showing. “I suggest that everybody puts their knives down.”

I didn’t want to. I wanted to gut them both. For what they were. For where we were. For the sheer fun of it.

I put my knife down. The creature called Mooncalf backed away. It seemed to be looking at me. Now my eyes were more used to the darkness, I could see that he looked broadly human. Hunched, scarred and beaten-down, but more like me than most of the things I’d seen since I got here.

“Kate wants something belonging to Vera King,” continued Gethsemane. “I think you have it.”

Mooncalf flinched. “Maybe. What?”

“The soul of a child.” She’d changed again. This time into a young woman, with auburn hair and a timeless, innocent quality. “You won’t have sent her to the blood pits. Not yet.”

“The mistress commands,” he replied. “And I obey.”

Gethsemane came forwards and took his head in her hands. “She is not your mistress. She is a mortal sorcerer, and you are a demon of the pit. She may have bound you as she once bound me, but she will die for that. This woman will make certain of it.”

I felt another flash of anger, and I think it was the regular sort. “Hey, wait a moment, what?”

Mooncalf turned towards me, gazing up at me with cruel, unbelieving eyes. “Kill her, will you?” He didn’t look happy. Happiness didn’t really seem to exist here.

“I’m not going around murdering grannies.”

Gethsemane’s hand came to rest on my shoulder. “You want the girl back? This is how you get it.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted anything that badly. Nana King wasn’t exactly an innocent, but she was somebody’s nan, for fuck’s sake. Okay, the somebody in question was a bloodthirsty gangster who could shoot fire out his eyeballs, and I knew for a fact she had a legion of demons at her beck and call, but it still felt wrong.

Mooncalf put his hands together, then moved them apart to reveal a tiny swirling ball of light. That was Phoebe. In the hands of one of Vera King’s minions, in a dark damp chamber, in the Palace of Wrath. In Hell. There were no two ways about it, I had to get her out of there.

“Fine,” I said. “Just...it won’t be straight away. It’ll be... I don’t know. But I’ll get it done.”

“Promise me.” He sounded desperate. Everything here sounded desperate. “Promise me that she will die. That she will die soon. That you will take this—” He reached out, twisted a shard of rusted metal from the wall, and held it towards me. “That you will take this and thrust it into her heart.”

Hey Kate! What did you do this evening? Oh you know, the usual. Let a shapeshifting sexual predator take me to the most miserable place in the cosmos and promised a bloodthirsty hellbeast that I’d brutally stab a little old lady. “Whatever,” I said. “Just give me the girl.”

“Promise me. I have to hear the words.”

I’d say this was getting creepy. But we’d passed creepy about six stations ago. This was getting sick. “Okay. All right. If that’s what it takes.” I grabbed the spike. “I promise that the next time I meet Vera King I will stab—”

“Thrust.” There was a malicious glee in his voice.

“That I will thrust this spike through her heart.” The moment I’d said it, I felt something. A tearing, catching feeling in what I really hoped wasn’t my soul.

Mooncalf handed me the little ball of light. “It will be sweet,” he said, with a faraway look on his face, “to be free.”

“You do realise that you have a gigantic pit full of armour-plated monsters down here?” I tucked the spike into my inside pocket. “Is it really so hard for you to take care of one octogenarian?”

“You think we’d stay down here if we could come and go as we liked?” Gethsemane looked genuinely pissed off. “You think I’d spend my evenings picking up losers in fast food outlets if I could just live?” She took my hand again, none too gently. “Come on. We’re done here.”

We turned and left. I heard Mooncalf whispering kill her over and over again as we went, and I carried on hearing it long after I should have stopped. I held Phoebe’s soul cupped between my hands—something told me that I wanted to make really, really sure nobody got sight of it while we were making our way out. The path between the palaces was still chaos, but I kept my head up, walked straight ahead and tried not to think of all the hideous, visceral things that people were doing to one another either side of me. Unfortunately, walking straight ahead turned out to mean walking straight into this full-on spiky lizard monster with crocodile teeth and bat wings. It stared down at me and growled.

I made apologetic noises and tried to step around, but it grabbed me with one massive claw and lowered its muzzle to sniff at me.

“Let go. Now.” I tried to sound menacing. Which was tough when you were dealing with a creature about twice your size while holding something you couldn’t risk damaging.

It reached up with its other talon and tried to pry my hands open. I guess this was the infernal equivalent of the big kids taking your lunch money, only with an eternity of torment at the end of it. And from the looks of things, I was about six seconds away from getting the world’s least precise acupuncture treatment. If my mother’s power couldn’t reach me here, I was totally fucked. Pressing Phoebe’s soul to my chest with one hand, I grabbed the demon’s wrist with the other, and twisted. At the same time I reached out to the Deepwild with whatever bits of my mind weren’t already busy dealing with this totally fucked-up situation. The power came over me in a rush, wild and vicious and different somehow, tangled up with the sick and strangling hatred that filled the air.

Taken off guard, the demon stumbled forward. I pressed on its arm with my elbow and forced it painfully to its knees. It slashed up wildly with its one free claw and drew blood. Between the Palace of Wrath and the dark of the wood, it just pissed me off. I hooked my leg over its shoulder and twisted with my whole body. There was a wet popping tear and the limb came away in my grip. The beast howled and rose up to savage me. I tossed the arm, wrapped my hand around its throat and squeezed. The muscles in its neck were strong, but faerie and the violent, vindictive power of this Hell were stronger. My fingers broke skin and crushed tissue, forcing its head back and ripping through tendon and gristle. It fell at my feet and I almost laughed. I licked its blood from my fingertips and immediately regretted it. It tasted of bile and acid, spite and fury. Gethsemane was pulling at my sleeve, and a dozen voices at the back of my mind said to pluck out her eyes and eat them.

I looked down at the little orb of light that swirled in my left hand. It was important. I remembered that. There was something calming about it. Something that didn’t belong to this place or to the wilds or to anything but itself.

I glanced at Gethsemane. She looked fucking terrified. I really needed to get out of here.

We didn’t run. This was the kind of situation where running got you chased. But we walked pretty damned quickly, and the nice thing about ripping a monster’s throat out with your bare hands is that it made people give you your space. We passed beneath the iron arch and hurried back to the Palace of Lust. I was feeling more myself, but the demon-blood in my mouth and the constant, gnawing pressure of, y’know, Hell was really getting to me.

Gethsemane led me through the corridors of the Palace and back to the staircase. I started climbing, and found it harder than I’d imagined. I might not be the fittest person in the world, but I’ve done the steps at Covent Garden tube when the lifts were down, and this was something else entirely. It was like something was trying to drag me down. By the time I reached the top I was crawling, my heart racing, my breath catching. When we reached the door, I collapsed, turned back to face down the stairwell, and vomited. The mingled scent of piss and puke and the lingering traces of sulphur was the least pleasant thing I’d smelled in a good long while. Including the times I’d been sewer-diving.

I slumped on the top step with my head between my knees, holding the little soul-orb in front of my eyes and telling myself it had all been worth it. Gethsemane sat beside me. They’d reverted to their neutral form—which I was beginning to take as a perverse sign of trust.

“That,” I said. “Was fucking horrible.” I kind of wanted to throw up again, but I wasn’t sure there was anything left in my stomach.

“It’s Hell. What did you expect?”

I just waited there a while, breathing heavily. Then I looked up and stared at Gethsemane. Even in this shape, the one that wasn’t completely designed to push all of my buttons, there was something enticing about them. But that wasn’t what was bugging me right now. “How do you do it?” I asked. “You send people there. Forever. You must have sent hundreds. Thousands.”

“You were in that place for an hour, and look at you.” They turned away. “I’m not going to try and justify myself. I’m not going to say it’s right. But we can’t all be like Ashriel. Most of us, most of us who’ve been there for so long, for six thousand years some of us, we’d do anything to get out.”

“Then how did Ash escape?”

Gethsemane laughed. It wasn’t the laugh I expected from a succubus, or incubus, or whatever type of ’cubus they were in this shape. There was nothing seductive about it. “He didn’t.” They looked at me, and I must have had a really vacant expression on my face because they continued: “Oh come on, you must have heard the line. This is Hell...”

“Nor am I out of it?” I finished. Ash had said that to me when we’d first met.

“I’ll admit, coming up here and walking around is a perk a lot of us don’t get. But Hell isn’t really a place; it’s a state of being. The way you felt while you were down there, we feel that way all the time unless we” —they looked away again—“unless we do what we do.”

Next time I saw Ash I was buying him a drink. Okay, not true, next time I saw Ash I was probably going to ask him to help me out with something really important and life threatening because that was how most of my relationships worked. But the next time I saw Ash socially and outside the context of a giant mystical clusterfuck, I was buying him a drink. “What is it even for? I mean, what’s the point?”

Gethsemane shrugged. “It wasn’t my idea. It’s a punishment for...something. Go around expecting things to be fair or make sense, and you’re going to be really disappointed.”

At last I went back to the carriage and Gethsemane went off to... I don’t know, damn another person to eternal torment, I guess. Fuck, this reality was fucked up. At the flat, I found Nim still asleep and Phoebe still unconscious. The little ball of light seemed to brighten somehow as it got closer to her body. A tiny, suspicious part of me had the sudden paranoid thought that this wasn’t her soul at all but some kind of monstrous hell-parasite that I was about to unleash on the world. But if that was the case, there was nothing I could do about it.

I held the light over Phoebe’s chest. It sank slowly into her body, and her eyes flickered open. She sat up, glanced frantically around her with a look that I can only describe as mortally fucking terrified, and then burst into tears. All the commotion must have disturbed Nim, because she stirred as well. I was selfishly glad about that, because I suck with kids and Nim’s quite good with them. Is quite good with everybody, really. Without stopping to ask what was happening, or how things had got the way they’d got, she put her arm around Phoebe’s shoulders and told her everything was all right. That it was going to be all right. She said it in that way she had of saying things so you couldn’t not believe her.

I left the room. Phoebe didn’t really know me and having a stranger around was just going to make things worse, so I sat on my sofa and waited for everything to be done.

I must have nodded off, because the next thing I knew light was filtering through the curtains and Nim was sitting next to me. I peeled my face off the armrest and swivelled myself into something that looked a bit like a sitting position. My head was killing me and my mouth felt like—oh yeah—like I’d swallowed demon blood, vomited heavily, and then passed out without brushing my teeth. There was blood on the sofa as well, from where my arm had been ripped open. I took such terrible care of my stuff.

“How is she?” I asked.

“Fine.” Nim shut her eyes and thought for a moment. “As fine as she could be. Kate, what did you do?”

“Fixed it.”

She glared at me. It was her serious, I run this city and you don’t pull that crap with me face. “Kate,” she repeated, “what did you do?”

So I explained. That I’d gone to see Ashriel, then Gethsemane. That I’d asked a devil for help and that I’d got it after a fashion. That I’d literally been to Hell and back. That I was honestly feeling really pretty messed up right now what with everything that had happened in the last few days and that I wasn’t in any fit state to have my choices raked over no matter how stupid or reckless they were.

It wound up being quite a long explanation.

When I was done, Nimue stood up. Then she crouched, and kissed me gently on the forehead. “You shouldn’t have done it,” she said. “But I’m glad you did. Phoebe will be safe, I’ll make sure of it. So will everybody else who can’t protect themselves. We’ll win this. I promise.”

I stared blearily at her. “You still need the Tears, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“You know that means messing with the wolves and the Merchant of Dreams?”

“The wolves are your problem. The Merchant is mine. Get the Tears for your client. I’ll make whatever bargains I have to from there.”

I tried to stand and failed. “Nim, you don’t have to. Never make deals with faeries is, like, page four of the Big Book of Not Getting Totally Fucked Over. I’ll square things. Don’t worry.”

“No,” she told me. “You won’t.” It wasn’t a statement, it was a pronouncement. This was the way things were going to be. I felt bad that I was glad about it.

“Fine.” I sighed. “Look, you and Phoebe can stay here as long as you like. I’d ask if you need anything but, honestly, I think I’m going to want to lie here and be unconscious for a bit.”

Nim might have said something back to me, but I didn’t catch it. Because, y’know, unconscious.

Chapter Twelve

Statues & Wolves

I woke up—okay, came to—a couple of hours later. I could barely move. I really had to cut down on the amount of running around, getting the crap kicked out of me, being set on fire and literally visiting Hell that I did. That and saturated fats. At first, I just sort of lay there for a bit, staring at the ceiling, and trying to comfort myself with the thought that I’d done a straightforwardly good thing last night. Unless I hadn’t.

Nim had vanished sometime in the night, and taken Phoebe with her. Which was fine. I hadn’t expected them to stick around. Mages were paranoid and elusive at the best of times, even when they weren’t trying to stop their friend’s kids getting caught in the crossfire of a massive magical war. Besides, I had shit of my own to deal with, what with the Tears and the werewolves and the Merchant.

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 possession 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.

All I had to do was be smart, keep my head down, and offload this thing as fast as possible. How hard could that be?

I got home to find Elise in the kitchen. She was finishing off the washing up, which was nice of her. Especially since she didn’t contribute to it. I went and flopped down in the sitting room, took the Tears of Hypnos out of my pocket and sat there for a bit, looking at them. As far as I could see, it was nothing more than a little bottle of sparkly liquid. Like bubble mix. I set it on the table and pulled out my phone to give the client the good news.

“Kate.” The Merchant seemed almost perky. “I’ve had a message from the Witch Queen of London.”

“And?”

“And we’ve reached an agreement. The Tears go to the Queen, I get my chance to show Mr. King what happens to people who steal from me, and”—I know you can’t hear a grin over a telephone, but I felt like I could—“one or two other little particulars. Now, do you have good news for me?”

“Looking at the merchandise right now. I’ll get it to Nim ASAP. Guess this means that we’re about done.”

“It often feels like that, my dear. It’s surprising how rarely it’s true. But send me your invoice and we can settle things your way this time.”

“And your father-mother won’t come screaming for wolf blood any time soon?”

“They’ll have no need. You see how well things work out when everybody plays their part?”

Hanging up the phone and trying not to think too hard about what part the Merchant of Dreams wanted me to play and what they wanted me to play it in, I called through to the kitchen. “Elise, can you get an invoice out for the Seven Dials job?”

“Certainly,” she called back. “I’ll do it right away.”

It was kind of a relief to have things with the Merchant wrapped up, although it occurred to me that this did mean I was once again between paying gigs and battling supernatural monsters on a strictly pro bono basis.

Elise came through from the kitchen. She stopped, like she always did, in the doorway. Standing stock-still in that unnerving secretly-an-actual-statue way of hers, she glanced at the vial, then at me. Then smiled, pleasantly. “How was your day, Kate?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Hellpits, witches, werewolves who won’t take no for an—”

My brain caught up with my mouth. Elise never called me Kate.

I grabbed the Tears from the table and made a dash for the door. Elise, or whoever it really was, moved to stop me.

Chapter Thirteen

Rats & Weasels

I ran into a wall of stone. Apart from that one time at the Undertow, I’d never fought...what did I even call these people? An Elise? A mystically animated statue-lady? Whatever, I’d never fought one when I wasn’t already intending to take a beating. She had this utterly unfair mix of invulnerability, superhuman strength, and more speed than you’d expect from somebody who was made out of rock.

As a result, it was a pretty short battle. I tried to duck past her, she grabbed me, smacked me in the side of the head, and I went down.

Here lies Kate Kane. Fell for the old “replace your assistant with an identical duplicate” act. Beloved daughter, sorely missed.

I woke up to find the Tears gone and my head killing me. Well fuck. Tara was going to be so pissed. Picking myself up, I fumbled for my phone. I was beginning to worry that if one of the players in this gigantic fucking farce had decided to replace Elise they’d have needed to get rid of the real thing.

I rang the office.

“Kane and Archer, neither Kane nor Archer are present at present. She is absent, and he deceased. How may I assist you?”

“Fuck, Elise. That is you, right?”

“Yes, Miss Kane.”

“Has anything, y’know, weird happened to you in the last day or so?”

“I might observe that in our particular business, ‘weird’ is rather difficult to identify. Yesterday, a little after I returned from Highgate Forest—a journey which, I might add, I enjoyed very much—a young lady hired me to carry out a simple investigation into her husband, with the very clear instruction that I keep him under observation for at least twenty-four hours. It seemed mildly unusual, but well within our usual repertoire, and so I took the job. I have just returned, and will invoice the lady shortly.”

I was starting to get a pieces-into-place type feeling. “This lady. Describe her.”

“American. Dark hair in a rather eccentric style. The gentleman she wanted me to follow seemed to live a perfectly unobtrusive life, and spent a rather long time commuting up motorways. Overall I was glad when the assignment was over. Is there a problem, Miss Kane?”

“You could say that. I’ll explain when I get to the office.”

“I shall have the coffee ready.”

She would, too. I double-checked that the imposter hadn’t taken anything apart from the world-altering superweapon, grabbed my keys, and headed downstairs. Technically, I should probably have been going to a hospital because being punched in the head by something made entirely of marble put you at serious risk of concussion. But, fuck it, things were getting apocalypsey. At least, I didn’t have to worry about passing out at the wheel or swerving off the road thanks to the creepy ice-and-shadow horses.

Once I reached Bow Street, Elise and I swapped stories. I explained about the whole abduction/forest/werewolves/trip-to-hell/werewolves again/ambush thing, and she got me caught up on all the bits of invoicing and filing that she’d been taking care of while I was out of commission.

“If I may ask, Miss Kane,” she said, “the woman who stole the artefact...”

“Looked like you. Moved like you. Didn’t talk like you.”

“Do you believe that she was the same...example that you saw with Mr. Lake?”

I really wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to get her hopes up, but then I also didn’t know what her hopes were or what getting them up would even mean in this situation. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean...identical copies so...kind of identical? But the lady who had you following her ‘husband’ for the last day or so sounds like somebody who works for Fisher, and it’d be too big a coincidence for one person to arrange for you to be out of the way while a completely different person arranged for somebody to impersonate you. Unless they’re working together, but since they have exactly zero common ground I think it’s unlikely. Which means you have more than one...umm...clone wandering around.”

Elise didn’t react. Like, at all. Which was kind of weirding me out, because it was like she’d been switched off.

“Are you okay?” It was a crappy question, but it was the best I had.

Her head swivelled sharply to face me. “Yes. Rather, I see no reason that I should not be. I had always known that the magic which created me was not unique. But I find it peculiar to imagine that I have—I am sorry, I am not certain what word is appropriate—sisters? It raises unsettling questions. I find myself wondering what they are like, if they are like me, and if they are, what it means that they are or, if they are not, what it may mean that they are not. I wonder.” She stopped again. Dead still and stone cold. “I suppose I wonder if they are happy.”

I gave her a hug. I’m not the most tactile person ever, but it kind of seemed like the thing to do. Also, it meant I didn’t have to say what I was thinking, which was “mostly I’m wondering if they’re going to try to kill us.”

The good news was we weren’t back at square one. Yes, I’d had the means to solve all of our problems in my hands and promptly lost it again, but we were still making something like progress. I was fairly sure that the Tears were with Fisher, and that he’d teamed up with either Elise’s creator or one of her—to stick with her language—sisters to get it. At least he didn’t seem to want to use the Tears to kill any of my friends, although healing a wound was one of those seemingly benign motivations that usually turned out to mean something unutterably terrifying.

“How do you want to play this?” I asked.

“Miss Kane?” She was still a bit off, but she was loosening up.

“I need to find out what the...other Elises are doing. I’ll start with the Multitude. From there I’m not sure. I can’t risk going back to Lake. But either way, I want you to know that you can be in this or out of it, whatever you need. I’ve got your back, or I’m in your corner, or, y’know...”

She patted my hand gently and a bit mechanically. “That is very kind of you. I think—” Another pause, frozen like a photograph. “I think I should like to come with you. To investigate. I am, after all, an investigator by profession.”

I said something vague and reassuring and probably a bit patronising like “that you are” or “and a damned good one” or whatever. I honestly don’t remember. Point was, we had a lead and a clock. Fisher had a clear plan for the Tears, and as far as I knew there was no reason he’d wait to use them. That meant we had to find him as soon as possible. The Multitude was our best bet. Plus I hoped that Elise would find it comforting to speak to Carew again. Yes, he was a bodiless gestalt entity made of rats that pretended to be an Anglican priest, but all that aside, he seemed to be a decent guy.

We piled into the car, and Elise drove us down the Strand, towards Whitechapel. She didn’t put any music on which was a relief in some ways, because I didn’t think my head could take it, but a worry in others. If I’d been less shit at this sort of thing, I’d have asked what was on her mind. But I wasn’t so I didn’t.

St. Botolph’s Without Aldgate was a friendly, welcoming sort of church. Which was fitting, because the Multitude was a friendly, welcoming sort of all-seeing hive-mind. Edmund Carew was seated in a pew near the entrance. I put a hand on Elise’s shoulder in what I hoped was a reassuring “you take the lead here” sort of a way. She seemed to understand what I was getting at, because she went and sat down next to Edmund. It was quite a pretty scene all told—charming young woman seeks guidance from friendly local clergyman. Charming young woman who’s actually a statue animated by magic that usurps the very power of creation and friendly local clergyman who is entirely made of rats but, hey, you can’t have everything.

“Mr. Carew,” Elise began. “I have questions, if I may.”

Carew didn’t say anything. He just looked sort of wise and approachable.

“The man who...who made me. I wish to know if he made others.”

“And why do you wish to know that?” Carew’s voice was soft, but there was an edge to it. Suspicion, perhaps.

“My partner. Miss Kane. She has encountered some...people who resemble me very closely. It has made me wonder what else might exist. What my creator might have done or be doing. It has...confused and upset me.”

Carew glanced my way. I was pretty sure that was for my benefit. They say you’re never more than six feet from a rat, after all, and the Multitude had more than one pair of eyes. “And what about your—how do you put it—partner? Why does she want to know this?”

Elise looked at me. As always, her expression was hard to read, but I think she was looking for a hint what to do next. I tried, through minute changes in my facial expression and subtle gestures, to articulate a sentiment along the lines of “it isn’t really my place to tell you how to handle this, you need to deal with it on your own terms and I’ll support you in whatever you decide.” But I think I might have come across as a bit confused.

“Miss Kane,” she said, “is aligned with the Witch Queen Nimue in a mystical war against a man named King. She is seeking a magical reagent called the Tears of Hypnos, which was stolen from her by one of the...others. She intends to track it down. I wish to help her.”

The air shifted, and while I might have been imagining it, I could have sworn I heard a skittering, scuttling sound right behind me. “The Multitude,” whispered Carew, “does not take sides in the conflicts of wizards.”

Elise leaned forward. “Please, this matters to me.” Perhaps I was going soft in my old age, but there was something in her tone I found pretty damned heartbreaking. “If there are others out there, I wish to know. I wish to know what happened to them. What their lives are like.”

Carew looked down. “I have done a great deal for you already, Elise. Would you really ask me to do more?”

A huge warning sign was flashing in my head. Maybe it was all the time I’d spent hanging out with demons and half-faeries recently, but I really wasn’t sure I wanted my assistant getting herself deeper in debt with this thing. Everything had been okay up to now, but I knew something in the region of sod all about it, and my policy with things I know sod all about is to assume they’re secretly evil.

Gently, Elise put a hand on Carew’s arm. “I know you have done a lot for me. And I have never entirely known why you did. I am only asking you to help me because I think you can, not because I think you must.”

There was a definite chittering now, but it seemed more curious than ominous, like the swarm was processing something, considering it. “It is true,” said Carew at last. “We can help you. And we will, because it is our nature to watch over the lost. But your friend should not take this to mean that we are on her side. We are on nobody’s side.”

That was pretty clear. Carew answered Elise’s questions as best as he—or rather they—could. The Multitude knew of three more “sisters”. One was working for Lake at the Undertow, and had been for some while, since before Elise existed. One was still with their creator. The other was living in a flat in Brentford and engaged to an estate agent. Assuming I wasn’t jumping to completely inaccurate conclusions, that pointed to Fisher and Elise’s creator working together directly. Well, he had said he’d find another way in if I didn’t help him.

Elise said her goodbyes—she was nothing if not polite—and we came out of the church into the late afternoon sunlight. I tried to make reassuring noises, but I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Okay...” I tried. “Seems like we’re looking up your... I don’t know, what do we call him?”

“Russel?”

“Yeah. Although I’m kind of leaning towards ‘the arsehole who literally threw you on a rubbish heap.’” Actually, he’d packed her in the boot of a car and sent it to a wrecker’s yard. But that didn’t have the right ring to it. Also it was still kind of too disgusting to think about.

“That seems overlong.” Maybe she was joking, but it was hard to tell. I still wasn’t getting the cues I normally did.

“I’m assuming you know where this guy lives, unless he’s moved in the last few months. But I’m also assuming there’s kind of a reason you haven’t gone back to see him since.”

“He made it very clear that I was unwanted.”

“Yeah, I didn’t mean ‘gone back for a chat’. I more meant ‘gone back to beat his head in’.”

Again she was very still. “I do not. That is. It did not ever occur to me that I could do such a thing.”

“Do you, y’know, want to?”

“I am not sure.” She seemed to be seriously thinking about it. “I do not believe so. I do not think that I am the sort of person who would take satisfaction from it. But I cannot rule out the possibility that I am simply incapable of considering action against my creator. And that raises worrying questions about my consciousness.”

This was edging dangerously close to out of control. I steered Elise away from the church and back towards the car. “I wouldn’t overthink it. I was only asking because I wanted to say that if you felt you had to sit this one out I’d be totally okay with that. I mean, y’know, blah blah confront your past blah blah closure but, let’s be honest, I’m kind of the poster child for running away from your problems.”

Elise smiled. It looked like she had to think about it more than she normally did. “I will be fine, Miss Kane. But thank you.”

Turned out Russel lived in Pinner, which was the best part of an hour from where we were. Elise didn’t talk the entire journey, and I didn’t push it. Instead I followed her when we got out of the car, and watched as she wandered the leafy suburban streets like she was remembering a dream. She finally walked up to a nice-enough little end-of-terrace, all tokenistic front gardens and satellite dishes, and stopped outside the door.

“Here,” she said. “It was here. He may have gone.”

I waited to see if she’d knock. She didn’t, so I did.

There was a definite movement from inside, and then the rattle of a chain. The door opened a crack to reveal a skinny blond man in a short-sleeved checked shirt.

“You Russel?”

“Who’s asking?”

You could always take that as a yes. “I think you know a friend of mine.”

He peered around the door. “Shit, Lissa? I told you to stay with Mr. Fisher.”

“Not Lissa.” I looked at Elise, she wasn’t saying anything and didn’t look like she would any time soon. “Are you going to let us in, or are we going to have this whole conversation on your doorstep.”

“You haven’t even told me who you are yet.”

“You know who she is”—I indicated Elise—“or at least you can get it within three guesses. I’m just a freelancer who really wants to know what your deal with Fisher is and really, really wants to know how she can find the bastard.”

Russel looked at me. “Yeah, no.” He tried to shut the door. I shoved back against it and, almost without thinking, my mother’s strength ran through me and the door burst inwards, ripping the chain out of the frame. I’ve got to admit I’d never really understood what those things were supposed to protect you from.

“Right, you petty little hedge wizard.” I stepped over the threshold and saw Russel scrabbling backwards. His hands were raised in what I thought was some kind of mystical gesture—I hoped this wasn’t going to turn into another magic duel. Elise followed me, shutting the door quietly behind her.

“You don’t know who you’re dealing with!” Russel’s voice was on that iffy borderline between menacing and shrill. He began tracing sigils in the air.

I folded my arms and glared at him. “I came here with a person you created. I have a pretty good idea of the kind of magic you do. And since you haven’t shot fire in my face yet, I’m betting good money it’s the kind of magic that’s too slow for you to pull anything before I can break at least three of your limbs.”

“Hey!” He stopped tracing immediately. “You’re the one who barged into my house.”

I took a step back. He was annoying as hell but he kind of had a point. “Okay, so we got off on the wrong foot. How about we start over, nice and friendly, and you answer some questions for me.”

“What sort of questions?”

Elise spoke up without warning. “Why did you attempt to destroy me?”

“It’s you?” Russel stared. “I assumed you’d be buried by now.”

“That is not answering my question.”

He waved his hands in the air. “I don’t know. I was frustrated. I was nervous. I’d put two of you out there already and I thought three was pushing my luck. Lake was already breathing down my neck asking if I could make him more and—look at me—do you think that’s why I’m in this? To pump out merchandise for some cockney dick in a sharp suit?”

“So you instead elected to have me crushed in a scrap metal yard?”

“It wasn’t personal.”

Elise stood for a moment. “No, I suppose it would not have been.” She closed her eyes. “Thank you for answering my question.”

The part of me that lived in wild forests and endless twilights wanted to tear this guy’s throat out and eat his heart. The part of me that was human, but had worked with too many nasty people down the years still wanted to smack him in the teeth. Unfortunately the part of me that actually gave a shit about Elise knew this was a million miles from my fight. I swallowed my anger and tried to get on with the job in front of me. “What did you do for Fisher, and how can we find him?”

“I didn’t find him. He found me. Said he needed to borrow Alissa. I knew why he was in town—same reason all the big players are in town—and so I said that if he wanted to use my girl he needed to cut me in on the action.”

“The action?”

“The Tears. A couple of drops of the Tears of Hypnos might be exactly what the formula is missing.”

I was about to ask what formula he was talking about, but I realised that there was really only one possibility. “You sold your old girl for a way to make a new girl?”

“I didn’t sell her. I said he could keep her. Gesture of goodwill.”

“And you’ve got your sample?”

“Not yet.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “How are you planning to get your payment? You must have some way of picking it up.”

“I’ve got a friend. She introduced us, she’ll collect for me. I’m not an idiot, I know who Fisher is. It’s best for me if I keep him at arm’s length.”

“But it’s okay for you to let your friend deal with him, and for you to literally hand Alissa over to him?”

Russel gave me an uncomprehending look. “He’s dangerous, not a total psycho. They’ll be fine. Becca knew him already.”

At least I had a name. “You couldn’t get Becca on the phone for me, could you?”

“Right, because I always give out my friends’ contact details to total strangers. What kind of guy do you think I am?”

I wasn’t even sure I could dignify that with an answer. “Look,” I tried. “This is important. People are going to die if I don’t find Fisher and get him to give me back the Tears.”

“And I’m going to believe you why?”

“Where is she?” Elise’s voice came out of nowhere.

“I told you, I’m not saying.”

“Not your friend. The replacement. The one that will take over from Alissa.”

Russel looked perplexed again. “In the shed. Why, you want to see?”

“Yes.”

We were kind of in the middle of a thing, but I didn’t want to step on Elise’s toes. She went through the house and out the back door. I suppose she knew the way.

The shed was this odd mix of clutter and really specific attention to detail. Old tools, bits of broken stone, and the kinds of ancient-looking books that were probably technically grimoires were scattered about the place, covered in a fine layer of marble dust. The middle of the shed, however, was a meticulously prepared ritual circle with a statue in the centre. A statue that looked a whole hell of a lot like Elise. Only naked. Well, that was a bit embarrassing. I couldn’t quite stop myself staring. Russel had his flaws but he was a very talented sculptor. And while I might have been distracted by the situation, Elise was fascinated. Hypnotised even. To be fair, in her place I’d be freaking the fuck out.

Slowly, she circled the statue. Ran her fingers over its face. Stared into its eyes. I couldn’t begin to guess what was going through her mind right now.

“She isn’t ready yet,” said Russel.

“Yes, she is.” Elise seemed pretty fucking certain about that.

He hurried over to her. He had that expression that people get when their friend’s toddler starts taking an interest in their collection of crystal glasses. “Hey, now, back away from that. Okay? This is my thing. I know what I’m talking about.”

Elise turned around. For the first time since I’d known her, she looked angry. “This is not ‘your thing’. This is her thing. This is my thing.”

“Babe, it’s just a statue.”

Of all the things he could have said, that was very close to being the worst. Next thing I knew, Elise had a hand around Russel’s neck, and was raising him slowly onto tiptoes.

“No.” Her voice was cold. “She is not.”

