Vowed (10 page)

I scowl into the dark, wondering how he even knew I had decided to take on the job.

‘How did you know?’ I ask eventually.

‘You spoke the words at night, Kit. Of course Suola would be eager to pass that on to me. You know how she is.’

I try and stifle a full body shiver. How could I have been so careless? The Unseelie Queen’s domain reaches further than most. Suola will be aware of everything I say or do at night, in
the darkest of shadows, especially if the job I’m on is under her sanction.

‘Shit.’

‘Exactly.’ Uncle Andrew doesn’t bother to reprimand me the way Jamie would have for swearing. Instead he sighs heavily and I can feel disappointment radiating from him, even
across the many thousands of miles separating us. ‘So now you’re working with the Spooks. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You are your mother’s daughter, after
all.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ My tone is sharp and, right then, I don’t really care. I’m owed so many explanations about my life that I’m prepared to get into trouble
to get answers.

‘Only that you follow your head and your instincts and usually they’re good. Sometimes they’re a bit misguided.’ He sighs again. ‘I have a few things I found out
about your young Spook, Dante. I’ll email you what I’ve got. All I ask you is to keep me up to date with everything that’s going on. Especially anything he drops about who in
Suola’s court is feeding the Spooks intel. I’ll get our people working on it too.’

‘What will the rest of the family say?’ I ask him, still sharp, still a bit annoyed at his jab about my mum.

‘They’ll grumble and think you’ve gone over to the dark side,’ he says, his voice full of humour. ‘But I’ll assure them you’re a Blackhart claimed and
trained and know how to handle yourself.’

‘You guys are so full of it.’

‘Read the stuff I’m sending you on your new friend. Tell Aiden to stick around as much as he can too. I don’t want you going at this alone. I’m talking to his dad in a
few hours. I’ll keep you updated on stuff.’

‘Yes, sir!’ I snap out smartly and it earns me a laugh. ‘I’ve got to go. My frappe’s getting warm.’

‘Get some rest, Kit. You look tired.’

Bah, I hate it when he does that. I look around me and spot the CCTV camera above the door pointing at me.

I salute with two fingers to my brow and click my heels like a good soldier and know he’s watching me. Kyle didn’t get his tech savvy from nowhere. Pocketing my phone I head back
into George’s to find Dante on the phone. Possibly speaking to one of his bosses.

He rolls his pretty eyes at me in an apology when I sit down and grab my frappe.

‘Yes, sir. I understand.’ A pause. ‘Highly irregular. Yes. Understood.’ He nods a few times. ‘I’ll see you in a few hours and will make my report
then.’

He shares my grimace.

‘Do you ever feel like a pawn in a much bigger game?’ he asks me with a weary sigh.

‘All the time. The pawn that gets bashed around and beaten up.’

‘Sent on errands that lead nowhere.’

My frappe’s melting so I push it aside. ‘I was born into this; you chose it,’ I tell him. ‘You’re still young. You can leg it. Go somewhere else, do something
else.’

‘Huh, not as easy as that. I’m being put through uni by the SDI. Without it I get to sling burgers somewhere if I’m lucky.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘There’s no way they could afford it. Besides, they think I got a scholarship and that I’m going into IT. They don’t know anything about the SDI.’

‘That must be hard.’ It’s hard enough not being able to speak to other people about what I do. But at least I have my family, who are all so immersed in all the weirdness that
it’s not unusual to have long rambling conversations about it at breakfast. For example, on the luxuries of waking up and not having blue hair. All because a nixie got annoyed with you the
day before and slammed you with a blue-hair-for-a-month spell.

He shrugs eloquently and the edge of his T-shirt collar moves, revealing a further hint of tattoo. A part of me wonders how big the tattoo is. Something tells me it’s not tiny and I wonder
how intricate it is. My cousins Marc and Megan each have one on their left wrist, an eternity sigil. I find this quite sweet, as it’s a promise they made to always be there for one another,
no matter what happens. I realize I’ve been staring intently at Dante’s neck with a dazed expression and I snap my gaze back to his face and pretend not to see his amused expression at
being caught staring.

‘Your uncle not too impressed with us working together?’

‘Not really, but I think he’s prepared to let me run with this. I suspect he knows better than to tell me outright that he doesn’t want me to do it.’

