‘Yes, it is,’ I said. As she waited expectantly, I decided to test my theory and calledmy own magic. It uncurled from my centre, up and out into my fingers, dusting them with a golden glow. I reached out and clasped her face, pushing the golden magic into her as soon as our skin touched. She jerked with surprise, then relaxed into smiling compliance, her pupils lighting with pinpricks of gold as she succumbed easily to my Glamour.

Too easily.

Glamouring someone isn’t much different from a vamp mind-lock: the aim of both is to control the victim. Vamp mind-locks can be like magical Rohypnol—more humans end up as a quick snatch-and-suck than you’d think; they just don’t remember. Add in a side order of vamp mesmaalong with the mind-lock and vamps can play pick and mix with their victims’ senses and emotions, making them believe anything for a time. But siccing a mind-lock on a human outside of licensed premises is illegal, and can end in a one-way trip to the guillotine. I sincerely doubted Victoria Harrier, a well-known witch, had ever set foot inside a vamp club, licensed or otherwise.

Of course, Glamouring a human was just as illegal and carried the same sharp-edged consequences.

The hair at my nape rose in an ominous and not-so-subtle reminder of that as I gazed into Victoria’s adoring, Glamoured eyes. Tentatively, I checked the tangled net of her mind, dusting it with golden magic, and found just what that familiar gleam in her eyes had told me I would: a looping skein of hard blackness, worn smooth and even like a well-trodden path. No wonder she had succumbed so quickly; she was pre-programmed. Whoever the vamp was, he or she had been reinforcing their commands for years, which wasn’t a mind-shattering discovery after hearing the daughter-in-law’s history. But trying to remove the command wouldbe mind-shattering; it was too deeply embedded. The much simpler option was to remove the vamp, but that was a job for later. For now, though, I just needed to take my Glamour back without disturbing anything.

As I started to retreat, Victoria whimpered in distress and I stopped, fearing that despite being so careful, I’d overloaded her with Glamour. I started to pull back again, slower this time, feathering the magic and letting it trail gently from her mind. She moaned, a low sound of pleasure that echoed inside me, and her pupils expanded into bright orbs of gold. Fascinated, I leaned towards her and placed my lips on hers, tasting the adoration in her exhaled breath, drawing in the sweetness of that devotion, pulling the energy of her adulation into my own body and feeling it hit with a hot jolt of electric bliss that was both more than and less than sexual. I gasped against her mouth, trembling with the urge to pour my magic into her, to fill her until her mind worshipped only me, until her heart beat only for me, to take her and make her mine, and mine alone—

I stilled, my mouth on hers, my hands cupping her face, savouring the delicious sensations as I teetered on the edge of temptation. Some part of me knew this was wrong, very, very wrong, but there was another, deeper part of me that said this was what I needed … I pressed my lips against hers again, sighed, and drew my hands and my magic reluctantly away as I followed the smooth path made by the vampire.

She moaned again, and this time I settled back in my own seat, my eyes fixed on the tinted windows and the world outside, giving her the semblance of privacy as her body surrendered to the commands entrenched in her mind, the ones my own magical invasion had triggered and curiously enhanced.

I caught a glimpse of Nelson’s Column in the distance. We were still trundling luxuriously along in the traffic, the driver obliviously going round and round in circles until he was given the signal to take me home.

‘So, Ms Taylor, what do you say now you’ve had time to think about my suggestion?’ Victoria Harrier asked.

I turned to find her sitting straight-backed, a slight flush to her cheeks, as calmly as if nothing untoward had happened. Of course, in her mind it hadn’t.

‘You know,’ I said slowly, ‘I think you might have a point about my 3V infection. I truly hadn’t thought about it in those terms before. Maybe I should speak to your daughter-in-law.’

She gave a pleased smile. ‘We can visit Ana now if you like.’ She gestured out the limo’s window. ‘She lives in Trafalgar Square with her grandfather, the fossegrim.’

Ana’s grandfather was the fossegrim? Shit—the old water fae was supposed to be totally and utterly insane. I’d been warned to stay away from him when I’d taken my first pixie eviction job for Spellcrackers. He’d come over from Norway with the very first Christmas tree after the Second World War: he’d been in love with the tree’s dryad and she’d died fighting in the Resistance. He’d been half-mad with grief, until he met a new lady love—but then he’d lost her too, to the curse. He’d gone on a killing spree in revenge, then holed up in the square’s fountains, where he’d been ever since. Ousting a blood-sucking fanged cuckoo out of their family nest was one thing, but no way did I want to run into the fossegrim, not without some sort of magical protection.

I gave Victoria Harrier a wary smile. ‘Okay,’ I agreed, backpeddling fast, ‘but I think we’d better leave the socialising until after we’ve seen the ravens.’ And after I’ve had chance to check things out and come up with … some sort of plan.

‘Perfect,’ Victoria Harrier said, with a satisfied expression. ‘I’ll arrange it for tomorrow. Now how about we get you home, Ms Taylor.’

Chapter Fourteen

‘Hang on,’ I muttered as my phone vibrated. I bumped the door to my flat closed with my hip, careful not to spill the cup of blood I’d just picked up from the Rosy Lea Café. With an annoyed sigh, I reactivated the protection Ward by banging my forehead against the painted wood; the Ward shimmered into life, a faint purple tinge on the white door. I dropped the ten-kilogram bag of salt—also from the Rosy Lea—next to the bucket beside the door and flexed my fingers, working out the cramps from carrying the salt up five flights of stairs. Life would be so much easier if I didn’t live in a converted Edwardian attic.

‘And life would be much easier if I didn’t have jealous witches, scheming fae, Machiavellian vamps, and The Mother of all goddesses to deal with on top of the fertility curse,’ I told the door, giving it a frustrated kick. I took a calming breath and muttered, ‘Stick to dealing with one problem at a time,’ and pulled my phone out.

I had a text from Finn:

I’m sorry. We need to talk. But not 2nite. I’ll CU 2morrow.

Short and not so sweet. I stared at the text, puzzled. It wasn’t like Finn and his inner white knight to leave me to my own devices, particularly when he knew my plans involved the vamps. Irrational disappointment flashed in me that he wasn’t beating my door down, as I’d half-expected him to be, along with morbid curiosity about what he wasdoing … and whether it had something to do with Helen.

Damn. I snapped my phone shut, put the cup down, hung my jacket up, tucked the police file Victoria Harrier had given me next to the bucket of salt, and mentally shelved Finn and the rest of the day’s dilemmas until later. I glanced at the clock: a little over four hours until sunset, so time enough for that long shower, a bite to eat and a bit of research before I headed off to Sucker Town and the vamp side of my problems.

But first things first. I might be home, but that didn’t mean I was safe.

I grabbed my drink and a handful of the salt already in the bucket and turned to look—and look—at my living room-cum-kitchen.

And at the books.

They were piled in knee-high stacks in my living room floor like a miniature village of tottering skyscrapers made of … well, stacks of books. Not being able to afford any furniture other than floor cushions was a definite advantage when it came to accommodating the fae’s curse- crackingresearch library, or at least the latest batch from the thousands of tomes they’d collected over the last sixty-odd years. The books had been arriving and disappearing on rotation ever since Tavish had told me about them and I’d insisted on checking them out for myself. Except Ihadn’t been the one insisting, had I? It was him, or rather him and Malik, the other half of that annoying, over-protective little double act. Between the Sleeping Beauty spell and Malik’s mind-mojo, I was surprised they’d stopped at imposing the curse- crackingreading on me, and hadn’t just wrapped me up in the proverbial cotton wool and kept me under magical house arrest.