Faerie Magic (7 page)

He shook his head. “Not magic. Faerie blood.”

Alarm zinged through me. “To make you immortal. Right?” Damn. Would the rumour ever die?

“How’d you know?” The half-faerie’s eyes flickered over to me. “The blood. It wasn’t right. Something went wrong. I’m not all powerful. It’s…” He shook all over, the back of his head resting against the wall.

“So you drugged yourself with a substance you thought was faerie blood?” said the Mage Lord. “Where did the seller get it from?”

If it was the real deal… but no. It wouldn’t be. Plainly, someone had tried to capitalise on the half-faeries’ desperation after the veil closed and Velkas left. And now people were getting killed over it.

“I don’t know.”

The Mage Lord took one step forward. Careful, measured to show the light gleaming on the side of his blade. “You took the drug, then you stabbed the mage. Did anything happen in between? Did anyone else take it?”

The half-faerie’s whole body flinched back at the sight of Vance’s weapon. “Didn’t see. Guy was at the market. He might have sold it to other people.” He turned away from the Mage Lord to regard me with red-rimmed eyes. “What’s with you? The magic’s all over you.”

I froze. Vance didn’t look at me, but he moved forward until he stood between me and the half-faerie.

“Have you nothing else to say, other than that you had every intention of committing murder?”

“I—I—don’t hurt me. Please.”

“You murdered a Mage Lord,” said Vance. “You didn’t think you’d be let off with a slap on the wrist, did you?”

Frantic head-shaking. I knew what was coming, but didn’t look away. The sword flashed out. Blood spattered the wall, and the half-faerie’s head collapsed onto his chest.

“There are more pleasant ways to kill people,” I said, swallowing. “You don’t need to prove you’re the scariest mage around. Everyone knows already.”

He turned to me. “You don’t think he deserved to die?”

“I think you should have pressed him further,” I said. “Plainly, someone gave him the illegal substance. He might not have been acting under his own power. Not that it makes
murder
okay, but really, the person selling the drug’s equally to blame.”

“I’m a Mage Lord. My position leaves no room for second guessing. The Mage Lords have the weight of the entire supernatural community on our shoulders—and yes, that includes the half-faeries.”

“They’ll hate you now,” I said. “Just saying.”

Instead of responding, he made for the door. “I’m going to talk to the other mages. If possible, collect a blood sample, to make sure it’s the same drug.”

“If it is, it’s travelled a long way,” I said. “Like I said—we need to know who’s selling it. Screwing people over is one thing, but making them go batshit insane is another.” And there’d been one witness to the first killing… Alain.

I sighed. “I need to speak to Alain. She might have seen something. But I wasn’t kidding about the kelpie almost eating me alive the last time I went near her place. I can’t just waltz into their territory again, but nobody will give me permission to be there.”

“I can,” said the Mage Lord.

Great. Here I was, forced to depend on him again. But what choice did I have?

“You and I don’t exactly see eye to eye on these things.” Alain hadn’t done anything wrong—at least, not that I’d seen. The image of her tear-streaked face flashed before my eyes, and suddenly I knew I couldn’t let Vance go near her until I’d confirmed if she was guilty or not.

“I don’t harm innocents.” He cast a dismissive look at the dead half-faerie.

“Good to know.” I walked after him, out of the room.

I pondered what we’d found on the long journey back, trying to figure out how in hell to talk to Alain without getting killed or maimed. A spell might help. Aside from truth serums, which were tricky to operate at the best of times and might not even work on half-faeries like they did on humans… Maybe if I sneaked in there without anyone knowing who I was.

Without anyone knowing I was human.

Illusion charms… Isabel did have some. But the ingredients were hard to get hold of, and considering she used beautification charms herself, Alain might see through it. Odds were, I’d be better walking in as Ivy the freelancer and hoping I wouldn’t get attacked this time. Apparently, closing the veil and saving all their hides didn’t get me a free pass to half-faerie land.

I sighed inwardly and sent Isabel a message.

A response came:
I need to show you something.

I frowned.
Show me what?

I managed to separate the serum in the faerie’s blood and tried a distant tracking spell on it. The results were a little blurry, but maybe you can make more sense of it than I can.

Wait,
I messaged back.
You tried to see where the serum came from before that half-faerie injected himself with it?

Tried to. It’s the distant past, so it’s pretty indistinct. I think someone sold it to him. I saw someone hand it over, but didn’t see cash exchange hands. The details were blurry, though.

Sold it. Quickly, I told her what we’d discovered. And then, hesitantly, I told her my idea.

There was a long pause. Vance looked at me. “What are you doing?”

“Talking to Isabel,” I said, shifting in my seat. “She tried a tracking spell on the serum. Looks like someone sold it to the half-faerie. Or gave it to him.”

Vance looked preoccupied. “The same person? Or a collective? I’ve asked the mages in the other districts, and there haven’t been any reports of similar incidents.”

“Hmm…” I frowned. “Might be a local thing. Like the faerie equivalent of a drug dealer, promising immortality. That’s messed up.” But if we knew who was selling the stuff, we’d be able to stop it.

All I needed was a way to get into half-blood territory, undetected.

***

The following morning, I checked my phone and found no response to my messages.
Dammit, Vance.
Should have known better to trust he’d keep his word and tell me his plan. He might be in another meeting, of course, but the guy could summon his phone out of thin air if he wanted to now he was back in the city.

I had bigger problems, anyway.

“I don’t believe I’m doing this,” I muttered.

“Keep still,” said Isabel.

“I am.”

I kept an eye on the edge of the circle I stood in, trying my hardest not to jump out of it. The edges swirled with red smoke, forming unreadable glyphs. I trusted Isabel with the difficult spell, but I’d been standing in the middle of the circle for twenty minutes and I looked exactly the same. The spell was meant to make me appear like a half-faerie—or a passable one.