Chapter Fourteen

Wins & Losses

I wasn’t at all sure where all this was going. I kind of hoped that Elise was just making a point, because the alternative was that she was going to choke this guy out, and while he super had it coming, we really needed some things he had. Also, murder? Still illegal last I checked. Stupid mages and their stupid actually legally existing.

“You’re blowing this way out of proportion,” protested Russel.

“You tried to kill me. No, worse. You threw me away.”

Some people, when they’re in a hole, are pathologically unable to stop digging. Russel was one of them. “It wasn’t working out!” That didn’t help. “I just, I needed to start over. To get you out of my system.” That didn’t help either.

“It is curious,” said Elise. “I do not have any especial wish to hurt you. I thought perhaps that I would.”

“Great.” He was kind of taking what he could get here. “We’re making progress. We can build on this.”

She cocked her head to one side. “However, I find myself possessed of a quite extraordinary desire to prevent you from doing to anybody else what you did to me.” Gently, she lowered him to the ground. “You will finish the girl in the garden. Then you will let her go. And you will make nobody else.”

Russel was hunched over, a mixture of getting his breath back, straightening his neck out, and—I admit this was mostly wishful thinking—kissing his arse goodbye. Finally, he stood up. “How the fuck do you think it’s okay to give me orders? You wouldn’t fucking exist without me.”

“Which part of ‘sent her to an actual scrapyard’ are you either forgetting or not understanding?” I didn’t like to butt in, but this guy was really beginning to get on my wick. “You are so far from the moral high ground here that you couldn’t even see it on a clear day. Right now, the only reason I have a mild preference for Elise not splitting your head open like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange is that you have information I need. If I don’t think I’m going to get it, then I have zero reason to object to her doing whatever the hell she thinks needs to be done here.”

“Fine!” He dug in his pocket, fished out a phone, unlocked it and tossed it over. “Becca’s number’s in there. Now can you please call her off?”

I checked that he wasn’t bullshitting me. He wasn’t. There she was. I made a note of the number in case I needed it. “I don’t actually get to tell her what to do,” I explained. “Okay, I do in some situations, like when we’re out of paperclips and I have to say ‘Elise, can you order us some more paperclips?’ But here? Not the boss of her.”

She looked at me. Her expression had softened a bit since she’d decided not to crush Russel’s throat. “Thank you, Miss Kane. I confess that I am not certain what I should do next.”

“Here’s a good suggestion,” Russel snapped, “how about leaving my house?”

“Not without my sister.”

He collapsed against the wall of the shed. “Will you let it go? She isn’t your sister. She’s a lump of rock.”

Again, not the right thing to say. “You have given her form,” said Elise. “She has a shape, an identity. All that she lacks is impetus.”

“This is bullshit.” Russel curled up by the wall and put his head in his hands. “All I’m after is some company. Is that too much to ask. Shit, what does it say about the world when a guy like me finds it easier to wrest the secrets of life from the Gods themselves than to get a real woman to pay attention?” He gave me an accusing look. “Seriously. You’re all fucking mental.”

I stared right back at him. “Oh right, because I’m the one building people at the bottom of my garden?”

“You think I want to be doing this? If anyone would give me a chance I’d have been fine. But Bill Hicks was right. There’s studies on it.”

Okay, this was getting special.

“How about this for a deal,” I said. “You’re going to finish whatever magic ritual you have to do to wake this lady up. Then you’re going to ring your friend, so that she can get us in touch with Mr. Fisher. And then we’re going to take all your books, and either throw them in a river or hand them over to the Witch Queen of London, whichever comes first. And you’re going to go along with this, because otherwise you’re going to have a really pissed off animated statue to deal with.”

He looked subdued. I hoped I hadn’t misjudged the guy, but I was pretty sure he cared more for his physical safety than his work. The books might have been pushing it, but Elise clearly wanted him out of business for good, and I was betting that he was betting on it being easier to rebuild his magic library than, say, his kneecaps.

“Alright.” He stood up. “Clear some space, and I’ll do it. She’d be better, though, if you let me wait for the Tears. She’d be more... I don’t know. More complete. More real.”

Elise had that stone look again. I couldn’t blame her.

Audibly sighing, Russel went to one of the books, flipped over a few pages, and began an incantation. There was about a seventeen percent chance that he was going to try to screw us over. To summon something horrible or—and this was a really nasty thought—undo whatever he’d done that made Elise. Then again, I suspect he’d worked out that if he did that I really would kill him, and fuck the cops and the evidence and everything else.

Magic in practice tends to be either really super impressive, like when people are slinging fire all over the shop or opening gaps into nightmare netherworlds, or else really nothingy. The nothingy kind tends to be the most powerful—half the magic Nim did you wouldn’t even know was magic at all, but it suppressed crime rates, eased the flow of traffic, and generally made things way better for people without anybody noticing—it was part of why I was so mostly okay with her having a hold over me. What Russel was doing, that felt extremely nothingy. There was a faint tingle at the back of my mind, a sense that something uncanny was going on. But there were no sparks or flashes of glittering light, just a skinny guy in a shed saying words to a statue. Elise watched, expressionless. It must have been weirdly like looking at your own birth. I wasn’t sure I wanted to think too hard about how that would feel.

Minutes passed. Sometimes magic took a tediously long time. Finally, Russel walked up to the statue and, with surprisingly little self-consciousness since Elise and I were both staring at him pretty intently at this point, kissed it on the lips. And then there was that two-faces-vase thing you so often got with mystical transformations. A change in the way you held your head or focused your eyes, and instead of seeing a statue you saw a live woman, and once you’d seen it you couldn’t unsee it.

She stumbled forwards like the little mermaid using her legs for the first time. Which I suppose she was in a way. The legs thing, I mean, not the mermaid thing. Russel caught her and for half a second the scene looked almost romantic. He gazed down at her with real adoration and the way she looked back at him it was almost like he was a fairytale prince and she his princess. His naked princess. His naked princess who he had deliberately made, for himself, using magic.

Russel led the woman to a relatively stable-looking pile of junk and sat her down. He even retrieved a blanket from somewhere in the corner and draped it over her shoulders. I bet he was the kind of guy who self-defined as chivalrous.

“Thank you.” She pulled the blanket a little tighter, and looked around the shed. “I am sorry, I do not know exactly what is happening.”

“My name is Russel.” He patted her gently on the thigh. “I created you. These here are Elise and...did you even tell me your name before you broke into my property and threatened me?”

“Kate Kane,” I said. “You might not have realised this yet, but my friend here is basically the same as you. Less naked, pretty much the same otherwise. What this kind gentleman forgot to mention is that before he made you, he made at least four other girls, and he ditched all of them.”

“And they’re all fine!” His hand was still on her leg. “You know the saying: if you love somebody, set them free.”

“You did not set me free,” offered Elise. “You locked me in the boot of your car, and then you sent the car to be crushed.”

“And I’ve said I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t going to let that slide. “Actually, you haven’t.”

“Okay, fine.” He rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry. It was a moment of madness. But look, you’re fine now. We’re all fine. Just leave us alone, and we’ll pretend this never happened.”

This was getting into some seriously shonky philosophical territory for me. When she’d been a statue, I’d been perfectly happy to say we should take her away from this prick and that she’d be a thousand percent better off for it. Now that she was a scared, alive, human person, it was a lot more complicated. It was really hard to rescue somebody when you not only weren’t sure if they wanted to be rescued, but couldn’t be certain they even understood the idea of rescuing. She certainly had no way to understand what we’d be rescuing her from.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Miss...do you even have a name yet?”

“I called her Lisbeth.”

“Like Salander?”

Russel shrugged. “I like strong women and thrillers. Sue me.”

“And”—I turned to the girl—“you’re okay with that?”

She nodded. I guess Elise had been named roughly the same way. Hell, I suppose I had—but it had been Dad and Jenny who did it, rather than a creepy wizard.

“Fine. Lisbeth, you’re going with Elise. She’s been where you are. She’ll help you, and she’ll do it without expecting you to bang her afterwards.”

“Hey!” Russel looked genuinely and deeply offended. “You’ve got me totally wrong. Like, totally. If you think for one second that I...”

Calm down, Kate. Don’t stab him. “Will you shut up. Please? For one fucking minute? Elise. Take Lisbeth into the house. Find her something to wear. Then take the car and go. I’m going to have a word with our friend here.”

Lisbeth clearly didn’t have a clue what was going on, but she let Elise take her out the shed, through the garden, and back into the house, leaving me alone with Russel. He stood sulkily in the middle of the ritual circle and gave me an evil look.

“You’re a total bitch, you know that?”

“Thanks, I get that a lot. Now”—I handed him his phone back—“ring Becca.”

“You realise that Lisbeth won’t cope without me.”

Okay. Maybe only stab him a little bit. “Honestly? I think what you do is ugly and shitty, but it’s my partner that’s all about shutting you down. Me, I’ve got a completely different job to do, and it’s a job that you’re currently making way harder than it has to be. Now dial the fucking number.”

He dialled the number and handed me the phone.

“Russel?” The voice at the other end of the line was breathy, trembling. Familiar. “Russel, what’s wrong? I need a little more time with Mr. Fisher, and you’ll have everything you need. I promise you.” Yeah. Definitely familiar.

I took a deep breath. “Corin. It’s me. Don’t hang up.”

She didn’t miss a fucking beat. “Kate? Kate, I’m so glad you found this number. I’ve been in such terrible danger ever since we met the werewolves. I knew Mr. Fisher from before, you know. From New York. I stayed there a while after everything that... He’d always been so kind to me, and I needed somebody to protect me. From Henry Percy, and from everybody else. I’m in so much trouble, Kate, and I don’t know what to do.”

The temptation was to call her on her bullshit, but Corin’s most seductive and most maddening quality was the way she never broke character. She’d carry on pretending that she was this lost, innocent girl, even when she had a gun to your head. The smartest way to deal with her was to pretend you bought it and hope to get away before she made you forget you were pretending. “Okay,” I said. “You need my help, you got it. Give me a place and a time.”

“King’s Cross. Metropolitan line, westbound. Six forty.”

“Time’s good. Place not so much. Tube’s a bit demony right now.”

“I didn’t know. I wasn’t... I didn’t...”

Fuck. I’d spooked her. “How about Hyde Park. Same time. In the rose garden.”

There was a tense silence.

And finally: “A-all right. But I have to go. I shouldn’t even be speaking to you like this. I... I... I’m sorry, Kate.” She hung up.

I gave Russel his phone back. Chances were good that Corin would never answer that number again. I’d have felt sorry for the guy if he hadn’t been such a complete shit. “Are you done?” he asked.

I was. I took his books like I’d promised Elise I would. There was a convenient little alleyway connecting the front and back gardens, so I didn’t even need to go through the house to get the hell out of there. Russel ran ahead and tried to block me.

“Come on!” he protested. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to work all this stuff out? These are some seriously ancient secrets. You’ve taken my girl, can’t you at least leave me my art?”

Carefully, I laid the books on the floor. “Thing is,” I said, “I’ve had about three friends in my entire life, and one of them’s dead, one of them I haven’t seen in ten years, and one of them—this is Elise by the way—you tried to have crushed in a wrecking yard. And I would really like to beat the hell out of you for that. But I’m trying this new thing where I respect people’s choices, and I’m pretty sure Elise wouldn’t want me to.”

The look in his eyes bordered on contemptuous. “Nice speech, babe. Now give me my books and fuck off.”

“Thing is,” I continued, “you’ve also pissed me off in your own right.” I smacked him in the jaw. “So that’s for getting in my way.”

“You crazy fucking...” He put his hand to his chin and came back towards me.

I kicked him in the gut. “That’s for helping an evil wizard ambush me in my own fucking house.” While he was doubled over, I grabbed him by the hair and brought my knee into his face. “And that’s because I kind of think you’re a prick.”

I picked up the books and left him in a pile in the alleyway. I’d probably made an enemy but hey, it was good to end your day knowing you’d made something.

The carriage was waiting for me outside. One of the infuriating things about faery magic is that it could be so fucking convenient sometimes. Like, seriously, that’s how they get you. It let me out again opposite a bronze statue of Byron on the A402 and I crossed the road into the Park. It was technically evening, but it was still stiflingly hot, and the grass was dotted with picnickers and tourists, lying around in various states of can’t-be-fuckeditude. I’d given us both plenty of time to get to the rendezvous, which now meant that I was stuck in a rose garden in weather I was way overdressed for, waiting for somebody who would probably just screw me over first chance she got. Well, at least I’d brought something to read. Not that I was exactly sure what I was going to do with a stack of ancient tomes about turning statues into sexbots.

I plonked myself on a bench, surrounded by flowers, not quite sure in retrospect why I’d chosen this particular venue. I think my basic line of reasoning had been somewhere central, public and, as far as I knew, not currently controlled by a geriatric hellwitch. But, as I sat there, drowning in the heavy scent of far too many roses, I couldn’t help wondering if my subconscious had been trying to make a point. “Hi Corin, come meet me in this place full of things that are beautiful and fragile and covered in fucking thorns.”

Bang on the minute, I saw her hurrying down the fancy rose tunnel. She kept glancing behind her, as if she was being followed. That didn’t necessarily mean anything—Corin lived her whole life like she was on the run from something, and for all I knew she really was. I occasionally wondered how that must feel, what it must be like to spend every day scuttling from shadow to shadow, latching on to whoever you could, and hoping that they wanted you badly enough to help you but not badly enough to hurt you. She’d made a weapon out of weakness, and she’d done it well, but it wasn’t an option that you chose, it was one you were forced into.

She perched next to me. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. I wasn’t sure you’d trust me. After everything I’ve done.”

“I didn’t have much choice.”

“I meant what I said.” She looked away, but rested her hand gently on my arm. There was something weirdly intimate about it. “I meant what I said about Fisher. He’s been kind to me. I don’t want to—that is—I don’t want to do anything to hurt him.”

Just like she didn’t want to do anything to hurt me, or Archer right up until she shot him. “I need to get the Tears, so that Nim can beat Arty King. It’s best for everybody. Yeah, Mr. Fisher has to live with his injury for a few more years, but me, Nim and half the mages in London get to be not burned alive. I kind of take that as a price worth paying.” It was selfish, but we were talking about stealing something from a guy who stole it from someone who was given it by someone who stole it from someone who stole it from someone who stole it from someone who stole it. It was winding up like the thing with the pheasants in that book where the kid’s dad is a poacher. They basically belonged to whoever had them.

Her eyelashes trembled. “I understand. I mean...that is... You’ll try to be as...you’ll try not to do anything to him?”

“My only quarrel with Fisher is that he has something I need, he got a living statue to punch me in the head, and he was kind of a dick to me that one time. I’ve got no reason to do anything messy unless things go way further south than I’m expecting.”

And that was when the mist rolled in—eerie and silver, making the whole world look unreal. There were three people I knew about who could do that kind of magic. One was Nim. One was Gabriel.

It wasn’t either of them.

Corin looked up at me. “Kate, I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

For once I believed her. Like, really believed her, not fell-for-her-act-in-spite-of-myself believed her. She never worked with anyone she didn’t think she could control and there was no controlling a guy like Arty King.

I got to my feet and went for a knife, very conscious I was bringing it to a gunfight, if not a guns-and-magical-powers fight. A dozen figures coalesced out of the air and all at once we were surrounded. I recognised Lake, and his version of the Elise series, and a few of the guys from the Undertow.

He gave me an even shit-eatingier grin than he had the last time. “Your mate said we’d find you here.”

“My mate?” I’d say that narrowed it down a lot because, as I’d explained to Russel, I wasn’t exactly over-endowed in that department. But I honestly had no idea who he was talking about.

“Weaselly guy, makes girls. Said you were on your way to meet someone who knew how to get the Tears.”

Wow. Never underestimate the damage that a petty little jerk can do to your life expectancy. I suppose this was what I got for going around punching people in the head. I put my hands in the air in a we don’t have to fight about this even though we absolutely have to fight about this kind of gesture. “Look, whatever you’re here for, I don’t have it. How about we all move on, cut the Stephen King crap, and go about our lives?”

“This her?” Lake glanced at Corin.

“Just a pretty girl I met in the park.”

He casually pulled a phone out of his inside pocket and glanced at it. “The guy sent us a photo, you dumb shit.”

Well, fuck. I gave Corin a look that I hoped said stay down, this is about to get nasty, although if her instincts were as good as they usually were I doubted she’d need encouragement.

I wouldn’t normally call on the Deepwild in a public park because the greenery and the fairytale vibe made it a whole lot harder to control. Also: serious risk of casualties. But this wasn’t the time for half measures—I had a wizard, a statue that had taken me out twice already, and a pack of armed shitheads to deal with.

Opening myself to my mother’s realm, I reached deep. A castle choked with briars. A carpet of petals on a mountain of bones. This is my kingdom and trespassers my lawful prey. The little wizard defies me. He will die for it. I spring. Taste his surprise. The sweetness of his sudden fear. His blood in my mouth. Beneath my claws. A sound, loud and sudden. Pain. Hot, then dull, then sickening. I feel the green and the wild slipping away. I lie on a gravel path in a park in London.

Lake crawled to his feet. If there was one thing I hated more than cocky gangster wizards, it was cocky gangster wizards with guns. And if there was one thing I hated more than cocky gangster wizards with guns, it was cocky gangster wizards with guns loaded with iron bullets. He was bleeding from a gash on his cheek that looked like a bite mark. I’d have felt smug that I got the bastard except that trading a few teeth marks in the face for a bullet in the hip was a really bad deal.

“Nice try.” He stepped over me and vanished into the mist, taking his men and Corin with him.

Here lies Kate Kane. Shot in Hyde Park. Beloved daughter, sorely missed.

Chapter Fifteen

Battered & Bleeding

Sometimes, it’s nice when things aren’t all about you. It means you can get on with your life without anybody dicking you about. Other times it means that people leave you bleeding in a park. Now that King’s men had gone, I figured I had a couple of minutes before whatever city-king-mist-magic mojo that had kept the members of the general public away from interfering in their little ambush wore off. The good news was that I didn’t think I’d been shot anywhere fatal. There was a reason they didn’t make bullets out of iron—they weren’t especially effective. I got up, and did the best I could to stop myself bleeding. This was one of those hospitals-will-ask-questions deals, which was awkward. And Elise was still tied up with Lisbeth, and Nim was tied down with the war. That made my options pretty limited, but damned near all of them involved not being face down in a rose garden with blood coming out of me.

This was going to hurt.

I dragged myself back to the carriage. Okay, more hobbled if we’re being super literal. The great thing about this city was that you could pretty much always be anonymous if you had to be. Even if you were a thirty-something woman with a fedora, purple eyes, and a near-debilitating injury. Hell, there was a non-zero chance I’d start a hipster fashion trend if I went into the right pub.

The horses seemed pretty unbothered, which I was taking as a win because I’d been laying fifty-fifty odds on the scent of blood making them go all mares of Diomedes. I’d been pretty explicit that I shouldn’t have to feed them anything weird but I technically hadn’t said anything about them eating people on their own time. When they didn’t flip out, I crawled in and lay down on the floor. Sitting seemed like too much hard work right now.

Despite being magic, horse-drawn transportation was way rattlier than I was currently up for. Also I really needed to contact Nim. Shutting my eyes, I tried to sort of bend my mind towards her. It felt weirdly like praying—not that I’d ever been especially religious. Nobody in my family was. I think my dad’s experiences with my mum had kind of put him off powerful supernatural beings, even the ones with really good PR.

Perhaps I was imagining it, but I felt a hand rest gently on mine.

“King is going for Fisher,” I whispered. “He’ll have the Tears soon and there’s not a lot I can do about it.”

I felt a brush of warm air, the ghost of a kiss. Maybe the message had got through. Maybe I was just way worse off than I thought. Wincing, I did my best to relax while the carriage clattered through the streets. I’d left Russel’s books in the park but fuck them. The world was better off without them anyway. We rolled on, and it dimly occurred to me that, while I never really knew where this thing was taking me, I normally at least had a sense of where I wanted to be. And I suppose I really wanted to be in some kind of expensive hospital, hooked up to a drip of high quality narcotics, or on an exotic island surrounded by hot bikini models who also happened to be fully qualified trauma surgeons. But I didn’t think it was a good idea to hold out for either option.

I was drifting a bit but barely twenty minutes could have passed before we stopped. Hauling myself to my knees, I peered out the window and the first thing I saw was The Velvet.

Seriously, subconscious? This is where you take me?

Out of everybody I knew, Julian was the one who was least likely to be able to help. She had her talents, but last I checked medicine wasn’t one of them. But fuck it, I was tired and in pain and I suddenly realised I really wanted to see her. Although, thinking about it, showing up to meet your vampire girlfriend covered in blood was borderline tacky.

The club was still closed, but there was a fire exit around the back that they seemed never to shut, because as far as Julian was concerned health and safety regulations, like solid food, unsatisfying sexual experiences, and the word no, were things that happened to other people. Inside, everybody was in full setting-up-the-club mode, and while I didn’t like to interrupt them, I kind of needed some help here. I cunningly drew attention to myself by falling heavily into a stack of boxes. The crash brought Ashriel running over, along with a gaggle of employees I didn’t recognise.

“What the? Kate?” His tone was a mixture of concerned and pissed off.

I looked up at him. “I’m going to lie here for a while. Remind me that I owe you a drink.”

“Shit. Somebody get Julian. And the first aid kit.”

It was around this time I gave myself permission to pass out.

When I came to again, I was lying on Julian’s chaise longue. I wasn’t exactly feeling better, but I didn’t have quite the same foggy-headed feeling, which suggested that somebody had got the iron out. Julian was kneeling beside me, gently stroking my hair.

“Dear me, sweeting. You really don’t know when to stop, do you?”

I propped myself up on my elbows. Honestly, it still hurt like hell, but I was almost ready to start thinking and talking. “You don’t know the half of it.”

In a swift, fluid movement, Julian slithered onto the chaise beside me. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Are we doing story time again?”

“No.” She sounded a lot less playful than she usually did. “I really do want to know what happened. Not to be melodramatic, but you just fell through the doors of my club with quite a serious injury. And Ashriel tells me you’ve been making some rather worrying enquiries about his place of origin.”

I lay back and put my head in her lap. “Yeah, I kind of visited Hell.” I tried to sound offhand about it.

“I wish you hadn’t, darling. That place has a way of putting its hooks in one.”

“Had a child to rescue. Seemed like the thing to do.”

She raised my hand to her lips and kissed my fingers. “I know. You’re terribly brave and chivalrous. But the Inferno doesn’t mess around. Believe me, I know whereof I speak.”

“Your nuns were probably a bit biased.”

“I’m being serious. In the few days you’ve been beaten, shot and visited one of the worst places in creation. I’m used to my relationships ending in fireworks, sweeting. Not with the girl getting wiped out in some ugly brawl in a carpark.”

“Regular park.”

“Stop changing the subject.”

“Oh, you like it that I have my own stuff going on.”

She ran a fingertip over my brow. I shifted a little into her touch. “Tell me about the fight.”

“Guy called Lake. Had a pack of goons, a magic statue and a gun loaded with iron bullets.”

“Thank you.” Her fingers began to wind idly in my hair. “You understand that I am quite tempted to kill him.”

That was tricky. On the one hand I didn’t like my lovers doing things for me. On the other hand my life would get way easier if some of Arty’s men dropped dead of sudden and extreme blood loss. I compromised. “You know that’d put you in the middle of an actual gang war.”

“A magicians’ gang war. Do you really think that I’m going to let some pissant little sorcerer shoot my girlfriend with no reprisals?”

I sat up and swivelled painfully around. It was nice, having a partner who shared your interests, it meant you always had something to talk about. The less nice thing was that you spent a lot of time talking shop. “If you’re going to do this,” I said, “would you mind doing it...sort of...officially?”

“Formally ally with the Witch Queen?” She sounded like I’d suggested she fuck a chicken. “Why on earth would I do that?”

“I don’t want you to shake hands for a photo op. But—how can I put this in a way that will make sense to you—I kind of think war is like sex, it goes way better if you communicate.”

She tilted her head slightly. “Curious. I always thought war was like sex because it goes way better if you’re me.”

“Point being, if you’re going to trash this guy anyway, and I’ll be honest it would be great if you did because I really don’t want Arty King to wind up controlling the city’s mystical shadow, it makes sense to work with the other people who are also trying to trash him.”

“This is getting political.” Julian frowned, which was kind of adorable and terrifying at the same time. “I’m not sure I’m happy about that. But I can see it’s important to you.”

Note to self: if you’re going to your girlfriend for emotional support after you’ve had a horrible week, it’s a bad move to start asking her to fight a war for your ex. I leaned against her shoulder. “It is. It really is. And I know it’s kind of shitty to try to get you on side for it but...” Fuck, this was difficult. “I’m actually scared here. I mean we’ve fought some creepy shit, but this is different. I know it’s just a guy but that’s the problem. It’s a guy, and he’s an arsehole and he has a whole bunch of arseholes working for him and he wants to hurt me, and he wants to hurt people I care about and it’s personal and it’s horrible and he fights really fucking dirty.” I took a breath. It kind of felt good to get all of this out. “So, yeah, sorry. But this is kind of bugging me right now.”

Without saying anything, Julian put an arm around me and held me for a while. She made such a thing of being an immortal sex fiend that I sometimes forgot how tender she could be. And right then I knew that whatever else happened, she was in my corner. And it helped. It helped a whole hell of a lot.

At last she looked down at me. She had her serious face on, she didn’t have serious face very often, so when she did I tended to pay attention. “I can talk to the others,” she said. “I’m not certain, but I think I can persuade my fellow princes that the man you describe is—shall we say—bad for business.”

“You don’t have to. I don’t want you to do this just for me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What better reason to do anything than to show off in front of your lover? And I’m not being entirely unselfish, we like to keep the magicians on a short leash and if this man has you worried, then he has me worried. The lady Nimue might be a smug self-righteous little upstart with ideas well beyond her station, but she isn’t completely impossible to work with. After all, we have one or two things in common.”

“We’d need to move fast.” I made an emphatic gesture, and got a fresh round of stabbing pains for my trouble. “Once King gets the Tears, things are going to start going his way really soon, and when that happens it’s going to be a world of too late.”

Julian’s laugh was like faintly patronising music. “I do love, sweeting, how quickly you can transition from oh, you mustn’t do such things on my account to now, let me tell you exactly how to do them. If you weren’t injured and we weren’t about to assemble a council of war, I’d be quite overcome by how decisive and commanding you were capable of being.”

“Y’know,” I said. “I’m not that injured.” Okay, I was exactly that injured, but a girl had to get her priorities right.

“You encourage all my worst habits.” Julian’s eyes sparkled. “It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

I twisted around and kissed her. It hurt like fuck, basically everywhere, but I kind of felt it was worth it. To my surprise, Julian drew back. She never drew back. My head swam like I’d just downed the whiskey after one too many.

“I’ve said this precisely twelve times in the last eight centuries,” she told me, with an odd little smile. “But you should rest.”

“Haven’t you met me? I don’t do rest.”

“And look where it’s got you.” She put a hand on my chest and gently, but very, very firmly pushed me onto my back. “Tonight, you’re going to lie down and be still, and let me look after you.”

I blinked blearily. “That doesn’t sound very fun for you.”

She dropped down to the floor next to me and sat cross-legged, watching me with those too bright eyes of hers. After a moment or two, she took my hand. “It has its compensations, sweeting.”

Chapter Sixteen

Councils & Conclaves

When Julian said she’d do something, she did it. I got that she was a motherfucking vampire prince, but she managed to get some of the most powerful supernatural beings in England around a table really fucking quickly. True, they all lived in town apart from Sebastian, but they were also stubborn bastards. I’d have assumed they felt bad about the way they’d almost had us both executed, except feeling bad about stuff wasn’t really in their job description. The meeting was scheduled for the following evening, which meant that I had pretty much a full day to recover from my injuries. To be honest I really fucking needed it, and it was kind of cool to watch Julian do her thing. One of the weird quirks of dating a woman who was eight hundred years old is that she was like a bunch of different people. Surprisingly caring Julian was different from flighty sexually insatiable Julian, and they were both different from has-been-playing-supernatural-power-politics-since-Henry-the-Eighth-was-a-bachelor Julian. She bargained, she wrangled, she called in markers and she sure as shit got things done.

A part of me felt pretty fucking guilty about taking what amounted to a day off and leaving Corin behind, but it was clear by this point that firefighting was getting me nowhere. I needed to do something about King. It needed to be something drastic, it needed to be something sudden, and it needed to be something he wouldn’t expect. I was hoping he wouldn’t expect the undead. But perhaps even hoping that was getting ahead of myself.

Right now what I really needed to hope was that the princes of England would be at least vaguely willing to listen to me. Which wasn’t hugely likely given that I’d personally killed the progeny of one and the mentor of another. Aside from Julian, the closest thing I had to an ally amongst them was Sebastian Douglas, the Prince of Wands. And when I say “ally” I mean he’d voted not to execute me for reasons I was sure were purely selfish. The one thing I had going for me was that I was pretty certain Arty King really did represent a threat to their interests. Vampire politics were cutthroat—not that cutting a vampire’s throat technically did it any harm—and nobody survived long in that environment by letting personal distaste get in the way of personal gain.

After some wrangling, the meeting had been slated to take place at PCM Consulting, the tasteful City palace of Thomas Pryce, the Prince of Coins. It had been the only sensible venue really. Mercy had only been in her role for a year, and Julian was already pushing her luck by getting everybody together at less than twenty-four hours’ notice. The last time I’d been to PCM it had been with the late Aeglica Thrice-Risen and he’d thrown the Prince of Coins out of a window onto a piece of offensively expensive corporate art. That time, we’d been met by armed guards. This time, well, we didn’t exactly get the red carpet rolled out, but the staff greeted us politely and showed us through to the meeting room, which was an improvement over, y’know, guns. We were the first to arrive after Pryce himself, who gave us about as warm a welcome as you’d expect from somebody who hated both our guts. Mercy and Sebastian showed up soon afterwards.

“Well?” Pryce did not sound long on patience.

“Aren’t we in an abrasive mood?” Julian swung back in her chair, propping her knee-high pirate boots on the conference table. “I have asked you to meet with me because my companion here would like to enlist our assistance with the small matter of Mr. King.”

Pryce massaged his forehead with one hand. He looked genuinely pained. “Are you honestly telling me that you assembled this council simply because your mortal plaything wishes to get us to—if you will pardon the analogy—do her homework for her? Wasn’t it only last year that you stood in front of us and argued that your judgement hadn’t been compromised?”

Julian smiled. “You’re so sweet when you’re being condescending. I never said this wasn’t personal. Mr. King touched my things. I don’t like it when people touch my things. But Kate makes a strong case that we should treat the gentleman as undesirable and my judgement was that she made it well enough for it to be put before the rest of you.”

“Then let her.” Mercy dragged a talon along the pristine glass tabletop. “I am sure she can speak for herself.”

Right. My turn. I hated this part. Talking to important vampires was kind of like getting dressed down by the head teacher. If your school went in for extrajudicial execution. At times like this, they told you to imagine the audience naked, but I really didn’t think that would help with this lot. Mercy was terrifying enough with her clothes on, and the other two would have no problem looking infuriatingly superior even with their cocks out. “Okay,” I said. “Here it is. I get that this is just a mortal thing, and just a wizard thing, but Arty King is about to get his hands on something called the Tears of Hypnos, and if he does it will mean he can...” What, exactly? One of the big drawbacks of my job was that I spent about half my life neck deep in shit I only partly understood.

Pryce was glaring at me like I was on Dragons’ Den and I’d admitted that I didn’t know what my turnover was. “It will mean he can...” he prompted.

“It will mean that he can weaken the borders between reality and the Dream,” said Sebastian. I was getting really fucking suspicious of the way this guy kept pulling my arse out of the fire. “All magicians, after one fashion or another, alter reality according to their will. They make what might be into what is. Most supplement their abilities by aligning themselves with some power or other—with Hell, or with the Old Ones, the fair folk, or with the elemental principles—but their true power comes from the Dream. From the vast, fathomless potential of everything that can be conceived or imagined. It is part place, part state of mind. It has parallels with the World of Forms, or the Jungian collective unconscious, although in truth it is more complex than either of these. They wrap themselves in stories and echoes of legends in order to draw closer to it, and it allows them to work their will in the world. The Tears allow them to do the same, but more strongly and more clearly. In the hands of a skilled magician, they are a dangerous weapon.”

