‘Bastard,’ I spat out.
‘Payback’s a bitch! Oh, no, wait! This time payback’s a dog!’ He chuckled then growled menacingly exactly like a dog, which was eerily apt since his other form was an Irish wolfhound. Like the picture on the T-shirt he was no longer wearing.
‘Why aren’t you dressed?’
‘Just being practical, Cousin.’ He pointed at my bottom half. ‘That’s a wet towel and I’ve got a bath full of Poultice potion.’
Practical? Him?
‘But I ’spect you’re asking ’cause you’re wondering if I took you up on your offer to do the old in and out together,’ Mad Max continued cheerfully
I gritted my teeth. ‘Yes.’
‘Enticing as making the beast with two backs with you might be, a few too many interested parties would get a tad upset about it. My loopy fruitcake of a sister with her part-time goddess gig, for one – or two, depending which way you look at it.’
I wasn’t sure that his sister, a.k.a. my mother, Angel, would even notice, though she had spied on me magically in the past, but why was anyone’s guess. She wasn’t just loopy, but seemed to have the mental age of a five-year-old, so I doubted she even knew I was her daughter. Hell, I hadn’t even known she was my mother until I’d met her for only the second time three months ago. Until then I’d believed my mother died at my birth— all of which was something my head, never mind my heart, was still coming to terms with.
And as for Angel’s goddess hitch-hiker, The Mother, well no way could I predict how she’d feel; it wasn’t like she’d been overly concerned about me in the past other than to dump me with a problem she couldn’t be bothered to solve herself. Though Mad Max knew them better, so if he thought they’d be ‘a tad upset’, I was happy to go along with him. On that, anyway.
‘Then there’s the Turk’ – he gave a dramatic shudder – ‘I’d have to be insane and suicidal to get on the wrong side of the great and powerful Malik al-Khan. Oh, and let’s not forget His Royal Brattiness—’
‘The Autarch’s not coming here!’ I interrupted as a spurt of panic overcame the spell’s calm.
Mad Max waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, Cousin. It isn’t worth sticking my head above the parapet to tell him about your little problems. He enjoys eviscerating the messengers too much.’ He cocked a finger and mimed shooting himself in the head. ‘So, unluckily for you, Cousin, you’re doomed never to know the magnificence that is my love wand.’
Relief flooded through me. Not that his self-serving restraint was going to stop me removing his love wand and shoving it, along with the rest of him, where the sun didshine, given half a chance.
‘Now, of course, you’re probably also wondering why we’re having ourselves a little bondage party here.’ He flashed a fang-filled grin. ‘I must admit I was too, for a while, since it’s unheard of for me to be so altruistic. But then I convinced myself that having everyone find out I’ve got more than one crazy relative was going to reflect particularly badly on me.’
And they say chivalry is dead.
‘So I magnanimously opted to save you from beating around your own bush until some poor unsuspecting human stumbled into your Glamour.’
The suspicious part of me wondered exactly how and why he’d been oh, so conveniently on hand to saveme, but that thought was eclipsed by the horror of what could have happened. Humans can’t survive full-on sex with a sidhe outside of the Fair Lands. If a human had found me, I’d probably have fucked them to death.
‘I’m sure you can think of a suitable way to thank me later, Cousin,’ Mad Max said, a smug smirk on his face. ‘But I can’t always be waiting around to clear up your nasty little messes, so this lesson is by way of a heads up.’ He leaned forward in the chair. ‘So, listen carefully.’
I snorted. ‘It’s not like I’ve got any choice.’
‘Good-oh!’ He wagged an admonishing finger at me. ‘Living like a nun while shacking up with a Fertility spell isn’t the best lifestyle choice for a sidhe fae.’
I wasn’t shacking up with a Fertility spell, exactly. I was living with Sylvia, my friend who was pregnant. And Sylvia was wearing the sapphire pendant with the fae’s trapped fertility that had made that pregnancy possible. She and her partner, Ricou, had moved in with me after the ToLA case, due to their families arguing about where they should live; my flat was apparently nominated neutral territory. I hadn’t been too thrilled having new flatmates to begin with, but it had turned out to be fun, though evidently the fertility magic in the pendant had been having its own fun without any of us knowing— if I was to believe Mad Max.
‘Are you saying the pendant is’ – I eyed him mistrustfully – ‘spreading its magic around, or something?’
‘Leaking is the word you’re looking for,’ Mad Max said cheerfully. ‘Which means denial isn’t just a river in Egypt; for you, love, it’s a cracked dam leading to a flood of impromptu orgies every time you feel a tad frisky. Sticking your finger in the hole, however enthusiastically, isn’t going to do a damn thing.’ He gave a barking laugh then poked me in the side. ‘Dam and damn. Get it, Cousin?’
I got it. Along with a jagged pain that said: cracked ribs. Sonofabitch had really gone for it with his payback.
I also got what he was going on about: the stupid sidhe sex myth, the one where the humans all think we’re gagging for it at the drop of a hat thanks to the ancient fertility rites once held to replenish the land and encourage its future fecundity, and the salacious tales about the rites being huge free-for-all orgies. Tales I’d been told were the product of humans prurient imaginations, since the rites, usually held during the main equinoxes – like the Summer Solstice we were fast approaching– had always been well orchestrated, rigidly controlled and only for those specifically chosen participants who’d carefully prepared . . . by purposely abstaining from intercourse in the months leading up to the rite . . .
Like I’d been abstaining!
Shit! How could I have been such an idiot? I’d been obliviously setting myself up for my own personal fertility rite. And the Glamour I’d hit Malik with, along with the frustration of oh, so nearsex, had flipped some sort of switch inside me. Only by the time it had, Malik was gone. Hence my desperate self-pleasuring (which really hadn’t been any pleasure at all) until Mad Max had turned up and the fertility magic blazing hot within me had decided it wanted a piece of him. Even though the thought of jumping hisbones, blood relationship aside, was enough to make me want to throw up, it seemed being male had been enough for the magic to go, ‘Screw the crazy sonofabitch!’
Maybe I should thank him for tying me up instead? Nah. Never gonna happen. I was pretty sure he’d gone for overkill, and even if he hadn’t, he was enjoying the pseudo BDSM way too much.
I glared at him. ‘What’s the spell in the towel for?’
‘Oh, just a little magic poultice I cooked up to help you.’
‘Since when do vamps do magic?’
‘You forget, Cousin,’ he admonished, ‘that my mother is a sidhe queen. Clíona might have chosen to make me human and mortal, but I’m still a wizard by birth. Becoming a vamp didn’t change that.’
I frowned, suspicious. Was he kidding me? Though now I thought about it, he would be a wizard, as the son of a sidhe and a human (as his dad had been, when Mad Max was – nauseatingly – conceived). And I’d never known any vamp who’d been anything other than a straight human before they’d Accepted the Gift – unsurprisingly, given the whole ancient Live and Let Live Tenets between the witches, wizards and vamps: the last thing they did was socialise. So a wizard keeping his magic after being given the Gift could be possible . . .
‘Though Mommie Dearest didn’t actually teach me anything. That was down to your sister, Brigitta.’ He gave me a cat-that’s-got-the-canary smile.