My mate.

And I/it was his.

Mated.

No!I tried to shout, to push it out, but it raked claws through me, slicing me into smaller and smaller bloody pieces and casting them down into the darkness.

As I fell it reached out to Finn and as my lips met his, I felt it find the memories of it returning as the Gold Cat to the cave, of his and my waking minutes, of my telling him about it, and steal them from him.

The memories rained down on me, burning like acid tears.

Chapter Fifty-Three

I woke with a raging thirst, a hammering in my head that rivalled a dwarves’ workshop, and a nauseous roiling in my belly. I groaned, rolled groggily away from the sunlight sending knives into my eyes, and got a face full of fur. I groaned again, belatedly realising my Hot.D/Reviver double-postponed hangover had sucker-punched me. As had Gold Cat.

Fucking animus had mated me and Finn. Or it and him. Or all of us. Or— Fuck if I knew. But whatever Gold Cat had done, it was going to undo it as soon as I got my hands around its funky furry neck.

I scrambled up, dizzy with the hangover, to find Finn and Gold Cat were gone.

But Viviane was back, sitting with her game of Patience.

Shit. I should’ve known better than to trust her small agreement. I should’ve negotiated a cast-iron bargain with her and damned the consequences.

‘You and Gold Cat planned that, didn’t you?’ I accused, grabbing my clothes and yanking them on.

She calmly moved a card. ‘Not so much planned as, once I knew what the animus wanted, I agreed not to interfere.’

‘Why?’

‘Why isn’t important right now, bean sidhe. Not if you want me to help you save the satyr, as we agreed.’

I snorted then wished I hadn’t as the dwarves in my head hammered another couple of nails in. ‘No thanks, Viv. After your last bit of help, in which you, oh so helpfullyfucked Finn and me up, you can stick it. And the agreement’s off; you’ve broken our no-harm-to-me-or-mine deal.’

Her cards jerked up on end, quivering with umbrage. ‘I agreed to help release you from that circle. In order to do that without your dying, the ritual had to be completed. As stated on page thirty-nine of the notes taken from the witch archives.’

My hands stilled on my shirt buttons as the ramifications hit me. If I hadn’t had sex with Finn, I’d be dead . . . except I’m sidhe, and hard to kill. And I trusted Viviane about as far as I could throw her, which seeing as she was incorporeal was not at all. But I didn’t need to trust her, I could check for myself. I lurched over to Carlson’s ripped backpack, only to find the cloth-wrapped bundle containing the details of the ritual was missing.

I rounded on Viviane. ‘Where is it?’

She shrugged. ‘I do not know. But I can tell you that what happened between you and Finn was for the best. If it had not happened, then when the Emperor’s lupus centurionsappeared, they would have killed the satyr and one of them would have completed the ritual instead. I do not think you would enjoy being mated to one of the Emperor’s werewolves.’

I stared at her, horrified at the worse-than-having-sex-with-Finn-and-whatever-Gold-Cat-had-done fate Finn and I had averted. ‘The Emperor’s werewolves were here?’

She tossed her black hair back in irritation and her cards flew up into a line in front of my face. Like a slide show they showed seven huge wolves at the cave entrance. Then three black-haired, olive-skinned males, dressed only in short centurion-style leather kilts with thick hair furring their muscled chests, alike enough to be brothers, if not triplets, and all of them resembling the Latin Lover werewolf guy from Trafalgar Square. Next card showed Finn, his head bleeding, eyes closed, half-bundled into a net. The last card showed the swish of Gold Cat’s tail as it chased after them.

A vice squeezed my heart. The Emperor’s werewolves had taken Finn. I had to get him back. Rage and fear ignited in my veins. I wouldget him back, no matter what it took. The Emperor wanted something from me—

‘I was here,’ I said, my voice flat. ‘Why didn’t they take me?’

‘No doubt they had a reason.’ Viviane flicked her fingers and the cards returned to a tidy stack in front of her. ‘But if you want my help to save the satyr along with all the other victims of the Forum Mirabilis we should get moving.’

‘Told you,’ I snapped. ‘Your help is no longer required.’

She gave me an arch smile. ‘Then I wish you luck finding your way back to the humans’ world.’

Crap. Like I’d ever find it. Betweendidn’t go in for handy signposts and I’d been unconscious on the way here. Even if I struck lucky and found an entrance, right one or not, opening it would take another miracle. Being magically challenged sucks. Big time.

‘Fine,’ I snapped. ‘Let’s move.’

The way back felt like I was climbing-through Dante’s nine circles of hell. My Hot.D postponed hangover, which even the painkillers in my backpack couldn’t nix, didn’t help. Neither did the cave being so far off any regular paths, so not only did I have fucking garden fairies screaming in my ears and sulphurous-smelling swampies to dodge but all the other magical beasties and half-formed spirits that plague Betweendecided to come out and party too. Most of them decided retreat was the best option as soon as they got a look at Ascalon, but enough wanted a piece of me that by the time we reached the double oak tree with its bramble- and weed-tangled and impossible-for-me-to-pass exit back to London’s Primrose Hill, I already looked like I’d been pulled through a hundred hedges backwards.

I glowered at the bespelled tangle, cursing my lack of magical ability, the Emperor and anyone else who’d had a meddling hand in my life. Slicing and dicing my way through the half-formed hadn’t done much to take the edge off my rage and fear for Finn; instead the fighting had solidified it into a gutful of determination. But at least the long trek in between the fights hadgiven me time to put more of the ‘Viviane jigsaw’ together.

I turned to where she hovered silently. Once we’d left the cave she’d changed her outfit to a lavender-coloured Victorian dress, complete with beribboned bustle, feathered bonnet and lacy parasol, and had entertained herself by making small-talk about all the famous artists she’d got it together with, or by critiquing my sword-handling skills, demonstrating with her parasol, after each of my tussles. Of course, none of the half-formed had attacked her; she’d been safe behind a personal Ward. She’d shut up, though, after my frustrated rage had exploded and I’d threatened to slice and dice her wretched parasol.

I reached out and grabbed her wrist.

Her mouth dropped open in shock. ‘You can’t do that. I’m a spirit! Incorporeal!’

Except I could. As I’d discovered during my skirmishes with the half-formed. It hadn’t just been Ascalon that had chased them off; my fists and feet had too. The first time had been by accident; two seven-foot cyclops-types with orange exoskeletons and snapping lobster claws got me in a pincer movement (bad pun aside). Ascalon declawed one (a minor injury, if not for the fact it was caused by the blessed, bespelled sword), blasting the cyclops-lobster back into the magic, and my automatic elbow to the gut got the one behind me. Its surprised look as its carapace cracked had mirrored my own, then, as it gathered its leaking magic back to re-form and attack again, I instinctively calledit and absorbedit. Horrified about what nasty side-effects might arise from ingesting a half-formed, I spat it straight back out. Or rather I spat out an orange amorphous mass. It floated off, drifting gradually apart until it fadedaway into the ether.

It took me a few more fights, and absorptions, to put my new ability together with the sorcerer’s soul I’d consumed during the demon attack last Hallowe’en, and realised that I could do more with souls and spirits than just chomp on them and regurgitate the magical remains. Like spells, I could grab them and, once they realised my touch controlled them, let them go (at which point most of them beat a hasty retreat) or I could absorbthem and spit them back out whole. Well, I could after my ninth attempt. Of course, those spirits had found the whole experience a tad traumatic, but then they hadn’t exactly wanted to be absorbed.