Home Improvement: Undead Edition (35 page)

I shook my head. “Nah, just an annoying paparazzo.”

“A photographer?” His concern sharpened as he scrutinized the square. “Is she still here?”

“No,” I said, frowning. “Why?”

He was silent for a moment before turning back to me with a frustrated look. “Those newsy folk are nae but pests,” he said, and then with a soft snort of dismissal he changed the subject. “So, this next job you’re going to, will you be fancying a wee bit o’ company?” He flashed me a grin. “I ken ’tis the witches’ special night, and I wouldnae want you being lonely, doll.”

Anticipation flared inside me, and I straightened my attraction wires: we weren’t talking about him tasting my soul here, but other much more earthly pleasures. But having him tagging along on a job wasn’t a good idea . . . he’d be way too distracting.

“Appreciate the offer, Tavish,” I said, promising myself: another time . . . maybe, “but I’m good.”

“Aye doll, I ken you are, but ’tis myself I’m worried about.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

“Well, after you were for saving my life”—he placed a hand over his heart—“there’s nary a day goes by that I dinna feel lost and rudderless if I’m nae by your side.”

I shot him a quelling look. “Tavish, removing that death curse from you does
not
mean I saved your life. The guy that sicced it on you didn’t die, so it hadn’t taken hold.”

The beads on his dreads clicked a denial. “Nae, doll, you’ve a responsibility for me after that.”

“Pull the other one,” I said drily. “You’re not Chinese, and neither am I.”

“Och, well.” He threw out his arms and heaved a sad-sounding sigh, and I couldn’t help notice how his muscles shifted nicely under his green-black skin, which of course, was what he intended. At least I wasn’t drooling. Yet. He smiled, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “If you’re nae agreeing with me over that, then maybe you’ll be wanting to be irresponsible with me?” He leaned down and dropped a hard, hot, glorious kiss on my lips, and a delicious spiral of lust coiled deep inside me. “Call me.”

THREE HOURS LATER,
my taxi turned into Belgrave Square. I could still feel Tavish’s kiss like a promise on my lips, but his
Call me
was reverberating through my mind to an indecisive beat. Should I? A big,
big
part of me wanted to, but he was still wylde fae, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be long before I’d end up way out of my depth with him . . . I tucked his enticing voice away to deal with after the job, and scanned my surroundings.

Elegant, imposing, and über-expensive nineteenth-century town houses, many of them home to more foreign embassies and Important Places than I could count on two hands, lined all four sides of the square. The houses guarded a well-stocked, well-manicured, and private central garden. The place bristled with flags, diplomatic cars, and enough magical security that my skin felt as if it were trying to rip itself from my flesh and crawl away, which was maybe why the place was strangely devoid of people, even for a late Saturday afternoon.

Why was someone who lived here hiring Spellcrackers.com? Not that we’re not the best, but hey, anyone who could afford to buy a house here could keep a whole coven of witches on retainer. It didn’t make sense.

Toni had told me not to worry about
why
when I’d asked her, just to sort out the pixie problem the builders had caused. Which meant my destination was easy enough to spot, even without the address Toni had e-mailed to my phone. It was the only house with a yellow rubbish chute hanging from a fourth-floor window. A haze of dust clung to its smart front, and a large, new-looking skip was parked outside and hemmed in by temporary fencing. If that hadn’t given it away, then the fancy sign advertising the builders’ company would have. As I got out of the taxi I had an errant urge to write
Spellcrackers wuz here
across it. I resisted. Instead I stacked the half-dozen cat carriers I’d brought under the colonnaded portico with the cheerful help of the taxi driver, and, once she was gone, I straightened my black trouser suit and cased the joint . . . sorry, job.

The Ward, shimmering like a diaphanous lavender curtain over the front door, was a standard-issue “sucker” one, as it’s called in the trade. Once invited in, then you could pass back and forth over the threshold until the invitation was rescinded, much like the vamps it was colloquially named for. (Of course, once you’ve freely given your blood to a vamp, then there’s no rescinding that particular threshold invitation, which is why all the vamp clubs have to charge entrance fees by law.) The Ward seemed a bit low-key for such an expensive end of town, but with builders, and the rest of the square’s defenses, it was adequate.