“Dangerous to whom?” Pryce again. You had to hand it to him, he got to the heart of the matter.

“To anybody who does not fit with the magician’s view of the world.”

“You know,” observed Julian. “If you were already aware that this stuff existed, and if it really does what you say it does, did it not occur to you to mention it at any time over the past, say, three hundred fucking years?”

Sebastian arched an eyebrow. “I am the Prince of Wands, dear. Guardian of secrets within and without. Keeper of knowledge. If I were to list for you all of the deadly arcane mysteries to which I am privy, I assure you it would take three centuries.”

“You’re a smug prick, Sebastian.” I knew I was dating Julian for a reason.

“I endeavour to give satisfaction.”

Mercy turned to me. At least, I assume she did, she still hadn’t let go of the Edwardian Widow vibe so she was veiled. “If what Sebastian says is true, this weapon would be a danger to us whoever wielded it.”

Yeah, I’d hoped they wouldn’t notice that. “There’s a difference. Arty King is a ruthless, violent bastard. Nim isn’t.”

“Violence and ruthlessness are tools we all use.” Mercy’s voice was low and menacing. Even more menacing than usual. “Even your queen.” She sat back, folding her claws with surprising delicacy in front of her. “But I have had dealings with this Mr. King before. The man is...vulgar. Whatever this weapon may be, he is the mortal I would least trust to control it.”

On the whole, things could have been going worse. If it came to it, I was pretty sure I could sell Nim on “nobody gets the Tears” as a plan. The sheer amount of death and bullshit these things had caused made it pretty appealing even to me if I was being honest. “So...” I began, not quite wanting to jinx it, “are we actually agreeing about this?”

“I suspect,” said Sebastian, “that we all agree Mr. King cannot be permitted to wield the Tears of Hypnos. I suspect further that most of us agree that no other mortal magician may be permitted to possess them. I do not wish to speak for this assembly, but I believe that you would be well advised to inform your queen of this decision. Let her know”—he looked around the table for assent and seemed to get it—“that she will have the support of the Princes of England in her struggle against the usurper, but that should she or any other sorcerer attempt to take possession of, or to wield, the weapon he currently possesses, that sorcerer will suffer swift and bloody retribution.”

The rest of the vampires nodded in agreement. Even Julian looked pretty down with it, but then swift and bloody retribution was kind of one of her hobbies. There wasn’t much more to be said. At least, there wasn’t much more for me to say, but the vampires seemed to be settling in for a late-night undead networking session which I wasn’t invited to. Julian walked me out.

“Thanks for putting that together.”

She smiled, kissed me quickly and affectionately. “Think nothing of it. We talk a lot about being above the petty concerns of the living, but the truth is that we need to know about these kinds of things. We can’t let rough men run around with unstoppable mystical power any more than you can.”

“How socially responsible of you.” I thought about it for a moment. “Seriously, though, that went way easier than I’d expected.”

“We had Sebastian on side. People tend not to go against Sebastian. It ends badly for them.”

That was reassuring. “And does that make it a good thing he’s being so helpful, or really not a good thing?”

“I wish I knew. I gave up trying to second-guess him long ago. Just when you think you know what he’s going to do next, it turns out he’s already done it.” She looked very serious for a moment. “You’ll be careful out there, won’t you? I know you trust the Witch Queen, but take it from somebody with experience: power makes people do strange things.”

I gave her a squeeze. “I’ll be fine. I’m like eighty or ninety percent sure that Nimue isn’t going to suddenly turn evil and betray me.”

“Stop being silly. This could easily become very nasty. Now run along and have fun with the wizards.”

I was getting heartily sick of travelling by bullshit faery carriage, but Julian had laid on a car because motherfucking vampire prince. I kind of felt I deserved a bit of luxury, what with all the getting shot and the going to Hell and everything else. I leaned back in the plush seats and let the driver whisk me home in style. The flat was empty when I got in. Empty and still kind of trashed from my very brief tussle with... Alissa, I suppose it was? Admittedly it was also kind of trashed because I was bad at keeping my place tidy, but the fight had made a non-zero contribution to the overall chaos.

I needed to get in touch with Nimue, and I only really had one way I knew how to do it.

I went to bed.

The problem with dreams as a form of communication is that they’re not the kind of thing you can switch on and off. It was bad enough getting to sleep when you had something important to do the next morning. Getting to sleep when you had something to do that same night, and when it was something you had to be asleep to get done was a recipe for hours staring at nothing and trying desperately to count imaginary farm animals. I fucking hated the whole fucking process. No lights, no cues, no sense of how much time was passing. Just a nagging idea that you were fucking up somehow and you weren’t sure what you were fucking up or how to unfuck it. Just a sense of dislocation and uncertainty. Just disorientation and fatigue and...and...

And I awoke in the Dream of a hall in the Dream of a city. Ancient stone. Arches and chandeliers. Stained glass and coats of arms. The echo of a place that had stood through fire and through plague. A place of meeting and of ceremony.

Nimue sat at a round table. A sword lay in front of her. To her right, Fisher. The staff clutched in his hand was wound around with snakes and topped with wings. To her left, Rose Red, a mirror behind her, a crown sparkling on her brow. An apple on the table. Inviting and threatening at the same time.

“Umm...” I said. “Hi?”

Nimue looked at me. “You’re safe?”

“Yes.”

“You should have taken my offer, Miss Kane.” Fisher looked different here. Fainter. The wound in his side was more obvious. “This whole situation could have been avoided.”

“King’s got the Tears, then?” I hadn’t been sure.

Fisher nodded. “He took them from me last night. The girl betrayed my location, he came in force. In my current state I was not a match for him.”

“So now,” Rose Red added, “we’re pooling our resources. Because if we don’t we are fucked.”

If it hadn’t been for Nimue I’d have been inclined to say they deserved it. This was what you got for chasing after mysterious magic widgets.

“I’ve spoken to the vampires,” I said.

Rose Red let out a kind of sputter. “Excuse me, princess, you’ve what?”

Nimue raised a hand. “Let her finish.”

“The Princes of England agree that Arty King can’t be allowed to keep the Tears of Hypnos, but they don’t think any of you should be allowed to have them either.”

“That isn’t their call.” Fisher again.

“It is not.” Nimue. “But they are within their rights to make their position known to us.” A faint smile crossed her lips. “You have served me well, Kate.”

Gee, thanks. That was the trouble with Nim, it was hard to be her friend when she kept trying to be your sovereign. “So, what now?”

A harsh, scraping sound. Rose Red raked her nails over the rough stone surface of the table. “Now we scratch his eyes out, honey.”

“King is strongest in the south.” With a wave of her hand, Nimue conjured a wavering, misty image of the city in front of us. “The river will be the first battleground, and the one it is most vital that we win. It is a barrier and an artery. Before that we must weaken his influences to the north, west, and east. Rose, I look to you to fight in the deep earth and the shadow—my agent in the dark places may still live, but I cannot reach him, and so you cannot rely on his support. Fisher, you will take the battle to the upper air and the places between. I will begin the fight in the quiet waters and the edges of eternity. Kate, you will assist me.”

I wasn’t completely sure how much I could assist anybody, because this sounded about three points too mystical for me to really cope with. “I... Sure. Uh...how?”

“I will show you.” Nimue rose. I couldn’t quite remember what she’d been wearing before, but now she was back in that sparkly silver dress that meant she was in full on queen-of-the-city mode. With a gracious gesture she dismissed her companions, who sort of faded into mist along with the table, the room, and everything else.

And then we were alone in a high place. The city beneath us like a living, dreaming map. I thought that if I focused I could see anything. Everything. The great grey serpent of the Thames. The hidden, filth-choked veins of the city’s buried rivers. The hopes of office workers. The fears of suburbanites. The secret wishes of city brokers. She’d shown me this before. It had been beautiful then and it was beautiful now.

“The city,” she said, “is currents. Connections. Channels. Magic—my magic, King’s magic—is touching those channels. Changing them. They exist in the Dream, but they exist also in the physical world. Power here is power there, and the reverse is likewise true. King’s power in the north flows from his Guardian of the Watchtower of the North, from Lake.”

I had a sense where this was going. “From the Undertow?”

“It is a temple of sorts. A place of power. It is not the greatest of his holdings, nor the least. I ask that you deliver it to me.”

“Deliver it how? I’m not Ronnie Kray, I can’t just walk into a place and say nice club you’ve got here, be a shame if something happened to it.”

“You will find a way, Kate.” Gently, she took my hands and gazed fixedly at me. There was something deep and hypnotic about Nimue’s eyes, like you were looking back in time. “You are my strong right arm. My most trusted agent. My perfect knight.”

I was getting increasingly worried about how little of this I understood. “Great. No pressure.”

“You will find a way, Kate. You will always find a way.”

She leaned up to kiss me. She did that a lot in my dreams. I was hoping it didn’t count as cheating if you were asleep and it was redolent with mystical symbolism. Before her lips could touch mine, though, the dream shattered. The high tower and the city beneath dissolved like mist in summer.

I was alone, tangled in my bedsheets, and somewhere somebody was hammering on something in a way you really shouldn’t do at whatever the hell time this was. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and doing my level best to shake the cobwebs from my brain, I slowly worked out that while the “somebody” was still a mystery, the “somewhere” was outside my flat, and the “something” was my front door.

Of all the weird, mysterious things I’d ever heard of in my time, a good night’s sleep was the only one I wasn’t sure I believed existed.

I crawled out of bed, pulled on the minimum respectable amount of clothing, and went to see who the fuck it was and what the fuck they wanted. Given how completely terrible the timing was, and how much of a gigantic pain in my arse my mysterious visitor was being, I should have guessed the first part pretty much instantly.

I opened the door.

“Katharine!”

Patrick. What a fantastic way to round out my evening.

Chapter Seventeen

Boys & Girls

I admit I’m not an expert, but I’d always thought that one of the perks of not being in a relationship with somebody was not having to deal with their infuriating bullshit. But I guess Patrick never got that memo. He stormed into my flat and began pacing the floor of my living room. He had this way of looking like he was constantly about to fly into a violent rage. I’d thought it was dangerous and exciting when I was sixteen, when I’d confused the thrill of physical danger with actual sexual interest. These days it just made me really want to slap him.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Sofia has been spending a lot of time with a guy named—what was it—Samuel? And either you’re afraid she’ll leave you for him, or you had a hissy fit and told her to leave you for him, or she straight-up left you for him. And now you’ve come here because in your twisted mind everything that goes wrong in your relationship is part of my master plan to get you back. Am I close?”

He stopped pacing and started to seethe instead. “Do not mock me, Katharine.”

“I’m not mocking you. I’m just not sure what you want me to do.”

“Find her! Tell her what danger she is in.”

I sat down on the sofa and pointedly switched on the TV. “Danger?”

“She is an innocent girl. Who knows what...plans this boy might have for her?”

Oh, dear me. This was getting beyond pathetic. “Can I clarify, when you say plans, do you mean you’re worried that he might secretly be some kind of supernatural being who wants to drag her into a centuries-ancient conflict in which she is a vital linchpin?” Given Sofia’s personal history, my experience, and the track record of Patrick’s girlfriends down the ages, this was actually fairly likely. “Or do you mean that you’re scared he wants to stick his cock in her?”

He seemed genuinely disgusted. Looking back on it, maybe the fact that my teenage self didn’t find Patrick’s nineteenth-century revulsion at the idea of sex remotely frustrating or off-putting should have been a clue that I didn’t like him that way. “We are talking,” he said with a low, menacing intensity, “about a young girl who is ruining her life.”

I’d say there were times when I really wanted to punch Patrick in the teeth, but that would imply there were times when I didn’t. “Okay, three things. One: No, she isn’t. She’s just breaking up with you, which might be the best decision she’s ever made. Two: The key words in that sentence are her and life. She’s old enough to have sex, get married, drive or join the army. She’s certainly old enough to decide who she wants to date. And finally three: Let’s assume that your worst fears are true and this guy turns out to be some cannibalistic axe murderer who wants to sacrifice her to some ancient hell god. I’m pretty sure we could still get her out of it.”

“You don’t understand!” He’d gone back to stalking the carpet like a caged panther. “I love her!”

“Your feelings don’t control her decisions. That’s kind of not-being-a-controlling-douchebag 101.” And gosh didn’t I sound mature and with it. He didn’t need to know that my last major breakup had involved screaming, crying, way too much drinking, disastrous rebound sex with a femme fatale, a year of zero communication, the murder of my partner and finally reconnecting over the rise of a vampire queen thought dead since the civil war.

For a while Patrick just stood there, digesting. To give the boy his due, he seemed like he was genuinely thinking. Possibly even about what I’d said. If so, it might have been a lifetime first. “What if I hired you?”

Or not. “Hired me?”

“You are an investigator. I will pay you to investigate. Find out who this boy is and what he wants with Sofia.”

Well, this was a quandary. On the one hand I did like money rather a lot on account of this expensive habit I’ve developed of eating food and sleeping indoors. On the other hand I hated the idea of having any relationship with Patrick where I owed him anything, and I wasn’t wild on the notion of spying on one of the few people in the world who still trusted me. “You know,” I said, “I’ve got quite a lot going on right about now. This has probably passed you by on account of it existing outside your weird eternally teenage bubble, but the whole city is about to get ripped apart by a magic gang war, and I’ve got a very limited window to stop it.”

“Katharine, I am begging you. I will do anything. I will give you anything.”

He said that sort of thing a lot. To be fair to the guy, he usually meant it. And right now I kind of needed all of the warm bodies—okay, room temperature bodies—that I could round up. Plus I was beginning to put together a plan for how to deal with Lake. I took a deep breath. “Okay, Patrick. If you really won’t be talked out of this, then I’ll help you. But you’re going to pay my standard rate, and you’re also going to help me take out a nightclub.”

“Which nightclub?” He was looking at me like he was sure this was a trap but wasn’t sure how it could be.

“Place called the Undertow. I don’t want anything burned down, but—you used to be Sebastian’s man in the police, lean on whoever you have to lean on and get it looked at. It’s not even like you’ll have to make anything up, the place is a front for a whole pile of shady magic gangland bullshit. Point the cops at it and make sure that whatever pressure gets put on them, you pressure back harder.”

“And in return you will help me protect Sofia?”

“In return I’ll look into this Samuel guy on the off chance he really is as dodgy as shit. But if he isn’t, then he isn’t, and you’re going to have to accept that.”

Patrick stared at me for a moment, nodded curtly and held out his hand. I shook it somewhat awkwardly. Then he left. Which always brightened my day.

And yet again, things had got to the point where I had far too many balls in the air. I needed to catch up with Elise and Lisbeth at some point, I needed to get started on this job for Patrick, and then there was the little matter of Nimue needing me to hand her a key victory in her mystical war for the soul of London. Obviously, the mystical war kind of had to be my top priority.

I wasn’t exactly an expert on this sort of thing, but funnily enough I did have a certain amount of experience with nightclub-based supernatural conflict. When I’d first met Julian, she’d been under attack from this hacked off faery lord called the King of the Court of Love, and his first order of business had been to go after her territory by whatever methods he had at his disposal. Which—since years of neglect and imprisonment had transformed him into this twisted sewer beast—basically meant “throwing poo at things,” but you get the idea.

Faery magic is different from wizard magic—it’s three steps more surreal and about twelve percent more likely to leave you trapped in a magical forest for all eternity—but they did seem to share some basic principles. Back when I’d been with Nim in the romantic sense as well as the owing-her-my-undying loyalty sense—I really needed to find a way out of that—I’d paid more attention to getting her kit off than to learning the intricacies of her magical arts, but I’d picked up some of the basics. There was this whole as-above-so-below deal where what happened in real actual London would affect what happened in magic London and vice versa. My job from now on was to make life in real actual London as difficult for King’s men as possible. For Lake, that meant cracking down on his business in the north. Patrick had been an unexpected bonus there. It had been fifteen years but it was almost like we were getting to the stage where we could work together as grownups.

Then again, there was also a much more straightforward option.

I rang Julian.

It took her a while to pick up, which suggested she was feeling either busy or lazy or both. “Sweeting,” she purred, “I was just about to take a little nap. It’s morning and my power ends as does that of all evil things with the coming of the day.”

“Vampires don’t need to sleep.”

“I know, but it’s so very pleasurable. The terrible drawback of mortal lovers is that they’re always so damnably busy during the hours of daylight, it leaves one with no recourse but to entertain oneself.”

“So... I was going to ask you about the, y’know, the war? But it kind of sounds like you’re about to start wanking at me.”

Julian sighed contentedly. “What makes you think I haven’t started already? Don’t worry, I can multitask.”

“Wow, the word ‘appropriate’ really isn’t in your vocabulary, is it?”

“I’m teasing, sweeting. You have my full and undivided attention.”

“I’ve spoken to the mages. They’re not wild about the nobody-gets-the-Tears thing, but Nim seems willing to cross that bridge when she comes to it. She’s asked me to give her control of a club called the Undertow and that’s so far in your wheelhouse that it...” I stopped and thought for a moment. “What the hell even is a wheelhouse?”

“I believe it has something to do with baseball. But yes, I know the place you’re talking about. It’s run by the little fucker who shot you, isn’t it?”

“That’s the one.”

I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could hear Julian clapping her hands like an excited schoolchild. “Oh, darling, it’s like Christmas. You know how I love to put annoying wizards in their place. And you have all these silly rules about not killing your ex-girlfriends.”

“You want me to come over and talk strategy?”

“Well, I do love it when you talk strategy.” She sighed. “I suppose you’re going to want this to be all subtle and co-ordinated, aren’t you? What happened to the days when you could just feed somebody his entrails and have done with it?”

“It’s sweet that you care.”

“I’ll tell you what, give me the day to talk to my people, and this evening we’ll take a little trip out to show Mr. Lake what a terrible error he made when he messed with my lady.”

Well, they did say it was important for couples to do things together. Honestly I shouldn’t have been pandering to Julian’s penchant for random acts of violence, or her petty vindictive streak. But this fucking fucker had fucking shot me. Ergo: fuck him. She could feed him whatever bits of his body she liked.

With nothing else I could do for the war effort and Elise still busy with her own shit, I had the whole middle of the day to milk Patrick’s paranoia for all it was worth. I was kind of hoping that it wasn’t going to be rocket science. I mean, I did this for a living, if I couldn’t find out about a seventeen-year-old boy in these days of Instagram and Twitter feeds I was doing something seriously wrong.

By about lunchtime, I’d decided I must have been doing something seriously wrong.

I’d got the basics pretty easily because Facebook. He was tagged in a bunch of Sofia’s pictures—a classically pretty young blond boy, the kind you’d almost want to call a youth. With his tightly curled hair and look of nonspecific niceness, he could have been a model for a really bland sort of catalogue. Digging deeper things got weirder. I don’t want to make old-person-type generalisations about young people today, but that generation were pretty much raised on social media—I’d been able to dig up tweets that Sofia had sent when she was so young that even Patrick might have thought twice about drooling over her—but this Samuel guy had nothing before the start of this year.

It wasn’t a huge red flag. People sometimes did cleanses—got new accounts for things because they wanted to make a break with the past or whatever. And there could have been all kinds of perfectly mundane teenage drama behind the guy’s complete lack of digital footprint before January. Or he could have been a hired assassin dropping into a cover identity. Or a creature from another reality that had only recently materialised into this universe and had to quickly adopt the persona of an A-level student. Either way, it looked suss to me. I didn’t have kids, but if I was responsible for a seventeen-year-old girl, and she was about to start dating a guy who seemed to have popped into existence from the ether about two days before he started leaving flirty comments on her status updates I’d be pretty fucking concerned.

Fuck, I was turning into Patrick. I was webstalking a child and convincing myself that he was a terrible threat to a girl who was perfectly capable of looking after herself.

Still, I wasn’t wrong about the flirty comments thing. It wasn’t just that the guy was a bit of a ghost on the interwebs, it was that when he did show up it was always interacting with Sofia. I spent a good few hours trawling the walls, feeds and streams of her immediate social circle, and he was only there if she was there. And okay, maybe he was shy. Maybe he didn’t have many friends, and maybe he really was just so into her that he’d made his virtual life totally Sofia-centric. Which would mean that the girl definitely had a type, albeit a creepy and faintly obsessive type. So far I didn’t have anything that suggested immediate mortal peril. Hell, looking at it objectively this guy was still about ninety-four times less sinister than Patrick.

But it was enough to dig deeper.

By mid-afternoon I’d tracked down more big piles of nothing. I’d called the college, and they’d been naturally cagey because child protection, but they’d been able to tell me that he’d transferred from Charterhouse. Except he hadn’t, because nobody there had heard of him.

On a whim, I ran a similar set of checks on Patrick. His web presence was equally spotty, but his transcripts all checked out far better. On paper he’d gone to Latymer before switching to Sofia’s college for A level, he had an official address and I was pretty sure if I dug deep enough I’d be able to pull a birth certificate for him as well. Patrick worked for the Prince of Wands, and the Prince of Wands did his homework. In which case not only was Sofia’s new guy not who he said he was, but he also wasn’t in deep enough with the city’s secret masters to cover it up well.

I guess that was comforting?

I wasn’t completely sure what the best play was from here. I wouldn’t be clubbing with Julian until after sunset, so if I wanted to leave my desk and do actual legwork I had time to move from cyberstalking teenagers to physically stalking teenagers. God, this job made me feel dirty sometimes. Okay, most of the time. Still, work was work, and you went where it took you. Which was how I wound up staking out a bus stop outside a sixth form college, waiting for a kid to get on a bus, so I could intercept it and follow him.

He got on the number 82 at five past four. Sofia wasn’t with him, which was good. Once the bus pulled away from the kerb, I drove a couple of stops ahead, ditched my car, and got on myself. I felt a bit bad taking the car without asking Elise, but she was so busy with her sister that she’d be very unlikely to need it. Also you couldn’t inconspicuously tail a guy in a horse-drawn carriage unless that guy happened to live in 1764. Also, it was my fucking car.

Samuel got off about ten minutes later, and I got off as close behind him as I could manage without looking totally suspicious. I hung back, giving as much of a “we just happen to be walking in the same direction” vibe as I possibly could, and managed to tail him to a rather nice little semi-detached in Golder’s Green. I walked straight past, because nothing screams “you’re being followed” like somebody stopping directly outside your house. Then I looped back and settled into an unobtrusive position on the other side of the road. And I pretty much lurked there for the next couple of hours. Because even if Samuel was a hellbeast from another dimension, he wasn’t doing anything so hellbeasty right now that I’d be able to see it through the windows of a nice little suburban house in North London.

You get kind of paranoid in this job, and there was a nagging voice at the back of my mind saying that the lack of anything suspicious was suspicious. Once the front door closed, the house looked basically deserted. It was possible that his parents worked, but unless they were both doctors or lawyers or something—not impossible, it was a nice enough part of town—you’d expect at least one of them to be home before sunset. And you’d expect a kid that age to move around some. Instead he seemed to sit in this one upstairs room. Maybe he had homework, but if so that was a level of commitment to academic performance that a seventeen-year-old boy in an otherwise empty house wouldn’t normally display.

Yeah, I was leaning far closer to hellbeast.

I stayed watching the window until it started to get dark. I had nothing better to do and the more time I put into the case the more I could bill Patrick for at the end of it all. The target hadn’t moved from the upstairs room that I was assuming was his bedroom. I was about to head out—I had a date to go paint the town red with my undead lover and I wasn’t about to miss it—but then something caught my eye. A tiny flare of light in the upstairs window. Like a moment of sunlight before the world went dark.

Definite hellbeast.

Possibly a solar-themed hellbeast. But a hellbeast.

Still, he hadn’t eaten Sofia yet despite having ample opportunity, so the chances were she’d still be alive if I picked this up tomorrow. I filed it away under “problems to address really fucking soon but not right the fuck now.” And then my phone rang, right on cue.

“I’m outside your flat.” It was Julian’s pout voice, the one she did if I wasn’t where she expected me to be. “Are you ignoring me?”

“I’m in Golder’s Green. Had a job. Come get me?” I thought about this. “Umm, and if you’re in the limo, can you come get me somewhere not totally conspicuous. I’m trying to throw the odd bone to subtlety here.”

We arranged a pickup a few streets away from the building I was trying to keep under covert surveillance. Still not the best undercover move ever, but we were talking about a teenager. Even if there was a good chance he was a magic demon teenager with mystic light powers, I’d take the risk. In the back of the limousine, Julian sprawled like a cat who hadn’t so much got the cream as worked out where the cream was coming from and begun to take steps to secure full control over the cream supply in perpetuity.

“Dah-ling,” she purred. If she’d been human, I’d have said she’d been drinking. “You have no idea how much delight I am feeling right now.”

I sat down next to her. “The thought of strong-arming some guy really turns you on, huh?”

“Prince of Pleasure, sweeting. Everything turns me on. I’m sure I’ve explained that one before.”

“You know I’m still nowhere near a fit state for a fistfight?”

“I’m certain that I can do enough violence for both of us.” She swivelled around in a way that looked impossible and clambered across me. Her hands went places that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with hands going in a chauffeur-driven vehicle. “Now how shall we pass the time until we get there?”

I gently disentangled her. “How about you tell me what you’ve already done?”

She gave me a look of aggressive disappointment. “You know, you are perilously close to being no fun at all.”

“Quite a few times in the last couple of days I’ve been perilously close to dead.”

“I know plenty of dead people who could still make time for a quickie in the back of a limo.”

“Can you please just focus?”

Turning again, she laid her head in my lap and gazed up at me with her best big-blue-eyes. For an eight-hundred-year-old fiend, she could be pretty obvious sometimes. “I’m sorry. Let me explain how incredible I’ve been, and then you can decide how best to reward me.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Obviously these things take time, but the Calix group will soon own the Undertow outright. As of approximately noon today, no reputable or disreputable supplier will sell Mr. Lake so much as a cocktail stick for fear of losing my business. Environmental health, trading standards, and vice have all received anonymous tips about his operation. Tips which your irritating ex-boyfriend seems to have made certain they will take seriously. By the time this wonderful, luxurious vehicle arrives at his establishment I can confidently predict that the man will be having a very, very bad day.” She shut her eyes and sighed with a deep, almost sensual satisfaction. “I’ve had a simply lovely time. While tearing somebody’s throat out has a certain visceral rush, there is nothing quite like the sense of accomplishment you get from beating an enemy down with nothing more than a telephone and a list of contacts.”

Our eyes met. “I’ve got to admit,” I said. “I do kind of want to do you right now.”

“I love it when we’re on the same wavelength.” She wriggled in my lap. “After all, I have worked terribly hard on your behalf today.”

This was a bad idea. This was a terrible idea. We were about to walk into a life or death situation, and we needed to be focused and disciplined and not get distracted from the very important job in front of us.

I twisted my fingers in Julian’s hair and pulled her into a kiss. Her fangs grazed the tender places of my mouth and I tasted blood.

Blood and wine and rose leaves and the irrepressible joy of not giving a fuck.

Chapter Eighteen

Music & Mist

Pro tip: if you really want to make a dramatic, intimidating entrance at the nightclub-slash-mystical-sanctum-slash-criminal-hideout of a sleazy gangster-wizard, it’s best not to show up looking like you’ve just been interrupted in the middle of something sweaty and personal. It’s also best not to show up looking like you’ve spent the last week getting beaten, shot, stabbed and sent literally to Hell but, hey, you work with what you’ve got.

It was earlyish in the evening but there was already a queue outside the Undertow. Julian and I breezed past it and ran smack into an unimpressed bouncer.

“There’s a line.”

I eyed him up: heavy set, slightly taller than me, poorly chosen goatee. His expression suggested that he didn’t think Julian and I would gel with the clientele. Which is to say that we didn’t look much like randy, wankered straight people. To give the man his due, he wasn’t wrong. “So...” I began, “there are kind of two ways this conversation can go.”

“Three ways.” Julian sparkled next to me. I was pretty sure that her third way involved cold-blooded murder in front of witnesses. She was way too excited about the prospect.

The bouncer’s expression didn’t change. “Which part of there’s a line is hard for you ladies to understand?”

This guy was made of stone. What sort of person didn’t respond to a there are two ways this can go opening by asking what the ways were? Somebody who didn’t appreciate a classic, that’s who. “Right,” I tried, “let’s assume that you’re working here on the understanding that Mr. Lake is a completely legitimate businessman who never does anything illegal, or that breaks the laws of physics.”

“Line. Back of. Now.” I’d have said this guy must have had his imagination surgically removed, but that was unfair. Dealing with annoying horny drunks from ten to three every evening must have been a shitty way to make a living, and a zero-bullshit policy was probably the only way to stay sane.

“Look, this here is Julian Saint-Germain. She’s really big in the industry, she wants to speak to Lake.”

“She talk for herself?”

Julian flashed him her most condescending grin. Nobody did condescending like vampires. “She does, but she has this whole set of rules in which organ grinders and monkeys are a big feature.”

“He expecting you?”

“No, I’m a delightful surprise.” Her eyes gleamed like sapphires in the half-light. Fuck, she was distractingly gorgeous sometimes. “Now let me in or—and can I just say how much I resent your making me resort to cliché—you will never work in this town again.”

The guy let us in. Part of me instantly wished he hadn’t, because the Undertow was everything I hated about the club scene. Music too loud, lights too bright and strobing, and the smell of sweat and desperation in the air. Calling the place a meat market would be an insult to Smithfield. It reminded me a bit of the Palace of Lust. Not quite as literally in Hell, but with the same sense that something was feeding on everybody here. And for a moment, even with Julian beside me, I was very much aware that I was walking straight into a magician’s place of power. That we were going to throw down with this guy, with me only half recovered from a gunshot wound, in the one place in the entire cosmos where he was at his strongest.

Here lies Kate Kane. Started a land war in Asia. Beloved daughter, sorely missed.

I led Julian through the club to the roped-off area where Lake held court. I was ever so slightly bothered by how similar their two setups were. I kept telling myself that the Undertow was sleazy and exploitative while the Velvet was subversive and liberated, but I couldn’t quite avoid feeling like the major difference was that Julian happened to be into the same things I was.

There was another bouncer at the entrance to the VIP area, and beyond I could make out Lake, a pair of drunk, half-naked groupies, and the Elise-alike. It was getting to where I wanted this over as fast as possible. I strode up to the guard and gave him the executive summary:

“Hi. If you didn’t already know, you work for an evil wizard. My friend here is a vampire. She’s here to talk to him and, if you try to get in our way, she’ll kill you before you can blink.”

Julian gave a little wave. The bouncer stepped silently aside.

As we approached, Lake dismissed his hangers-on, and a couple more of his goons—the same ones who’d kicked the shit out of me when I’d started this whole case from the looks of them—loomed out of the shadows to back him up.

He stood. “You do not know when to fucking quit, do you?”

“I usually go with ‘when I’m ahead,’ and I’m nowhere near ahead yet.”

“You really think I’m letting you walk out of here again?”

I glanced at Julian. She was clearly itching to break into the nice place you’ve got here routine that I wasn’t able to pull off last time. She trotted over to the seat that Lake had just vacated and perched herself on the back. Surrounded by that pack of burly East End thugs, she looked worryingly tiny.

“Let me explain,” she began. “Within the month, I will own this establishment. Until that time, you will close its doors, cease trading, and go bother somebody else.”

Lake didn’t look even remotely impressed. “Or what?”

“Or nothing. I’m not making a threat, I’m telling you the way things will be. You might have missed the memorandum, Mr. Lake, but I rather run entertainment in this town. It’s a—” She waved a hand in the air as if trying to summon the right words out of the darkness. “It’s sort of an immortal-parasite-wound-around-the-very-life-of-this-city-like-a-serpent-around-a-chalice thing. You understand.”

He looked from me to Julian, then back to me again. “You got the vampires on your side?”

“They’re kind of on their own side. But turns out they also think your boss is a dick.”

