‘Isn’t that what I just said?’ I raised my brows, then sighed at her expectant silence. ‘Yes, I agree.’

She smiled, satisfied.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Now that you’re happy, please start talking.’

‘Very well, child. The three London gates have not been opened, but another has been recently conjured by a mortal in this part of the world. As yet, my queen has not succeeded in locating the gate’s anchor, either here or in her own territory. ’

I frowned. ‘When you say “anchor”, what do you mean?’

‘Gates are traditionally opened at specific landmarks, anchored by a combination of earth, air and water magic, which makes them easy to locate and to guard.’ The pointed tips of her ears seemed to flatten. ‘This gate is anchored by blood magic.’

‘Which means?’

‘The gate can be opened anywhere, here or in the Fair Lands, by whomsoever controls the blood.’

‘So the anchor is the person and not a place?’

‘Almost correct, child. The anchor is two persons, the two halves of the gate. It will be a mortal on this side, one who shares a close blood-connection with someone in my queen’s court.’

‘What sort of blood-connection?’ I asked.

‘A parent on this side whose child is in the Fair Lands.’

‘A mortal parent this side,’ I said, putting the pieces together in my mind. ‘So you’re talking about, what, a stolen child on your side?’

Grianne paled in shock. ‘My queen would neversanction a stolen child at her court! That would be to break the bargain the human monarch Victoria brokered with all the queens of the Fair Lands on the birth of her first child.’

I wasn’t quite sure how many queens of the Fair Lands there were; I’d asked Grianne once and finally got out of her ‘ more than twenty’ along with ‘ as many as the magic desires’when I’d pressed the matter. Both were typical answers when she either didn’t know, or didn’t want to tell me something.

‘Queen Victoria died more than a century ago,’ I said, matter-of-fact.

Her shock turned to puzzlement. ‘There is still a queen on the throne of England, not a king, is there not?’

‘Yes, Queen Elizabeth. The Second.’

‘Then the bargain will have been renegotiated on the birth of the current queen’s first child.’ She waved dismissively. ‘The tradition goes back to Boadicea.’

‘Okay, so if the child isn’t stolen, what is it?’

‘A treasured gift given to my queen,’ she said softly, ‘at a time of great sorrow.’

Ri-ight. I wondered briefly who actually suffered this great sorrow, the queen, or the poor human who was persuaded to give up her child as a gift? Still, there couldn’t be many who’d done so, whatever the reason, which would narrow the search. ‘So who’s the parent?’ I asked.

She placed a hand on my arm. ‘There is a complication, child.’

Figured! ‘Go on.’

‘The gate has not been used by either the child or the parent, but by someone unrelated to either of them.’

I frowned. ‘But you said the gate needed their blood to make the connection.’

She nodded. ‘This is true.’

‘So whoever has opened the gate has access to their blood,’ I mused. ‘Which means they have to be close to the parent, so finding the parent should lead me to the gate-conjurer and then to the sidhe.’

‘This quest would be of benefit both to my queen and to you yourself.’ Grianne guided us around a large oil-slicked puddle. ‘When you find the anchor, my queen will intercede on your behalf with the human authorities to confirm that you are not responsible for the human’s death.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘There is one more thing you should be aware of.’ She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘The bean sidheis not in her right mind.’

‘I’d kind of got that by the fact she’s murdered someone,’ I said drily.

‘She may not realise she has done so.’ The tips of Grianne’s ears twitched. ‘It is important you take care that she is not harmed.’

‘Fine. The information, Grianne.’

‘It is in your pocket, child.’ She turned, the air wavered about her, she dropped to all four doggy paws and bounded off, nails clicking sharply along the street.

‘Make an exit, why don’t you?’ I muttered, pulling out a folded sheet of parchment from my jacket pocket. Opening it, I glanced at the name—

—and sighed. Helen Crane, a.k.a Detective Inspector Helen Crane, Head of the Metropolitan Magic Murder Squad, the person in charge of hunting me down for a murder I didn’t commit.

Crap. Could my day get any worse?

Chapter Twenty-Five

Helen Crane’s blood had been used to open a gate between London and the Fair Lands, a gate that led to her child—a child she’d given to the sidhe. A changeling, then. What was I supposed to do, ring her up and say, ‘Hi, Helen, I know we’re not best buddies or anything, but hey, just heard you’ve got a long-lost kid, one that’s off in the Fair Lands, and guess what? Someone’s using your blood connection to let the murderer come through—any ideas who that might be?’

And I could just imagine the superior look on her beautiful, patrician face as she replied, ‘Well, that’s very interesting, Ms Taylor, but isn’t this the murder we suspect you’re responsible for? The one I’m investigating? And not that it’s relevant, but don’t you think I’d know if someone had used my blood?’

Damn. Whichever way I looked at this, it didn’t get any better.

Helen liked me even less than Grianne did, and she had even less incentive to listen to me, thanks to our butting heads over Finn—her ex ... and if anyone would know about DI Helen Crane’s long-lost child, her ex should. Okay, so they’d only had a broom marriage, but even so, seven years and seven days isn’t exactly ships passing. Asking Finn what he knew about it was a way better option that trying to beard a powerful witch in her police den at Old Scotland Yard. Not to mention I’d been planning on seeing him as soon as anyway.

‘ Genevieve!’

I jerked my head up at the sound of my name and scanned my surroundings. The street was empty, other than the three costumed actors outside the London Bridge Experience. Beyond them, thirty-odd feet away, was Tavish’s doorway, still propped open for my return, but Tavish hadn’t appeared there, and no one else was near it. I did a quick circle, checking out the steps leading up to the bridge above, and squinting at the bridge parapet—

‘ Genevieve,’ the voice came again—

—from the direction of the actors. I frowned at them. The two women were engrossed in their gossiping, but the man was standing off to one side. As I looked, he started shuffling towards me, dragging his feet over the ground. I froze like the proverbial rabbit, pulse jumping in my throat, staring at the sunken eye sockets, the nose eaten away by a sore, the deep cut marring his left cheek ... and as he got closer, I caught the rotten smell of putrefying flesh. The hairs at the nape of my neck lifted in shock. He wasn’t staff; he wasn’t an actor playing the part of a plague victim, but the real thing: Scarface, the ghost who’d kept bumping into Finn’s magic circle.

Adrenalin finally broke through my fear and I started sprinting for Tavish’s doorway on the other side of the bridge.

Scarface jerked and shuffled faster, changing his course to cut me off.

The world narrowed to the gap between ghost and wall.

The women looked up in surprise.

The gap got smaller.

An arm stretched out for me—

A scream lodged in my throat—

—and then I was past him, my lungs burning, nearly there—

—and my foot caught the kerb, sending me sprawling. Sharp grit cut into my palms and my jeans-clad knees. Skeletal fingers snapped at my ankles. I cried out and kicked back, my feet sinking into something soft and fleshy, then I struggled to my feet and, staggering, started running again, crouched over, not daring to look behind me, desperate to reach the doorway and safety. I hit the opening at full pelt and felt the magic resisting me like sticky syrup as bony fingers raked down my back. I screamed again, threw myself forward, not caring for anything except getting away, grabbing for something, anything, to stop him dragging me back ...