I hitched my backpack higher, dug out my ID, and rang the bell. The person who answered wasn’t the butler/builder/security I expected, but she was familiar, from her spiky black hair, the red and black ink almost encircling her throat, right down to the huge professional camera still slung around her neck. The petite paparazzo, a.k.a. my stalker.

“Sorry, no offense,” I said, hiding my irritation behind a neutral tone, “but if this is an expensive way of getting an exclusive, I’m not interested.”

“Hey, I know all the gear looks suspicious,” she grinned, “but I’m not a pap. I have enough problems with them myself.” She stuck out her hand. “Theodora Christakis.”

My inner radar automatically pegged her as straight human. But the Witches’ Market in Covent Garden sells all sorts of spells, legal or otherwise, and skin-to-skin contact is an easy way to
tag
someone. I
looked
at her outstretched hand, but she was clean. I still didn’t take it, and she dropped her own.

“So, if you’re not a pap, Mrs. Christakis,” I said, “why have you been stalking me?” Okay, maybe I wasn’t hiding my irritation quite that much.

She laughed, and I caught a glimpse of the silver ball piercing her tongue. “I haven’t actually been stalking you, Ms. Taylor, or not much anyway.” She paused. “I design graphics for computer games; taking pictures helps”—she pointed her camera at me, but the frown on my face obviously deterred her from snapping—“and your bones are slightly longer, proportionally, than a human’s, so they make for interesting lines.”

It all sounded plausible enough, but my bullshit antenna was still twitching.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got any interesting ID, Mrs. Christakis?” I said flatly.

She disappeared into the hallway for a moment, then thrust a passport, a computer game, and a glossy magazine at me. “Is this interesting enough?”

The magazine showed a bride and groom laughing against a backdrop of rocky beach and sparkling, aquamarine sea. He was dark-haired, darksuited, and tall, or looked it since his bride was petite. She was draped in an off-the-shoulder Grecian-style dress of red and yellow silk, with red and yellow veils covering her short black hair. Both bride and groom wore delicate gold crowns joined by a twisted red and yellow ribbon, which echoed the faint red and black ink that snaked over the bride’s bare shoulder. A silver dumbbell pierced her eyebrow. The magazine was dated three months ago, and the headline read: WORLD EXCLUSIVE: CYPRIOT HEIRESS THEODORA BELUS WEDS ANTIQUITIES EXPERT SPYRIDON CHRISTAKIS ON THE SUN-DRENCHED ISLAND OF APHRODITE.

“Check out page fifteen,” Theodora said.

I did. It stated that Theodora was the owner of Herophile Futures, a blue-chip company producing computer games featuring modern-day wars between ancient Greek gods. The game she’d given me was Quest for the Aegis of Athena.

I also checked her passport. Other than the fact that her legal first name was Herophile (and who would want to be called that?), Theodora was who she said she was.

And it was a job.

I packed my paranoia into my backpack and handed her the things back. “Very colorful dress, Mrs. Christakis. Thank you.”

She grimaced. “Not my choice, unfortunately, but you can’t argue with the old traditions.” She stood aside and motioned me in. “Or at least, I can’t. Oh, and call me Dora. ‘Mrs. Christakis’ reminds me too much of my mother-in-law.”

“Sure,” I said, and transferred my cat carriers inside.

The entrance hallway was high and wide, with double doors leading off either side and an ornate marble-and-iron staircase sweeping upward. The walls were bare of pictures, the black-and-white marble floor was partially covered by drop cloths, and the only lighting was a couple of dangling bulbs. Next to a door at the back of the hall was a crisscrossed stack of toolboxes, a pyramid of paint cans, and three huge sledgehammers lined up by height. The builders were either toddlers, or neat freaks. Unsurprisingly, the place smelled of paint and the nose-stinging reek of turpentine, and I had a brief, regretful thought that my best black suit was going to end up trashed.

The double doors to the left were open, and the room beyond snagged my attention. It was haphazardly peopled with life-size statues of muscled, naked men in various athletic poses, and half-dressed women cradling fruit or pouring water. Scattered among the statues were marble busts, plaques, stone animals, and half a dozen knee-high stacks of shining silver and copper platters. It was like looking into a museum’s messy storeroom, or the White Queen’s lair, if she’d been Greek. Not to mention that the room was obviously pixie heaven.

