‘Then how can you suspect?’
His face rippled with distaste. ‘You were conversing with another in your dreams. I have heard that ability is one it is possible for vampires to effect.’
Astonishment flooded me. I’d been talking out loud in the dream? Why hadn’t Robur woken me? Though hard on that thought came the answer; this was the first time he’d done more than creaked at me since the polish incident. Eager to find out, I asked, ‘What did I talk about?’
‘Ghosts and blood.’
I frowned. ‘Can you be more specific?’
Robur grunted. ‘No. The language is unknown to me; I only know because you repeated the words “sanguine lemures” over and over. I was irritated to the extent that I searched for a translation. It is Latin for “the blood of undead ghosts”, or some such nonsense.’
The blood of undead ghosts?No doubt Malik could explain what it meant, along with how I’d ended up in his dream or memory in the first place. After all it wasn’t like I’d had his blood during our Jellyfish spell-removing episode, except— the jellyfish had been feeding on him, and it had stung me. Okay, so I’d crackedits magic and killed it, but I’d definitely got some of its poison in me, possibly along with some of Malik’s blood. Was that why I was experiencing his dreams/memories with him? I filed all my questions away for our ‘date’ tonight— if I ended up going.
Which I would if Tavish didn’t sort the Emperor question first.
‘Right, thanks,’ I said to Robur. The jellyfish scenario could explain why I was gatecrashing Malik’s dream, but it didn’t explain the physical presence of the rose petals. ‘Are you sure no one’s breached the Wards?’
‘I have informed you already. No!’
‘Then how did the rose petals get in?’
‘That . . . I do not have an answer for,’ Robur said dismissively, his face smoothing back into the wardrobe’s wood.
I resisted the urge to kick the wardrobe. The sneaky dryad had eyes everywhere, supposedly, but those petals had still got in without him knowing. Concerned, I called Tavish and got his voicemail. I left a brief message about the Morpheus Memory Aid revealing Katie’s boyfriend as the peeping tom, the shadowy animal beneath the trees, which might or might not, have been a werewolf. Now I thought about it, it looked like the grey crawling-out-the-abyss cat on the Moon tarot card. I mentioned my weird blood and snow dream, the rose petals and Robur’s comments. I left another voicemail for Katie, and one for her mum too, saying we needed to chat about Marc, a.s.a.p., and for Katie to be sure she wore the werewolf repellent, even if its reek meant she was likely to repel half of London.
Better safe than sorry, as the saying goes.
I grabbed an orange juice from the fridge, exchanging the stink-eye with Ricou’s dead mackerel. That they were still there meant Ricou hadn’t been home and Sylvia had spent the night alone. I made a note to talk to the absent naiad, tell him he needed to pay his pregnant partner more attention.
My gaze snagged on the shelf below the fish where the two bags of blood sat, my last two donations ready to go to Freya, my niece. The Wards were keyed to my blood, so maybe that was how they’d been breached. By someone who had access to my donations. Someone like, say, oh, Freya’s granddad, Mad Max— the Autarch’s pet vamp.
Only Mad Max didn’t need access to my donated blood; he could’ve easily siphoned off a couple of pints while he’d had me unconscious and tied to the hotel bed. Then given my blood to the Autarch. The blood would be stolen, so its power over me reduced, but there might still be enough for a small breach. And the petals were exactly the sort of sick joke the psychotic bastard would play. What if Robur, despite his initially reassuring conviction in his own surveillance abilities, was wrong and the Autarch had breached the Wards, even though all the interior ones looked intact? Of course, I hadn’t checked the ones outside on the roof yet.
I grabbed a handful of dog biscuits from the jar on the kitchen counter, and stuffed them in my pocket as I made a beeline back to my bedroom window. The Steel Shutter Ward moulded like thick, suffocating plastic around me as I climbed over the low sill and breathed in the scents of honeysuckle, cherry blossom and watercress, undercut with the copper tang of the blood fuelling its magic. The Ward released me, snapping back in place over the window and sending me stumbling into the summer sunshine. A hot breeze ruffled my hair, and the early morning bustle from the Witches’ Market in Covent Garden five storeys below rode the air like a distant radio.
I tuned it out, scanning the roof.
In the humans’ reality the roof was ten feet deep and stretched in a large squared-off U around the three sides of the Edwardian terraces that hemmed in the garden and cemetery below. The red-brick entrance to St Paul’s Church closed off the last side of the garden square. The roof was a great place to sunbathe, and all around the U-shape deckchairs and flowerpots had sprung up as soon as the weather turned warm.
But the section outside my window was nearing thirty foot deep; a new addition thanks to my flatmates. And instead of a few potted plants, we had a peaceful forest glade. Moss and colourful lichens carpeted the roof’s surface, multi-stemmed silver birch saplings ringed the glade’s edge, and in the centre was a silver-watered pond. If I squinted I could just make out where the original roof edge bisected the pond; one of the reasons I never ventured in for a paddle. The other was the water’s occupant. Alongside the pond were four wooden sun loungers with green-and-white-striped cushions. It looked like some luxury holiday retreat instead of a roof garden in the heart of London. It also looked as peaceful and undisturbed as usual.
So far, so good.
Above the glade rose a geodesic dome of magic, the dome’s opaque glass-like panels obscuring the view over London’s rooftops. That dome was the Ward protecting, enclosing and enforcing the overlay of the forest glade on the humans’ world. I focusedmy attention on the pink-tinged panels, scanning carefully for any breaks or breaches.
Nothing.
Relief settled in me. Robur was right. No one, not the Autarch, and not even Malik, had bypassed the Wards. The rose petals had to be a vamp illusion, however real they seemed. I turned to go and double-check, but stopped as the shadow of a tall figure appeared outside the Warded dome. Someone was on the roof, and this early it was unlikely to be one of my neighbours, not least because they usually kept their distance.
Pulse hitching in wariness, I clenched my hand, ready to release Ascalon, and dropped my sight.
The magical dome winked out.
Finn stood outside the Ward.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Hey!’ Finn’s moss-green eyes sparked emerald, faint lines creasing their corners as he smiled.
Stunned surprise laced with joy at seeing him again made my heart leap, then my anger and hurt boiled up. I started to demand what the hell he was thinking of turning up expecting a welcome as if we’d last seen each other yesterday—
Suspicion froze me. Finn was supposed to be in the Fair Lands with Nicky, his pregnant daughter, until she had her kid. He wasn’t due back for at least another two months. So he shouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t be here . . . Unless, while my inner radar pinged him as fae, this wasn’t Finn.
I curled my fingers around Ascalon’s ring, and narrowed my gaze. The sharp points of his horns standing a couple of inches above his dark blond hair were the only thing about him that said he was satyr and not human, but then he was wearing Finn’s usual clean-cut handsome Glamour. Or almost. The lines at his eyes were new, his face was thinner, and the angle of his jaw was more defined, making him look early thirties. Though, like any fae, how old he looked was irrelevant, the real Finn (who at a hundred and eight was one of the youngest in the satyr herd) had always looked around my age: twenty-five.