The Shifting Price of Prey (18 page)

‘Genny?’

. . . whereas mine were way smaller. Tiny even. In fact, I was virtually flat-chested. I could never get a cleavage like Sylvia’s, not even with a padded bra. Maybe I could get a pair of
those silicone chicken breast thingies . . . or there was always plastic surgery . . . hmm, that might be the easiest, especially with my quick healing . . . and now I was earning more I could
probably afford—

‘Genny!’

I jerked my gaze from Sylvia’s boobs to her exasperated face. ‘What?’

‘Why are you staring at my chest?’

‘I’m not.’

She gave me a ‘pull the other one’ look. ‘You were!’

Shit, she was right. Embarrassed heat stung my cheeks. What the fuck was wrong with me? Mentally I shook my head, shoving stupid thoughts about plastic surgery where they belonged.

‘Sorry, Syl,’ I said, stepping back, ‘I was just admiring . . .’ I waved my hand vaguely at her.

‘Gosh, ’s’okay, Genny.’ She smiled, a pleased glint in her eyes. ‘My boobies are glorious, aren’t they? They’re even bigger now I’m pregnant, and
Ricou loves them. Says they’re—’

‘Don’t wanna know, Syl!’ I quickly held my hands up before she hit me with TMI about her and Ricou’s love life. Something she was fond of doing. Dryads don’t do
personal boundaries well. ‘What were you standing around in the dark for anyway?’

‘Waiting up for you, of course,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But, gosh, I really didn’t expect you to be so late, and I was tired, so I was just having a little nap.’ She
looked down, and slowly lifted one foot then the other as she carefully pulled the net of hair-like roots out of the wooden floorboards. The scent of green, growing things filled the room.
‘Baby Grace has been kicking like a lumberjack in hob-nailed boots all day,’ she added, snagging my hand and placing it on her barely there bump with a contented smile.

Baby Grace. Joy and happiness spread like warm honey through me. Baby Grace was the one wonderful thing to come out of the sacrifice my friend Grace had made to save me last Hallowe’en.
I’d unintentionally trapped her soul in her pentacle necklace, but once I’d realised I’d let her go, and her soul had moved on into Sylvia’s baby. I wasn’t clear if
Grace was being reborn, reincarnated, or how it all worked, but for me Sylvia’s baby having Grace’s soul made her and her mother even more special.

‘That’s my gorgeous girl,’ I murmured, grinning as Baby Grace said hello in her usual enthusiastic way. Then I quickly modified the grin to a sympathetic grimace as Sylvia shot
me a narrowed look, one that heralded another lecture about babies and bladders. ‘You really shouldn’t be waiting up for me, Syl. C’mon, off to bed with you,’ I said, gently
trying to steer her towards the oak wardrobe hulking near my bedroom door.

Through the back of the wardrobe was Sylvia and Ricou’s own private patch of
Between
; their magically created living space outside the humans’ world. Whoever introduced
Sylvia to the Narnia books had a lot to answer for; if it hadn’t been for them, my protest that my one-bedroom attic flat was too small for us all to share, and that the pregnant pair should
live somewhere safer and more comfortable, would’ve held water. Though, truthfully, while having Sylvia and Ricou as flatmates, was strange at times and not without its complications, it was
great.

Sylvia pouted. ‘But I wanted to talk to you, Genny. And look, I’ve got all your stuff ready.’ The light globe brightened to full-moon strength as she draped an arm over my
shoulders and waved a graceful hand at the floor where there was a large sheet of blue plastic.

The blue plastic was my magic neutralising gear. The sheet was marked with two circles, a large eight foot one with a smaller three foot one offset inside. I’d
drawn
the circles
with a mix of ground amber, dried unicorn faeces and my own blood after dissolving juiced-up ricepaper runes – very expensive, very elaborate, ricepaper runes – into the mixture to
power it up. The magical ink meant I didn’t have to use the traditional sand and salt (cheap, but hell to cart around and messy to clean up) or buy one of the rare etched-by-dwarves silver
and copper circle chains (easier to carry, but even with the inbuilt protections they’re a magnet for thieves). And though pricy to make, my blue plastic spell-neutraliser kit was worthless
to anyone else since it was
keyed
only to me. I was quietly proud of it – the result of hours of painstaking trial and error – and was thinking of patenting it, once I’d
worked out how to bring the cost of the runes down.

