Frustration had me briefly closing my eyes. I took a calming breath and let Ascalon slide back into my ring. ‘If the coin only works for her, or her proxy, what’s she doing here? Why isn’t she off to the Forum?’
Gold Cat’s ears flattened. Need you speak.
She wanted me as her mouthpiece. Figured. Except she still didn’t need me. Or she hadn’t when she’d decided to make Finn her mate. ‘Why isn’t she just jumping in and doing her possession bit like she did before?’
Her whiskers quivered in disgust. Not strong.
I took a closer lookat Gold Cat. Beneath her ‘been in the wars’ look, her body was faded, almost transparent. She was my ùmaidh. A temporary changeling. They usually had a couple of weeks, sometimes even a month. But Gold Cat didn’t look so lucky. My guess was she had a couple of days at most.
She means she’s too weak because she is dying—
‘I managed to work it out for myself, thanks, Viv,’ I said flatly, despite the anxious pounding of my heart. Carlson had been dying too because his mate had died, so he said. So if Gold Cat was dying and she was mated to Finn— I squatted next to Gold Cat, grabbed her by the scruff, demanded, ‘If you die what happens to Finn?’
Mated you too.
I blinked. ‘Thought you said he wasn’t mine, Viv?’
Was not,Gold Cat said sourly. Is now.
She means the mate bond jumped to you too,Viviane supplied with a touch of smugness, when you reclaimed the satyr just now.
Relief streamed through me. So Finn wasn’t going to die when Gold Cat did. That was the good news. And of course the magic would take its pound of flesh for that little bargain. Still, it could’ve been worse. But that didn’t mean I was just going to accept being mated to Finn; not when it wasn’t what I’d chosen. And for all Finn saying he wanted us to be together he hadn’t chosen to be mated either. If it wasn’t what he truly desired, then sooner or later he’d feel trapped, never mind whatever magic the mate bond was supposed to do to make us like each other. I gave Gold Cat a shake. ‘Can you undo the mating without killing either of us?’
Not possible.Her copper-coloured eyes slowly blinked and my heart sank. For me.
Tentative hope flared in me. Specific questions, Gen.‘Is there someone that can undo the mating without killing either Finn or me?’
Her pink tongue swiped her muzzle thoughtfully. Yes.
‘Who?’
Shrewdness flickered over her furry face. Save mate first.
I sighed, not even surprised. Standard negotiation tactics. Next she’d be asking me to find a way to keep her alive before she’d tell me who could break the mate bond. After all, she wanted to survive. But saving Finn was more important right now. In that we were of one mind, so we might as well be of one body. I tightened my hold on Gold Cat’s neck and lifted her. For something that looked the size of a chunky tiger, she was as limp and light as a kitten, but then the physical part of her was virtually non-existent.
‘Say hello to your fellow passenger, Viv,’ I said, as I absorbed Gold Cat in a brush of tickling fur. She landed on the grassy bank next to Viviane in a tumble of tail and paws. Viviane sniffed and brushed a couple of loose cat hairs off her dress. Gold Cat staggered to her feet, shook herself then curled up on the grass, tucked her nose under her paws and went to sleep as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Nice for some. I rolled my shoulders, feeling the muscle ache of swordplay setting in. At least with Gold Cat and her coin on board I could waltz right into the Forum; a way better plan than the original one of letting Mad Max walk me into his ‘trap’. But I still needed backup. And I needed to know what else had happened while I’d been stuck in Between.
I dug my phone out – surprisingly, it was working!– and called Hugh.
‘Genny, thank the peaks. Are you all right?’ His frantic rumble calmed as I told him I wasokay and where I was: Primrose Hill.
‘I’ll send a van to pick you up. What happened.’
I gave him the highlights: we’d been kidnapped by the gnome and the cat-shifters. They’d disappeared, and Finn had been taken by the Emperor’s werewolves.
‘Finn’s safe, Genny,’ Hugh said. ‘Half the herd were searching for you two in Between. They ran across him with the werewolves.’
My legs gave way with relief and I sat abruptly on the rough ground. ‘Is he okay?’
‘He’s been injured. There was quite a battle between the satyrs and the werewolves from what I understand, but he’s in a healing trance and should be fine.’
A bubble of joy expanded inside me and I felt a grin spread across my face. ‘That’s wonderful, Hugh.’ I jumped up, punching my arm into the air. Finn was safe. Everything else, like the mate problem and my lost memory, could be sorted out. I told Hugh I had another coin. ‘So now we’ve got three invitations to the Forum auction, which should up the odds of saving the kidnap victims.’
‘Sorry, Genny, but Finn’s coin isn’t going to help,’ Hugh said, then filled me in.
The police had already tried to gain entrance to the Forum auction using the coins. Mary (as the police’s main undercover girl due to her ability to mind-speak with her mother over any distance and so relay info back) had gone along with the Bangladeshi ambassador (who’d refused to let anyone else use his coin). But as soon as the pair had crossed into the Carnival Fantastique (the ambassador had been told the Forum Mirabilis was at its ‘heart’, wherever that was), the ambassador had vanished, as had Mad Max’s coin, leaving Mary and the police backup team with nothing.
‘So we think the coins contain some sort of dormant Translocation spell,’ Hugh finished, ‘but it only activates if the corresponding lot they’d been given in payment for is actually in the Forum. So now you’re back I’d like to put your cousin Maxim’s plan into action. If you think you’re okay to?’
‘Just try and stop me!’
Ten minutes later I reached the park entrance. The gnome’s house opposite was sporting crime-scene tape. I jumped into the police van waiting for me and Constable Taegrin told me that the cambion had confessed to buying (unlicensed) dried garden fairy and various other illegal aphrodisiacs from the horrid little gnome. The cambion was under arrest but, annoyingly, the gnome had slipped the police net, obviously by disappearing into Between.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if there’s any justice a swampie or one of the other nasties in there will eat him.’
‘A fitting end, Genny,’ Taegrin agreed with a grin, giving me a glimpse of shiny gold teeth, ‘but the boss would rather we had him in custody. He was going nuts with you missing. We were all worried, so glad you’re okay.’
‘So am I,’ I said. ‘So we’re back to the zoo again?’
‘Yes. Back to see the tigers.’
I gave a quiet huff. Gold Cat was gonna love them.
I was right. Gold Cat’s hackles went up the minute I’d entered the covered corridor of the tiger exhibit, and she’d circled restlessly around Viviane until Viv poked Gold Cat with her parasol. Gold Cat then slunk off behind the curtain of willows on the canal bank and I hadn’t seen her since. Not that her disappearing had made the zoo’s tigers happy. Through the corridor’s U-shaped viewing windows I could still see them crouched low to the ground, ears flat, their own hackles raised, eyeing me like I was an interloper in their territory and they weren’t sure whether to attack or run away.
Much like the two males before me.
I narrowed my gaze at Mad Max. His long platinum ponytail was tied at his nape with black ribbon, and his diamond dog-tags glinted in the V of his unbuttoned-to-the-waist black silk shirt, which was tucked into black satin dress trousers. He looked like a naff Legolas crossed with an eighties Medallion Man. ‘Look, Maxim,’ I said, tapping my boot on the blue plastic of my portable circle which I’d laid out in the centre of the corridor. ‘Stop being a wimp and get in the circle.’