The Shifting Price of Prey (43 page)

‘Right, ladies.’ Mary held up her scrying pendant. ‘Time to get back to work. See if we can’t find this missing Irish wolfhound.’

Half an hour later we were still driving around searching for another hit. Then, as we passed the fifteen-foot bronze of Freddie Mercury rocking it outside the Dominion
Theatre, my phone rang. Unknown number.

‘You need to come to the Carnival at Regent’s Park.’ The voice was muffled, as if the person was trying to disguise it. ‘Your dog is here.’

Pulse speeding, I pressed speakerphone and tapped Mary’s shoulder. ‘My dog is at the Carnival?’

‘Yes. The Irish wolfhound. He’s here.’

Mary made ‘keep talking’ motions with her hands. I nodded and said, ‘The Carnival’s a big place. Where exactly is he? And who are—’

The phone went dead.

‘Hung up,’ I told Mary, disappointed not to have more info. ‘Still, at least it’s a lead.’

‘It’s a trap,’ she said briskly.

‘Then why not tell me exactly where to go?’

‘So you can’t tell the police, of course. And once you’re in among the crowds, it’s easier to snatch you and make you disappear.’

‘Nice,’ I muttered. ‘But we’re still going to follow it up, aren’t we?’

She gave me her cop face. ‘The police are, yes.
You
are not. Now let me have your phone so I can see if I can get a trace on that call.’ She held her hand out. I handed the
phone over with a scowl, determined Mary wasn’t going to leave me to sit this one out while she and her witches in blue went looking for Mad Max. By the time Dessa pulled into the temporary
Carnival car park opposite Regent’s Park Mosque, I’d managed to convince Mary to let me tag along.

‘But only if you remember you’re a civilian, Genny,’ she said firmly. ‘No running off on your own again, especially not after what just happened in Trafalgar Square.
You’re their intended target and I’m not losing you. I’m bending the rules as it is letting you join the search, so either you agree to stick with me or I’ll take you into
police custody for your own safety and lock you in the car until we’re finished.’

Looking into Mary’s implacable face, I saluted smartly. ‘Yes, ma’am!’

‘Okay,’ Mary said, ‘let’s get organised, shall we?’

I
nodded then realised Mary’s question was rhetorical, as she went into full Detective Sergeant mode. She and Dessa scryed again for Mad Max
– using a visitor’s map of the Carnival this time – and came up with a possible hit in the north section nearest the zoo. It should have made Mad Max an easy find, if the north
wasn’t the section with over a hundred of the smaller shows, all crammed together in what was meant to give visitors ‘a surprise around every corner’. The surprise for us would be
finding Mad Max at all, as the search was going to be like looking for a tick on a dog’s back.

Mary snagged some extra manpower from the nearby investigation at the zoo, and within half an hour the section was divided up and five separate search parties, each consisting
of three WPCs and a troll – I got to tag along with Mary, Dessa, another WPC and Constable Taegrin: ‘safety in numbers’ as Mary said – headed out.

The Carnival Fantastique has always been a place for Others to make a living, either by exploiting their own, or another’s, rarity. And the north section of the carnival was the area
reserved for the less usual acts. So the place wasn’t only crammed with shows but was also chock-full of visitors, the majority human, but with a smattering of fae, faelings and Other folk,
all eager to catch sight of something, or someone, different.

Finally Mary’s scrying crystal flashed faster as we turned into a short, dead-end lane with only four stalls, all of which had seen better days, and a corresponding scarcity of visitors:
two women at a spell and potions stall looking at a marble pestle and mortar; a burly man buying a phoenix burger (in a fireproof bun) from a fast food bar manned by a chipped concrete troll; no
one at the Ring-a-Rat, which wasn’t a surprise considering the weird-looking, two-headed rodents scuttling around the stall’s circular track; and at a herbalist’s barrow near the
willow wall making up the end, a young couple who were more interested in each other than any herbs, judging by the way they were lip-locked together.

The tourists (apart from the lip-locked couple) looked round as the five of us invaded the lane. The women’s eyes widened with curiosity while the burly man grabbed his burger and
high-tailed it away, to a narrow-eyed frown from Constable Taegrin.

