The Shifting Price of Prey (2 page)

‘Ah, but I know this is what you fairies like, Ms Taylor.’ He pushed the plate towards me, the edges of the mustard-coloured lichen mapping his bald pate crinkling with
encouragement.

‘I’m sidhe fae, Mr Lampy,’ I said, more sharply and less patiently than I had the first three times I’d corrected him. ‘Sidhe fae are not related to garden
fairies.’ Something you’d think a gnome, one of the Others should know. ‘We have more genes in common with an ordinary human than a chimpanzee does. While garden fairies are more
closely related to insects and amphibians.’

‘Of course they are.’ He gave me a sly wink and tapped the sandwich box. ‘But these little beauties can tap into the magic, much as you yourself can, unlike even the most
extraordinary of humans.’ He clasped his fat little hands and rested them on his shirt-straining pot belly. ‘It’s what makes them so desirable.’

Ugh.
Dried garden fairy parts – smoked, snorted, imbibed or injected – are the equivalent of magical Viagra, and not just in the obvious, sexual way, but in the
boosting-your-magical-abilities way. The resulting power spike is said to be a hundred times better than sugar (the standard way to amp up magic), a phenomenon discovered in 1835 by Jacob Sabine, a
prominent Victorian naturalist and wizard. By the end of the nineteenth century, garden fairies had gone from being as common as dragonflies to near extinction, only to be saved by Sclalter’s
Intervention, the Parliamentary Bill passed in 1902 which now protected them.

I’d fine-combed the legal stuff, hoping for something to nail the gnome with.

Unfortunately, the gnome was an accredited conservationist and therefore an authorised dealer. He was allowed to trade as a way to independently fund his fairy preservation work. Once licensed,
the fairy would be worth around a grand. Given its rarity for this time of year, the gnome could probably charge three, maybe five times that. Add in that the Carnival Fantastique was in town, and
ten times probably wasn’t beyond the realms of the gnome’s greedy calculations. Which was a hell of a monetary incentive to find a way to fast-track nature. The only thing stopping him
coining it in was me.

Anyone would think he’d be more politic about things. But that’s gnomes for you.

‘It’s very early in the year for the fairies to be . . . active,’ I said, opting for euphemistic vagueness.

The gnome hit me with another denture-filled leer. ‘But you’ve examined the body haven’t you, Ms Taylor? So you can confirm that his death was part of normal mating and
entirely unassisted.’

It was— if you ignored the fact that the male fairy’s near decapitation had been assisted by the female fairy’s neck-frill stiffening during fertilisation. Black widows have
nothing on garden fairies.

‘I’ll agree it looks like it,’ I said. ‘But that doesn’t stop it being much earlier.’

‘I think it’s a side-effect of global warming.’ The gnome’s eyes behind his glasses watered, as he gave me his version of an innocent look.

Global warming, my arse.
‘I see.’

Of course, there was always the other, illegally assisted alternative. That somewhere, the gnome had a hothouse dialled up to tropical, and had used it to accelerate the fairy’s life
cycle, then trapped him in an airtight box with a rubber frog and a handful of foxglove flowers a.k.a. fairy catnip. As soon as the excited, albeit confused, fairy lost consciousness, the gnome had
slit the fairy’s throat and left him to dry out with a sachet of silicate crystals. That was the modern way: the Victorians used to use live frogs and rack the comatose fairies in small
oak-lined smoking bins.

Trouble was, as the Victorians had discovered, garden fairies are almost impossible to breed in captivity. They need natural light. Which means glass. And they zip. Zipping into glass at the
fairy equivalent of fifty miles an hour is like bugs hitting a car window. They splat.

The only time captive breeding had succeeded on any scale was when the Victorians had relocated Crystal Palace to Sydenham Park. An accident had placed it right on top of the local fairy
hatching ground. So if the gnome did have a hothouse, it would have to be at least the size of a football field. Something that huge was hard to hide, even with magic. But my gut said the gnome was
up to something. And I was determined to prove it. Only every time I’d moved out of his ‘office’ during my last inspection, he’d stuck to me like some of his nasty lichen,
so now I was back, with my invisible-to-the-gnome co-worker in tow.