I
looked
. And everything lit up with the telltale colorful sprinkles of pixie dust, but most of it was faint and old, with only a few brighter, newer patches. My paranoia peeked out of my backpack.

“We’re renovating the whole house”—Dora smiled and pointed up the stairs—“so we’re camping out on the second floor just now, but if you’d like something to eat or drink before you start, then you’re very welcome.”

As if on cue, a gray-haired woman in a black head scarf, who looked as if she were a hundred and suffering from eczema going by her wrinkled, scaly face, leaned over the banisters above. She waved a ladle large enough it could be classified as a weapon and shouted something (which was all Greek to me) in a strident, demanding tone. Dora repeated her offer of hospitality in a dutiful-sounding voice. I told her no thanks, and she shouted back in the same language (obviously it was all Greek to her too, except she understood it). The woman threw her hands in the air in disgust or despair and disappeared.

“Malia, my aunt. She refuses to believe that women work outside the home”—Dora rolled her eyes—“and therefore you must be a guest, and I am shirking my responsibility by not letting her stuff you full of food.”

The aunt’s stereotypical Greek appearance had almost settled my paranoia, although I still had questions. “So,” I said, “how long have you had your pixie problem?”

“With all the building work going on, I’m not sure when they first appeared.” Dora’s reply was a bit too casual. “I’ve seen them in Trafalgar Square, and thought they were cute.” She stopped and gave me a rueful grimace. “Look, to be honest, I’m using them in a new game, so it was handy having them around. Only then one of my husband’s more expensive statues got broken, and he’s due back next week, so, well, it’s time for the pixies to go.”

Made sense, but—“What about the local witches? Have you consulted with them at all?”

“I did,” she said, and frowned, “but the local coven wanted to use Stun spells and nets.” (Which was another way of solving the problem—with a low survival rate for the pixies.) “But I want it done humanely”—she smoothed her hand over her camera—“which is the way Spellcrackers does it, isn’t it?”

“It is, yes.” Humane to the pixies anyway; my arms still itched from their bites. Not that I’d want to catch them any other way. And after all, like all fae, I’m fast-healing, a bonus of being virtually immortal. So Dora’s answers meant I was good to go, other than my last niggle of unease: “Where are the pixies?” I asked her.

“Mostly up on the third floor,” Dora said. “But your office mentioned you’d probably need to close the portal in the swimming pool first.” I nodded. It was standard operating procedure: pointless rounding them up before you’d stopped more coming through. Dora led me to the door at the end of the hallway, “It’s down here, in the basement,” and then she added in a rush, “I’m not sure, but there might be a bit of a problem.”

I bit back a sigh. I hated it when clients didn’t tell you everything going in; it always made my job harder. But at least that explained where my last doubt was coming from.

I gave her my best professional smile. “Why don’t you show me, then?”

She opened the door to reveal a modern glass-and-chrome stairway that clashed with the rest of the house and the half-finished mural of ancient ruins and olive trees that decorated the stairwell wall. As we descended, the sound of crashing waves assaulted my ears and the salty scent of open water cut with the rank smell of death slapped me in the face. Either Dora had a hell of a wave pool down here, or she was right, and there was definitely a problem.

We reached the bottom of the stairs, walked along a long opaque-glass corridor, and at the end she opened another door.

The sound of the sea intensified.

I walked through the door with a feeling of trepidation. I just knew this wasn’t going to be good.

The room and the swimming pool were both bigger than I’d expected. The pool was fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, and eighteen feet at the deep end, going by the markings stenciled onto the very obvious white squares on the walls, which ruined the whole illusion of the painted panoramic vistas. And judging by the way the pool’s edges wavered with magic, instead of the pixie portal being the usual, easily closed hole about the size of a dinner plate, this portal was the size of the pool. Which explained why the waves were rolling toward us like we were on a beach in the Mediterranean, why the expanse of sandy-colored terra-cotta tiles (which was almost as large at the pool) was littered with dead fish and seaweed, and why there were three shark fins cutting an ominous figure eight in the pool’s sea-dark water.

I stared, stunned, then walked to the water’s edge. “How long’s it been like this?” I asked, pleased my voice came out calm.