Mary checked her crystal against the map. It pointed at the decorative willow wall blocking the end. ‘We’ll have to double round.’

Something about the location snagged my memory and I jogged to the wall. At its centre was a woven willow arch backed with mirrored foil. A label stuck to the foil quoted:
Extend your garden
vista safely: won’t scratch, chip or crack
. And as I squinted at my distorted reflection, it clicked where we were.

‘We won’t need to,’ I called. ‘This is an entrance to one of the Other areas. It’s got a Look-Away on it.’

Out the corner of my eye, I saw the lip-locked couple pull apart. The girl – a pretty, freckled redhead – nudged her boyfriend, who was well worth the tonsil tangling, if tall, dark
and handsome flipped your switch; obviously it did hers—

And Katie’s too.

I stared in disbelief.

Tall, dark and handsome was Katie’s new boyfriend.

Marc. Marc’s eyes met mine curiously for a moment then, as he realised who I was, colour stained his cheeks and he turned away, suddenly very interested in showing his redhead
girlfriend
whatever was on the barrow.

I clenched my fists, wanting to grab him and ask him what the hell he was playing at. This was going to break Katie’s heart when she found out. Crap. I knew the guy was too good to be
true.

‘You all right?’ Mary said quietly as she and Dessa joined me.

‘Yeah,’ I muttered, glaring at Marc’s back. ‘Sorry—’ I stopped as, from behind another section of willow screen, two more figures appeared: an older male I
recognised as Marc’s uncle from their picture on their plant nursery website, and a small, squat and disgustingly familiar gnome: Mr Lampy. The gnome was followed by one of his cats, its tail
held high. Marc bent to stroke it, nearly managing to hide himself under the stall as he did so. Well, looked like he
had
been telling the truth when I’d caught him spying on me,
about speaking to one of the gnome’s cats before doing business with Lecherous Lampy. Not that it made me feel any better. Neither did the fact that as the gnome saw me, he waved, mouth
splitting into his awful denture-filled leer.

I half-heartedly lifted a hand in greeting then suppressed a groan as he rushed over.

‘Ms Taylor, how fortunate to see you here.’ His beady eyes leered from behind his round glasses. ‘Doing a bit of shopping are you? I’ve got some juicy worms marinated in
sugar syrup with deadnettles if you’re interested? Jarred for portability? I know you fairies like those.’

Dessa made a choked noise behind me as I said, ‘I’m not a fairy, Mr Lampy, I’m a sidhe. And I’m not shopping. I’m here on official business.’ I waved a hand
at the four police officers. He had to be blind if he couldn’t see them.

‘Of course.’ The gnome nodded his lichen-covered head agreeably. ‘I won’t hold you up, then, but you haven’t forgotten about my licences, have you?’

Out-of-season desiccated dead garden fairies are hard to forget, much as I wanted to. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, Mr Lampy.’

‘Wonderful, Ms Taylor.’ He turned away, then spun back and leaned in way too close to my chest. I stepped back, bumping into Dessa. ‘There was another small item,’ the
gnome said in a conspiratorial voice. ‘The pathway on Primrose Hill seems to have developed a problem. Perhaps you could look at it sometime?’

Pathway? I frowned . . . Oh, right, there was a small patch of
Between
tagging Primrose Hill to some of London’s other green spaces that acted as a shortcut for a lot of fae. It
wasn’t really anything to do with me or Spellcrackers, but . . .

‘What’s the problem?’

He clasped his sausage-like fingers over his pot-belly. ‘I’m not really sure, Ms Taylor. I haven’t seen it for myself, just heard a rumour.’

‘Fine. I’ll look into it.’ Anything to get rid of him.

‘Wonderful.’ The gnome gave me anther denture-blinding smile and hurried back to his stall. The freckled redhead was still there talking to Marc’s uncle. The gnome’s cat
had been joined by another, and the pair were under the barrow, ears flat and bottle-brush tails suggesting a spat was in the offing. But Marc had obviously made himself scarce. Damn. I was going
to have to break the bad news about him to Katie; so not a conversation I wanted to have.