‘Why did you decide to do it? I mean, you’ll be working with me. Your family will hate that. You’re not going against some kind of religious edict or anything?’

His question, although overly dramatic, stills me and I breathe out quietly. I decide to be as honest as I can.

‘I think no one else can help these kids,’ I tell him. ‘What
she
said is true, if we’re dealing with kids younger than Dread Boy and his little crew of Lost
Boys, any adults who go in there will be met with animosity. We don’t look like the establishment.’ I flick my eyes over him again and smirk. ‘We’re likely to get answers
and fast too, before these kids turn up dead.’

Dante’s dark eyes watch me intently. ‘I think there’s more, but I won’t pester you. My boss isn’t madly keen about me working with you either, but mostly I think
he’s worried I’ll run off and join you in fairyland or something.’

My eyebrows shoot up. ‘Or something?’

‘Yes, be lured to the Otherwhere and sold into slavery to some bad fairy or something and used as a pleasure toy.’

My eyebrows climb higher. ‘That’s what the Spooks think the Blackharts do?’

‘We have no idea what exactly you do. A lot of the files I’ve seen are old and yellow and falling apart. A lot of superstition and wild stories.’

I’m actually thrilled by this. The agency apparently doesn’t know every single thing about the Blackharts, which pleases me immensely.

‘Let’s go walk around for a bit,’ I say, pushing upright. ‘I promise not to sell you to anyone to be used as a – what did you call it? A pleasure toy.’ I
laugh at his scowl. ‘Sorry, I forget that we’re not in some swashbuckling Regency drama.’

He mutters something about me not being funny and that it could happen as he shrugs into his jacket.

We wave at the waitress and head out into the night. I lift my jacket off the back of the bike and shrug into it, flipping the collar up. The air’s become cooler and
fresher, with the breeze coming off the river. We head towards the newly restored
Cutty Sark.
The shape of the eighteenth-century tea clipper is lit by bright lights but it still looks
ridiculously exotic, as if it is ready to sail off at a moment’s notice for places far more exciting than Greenwich.

‘Do you want to go to the Brownie Market?’ I ask him after we’ve walked around for a bit.

‘I don’t even know what that is.’

‘Come, I think you’ll like it. It’s perfectly safe.’ I lead him down a set of steps. ‘These are the stairs to the foot tunnel that leads beneath the river to the
other side.’

‘Pardon?’ He stops behind me and looks down the long tunnel. ‘I’m not comfortable going down there.’

‘Seriously?’

He looks shocked by what he just said but he nods after a few seconds. ‘I’m not sure where that came from but, yes, the thought of going into that tunnel is making me feel physically
ill and I’ve never experienced anything like it before.’ As if to prove it, he sits down heavily and drops his head between his knees. His breath shudders through him. ‘Oh my God,
what’s going on?’

Okay, so this is really weird and I’m pretty freaked out by his odd behaviour. And I’ve seen odd behaviour in the past. This is something else and the way he just spoke, with his
voice a bit high and rushed, makes me more than a bit worried. I lean forwards so that my knees are on the step beneath him and duck my head so I can look at his face. ‘You’re sweating
and shaking. Are you scared of water? Enclosed spaces?’

‘No, not at all. I’m a strong swimmer and I’ve never had issues with tight spaces.’ He looks me in the eye and I’m shocked to see how far his pupils are dilated.
Genuine fear, I decide.

‘But you can’t come down there with me?’

He shakes his head and closes his eyes, obviously trying to get a grip on himself. ‘No. I’ve never embarrassed myself like this before. I’m not sure what’s going
on.’ He sucks in a deep breath of air and looks at me. ‘Can we please go somewhere else? It feels like something’s sitting on my chest and I can’t breathe.’

‘Yes, sure, of course.’ I help him up and we walk back up the river towards Queen Anne Court.

It’s a cold clear night but even so his forehead’s beaded in sweat and his skin feels feverish under the back of my hand. I make him sit on the stairs to the chapel and settle down
next to him.

‘Do you want to go home?’ I ask him, watching him carefully to see if any part of this is going to kick off into a proper panic attack. I’ve never had one, but I’ve seen
a young girl go into one when confronted by a goblin eating her dog, and it had been incredibly scary to see.