Lake turned, nodding almost imperceptibly at one of his men. The guy reached for some kind of weapon, but I never saw what. Julian moved like a shadow and twisted his arm to an angle that arms really shouldn’t twist to.

“I was so hoping that you’d resort to violence.” She gave the man’s wrist a yank. “Do you want to see how many of your men I can eviscerate before I get bored?”

I glanced towards the dancefloor. We were visible, but this was the kind of place where nobody was really paying attention to anything except themselves. On the other hand, a full-on superpower smackdown kicking off somewhere this crowded was likely to get a whole bunch of people real dead real fast. “Tell you what,” I tried, “how about we take this outside?”

“How about we don’t?” I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could sense something gathering around Lake now. Something deep and dark. I thought I could smell the sea. “You have some fucking nerve coming into my place...”

“At the risk of repeating myself...” Julian gave her victim’s arm another experimental jerk. He did a creditable job of not screaming. “It isn’t your place. It’s my place. You see, taking what we want and giving nothing in return unless it pleases us is rather what my species do.”

Lake sneered. “Think you’re real tough, don’t you. You come in here like you own the fucking shop...”

“Please try to keep up. I do...”

He ignored her. “I am going to teach you a lesson you will never fucking forget.” He nodded in the direction of the Elise-a-like, who vanished into a back room. Part of me was afraid that Julian would just kick off before she returned, but I needn’t have worried. The lady might have had no sense of shame, compassion, or self-preservation, but she had a tremendous sense of drama.

Still, it was an uncomfortably long time before the girl emerged. When she did, she was dragging Corin behind her.

Oh, yeah, there’d been that too. Shit. What with the dreams and the council of wizards and the council of vampires and everything, I’d kind of put her out of my mind. I tried to tell myself I thought she’d be okay, that Corin always landed on her feet, but the truth was I’d just had too much going on to care much about a woman who’d tried to kill me more than once.

Except I kind of cared now. Because she looked scared, and I realised that I’d never seen her scared. Not really. I’d seen her do the “save me, you’re my only hope” act more times than I could remember, and I’d bought it more times than I should have. This was different, defeated. Like she’d said all the things she always said and made all the moves she’d always made, and they hadn’t worked. She didn’t look hurt—at least not in any ways that showed—but there was no way I was leaving her behind.

“Here’s the deal.” Lake gave the kind of smile that large predatory animals give smaller, less predatory animals. “You walk away, and call off this fucking stupid plan to push me out of my own property, and I’ll let your friend keep her pretty face and all her fingers.”

There was a kind of popping, cracking sound as Julian casually dislocated something in her man’s arm. She laughed like a damned schoolgirl. “Are you honestly trying to get me to bargain for the life of a mortal woman whose only claim to my affection is that she once seduced and betrayed my current lover?”

I started eyeing the exits. Things were about to get super bloody, and I really didn’t want a club full of massacred civilians on my conscience. Well, more on my conscience than they already would be, what with this having been entirely my idea in the first place. Note to self: don’t point psychotic vampires at people unless you’re one hundred and ten percent certain you want to deal with the fallout.

Julian took a deep breath. Or I guess she kind of faked taking a deep breath for dramatic effect because, well, vampire. “I am going to ask you one more time, politely. Stand your people down, close your doors, and run back south of the river to your master. Or die.”

Well, that was it, then. From there things unfolded really fucking fast. Lake raised a hand and began to incant something—Julian moved like light and shadow towards him, quicker than I could see but not quick enough to catch her target. Lake vanished into silver mist—it was a trick I’d seen Nimue use hundreds of times and it was kind of weird to see somebody else doing the same thing. Julian didn’t miss a beat and, finding her hands empty, switched her attention from Lake to his men.

I went for the doors, hoping that the vampire-versus-wizard smackdown would distract everyone long enough for me to start getting at least some of the drunk idiots out of the building. One of the bouncers tried to block my path, but Julian struck at him from the darkness, all claws and fangs and death in those brilliant blue eyes. I dodged along the edges of the dancefloor and shoved open a fire exit. For good measure I smashed one of those In Case of Fire, Break Glass things on the way. A piercing alarm cut through the music and the sounds of the crowd, and a sprinkler kicked in.

On the plus side, a lot of wet clubbers were filing into the street and away from immediate physical danger. On the downside, it filled the building with this fine spray that shimmered in the club lights and gave the whole place a weird, dreamy feeling. I’d hung around mages enough to be really worried about weird, dreamy feelings. If King’s court worked like Nim’s then they’d have this whole elements-and-cardinal-points thing going on, and I wasn’t sure filling a water-wizard’s sanctum with, well, water was a good idea. Actually I was pretty sure it was a terrible idea. Just not quite as terrible an idea as leaving a bunch of innocent bystanders to get caught in the crossfire of a supernatural free-for-all.

I pushed back past the crowd. Between the music, the water, the alarms, the strobe lighting and the press of bodies, I didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on. I’d have expected people to be panicking more, but water magic was all about deception and forgetting. If I had to guess, I’d say Lake had enchanted the place to keep the punters drunk, happy and pliable. I kept seeing his face in the crowd, that mocking grin you got on a certain kind of smug magician when they thought they had you beaten. I’d completely lost track of Julian, but she could take care of herself. And I’d have said the same about Corin, except she seemed to be in over her head with this one.

As the dancefloor began to clear, I realised I was standing in a shallow pool of water on a tile floor under a lighting system designed to conceal how unattractive a room full of sweaty drunks really looks. I was only half sure I’d come into the same building I’d come out of. Magic was tricky like that, this kind of magic especially, and I wasn’t a fan of tricky. I was way more comfortable with people who tried to burn my face off. The music and the alarms had faded away—they were still there, but muted like somebody had turned a slider down somewhere. There was a definite calm-before-the-storm vibe. I waited. It was a waiting kind of situation.

Lake appeared across the floor from me. Visibility was shitty and there was that nagging sense of headfuckery I was getting way too used to. I couldn’t see anybody else, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. He walked slowly towards me, his shoes splashing rhythmically in the water. “I am getting really fucking sick of you.”

“Let me guess.” I did my best to sound cocky but I think I just sounded tired. “You’ve got us all split up with some mists-of-Avalon mystical bullshit, and you’re playing divide and rule. You’re probably having this exact same conversation with Julian and Corin right now.”

“Well, aren’t we clever. But if you think a conversation is all I’m doing to your little girlfriends you are in for a nasty surprise.”

Yeah, yeah, I knew that one too. I watched him carefully. I’d been around Nimue enough to know that this complicated controlly type of magic was as draining as it was powerful. If I focused I could see the tension in his face, and when he moved it was slow and deliberate, like he was having to concentrate on too many things at once. Darting forward, I swung a punch at him. He vanished in a swirl of silver mist. I’d expected that he would. The aim here was to wear him out, not knock him out.

“Is that the best you can do?” He was behind me. They were always behind you.

I turned and rushed him. Not too fast, not trying to catch him—that’d be about as useful as trying to catch fog. He vanished again, and before he could reappear I dropped my weight and covered my head. The blow came in right where I’d expected it. Teleporters got really lazy in a fight: it’s always bamf, taunt, bamf, smack on the back of the skull. I pivoted and dug a hook into his ribs. It barely connected before he went shadows and sea spray on me. I wouldn’t catch him like that again.

Somewhere to my right, a body fell out of nowhere. Blood billowed from his throat and spread through the water. That would be Julian’s work. If I unfocused my eyes and concentrated, I thought I could see her through the haze. Then I stopped unfocusing my eyes, because that was a recipe for getting shot in the face. Instead I crouched down, put my fingertips to the ground, and fell back on my hunter’s instincts. In the Deepwild, I felt my mother’s approval. She didn’t like being played, and hiding from her only made her angry. I felt ripples in the water, I followed them, and I saw the bastard.

He was only a few feet away from me, but whatever weird mind-twisting space-bending mojo he was throwing out made it seem a lot further. He had Corin at gunpoint. I sprang forward, pinned his arm, and pulled him away. His weapon clattered to the ground, and Corin went for it immediately. Give the girl her due, she never missed an opening. She came up with the pistol level, and Lake faded into mist again. I was beginning to get really tired of that.

“You alright?” I asked.

Corin glanced up at me with those big, vulnerable eyes of hers, and nodded. I reached out and took her hand. Breathing deeply, I tasted the air for signs of my enemy, or of my allies. I caught saltwater and alcohol, I caught wine and rose leaves. I went for the roses.

Leading Corin behind me I stepped between the spray of the sprinklers, and crossed the dancefloor. As I moved, Julian faded into view. Her shirt was torn and her jacket soaking, but otherwise she seemed to be positively enjoying herself. Three men lay at her feet and if they weren’t dead she was seriously off her game. The Elise-alike stood opposite her.

“If you wouldn’t mind, sweeting,” she called over her opponent’s shoulder. “We seem to be at an impasse. This lady and I are quite incapable of harming one another, and I am becoming a little frustrated.”

I let go of Corin’s hand and circled around. The Elise-alike didn’t look particularly bothered by the situation. “Umm, hi,” I said. Not my strongest opening but you had to start somewhere.

She flicked her head towards me, moving way more like Elise than I was comfortable with. But she didn’t reply.

“You’re one of Russel’s girls, aren’t you?”

She paused. It was hard to tell if she was thinking or just having a statue moment. “I was. I belong to Mr. Lake now.”

Okay, this was going to be awkward. “You know you don’t have to belong to anybody, right?”

“I was created to serve. I find pleasure in it.”

Well, that was one for the philosophers. “And you don’t feel like serving, say, anybody in the world except that prick, do you?”

“Mr. Lake is my master.”

There was a swirl of mist, and the man himself appeared beside the bar. He was doing his best to look nonchalant, but he was pale and unsteady. All the shifting and mind warping and teleporting must have been getting to him, even in his place of power. “She knows what’s good for her.”

Julian went straight for him in a rush of fangs, shadows and uncanny vampire speed. It wasn’t enough. He was gone again. She looked vaguely upwards and shouted at the ceiling. “I’m getting terribly tired with these games, you smug blond git.”

The sprinklers froze, droplets of water hanging in the air like tiny jewels. Lake appeared in the centre of the dancefloor. “You think you’re fucking tired?” He raised his hands, and a sense of futility crashed over me. Something deep and cold and mysterious that said everything I’d ever hoped for was just a blink in the eye of the dark blue eternity of the oceans.

I tried to move towards him, but it was worse than moving underwater. Everything felt heavy and grey. Breathing was going to get tough sooner rather than later. I’d seen Nimue do something like this to some extremely powerful people about a year ago, but it was way less sexy and exciting when you were on the receiving end of it. Julian got further than I did, but not by much. She managed to cross halfway towards Lake before the weight of his unbound mystical whatever brought her to her knees. The Elise-clone took the opportunity to grab her firmly around the neck. Corin was curled into a ball, trembling.

Welcome to Screwedville. Population: us.

“If you’d just stayed out of our fucking way...” Lake began walking towards me. He was speaking slowly, walking slowly. However bad this felt for us, I was betting it was pretty tough on him too. I wasn’t sympathetic. “But you had to get involved with things that were none of your fucking business. And now...” He paused for effect. “Now you’re fucking mine.”

He twisted one hand, made a grasping motion, and a wave of nausea rose up inside me. I felt things crawling in my head. Biting hard on my lip in an effort to distract myself, I reached for the Deepwild. Pretty much my least favourite thing in the world was finding myself caught between two conflicting metaphysical forces trying to tear my soul in half—and really it said a lot about my life that I was in a position to know that it was one of my least favourite things—but the alternative was giving in to this arsehole, and that really wasn’t an option.

I tasted blood, and felt my mother’s heart beating. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to let me get to my feet and begin staggering forwards. Lake extended a hand, and my vision began to swim. Oh, this wasn’t good. I reached further into the Deepwild, but it was like looking through fog or falling through freezing water.

“You will not learn to stay down, will you?” He closed his fist, and a stabbing pain ran through my whole skull. I really, really hoped this was wearing him down enough that I’d be able to do something. Maybe.

He came closer. Touching close. I had knives, but I couldn’t make my limbs move.

Here lies Kate Kane, casually dispatched by a sadistic gangster wizard. Beloved daughter, sorely missed.

“You know”—he looked down at me with a mix of hate, disgust and anger—“you’ve really upset me.” He reached inside his jacket, producing a small, cruel-looking blade. “Now, what do you want to lose first?”

He pressed the knife underneath my left ear and I felt it bite. I was cross at my arms for not moving. It didn’t help.

“Next time stay the fuck out of my—” Blood spread across the breast of his suit, and through the fog in my mind, I became dimly aware that I’d just heard a gunshot. And for perhaps the first time in my life, I was incredibly glad I’d managed to give a heartless, paranoid opportunist a chance to pick up a firearm.

Everything snapped back to reality sickeningly fast. The weird muted feeling Lake’s magic had been imposing on the club evaporated, and the whole place turned into this noisy echoing mess of dance music, fire suppression systems, and voices I couldn’t make out. I was fairly confident Lake was going down, but I thumped him in the gut on my way up anyway. The Elise-copy, or possibly the Elise-original let Julian go and rushed to her master’s side. I left her to it. Corin was already backing slowly out of the door, still very much armed, and I figured it was best to join her. I grabbed my girlfriend by the shoulder and yanked her in the direction of the exit.

She gave me a pouty look. “Don’t you have a rule about making sure they’re really dead? He could easily walk away from this and come back to wreak terrible vengeance on all of us. And I know firsthand how infuriating an angry wizard can be.”

“You really want to fight the indestructible statue again?”

“You make a good point.” She followed me outside.

Corin was waiting for us, still shaking, Lake’s pistol hanging from her fingers like she didn’t really know what she was doing with it. “He...” she said, “I mean... I... I had to. I didn’t mean to.”

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “You did. You’re a cold-blooded murderer but right at this moment you’re a cold-blooded murderer who’s on our side.”

“I’m almost jealous, sweeting.” Julian slinked towards Corin with a look that I hoped was mischievous-playful, not eviscerating-playful. “I’m not sure I like the idea of your having more than one remorseless killer in your life.”

Corin gazed up at her, and again I caught that look of real fear. The look that was like-but-not-like her usual look of fear. “I...” She stumbled, and it was a genuine stumble. “I’m not a threat to you.” And in an eye blink, the mask was back up. “Kate is just...somebody I work with from time to time.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard.” Julian shot me a glance. Then she leaned towards Corin, snatched Lake’s gun out of her hand, and kissed her gently on the lips. “There,” she said. “Now I believe we can be considered even.”

I suppose that was fair. “Come on.” I turned towards the limo. “We should get out of here before somebody realises what’s happened and calls the police.”

Julian smiled. “You realise that the police have very little power over an immortal being with immense wealth and the ability to control minds?”

“Yeah, but that only describes one of us.” I opened the door and got in, and Julian pounced in after me. The driver pulled away. Through the window, I watched Corin vanish into the night.

Much to Julian’s annoyance, I full-on crashed out in the back of the car. She was in a disturbingly celebratory mood.

“So...your place or mine?” she asked. I had my eyes closed but I knew exactly what the look on her face was like.

“You really aren’t at all bothered that we just walked into a fashionable North London nightspot, flooded it, evacuated the clientele, and left at least three corpses on the dancefloor?”

I felt her shift and stretch next to me. “You worry far too much. Your enemies are as keen to keep the police out of this as you are, and even if they weren’t, Sebastian’s people would take care of it. That’s his job, after all, and he’s quite terrifyingly good at it.”

She was right. There was something weirdly comforting about having an amoral immortal fiend in your corner. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” I said, “but could you actually drop me off at mine. I’ve got a report to put together for Patrick and I really need to get some actual sleep tonight.”

“Do you ever work for anybody you haven’t banged?”

“Hey, I took a job for the Merchant of Dreams. That’s what started this whole mess.”

“Technically, that didn’t answer my question.”

She folded up against me, and the limo whisked us through the late-night London streets and back to my flat. I had to admit that it was pretty tempting to say fuck the consequences and let it take me back to one of Julian’s many residences, but the twinges, aches and very real chance of tearing open all my stitches made me come down on the side of sensible. I kissed her goodbye, which took a while, and then struggled upstairs to a place where I could safely go unconscious.

Chapter Nineteen

Sisters & Grannies

The Dream of fire burned the Dream of a city. I really missed the days when my sleep wasn’t being hijacked by a mystical monarch.

Nimue stood beside me. She had taken me to a high place, and shown me the city laid out beneath us like a map. Except now the map was broken. It was burning around the edges, like a letter in a fireplace. Smoke blocked out whole boroughs, especially south of the river. There was a fight happening here, invisible during the day but raging all around us, all the time. Two wills clashing over the fate of a city and everybody living in it.

“You served me well,” she said. She was looking away, her voice soft and on the edge of cracking. “The north is mine again.” She closed her eyes, lowered her head. “Or soon will be.”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get through this.”

“You have done much for me.” She didn’t seem especially happy about it. “But there is much more to do. The east and west are still in the balance, and the final battle will come in the south.”

“What about the Tears?”

“We have some time. Days, perhaps. Even King would not rush to use something so powerful without the proper rituals. For now, we should...” She broke off. “I should gather my strength. Wait.”

That didn’t seem right. “If this guy is going to be basically unstoppable in a couple of days, is this really a good time to be playing it safe?”

Nimue pulled away from me. She was dressed in silver and starlight, but in that moment she wasn’t the Witch Queen of London, she was the girl from Tottenham who’d loved her city so much that it broke the universe.

“Nim.” I went after her. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

She stopped, turned, looked up at me. I’d never seen her this worn out. “Nothing,” she said. I think she sort of meant it. “There’s nothing I can do. Nothing I can ask you to do. Things will be as they will be.”

I was about to say that this wasn’t like her, but that would have been untrue. The truth was that Nim had always had this kind of Zen attitude to things. Even big scary life-or-death things. It was part of her whole mists-and-waters lady-in-the-lake vibe.

“You know this is kind of scaring me?” I told her.

“I know.” She looked away again. “But this is a scary time. You’ve done enough, Kate. And I thank you for it.”

This was going from kind of scaring me to really fucking scaring me. I grabbed her by the arm. “Seriously, what’s going on? You can tell me.”

She shook her head. “You’ll find out, when the time comes. For now, rest. I will need you.”

Before I could make any kind of reply, anything like “what the fuck does that mean” or “you are really freaking me the shit out,” she leaned forward and kissed me gently on the lips. Everything dissolved into mist.

I suppose that was one way to get the last word.

As the world around me faded into silver and shadow, I kind of expected to wake up. That was how these things usually went. Instead I found myself standing on a bridge—the Millennium Bridge from the look of it—with a woman in green standing across from me.

“You are the last person I wanted to see here,” I said.

“I am not your enemy, Kate. Not today.”

Great, she knew my name. I mean, that was clearly the first trick they taught you in smug villain school, but it was still creepy. “Okay, I’ll bite. Fuck knows one more deal with a dodgy supernatural creature won’t make much of a difference. Why are you not my enemy?”

“We want the same thing.” She was masked, so all I could really make out was the shimmer of her emerald gown and the gleam of starlight on her lips, but I got the sense that there was a deliberate double-intent there.

“Long life and happiness? Wine, women and song?”

“For Nimue to win the present war.”

Now this was getting super confusing. “Hasn’t Nim had me fighting you in my dreams for, like, a year? Why are you on her side now?”

“I have always been on her side. She just doesn’t trust me.”

I looked at the woman in green. I was beginning to entertain a suspicion. “Take off the mask.”

She reached up and did as I asked. Her sparkling mask fell to the ground, and she looked back at me with Nimue’s face.

Really should have seen that one coming. I sighed. “So, you’re what? Dark reflection? Evil twin? Parallel universe version?”

“I am what she could become, had she the courage.” She glided closer. Inappropriately closer.

“Yeah, I’m going with dark reflection.”

“Then you understand why I want her to win this battle.”

This was a bad idea. “To be super, super clear, I’m not swearing eternal fealty to you.” I gave it a moment’s thought. “Or fucking you.”

Nimue’s Evil Twin smiled. “Pity. But for now you just need to listen.”

It was the less exciting option, but I listened.

“King is close to victory. He needs a distraction.”

“So what, you want me to track him down and flash him my tits?”

“No.” The Evil Twin looked up into my eyes. Hers were this strange, deep green like some ancient rainforest. “I want you to kill his grandmother.”

“Why is everybody so keen to have me job this old lady?”

She put her hands around my waist, and whispered in my ear. “Because she is the only thing King cares for in this world, and because while she is frail now, she has done enough in her life to earn death many times over.”

I reached idly into my pocket. At least in the dream, I was still carrying the iron spike that Mooncalf had given me for pretty much exactly this job. Stabbing a pensioner really hadn’t been on my to-do list for this, well, this lifetime, really. Then again, Nana King had stolen the soul of a child, was supporting a maniac who wanted to burn down London, and was directly responsible for me having to go to actual Hell.

I still wasn’t sure I had it in me. “Look,” I tried, “there must be some middle ground here between ‘roll over and die’ and ‘shank a granny.’”

The Evil Twin turned sharply away from me in a swirl of emerald. Lightning sheeted across the sky. “You try my patience. Let Nimue act as she wishes, and she will fall. That is unquestionable. I offer you an opportunity to save her, and you flinch from doing what must be done, as she does.”

“You don’t think killing his nan might, say, really piss him off?”

“I am certain it will.” That smile again. “Just as stealing the child really”—she paused, rolled the words around in her mouth as if she wasn’t sure how she liked the taste of them—“pissed you off. And look what happened: you struck a bargain with a demon, then descended into Hell, where you struck a different bargain with a different demon.”

“How the shit do you know all that?”

She gave me that I don’t know what happened to make you such an idiot look I got from wizards all the fucking time. “You do realise this is happening in your head?”

“Still not sure that explains things.”

“It doesn’t have to. The point is that angry people make mistakes. Terrible, soul-destroying mistakes.”

I was getting really weirded out hearing this kind of talk from somebody who looked like Nim. Honestly, I’ve never exactly got a warm fuzzy feeling from hearing somebody use words like terrible and soul-destroying with quite that much relish, but hearing it from somebody with the same face as my hands-down-least-psychotic ex-girlfriend made things a whole lot creepier.

“You know,” I said, “I’d really like to wake up now.”

The Evil Twin blew me a kiss. “Take my advice, Kate. Or don’t, and wonder what would have happened if you had.”

I awoke to the smell of coffee and a stabbing pain in my hip. Right, slept in my clothes again. Well, it saved time.

The coffee meant that either Elise was back, or somebody had broken in. My luck being what it was, I made certain I left the room armed. I still had the iron spike of old lady slaying in my pocket, but I made sure to grab a dagger as well, just in case I had a non-old-lady intruder.

I felt a bit of a dick creeping into the front room like I was expecting a ninja attack, but the sheer number of things that had jumped out and abducted me recently meant I cared way less about dignity than survival.

Turned out it wasn’t a break-in. Elise was standing in the middle of the sitting room, gazing contemplatively into a cup of coffee. I slumped onto the sofa.

“That for me?” I indicated the mug.

She looked up. “Yes, Miss Kane. I am sorry, Miss Elise made it, and I found the warmth pleasing.”

Right. Not her, then. You know, I was really getting sick of doppelgangers. “Lisbeth, yeah?”

She nodded. “I was told I could stay here.”

Sure, why not. What did I have to lose? Yes, it was going to turn my flat into a terrible sitcom: she’s a gay private detective who lives with a pair of identical magic sex-golems, they fight crime, but the way my life was going that would probably have been an improvement. “So...” I began. I’d more or less got to the point where I could make something like small talk with Elise but I wasn’t sure what to with her not-exactly-sister. “How’s it going?” I finished. Damn, I sucked with new people.

“Well,” she said. “Except I am afraid many things are still very new. I am very aware that other people have expectations, and that I am not fulfilling them. That is upsetting to me.”

I shrugged. “Maybe try not sweating it?”

She looked blank. Either she hadn’t understood me, or she hadn’t learned to do facial expressions yet.

“Don’t worry. I have no idea what it’s like to be, y’know, a magical statue person thing, but it seems like you get to be whoever you want to be. Not everybody has that.”

“I am not sure.” She wasn’t moving at all—Elise had been the same when we’d first met. “I do not think I know what I am supposed to want to be. I was created for a purpose that Miss Elise tells me was...” She paused. Unblinking. “She tells me it was not appropriate.”

I nodded. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t want to spend your life as...” I realised too late that there was no polite way to say a magician’s fucktoy. “To spend the rest of your life with Russel.”

“No.” She was silent again. “I am sorry. I do not really...” She stopped again. “This is hard for me.”

It was hard for me too. And right when I thought I was about to actually drop dead of awkward, Elise appeared from the kitchen.

“Miss Kane, you have arisen.”

“Yeah.” I checked my watch. It was before noon. Given the week I’d had, I was calling that a win. “You been back long?”

“Some hours. You seemed to be resting.”

“Sort of.”

She gave me a look of concern. “Dreams again?” Seeing her next to Lisbeth, it was weird how different they were. Elise had changed a lot in the last year. She was less, well, statuesque than she had been. She’d gone through eerily still into over-emoting into something that felt natural and entirely hers. I was sort of proud of her.

“Dreams.”

“Miss Nimue has another task for you?”

“Not exactly.” I explained the situation. At least, I explained it as best I could; I still didn’t really understand how the whole dark reflection thing worked, or whether taking out King’s only living relative was a vital but ruthless move, or if it was just as pointless as it was distasteful.

Lisbeth listened as patiently as only somebody made entirely out of marble could. I had a nagging voice in the back of my head saying I shouldn’t trust her, that she was essentially a robot that had been programmed by one of our enemies. But fuck it, she was alone in the world and there was no way I was making Elise turf out the closest thing she had to family.

“So,” I said, “what do you think I should do?”

“I am not certain I understand the dilemma.” Elise’s voice was hesitant, like she’d hit the limit of her experiences. “You care for Miss Nimue. You have reason to believe that Mrs. King is a cruel and vicious woman. You have already made a bargain with a demon, which my limited understanding tells me it would be dangerous to break, in which you have undertaken to do this thing. You have killed a number of beings before, and felt no such difficulties.” She blinked, a calculated action. “I understand that there may be legal reprisals, but I am certain Miss Saint-Germain or Mr. Douglas would be able to resolve such issues.”

“It’s not that. It’s—” I waved my hands in a flustered sort of way. “It’s an old lady. She’s somebody’s nan.” I wasn’t proud of much in my life, but at least up until now no matter how badly I fucked everything else up, I’d been able to look in the mirror at the end of the day and say well, at least you’ve never murdered an elderly woman in cold blood.

Elise cocked her head to one side. “Ah. I am afraid I lack a reference point for such issues. I have no grandparents, and the closest thing I have to a father is the man who created me purely in order that he might use my body as a masturbatory aid.” A flash of something crossed her face. I wasn’t sure, but I think accepting that it was okay for her to be angry with Russel had opened a bit of a floodgate. “Perhaps if I had more experience of such things I would better understand your reticence.”

“Thanks.” I patted her on the arm in a slightly distracted way. “I know what I have to do. It’s just that it feels like crossing a line.”

“I understand. Perhaps it would help if you were to think of it less as murdering an old lady and more as slaying a wicked witch.”

“Yeah, maybe if you could avoid using the M-word?”

Elise put her hands on my shoulders in a way that I think was intended to convey sincerity. “Miss Kane, although my experience is limited and I have little basis for comparison, I believe you to have good instincts in these matters. If you truly feel that Miss Nimue does not need your help, or that the death of a woman so evil that Hell itself seems afraid of her is too great a price, then I am certain you are correct.”

I looked into her eyes a moment. “Are you trying to use reverse psychology on me?”

“I do not think so. Although I confess that I am not sure what it would sound like if I were.”

“Right.” I finished my coffee and grabbed my coat. “I’m going out to deal with a creepy granny. You two just...” I wasn’t really sure what I wanted them to just, only that I wanted to deal with this on my own. “Just carry on with whatever you’re doing.”

I left Elise and Lisbeth behind and took the car into the city. Even if I was going to do what Mooncalf and Nimue’s Evil Twin wanted, I wasn’t completely sure how I’d go about it. Elise had been half right when she’d said that I’d killed people—in the sentient beings sense, rather than the biological humans sense—before, but it had always been a secondary kind of thing. Maybe I was reaching, but I thought there was a real difference between heading into a confrontation with someone, or something, knowing that it might come to a fight where one of you got killed, and deliberately setting out to destroy somebody.

While I’d been under my mother’s control at the time, I was sure that I could find my way back to the house in East London where they’d kept Phoebe. It had been somewhere in Hoxton, and I had a decent sense of direction. King wasn’t likely to be there—he was off doing whatever the hell magic city kings did somewhere in the south—but the old lady might be, and even if she wasn’t, it was a good place to start. I hit the A103 and drove around until I found the place where I’d caught that scent of sulphur and lavender.

Parking across the road, I sat there for a while not really moving or thinking too hard about what I’d come there for. It said something unfortunate about my life choices that I was spending so much of my career hanging around trying to convince myself that the thing I was about to do wasn’t flagrantly immoral. I pulled the metal spike out of my pocket. It was covered in flaky rust, but didn’t seem any weaker for it, and felt colder than it should have—or maybe that was my imagination. As hell-forged weapons went it seemed pretty basic, but it would do the job.

I stayed in the car.

Right. I’d come this far. No backing down now. I tucked the spike into my jacket pocket, decarred, and made my way across the road. It was broad fucking daylight. Waiting until the evening would have given me more cover, but unfortunately prime stabbing-people-without-getting-noticed time was also prime summoning-demons-to-rip-Kate’s-face-off time.

As I crossed the road, I realised I’d given myself about forty-five seconds to figure out what my play was going to be. It was a fairly quiet area, and I would probably have been able to pick the lock without anybody noticing, but somehow that would have made things feel one step too murdery.

So, like an idiot, I knocked on the door. For a moment I heard nothing. Then there was a shuffling from inside and it swung open on a chain.

Nana King’s face appeared in the gap. “Hello dear,” she said. “Why don’t you come in?”

Chapter Twenty

Tea & Chaos

Shit shit shit shit shit. I was in. I was in and face-to-face with a tiny old woman who I was sure was totally evil, and who I was going to have to kill if I wanted to stop Arty King burning everything I cared about to the ground. Very slowly, I moved one hand towards the rusty hellspike. I’d say that this wasn’t going the way I’d imagined it, but honestly I wasn’t sure how I’d imagined it.

Nana King turned away from me and hobbled into the kitchen, where she began busying herself with a kettle. I followed.

Come on. Just stab her. She’s a horrible demon summoner who sends children to fiery pits.

I didn’t stab her. She began bringing delicate china teacups down from an overhead cupboard.

“So,” I said, “do you...umm...do you know who I am?”

She turned. She had this smile that made me think the stabbing plan was the way to go. “I know, dear. And I know why you’re here. Mooncalf ain’t half as clever as he thinks he is.”

This was turning into one of those confrontations. “You’re not even a little bit concerned, are you?”

China clattered as Nana King laid the tea things on the kitchen table. “Not even a little bit.” She sat down and eyeballed me. “You ain’t going to kill me.”

I wanted to say “wanna bet,” but I was beginning to think that it was a bet she’d win. I tried another tack. “I’m guessing you let me in for a reason?”

The old woman fished a Garibaldi biscuit out of a floral-patterned tin and dunked it in her tea. “I wanted to meet the competition.”

“And?”

She took a bite of her biscuit. “Not impressed.” Another bite, a sip of tea. “You’re going to die, my girl. My Arty is going to kill you, your Queen, and her whole court.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

The cup clinked back into place. “Why wouldn’t I be? It was your mistress what started all this. Should’ve got behind my lad when the old man passed on all them years ago, ’stead of making her own play.”

I thought back to when I’d first known Nim. Back when she and Arty had been working for the old Witch King of London. I’d not been paying that much attention to the ins and outs of magic politics in those days, but my admittedly biased opinion had always been that she was the natural choice to take over. I couldn’t see how anybody would support a nutter like King over somebody like Nim for any job that didn’t involve chewing the heads off dogs, but obviously the Nana Kings of this world felt differently.