‘Juicy worms?’ Mary murmured. I shot her a look and she held her hands up. ‘Hey, just asking.’

‘Sorry. Disgusting client.’

‘Yeah, I can see that,’ she agreed, her sympathy only just edging out her mirth, then got back to business and indicated the willow arch with its mirror. ‘How do we get
through?’

‘Just walk,’ I said. ‘It’s an Illusion spell designed to stop anyone entering by accident.’ I stepped towards the mirror, only to have Mary’s hand clamped on
my arm.

‘Genny,’ she warned, ‘we’re doing this by the book, remember? Which means we need backup.’ She thumbed her radio. It crackled into life.

I sighed impatiently as Mary gave out orders, then pursed my lips at the pretty redhead, wondering if she knew her boyfriend was chatting up seventeen-year-olds on the side. And wondering why
she wasn’t slapping the disgusting gnome for so patently leering at her cleavage while bagging up what looked like a sheaf of A4 pages and various concoctions for Marc’s brother. Why on
earth would a nurseryman want all those magical ingredients? Curious. I pinged him: human. The girl, though, had a touch of fae, or maybe witch, blood—

‘Okay.’ Mary clicked off her radio, and I put the gnome and Katie’s treacherous boyfriend away to deal with later. ‘Backup’s on its way in ten.’ She motioned
to the other WPC. ‘Constable, wait here for them, and while you do take statements from the stallholders.’ She extended her baton with its jade-tipped Stun spell and pointed it at the
mirror. ‘Constable Taegrin leads the way, as he’s less likely to be affected by any magical attack. I’ll go next, then Constable Dessa. Genny goes last. That way if there’s
anything dodgy on the other side, she’ll be protected.’

Taegrin nodded grimly as Dessa extended her own baton with a ferocious snap. ‘Yes, ma’am!’

‘You know I could snag your Stun spells before either of you could blink, don’t you?’ I said drily.

Mary shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter, Genny, you’re still a civilian. Now, is there anything you can tell me about what to expect?’

I shifted through my mental Carnival files, and as it clicked exactly which Other area this was, an errant moment of mischief made me say, ‘A few shows, nothing special.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

Taegrin ducked under the willow arch, disappearing through the mirror. Mary and Dessa followed, and like the good little civilian I was, I brought up the rear. The mirror’s illusion
slipped over me like a chill breeze, and I found myself standing between my three protectors, in a visitor-free clearing, ringed by half-a-dozen exhibition tents. And when I say exhibition, I mean
exhibition
!

I’d read the shows’ listings on the Carnival’s manifest, but words on paper couldn’t compare. For a moment I stood and stared with the rest.

Tents one to three, respectively, offered:
Dwarf Smelting ~ Golden Showers a Speciality
,
Sing-a-Long Sea Shanties with Susie the Siren
and
Swan Maiden Dancing
. Though
if the gaudy painting of a swan-headed girl, scantily clad in white feathers and wrapping her long legs round a pole, was right, it definitely wasn’t the usual ‘suitable for
children’ show.

Standing in front of the next tent were two male centaurs, all arrogant expressions, handlebar moustaches and oiled, pumped-up muscles. The sign above them offered
Heavenly Rides
. Tent
five’s door flap was down, its sign turned round with ‘Closed’ scrawled across it in purple ink.

Sitting outside the last, rainbow-decorated tent was a small, green-skinned, pointy-eared leprechaun in a green cloak with his nose in a book titled
Silver-Tongued Devil
. At his feet
sat a hairless cat in a blue-knitted jumper, leg in the air as it studiously washed its junk, and surrounding both were stacked huge foot-high balls of multi-coloured string. Behind them stood a
massive bull-headed figure, hand on cocked hip, wearing a Spandex one-piece in shiny pink that did nothing to hide the figure’s melon-like boobs, nor its thick salami-like erection flanked by
what looked like a pair of overlarge apples. A rainbow-shaped sign hanging in the tent doorway challenged all-comers to
Chase the Minotaur to the Pot of Gold ~ String £50!

‘Fifty quid for a ball of string,’ Dessa muttered, breaking the stunned silence. ‘Even for a pot of gold, that’s a bit rich, isn’t it?’