‘I’m okay, thanks. I already feel better. It’s just when I stood at the top of those stairs and looked down, it felt as if the world around me tilted and my knees just went
lame.’ He presses a hand to his chest and sucks in deep breaths of air.

I give him some space to pull himself together. On the other side of the river the buildings of Canary Wharf stand tall and proud, having grown out of the wreckage of the Second World War and
many years of urban neglect. I like looking at the new buildings across the river; they make me realize how London will always rise up from its ancient roots and shows a new face to the world.

‘Have you met any of Suola’s people before?’ I ask him to distract him.

He shakes his dark head and the wind ruffles his hair lightly, making his fringe drop across his forehead. I resist the urge to brush it back. The gesture would be too intimate, too strange
coming from me. I hardly know him and I’m not sure how he’d react because personally I’d hate it. I hate being touched by strangers and I always have.

‘Not face to face, no.’ Dante’s hands have steadied somewhat but even so he folds them together in a tight knot, twisting his fingers together. I notice that he has nice hands:
with long fingers, the nails neat and well cared for. ‘I’ve only ever heard my superiors talk about meeting one of her people, or getting a contract to work on something.’

‘What did you think of her Beast?’ The questions are meant to distract him enough so that he can think about something else, not about whatever made him freak out so much.

‘He seemed pleasant,’ Dante eventually says after some time, his lips twisting in a way and making the word ‘pleasant’ sound dirty somehow. ‘Isn’t that
strange?’

‘He did, didn’t he? Like someone’s kindly, slightly eccentric uncle.’

He nods, and his gaze is pulled to the reflection of the lights on the water. I can tell he’s trying to equate the man we met earlier with the savage murderer and torturer we know by
reputation. I somehow expected the Beast to look exactly like his namesake, something akin to the nightmares he induces in the Unseelie realm. Instead, we were given the well-dressed,
cane-carrying, middle-aged professor lookalike.

‘What do you think will happen when we find the people who’ve been taking the kids?’

‘The Beast will come and take them. It won’t be our problem any more.’

‘What if they’re human?’

‘They probably are human. The Fae are no longer allowed to steal children.’

The bleak look he gives me tells me he doesn’t really believe me.

‘There are treaties between us now,’ I explain. ‘And they’ve been around for several hundreds of years. Humans are safe from the Fae. Mostly. Unless they ask to be taken
to the Otherwhere; then there’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘Some people
ask
to be taken?’

I nod, remembering the young artist we found wandering around Dartmoor, his mind entirely gone.

‘Yes. And then we can’t stop them, not if they go into it willingly. Once they’ve signed over their free will to the Fae, the Fae can do anything with them.’

Dante shakes his head and leans forward, watching the black water of the river below.

‘Why would anyone do that?’

‘Fame,’ I say. ‘Fortune. Sometimes someone wants something so badly they are prepared to do whatever it takes to get it. Artists, singers, musicians, writers. There are records
that go back a long time that are evidence of this type of thing.’

We stand quietly for a few minutes before Dante slants a look at me. ‘I think I’m learning more from you in one night than in the time I’ve been with the SDI.’

I check the BBC website and it tells me when dawn’s supposed to arrive. Dante’s starting to look a bit hollow-eyed and I worry that he’ll fall asleep talking
to Melusine or on his way back to the office. We huddle near the
Cutty Sark
, drinking tea from polystyrene cups, the warmth from the previous day now completely gone.

We don’t have long to wait for Melusine. She comes out of the water in front of us and changes shape as she moves towards us, her mermaid’s tail melting and splitting into two trim
long legs encased in what looks like silvery leggings. Her hair’s long and loose down her back and her eyes are large and dark as she takes us in.

‘You’ve decided?’ She frames it as a question but it’s a statement really. I try not to stare below her neck because the shirt she’s wearing is diaphanous and it
leaves
nothing
to the imagination. And, well, I have my own and it’s not necessary to stare at someone else’s.

‘We have,’ Dante says, his eyes rigidly above the neckline.

‘We’ll take on the job,’ I tell her. ‘At the usual payment. For both of us.’

Melusine’s smile is sharp edged. She produces two wooden tokens on silver chains and hands one to each of us.