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.’
‘I could always stay and watch?’ she said, giving me a hopeful look. ‘It gets a bit lonely with Ricou gone most of the time.’
Did she never give up?‘No, you really couldn’t,’ I said firmly.
She pouted. ‘Spoilsport.’
‘Yep, that’s me.’ I opened the wardrobe door and gestured inside. ‘Goodnight, Sylvia.’
‘You know, Genny, you’re really not like sidhe are supposed to be—’
‘Please,’ I groaned, ‘not the sidhe sex myth again. Syl, I’m really not gagging for it.’ At least I wasn’t now, after Mad Max’s tough-love Poultice spell. And, thankfully, even before that Sylvia obviously hadn’t been hitting my hot buttons. ‘Now. Go. To. Bed.’
She gave me one last imploring look, which I pointedly ignored, then, with a loud guilt-inducing sigh, she ducked under the empty hanging rail and disappeared through the back of the wardrobe.
I grabbed the sheet I kept on the wardrobe shelf, closed the door and carefully draped it over the wardrobe’s front to stop any peeping eyes.
I stripped off. Not that I needed to be naked to do the cleansing ritual to get rid of the Magic Mirror spell I’d absorbed at Harrods; it was just more practical than neutralising my clothes afterwards. Crunching on half-a-dozen liquorice torpedoes, I sat crossed-legged inside the larger circle, opened the part of me that can seethe magic, picked up my knife and pricked my left index finger. A bead of bright red blood welled up and I touched it and my will to the outer circle. The circle rose like a glass cake dome shot through with gold.
I gathered the hyperactive pinballs of magic inside me and taking a deep breath, taggedthe pinballs to the salt block. They fizzled and spat like water on a hotplate as they hit the salt, then, as I hoped it would, the Magic Mirror spell dissolved into the usual thick grey sludge. The fetid smell of rotting vegetables filled the circle – confirmation, if I’d needed it, that the original spell had been altered with deliberate malice and wasn’t some sort of accident, same as the last few times I’d done this.
Only now, after my unusual preoccupation with my looks and Sylvia’s cleavage, I had an idea what might be responsible. That urge for plastic surgery hadn’t popped into my head on its own. A quick email to Hugh and bit of investigation by the Met’s Magic Squad, and Harrods’ mutating Magic Mirror spell problem should be sorted. Satisfied I’d got something to go on, I setthe sludge-filled inner circle. It popped into place like an upside-down sieve made of fine gold mesh.
‘Now for the fun part.’
I focusedon the sludge-covered salt, and crackedit.
The magic and the salt exploded, the sludge predictably erupting like a mini volcano. I threw my arms up in front of my face as the sludge splattered me, leaving me feeling cold, wet, and as if I’d been thoroughly slimed by a swamp-dragon’s parasitic wyrm.
‘And isn’t that an icky thought,’ I grumbled, flicking sludge off my fingers and watching as it dissipated into the ether. At least the sieve-like inner circle kept the actual salt from hitting me; the stuff stung like sand in a desert storm otherwise. The sludge was magical, so now the spell was neutralised the only physical clear-up involved was washing the salt down the drain in the bath, and stowing my blue plastic.
I tidied up, jumped in a hot shower then emailed Hugh about my suspicions.
The Magic Mirror spell problems at Harrods: think I know what’s causing it. The lingerie fitting rooms are filled with promo leaflets for a posh plastic surgery clinic (link to website below). I think they’re probably tagged with some sort of Dissatisfaction or Envy hex to encourage new customers to the clinic. Could be worth checking out?
I pressed send then headed for the kitchen to make my Bloody Mary nightcap.
The glass of ice was still waiting for me; Sylvia had thoughtfully bespelled it to stop it melting. I opened the fridge and wrinkled my nose at the fishy reek of the two dead mackerel; having a naiad as a flatmate has its smelly downsides. At least Sylvia likes her food cooked. Though I couldn’t really talk, I thought, as I snagged the carton of lamb’s blood and poured a pint into a cocktail shaker. I added a healthy measure of vodka then stuck my hand in the empty cut glass bowl next to the sink.
The glyphs etched around the bowl glowed pink as it conjured some blood-fruit: the magical answer to controlling my 3V infection. The blood-fruit meant I didn’t have to rely on G-Zav – the human vamp junkies’ methadone – which doesn’t work too well for fae, or need to Get Fanged by a vamp to get my regular dose of vamp venom. The bowl and its never-ending supply was a reward from Clíona after I’d helped her out. Seeing as my queenly grandmother wasn’t my biggest fan, the paranoid part of me kept expecting her to take it back, or use it to poison me, even though that would effectively break the bargain we’d made. So far, she’d stuck to her word.
Usually I got cherries – the bowl had a thing for Sylvia (with the whole fruity connection they had, she and the bowl gossiped like a pair of silver birches) – or sometimes blackberries, though they’d been noticeably absent since the satyrhad stopped writing. Occasionally the bowl produced something weird, like today’s offering. A fruit, painted silvery gold like all blood-fruit, appeared. It was vaguely pear-shaped, but too knobbly, so I doubted it actually was one.
I poked it and guessed. ‘A pear?’
‘This is not a pear, but a quince, sacred to Aphrodite’ – the bowl’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone – ‘and you know who she is, don’t you?’
‘Yep,’ I said flatly, ‘the Goddess of Love.’
‘And of beauty and sexuality,’ the bowl added smugly. ‘The quince is also the fruit of love, marriage and fertility,’ it finished archly.
Of course it was. ‘What’s it taste like?’
‘What else but paradise?’
Gods save me from magical artefacts and their lame sense of humour.
‘Thanks,’ I muttered, knowing from past experience that saying anything else would get me something disgusting next time, like crab apples. I chopped the quince, popped the pieces into a mincer, cranked the handle (not having electricity sucks) and added the pulp to the blood in the cocktail shaker. I shook, poured the Bloody Mary into the glass and added a good shake of chilli flakes. They’d help disguise the quince if it tasted foul. And, after that paradise quip, I fully expected it to.
I sipped. Under the chilli the blood tasted bitter and astringent. Figured.
I moved to the full-length mirror propped next to my bedroom door (I’d shifted it out of my bedroom to stop Sylvia, and her lack of boundaries, from bursting in every time she wanted to use it) and dropped my towel. Might as well check the Magic Mirror spell was truly kaput.
I stared at my reflection with apprehension. Malik’s rose-coloured bruises still marked the front of my body from my breasts down to the faint Celtic knot tattoo which sat low on my left hip, the remains of the spell that had let me borrow Rosa’s vamp body. It was now as dead as she was. If not for them, I thought I looked pretty good. My curves might be not be as generous as Sylvia’s but I was healthy and in proportion. Big boobs would look odd, I decided. Relief filled me. The nasty influence of the Magic Mirror spell was definitely gone.