The phone cut out.

I stared at it, warring between heartsick I’d hurt him and annoyed, both at him and myself.

A hand waved in front of my face. ‘Earth to Genny!’

I looked up to find Mary smiling quizzically at me. ‘What?’

‘We’re going scrying, remember? For your Cousin Maxim? You get to come along for the ride.’

‘Oh, yeah. Sorry.’

‘C’mon, then,’ she said, and as I followed her to Dessa and her police car, she told me the plan. It sounded like we were going to be driving in ever-expanding circles around Trafalgar Square until they got a hit. All I had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride.

I slide into the back of the car – which was like an oven after being parked in the blazing summer sun – and, as Dessa pulled out into the slow-moving traffic, stifled a yawn. Damn, looked like my restless night, thanks to the Morpheus Memory Aided nightmares, was starting to catch up with me. A nap would be good. Only I had a lot to try to make sense of. I leaned my head back on the seat, thoughts of Mad Max, werewolves, kidnap victims, gossiping dryads, Finn and Malik spinning like dervishes in my mind . . .

Malik/I strode through the twists and turns of wide shaded corridors, his/my hand on the sabre’s hilt, pantaloons ballooning about our legs, the tall headdress on our head an odd but familiar weight. Our slippered feet marched purposely past the ornately arched and curtained doorways, behind which flowed the constant murmur of female voices. The guards – plump, ebony-skinned eunuchs – bowed their heads, murmuring soft-voiced greetings.

‘Abd al-Malik’ – Servant of the King– ‘welcome.’

I slipped further into Malik’s dream/memory, acknowledging them, accepting their respect, but not stopping as the dream/memory drew me along its path.

Soon I halted at the entrance to a small courtyard garden. Gleaming mosaics patterned the courtyard’s walls in a geometric design that spoke of the Middle East, fan-shaped palms cast welcome shade, a breeze carried exotic floral scents and the quiet splash of the corner fountain was a soft relaxing music. Above, the sky stretched an endless blue, a blazing sun throwing down a fierce midday heat.

In the centre of the courtyard sat a woman in her mid-twenties swathed in layers of jewel-encrusted fabric, topped with a short embroidered waistcoat. Her glossy brunette hair cascaded in was to her hips from beneath a fez-style hat atop a headscarf, also encrusted with its own fortune in gems, as she tended to the black-haired baby girl lying on the colourful rug in front of her. The baby was in the middle of being changed, arms waving, legs kicking free, giggling as her mother tickled gentle fingers over her tummy. Sitting on the rug close to them was another child: a solemn-looking girl of about six, her hair the same glossy black as the baby’s, dressed in a miniature version of the mother’s bright, jewel-covered outfit. The girl cradled a doll in her arms, rocking it back and forth, her mouth murmuring a quiet lullaby.

The memory stilled as if I’d pressed pause.

I, not Malik, recognised the girl. It was Fur Jacket Girl, the werewolf I’d seen at the mosque, and then again in the memory I’d had at the zoo, where she’d been chained in the ash circle in the snow, her mate lying dead nearby. This was her as a child.

Malikhad known her. She’d meantsomething to him. That’s why he’d been full of rage and had killed her mate.

Even as shock stuttered within me, the memory started up again.

Behind the woman and children stood a tall boy of around nine or ten, head down, arms crossed over his thin chest, bad-temper radiating from his stance. He was dressed in a miniature version of Malik’s/my clothes: a tall headdress atop his turban, pantaloons, and a floor-length crimson coat that brushed the gem-sewn slippers on his feet. And secured through the embroidered belt around his waist was a curved sabre, similar to the one I carried, a man’s blade and not a child’s toy.

I stepped into the courtyard and the woman looked up, giving me a smile full of welcome and love.

‘Malik, canımın içi’ – light of my soul– she called. ‘You are home. Safe. I trust the campaign goes well?’

The memory sharpened and I drank in the woman’s beauty; her huge, thickly lashed, dark eyes, porcelain-pale skin touched with the sun’s blush, the perfect lines of her cheek and jaw, the tiny black crescent inked at the corner of her lush mouth.

The moment broke as child-Fur Jacket Girl jumped up and flung herself at me. I caught her, lifting her high in the air to a delighted squeal, then kissed her cheek as I carried her back to her mother. I set her on the rug as her mother offered me the baby. As she did, her sleeves fell back to reveal intricate tattoos like black vines twisting up her arms. Dropping an affectionate kiss on the woman’s forehead I took the chubby baby into my arms and tickled her tummy as her mother had done. She smelled of sweet herbs and aloes. I laughed as she giggled with innocent happiness.

A sharp cough vied for my attention and I saw a shadow flit through the woman’s eyes. I handed the baby back and turned to the boy. He was still staring at his slippered feet, his bad temper more pronounced.

‘Emir,’ I said, sketching a bow.

‘ Çorbaci’ – Commander –‘Abd al-Malik. Welcome.’ He returned my bow. Then he raised his eyes to mine, his mouth splitting wide in a knowing grin.

The memory froze again.

I, not Malik, knew that grin, even with its slightly crooked, still human teeth.

Last time I’d seen the boy I’d been fourteen and it was our wedding night. He hadn’t been a child then but a six-foot-tall gangly fifteen-year-old. Or at least, that was the age he’d looked; as a vamp he was however many centuries old. But it didn’t matter how childish he appeared in this dream/memory, no way could I ever forget the spiteful way his lips curved. Or the lust for others’ pain that shone in his large, doe-like brown eyes.

He was the Autarch – Bastien – my psychotic murdering betrothed.

‘Hello, my sidhe princess,’ the boy-Bastien said, as if we’d last met days ago instead of eleven years.

Terror-induced adrenalin flooded my veins. I forced myself to take a calming breath, and then another. This was Malik’s memory, twisted into nightmare. A side-effect of the Morpheus Memory Aid interacting with his blood. Just like at the zoo. Nothing more. Bastien wasn’t real, which meant he couldn’t hurt me. But despite my mental bolstering, I still flinched as his hand clasped the scimitar and he rolled his shoulders back in the same way that had been a prelude to him wielding another sword on my faeling friend that betrothal night. Finally killing her after days of torture. And I couldn’t stop myself instinctively shuffling backwards to put more space between us until I bumped into the courtyard wall.

‘You’re not real,’ I whispered.

He laughed, darting to me and pinching my arm. It hurt, and I froze, shaking with panic. ‘Real is a mutable term, princess,’ he admonished. ‘Particularly when you are trespassing in someone else’s memories.’

I swallowed. ‘Yours?’

‘Come now, sidhe. Let’s not spoil our reunion with stupidity.’ He threw his arms wide to encompass the woman, the girl and the baby. ‘This vision of domestic sentimentality is certainly not something I would desire to relive.’ He leaned towards me and I pressed myself harder into the wall as he sniffed. ‘And then there is the nasty little irritation that you stink of Abd al-Malik’s blood.’

This is a nightmare. Nothing more.

Only even as I told myself to wake up, I knew I wouldn’t. Somehow I’d blundered – or been pulled? –into the Dreamscape; where dreams and reality mix.

And now I was trapped there with the one person who churned my guts liquid with horror.