The Shifting Price of Prey (20 page)

He answered on the ninth ring and, almost jumping up and down with worry, I demanded, ‘Did you give Katie that werewolf-repelling perfume yet?’

‘Aye, course I did, doll. I sent it her right after we chatted. Sent some to you too, ’twill be in your fridge. Why?’

The anxious knot in my stomach relaxed slightly. Katie was safe; the perfume should keep the werewolves at bay. And the Ward on her necklace would protect her from almost anything else.

I said thanks and filled Tavish in on the Moon tarot card. ‘So,’ I finished, ‘I obviously need to watch out for werewolves, but what about the knife? Could it be another
soul-bonding one? And if it is, why does he want it?’

‘Och, Soul Bonders are a rarity. The knife may be another thing entirely. ’Tis difficult to say why, doll, with only two cards revealed. ’Twill be easier to divine once the
full reading is complete.’

‘So not helpful, Tavish.’

‘Aye, well, I told you searching out the answers takes time.’

‘What about the fact that the Emperor’s holding the knife in the first card, but the Irish wolfhound has it in this one? That’s got to mean something?’

‘Nae doubt it does, and the cards will tell you in time.’

He sounded preoccupied, but then I could hear his computers beeping and the clack of keys in the background. I tapped my foot, anxious. ‘Tavish, c’mon, they’re your cards. Give
me something to work with here.’

‘Aye, but ’tis your reading. So ’tis catered to what’s in your mind and heart, nae mine.’

‘Okay, then how’s this for a theory.’ I closed my eyes, trying to fit the pieces together. ‘The werewolf on the card said the Emperor’s werewolves are coming for
me. It felt like a threat, but what if it’s not? What if it’s just a heads up? I mean, when I asked the werewolf why the Emperor wanted me, the Irish wolfhound chased the werewolf off.
And when I asked Malik about the Emperor last night, he started prevaricating, and he was under the Autarch’s influence.’

I leaned on the kitchen counter, head in my hand and clutched the phone closer. ‘So if we take it the Irish wolfhound, a.k.a. Mad Max, represents the Autarch, and the werewolf represents
the Emperor, then the dog stopping the werewolf from telling me things could mean that the Autarch is trying to stop me from finding the Emperor.’

I blew out a breath, trying to ease the tension in my shoulders. ‘Maybe what the card’s really telling me is that the Emperor’s beasts are coming for me so we can do a deal,
but that the Autarch is going to try to stop me meeting them. Which could mean the Autarch’s trying to prevent me from finding out how to release the fae’s fertility from the
pendant.’

‘Hmph.’ The sound of Tavish’s fingers hitting keys quietened for a moment. ‘Nae sure the Autarch’s bothered about the fae’s fertility, doll. But stands to
reason he won’t want you mixing with any outsider vampires, not when he’s always had a hankering for you himself. And I ken you said Malik does-nae think much of this Emperor, either.
So my money’s on the card being a warning for you to take care about the Emperor, and also a warning to keep away from the Autarch and Malik al-Khan till this matter with the Emperor is
done.’

Except I’d already agreed to Malik’s ‘date’ . . . if he ever phoned me back to arrange it. And the date wasn’t only to find out about the Emperor and the
fae’s fertility. I needed to talk to Malik about us. To work out whatever our relationship was. And I needed to know the beautiful vamp was okay.

Of course, if I didn’t go on the ‘date’ I probably wouldn’t need to confront Bastien the psycho, or my phobia.

But then if Malik were in trouble, I’d be leaving him to the sadistic psycho’s not-so-tender mercies . . . something I wasn’t prepared to do.

I decided not to mention any of that to Tavish.

Instead, I said, ‘If I stay away from Malik, it makes it harder to find the Emperor. And I’d rather find him before his werewolves find me.’

‘Told you, doll.’ Tavish’s irritation came over the phone loud and clear. ‘’Twill nae take me long now I’ve found his website . . . as a matter of fact,
I’m sending you another screenshot.’

I checked. The new shot of the Emperor looked the same as the last one except now below the Emperor, scrolling across the screen in Romanesque font, were the words: Forum Mirabilis.