“Your tea’s getting cold.”

Funnily enough, that wasn’t at all my priority. “No offence, but I don’t think I’ll be having any.”

“You come here to murder me, and then won’t even share a cuppa before you do it?” The old lady sneered. “That’s just rude.”

“Y’know, I’m really beginning to think this was a mistake.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. When you get to be my age it’s nice to have company.”

Well, this was awkward. My heart hadn’t exactly been in this to begin with, but I wasn’t sure that I could back out either. At the end of the day she was still my enemy, and she’d as good as said that she intended to help her grandson slaughter all of us.

“Not leaving?” Her lips curved into the wickedest smile I’d ever seen on an old lady. “You’re still hoping I’ll make this easy, ain’t you?”

“What do you mean?” I knew what she meant. But I was hoping I could bluff it out.

She helped herself to another biscuit. “If you’ve got half the brains you was born with, you know you need to kill me. You know the kind of power I’ve got. You know that with me around, Arty has an army of devils to back him up if he needs ’em.” The teacup clinked again in its saucer. “But you’re hoping I won’t give you a choice. Hoping I’ll try to burn you alive or suck your soul out or some such.” She crunched the last of the biscuit between her teeth. “You ain’t getting off that light.”

Okay, this had gone past awkward now. It was getting actively creepy. But not, and this was where the old lady was infuriatingly right, creepy enough that I wouldn’t feel shitty for stabbing her. “It’s beginning to sound like you want me to kill you.”

She was standing now, and she moved quicker than you might expect from a whatever-number-she-actually-was-agenarian. “And that,” she said, “is why you’re going to lose. That’s why my Arty will be a better king than your mistress ever will. Because when you get right down to it, you’re both weak.”

Her feet made hardly any sound as she moved. She was behind me now. Unsettling, but not enough to be murder-worthy.

“Your whole generation,” she murmured half to herself, “got no values no more. You want everything handed to you on a blooming plate. I brought Arty up different. He’s like me. Worked for everything he’s got.” She rested her hands on my shoulders.

I twisted away, stood up. I was a good deal taller than Nana King, but right about then it didn’t matter.

“And if you think,” she went on, “that we’re going to stand back and let you and that black bitch you serve take it all away from us, you’ve got another think coming.”

Okay, that crossed a line. Not a cold-blooded slaughter line, but a line. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but we already took it all away from you. Years ago.”

“That was a battle. This is the war.”

And she was right. It was a war. I stabbed her.

She looked like she genuinely wasn’t expecting it. Over my years of dealing with angels, vampires, mad faery lords, and ninja zombie nuns, I’ve got pretty damned good at moving fast and striking hard when I have to. Almost without thinking I’d grabbed the iron spike from my jacket and—just as I’d been instructed—thrust it through her heart. My own heart quickened, and in the Deepwild I felt my mother’s approval. Somewhere in a sick part of the edges of my soul, I felt other creatures watching and smiling. I was starting to think I’d been played, and I really wasn’t sure who was doing the playing.

There was blood. Most of the creatures I’ve fought over the last decade and a half don’t have regular biology. The undead barely bleed, and weird things from other dimensions might be full of yick and ichor, but that isn’t the same as showering an elderly woman’s kitchen with hot, red, decidedly human blood. I’d had to do it, she’d probably deserved it, but I was still going to be sick.

Doing my best not to leave bloody footprints and, worse, fingerprints everywhere, I found Nana King’s downstairs loo, washed the worst of the mess off my hands, and threw up violently into the toilet.

I’d murdered an old lady who really, legally existed and was protected by the laws of the land. If I was wrong about Patrick and Sebastian’s abilities to scrub crime scenes, I was going down for a long time. And I was guessing that prison was nowhere near as much fun as that one Netflix show made it look. I fumbled the phone out of my pocket and rang Patrick.

He picked up instantly. “Well? What did you find out?”

Oh right. That. “I don’t have the full picture yet, but I think there might be something up with him. But look, right now I—”

“What? What’s up with him?”

“Patrick, I really need your—”

“Katharine, we are talking about a young girl’s life.”

“I’ve just killed somebody, Patrick. I need whatever contacts you still have, and I need them now.”

The phone went quiet.

“Patrick?”

Still silence.

“Are you even there?”

Another moment. Then: “I am sorry, I was thinking how innocent you once were, how I changed you, and how I fear I shall now—”

This was too much. I screamed, and then immediately regretted it. “Fucking listen to me you fucking narcissistic fucking patronising fucking egotistical fucking stalker fucking bastard. I am in a house with a dead woman, who I stabbed and I need your help, or Sebastian’s help, or somebody’s help to get me out of it, or I will die in prison. Do you understand me, you fucking manchild?”

Yet more silence. “There is no need for such language, Katharine.”

If I hadn’t super needed my phone, I’d have smashed it against the sink. “Just please, please get somebody to take care of this.”

“You may rely on me.” He rang off.

The next hour was a good contender for the longest of my life. I could have run, but I figured that was a bad plan. Then again, hoping that my douchebag ex-boyfriend would handle this situation competently was not up there with the greats either. When I finally heard a polite knock at the door, I wasn’t sure whether I was finally saved or totally fucked.

I sidled into the hallway, doing my best not to give away more than I had to.

“Miss Kane?” A crisp, assured voice from outside. The Prince of Wands. “Daylight limits my abilities, but I can still hear your thoughts. It would be best if you let me in.”

Ah yes, there was the whole telepathy thing. Great. I opened the door.

In the late-afternoon sunlight, Sebastian Douglas looked positively cherubic, all golden hair and bright blue eyes, immaculate in white linen like he was on his way to Lord’s. He handed me a case that might technically have been a valise. “Get changed. You can’t leave here covered in arterial spray.” He signalled through the doorway, and a pair of grey-looking figures in overalls came in behind him. “These gentlemen will deal with the physical evidence. My servants and I shall deal with the witnesses as any arise. You may be assured that the matter is dealt with.”

Something about his calm, unflinching efficiency was weirdly reassuring. I took the valise back into the downstairs loo and got changed. He’d brought a suit that looked more-or-less like what I normally wear, and that more-or-less fitted. I still felt pretty shitty, but the whole thing had taken on a dreamlike quality and I decided to go with that.

When I was done, the Prince of Wands led me quietly outside to a nondescript car that was waiting at the kerb. He put me in the back, and climbed in the other side. It wasn’t until we were well on our way that I realised I wasn’t completely sure where we were going.

“I am simply taking you home,” he said. Fucking mind readers.

“Great. Umm. Thanks.” I could never quite work out how I felt about Sebastian Douglas. There was something about him that put people at their ease, and that made me uneasy. Being good at getting people to let their guards down was a skill you mostly found amongst hostage negotiators and serial killers.

He gave me a knowing look. “Think nothing of it. I said last year that it was not in my interests to allow you to be executed. Nor is it in my interests to allow you to be incarcerated. You are, after all, an ally in our current fight.”

Well, that was comforting. I suppose being a useful pawn was better than being—actually I’m not sure what it was better than being. An enemy pawn, maybe? And I definitely didn’t want this guy as an enemy, even if I didn’t think I wanted him as a friend either.

The car pulled up outside my flat, and we both got out.

“If I might, Miss Kane.” Sebastian crossed the road with me and followed me to the doorstep. “I believe that it would be safest for all concerned if I were to remain with you for the moment. While we can conceal your actions from the mortal authorities, we cannot conceal them from Mr. King, and I suspect that the next day, perhaps the next few hours, will be critical.”

I gave him a suspicious look. I thought it might be best to play along, but it was a bit pointless to play along with somebody who could read your mind. “And you think it’s more important to stick with me than, say, literally anybody else?”

“You are the only point of contact between my kind and the Witch Queen. If she reaches out to you, I would like to be present.”

“Yeah, the way she reaches out to me isn’t necessarily the kind of thing you can sit in on.”

He smiled.

Oh, right, psychic.

“So you’re going to...what? Hang around all day in case something comes in?”

“I was intending to wait until the evening. Then I believe my power will have returned sufficiently that, if your queen does not approach us, we shall be able to approach her. With your approval, of course. This is, after all, surely a development about which she would wish to be informed.”

It was. But I really didn’t want the Prince of Wands there when I informed her. On the other hand, it didn’t quite look like he was giving me a choice. And something told me I shouldn’t push this one. What was I going to do? Tell the ancient telepathic vampire with the library of occult knowledge who had just casually demonstrated how little power the law had over him that he wasn’t welcome in my flat? I wasn’t sure what good that would even do. Perhaps I should send Elise out to buy some long spoons.

Upstairs, Elise and Lisbeth were still in the front room. It might have been my mind playing tricks, but it looked like they’d barely moved since I left. I wondered if Elise felt more comfortable like that. Having somebody to talk to who shared her—what? Nature? Background? Exact physical shape and tendency towards motionlessness?

“Miss Kane?” It took me a moment to work out which one was speaking. At least I’m pretty sure I worked it out—it was Elise, right? It didn’t help that she seemed to have lent Lisbeth some of her own clothes. “And Mr. Douglas, I believe? We met at Mr. Knight’s dinner last year. If I might make the observation, you look healthier than when I last encountered you.”

For about a nanosecond, a shadow crossed Sebastian’s face. “Thank you, Elise.”

“I take it,” she continued, “that the deed is done?”

I was really bothered by how casually my assistant seemed to be taking the murder of an old woman. Then again, last year she’d been pretty bothered by how casually I took the idea of scrapping my car. I guess we just all identify with different things.

“It’s done,” I said. Then I immediately did my best to stop thinking about it.

Sebastian settled himself on the arm of my sofa, hands folded primly across one knee. “I see you have two of them now.”

It took me a second to work out what he meant. “It isn’t really a having type situation.” I glanced at Lisbeth. “And no offence but I’m kind of assuming you’re not staying forever.”

She turned to me. Now I was settling into it, it was much clearer who was who. She had way more of a still-made-of-rock vibe than Elise did. “I fear I had not made definite plans.”

“She will take up very little space,” offered Elise.

“That’s what you said when you moved in. Now we have two juicers. I got by for years with zero juicers.”

“I enjoy machines, and my salary is mine to spend as I wish.”

Perhaps it was what TV psychologists call displacement activity, but right about then I really needed inane flatmate talk. And talk inanely we did. Elise, Lisbeth and I discussed the ins and outs of Elise’s collection of pointless gadgets, my habit of storing pans in overhead cupboards, and the necessity of bananas for the healthy functioning of biological humans. The Prince of Wands was mostly silent, watching the whole thing with a smug air of detached amusement that I’d have bet money he’d spent literally centuries practising.

Before I really knew where the time had gone, it was after sunset, and quick as a light goes out, Sebastian was all business again.

“Moonrise, Miss Kane. Now if you will excuse me I rather feel it would be best if we spoke to your queen.” He stood up, and moved swiftly towards me.

“Hey there one minute. What is your actual plan here?”

He stopped. He had that perfect control over his body that made vampires so creepy, going from motion to stillness with none of the hesitation that you got from living beings. “I apologise, perhaps I have not made myself clear. My duty for the past several centuries has been to delve into whatever arcane secrets might pose a danger to our kind, and since my discovery of the Witch Kings and Queens, long before the rise of your current mistress, I have made an especial study of the Dream. I would now like to use what I have learned to—how best to put it?” He gazed off into the middle distance a moment, then turned his attention sharply back to me. “To tap into your connection to the Witch Queen. I will then take the opportunity to tell her not only of the recent events involving the unfortunate Mrs. King, but also the results of my researches into the Tears of Hypnos.”

I did my best to give him a suspicious look, but honestly, every look I gave him was suspicious. What was it Julian had said? Just when you thought you’d worked out what he was going to do, it turned out he’d already done it. And right now it wasn’t like I had much choice but to go along with his plan, whatever it was. Chances were good that Arty King would be coming for me and everybody associated with me right the fuck now, and if the Prince of Wands could find a way to give Nim a heads up and the backing of a powerful magic vampire then I kind of had to go with it. I gave him a nod, and waited.

He laid his hand on my face, and I fell into the Dream.

The Dream of fire raged in the Dream of streets. The Dream of a storm tore the Dream of the sky. Nimue, windswept and rain-lashed, stood at the apex of a great glass shard that towered above the city. A thought, and I was beside her.

I hoped it was my thought.

I’d seen bits and pieces of Nimue’s wars in the Dream before, even been involved with them, back when the Morrigan was rising in the city and bringing shadows with her. But I’d never seen her in full fight, all the mortal shell stripped away leaving nothing but the icon, a living embodiment of the sea and the sky and the primal concept of rulership. This right here was what Arty King was fighting to become, and that scared the shit out of me.

Not entirely willingly, I turned my attention towards the Prince of Wands. He was pretty much ignoring me, watching Nimue with the kind of naked, animalistic hunger that you had to be an apex predator to do properly. Despite the storm, sunlight and shadows played around him in a strange, shifting pattern. I began to really regret bringing him.

Rule 33: never show a megalomaniac a source of ultimate power. It always ends badly.

The storm surged, and the fire answered and then, just for a moment, there was calm.

Nimue turned towards us. I tasted the sea on the wind. The rain stung my face. And between the fire in the streets and the sunlight out of nowhere it was hot, unbearably hot. I tried to meet her gaze, but there was something terrifying in her eyes, something lightless and ancient.

“Nim,” I tried, “we need to talk.”

A charge like static built in the air. My skin—or the Dream of my skin—prickled. I didn’t think there was a single woman in my life who hadn’t shown me, at least once, precisely how easily she could kill me if she wanted to. Looks like today it was Nimue’s turn.

Gradually, I felt her gathering inwards. Like some fantastically complicated piece of origami, or a volcano in reverse, the raw elemental force that was the Witch Queen of London somehow came back together into the woman I knew. And her eyes were Nim’s eyes again, even if I couldn’t quite unsee what had been behind them.

“Kate?” She seemed surprised I was here. She was never surprised.

Sebastian stepped forward and bowed with what looked like genuine courtesy. “Majesty, I am Sebastian Douglas, Prince of Wands. I come with information.”

Lightning sheeted across the sky. “Speak, but speak fast. Things are changing, and I am losing control.”

“Yeah,” I began, “I think I might be able to explain why that’s happening.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Explanations & Excuses

I told Nimue everything. The deal with Mooncalf, the other deal with the Green Lady. I tried pointing out that this was kind of a war, and that killing our enemies was—when you got right down to it—pretty much the deal. I wasn’t sure if that last part was for her benefit or for mine.

“You’ve made him angry, Kate.” Nim usually wasn’t quite this into stating the obvious. I guess she really was rattled.

“Angry people make mistakes.”

“And when powerful people make mistakes, innocent people get hurt.”

It was probably disrespectful what with her being a mystical sovereign to whom I had sworn eternal fealty, but I facepalmed. “Nim, we had to make a play. Your plan seemed to be to sit back and die, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

“That wasn’t your choice to make.”

I was really sick of people telling me things like that. “Yes, it was. You pulled me into this, and now I’m in it. So I made a call, and I’m sorry if it doesn’t line up with the mystical master plan you haven’t let me in on, but hey: that’s what you get for not letting me in on it.”

“If I might.” Sebastian raised a hand. “I think I can be of some help here.”

Nimue glared. I wasn’t sure if she was more upset at me for going off book, him for crashing the Dream, or me for helping him do it.

“The death of Vera King has robbed both parties in this conflict of time. Whatever your enemy was planning, those plans will accelerate. Crucially, I think it very likely they will accelerate to the point that he will seek confrontation before he has unlocked the power of the Tears. This gives us an opportunity.”

I was six different kinds of unconvinced. “Why the hell would he do that?”

“Do try to remember which of us has centuries of occult knowledge behind him.” It was nice to know that Sebastian was exactly as smug in Dream-reality as real-reality. “Unlocking the Tears of Hypnos is a blood ritual, a variety of magic in which I have a rather obvious vested interest. Previously Mr. King had three options: using his own blood, the blood of one of his lieutenants, or the blood of some other being. His grandmother’s personal army of tractable demons would have provided a useful and potent sacrifice. The loss of two of his captains has almost certainly put a strain on his forces, and so he cannot afford to sacrifice one of the two who remain. He could sacrifice himself, and if his urge for vengeance is strong enough he might, but everything I have heard tells me that the man is too selfish. He needs blood, and I strongly suspect he will want yours, or yours.” He indicated Nimue, then me.

Nimue looked at Sebastian the way a sheep looks at a tattered sheepskin draped loosely over the body of a vicious carnivore. “You seem to know a lot.”

“It is my business to know a lot.”

“You seem to know more than that.”

“The Tears of Hypnos are one of the few things that can give a mortal sufficient power to threaten my people. Did you really think I wouldn’t have learned how they work?”

Something was bugging me. “Can we just back up to the part about the sacrifice? Nim, did you know about that bit?”

She nodded.

“How...how did you expect to use the damned things?”

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

“Oh of fucking course. ‘Something’s come up which is a bit tricky to deal with so I’ll sacrifice myself for everybody else like the grumpy veteran in a war movie.’ I swear, if I knew where your actual body was, I’d come over there right now and smack you in the head.”

The wind gusted, the rain came in waves. “It’s how it was always going to be.”

“I cannot believe that we’ve got to the point where your evil alter ego is talking more sense than the real you.”

“It’s complicated, Kate. There are tides. Patterns. I started down this road long before I met you.”

This was circling the edges of useless. I’d have walked away, but we were in a non-geographical never-space, so I wasn’t sure it would even work. “You know what? Fine. I tried. I guess I fucked up. Sorry I ruined your whole big martyrdom kick. Good luck with the war.”

“If you mortals have finished squabbling, perhaps we could focus on the matter at hand.” I hadn’t thought Sebastian’s tone could get any more patronising. I was wrong. “King will come for you, and he will do it soon. Are you prepared?”

Nimue flared again. The silver and the storm. The queen in splendour. “You are not my master, vampire. You may follow me or oppose me, but you will never command me.”

A look crossed Sebastian’s face. It wasn’t much, and it only lasted a moment, a look of bitter resentment and hard memory. “As you say, Majesty.”

Without another word, Nim turned back to the city. Lightning sheeted across the clouds, and she took to the sky.

A thought and I was beside her. I still hoped it was my thought.

We came down in some kind of garage. The Dream of fire. The Dream of a storm. King stood waiting for us. He was all light and hate and anger. Around us the rain warred with the flames.

For the longest time, neither of them said anything. I almost felt like I was intruding, and I guess I sort of was. After all, Nim had made it pretty clear that the only thing I’d done so far was throw off her plans. Finally King stepped forward. His footprints were ashes.

“You made a bad fucking mistake.”

Technically I’d made a bad fucking mistake. But Nim didn’t drop me in it. “This ends.”

And right here was where I found out if it had been worth it. Because if he’d been thinking at all clearly, Arty’s answer should have been “no thanks, I’m going to unlock the power of this ancient mystical doodad first, then use it to kick the crap out of you.” If he actually agreed to a showdown, then maybe I’d done something at least half right. Maybe.

He nodded.

I woke up.

Normally when I came back from the Dream, I was in bed, usually feeling that not-exactly-pleasant sense of waking from mystical communion with a mysterious city queen. This time I was standing up, looking into the eyes of the Prince of Wands. My legs gave out for a moment from the sheer unfamiliarity of it. I recovered, but really wished I’d been more dignified.

“Thank you.” Sebastian bowed. “I fear that I shall be of little help in the confrontation to come.”

“You’re bailing?”

“Your mistress and her rival seem determined to meet in open battle. Probably in daylight. I fear our kind would prove a liability.”

“And what am I supposed to do?”

The Prince of Wands was already halfway to the door. “I suspect that you will work something out. You generally seem to. If she doesn’t call you to her side when she begins to muster her forces, I might suggest you visit Bromley.”

“Bromley?” I’d seriously had it up to here with cryptic bullshit. “What is it you know that I don’t?”

“A great many things, Miss Kane. A great many things.”

Okay, I’d kind of set him up for that one.

He left. Hadn’t that been fun? If by “fun” you meant “confusing, frustrating and now I thought about it a little bit scary and sad.” I filled Elise—Elise and Lisbeth, technically—in on the details. When I’d finished they sat patiently, like they were waiting for me to say something else.

Nobody could do sitting patiently like those two.

“And umm...that’s it?” I tried.

Neither of them blinked. “And will you help in any way?” asked Lisbeth. “It seems as if you want to, but you have said nothing to suggest that it is your intent.”

“I feel like I should,” I told them. “But last time I tried it didn’t go so well.”

Elise took my hands in hers and gave me a surprisingly well-executed look of reassurance. “Do not fret, Miss Kane. You made a difficult decision in trying circumstances and, from what you have told us, it has led to a strategically favourable outcome.”

“It’s led to Nim running into a deadly wizard duel before she’s ready.”

She made a thinking face, a tiny crease forming and then vanishing between her eyebrows. “I am not a great strategist,” she began, “but it seems to me that when confronted with an enemy whose power is increasing, who has access to a weapon that will, in time, make him unstoppable, then however unready one feels oneself to be, it is none the less optimal to force a confrontation at the earliest possibility.”

I gave Elise a half-hearted hug. “Thanks. That’s the third wordiest pep talk I’ve ever had but, thanks.”

There was still a lot of night left. The sun went down late what with the whole summer thing, but I wasn’t exactly the early-to-bed, early-to-rise type. Which might have explained why I was doing so badly in terms of health, wealth and wisdom. I crashed out on the sofa, displacing Lisbeth slightly but fuck it, it was my damned flat and I hadn’t technically invited her into it.

My phone buzzed. Julian’s number.

I’m in your room.

I really needed to date somebody with boundaries.

“Well...” I looked at Elise and Lisbeth in an I-suck-at-making excuses kind of way. “I might go and just check on something. Later.”

I slipped back into my room. Julian was sprawled on the bed. She had that faux-outraged look she liked to get when I’d mildly inconvenienced her, or whenever else she thought she could get away with it.

“In future, sweeting,” she purred, “I’d rather not find out about significant events in your life from Sebastian.”

I could have called. But I’d been freaking out and covered in blood, and I’d gone with the people I knew dealt with that kind of thing. “Sorry. Been a really long day.”

She glided towards me, pulled me down into her arms. “I know.” Her voice had lost all of its edge—it was weird how gentle she could be when she put her mind to it. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

I told her about it.

It took longer than I’d expected. Once I started talking, all of the guilt and confusion and uncertainty and fear started coming out like emotional vomit.

“...and there was all this blood and it was—fuck—she was his nan, you know? She was basically the same as my nan if you don’t count the part where she’s an evil wizard. And now she’s dead because I stabbed her because a demon and a witch’s evil dream twin told me to. And I don’t know if I did it because something made me or because it was the right thing to do or because deep down some part of me really wanted to see if I could. And I could feel my mother watching me while I did it, and it wasn’t like last year when everything went crazy with the Morrigan and she took over, because this time it was just me and she was just watching and it was like she—like she approved. Like even when she isn’t controlling me she’s—like I’m like her. And I don’t know... I don’t know if I feel bad because of what I did, or because I don’t feel anything, or because...”

I didn’t finish the thought. She kissed me. The soft touch of rose leaves. The promise of forgiveness, of something dark and comforting. Leaning back a little, she placed a finger over my lips. “Hush now, sweeting,” she said. “I won’t tell you that you’re a good person, because there is nothing so tedious as a good person. But whatever your mother may want, you are not a hunter, and you are not a killer.” She smiled, a little of her natural wickedness slipping through. “After all, if you get this worked up over one trifling assassination, you’d clearly be terrible at it.”

I wiped my eyes, and it was only when I did that I realised I’d been crying. Great. Real sexy. “Is that your idea of being supportive?” The freaky thing was, it had sort of worked. It was hard to be overcome with self-loathing when your companion actively rejoiced in her own villainy.

“If you wanted sentimentality, you should have chosen a less interesting lover.”

“Christ, your vanity. Remind me why I find you attractive again?”

She smiled, flashing the tiniest hint of fang. “Don’t worry, I fully intend to.”

The speed with which we’d changed the subject was calming in some ways, disconcerting in others. “It really doesn’t bother you at all, does it?”

“You’re forgetting two very important things, sweeting. Firstly, I am older than Vera King, and so I lack your culturally mandated respect for her advanced years. I tend not to pay much attention to the affairs of witches, but back in the sixties she was notorious. Beautiful, ruthless and up to her neck in hellfire. If she hadn’t been strictly cock-only, she’d have been very much my type.”

“You don’t think she deserved better than dying in a kitchen?”

“I think she deserved better than dying of old age. Besides, if I’ve learned anything about fighting wizards, it’s that you should never assume they’re beaten. Not even if they’re dead.”

Again, that weirdly helped. While my personal life plan has always been to die at the age of a hundred and six with my friends, family, and twenty-eight-year-old trophy girlfriend gathered around me, Nana King had seemed like the sort who’d want to die on her feet.

“So,” I began, although I was pretty sure I was walking into an obvious setup. “What’s the second thing I was forgetting.”

Julian quirked an eyebrow. “That I’m a motherfucking vampire prince, naturally.”

She kissed me again, less gently this time.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Fire & Water

The sun rose early. We’d had a new hottest day on record pretty much every week for the last month, and I was really beginning to appreciate having a girlfriend whose body was naturally room temperature.

“I don’t suppose,” she began, hooking one leg playfully over mine, “that I can persuade you to give the whole final conflict between good and evil thing a miss and stay home and fuck instead?”

It was a pretty tempting offer. And it wasn’t like Nim had exactly asked for my help. Hell, she’d come close to doing the opposite. And I didn’t even know for certain that Nim vs King was even happening today—Sebastian seemed to think it would, but what did he know?

Probably too much.

I disentangled myself. I started to disentangle myself. Be mature, Kate. Be a grown-up and go stand by your friend in her hour of need. Don’t think about the hot, naked, limber, sexually adventurous vampire lady already in your bed.

Doing the right thing sucked.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve known Nim a really long time and this whole shitstorm is partly my fault and...”

Julian sat up under the covers. They framed her body in a way that had to be deliberate. “I understand. I really do understand. I confess that I am a little bit jealous, but we’ll all be safer if you go. Just make sure that if anybody achieves absolute power today, it’s somebody on my side.”

I dressed. Julian didn’t. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I do like it when you’re all bold and decisive. But truthfully I would very much rather be with you when whatever is going to happen happens. It’s just that sunlight makes me rather less indestructible than I prefer to be in the event of violence. If you could ask your ex to arrange her next battle for the destiny of the city sometime around one in the morning, I’d be ever so grateful.”

I kissed Julian goodbye and emerged into the flat. The smell of fresh-ground coffee suggested that Elise and Lisbeth were making an early start as well. Or maybe they started grinding coffee at dawn. Actually, that was pretty likely.

One of my identical houseguests—they’d changed clothes overnight and I really couldn’t tell them apart if they weren’t speaking or moving—was standing by the sitting room window, eyes closed, one hand pressed to the glass and the other touching the wall.

“Elise?”

The woman by the window shook her head, slightly too deliberately. Lisbeth, then.

“What are you, y’know, doing?”

“Enjoying the temperature differential.”

Served me right for asking.

The real Elise appeared in the kitchen doorway. “You had a pleasant evening, Miss Kane?”

That was worryingly close to not being a question. And apparently Elise had been practising her suggestive look. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what kind of answer she was expecting so I went with “Yeah.”

“And have you developed any further plans regarding the on-going magical conflict?”

I sat down on the arm of the sofa. “Not exactly. The Prince of Wands said I should head to Bromley. That isn’t much to go on, especially since he might be flat-out lying.”

“How would that benefit him?”

“I don’t know. And that’s what bothers me. There’s too much about all of this that doesn’t quite make sense. But there isn’t much we can do about that. We’re going to have to hit the streets and see what we can see.”

Elise’s face brightened instantly. “Are we doing legwork, Miss Kane. I believe myself to be extremely proficient at legwork.”

“Well, you’re in luck.” I swung myself off the sofa. “Because your legs—scratch that. I can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound really inappropriate.”

Leaving Julian to show herself out, I headed down to the car. It wasn’t until we reached the street that I realised Lisbeth had followed us. “You’re coming too?” I tried to sound neutral about the idea, but voice went up half an octave.

“If that is agreeable.”

It was...well, okay, it wasn’t not agreeable. But I hadn’t been counting on it. I wasn’t especially wild about running around with an ever-expanding menagerie of animated statue-ladies. Still, I couldn’t leave her standing on the doorstep, if only because it was so likely she’d stay there until I got back. I told her it was fine, and we all set off for Bromley.

Honestly, it was a trek. Going suburb to suburb was always a pain because your choice was either go through the middle of the city where the traffic was a nightmare or go on a massive detour around the M25. And we couldn’t even take the Tube because, although the death of Nana King made it a lot less likely we’d be ambushed by demons, we were going to the one damn borough in the city that didn’t have an underground station. Once you factored in the weather, I was honestly half ready to just leave Nim to it. But there was that whole annoying oath-of-fealty thing to deal with. Plus I really didn’t want her to die horribly.

We were stuck in a tailback on the A13 when my phone went. I motioned for Elise to turn her music down. My preference, as ever, would have been for not listening to loud, angry thrash metal in the first place but I was now being outvoted by two-to-one.

“Hello?”

“Patrick’s gone crazy.” Sofia’s voice.

Ah. Well, fuck. “Crazy in what way?” I asked, somewhat disingenuously under the circumstances.

“He attacked Samuel. He said he was lying and he was trying to hurt me. I mean... Patrick said Samuel was lying and trying to hurt me. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s been angry but I’ve never seen him so... I know he’d never do anything to...but I’m worried and...”

“Okay.” I tried to sound reassuring. “This is kind of...how he is. It’s very unlikely he’ll kill anyone and...look, can you hold things down at your end for a bit? I’m kind of in the middle of a situation here.”

“He said you’d told him things.”

Double fuck. “Yeah, about that.”

Sofia was very quiet.

“Look, I’m really sorry, but I’m an investigator. It’s my job and he hired me and I couldn’t really say no.” It was only half a lie. Okay, maybe two thirds.

“He said you’d told him Samuel was a monster.”

Woah there. “I never said that. All I said was I’d found a couple of red flags.”

“Kate, how could you!” She sounded genuinely betrayed.

Honestly, it had been a pretty shitty thing to do. But it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Actually it hadn’t even seemed like a good idea at the time. I guess I just have really poor judgement. “I know, I know. Don’t learn how to be a grownup from me. I’m a terrible example. And I really will come sort this out, but right now I’ve kind of forced one of my oldest friends into battle with an angry gangster fire wizard who wants to be spiritual king of London.”

She was silent again. I’m not sure I’d have known what to say to that either.

“Try to keep it together,” I said. “I’ll deal with Patrick when I’m done.”

There was a vaguely assenting noise from the other end of the phone and something resembling a thank you, which was a really unwarranted level of politeness given how badly I’d screwed her over.

Note to self: try to ruin the lives of fewer teenagers. Fuck, I hoped I wasn’t turning into Patrick in my old age. That would be depressing as shit.

“A problem, Miss Kane?” Elise had to have heard most of what went on, but I filled her in anyway.

“Do you wish me to go in your place?” she asked. “I believe that I will be able to pacify Master Knight if necessary.”

It was tempting, but I kind of felt that Elise would be worth having around, especially if Lake was less dead than we thought and showed up with his—I’d never quite worked out what the term was—his animated statue lady? “No, I’d rather have you with me on this.”

“As you wish.”

She turned the music back up. Something growling, thumping and anticapitalist with an angry man shouting about fire and destruction which, given what we were up against, was a little bit on the nose.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed to get hotter the closer we got to Bromley. That was magic for you. The weather in this country was unpredictable enough without wizards dicking with it. We dumped the car in the multistorey at the civic centre and hit the streets.

We were as good as working blind again. All I knew was that an ancient vampire with a reputation for deception had told me two people whose entire MO was working half in an invisible dream world would be meeting here. I could have been walking into a broad daylight superpower battle or two people exchanging significant looks in a café. True, King didn’t exactly seem the significant looks type, but on the other hand, Nim wasn’t the sort to get into a huge fight with massive collateral damage unless she couldn’t avoid it. And I really, really hoped she could avoid it.

