Though they did reveal Mad Max had trotted past them, tail wagging happily, into Cupid’s tent about an hour or so before we’d turned up. No one had been with him. Or, at least, they hadn’t noticed anyone. Not that any of them had been paying attention. So for all they knew Max the doggy could’ve had a whole army with him hidden beneath a See-Me-Not veil. And no, none of them had looked up either; so no one had seen any eagle, or any other birds, other than the swan maidens. Stellar witnesses they were not.
Once Mary was sure they had no more beans to spill, she deemed us – us being Mary, me, Dessa and Taegrin – ready to beard the love god in his tent.
‘Right, no messing about this time, Genny,’ Mary told me as Dessa unzipped the tent’s entrance, Taegrin on standby to enter first. ‘Tell me what we can expect of Cupid.’
‘Far as I remember, he’s a cambion.’
Cambions are born of a witch and an incubus, or a wizard (a witch’s son with a human) and succubus. The actual pairing could vary. And since cambions have long been considered ‘another type of witch’ (something the witches themselves have always been careful not to dispute, lest it reflect badly on their own ‘human’ classification) cambions benefited greatly from the witches big ‘human rights’ thing in the eighties. Of course, the real difference between a cambion and a witch or wizard, apart from their parentage, is their appetite for sex magic and their gift for prophecy. Which sort of explained why this cambion called himself Cupid and was telling fortunes.
Mary gave me a resigned look. ‘So this guy’s not only a comedian, but a bona fidemagician like Merlin?’
‘Yep,’ I agreed.
‘Cambions are demons,’ Dessa suddenly piped up.
We both stared at her, shocked.
‘Half-demons anyway,’ she amended as she crossed herself.
‘Incubi and succubi are minor demons,’ Mary replied in a neutral tone, ‘but cambions, like us witches and wizards, have been classified as human since the Malleus Maleficarumwas discredited back in the eighteenth century. Do you want to sit this one out, Dessa?’
‘No!’ She shook her head vehemently and adjusted her stab vest. ‘This is my job.’
‘Right,’ Mary said, after a few moments’ silence that told me, without any need of a cambion’s prophetic abilities, that Dessa could look forward to an uncomfortable chat in her near future. ‘The tent’s surrounded,’ Mary carried on, ‘so whoever’s in there isn’t going anywhere.’ She paused, extended her stun baton with a sharp snap (she’d still refused to give me one, much to my disgust), and motioned to Taegrin. ‘Lead the way, constable.’
Taegrin lifted the tent flap and led the way. Mary, Dessa and I followed.
Straight into an illusion.
Years ago, before the lesser fae sealed the gates to the Fair Lands, and barred the sidhe from London, the Carnival Fantastique was famous for its illusions. The sidhe would take any idea and, using nothing but magic would build illusions so powerful that folk told stories of climbing towers in fairytale castles, feasting in mediaeval banqueting halls, swimming through tropical seas, dallying in enchanted woods, hiking up snowy mountains and many more. Now, with the sidhe locked out, most illusions were cast by half-rate magicians, and were as rough and shaky as the wooden scaffolding their fairytale towers were built on.
But going by the illusion the four of us were now standing in, half rate, rough and shaky didn’t apply. As hard as I focused, I still couldn’t see the tent beneath the magical sheen of the illusionary room.
The room itself was straight out of an Elizabethan-era castle: flagged stone floor and dark wood-panelled walls, candles flickering in sconces, fire burning merrily in the huge walk-in fireplace, the smell of herbs and woodsmoke scenting the air, and a massive four-poster bed with velvet drapes and enough tassels, fringes, and cushions to fill a hearth-witch’s haberdashery shop. And on the table next to the bed waited a golden flagon and five golden goblets.
We were expected.
Not really a surprise considering we were visiting a prophetic Cupid.
Cupid himself was half-reclining on the four-poster, the silk sheets artfully arranged to preserve his modesty. But he wasn’t the stereotypical winged, curly haired cherub of legend. This god of love was definitely the grown-up adult version. The firelight licked golden shadows over his long, leanly muscled and obviously (apart from those pesky sheets) naked body, his hair was dark, sleek and cut short to his head, a mediaeval-looking gold chain hung around his neck and draped down to his navel, and he regarded us arrogantly with cool blue green eyes.
I squinted in the dim light as I realised both the grown-up Cupid and the room looked vaguely familiar.
‘Ooh, my,’ Mary murmured in astonishment. ‘That’s—’
‘Jonathan Rhys Meyers,’ Dessa said, her gaze fixed unwaveringly on the figure in the bed. ‘Got everything he’s done on DVD. I loved him as Steerpike in Gormenghast. But his new Tudors series is the one I’ve been watching lately.’
Recognition clicked. Cupid had cast himself as the young Henry VIII!
And Dessa had the hots for the actor playing him . . . which meant the illusion wasn’t by chance.
Which also meant Cupid/Jonathan/Henry – Hell, I was sticking with Henry; it suited him – had plucked his illusion from Dessa’s thoughts. Except cambions couldn’t do that. But there was something that could. A Wishing Web. I’d never been in one, but I’d read up on them for the Carnival – the spell woven in the web picked up on a person’s subconscious fantasies. The Carnival had approved three applications, all for kids under eight, and they’d been set only to trigger for specific wishes. No one in their right mind would license one for adults; their deepest, darkest fantasies are far too dangerous.
I upped my focus. Now I was lookingfor it I could see the dark emerald lines of the spell stretching through the dim room in all directions, hidden beneath the sheen of the illusion. It wasn’t so much a web, but more as if thin laser-like beams randomly crossed the room at all angles. Each emerald laser beam bristled with tiny sticky fibres. Fibres that were floating around us like fine cactus spines, and in Dessa’s case had already dug themselves into her skin.
Hence, the Jonathan Rhys Meyers scenario.
Crap. I needed to find the Web’s power source, and shut it down—
‘Ladies!’ Henry shifted one long lean leg so the sheet slipped a couple of enticing inches lower, patted the bed next to him and held his hand out. ‘Will you not join me? Please?’
—hopefully before the fucking orgy started (no pun intended).
‘Oh, boy!’ Dessa took a step towards him.
I grasped Dessa’s upper arm. ‘Oh no you don’t.’
‘Hey, single mum here,’ she growled, jerking her arm back and catching me by surprise in the stomach. I doubled over, wheezing. She packed a punch, even though the stab vest I was wearing took the brunt. ‘I gotta take whatever opportunities I can get,’ Dessa muttered, starting forward again.
I straightened, grabbing for her wrist and pulling her round to face me. Her eyes were glazed, pupils fully dilated, almost eclipsing her dark brown irises, her mouth slack. ‘Believe me,’ I gasped, clamping my hand round her other wrist as she tried to shove me away again, ‘this isn’t an opportunity you want, Dessa. He’s not real. And you’re working, remember?’
‘Who cares,’ she snapped, still struggling.
‘A little help here, please,’ I called, then my stomach sank as I caught sight of Mary and Taegrin. They both stood still as stones, beatific expressions on their faces as they stared up at . . . whatever. Damn it. Mary I could understand, but what the hell was in the illusion that it could affect a troll?
Deal with them in a minute, Genny, I told myself as I narrowly missed getting kicked in the shin by Dessa.