I tapped my fingers against my crossed arms, watching as Isabel applied another layer of a faint blue powder to the circle, from a glass container. At least a dozen more lay on the side, filled with bright, glittering powders and potions. Words passed her lips, but I didn’t understand a single one. The language was ancient, kept amongst historians and students of ancient magic. Only the witches used it, though I’d seen similar glyphs on the walls of the mages’ headquarters and around the necromancers, too.

A tingling sensation ran up my arms. While faerie magic felt like a heady adrenaline rush and mage magic felt like a force of nature, witch magic generally seemed calm by comparison. The tingling wasn’t unpleasant, more like a healing spell. Goose bumps rose on my arms. My head snapped up as Isabel gasped aloud.

“What?” My voice sounded strange. Instead of answering, Isabel crossed the room and went into her bedroom. She reappeared seconds later holding a small mirror. My heart began to beat faster, my arms dropping to my sides.

Isabel held the mirror up. For a second, it was like looking at a portrait or an illustration. The woman staring at me
was
me, but… altered. My face was more pointed, the cheekbones more pronounced. My eyes glittered, green as emeralds, and my brown hair had darkened to black, twisting into curls I’d never have achieved on my own. I was taller, too, and somehow even my tattered jeans and T-shirt looked good on me. Possibly because I was
glowing.
A blue-green halo surrounded my entire body, like I’d walked through a glittery waterfall. I winked, and the stranger in the mirror winked back.

Damn.
I stumbled, tripping over the edge of the circle, and Isabel lifted the mirror, staring at me.

“Oh my god.”

“Bad faerie!” screamed a voice. Erwin, our resident piskie, flew shrieking through the room, colliding with the far wall.

“It’s only me,” I said, but the piskie screamed again and flew up, this time hitting the ceiling. “Pull yourself together.”

Shit. Even my
voice
sounded different. Like I was singing. Ugh. I turned to Isabel. “I hate this.”

“It’s only for a couple of hours, right?” She moved to start tidying the floor, like she was trying not to stare.

“Assuming I don’t give the game away.” I hesitated. “Damn. It doesn’t even matter if they see my magic. They’ll think I’m one of them.”

Hands at my sides, I walked to the bathroom to get a closer look in the large mirror over the sink. I really did look like one of them, down to the pointy ears. Hesitantly, I raised my hands to touch them, and even the self-conscious movement somehow looked regal.

Assholes.

I smirked, putting on the expression of complete and total confidence all pure faeries seemed to wear. The lords, at least. I looked like a sneering elven knight. Yeuch. I kind of wanted to punch the faerie woman in the mirror on the nose, but even as a faerie, that’d look stupid.

I turned my back instead, suddenly glad the Mage Lord wasn’t accompanying me this time. It’d be less conspicuous for me to get into half-faerie territory alone, and besides, he was stuck in meetings with the other mages, trying to get information about the murder. I still thought he should have left the killer alive, at least until they could properly question him.

What would he say if he saw me now? I didn’t like to imagine. Not that he wouldn’t like how I looked as a stupidly attractive half-faerie—that was the problem. Because she wasn’t me. I shouldn’t even care, anyway.

Back in the living room, I found Isabel had managed to calm Erwin down. The piskie sat on the kitchen work surface, glaring at me with beady eyes.

“It’s temporary,” I said. “I’m doing some sneaking around—”

The doorbell rang. I hung behind, alarm ringing through me. Shit.
Please don’t let it be Larsen. Or the landlord.
I didn’t want either of them to see what we were up to. The landlord would kick me out, while Larsen would know we were messing with something illegal. Even if we did have the Mage Lord’s permission.

Isabel peered through the keyhole. “It’s Henry.”

I breathed out when Henry Cavanaugh came into the flat, followed by four-year-old George.

“What are you doing?” asked Henry, eyeing the spell circles all over the floor.

“Er. Working on a case.”

“Fancy dress?” asked George. “You look different, Ivy.”

“It’s a spell,” I said. “I’m investigating on half-faerie territory and I don’t want them to attack me.”

“Right.” Henry raised an eyebrow at me. “I wondered why I smelled faerie blood.”

“It’s me, do you need to ask?” I asked, slightly uncomfortable. It was difficult to explain away illicit activity to a shifter with acute senses. Shifters didn’t have any argument with the faeries, but after our flat had nearly burned down the other week, the Cavanaugh family had been asking every time anything remotely suspicious came near the building.

“Just wondering…” He frowned. “There’s that scent again. Was a shifter in here?”

Oh, crap. The Mage Lord. Apparently he smelled like the most powerful form of shifter possible. I didn’t smell anything beyond the tang of the ingredients Isabel had used to make the illusion spell.

“No,” I said. “It might be from all the spells we were doing. We’re looking into… uh, a possible faerie drug.” I didn’t see the harm in telling him. The shifters didn’t mix with the half-faeries any more than the witches or mages did.

Isabel eyed me suspiciously, but didn’t say anything. “Did the spell I put on the roof work?” she asked Henry instead. While they discussed the rain-proof spell—there’d been a hole in the roof for months, and the landlord had never bothered doing anything about it—I occupied myself staving off George’s questions and keeping him away from the spell circles.

“You’re very pretty,” George said.

“Thanks, but this isn’t me. It’s a magical disguise.”

“Still pretty. Like the elf lady.”

I frowned. “Elf lady?”

“I sometimes see her on the corner of our road.”

Crap.
“What does she look like?”

“Pretty.”

Hmm. Kids made up stories, but when it came to the faeries, caution won out. “Never talk to her,” I said. “Don’t speak to any stranger you don’t know.”

“I know
that,”
said George.