The last time Nim had been drawn into an open confrontation—which had technically been with Julian over this big misunderstanding about a murder attempt, but that wasn’t the important detail right now—she’d managed to get the entire population of a London borough off the streets. It didn’t look like she’d been able to do the same this time. But she might have tried something similar.

I scanned the horizon. It was blue skies pretty much all the way, except one patch of thick black cloud to the north. A bright ribbon of rainbow stretched out towards the ground. Okay, wizards dicking with the weather was annoying, but sometimes it was really freaking convenient.

Elise, Lisbeth and I followed the clouds. I still wasn’t one hundred percent clear on what I was supposed to be doing when I got there. It didn’t seem likely I could talk them out of fighting. But maybe I could jump King from behind or something. The closer we got, the more certain I was that we were going the right way. There was an uneasy, prickling sense in the air, and despite the time of day, the streets were getting that deserted quality they had when Nim was clearing the decks for a battle.

Rain started falling. It was a welcome change after the heat. Also hopefully less stuff would get set on fire this way. We followed the gathering storm up past one of those random rows of suburban shops—the sort where you get three takeaways, a funeral director, and a bookie’s in the middle of an otherwise totally residential area—and all of them had their windows shuttered now, the rain clattering hard against the steel. Either things were getting more intense, or I was getting closer to the centre of whatever was happening. Or both. From here it was just a matter of going street by street until we found something.

We found something.

A sign tucked into a completely ordinary privet hedge said that we’d turned onto Camlan Road, but the walking-into-cold-water feeling that rushed over me said we were on the edge of somewhere else entirely. Up ahead, the road curved away, but I could see that somebody had parked a car across it. And then set the car on fire. The flames battled against the downpour in a way I was pretty sure even a petrol fire wouldn’t if we were still in the land of real physics.

Beyond the burning wreck, King and his men waited. Lake wasn’t there, and Nana King obviously wasn’t. He had a lot of rough looking guys with rough looking weapons, but seemed pretty low on actual powerful wizards. Elise’s rogue sister was with him, though. I really hoped that didn’t make things weird.

Further up the road, Nimue stood. She was dressed in grey jeans and a grey hoodie, but in the rain they sparkled like silver. Rose Red stood at her left hand wearing a gown the colour of blood. On her right, Fisher leaned heavily on a walking stick, blood still seeping through his otherwise immaculate suit jacket. He was backed up by his own Elise-alike, Alissa, I think it was, and the girl who’d bundled me into the van that one time. Of Nim’s court, only Michelle—the flame-slinging, Fat Boy-riding Guardian of the Watchtower of South—was with her. I guess Rachel was still in hospital, Jacob dead or imprisoned underground and hopefully Gabriel had got out of the city with his family. This was looking bad. Nim had most of the heavy hitters, but even if they pulled through there was a non-zero chance they’d turn on her the second King was dealt with.

“They might.”

I turned. In his fussy white linen, Sebastian looked completely out of place leaning against a weather-beaten garden wall in Bromley. He also looked completely out of place because he’d as good as told me the vampires were staying out of this one on account of daylight.

“We are.” He really had to stop answering questions I hadn’t asked him. “But I felt it important to at least witness the battle.”

“I thought you lot stayed away from anything that could actually hurt you.”

He looked contemplative a moment. “Normally. But I have found over long years that there is little so deadly as ignorance. Come, perhaps we should move to a point of better vantage.”

I followed him. I didn’t want to, but he wasn’t the sort of person you let out of your sight if you could avoid it.

In the middle of the street, King’s people and Nim’s people were gradually moving towards each other. I was really glad nothing had exploded yet, but I didn’t like the way this was going. Nim broke from the group and stepped forward. No, I definitely didn’t like the way this was going.

“You have one chance.” Her voice was quiet, but it carried over the rain. “Stand down, stand your men down, and deliver the Tears to me, and we can have peace.”

I couldn’t help but notice that King had a knife. He wasn’t exactly hiding it, just letting it rest by his side in a way that could make a less paranoid person forget to watch for it. Of course, the guy could also throw fireballs, which was more of a problem from a practical perspective, but there was something about a blade that meant business. That said in no uncertain terms “I am willing to hurt people to get what I want.”

He sneered. “You think I’m scared of you, the poof, and the cripple?”

Quietly, Nimue stood in the storm. “No, I think you’re afraid to walk away.” The wind gusted, the rain lashed, the fire surged back. “Still, I am giving you the chance to try.”

“Y’know...” King raised his knife casually, running his thumb across the edge. “I’m really looking forward to killing you.”

Nim nodded. “Then so be it.”

Thunder cracked and shit got real. The flames billowed up from the wreck of the car, and I thought I could see a figure taking shape—something wild and winged. King’s men rushed forward, but two were snatched up by a whip of thorns that lashed from a decorative hedge, and two more fell to their knees in front of Fisher, who looked down at them cruelly. That still left Nim down on numbers, so I broke ranks and got stuck in.

I grabbed one of King’s men from behind and remembered in the nick of time that this was going to be a knife fight, shoving him away just as he stabbed backwards at me. He went sprawling to the ground, but gathered himself quickly and came back. My mother watched patiently from the Deepwild and I tried to remember that this was a fight for my life and forget that the last time I’d had a weapon in my hand it was to murder an elderly woman.

As it turned out there was nothing like the risk of disembowelment to keep your head in the game. I moved to the outside and caught my opponent’s knife-hand as he came in. It was a risky move but my mother’s blood made me faster than most people. Stronger, too. I twisted, and the guy’s arm bent behind him in a way that I really hoped was uncomfortable. In the Deepwild, my mother pressed me to go further. Take the blade, slit the throat, drink the blood. In Hell, the Palace of Wrath agreed.

Well, that was new and fucked up. So fucked up that I hesitated when I shouldn’t have. My enemy shifted his weight and turned close enough that he could drive his fist into my gut. That gave him room to pull his arm free and that got the knife back in play. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it coming towards my face. I put a hand up to protect myself, but it gouged a chunk out of me. When the adrenaline wore off, I was going to feel that. But right then all I was feeling was threatened and angry. I managed to pin his weapon arm again, stepped through, hooked his leg, and bore him to the ground. More than one voice in my mind told me to kill. I covered his face with my hand and drove his head into the tarmac. I did it again. I was kneeling on a road in a city. I was kneeling on a rock in a river in the Deepwild. I was kneeling on an iron altar in Hell.

I was totally fucked.

With more effort than it should have taken, I pulled away. I was sure I hadn’t killed the guy. I really wanted to be sure I hadn’t killed the guy. Breathing sharp and shallow, I looked around. The various Elise variants seemed to have been drawn into a complicated four-way tussle I couldn’t quite get a grip on. Fisher’s entourage, Michelle and King’s men faced off a little further up the road, while Rose Red seemed to have gone full Sleeping Beauty’s Castle on some poor bastard’s front lawn. Sebastian had basically vanished, which didn’t surprise me.

Lightning struck. When I could see again, I looked towards the place it had hit. Nimue stood alone in the rain, her street clothes replaced with a dress of silver scales, a long silver spear in her hand. King stalked towards her, flames playing about his fingertips and across the blade of his knife. The raindrops steamed when they struck his body. Part of me wanted to just rush the fucker and hang the consequences. The rest of me knew Nim would want to handle this herself.

They circled each other. With the rain and the flames and the chaos I couldn’t tell what they were saying, if anything. King raised a hand and fire streamed towards Nimue, but guttered out of existence inches from her body. He tried again. And again. Dude, learn when a strategy isn’t working.

He retreated, his back to the burning car. Reaching out towards it, he was surrounded by a great rush of fire that billowed up around him like wings. And then he and the flames surged forwards together. Fuck this non-intervention thing. I ran towards them. At least, I tried to, but the air got so hot that I couldn’t breathe and I smelled my hair beginning to burn. I pushed forward...one step...two. It was too much. My legs and my lungs gave out at roughly the same time, and I crashed to the ground. This, I knew far too well, was what losing felt like.

Then the wind picked up again, stronger than before, and lightning sheeted across the sky, so bright and sudden that for a moment everything was afterimages. The fire died. Staring through the rain and the smoke, I saw Nim standing with her spear levelled, King impaled on the end.

Then, slowly, he began dragging his body forward. I threw myself towards him, but a fresh rush of scalding air and burning embers pushed me back and knocked me flat again. I reached for the Deepwild but I couldn’t think through the heat or see through the mist. I reached out to Hell and it laughed in my face. Forcing myself to my knees, I looked up just in time to see King close the last of the distance and bring his knife down viciously into Nimue. If I screamed, I didn’t hear it. In the Deepwild, my mother revelled in the bloodshed.

When at last Nimue fell to the ground, Arty King turned his head stiffly towards me. He looked like he was having trouble standing, which wasn’t much comfort given he’d damn near killed one of my closest friends. The rain stopped abruptly and the sun flooded back. A wall of fire roared into life between us, and with agonising slowness, he pulled the spear out of his body. Then, from inside his jacket, he pulled out the vial containing the Tears of Hypnos.

He unstoppered it, bent down, and lifted Nim’s limp body with his free hand. I thought she was still breathing. I hoped she was still breathing. She had to be still breathing. “You think this is bad,” he said, looking me straight in the eye, “you don’t want to know what I’m gonna do to you.” He soaked his hand in Nim’s blood, letting her drop back to the ground, and began to anoint himself with it.

There was no fucking way this was happening. I crawled into the fire. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stand, and I could smell my own flesh cooking, but while I had anything left in me I wasn’t letting this complete arsehole use my ex-girlfriend to achieve ultimate power. My clothes began to smoulder, my eyes watered, my skin screamed in the heat. I half thought my teeth would crack. Then I was through.

King looked down at me. “You—”

Something moved past us at unbelievable speed. I heard a sickening crack and King’s head twisted at an angle heads are not meant to twist at. His body collapsed over Nim’s. And, in his place, Sebastian stood with the Tears of Hypnos in one hand. He smiled. The flames around me turned blue.

I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t make words come out. What the fuck didn’t even begin to cut it.

He stepped towards me. I hadn’t come armed to fight vampires, and even if I had, it was looking a lot like the normal rules didn’t apply here. It was barely past noon and Sebastian seemed no weaker than he’d be at midnight.

“I think that went very well, don’t you?” he asked.

It was too hot and I’d been through too much in the past few days to come up with a snappy comeback. The sunlight gathered around Sebastian like a halo, playing across his face like a golden mask. This was beginning to make sense.

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Now sleep.”

His eyes were blue and gold, his voice calm but impossible to disobey.

I slept.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Something Rather Unfortunate Has Occurred

I had gone with Miss Kane to the battle on Camlan Road in order that I might limit the probability of her coming to harm. I fear I failed.

At the moment the storm broke, when Mr. King struck down Miss Nimue I was distracted by my efforts to negotiate a peaceful understanding between myself and my various sisters. I take comfort in the knowledge that nobody present foresaw Mr. Douglas’s intervention and, even had I been more conveniently positioned it is unlikely that I should have been any use.

When the battle ceased we were, I think, all aware that something had gone very wrong. Few of Mr. King’s men were left standing, but the sudden cessation of Miss Nimue’s contribution to the elemental turmoil did not bode well for her allies either. The entire scene was quickly obscured behind a line of flames, first red and then blue. Once they had cleared, Mr. Douglas stood amongst several bodies. Of the three, only Mr. King’s was entirely inanimate, although I observed even from a distance that Miss Nimue had sustained significant damage to her form. Her essence, however, had proved more resilient.

Mr. King’s followers had been first to respond, and this decision had proved costly for them. The three who were still standing broke away from their previous targets and threw themselves at Mr. Douglas.

I have always found it interesting to watch vampires move. Like myself and my sisters, their actions are a product of conscious will, and therefore, not constrained by the limitations of their physical bodies. The three men, whose physiologies operated by the altogether cruder intercession of bioelectrical signals, stood little chance. Two fell to swift strikes at the throat, the necessity for oxygen being another limitation of their construction. The third was broken down by an act of will involving no physical action, Mr. Douglas’s thoughts simply reaching out to the poor man and twisting him about in directions quite incompatible with his continued functioning.

Mr. Fisher and Miss Red made the next attempt at intervention. Their wills matched against that of the Prince of Wands (to give him his proper title—I hope I have not hitherto been addressing the gentleman disrespectfully). Little changed in the world of shapes, but the world of essences shifted dramatically, Miss Red striking first with a blue-black hue of chaos and malice, which was not entirely compatible with Mr. Fisher’s red-and-gold inclination towards stillness and rebirth.

I apologise, it is difficult to describe these things.

Sadly, it transpired that their enemy’s will was, in this moment, the greater. A golden gleam of certainty and walls upon walls upon walls. He swept up Miss Kane and departed. I attempted briefly to follow him, but soon realised that to do so was unhelpful. His being, tied to a peculiar admixture of sunlight and shadow as mine is tied to stone, was necessarily lighter and more swift. I returned to the site of the battle. Mr. Fisher and Miss Red appeared to be arguing about the most appropriate course of action, given all that had taken place. I considered it best to leave them to their discussion, and returned to my sisters.

Since encountering my creator’s other creations, I have been reflecting considerably on the implications of their existence. It was strange to see the three of them gathered together. Beth, who had worked for Mr. Lake, was the eldest of those present, and had a way about her that I was not sure I envied. She seemed more like other people, less like my sisters and I. There was a confidence about her that I felt I would like to share, but I am uncertain whether it would suit me. I was next in line, and it troubled me somewhat to realise that my entire family had, between us, existed for less than a decade. After me was Alissa, who had been given to Mr. Fisher, and then Lisbeth, who I had been coming to know over the last few days.

Beth was staring at me. Her arms were folded, her expression a nuanced mixture of anger and condescension that I personally lack the skill to express physically. “Your lot really fucked this one up.”

“I do not believe anybody could have anticipated this situation.”

Her lips thinned and her eyebrows arched. Really it was most interesting to watch. “You’re the ones who brought the vampires into this.”

“I’m afraid she’s right.” That was Alissa. “You should never have interfered.” Despite her relative lack of physical movement, I was aware of a cold and personal anger from her.

“I do not think that is entirely fair.”

“Russel gave me away because your mistress wouldn’t work with Mr. Fisher when she was supposed to. If she’d just stayed away from everything, then none of this would have happened and—”

Beth laughed. It seemed natural to her. I was rather jealous. “Christ, you’re an idiot. Russel was a petty little git, and he’d have got bored of you sooner or later, just like he got bored of the rest of us.”

“He loved me!” Alissa had stopped moving now, except to speak. I had hoped that I might be able to persuade my sisters to assist me in liberating Miss Kane, but this seemed an increasingly remote possibility.

“He loved all of us.” Beth’s smile was cruel. I was not sure if I feared her or pitied her. “Turns out love isn’t worth half as much as people pretend it is.”

Alissa did not cry. We were not made to cry. I put my arm on her shoulder, but she pulled away.

“Oh, grow up.”

“In her defence,” I observed, “she can be little more than a year old.”

“I don’t need you speaking for me.” Alissa’s expression didn’t change, but I felt her hostility nevertheless.

I endeavoured to ignore her. It seemed the most productive approach for all concerned.

Gently, Lisbeth raised her hand. She had not hitherto moved, which was to be expected. The situation had become confusing, and I knew from experience that early in life, the most comfortable response to an unfamiliar situation is a reversion to the certainty of stillness. I turned to her.

“What happens now?” she asked.

I looked at my sisters. “It is not my place to speak for other people, but I will be returning home, and making preparations to rescue Miss Kane. I would welcome any of your assistance, but do not expect that it will be forthcoming.”

Beth gave me a sardonic look. I have practised the sardonic look many times, but failed to accomplish it. “Help you rescue the woman who had my boss killed and closed down my livelihood?”

“You make a fair point.”

Alissa did not even answer, but looked forlornly across the road towards Mr. Fisher.

“You know,” I said, “that you do not have to stay with him simply because you were told to?”

I am not certain if it was the idea that bewildered her, or the wider context in which she found herself. Whichever it may have been, I was aware of her bewilderment. “Where else would I go?”

I did not have an answer for this. “I am certain that an opportunity will present itself.”

“I can sort you out.” The spite was gone from Beth’s expression, and from her essence. “As long as you don’t mind getting your hands dirty.”

I was not certain if this was kindness or opportunism. Perhaps it was both.

“Get my hands dirty with what?” asked Alissa.

“Whatever it takes. My employer, his employer, his employer’s seconds in command, and at least one of their biggest rivals have all just died or been taken out of action. It’s going to be a messy time, but I think we could do well out of it.”

“What about Mr. Fisher?”

Beth broke away from the group and walked confidently towards the two magicians. Slowly, leaning heavily on a walking stick, Mr. Fisher turned towards them.

“Yes?”

“Alissa no longer works for you, she works for me.”

His fingers tightened on his stick. Behind him, a woman with fire in her heart started forwards. He put out a hand to stop her. “And why should I accept that?”

“Because we both know she’s not worth fighting over. You’ve already got what you needed from her.”

He looked at Alissa. “Your sister’s a piece of work.”

“I can stay,” she said. I think she would have been trembling had she been made of softer materials. “I could come with you.”

He shook his head. “No, she’s right. I don’t need you anymore.”

Neither I nor my sisters possess hearts in the physical sense but, metaphorically, I suspect that Alissa’s heart broke at that moment. I do not believe that she had any affection for Mr. Fisher, but being discarded so often in so short a time and by so many people must surely have been unbearable for her. I wish there had been something I could have done, but there was not.

“If I might,” I tried instead, “what do you intend to do about Mr. Douglas?”

Mr. Fisher looked blank. “You mean the vampire? An unknown quantity.” He sighed. “The time has come for me to accept defeat. I’m on the next flight home.”

“Miss Red?”

The Wicked Queen paused. In truth the sunlight did not suit her—she had shaped herself for smoky rooms and spotlights, for windswept balconies and lightning storms. “You know,” she began, “you’d look fabulous in a glass coffin.”

I waited a moment.

“The thing is, sugar, I don’t fight monsters.”

“I understand, but I have been told that the Prince of Wands is very dangerous and there is no knowing what he will do if we let him bring his plans to fruition.”

By way of answer, Miss Red stalked over to where Miss Nimue and Mr. King were still lying. “See these two? They wanted to be heroes. Didn’t really get them anywhere. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the glamours around this place are going to go down real soon, and then it’s going to be swarming with cops and paramedics. Once it is, we’re going to want to be far away.”

“That seems callous.”

She made a sweeping gesture that encompassed her entire ensemble. “Evil Queen. Deal with it. But seriously, you want the glass box job, mirror me.”

Heartless though Miss Red’s advice had been, she was correct about the necessity of leaving that place. I would certainly not wish to explain why I had been found in the company of three other women to whom I was wholly physically identical, all of us standing over a variety of corpses, nor to expose Lisbeth to the rigours of a police interrogation. I led her hurriedly away from the scene, through the streets of Bromley, and back to the car.

The vehicle had waited patiently for us throughout the confrontation, and was contentedly unaware of the difficulties we faced. I did not attempt to explain them to it, for its capacity to comprehend such things was curtailed by its structure and function. A more straightforward life, and I hope no less satisfying than my own.

Lisbeth and I did not speak on the drive back home. It was rather pleasant to spend time with a person whose natural rhythms more closely mirrored mine. Although I have great affection for Miss Kane, she is often distractingly active, and that sometimes makes it hard to follow her moods and trains of thought. I turned up the volume on my music, and felt its various frequencies play across what for want of a more physiologically correct term I shall call my skin. I am not certain if I technically have skin. To the best of my understanding, my body is a homogeneous mass of stone given mobility and the illusion of flesh by my creator’s will and a usurped celestial fire.

I am sorry, I appear to be digressing. I have little experience in these matters.

When we returned to the flat, the door was anxious. This at once made me wary. I explained to Lisbeth that we had best ready ourselves against the eventuality of attack. Perhaps I had inherited a little of Miss Kane’s paranoia, but since even her friends had a distressing tendency to break into her home rather than knock in the customary manner, I thought caution wise.

I opened the door as gently as I could manage, and did my best to soothe it. The atmosphere of disquiet continued in the hall, and I became increasingly convinced that somebody had entered the building uninvited.

My suspicions were confirmed on our entering the living room, where I encountered two strangers, both—from the manner in which their movements followed their inclinations and the devouring nature of their essences—clearly vampires.

One lay haphazardly on the sofa. He had arranged himself into a position that suggested careless ease, and was maintaining it scrupulously. He had a sharp smile that I think was intended to suggest a friendly nature, but there was ice in his eyes and fire in his heart. He was old, like trees rather than stone. I put a hand on Lisbeth’s arm. She would never have seen such a creature before, and I was not sure how it would affect her.

The second gentleman was scarred. His body had been touched by fire and his essence by something else, a weapon that left deep unhealing wounds. He was the younger of the two, but was full of secrets. He stood against the wall, stiff and cold.

“Good afternoon,” I began. “I am sorry, but I do not believe that we have been introduced.”

The elder of them swung his legs around and sat up. “Halfdan the Shaper. Where’s Kate?”

I was not certain how much information it was safe to share with this person. I did not keep detailed track of Miss Kane’s undead acquaintances, but she had never mentioned this man as being amongst her confidantes. His name was familiar and I was relatively certain that he had argued in favour of Miss Kane’s execution last year. This fact did not endear him to me. “She has been taken.”

“Unfortunate.” This was the other man. The scarred one. “I had thought he might choose another.”

“Another?”

Halfdan the Shaper leaned back, resting his boots on the coffee table. The table was not happy, but did not complain very much. “Another changeling. He needs the blood of a faery lord to complete his transformation.”

“My apologies, I fear I will be spending much of this conversation simply repeating things you have said. Transformation?” I thought a moment and looked up at the second gentleman. “If this is in reference to the affair that began last year with Miss Kyprianides and Mr. Knight, then I was under the impression that it was Henry Percy who was involved in that particular plot, not Mr. Douglas.”

The scarred vampire coughed. And I recalled that on their last encounter Miss Kane had left him under a burning building. That explained both the burns and the inward impression of bitterness. “I was in service to the P-Prince of Wands. It was always he who was to ascend the discarded stair. I was to serve in his new order.”

“Might I ask what persuaded you to abandon him?”

“He left me in a b-burning building. The Shaper rescued me.”

“And,” added the other vampiric gentleman, “he has been extremely helpful ever since.”

In honesty, I had my doubts as to the helpfulness of either of these men. “Any assistance you could render in the liberation of Miss Kane would be most welcome.”

“I’ve been tangling with Sebastian for more than a millennium.” The Shaper rose and sauntered casually to the window. “I’ve survived because I’ve never gone after him directly. When you get right down to it he’s a vindictive little twazzock, and if you cross him he will do whatever it takes to annihilate you. Look at what happened to the Morrigan.”

I considered this. “Then your intent is that I should move against Mr. Douglas, allowing you to achieve your desired end of thwarting his ambitions, while ensuring that the consequences of such actions fall upon me and anybody foolish enough to support me.”

He grinned. It was slightly too wide and slightly too cruel. “Got it in one, sister.”

“I have sisters. You are not one of them.”

“So serious for someone so young. It’s very simple. I will tell you, or rather the good Mr. Percy will tell you, where Sebastian is most likely to have taken your employer, and in return you will do everything in your power to get her back before he drains her blood and becomes a god. Do we have a deal?”

I considered this. “I am not certain that deal is the appropriate term for what you are proposing. I shall attempt to rescue Miss Kane irrespective of any information you may give me. It seems, therefore, to be in your interests to be as forthcoming as possible.”

The two vampiric gentlemen exchanged looks, Mr. Percy’s enquiring and Mr. Halfdan’s assenting.

“The Ascent of the Discarded Stair,” began Mr. Percy, “is a ritual whereby the magician may usurp the throne of Apollo. In its first stage, the aspirant must be acclaimed at winter solstice as the coming god of the sun by the high priestess of the oracles of Delphi.”

“You mean, Miss Kyprianides?”

Mr. Percy nodded. “Yes. The second part of the ritual must be performed exactly six months later, at the summer solstice. It requires the Tears of Hypnos be commingled with the blood of a faery lord. This offering permits the beneficiary, once they enter the realm of the faery lord in question, to subsume that being’s power and from that power, the remains of their kingdom and any parts of the waking world which border it, construct the metaphysical staircase by which they ascend to the throne of the sun itself.”

“And, if I might ask”—the question felt foolish but I thought it pertinent that it be voiced—“what happens next?”

The look that the Shaper gave me contrived somehow to be at once mocking and inscrutable; I made private note of its composition in case it should prove useful in future. “You mean after he’s killed your friend, sucked half the Scottish border into another universe, and literally become the sun?”

“Yes. My apologies if this seems an unproductive line of inquiry, but I find it best to understand all the parameters.”

“In practical terms, it means he goes from being one kind of very powerful supernatural creature to a different kind of very powerful supernatural creature. This isn’t a take over the world deal for Sebastian, it’s...it’s personal.”

“For something personal”—I moved my head in a manner I hoped suggested interest—“it seems quite remarkably convoluted.”

This earned me a scornful glance from Mr. Percy. “It’s an ancient secret of thaumaturgy that permits the supplicant to become a god. Did you really think it would be straightforward? The Prince of Wands is one of the most accomplished sorcerers the world has ever seen, has spent centuries preparing for this, and he has managed to acquire the necessary components and participants exactly twice.”

“And what happened on those occasions?”

“On the first, the original Prince of Wands caught wind of what he was doing and killed the changeling who would have provided the blood for the second stage of the ritual. On the second, Patrick Knight intervened and rescued the sacrifice.”

I was perplexed by this. “From what I saw of Mr. Douglas’s abilities today, I do not quite understand how Mr. Knight would have been able to overcome him.”

At this, Mr. Halfdan began to laugh, rather cruelly I felt. “He didn’t overcome Sebastian. He overcame Henry.”

“He took me by surprise. In retrospect I b-believe His Highness intended for me to complete the ritual on his b-behalf, and then for P-patrick to kill me.”

“You see”—Mr. Halfdan wagged an instructive finger—“all vampires are paranoid. And with good reason. We are a race of predators and it is our nature to attempt to destroy one another. But for Sebastian it goes deeper, he finds the thought of any being having the power to hurt him in any way intolerable. He doesn’t want to be a god because it’ll let him have power over other people, he’s got power over other people. He wants to be a god because it’ll stop other people having power over him. Sometimes I think he even resents the sun.”

“That is informative,” I remarked, “but I am not sure how it assists us in our present situation.”

Mr. Halfdan laughed again. I was beginning to think I did not enjoy his laughter. “Oh, but you’re wrong, my dear. Consider this: Sebastian came from less than nothing, and over the past two millennia he’s gone from being a slave in Verulamium, to a servant of the Morrigan, to an architect of the vampire council, to one of the most feared beings in the entire supernatural world. And he has done it by the slow acquisition and judicious use of secrets. The man is so sly that he invented the role of Prince of Wands specifically for his own use but gave it to somebody else first so that nobody would suspect that was what he was up to. And, last year, he personally orchestrated the awakening of an unstoppable vampire queen, whose downfall he had also personally orchestrated, just so he could disrupt the power structure he personally designed for long enough that he could make a play for godhood without anybody noticing. But, yesterday, he acted directly and in front of witnesses. You’re a private investigator. What does that tell you?”

It was gratifying to be recognised as a private investigator. “It tells me something has changed.”

“Exactly. When your rather reckless employer burned down Trismegistus Hall, she deprived Sebastian of his last and most useful proxy. Ordinarily he might have retreated, re-built his power base and attempted the ritual at some point in the distant future. But once he learned, or came to suspect, that Henry was in my custody he knew that I would prevent him from ever getting such an opportunity again.” Mr. Halfdan smiled, his face amiable but his heart not. “Frustrating my brother is normally a hobby, but when he’s on the verge of gaining unlimited power it becomes rather more important.”

“That gives me some insight into your motivation but not into a practicable course of action that will result in the liberation of my friend.”

Blue fire flickered at the tips of Mr. Percy’s fingers. “The p-point is, that the Prince of Wands has been forced to complete the ritual himself. The last time, I was to make the sacrifice at Trismegistus Hall while he was fifty miles away in Scotland on the borders of the Deepwild. Now I am no longer with him, he will have to perform the rite in situ, which means we know where he is. Further, because he most likely believes this to be his last chance, we also know that any attempt to stop him will be met with the full strength of a two-thousand-year-old vampire lord steeped in sorcerous mysteries with one foot on the stair to divinity. And that, I assure you, will take more than Mr. Knight’s adolescent passion to vanquish.”

Something was still confusing to me. “And yet, you feel that appearing in Miss Kane’s apartment and giving me the smallest possible amount of information required to precipitate a confrontation will somehow leave him adequately vanquished?”

“The way I see it,” said Mr. Halfdan, with another of his dualistic smiles, “it’s your friend who’s going to be sacrificed.”

“And I have already stated that I will attempt to rescue her, irrespective of what stands against me or who stands with me. But, the way I see it, it is your eternal rival and enemy who is going to acquire so much power that he no longer need fear the consequences of destroying you utterly. Or perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps you believe that Mr. Douglas has attained his current position of influence and authority as a result of his habit of leaving loose ends.”

Mr. Halfdan gazed at me for a long moment. “I can’t tell if I really like you or really don’t like you.”

“That detail is quite irrelevant to our current situation, but I hope I have persuaded you that accompanying me in this endeavour is the only rational course of action available to you.”

“He will d-destroy us,” muttered Mr. Percy.

“Probably, but is it not best to—as I understand they say—go down fighting?”

At this, Mr. Halfdan said a number of things in a language I did not understand but which I took to be some manner of expletives. “You realise,” he told his companion, “even though we’re plotting his downfall Sebastian is still playing us.” He rose impetuously from the sofa and turned to me. “Fine. We’ll come with you. But you better bring a fucking army.”

I promised the gentlemen I would do my best, a reassurance that seemed to bring them little comfort. They gave the precise location in which Mr. Douglas would need to perform his ritual—a small and unremarkable farmhouse on the Ettrick water that I should never have found if not for their intervention—and departed soon after. In truth, I was glad for them to leave as the disconnect between Mr. Halfdan’s form and essence was disorientating to me.

Lisbeth had said little throughout the meeting. I hoped she was well, and not feeling too lost. Though I did not like to admit it, I did not know what to do for the best. My own early experiences had seemed natural at the time but, since my abandonment and subsequent rescue by the Multitude, I had come to quite different conclusions about them. As such I did not know and could not guess what the most correct way to manage the first days in the life of a constructed entity was. I had no wish to simply turn her into a copy of myself, but as a being that had existed for something shy of a hundred hours I was not certain that she had an own self to which to be true.

I had endeavoured to speak to her a little about these matters, but it had soon become apparent that she lacked a conceptual framework within which to engage with them. Under different circumstances I would have liked to devote more time to her, to introduce her to things she might have liked or found interesting—although perhaps that would have been more for my benefit than for hers. As it was, I simply had to hope she was gaining something from our current adventures. If nothing else, she was learning about the world she would inevitably find herself living in.

I watched her a while. She sat perfectly still, but that was natural for us. Behind that, however, I was pleased to see a shifting in her. She had received a great deal of new information and it comforted me to note that she was processing it appropriately. I reached a decision.

“Lisbeth, would you like to meet some people?”

She nodded.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I Am Doing My Best to Resolve Things

When I first met Miss Kane, she had assembled an alliance of sorts to rescue Miss Saint-Germain from an entity called the King of the Court of Love. It would appear that this situation called for a similar response. I was less capable than Miss Kane in these matters, and the intersections between her personal and professional lives were such that it was sometimes difficult to determine who were her allies and who were her enemies. Miss Vane-Tempest, for example, seemed very capable of falling into either category. I had elected to start my own recruitment drive with Miss Locke. She was not my employer’s greatest admirer, their having parted acrimoniously a little over two years ago, but I surmised that she would be the individual whose motivations in this matter incorporated the fewest complicating factors.