‘Think it’s some sort of vamp chat room?’

‘I dinna ken yet, doll. Mirabilis means “Amazing”, or “Wondrous”,’ Tavish replied, his voice still distracted. ‘And there’s nae much that’s
wondrous about a chatroom. Anyways, soon as I find it out, I’ll let you know.’

‘Okay, but there’s a couple of things worrying me. First up, why did the cards show a huge cat thing instead of a crayfish? That has to mean something?’

‘Hm, could be something or . . .’ A silence. ‘Could be you’re more scared of cats than crayfish?’

‘I’m not a troll, Tavish,’ I said drily, ‘and I couldn’t care one way or the other about crayfish.’

‘Well, the cards dinna always show the literal truth, she may be picking up on your subconscious fears and having herself a bit of fun—’

‘Fun!’

‘Aye, she’s a creative type, so maybe ’tis a subconscious thing from last you were scared—’

Which was ten seconds ago. When I thought of the Autarch. Which meant the thing crawling out the abyss should be a vamp.

‘—Or last saw a cat,’ Tavish finished.

‘The gnome’s,’ I said flatly. ‘The place was full of cats.’ And I’d thought of the Autarch there, too.

‘Och, well, there you go, doll. Something scared you there and the spirit’s matched it with the cats. Told you, she’s the creative type. And she can be a bit ornery at times,
too’

An ornery creative type? Really? Dismay filled me. I’d rather have a pedantic-tell-it-like-it-is type answering my questions. A feeling that brought up my second, more important worry.
‘Are you sure the spirit in the tarot cards is trustworthy? That she can’t be compromised?’

He gave an exasperated snort. ‘Told you, doll. Those cards are sidhe-made.’

‘Sidhe can fudge the truth as well as anyone, Tavish. Seems weird that an out-of-town vamp, however powerful he is, who we’ve never heard of, knows how to release the fae’s
fertility. I mean, what if it’s a big hoax, or some sort of trap? What if the card’s spirit is out there chatting to this Emperor vamp, or to the Autarch, and they’re cooking all
this up together?’

‘She’s a spirit. She cannae talk to the living unless it’s through the cards. Only others she can talk to is like-minded spirits.’

I stared blindly at my scowling reflection, unwilling to let my ‘Bastien’ paranoia go just yet. ‘She’s like a ghost then? So a vamp could’ve got a necromancer to
talk to her?’

‘Nae, doll, she’s nae so much dead as disembodied and bound to the cards.’ Tavish sigh was mildly exasperated. ‘Told you, without the cards naeone can talk to her. And
right now, there’s only you can talk to her anyhows, seeing as it’s your reading she’s doing.’

Hmm. ‘What are like-minded spirits?’

‘Just that. Another spirit bound to an item, same as your blood-fruit bowl. And afore you ask, t’only way they can chat is if they’re by one another and I have the cards here
with me.’

‘I thought my bowl was a magical artefact?’

‘Aye, doll, ’tis that. It uses the power of the spirit bound to it to make it magical.’

Right. Made sense now I thought about it. ‘So how do the spirits get bound to an item?’

‘Och, maybe they upset someone, or make a bad bargain. There’s nae any way to ken.’

Nasty. And probably didn’t make for a happy spirit, which my blood-fruit bowl definitely was not; no wonder it was so snarky all the time. Only it wasn’t the bowl my paranoia was
panicking about, but the spirit in the tarot cards. ‘So there’s no way she could be plotting with anyone else?’

‘Doll . . .’ Another silence while Tavish obviously gathered his patience. ‘Dinna fash yerself about it. Once the reading’s done then ’twill all become clear. And
’twill nae be long before I’m into the Emperor’s website. That’ll give us more to go on.’

‘Okay, but—’

The phone went dead.

I scowled at it, wondering if it was worth calling him back, then shook my head. He knew where I was, and for all his distraction he was an invested in the outcome of the tarot reading as I was.
More so, really. So I should probably let him get on with his hacking.