If I could
cast
my own spells, my life would be so much easier.

I shoved the constant frustration away and gave Sylvia a quick hug. ‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’

‘Gosh, no worries, Genny.’ Sylvia grinned happily. ‘It’s the least I can do. And, look, I’ve even put salt out for you.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ I said again, eyeing the six-inch block of salt sitting in the smaller circle. Sylvia hated salt, always saying that just thinking about it clogged up her sap, so she
really was being helpful . . . so helpful that my ‘what’s she after’ antennae started twitching.

She stroked a finger down the lapel of my jacket. ‘This is new, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’

She tilted her head curiously. ‘What happened to the clothes you were wearing?’

‘Got damaged when I tangled with a spell.’ Not a lie, but way better than telling her Malik ripped them off me. The last thing I wanted was an interrogation about my love life,
however well intentioned.

‘Goodness. Must have been a hard one.’

An image of Malik naked flashed in my mind.
Oh boy!
I swallowed, then managed a weak, ‘Yep. It was.’

‘Still, the jacket is nice. Not your usual colour, but the lilac suits you. Now why don’t I help you out of it’ – she grasped the jacket and I let her tug it off, only
just managing not to jump as her hand trailed down my spine and came to rest on my hip – ‘and while you’re doing your spell-
cracking
, I’ll mix you up an
extra-special Bloody Mary and we can have a lovely cosy chat, just us girls together.’ She chuckled low in my ear, squeezed my butt then headed for the fridge.

I watched her, thoughtful. As passes go, it was about as subtle as if she’d flashed me a neon sign. Question was, why? I might have thought it was because of my boob-staring, if not for
the salt.

Not that I was too surprised. Sylvia didn’t have any gender preference when it came to sex, other than her own, which seeing she was co-sexual and had all the accessories she needed was
whatever she wanted it to be. She preferred to be female, though a few months ago, when her mother had sent Sylvia to court me in order to break the curse and she discovered my partner choice was
male, she’d offered to ‘change’. But that was then. Now she was pregnant and happy, or so I’d thought, with Ricou.

She turned, a highball glass filled with ice in her hand. ‘Gosh, haven’t you started yet, Genny?’ She rattled the glass. ‘Hurry up, otherwise this will melt.’

‘I’m wondering why I’m getting the special treatment?’

A gleam lit her green eyes. ‘Maybe I just want to see you naked.’

Right. ‘What about Ricou?’

‘Oh, gosh, he’d like to see you naked too.’ She smiled a little too widely. ‘But he’s out on search duty.’ Her fingers closed around the sapphire pendant
nestled in her cleavage.

Ricou was feeling guilty that he was going to be a dad again, when the rest of the fae were still in fertility limbo. Consequently he was spending a lot of time searching for a way to release
the trapped fertility, and not a lot with Sylvia.

‘So, you’re hitting on me because you’re feeling lonely?’ A possibility, but doubtful given the way she was clutching the pendant so hard her knuckles were turning
white.

‘Golly, of course not,’ she said, banging the glass down with frustration. ‘No. I’m hitting on you because I like you, Genny. And anyway, Ricou and I always
share.’

‘So you’re interested in a threesome deal?’

‘If you are?’ she said hopefully.

Crap, maybe she really was serious. ‘Um, Syl, you know I like you, and Ricou too, but I thought you realised neither of you is my type.’ Not to mention she was pregnant, so was this
really the time to expand their relationship to include anyone else?

‘Fiddlesticks!’ She threw her hands in the air. ‘I knew this wouldn’t work.’

A
h.
‘What wouldn’t work?’ I asked.

‘I told them you were still hung up on Finn. That you wouldn’t be interested in me and Ricou. But they wouldn’t have it.’

Finn. The cut-me-off-without-an-explanation-satyr-I-wasn’t-thinking-about.

I rubbed the ache blooming in my chest.