The Locke Enterprises building was at once cheerful and aloof, seeming as if it was happy to see me, but also seeming as if it would have been equally happy to see anybody. It did not have a reception so much as an informal receiving area scattered with beanbags. An enthusiastic-looking young man whose essence was at odds with his demeanour bounded up to us and asked our business.

“We are here to see Miss Locke. It is most urgent.”

His face and posture betrayed none of the frustration that he evidently felt. It is a point of interest to me that biological humans must learn to stop their bodies responding to their emotional states, while I have had to learn the opposite. “Okay, great. Just pull up a beanbag and I’ll see what we can do for you. Latte?” He directed my attention to a relaxed coffee machine.

“Thank you, but I am quite alright. It really is very important that I see Miss Locke immediately. If you could inform her that I am a friend of Miss Kane’s and that something extremely unfortunate has happened, and that her assistance is needed most swiftly, I would be very grateful.”

We were left to ourselves for a moment. Lisbeth seemed to have found the coffee machine rather enticing, and was in the process of running highly pressurised hot water onto her hand. I intercepted.

“Do be careful. The people who work here might be alarmed.”

She looked at me. “I was interested to discover what the sensation would be.”

“We can purchase such a machine on the way home. But most humans would be profoundly damaged by the actions you are presently undertaking, and as such they will be surprised and concerned to witness you undertaking it.”

She pulled her hand out of the stream of water and dried it on her skirt. “I apologise. It was not my intent to cause anybody distress.”

I turned back to the informal receiving area. I did not think I would enjoy sitting in a beanbag. I have always found something unpleasantly nothing-like about very yielding surfaces. Surveying the room, I noticed a small white-haired woman approaching us. She was almost certainly human, her body moving a little unsteadily and showing signs of erosion. Beneath that, she was a tangle of secrets.

“Terribly sorry. Couldn’t help but overhear. Did you say you were a friend of Kane’s?”

“She is my employer. And my flatmate.”

The woman extended a hand. “Claudia Underhill. Dame Claudia if it means anything, which it doesn’t. We should have a word sooner rather than later.”

At which moment, the earnest young man returned. “Real sorry, but I’ve checked and Ms. Locke’s got back to back meetings pretty much all of today, so if you guys could maybe come back some other time, that would be really great.”

“They’re with me,” returned the small, deteriorating woman. “I think they’ll be useful.”

His enthusiasm did not waver. “Okay, great. Thanks for the input Mrs. Under—Dame Claudia. You folks just head through to the Rhomboid Briefing Room whenever you’re ready.” He backed away bobbing his head to Dame Claudia in a way that signalled either deference or an incipient spinal condition.

We followed her through to the lifts. I thought they were a little self-satisfied, but then there must be something rather pleasing about a life with such clear and unambiguous direction. We were whisked up several floors and taken into a room which was indeed rhomboid in its layout. It contained a large, equally rhomboid conference table, and even the chairs had a parallelogram-like quality. Miss Locke sat cross-legged in the middle of the table working on several devices at once. She, the table, and the devices seemed perfectly content with the arrangement.

“Dame Claudia.” She nodded. “And you’ve brought Elise? And”—she looked at me, then back at Lisbeth—“you’ve brought two versions of Elise?”

“My sister,” I explained.

“Delighted to meet you.” Lisbeth gave a flawlessly executed curtsey.

“I found her in reception,” added Dame Claudia. “I thought she might have some insight into the ongoing situation involving the recent magical war, its abrupt conclusion, and the unseasonable weather.”

Miss Locke turned to me. “Please, please, please tell me Kate didn’t get tangled up with this.” She lay down on the conference table and covered her face with her hands. “Who am I kidding? Tell me how Kate was tangled up with this.”

I did my best to explain the situation as I understood it. That the battle had been the continuation of one that began the better part of a decade ago, that the recent escalation in the conflict had been a consequence of the surfacing of something called the Tears of Hypnos, and that virtually every supernatural faction in the city had been drawn into it in one way or another, including my creator. I omitted Miss Kane’s role in the death of Mr. King’s grandmother, fearing that Dame Claudia would not appreciate the extenuating circumstances.

“Well,” observed Dame Claudia, when I had finished. “This does seem to be a pretty state of affairs.”

“Did you not want to lead with the whole Kate’s been abducted angle?” The tone in Miss Locke’s voice was a mixture of anger and concern.

“That had been my intent, but I felt that a complete answer would be more likely to result in a favourable outcome.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “What do we know about the Prince of Wands?” This question seemed to be directed at Dame Claudia.

“Annoyingly little. He’s old, and therefore personally very powerful, but aside from making sure that the public at large doesn’t find out too much about the weird and wonderful things in the world, he tends not to do much.”

Miss Locke sat up again abruptly. “Apart from trying to become a god. How the hell did you miss trying to become a god?”

Dame Claudia stiffened slightly. “While your assistance has been valuable to the Department, do strive to remember that you are a contractor. I take a dim view of back-seat intelligence work. Especially since I seem to recall that you unearthed this very conspiracy last year, and attributed it to the wrong vampire.”

Much about Miss Locke reminded me greatly of Miss Kane. For example, the way in which she swung herself off of the table and began to pace the conference room in agitation highly resembled my employer’s habits in similar circumstances. “Okay, so right now he’s still just a regular vampire?” She seemed to be primarily addressing herself.

“Not entirely,” I interjected. “He was capable of functioning far more effectively in full daylight than should have been possible.”

She stopped and leaned against a wall with her arms folded. “But high explosives should still work?”

“They might also prove injurious to Miss Kane.”

“Which might prove regrettably necessary.” Dame Claudia sounded hesitant, although her voice in this case may not entirely have reflected her nature.

“Getting Kate out,” insisted Miss Locke, “is non-negotiable.”

Dame Claudia folded her hands gently in her lap. “Preventing the Prince of Wands from enacting his plan is non-negotiable. I am not about to go back to the Prime Minister and tell him that we are going to let the Scottish border get sucked into another reality. The SNP would skin him alive.”

I raised my hand. “I believe that the timings required for the correct execution of the rite give us sufficient opportunity to attempt a rescue before matters approach, as it were, criticality. I shall be endeavouring to gather a small number of additional allies in advance of any attempt, and I feel confident that we will be successful.”

“How charmingly optimistic. Very well, Eve. I will give you two days to solve things as you see fit. After that, I am afraid that we will be treating the situation as irrecoverable. Now if you will excuse us”—Dame Claudia turned to me—“there are other matters that I must discuss with Ms. Locke. Matters you are not cleared for.”

I nodded. “I understand. It has been a pleasure meeting you, Dame Claudia. I wish you well in your future endeavours.”

We left. Perhaps I was becoming complacent, but I felt that things had gone as well as could reasonably have been expected. I expressed as much to Lisbeth in the car.

“Oh, yes, sister. I thought you performed excellently.”

“You were very quiet. I hope you did not find the situation too overwhelming.”

“Not at all. It was most edifying. Although I confess that I do not like Dame Claudia. She seems both callous and dishonest, and I do not believe that those are desirable traits in anybody.”

I was very much inclined to agree, although my experience over the past year had shown me that sometimes people found themselves in complicated situations, and that those situations forced them to take actions that others might find unpalatable. The more I saw of the world, the more I was learning how seldom it fit into neat and comprehensible patterns.

Having secured Miss Locke’s support, I decided next to pursue the assistance of Miss Vane-Tempest and her pack. I reasoned that Miss Nimue’s court would be in no position to assist anybody, while Miss Saint-Germain’s support should be easily obtained. I had never accompanied Miss Kane on her visits to Safernoc Hall but, like many stately homes, it was easily located with the assistance of a diligent and hardworking satellite navigation device.

It was only as I drew closer to the hall that I realised how limited my experiences had hitherto been. Not only had I yet to accompany Miss Kane on one of her sojourns to the Vane-Tempest family seat, I had also not spent any extended period of time in the countryside. It was strange for me to find myself surrounded by so much that was growing. The trees were different here, less friendly than those in the city. They gathered in unwelcoming mobs and glared angrily at the car as we passed. I suppose I could not blame them, for they were losing their homes to the roads and the bridges, and that must have been terrifying for beings that had persisted for centuries.

Safernoc Hall was deep in the forest. The roads here were subdued, and almost fearful. They lurked in long shadows and cowered under trees. The gate up to the house was more confident, even forbidding. It wore its moss like a robe and its years like a crown. I parked the car in front of the main house and approached the doors. They were opened by a reserved gentleman who harboured secret regrets.

“Good day,” I said. “We wish to speak with Miss Vane-Tempest.”

It was interesting to observe how impassive the gentleman was capable of remaining. “The Marchioness does not entertain uninvited guests.”

“It is very important.”

“It always is, ma’am.”

“This is especially important.”

“I shall enquire within.”

The door closed. Lisbeth and I waited a short while, and it opened again.

“Her Ladyship will meet with you in the red drawing room.”

The gentleman stood aside, and we entered the building. The red drawing room was aptly named, with red wall hangings and red-upholstered furniture, supercilious in its antiquity. Miss Vane-Tempest was not present, rather we were met by an older, severe-looking woman in a dark green dress.

“And who might you be?” she asked.

I approached her and extended my hand. “Elise. I work for Miss Kane. This is my sister. Her name is Lisbeth.”

She stared down her nose at me. “How singular.”

“I confess that I was expecting to meet the younger Miss Vane-Tempest.”

“I am certain that you were. Your mistress’s influence over my granddaughter was becoming toxic. I have elected to intervene.”

“Miss Kane is not my mistress, she is my employer. And she has been taken.”

“It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.”

Oh, dear. This was not going well. “She has been taken by the Prince of Wands.”

“You still appear to be speaking.” The elder woman’s tone suggested that this was not an acceptable state of affairs.

“I am still attempting to impress upon you the gravity of the situation.”

“I assure you, I apprehend the gravity of the situation more completely than you possibly could.”

“He is attempting to become a god.”

She responded to that, slightly. Like her door-attending gentleman, she gave little physical reaction to such things, but those were not the responses that I found easiest to interpret. “This is entirely your mistress’s fault. Tara should never have given the Tears into her guardianship.”

I confess that this stung somewhat, especially since it was my own physical resemblance to Alissa which had permitted Mr. Fisher to procure the Tears in the first place.

Lisbeth raised her hand. “If I might observe, what is done is now done. Surely the most appropriate course of action is the one which produces the most desirable outcome working forwards from our present circumstances.”

It was pleasing to me to see Lisbeth making a greater contribution to our collective endeavour. She may only have been days old, but I felt it very important that she begin exploring the possibility space of ideas and interactions as soon as possible.

“Advise your sister to speak when spoken to.” The elder Ms. Vane-Tempest’s eyebrow arched.

“I shall not.” I hoped that I did not sound too petulant. “And she is correct; no matter how upset you are about the manner in which events transpired, it would be irrational to limit your future actions on that basis.”

She rose, slow and majestic like a tall ship. Then she growled. It was a little incongruous to hear a sound I would normally associate with a quadruped from a biped, but I believe that she expected me to experience a more primal reaction than I in fact did.

“Are you quite well?” asked Lisbeth.

“I don’t think they’re afraid of wolves, grandmama.” I turned to see the younger Miss Vane-Tempest standing in the doorway. She wore a well-tailored red dress that co-ordinated well with the upholstery. It was pleasing to observe such attention to detail.

The older woman did not seem pleased to be interrupted. “You were not summoned.”

Miss Vane-Tempest prowled into the room. The movements of werewolves were different from the movements either of humans or of vampires. A vampire’s body was subservient to its will, a human’s in conflict with it, but the werewolves moved as if their spirits and their flesh were in perfect unison. “I do not need to be summoned. This is my house. Or have you forgotten.”

They squared off. It is my understanding that such dominance struggles are common amongst biological beings across many species. I have always felt it must be very tiring.

The elder Miss Vane-Tempest bared her teeth. “You have shown repeatedly that you are unfit to lead.”

“Is that a challenge?” Another growl.

“You know full well that I can’t fight you, and so I can’t make you listen to reason. But unless you wish to preside over the slow death of this pack, you will mark me.”

The younger Miss Vane-Tempest turned momentarily to face us. “Sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll be with you in one moment.” She returned her attention to her grandmother. “Leave. I will seek you out when your advice is required, and not before.”

Her head bowed, the older woman left the room. Although I do my best to think well of everybody unless presented with strong reasons to the contrary, I confess that I was glad to see her go. The moment her grandmother had gone, Miss Vane-Tempest rounded on me.

“Kate knows how badly she’s screwed me, yah?”

“I am not certain what Miss Kane knows at this time. She is presently in the custody of the Prince of Wands.”

Miss Vane-Tempest turned away, stalking the length of the room. Her dress swirled like leaves in the wind. “I really don’t need this today. I stand by my decision to hand over the Tears to their proper owner—it stopped my pack being drawn into a conflict we could ill afford—but her letting the damned things get stolen out from under her has made things very awkward.”

“I am not certain that awkward is the word I would use.”

“She lost a weapon of incalculable power, a megalomaniac vampire took it, and ran off to another pack’s territory. It makes me look weak.” She stopped and swept towards me again. “I can’t look weak.”

Lisbeth brightened. “Then perhaps it is fortuitous that we have come. Our goal is to avert whatever disaster may now occur, and it seems that this would align with your own goals, which are also to avert whichever disaster may now occur. It would appear that we have an unrivalled opportunity to be of assistance to one another.”

Despite my companion’s interjection, Miss Vane-Tempest continued to address me directly. “Is she for real?”

“She is new,” I explained. “But she is also correct. Both of our problems have a common solution.”

Miss Vane-Tempest’s eyes narrowed. “This is where you put together an unlikely team of misfits to pull off a daring rescue, isn’t it?”

“Something very much along those lines. I have already recruited two vampires and Miss Locke, who may come with the backing of a shadowy governmental organisation—I am afraid matters were not entirely clear on that front. And I will shortly be attempting to attract the assistance of the Prince of Cups and her entourage. I may also attempt to enlist the further assistance of the young girl Miss Kane rescued last year, who I believe to have a deeper tie to this entire situation.”

“And you want us for backup?”

“You have a stake in events. It seemed polite to invite you. I also understand that you have a strong desire to engage in sexual congress with Miss Kane, and this will be a very different experience if she is dead.”

That may, perhaps, have been the wrong thing to say. Miss Vane-Tempest noticeably bristled, her eyes bleeding amber and her posture shifting in a manner that rang distinctly non-human. “Whatever people may think”—her voice was low and I believe menacing, although such nuances still sometimes cause me difficulty—“I do not make important decisions based on who I want to fuck.”

“I am sure that is very admirable,” observed Lisbeth, “but my sister was merely pointing out an additional axis along which your self-interest aligned with ours.”

With a strangely humanising sigh, Miss Vane-Tempest lowered herself onto a smug-looking chaise longue. “If it was up to me—” she began.

I have been practicing an expression of polite and only partly sincere confusion for just such occasions. I deployed it now. “Perhaps I have misunderstood; I was under the impression that it is up to you.”

“I have duties.”

“Which, by my understanding, include preventing exactly the kind of catastrophe that will inevitably unfold in the event that the Prince of Wands succeeds in his endeavour—even if he takes no malevolent action after achieving godhood, the process of transformation will destroy quite a large part of Scotland. It feels to me as if in this situation your desires and your duties are congruent with one another.”

Softly, Miss Vane-Tempest lay herself down, propped on one elbow. Her smile was curious, perhaps a little flirtatious. “How does Kate inspire such loyalty? But you have a point. I shall need to take the pack north to deal with the situation, and it would be best if we were to coordinate our efforts. Whatever little alliance you bring together, we will meet you there.”

I bowed. I was not certain that it was the appropriate gesture, but the entire structure of this place created the expectation of formality. “Where shall we find you?”

Miss Vane-Tempest smiled. It was a wolf’s smile. “You won’t. You’ll be found.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

I Am Still Doing My Best to Resolve Things

The next individual I believe could be prevailed upon to come to the rescue of Miss Kane was the young lady she had herself rescued from a similar situation six months earlier. It is possible that my employer may have had misgivings about my recruiting Miss Kyprianides for this adventure, citing her relative youth and the high probability that a vagary of circumstance or error in judgement could lead to the premature cessation of her biological function. My perspective, however, was that the lady in question appeared to have an intimate connection to the power that Mr. Douglas presently sought to usurp, and that she might, therefore, not only prove useful but also feel that she had a right to at least be invited to participate.

Initially I attempted to locate Miss Kyprianides at her father’s house, although I neglected to inform him of the precise details of the situation. I never had a father but I am given to understand they look somewhat dimly on the idea of their daughters embarking upon missions of certain death. To my dismay, he informed me that she could presently be found at the Royal Free Hospital but, to my relief, clarified that she was a visitor rather than a patient.

The Royal Free, as it described itself, was an amiable and trustworthy building of quite a modern disposition. Its work was complex and, no doubt, demanding but it did not like to complain. We located Miss Kyprianides by the bedside of a young man who shone both outwardly and inwardly. She herself possessed a similar light, although more concealed and at odds with an externality that was still in the process of shaping itself.

“Ah,” I said. “Miss Kyprianides. I have to come ask if you’d like to accompany me on a short journey to Scotland in order to confront an ancient vampire who seeks to claim the throne of Apollo by murdering Miss Kane.”

She gave me what I believe I correctly interpreted as a look of perplexity. It had, I suppose, been rather a lot of information to encompass in a short space of time, a task that, in retrospect, could not have been made easier by my delivering it while standing beside my exact duplicate. “I’m sorry... I’m not sure I understand.”

“There is no need to apologise. The error was mine. I should have explicated the matter more thoroughly.”

“It’s not that. It’s just”—she looked at the boy in the bed—“I’m not sure I can leave Samuel right now. It’s my fault he’s in here.”

This revelation was startling to me. “I had not realised you possessed such capacity for physical violence.”

“She doesn’t mean she attacked me,” said Mr. Samuel, opening his eyes and pushing himself up on his elbows. “She means she blames herself because I got in a fight with her boyfriend and lost.”

I blinked. I was endeavouring to do this more often. “It appears we are both dealing with very complicated situations.”

“Will Kate be okay?” asked Miss Kyprianides.

“I am not certain. I am attempting to build an alliance of sorts and have thus far managed to secure the assistance of two vampires, a pack of werewolves, Miss Locke, and a shadowy government conspiracy. But I believe your unique connection to the situation will prove invaluable.”

At this juncture, Miss Kyprianides looked forlornly from me to Mr. Samuel and back again.

Mr. Samuel reached out and took her hand. “Go. This is important.”

“But what about you?”

They gazed at each other for a long while. My experience in parsing nonverbal communication between other parties is even less than my experience of interpreting such nuances when they are directed towards me personally. Thus, I was not at all certain that my perception of unresolved tension and unspoken connection between the two young people was at all correct. Something golden and luminescent passed between them, but my perspective is limited and such exchanges may, for all I know, be commonplace.

“I’ll come with you,” said Mr. Samuel at last.

That, I thought, constituted an extremely satisfactory conclusion to the matter. Or it would have, had the wholly blameless door not, at that moment, been thrown inconsiderately inwards by Mr. Knight.

“Sofia,” he cried. My feelings for Mr. Knight have always oscillated between frustration and pity. He appears to my eyes a being of broken glass, beautiful in the right light, but liable to cut. “I came to ask what choice you had made, but now I see for myself.”

Miss Kyprianides and Mr. Samuel unclasped their hands with a quite startling rapidity and the young lady flew across the room to Mr. Knight. “It’s not like that! I just came to tell him that we’d always be friends but I love you, and always you, and only you.”

“I want to believe you, Sofia. You are my world. You are my everything.”

“I know, and I swear I’ll never hurt you again.”

“I can’t bear it.” Mr. Knight whirled away and once again assaulted the still blameless door by casting himself against it. “If I lost you, it would destroy me.”

“Ahem ahem,” I said, feeling that this was the appropriate juncture for a polite interjection. “May I clarify that everybody present has resolved to co-operate in the matter of rescuing Miss Kane from the Prince of Wands and preventing him from ascending to godhood, achieving near limitless power and potentially destroying a sizeable fraction of Selkirk.”

Mr. Knight stared at me blankly. “What?”

During the romantic altercation, Mr. Samuel had eased himself out of bed and replaced his shirt. “We’re going to Scotland to stop one of your people murdering an innocent woman and stealing a power that doesn’t belong to him.”

I was glad of the unexpected support, but considered Mr. Samuel’s conduct something of an outlier with respect to my understanding of the behaviour patterns of injured biological entities.

“You can’t do this.” Mr. Knight liberated the door and seized Miss Kyprianides instead. “He’s too powerful. It’s too dangerous.”

Far from subduing her, this action seemed only to strengthen her resolve. “We’re going, Patrick. Kate saved me. I need to try to save her.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“That would be most helpful,” I said. “Especially if you were able to drive, since we will not all fit into my car.” I turned to my sister. “I believe we are done here.”

She smiled. “I feel that went terribly well. Do you?”

I did.

My final destination in the attempt to assemble a team of powerful supernatural beings who might effect a rescue of Miss Kane or, as I was privately referring to it, Operation Secret Flamingo, was Miss Saint-Germain’s Soho nightspot the Velvet. I did not find it as trustworthy a building as I had the Royal Free. It concealed dark secrets behind coloured lights, a practice I considered most inappropriate. Given the hour, the establishment was not open, but I found my way inside through a negligent fire door that had allowed itself to be propped open.

Within, I discovered Mr. Ashriel reclining in one of the booths and apparently absorbed in a novel. I took a moment to observe him. I had met Mr. Ashriel only infrequently, but I had found the experience pleasant on each occasion. His form was well configured having been, like mine, constructed primarily for the gratification of the observer. Beneath there roiled a chaos of fire and darkness that he continuously endeavoured to shape into a form of his own creation. It was a struggle I understood and considered admirable.

“Do you enjoy reading?” I asked.

He looked up, wide-eyed. “Why are there two of you?”

“My apologies. Mr. Ashriel, this is Lisbeth. She is my sister. Lisbeth, this is Mr. Ashriel. He works for Miss Saint-Germain.”

She dropped into another curtsey, a behaviour I had not taught and which, therefore, must have been part of her essential design. “Delighted to meet you.”

“Um...so...” Unfortunately, Mr. Ashriel does not always seem as comfortable in my presence as I feel in his. I hope I am doing nothing wrong. “Is this...have you...are you here to see me or...?”

“It had not occurred to me that such a thing was possible. Now that I know it is, I shall make certain to do so in future if I am not destroyed as a consequence of our present undertaking.”

“Why would you think you couldn’t—never mind. What undertaking?”

I explained the situation and asked that he either permit us access to Miss Saint-Germain or convey to her the urgency of the matter.

Mr. Ashriel’s brows drew down, displaying a fascinating mixture of concern and resignation. “Is this for real? Actually, who am I kidding. This is the kind of thing that happens to Kate all the time. Julian’s upstairs.”

I thanked him and turned to leave. But he stopped me.

“Did you mean it?” he asked.

“Mean what?”

“That you’d come to see me.”

The question was surprising but not, it turned out, unwelcome. “If it would be agreeable.”

“I...yes.” He seemed momentarily at a loss. “I would like that very much.”

“I believe it is customary, in these circumstances, to ‘go for coffee,’ but as I am incapable of drinking, I feel I would miss out on an essential element of the experience.”

“Is there something else you’d enjoy?”

I thought about this. “I have seen some very interesting car parks. Perhaps I could introduce you to them?”

“Yeah. That sounds...yeah.” He gave me a practised and perfectly sculpted smile that I was pleased to see fully reflected in the sudden brightening of his essential patterns. “Let’s do that.”

Unexpectedly cheered, I said goodbye again and made my way up a somewhat devious concrete staircase. On entering Miss Saint-Germain’s office, I found her engaged in an animated telephonic discussion on the subject of a venue she had recently purchased. Waiting is normally one of my most inherent skills but, in this case, I felt that time was of the essence.

“Ahem, ahem,” I said.

She abruptly ceased her conversation. “What is it, Elise?”

“Miss Kane has been abducted by the Prince of Wands, who also seeks to become a god.”

I had expected a somewhat more significant reaction to this news, particularly given Miss Kane and Miss Saint-Germain’s personal relationship. Instead, she walked rather solemnly to the throne that dominated the northern wall of the room and sat down. “I’m aware.”

“Then you will be pleased to learn that I am in the process of organising a rescue mission and that I have already enlisted the assistance of Halfdan the Shaper, Mr. Henry Percy, Miss Vane-Tempest and her werewolf pack, Miss Locke, a sinister government conspiracy, Miss Kyprianides, Mr. Knight and an enthusiastic young man called Samuel. I believe our chances could even be considered favourable.”

She made no reply.

“You are not pleased?” I asked.

She propped her chin on her hand. “Pleasure doesn’t really come into this one.”

There was another silence. This was not developing as I had assumed it would. “I am confused. Of everybody I have approached, I had thought you would be the one most eager to assist us.”

“You’d need to have an actual death wish to be eager to go up against Sebastian Douglas.”

“I understand that he is powerful, but there are many of us and one of him.”

“You don’t understand at all.” Miss Saint-Germain’s attention seemed to drift towards the skylight. “He is ancient, devious and merciless. Even if you defeat him today, he will come for you tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. Forever.”

“But you will still help us?”

Once again, she made no reply.

“What of Miss Kane?” I asked. “She cares for you more than she admits.”

I was not certain whether I had said the right thing or the wrong thing because Miss Saint-Germain put her head in her hands. “I know. And I want to help.”

“Then help. Please.”

She was utterly still for a very long time.

“Miss Saint-Germain?”

The Prince of Cups was a strange being. Although her outward form was all fragility and delicacy, beneath I saw her essence shifting like serpents around silver. “I can’t.”

That was not the response I had expected. “In the strictest sense, you most certainly can.”

A vampire is a corpse inhabited by an immortal will, and never was I so aware of this fact than in this moment. Miss Saint-Germain sat in her throne like a dead woman, all semblance of life leached from her skin and her blue eyes as empty as the sky. “I have lived eight hundred years,” she said. “I have danced with Anne Boleyn. I watched from the top of the White Tower while the city burned in 1666. I saw Robespierre go to the guillotine and fled Venice the day before it fell to Napoleon. When the bombs dropped on London I stalked the streets feeding where I willed, and one night I rescued a child from the rubble of a bombed-out slum and watched her grow and age and live and die, all from the shadows. I have been more people and done more things than your mind can readily encompass, and I will not throw all that away for a mortal.”

I wished to respond, but could think of no response that would be of value. In my limited experience, when a person has decided to discard you there is little you can say to change their mind.

I left, hoping Miss Kane would not be too disappointed.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Choices & Sacrifices

The sun beat down on the Dream of a city. Far, far away I saw nine women bearing Nimue’s body across a lake. Somewhere, the woods were cool and green, but here and now, something had a grip on my mind, and I was trapped in a cage of iron and gold.

A man robed in sunlight stood before me. Sebastian. The man in the mask.

“You are so fucking dead,” I told him.

He smiled. I decided right there that I was going to murder him in the face once for every time he smiled. “I am. I have been for more than two millennia. But soon I will be something else entirely.”

“Where even are we?”

“Somewhere. Nowhere. The Dream.”

“Where in the real world, dickblanket?”

His eyes gleamed in his own personal sunbeams. “This is the real world. I think if I had to identify your single greatest mistake, it would be that. The world in which you have lived your entire life is, in essence, an irrelevance. Which is ironic, because you have also lived your entire life on the edge of another world—one so much grander and more beautiful than the material dross on which you have wasted your focus and attention.”

Yeah, that was all well and good, but I still had no idea where my body was. And whatever smug wizard bullshit Sebastian Douglas might spout, I was pretty attached to my body. It did basically all of my favourite things. “So you’re going to kill me?”

“Only incidentally.”

“Oh that’s a big comfort.” I really needed to wake up. C’mon Kate. You know it’s a dream, you know you’re unconscious. Just open your eyes.

“It makes a significant ethical difference. Not that mortal ethics have ever been my primary concern, but I would view it as an instance of Aquinas’s doctrine of the double effect. Your death is an unfortunate consequence of actions necessary for my ascension.”

Wake up. Wake up right now. “And you haven’t considered, maybe, not becoming a god?”

“What would that achieve? The mortal world is a wretched pit of violence and horror, and I will remain part of it no longer.”

Seriously. Wake up. You can do it. “And you don’t think all the murdering you’ve been doing might have been part of the problem?”

“You have always walked a fine line between entertaining and tiresome. It gladdens me that I shall no longer need to tolerate it.”

Okay, maybe you can’t do it. Maybe you just need some time. “This is why you’ve been so keen that I don’t get killed, isn’t it?”

“You seemed the most appropriate subject. The Merchant of Dreams would have been an acceptable backup, but I confess that the extent to which you waste your potential has always offended me.”

I bit my lip. Okay, not my lip, the Dream of my lip, or the memory of my lip, but either way the pain was something to hold on to. Something physical, or that seemed physical. Somewhere that wasn’t here, I felt the sharp pressure of my teeth and tasted the inside of my own mouth. It wasn’t much, but I took it.

“Isn’t this normally the point,” asked Sebastian, “at which you come back with a defiant but ultimately futile retort?”

On the other side of the Dream, there was metal at my wrists and the stifling midsummer air on my skin.

My eyes flickered open. I was chained to a wall. Iron chains. Obviously. Really couldn’t catch a break here. Directly in front of me, a sort of wide golden vat sat ominously. Yeah, that was a blood-catching bowl, no two ways about it. The horrid, gleaming dagger lying next to it was also a bit of a giveaway.

The Prince of Wands himself was nowhere to be seen, but I wasn’t alone. The slight, dark-haired young man I’d sometimes seen attending him—Hephaestion, I think? Cut me some slack here, I’m bad enough with names when I’m not tied up and about to be sacrificed—anyway, he was here too.

“Hey,” I tried. “I don’t suppose you’d get me down, would you?”

You’d think he’d maybe have cracked a smile, but he didn’t even blink. “I am afraid I cannot do that. The master has some business to attend to, after which he will expect to find you in your current position.”

“What sort of business?”

“That is not for me to say, or for you to know.”

Well, that was helpful. I looked around for anything that I might be able to use to get out of there. Honestly I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find—a casually discarded hacksaw that I could hold in my mouth? The problem with being tied to a solid object was that it really limited your options. I struggled against the chains, but that was a bust too. Terrifying wellsprings of preternatural power granting superhuman strength and agility: you never really appreciate them until they’re gone.

Nothing in the room gave me much of an impression of where I was or how I was going to get out. It didn’t look like the big, fancy ritual chamber that Percy—or Sebastian, now I thought about it—had set up under that manor we’d burned down. It was more basic, stone walls and a wood floor, almost rustic. Some kind of farmhouse? I shut my eyes again, hoping that I wasn’t just giving myself a one-way ticket to Sebastian Douglas’s private dream world. There really wasn’t much to go on, but I focused on what I could hear and feel. The air smelled relatively fresh, which meant I wasn’t underground, or not a long way underground. The stone behind me was cool which, with the weather, suggested it was relatively thick, or at least not facing the sun. That or it was nighttime.

Yeah, this was perilously close to no information at all.

I really hoped it was nighttime. It didn’t seem like daylight was a problem for Sebastian anymore and there was still a non-zero chance of Julian pulling me out of the fire at the last minute. Not that I was super sold on “wait around to get saved” as an escape plan, but it was nice to think it was there as a fallback. The room was quiet, mostly. Hephaestion had a surprisingly soft tread for somebody who, if I understood correctly, was made of the same heavy marble as Elise. I couldn’t hear cars outside, so we were either a long way from a road or a long way from anywhere.

Then I realised that I could hear something. I could hear wolves.

Maybe I was imagining it. Maybe it was a heady mix of hope and heatstroke, but I was sure I heard a howling in the distance. Perhaps that was the “business” Sebastian had to deal with. I couldn’t imagine the werewolves taking kindly to an egotistical vampire transforming himself into a god in their back garden. And I also couldn’t quite imagine Tara passing up the opportunity to put me in a situation where I might bang her out of gratitude. Not that I would. Partly because, y’know, relationship with possessive murdering vampire lady, and partly because I honestly have never been that into rescue fantasies. At least not this way around.