I double-checked the new screenshot of the Emperor’s website against the previous one. Apart from the ‘Forum Mirabilis’ bit, there was nothing new. But the tarot cards said the
Emperor’s werewolves were coming for me, and never mind the ‘heads up’ theory I’d given Tavish, I’d be stupid not to prepare for the worst. No way did I want to end up
howling at the moon. Only I didn’t know much more about werewolves than Tavish and Katie had told me.

Time for some research.

I grabbed a blood donation bag, hooked myself up and pushed through the Ward on the front door and out onto the landing (where thankfully, the Wards hadn’t managed to nix the electricity).
Checking the Buffer spell on my laptop was clear (with all the extra security around, a thief would have a hard time getting into the building, never mind stealing the laptop. Not to mention,
computers were even more susceptible than mobiles when it came to getting fried by magic; Buffer spells only give so much protection), I pulled up the online witch archives. The information on
werewolves was in the public section.

I clicked on ‘Therianthropic Metamorphosis’ and started reading.

T
herianthropes are ‘Bitten’, ‘Changed by Ritual’, or ‘Born’.

If Bitten, the bite should be done the first day of a new moon for optimum success and can only be performed by an alpha in their beast (half and half) form. The hopeful victim gets their throat
ripped out (called, appropriately enough a Death Bite) and it usually takes them until the full moon to recover. If they do. Only one in ten males, and one in a hundred females, survive,
apparently. Though a quick side search via Google got me enough happy pictures of New Werewolf Celebrations to think the survival rates must be better than stated.

The only place the bite’s legal is Russia, for obvious reasons; the Russian secret service aren’t nicknamed the Silent Wolves for nothing. Bitten werewolves, both male and female,
are infertile (a note said to see ‘Changed by Ritual’ for more on werewolf fertility levels). Werewolves prefer to live in dense forested areas. Aren’t sensitive to silver, as a
lot of fiction states, but are allergic to wolfsbane, mistletoe and ergot, particularly when presented in tincture. They generally live a slightly longer than normal human lifespan, have high
resistance to most diseases, but are as vulnerable to death or injury as any other in their human or animal forms. In their beast form (half and half) they can only be killed by removal of head or
heart.

‘Good to know,’ I murmured, hoping if I did come across the Emperor’s wolves they wouldn’t be in their beast form, and made a note to get Tavish’s werewolf
repellent out of the fridge.

I clicked on ‘Changed by Ritual’. It took me to the secure section of the archives; if I wanted to read it I needed a password. Clicking on the ‘Born’ link took me to the
same protected page.

Curious, I texted Tavish and Katie on the off chance that one of them might reply, despite the late hour. Unsurprisingly, given Tavish’s earlier abrupt end to our phone call, it was Katie;
only her password didn’t work. Instead, I got a security warning. I scowled at it, sent another text to Tavish, then after wasting fifteen minutes on Facebook’s Magikville, during which
I managed to lose half my spellcaster points and ended up trading a golden goose for a dud magic frog. I gave up on my werewolf research, sealed my full blood bag and headed for the fridge.

As I reached for the door, my phone rang. The number on the screen was Sanguine Lifestyles; the vamp’s 24/7 ‘do anything’ service.

My heart thudded against my ribs.

‘Ms Taylor,’ a woman’s efficient-sounding voice said, ‘I have a message for you from Mr Malik al-Khan. He would like you to meet him at the Blue Heart, at midnight
tomorrow. Can I tell him the time and date will be suitable for you?’

Tavish wanted me to stay away from Malik.

Part of me thought Tavish was right and really, with him on the Emperor’s case, I didn’t need to ‘date’ Malik for any more info. Only as I’d decided before, that
wasn’t the only reason I needed to see him . . .

But the fae’s fertility had to be sorted; it had to take priority.

‘Ms Taylor?’ the woman’s voice prompted.

I should say no. I opened my mouth, but instead the words that came out were, ‘Thank you. That time and date will be suitable.’

She rang off and guilt twisted inside me as I opened the fridge. ‘The “date” with Malik isn’t till midnight tomorrow,’ I told the two dead mackerel, sliding the bag
of blood in to join the one already there on the shelf below. ‘That gives me plenty of time to see what Tavish might or might not find out, so if need be, I can always call it off. All it
would take is a phone call.’ The two mackerel eyed me balefully.