Mary pursed her lips, debating, then blew out a breath. ‘Okay, but if it’s needed for prosecuting someone, you’ll have to get a warrant to ask the Witches’ Council for permission to view it.’
Hugh gave a slightly insulted rumble. ‘Of course,’ I said, patting him consolingly on the arm; the witches were always a bit close-mouthed about their secrets.
Mary lowered her voice. ‘It’s a ritual for changing a human into a therianthrope.’
I stopped myself from pumping my arm and shouting, ‘Yes!’
‘I take it this isn’t the same ritual that’s in the police manual?’ Hugh’s deep voice rose in question.
‘No,’ Mary agreed. ‘It’s nothing like the Death Bite one. This one has some seriously revolting stuff.’ She shuddered. ‘Well, like your vision, Genny. The human has to be a virgin, and the whole ritual is barbaric. That last weretiger killed in China? There’s a note in the archives saying they think he was the last pure blood-born weretiger, and the reason he mauled all those young girls was because he was trying to replicate the ritual, to make himself a mate.’
Which all tracked with Malik’s memory. Young Fur Jacket Girl had called the dead male her mate. And she’d evidently been a virgin.
A pensive frown lined Hugh’s forehead. ‘Werewolves have no more magical ability than a non-magical human, other than their inherent shapeshifting, so there’s still the strange lack of magic at the kidnapping to be explained.’
‘Which I still maintain looks like when you clean up after the pixies,’ Mary said.
‘But the àrd-cheannis adamant that there is no possibility of there being another sidhe fae in London.’ Hugh looked at me. ‘How confident do you think he is about that, Genny?’
‘I think Tavish is pretty sure—’
My phone rang.
‘Aunty?’ A girl’s high-pitched voice.
My mind did a fast turnabout from werewolves and sidhe to my faeling niece, Freya, and the fact she was calling me in the middle of a school day. Had Ana, her mum, gone into labour?
‘What’s the matter, Freya? Is it your mum? Is the baby coming?’
‘You have to get here quick,’ she shouted. ‘Granddad says they’re coming.’
They’re coming!I clutched the phone, stuffing my instant panic away. Not Ana, then. ‘Where’s here,’ I said, forcing calmness into my voice, ‘and who are they?’
‘Home, and I don’t knoooow!’ It was a scared, frustrated whine. ‘He can’t frogging tell me. He just shook me by the scruff and ordered me to phone you.’
Home for Freya was Trafalgar Square. Or at least, that’s where the entrance to her home was, through the left fountain. Which was also the watery abode of her great-grandpops, the fossegrim, the fountain’s fae guardian. Though why he’d be ordering Freya to phone me was odd; the old water fae wasn’t exactly compos mentisduring the daytime, nor much better at night, not to mention we’d hardly spoken more than a couple of times.
A dog growled in the background; a low urgent warning.
My heart stuttered as I realised Freya didn’t mean the fossegrim, but her other granddad. Her vampire granddad. The one who wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near her. Mad Max.
Freya yelped. ‘He wants to know how long, Aunty?’
I looked at Hugh. ‘I need to get to Trafalgar Square. Freya’s in trouble, and Ma—’ Conscious of Freya listening, I stopped myself from saying Mad Max, changing it to, ‘my cousin Maxim is with her. He says they’re coming.’
The same alarm thrumming through my veins etched Hugh’s face, then he went into full DI mode. ‘I’ll get you a car and driver, Genny.’ He lifted his radio. ‘At the zoo entrance. Should be twenty minutes tops from here, with a siren.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
We sped along the morning’s route from the zoo back into the centre of London. I sat hunched in the back of the police car, muscles tense, hitting Freya’s number on my phone and getting shunted direct to voicemail every time, questions whizzing around my head like a flight of manic garden fairies.
How did Mad Max know they were coming if he didn’t know who they were? Were they the same ‘they’ that the tarot cards warned me were coming? The Emperor’s werewolves? But why would they come for Freya? And why would Mad Max go to Freya and get her to phone me? If they were dangerous, he’d led them straight to her. And why wasn’t Freya at school, where she’d be safe? Where was her mother, Ana? Was Ana even okay? And why the hell wasn’t Freya answering her phone? Why was Mad Max there anyway? Why wasn’t he tucked away in his daytime sleep instead of running round London in his dog shape?
Damn it. I didn’t trust him. Vamps weren’t exactly altruistic to start with but Mad Max took the prize for selfish. He might have ‘helped’ me with his Poultice spell, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t sell me out at the drop of a dog biscuit. Never mind that he was the Autarch’s dog and I could be heading into a trap. Not that it would stop me, not when Freya was involved. And truly, for all Mad Max’s faults, this was Freya, his grandkid, and he was all about protecting her. Which still didn’t mean this wasn’t a trap for me. Just not for her. Gods, I hoped not anyway.
Deciding after the sixth voicemail that I should do something more constructive than going insane with worry, I started phoning for help. Trouble was, the only help I could get wasn’t going to arrive at Trafalgar Square any sooner than I was.
Desperate, I leaned forwards, tapped Mary’s shoulder. ‘How many Stun spells have you got?’
She twisted to look at me, a wary expression on her face. ‘Stun spells are police issue only, Genny.’
I gave her a flat look. ‘My niece is in trouble. Probably from werewolves.’
‘There’re the two of us.’ Mary jerked her head at the driver; a five-foot-nothing witch, with dark cornrowed hair and golden, freckled skin a few shades darker than my own. I’d met her at the Harley Street/Magic Mirror crime scene where she’d introduced herself as Dessa – short for Odessa – and who was manoeuvring the cop car through the traffic with an easy confidence that carried an edge of glee. ‘And there’s another WPC and a troll constable heading there from Old Scotland Yard.’ I hadn’t been the only one phoning. ‘Plus I’ve called in the Peelers.’
Peelers. Non-magical human coppers, so called because of Robert Peel (who started the Met) and the fact they had no juice. ‘Peelers are cannon fodder when it comes to magic.’
‘Trained cannon fodder who can deal with the crowds.’
‘Also cannon fodder,’ I said, fingers digging into the plastic seat backs. ‘How many Stun spells, Mary?’
The siren hooted its wha whawarning as Dessa slowed through a junction. We held our breath as she zipped the car through a narrow gap between a delivery lorry and a souped-up four by four, then we were speeding up again.
Mary held her baton up. The jade mounted in the silver tip winked the bright green of a Stun spell in my sight. ‘The usual one in the baton,’ she said, ‘and one here.’ She tapped the jade pin in her shirt collar.
‘Only two,’ I said, dismayed. ‘Dessa?’
The cornrowed witch sniffed. ‘I’m a plod, so baton only.’
‘Stuns are time- and ingredient-heavy spells to cast, Genny,’ Mary said, frustration making her words harsh. ‘It makes them expensive. And please don’t ask for one, it’s against regs for civilians to have them and if we’re caught, I’m suspended and you’re in jail. The DI won’t be able to stop it.’
‘I’ll take my chances,’ I muttered.
‘If something happens to Freya,’ she carried on, ‘you don’t want to be in jail. We haven’t got time to argue, plus we’ve got your back.’
Crap. She was right. And more than ever, this was one of those times I desperately wanted, no needed, to be the all-powerful magic-wielding sidhe I imagined I would have been if not for whatever the hell was wrong with me.