The howling had gone. Perhaps I’d imagined it. Perhaps they’d just got quieter as they’d got closer. And if they had, and if they really were here to sort all this out for me, then a tiny, irrational part of my brain resented the hell out of it. I like to think I’m a pretty together person all told, once you get past the drinking, the terrible taste in women, and the primordial connection to the ancient spirit of the hunt. But I do prefer to sort out my own shit myself. Maybe it’s a holdover from my time with Patrick, but I was not at all looking forward to owing my life to Tara Vane-Tempest.

Still better than death, mind.

I opened my eyes. “Hey, Hephaestion?”

“Yes?”

“If this place was in the middle of a full-on werewolf attack, you’d tell me, right?”

If the question had thrown him, he showed no sign of it. “No, I fear I would not.”

Figured. As long as they weren’t slitting open my pulse points and bleeding me out into a giant mixing bowl, I suppose I was still technically in the lead. “How about at least telling me where we are?”

He did that head-cock thing that Elise and her sisters all lapsed into when they couldn’t think of a more natural gesture. “Carterhaugh.”

Fuck. They’d taken me to fucking Scotland. I had to admit, I hadn’t been expecting it. “Well, that’s random and highly specific.”

“It is necessary for the proper working of the ritual.”

That made no sense. Dad was originally from around here somewhere, but he had nothing to do with this surely. And anyway he’d left a little while before I was... Oh wait, maybe it did make sense. “This about my mother, isn’t it?”

“I couldn’t say.”

He didn’t have to. The woods around here were where my dad had run into her back in the late seventies. I’d never had much inclination to go looking, but I was pretty sure that if I wanted to take a long walk in the Deepwild, it’d be a good place to start. “Wow, I’d at least thought I was getting sacrificed for me. But he’s just using me as a stand-in for my mum, isn’t he?”

“I am not privy to the master’s secrets.”

“Fine. Whatever you say.” I shut my eyes again and reached out with my thoughts. It was a bad idea, but what the hell. Alright, you scheming fuckburger, what’s the deal? Where are you, because I am ninety-five percent sure that you can hear me.

In true Star Wars style, I felt a presence. You realise that the next stage of this operation goes very badly for you. I would enjoy imprisonment while you can.

You know my friends are probably coming for me right now. I really hoped that was true. Although, honestly, friends was a stretch. But “a loose collection of randoms, most of whom I’ve slept with” didn’t have quite the same ring.

It would be an abysmal cliché to say I was counting on it. But rest assured that I have indeed prepared for that eventuality.

Don’t suppose you feel like telling me exactly what those preparations were? And maybe also how to get around them, and how to get out of this place?

I do—he stopped mid-sentence. Or mid-thought. Or whatever. I heard the howling again, and other sounds I couldn’t place, but which sounded worryingly like gunshots.

Something wrong? I tried to think it in a mocking tone.

“Nothing I cannot accommodate.” He was in front of me now. I hated how fucking quick vampires were. He retrieved the dagger from next to the evil sacrifice bowl. “The rite is more properly performed at midday, but your allies have proven more persistent than I expected.”

The badass thing to do in this situation would have been to kick the vat into his head and then throttle him with my legs, but the meticulous little shit had apparently had the foresight to chain my ankles as well as my wrists. Unless the fucker got improbably close to my teeth, my options for messing up his smug face were looking kind of limited.

He drew the knife across my skin. I felt my mother’s power flowing through me, and then out of me into that golden bowl. From inside his still-never-so-much-as-fucking-creased linen suit, he produced the Tears of Hypnos. Slowly, like the house chef on a cooking show from hell, he began to let the strange, rainbow-coloured fluid trickle into the basin. Watching an evil wizard-vampire mix your blood with a vial of distilled dream-essence is an experience that shouldn’t be on anybody’s bucket list. I’m sure it all adds to life’s rich tapestry, but there was a reason tapestry went out of fashion after Bayeux.

He bent down and dipped his fingers in the swirl of blood- and mystical-arsehattery. With his other hand he pulled something from inside his shirt—a tiny talisman made of bone and briars—and faffed with it in a way that felt magic, anointy and worrying.

“Should I ask?”

He gave me one of his smug, enigmatic looks. Not that he had many looks that weren’t smug or enigmatic. “A contingency.”

I tensed in the chains, hoping to catch hold of at least some part of my mother’s strength as it passed through my body and out of my veins. No such luck. Well, balls. If there had ever been a time for me to discover a previously unrealised reserve of unnatural power, it would have been now.

“If it is any consolation,” Sebastian said, “this is not going quickly enough for either of us.”

Somewhere very close by a door crashed open. Fuck, I hoped this was the cavalry. A pack of wolves and a band of heavily armed SWAT-types burst in. The moment they did, a wall of blue flames erupted in the middle of the room, cutting them off from us, and shifting patterns of silver runes appeared on the floor. The wolves stopped dead, snarling but showing a sensible level of caution. The soldiers, not having the benefit of millennia-long ancestral tradition of doing battle against supernatural foes, and putting way too much faith in their body armour, rushed forward.

It did not go well for them. Corpsefire burns you and rots you at the same time, which is a really fucking nasty way to die. The survivors pulled back, rifles raised. And, while I appreciated the thought, I wasn’t sure that high velocity bullets were the right tactical choice against an enemy that was human sized, immortal, incredibly fast and standing right in front of the person you were trying to rescue. At least, I hoped they were trying to rescue me. This might have been a no survivors no witnesses deal.

Sebastian sighed. “Did you really think that preventing my ascension would come down to kicking my door in and jumping on me? You may test my wards if you wish but I assure you they are quite impenetrable and, as you see, entirely lethal.”

I just hung there and bled. Perhaps the most annoying thing about this situation was that because, as far as I could tell, all Sebastian had to do now was wait for me to die, stopping to deliver an actual supervillain monologue wasn’t even going to hurt his plans. Bastard.

“I must admit, brother—” The honestly pretty unexpected figure of Halfdan the Shaper (last spotted threatening to murder me unless I got out of Northumberland) appeared in the doorway. “You’ve thought of almost everything.”

“It’s true I didn’t think you’d dare show yourself.” I couldn’t see Sebastian’s face but the back of his head looked really sneery. “Although that is your error rather than mine.”

The Prince of Wands extended a hand and a gout of blue fire billowed up around the Shaper. Then it was gone, leaving Halfdan standing unharmed with a smirk he’d been practising for a full millennium.

Great. I was chained to a wall in the middle of an ancient vampire smug-off. At least I could take a tiny amount of satisfaction in the knowledge that for about an eighth of a second Sebastian Douglas was on the back foot.

“Percy,” he said, in a tone that was half-realisation, half-threat.

Right on the cue, the Wizard Earl of Northumberland appeared, frantically incanting. He looked rough as hell, partly on account of the whole burning building thing which, in retrospect, I felt kind of bad for, and partly because he had that “all my will and spirit are committed to a mystical conflict I shall inevitably lose” air that wizards got when they were doing heinously draining magical crap.

“You of all people”—the Prince of Wands turned to his ex-minion—“should know the penalty for defiance.”

The next thirty seconds must have been really exciting and dramatic if you were capable of perceiving a quasi-metaphorical arcane battle unfolding at the speed of thought in the ephemeral neverspace between dreams and reality. In the real world, it kind of looked like two guys standing fifteen feet apart staring at each other and whispering gibberish. The flames guttered out, the silver runes vanished, the Prince of Wands staggered back the slightest of steps, and Henry Percy dropped to his knees.

Sebastian made one of those animalistic vampire noises that weren’t usually his style. “Your suffering will be immeasurable.”

“I just—” Percy didn’t even look up. “I don’t care anymore.”

The Prince of Wands screamed something in a language that felt ancient and primal and Percy’s body was consumed in a tower of golden flames. Before I even had time to feel sorry for the guy the werewolves and the SWAT team charged forward. Sebastian met them halfway, all wild eyes and sharp fangs and a nimbus of stolen divinity. What happened next was fast and horrible to watch. I’d seen him fight before, but only when he’d been more concerned with keeping his secrets than destroying his enemies. When he wasn’t holding back, he was a very different creature. Bursts of telekinetic force shook the room, scattering people and wolves like unwanted Lego figures, and at the same time, he tore at his opponents with teeth and claws. Werewolves heal fast, but dudes with guns don’t, and I really didn’t want to think too hard about the mess this was making of some broadly innocent mercenaries.

The whole nasty business couldn’t have taken more than a minute. When it was over, Sebastian was back in front of me, blood spattering his previously spotless white suit.

“This is becoming tiresome.”

My would-be rescuers had fanned out into a semicircle. Now the chaos had died down I couldn’t help but notice there was no sign of the Shaper. Two of the wolves had shifted back to their human forms, which—given that clothes aren’t part of the whole transformation deal—I’d have appreciated much more if I hadn’t still been kind of mid-sacrifice. One of them was Tara Vane-Tempest and the other was a redhead who I thought I recognised, although this was the first time I’d seen her naked.

“Heather?”

“You had to get yourself murdered in my back yard, didn’t you, Kate?”

“You know, I really, really meant to stay in touch.” We’d been friends back in the day—when I’d been living in the North, dating Patrick, and yet to work out that I preferred girls. At the time, I’d felt quite modern for having a lesbian best friend. Now I was really kicking myself for missing out.

“If you’ve quite finished”—the Prince of Wands sounded genuinely aggrieved—“I am about to ascend to godhood, and your attempting to catch up with old acquaintances rather dents the gravitas of the situation.”

More people bundled into the room. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Patrick forced his way to the front, snarling and posturing. I was slightly more surprised he’d brought Sofia with him and flat weirded out to see her new boy with them. I’d have said that must have made the most awkward threeway in history, but I tried not to think of Sofia like that because, y’know, basically a child.

“Sebastian!” Patrick announced. He had a tendency to announce things. “I shall serve you no more!”

With a tone of oddly sincere regret, the Prince of Wands sighed. “Oh, my boy, you had so much potential. And you proved yourself so very useful.”

“I’m done letting you use me.”

“That assertion would carry greater weight if you’d ever had any idea what I was using you for.”

I had no clue how this was going to play out. Patrick was a juvenile prick, but every so often, his creepy obsessive mindset made him a whole lot more effective than he should have been. For my own sake, I really hoped that this was one of those times.

“Enough!” And here it was. This was the point where either Patrick or the Prince of Wands got a really nasty surprise. Patrick flew at his former employer with a passionate intensity that should have been impossible in anybody over the age of twenty-five. Sebastian raised a hand contemptuously, twisting his fingers upwards. There was a hideous cracking sound and Patrick’s legs bent like pipe cleaners.

It didn’t stop him, though. Pushing through what must have been unbelievable pain, he threw himself forwards howling like...well, like an enraged bloodsucking monster now I came to think of it. That was enough to kick off round two. The werewolves leapt back in and, from my excellent vantage point of being chained to a fucking wall, I could see Eve bringing up the rear. She was keeping her distance and using one of those dart-launcher-wrist-things I’d seen her fight vampires with before. I was glad she was playing it safe-ish, because I really didn’t want her getting her neck snapped on my account, and she was way less invulnerable than most of my exes. While everybody else was jumping into the—in some ways literal—dogpile around the Prince of Wands, she skirted the edge of the room and sidled up to me.

“Hang on.” She swivelled her arm and some kind of blade popped out of her gauntlet, allowing her to begin levering my chains out of the wall.

Hephaestion, who had been dutifully guarding me and the bowl of god-making juice, turned to her. “Please refrain from doing that.”

Eve ignored him. She shouldn’t have. He grabbed her and yanked her backwards. She’d been doing this fighting-the-darkness thing for a couple of years now, but I doubted she’d ever taken on an animated statue before. She shifted her weight with a confidence that came from years of dedicated martial arts training and hit him on the side of the head. I was really glad she was wearing that armour, because otherwise that would have been it for her punching hand.

“He’s made of stone,” I explained. Slightly too late, I admit.

“Yeah, beginning to work that out.” She twisted free of Hephaestion’s grip and backed the hell away. “Any idea how to actually hurt this thing?”

“He is not a thing, Miss Locke. He is a person.” I’d been so distracted with the melee and the rescue attempt and the blood loss that I hadn’t noticed Elise coming up from the other side. “Mr. Hephaestion,” she asked, “might you be so kind as to allow us to remove my friend from this wall?”

Hephaestion turned again, with that weird quicker-than-you’d-think grace that the statue posse seemed to share. “I am afraid that will not be possible. I have strict instructions.”

Across the room, I saw a large golden-furred wolf fly backwards and slam into the wall. I was pretty sure it was Tara, and I was pretty sure she was bleeding badly.

“It appears to me,” Elise went on, quite unperturbed, “that the individual who gave you those instructions treats you rather poorly.”

“I fail to see how that observation is pertinent.”

For a moment, I saw the Prince of Wands clearly through the fray, his fingers closed tightly around Patrick’s throat. “If you guys could sort this out sometime soon, I’d be really grateful.”

Hephaestion hesitated. And Elise took the opportunity to move towards me, only to be cut off by a wall of blue fire, tinged with a light like the sun.

Another great psychic burst knocked everybody to the ground, even the statues. The Prince of Wands stood in the middle of the room, pale blue-gold flames between me and everybody else.

“That is quite enough.” He had no business being this calm. “Understand that I have the power to destroy everybody here and it is only the delicacy of my present undertaking that prevents me from using it. If you continue to push me, I will be forced to demonstrate the full extent of your folly.”

Elise stepped forwards. “With respect, Mr. Douglas, I have yet to meet any entity that is capable of physically harming me, and so while I would agree that the rest of these people should, perhaps, withdraw for their own safety, you may make no such threats against me.”

“Do you really believe that?”

From behind, one of Eve’s men sprang up and attempted to drive some kind of bayonet through Sebastian’s spine.

The Prince of Wands didn’t even blink, he just let the blow fall, and the man erupted into a pillar of fire. “As I say, there is nobody in this room I cannot destroy.” He gave Elise one of his condescending smiles. “And that includes you.”

Defiantly, Elise reached through the flames and yanked one of my wrists free. Sebastian raised a hand and spoke a few short words in a language I thought I recognised, but couldn’t remember where from. Elise froze. Her skin paled, and her eyes darkened. Reaching up with my free hand, I touched her and felt nothing but stone.

He looked me right in the fucking eyes. “You see, none of you are beyond my power.”

I pulled as hard as I could against my chains. They dug into my wrist, and clearly all I was going to do was dislocate my thumb, but right then I really didn’t give a shit. I was going to get my hands on this bastard if it was the last thing I did. Except I wasn’t. Between the iron and whatever magic the Prince of Wands had worked on me, I had no access to my mother’s strength, and solid metal wasn’t going to randomly break because I wanted it to.

Around the room, people were picking themselves up. Even Patrick looked wary. He’d sorted his limbs somehow and retreated to his standard position, hovering over Sofia like he was the only thing between her and painful annihilation. Which, in this case, he might really have been.

“And I see you’ve brought my priestess.” Sebastian stalked over to them. “My faithful tracker serving his function as ever he has.”

The fight seemed to have gone out of Patrick. It could have been the pain, but it was more likely the insinuation that he might have endangered his girlfriend.

The Prince of Wands took Sofia by the arm and led her gently towards me. He retrieved the knife-of-killing-Kate and placed it in her hand. “I had intended to carry out this stage of the ritual myself, but it would be so much more fitting if you were to assist me. And who knows, perhaps instead of letting Sibyl eat you, I will allow you to serve as my bride and oracle.”

This was too much for Patrick, who stumbled after them. “Sofia will never be your bride!”

Okay, things had just got a whole new level of skeevy.

“The term is entirely symbolic. I assure you I have no erotic interest in her. But heredity is as it is, and when at last I have assumed the throne of the Sun, she shall serve as my mistress and my voice on Earth.”

“That’s never going to happen.” Now it was Samuel who stepped forward. The jury was still out on whether he was a regular teenage boy or an evil monstrosity from before the dawn of history. For the first time in a while, I was really hoping he was a monstrosity.

“And what,” asked the Prince of Wands, “would you know of these matters, child?”

“More than you’d think.”

Yup. Monstrosity.

For the second time, Sebastian seemed genuinely thrown. I took it as a personal victory every time he looked something other than smug or exasperated. “You’re not?” His tone was caught between irate and unbelieving. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Sofia.” Samuel held out a hand. “Come over here. It’s really important that you come over here right now.”

Almost in a daze, Sofia began to walk towards Samuel. The Prince of Wands seemed curiously unwilling to reach out and snap her neck.

“Turn back, or I shall cause your lover unimaginable pain.” As if in illustration, Sebastian raised a hand, and Patrick’s flesh began to smoulder.

He didn’t scream. But the look of manly, piteous suffering in his eyes was just as bad. Sofia stopped. She looked at Samuel, at Patrick, then at me, of all people, although I wasn’t sure what the hell sort of advice I was going to be able to give her.

“Sofia—” Samuel was still holding out his hand. “Please, come over here and say that you choose me. That’s all you have to do. But you have to do it now.”

She was looking even more confused. “But I don’t choose you. I didn’t choose you.”

“I know, but, look, come over here and say the words and this will all be over.”

Sebastian moved his hand downwards, and Patrick’s flesh burst into flames, his skin blackening and necrotising as the corpsefire worked across it. Sofia glanced towards him, then ran into Samuel’s arms.

“I choose you,” she cried. “Please, if you can stop this, I choose you.”

And the room filled with daylight.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The End & Nothing Else

Everything had changed, and nothing had changed. I was still mostly tied to a wall, Elise was still a chunk of lifeless stone, and nearly everybody who’d come to rescue me was still battered, bleeding, or dead.

But the fire in front of me had vanished, and while the iron around my extremities was still bunging up my senses like a thick blanket, Sebastian’s eerie presence in my mind seemed to have gone too. Patrick had stopped writhing in agony, and the new boy in Sofia’s life was now bathed in golden light and looking a whole lot less like a teenager than he had ten seconds ago.

“It is over, usurper,” he said.

The Prince of Wands straightened his lapels. “I assure you, it is far from that.”

“The power you stole has been returned.”

“I still have plenty of my own.”

“None that will help you against the sunlight.”

“Do not be so sure. Your kind have weathered modernity far less well than mine.” Sebastian surveyed the room. Now the fight was over, he’d settled back into the implacable, immaculate calm that I always found so infuriating. You shouldn’t be able to carry that shit off covered in blood, but he somehow managed it. “As for the rest of you, you have made an enemy today.”

“You will never...” Patrick’s voice was harsh, faltering. He was royally fucked, but it still wasn’t enough to stop him grandstanding. “You will never harm Sofia again.”

“Had you permitted my ascension, I would have been incapable of so doing. As it stands, I’m afraid all bets are off.”

Eve peeled herself away from the wall. From the way she was holding her ribs, it seemed like she’d taken a nasty fall. “Big words from someone we just beat.”

“You believe”—the Prince of Wands folded his hands neatly in front of him—“the fact that two werewolf packs, an ancient vampire, a former servant with access to far too many of my secrets, a squad of fully armed soldiers, a prophetess, her guardian, and an actual god were, between them, able to fight me to a standstill reflects poorly on my capabilities?”

The great golden wolf, its wounds already closing, shifted and stood upright, becoming Tara Vane-Tempest in her more bipedal, more distracting form. “I think it reflects poorly on your chances of leaving this place alive.”

I glanced round. She did kind of have a point. We were in a stone room underground with one exit. Unless Sebastian had something very sneaky up his sleeve, he was totally fucked.

I was not betting on him being totally fucked.

As the wolves closed in, his hand tightened around the tiny bone and briar amulet that he had, in good Blue Peter style, made earlier. He vanished in a flurry of fallen leaves and a gust of air that smelled of uncut trees and hunters’ dens. My mind was still fuzzy from the iron, but in the Deepwild, my mother’s head came up sharply. Trespasser.

Patrick made a futile grab for the space where the Prince of Wands had been and Tara swore the way only a truly posh person could. While everyone else was either licking their wounds or flipping their shit, Eve limped over to my side and began working me free of the last shackles.

When she was done, I slumped to the ground, absently rubbing the marks where the metal had bitten into me. I’d expected to feel more... I don’t know...angry, shocked, scared? But I was kind of done right now. Just...done. I mean, what the fuck was even happening? The room was a babble of people planning, emoting and stressing. Sofia’s new boytoy was standing in the middle of it all glowing like a white shirt in a nightclub. And Elise...

Fuck. Elise.

I could recognise a statue when I fucking saw one but I hauled myself up and called her name and touched her face and did a bunch of other stupid shit that I knew would never help or make a difference. She looked so perfect, so like herself, as if she was just on the other side of alive. But there was only stone and stillness.

“Kate...” Eve put a hand on my arm.

Which was absolutely the last fucking thing I wanted. Flinging her off, I whirled around and saw Hephaestion, all fucking demure in the corner like he hadn’t helped reality’s biggest arsehole destroy my only fucking friend.

“What did he do to her?” It came out quite screamy, but I was way beyond the point of give a shit.

“He quenched her animating fire.”

I punched him in the face and immediately regretted it because I’m pretty sure I broke my hand. Couldn’t quite feel it though. He didn’t even blink. “How do we unquench her?”

“I’m afraid I am not privy to the master’s secrets. And you will find striking me unproductive.”

I hit him again anyway, and my hand protested loudly. Yep, definitely broken.

“Kate.” That was Eve again. This was her for-fuck’s-sake voice not her I’m-sorry-this-happened voice. “You have to stop this.”

I didn’t have to do anything. But I also didn’t have it in me to fight anything anymore.

Next thing I knew, I was sitting on the grass outside and somebody had put a blanket around me. My hand was taped up, and my cuts were bandaged.

I really needed a drink.

I didn’t keep track of what happened next. All I could think about was getting Elise home, and Eve eventually promised to arrange it. She accidentally called it shipping which made me want start punching things again.

The weird thing about being rescued is that once you’ve been rescued your job is over. Which was probably for the best because I was completely out of it. I barely even said hello to Heather, despite not having seen her in fifteen years. It made me a shitty friend, but why break the habit of a lifetime.

A bunch of people offered to take me home, but I couldn’t quite face six hours in a car—or even two hours on a jet—with any of them. I was going to ask somebody to take me to the nearest railway station, but it turned out that was in Carlisle. In the end, I let Eve put me in a sinister black transit van with one of her squads of quasi-legal paramilitary monster hunters. It was a pissing miserable drive back south, but at least none of them seemed interested in talking to me, and they’d lost enough of their own in the operation that they didn’t seem particularly inclined to make me feel better about anything that had happened. Honestly I think I slept most of the way back. And for the first time in a good long while, nobody came to speak to me in my dreams.

It was well after dawn by the time we got to London—one of those heavy summer mornings. The Velvet was closed. The fire escape was open. Ashriel caught me by the arm as I was showing myself through the security doors that led up to Julian’s office.

“Kate, are you okay?”

I looked around at those intense, hypnotic eyes, that love-me-’til-you-die face that would have let him feed on lust and souls for the rest of eternity if he hadn’t chosen to cut himself off. “Go to hell, Ash.”

His fingers tightened. “Seriously.”

“Seriously, go to hell.” I shoved him backwards and went on up the stairs, through the storage room where they kept all their cabaret tat when it wasn’t being used, and into Julian’s office.

She was there, like usual. Sprawled in her actual honest-to-god throne, like usual. Grinning like a cat, like usual.

“Sweeting,” she purred. “I’m so glad you haven’t been murdered horribly.”

“Fuck you, Julian.”

The grin had gone. “That seems a little harsh.”

Did it? Did it really? “Harsh? You fucking abandoned me. You left me to fucking die.”

In the daylight, she couldn’t move as quickly as she might have done, but she still managed to cross the room towards me faster than I could back away. “It was complicated, and I was relatively sure you’d come back in one piece.” She reached up to touch my face, and I pulled back sharply. “You’ve been in worse scrapes, after all.”

“Worse scrapes. A two-thousand-year-old vampire with magical powers was trying to turn me into his personal stairway to heaven. What worse scrapes have I been in?”

She gazed up at me. Humility wasn’t her style and neither was regret, but just for a moment there was something in those too-blue eyes. “You’re right, I’m sorry, that was dismissive of me. And I knew you were in real danger, but there was nothing I could do about it.”

“That’s not what Tara thought. That’s not what Elise thought. Fuck me, Julian, that’s not what even my self-obsessed schlong of an ex or his completely mortal and essentially powerless human girlfriend thought. Pretty much everybody else in my life who wasn’t already neck deep in their own shit came and tried to actually help me.”

In the sunlight, she looked very small. Perhaps I was imagining it, but it felt colder today than it had been for a while. “I dare say they did not know Sebastian Douglas as well as I do.”

“You—” I was having real trouble getting the words out. “You fucking coward. When the King of the Court of Love came for you, I made a blood oath to a witch, crawled through a sewer, fought a faery lord, and killed a vampire prince all to get you back.”

“You always did have a flair for the dramatic.”

My hand came up but, somehow, I stopped myself. The Palace of Wrath howled its disappointment.

Julian had gone very still in that forgetting-to-be-human way. “Don’t make an enemy of me, sweeting.”

“I just can’t believe...” My shoulders slumped. I wasn’t sure what I couldn’t believe. I’d spent so much time telling myself I knew what she was. I guess I’d somehow never thought she’d be that to me.

“I am eight hundred years old, Kate.” Her voice had that forced calmness that people got when they were trying not to laugh, cry, or scream. “I have buried more lovers than you will ever know, and it has hurt me every time, but I have never let it destroy me. And though you may not want to hear it, I do care for you. I care for you very much.” She looked down. I had no idea what she was feeling but I hoped to fuck it was shame. “The thing is, I care for myself a lot more.”

I turned my back on her, and saw Ashriel hovering in the doorway. “They didn’t teach you not to eavesdrop in the Palace of Lust, then?”

“Look, I wanted to say I’m sorry. Elise told us what was going on, and I would have gone with her but I owe Julian a lot and if I’d been there then the whole thing could have blown back on her and so—so it was complicated.”

This had gone beyond too much. “Well, I’m glad everyone’s sorry and I’m sorry that it’s complicated. But I’m afraid in the real world I wanted to but I didn’t doesn’t count for much. And as for Elise, I’m afraid she’s kind of dead now so, yeah, guess you really fucking blew that one, didn’t you. So. Umm. Fuck you both and goodbye.”

The look on Ashriel’s face made a tiny, bitter part of me incredibly satisfied in ways I was sure I’d feel bad about much, much later, but right then you could have fit all the shits I gave about him, his boss, and their oh-so-difficult relationship with Sebastian Douglas into a vole’s scrotum. I pushed past him and down the stairs. Down the stairs and out the door. Out the door and out the club and out the world of Julian Saint-Germain.

It was morning on Midsummer’s Day. A cool breeze blew on my face, and golden sunlight danced on the pavement and glittered off the windows of cars and restaurants and that one red phone box that had somehow survived the rise of the mobile networks. The sky was the perfect shade of just too blue, and all around me, the life of the city played on as if nothing had changed and everything was possible.

By noon, I was drunk.

Epilogue

Ink & Parchment

I heard later that the werewolves had done a kind of controlled demolition on the Tears of Hypnos, taking the Tears ’n’ Kate Blood cocktail to the borders of the Deepwild and something something boundaries between realities something something who gave a fuck. They took in Hephaestion as well, but if he told them anything useful, they didn’t pass it on to me. Not that I’d expect them to. For a while, I could feel the Prince of Wands in the Deepwild, but he soon vanished into shadow. Because of course he did, the slippery fucker.

If I’m honest, I don’t remember a lot of what happened in the next few months. I slept late, worked when I couldn’t put the bills off any longer, and spent as much time wasted as I could manage. My life was punctuated by a rotating set of socially mandated visits that put a bit of a crimp on my mission to drink myself into oblivion.

Sofia would check up on me more often than a teenage girl should really be checking up on a woman in her mid-thirties. She seemed to have recovered remarkably well from discovering the nice normal boy who’d offered her the chance of a life without constant supernatural conflict was actually Apollo. Then again, she’d got over finding out that Patrick was a vampire and that she was some kind of oracle, so I suppose this was all fairly close to being normal relationship drama for her.

Every week or so, I’d make a plan to visit Nim in the hospital then fail to get around to it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see her, I just couldn’t face speaking to any members of her family or her court. And it wasn’t like there was really anything to visit. She was in one of those should-be-dead comas that pretty much screamed “magical intervention” to anybody who’d seen as much of the world’s weirdness as I had.

Maybe it was my imagination, but the news—especially the local news—seemed to get steadily shittier as time went on. The weather calmed down a bit now that nobody was fighting for control of the sun, but with the mystical soul of the city up for grabs, there was a good chance of things spiralling out of control. Or not. What did I know, really? After all the pissing about with oaths and magic wars and dreams and actual fucking knife fights, I was pretty much ready to let reality sort itself out.

I missed Nim, though. Some days. Other days I got this pissy little feeling that every single fucking thing that had happened since who the fuck knew when was part of some crazy witchy master plan and she’d been wanting things to wind up this way all along.

Eve had told me she’d take care of Elise’s body. I hadn’t gone to see her. It would have felt practically ghoulish. I’d kicked Lisbeth out for pretty much the same reason. It was kind of shitty not to let her stick around while she sorted herself out, but it would honestly have done my head in, and I think Sofia managed to talk her dad into letting her stay with them for a bit—said she was a friend’s older sister or something. If that girl doesn’t die of niceness poisoning before she’s twenty, I’ll be amazed.

One evening in September (I think it was September, I’ve mentioned the “spent most of my time wasted” thing, right?) I’d made another abortive attempt at visiting Nim, which ran late, then stopped for a drink on the way back, which ran later, so I wound up stumbling back to my flat at close to midnight. If I’d been more sober, I’d have noticed that my door had been tampered with, but I wasn’t so I didn’t. Nothing struck me as out of the ordinary until I got into the front room and saw Hephaestion waiting for me.

“I know you can’t feel pain,” I said, “but believe me, I can put a lot of effort into trying.”

He inclined his head slightly. “I can’t stay long.”

“Too fucking right you can’t.”

“I have something for you.”

“If it’s not Sebastian’s head on a spike, I’m not interested.”

He didn’t react. He never reacted. Elise had got good at reacting. She’d worked really fucking hard at it. “It’s a book.”

“Not a big reader.” I eyed up my living room looking for anything that might actually damage a man made of living rock. Nope. Not a damn thing.

“It belongs to my master. It contains his researches on the animation of the inanimate.”

“Well, whoop-de-fucking-do. And that helps me how?”

He placed the book gently on the table. “What you make of it is up to you. But it contains within it the secrets of animating beings such as myself. Or of reanimating them.”

I was so off my face that it took me a while to work out what he was getting at. Enough of a while that he’d already bowed politely and started walking out the door. “Hang on,” I began, once I’d got my head in the game, “why are you giving this to me?”

He turned. “I am not. I was never here. It would be unthinkable for me to disobey His Highness in such a way. But if I had, it would have been because although I only met your friend briefly, I valued the way she saw me.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “You know your master is an evil shit, right?”

“Perhaps. But he needs me. Now more than ever.”

Once he was gone, I looked at the book. It was old. Proper handwritten on bits of dead cow old. At least I hoped it was bits of dead cow. The Prince of Wands didn’t quite seem the bound-in-human-skin sort but there wasn’t much I’d have put past him. Most of it was in a language I couldn’t read, but that wasn’t necessarily a problem. Sure I hadn’t been able to look any of Nim’s followers in the eye since the battle of Camlan Road, but I’d find somebody, or something. And maybe it wouldn’t work, maybe gone was gone for people made of rock, just like for people made of meat. But it had to be worth a try.

It was kind of the least I could do. And it always paid to have a project.

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to the usual people I thank for the usual things, and my editor Stephanie Doig for all her work on this book.

About the Author

Alexis Hall was born in 1764 and sustains his unnatural existence by the usual methods of drinking blood, avoiding sunlight, and brooding. He writes fiction from deep within a crumbling mansion with one wrist pressed to his forehead.

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ISBN-13: 9781488057014

Fire & Water

Copyright © 2020 by Alexis J. Hall

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