I unpacked my kit – measuring callipers, scalpels, pestle and mortar, ultra-violet light, magnifying glass and various potions and test spells I needed to complete the extensive tests
prior to granting the licences – carefully lining up the items on the marble-top table under the gnome’s eager, creepy gaze.

Ugh.
Last thing I wanted was him rubbernecking my every move for the next couple of hours.

‘This is going to take some time,’ I said firmly as I placed the last, most important item on the table: a packet containing the manmade crystals I’d superglue to each
fairy’s head (the least valuable part), each crystal holding the actual Licence spell. The crystals were clear just now, but would glow viridian green once activated. ‘And I prefer to
work undisturbed, Mr Lampy. I find there’s less chance of contamination or error that way.’ I paused, baring my teeth in a wide smile; he might not be a goblin, but he’d recognise
the threat. ‘I’d hate to have to resample anything because I was distracted.’ In other words:
leave me alone or I’ll chop large expensive chunks off your stock.

The gnome got the message. ‘Of course, Ms Taylor. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.’

I needed him like a vamp needed a suntan! He scuttled away and I settled down to work until my co-worker reappeared. Hopefully with something incriminating that would spell bad news for the
nasty gnome.

T
hirty minutes later a familiar brush against my senses had me looking over my shoulder again to see a clear crystal appear on the room’s
threshold. The crystal started to glow with the pink blush of dawn and the heady scent of peat and whisky shimmered through the room, sending desire shuddering through my body. I braced my hands on
the desk, let the power ride me to the soft edge of pleasure, then bit back a frustrated cry as the spell set, leaving me wanting.

The cause wasn’t the spell: it was a simple Privacy one. Anyone could buy five of them from the Witches’ Market in Covent Garden for under a tenner. No, my reaction was down to the
person who’d activated it. Tavish, the kelpie, defacto
àrd-cheann
– Top Dog, or in Tavish’s case, Top Water Horse – of London’s fae, and my
co-worker/employee . . . when the inclination took him.

It didn’t matter what spells Tavish set; if I was near it was like getting blasted with magical pheromones. The longer we worked together, the more potent it got. I’d learned the
hard way not to block it, as all that did was make my frustration worse. Not that he was doing it deliberately: in fact, when I’d brought it up, he’d looked dismayed then concluded it
must be a side-effect (caused by my usual random reactions to magic) of the protective Chastity spell he’d
tagged
me with three months ago (he’d removed the Chastity spell soon
after, once the threat was gone) and should fade in time.

Only the ‘side-effect’ wasn’t fading.

The second time I’d mentioned it he’d proposed we ‘swim in his lake’ and sort it out that way. But rather than his idea being one of his usual semi-serious suggestions we
have sex, he’d been obviously reluctant.

Which confused the hell out of me.

Until it clicked that while Tavish had never missed an opportunity to sic me with his kelpie power and I’d often found myself gazing at him like a Charm-struck human, he’d always had
an ulterior motive for hitting on me; the infertility curse afflicting London’s lesser fae. The fae had expected me to have a curse-breaking baby and, Tavish, as
àrd-cheann
,
had been number one prospective daddy. But Tavish had only volunteered as ‘daddy’ to protect me from the rest of them. Something I was grateful for despite my annoyance at being kept in
the dark about his whole take on the curse situation.

Of course, I didn’t need his protection any more, not since the true reason for the fae’s infertility had become common knowledge during the Tower of London Abductions case three
months ago (codenamed ToLA by the police); their lack of fertility wasn’t due to a curse, but rather their fertility had been stolen. And, thanks in part to Tavish’s Machiavellian
plotting, I’d recovered it.

Which was when Tavish had stopped hitting on me.

His reluctance hurt. Though, with the curse hanging around like an impatient Grim Reaper bent on eradicating London’s fae, I could understand why he’d faked fancying me. And it
wasn’t as if I wanted us to be an item: Tavish is hot, and there’s a definite chemistry between us, at least on my side, but all my heart truly felt for him was friendship.