Sylvia’s green eyes filled with sympathy. ‘Just because he stopped writing, Genny,’ she said softly, ‘it might not mean what you think.’

I’d
kept writing up until four weeks ago. Not because I was hung up on him but because he was my friend. And I wanted to know if he was okay. Even if he’d never got my
letters, he knew there was no way I could contact him other than through his family so he’d have found a way to check why I seemed to be giving him the silent treatment . . . if we’d
really been the friends, never mind the anything more, I’d thought we were.

Crap. I’d promised myself not to waste any more time on him.

‘Who are they, Syl?’

She gave me a long troubled look, obviously wondering whether to push me about a certain satyr. But that subject was done. To my mind, anyway— She started to speak and I jerked my hands
up. ‘Syl, forget it. Forget him. Please. Just tell me who
they
are, and why they want you to seduce me?’

She shook her head, leaves rustling with a mix of frustration and irritation. ‘Goodness, who do you think, Genny? Our mothers!’

Right. The Ladies Meriel and Isabella: Head naiad and dryad respectively a.k.a. Ricou’s and Sylvia’s mothers. ‘Why do they want you to seduce me—’ I stopped as it
all fell into place. ‘No, let me guess: Spellcrackers.’

‘Yes.’ Sylvia sighed, her shoulders drooping. ‘They said we might as well make ourselves useful since we both insisted on staying with you.’

Damn. I knew the satyr herd elders wanted Spellcrackers back but this was the first I’d heard the Ladies had their acquisitive eyes on the business. Well, they could all think again.
Spellcrackers was mine, and would be until a certain satyr came back from the Fair Lands, which wouldn’t be for at least another two months.

I scowled at Sylvia. ‘You’ve been staying with me for three months. Why are the Ladies plotting now?’

‘Gosh, I don’t know. Mother wouldn’t tell me anything more unless I let her through the Wards. She said she wasn’t going to discuss matters of import while on a public
roof for all to listen.’

I gaped. ‘You kept your
mother
standing outside?’

‘Of course I did.’ Her expression turned to a mix of despair and mutiny. ‘I’m not that stupid. You don’t know what she’s like.’

Actually, I did. Lady Isabella hadn’t been beyond kidnapping me as a way of making me do what she wanted in the past. That she hadn’t succeeded was not for want of trying.

‘If I’d let her in,’ Sylvia carried on, ‘she’d have had me locked up in my tree in a heartbeat. She’s on about it not being safe here for me and the baby
again.’

‘Is she crazy? With all the protective Wards and magic here this place is safer than Buck House. Not to mention you can hardly move for all the dryads and their trees she’s got
camped out around here. They’ve had to divert traffic round the huge elm that’s taken root outside the front door.’

‘I told her that, but she’s suddenly got this bee in her bonnet that “staying here is dangerous”. Of course, it’s really about that Ricou. She’s still furious
that her grandchild is going to be half naiad, and how we’re never going to find a suitable tree. She only shut up about it when I agreed to have a go at seducing you.’

‘You made an
agreement
with your mother?’ Fae don’t make or break bargains lightly; the consequences are too unpredictable and can backfire on both parties even if the
bargain is kept. I couldn’t care less about Lady Isabella, but I did care about Sylvia. ‘Why the hell did you do that, Syl?’

Her eyes went wide with shock. ‘Oh my gosh, no, it wasn’t that type of
agreement
, Genny.’ She held her hand up, fingers crossed. ‘Just the kid’s promise,
the sort that doesn’t involve magic, you know?’

Relieved, I nodded. ‘You had me worried for a min.’

She smiled, then added coyly, ‘And, you know, you might have said yes. It would be so much fun.’ She paused, obviously waiting for me to have a change of orientation: Sylvia is
nothing if not persistent. I gave her a look. ‘But, oh well, you didn’t, so now I’ve kept my promise, I’m off the hook. So’ – she grabbed the bottle of Cristall
vodka – ‘how about I make you that special Bloody Mary?’

‘It’s okay, Syl.’ I took the bottle from her and put it down. ‘I’ll do it myself once I’ve finished. You go to bed. You and Baby Grace need your
rest.’