Of course, there was another reason why Tavish’s ardour might have cooled . . . stabbing him in the gut with a five-foot bull’s horn, and leaving him to the Morrígan’s
tender ministrations probably hadn’t endeared me to him.

But whatever the reason I was no longer on his ‘SILF’ list, I didn’t want to complicate things for either of us by ‘swimming in his lake’, so I’d kept my
confusion to myself and pretended the inconvenient and frustrating ‘side-effect’ had faded, in the hope that it actually would.

I blinked as Tavish suddenly appeared on the other side of the desk, shedding the Invisibility spell he’d been wearing, then did a double take. When he’d gone invisible and
piggybacked after me into the gnome’s house, he’d been sporting his usual Sam-Spade-pinstriped-suit-and-Fedora work outfit. Now he was poured into a black unitard, pewter-coloured
cobwebs decorating the super-tight Lyrca covering every part of him, including his head, hands and feet. He should’ve looked ridiculous in the costume; instead it left nothing to my
libido’s imagination and he looked . . . disturbingly jumpable—
Down, girl!
Briefly I closed my eyes. How the hell had he even got himself into it, not to mention—

‘Tavish, why are you dressed up as a bad-ass Spider-Man?’

He stripped his hood off and the lacy gills either side of his neck snapped open like black fans. He shook out his green-black dreads; they writhed around his shoulders as if objecting to being
contained, beads flashing from cobweb pewter to a clear sun-drenched turquoise.

‘Och, doll,’ he said, giving me his shark’s grin, serrated teeth white against the green-black of his skin. ‘The fancy dress shop dinna have a Cat-Man costume, so what
else should I be wearing to be all sneaky and stealthy?’

Having him ‘work’ with/for me was like employing a two-year-old sometimes; still, most of my clients loved his ‘eccentricities’. I shot him an exasperated look.
‘You were invisible. It didn’t matter what you wore.’

‘Maybe. But where’s the fun in that? And look.’ Tavish lifted his hand and shot a stream of magic at the high ceiling. It expanded into thin filaments, attached, and then with
a leap he was above me, crouched upside down on the ceiling, giving me an excellent view of his,
oh-so-gorgeous arse.

Crap! Either I was as bad as the dirty-minded gnome, or Tavish’s magical pheromones were hitting a new high. I was going to have to find a way of getting rid of the damn side-effect, and
soon. I dragged my attention back to the dead fairy then decided that staring at his appendage probably wasn’t the ideal way to cool down my libido.

I fished a bottle of water out of my backpack, took a long drink. Spidey impersonation aside, at least now Tavish had finished his search I’d find out if he’d dug up any
incriminating evidence on Mr Lecherous Lampy.

‘Any luck?’ I asked, sitting down.

‘Nae a glint, doll,’ he said, disappointing me. He dropped silently down, lifted the gnome’s heavy throne-style chair as if it weighed nothing, set it next to mine and slumped
into it. His long, angled features took on a despondent air. ‘’Tis near like an untouched tomb upstairs, all inch-thick dust and empty, echoey rooms. Gnomes don’t care too much
for air twixt them and their earth.’

The huge ginger tom growled, subjecting Tavish to the same evil-feline stare it had me. Either it didn’t like Tavish talking about its master, or maybe a giant Spider-Man looked like a
tasty banquet. Tavish snorted, baring his teeth at it. The cat decided its paws needed cleaning.

I huffed. Figured Tavish would be more intimidating than me. ‘So if there’s nothing to be found, what’s next to investigate?’

His gills closed as if in defeat. ‘’Tis the nature of others to die.’ He plucked a slowly wriggling slug off the silver-foiled potato, held it up. ‘All of them live too
short a life: slugs, garden fairies, humans, even the lesser fae.’ He dropped the slug into the tea then raised his eyes to mine; his were now a solid murky grey. ‘You’re nae but
a youngster, doll, but you’ll discover it soon enough. They’re nae like us, the rest all
fade
too easily.