The Bitter Seed of Magic

Concentrating on slowing my pulse and my breathing to minimise the silver’s effect, I knelt on the floor next to the dead girl. I gently took her damp hand in mine, double-checking she didn’t have any more than the two spells on her: flesh-to-flesh contact makes it easier to sense the magic. I frowned. Her skin was wrinkled from being in the water, but it was still soft and pliable; either rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet, or it had been and gone … only the body looked too undamaged to have been in the water long enough for rigor to have passed. Still, time and silver weren’t waiting for me.

I released her hand and plunged both of mine into the mass of magic binding her, flinching as the dirty-white ropes writhed around my lower arms, feeling like cold slippery eels. Gritting my teeth, I ignored the rest of the circle’s distracting magic and focused on the rope spell. I called it and the ropes pulled away from the body with a nauseating sound like flesh being ripped from bone, and a sweet, rank smell assaulted my nostrils. Shuddering, I gathered the bundle into my arms and tried not to think how they were starting to resemble a mass of rotten intestines; or how the more I pulled at the ropes, the more the girl’s body twisted and jerked like a fish struggling to escape a hook.

An urgent gasp almost broke my focus. Annoyed, I frowned up at Dr Craig.

‘She’s bleeding,’ he shouted, pointing towards the girl’s head.

Bleeding? I froze in shock. She couldn’t be bleeding, she was dead!

Wasn’t she?

But there was definitely a small puddle of blood spreading out from beneath her head.

‘Genny, you need to start resuscitating her,’ he ordered. ‘Inspector Crane, you need to open the—’

The rest of his words were lost as I yanked at the last of the ropes and slid them down onto the nearest silver casting mirror, squashing them on with my hands and my will. A distant part of me registered the stinging burn in my palms, the sharp scrape of silver in my throat as I sucked air deep into my lungs, the brief dilation of the girl’s pupils as I leaned over her head, pinching her nose and tipping her chin. I fastened my mouth to hers and forced my own breath into her body. I averted my head, inhaled, then breathed into her mouth again; watching the girl’s chest rise—

Why the hell didn’t DI Crane break the circle?

Another breath; another slight lift of the girl’s chest.

The ropes had to be some sort of Stasis spell, trapping the girl at the point of dying, maybe.

Breathe again.

For fuck’s sake, get a move on, Inspector.

I clasped my hands together in a fist and raised them over my head, bringing them down on the girl’s chest with a hollow-sounding thud.

DI Crane swam into my sight: she was on her knees outside the circle, sweat beading her forehead as she traced glyphs on the outside of the mirrored dome with panicked, jerky movements. Behind her, Constable Martin was gripping the inspector’s shoulders, her eyes closed in concentration; and looming behind both of them was Hugh’s worried red-dusted face, alongside half a dozen others.

Crap, what the hell was wrong?

I sucked in more air. The copper smell of blood mixed with the rank sweetness and masked the sharp scrape of silver.

‘I can’t break the circle,’ DI Crane shouted, her voice coming as if through a thick wall. ‘The silver— blood— sealed …’

I fastened my mouth back on the girl’s as my mind raced to catch up: Silver to hold a vampire— fresh blood in the circle— Shit, maybe my vamp half was screwing with the circle’s containment magic?

I breathed out.

‘You’ll have to crack it,’ she shouted.

I briefly raised my head to take in more air, and focused on the magical dome of mirrors and the anxious group of police behind them. No way could I crack the dome; the mirrors might not be physical, but the salt and sand and bone in the circle were, and they would turn into enough shrapnel to flay the skin off anyone standing too close. I’d have to absorb the magical dome instead. Absorbing magic was never fun; absorbing sharp pieces of mirror, however metaphysical they might be, was going to be a fucking nightmare …

—I lowered my mouth to the girl’s—

She coughed and retched, filling my mouth with bitter-tasting liquid, and I swallowed reflexively, shock, disbelief and hope coursing through me.

‘She’s alive,’ I yelled.

The circle had to open—now!

I hurriedly but carefully rolled her over into the recovery position, then thrust out my arms, palms up, and called the magic. The candles guttered and snuffed out; a wind howled and buffeted my body; the dome of mirrors rattled, glowing red with reflected neon and blood … Time seemed to stand still as the Glamour spell peeled away from the girl and I saw her true face. No longer human-pretty, she had small, black bead-like eyes, a hooked beak of a nose, thin, almost nonexistent lips and a receding chin: a faeling, and one with corvid blood, going by the black feathers growing from her scalp. The feathers were stringy with blood, and the shape of her head was oddly uneven … Time started again, and the mirrors exploded into feather-winged flames and flew towards my heart like iron-tipped darts to a magnet.

I had a moment to think, Oh crap! before they hit—

—but the pain didn’t come—

Instead, something grabbed me, and yanked me out of the circle.

Chapter Four

After an infinitely long moment of disorientation, the oddly light feeling in my bones told me that I’d been plucked out of the humans’ world and was now somewhere in Between.

Between is the gap that links the humans’ world and the Fair Lands. And unlike those places, Between is still malleable enough that with enough power and will, you can mould it into whatever you desire. Of course, depending on the magic’s mood, its interpretation of your desires can be unpredictable at best, probably nightmarish at worst.

Much like the owner of the pale gold eyes, with their vertical, cat-like pupils, into which I was looking. I recognised the eyes and their owner, of course—hard not to when she was the only sidhe I’d ever met. Not that recognising her was going to help much. She wasn’t exactly the type you could get any meaningful answers from, not being fully compos mentis. Which might account for her … outfit.

Her head was crowned with a corona of yellow and white honeysuckle flowers, and long stems of golden heart-shaped leaves twined through the hip-length curls of her silver-blonde hair. Her dress was a flowing robe of yellow silk which billowed around her like sails in a nonexistent wind. That same wind riffled the feathers on the huge gold wings that spread out from her shoulders and framed her slender form. She looked like the love-child of a Rossetti painting and a Russian icon.

The angelic love-child raised her hands and suddenly we were standing in brilliant sunshine. Tiny cartoon-like cherubs, complete with rosy cheeks, golden wings and glittering halos, zipped around our heads like sugar-hyped garden fairies, white fluffy clouds nipped our ankles like a litter of playful puppies and the scent of honey, cinnamon and sweetened vanilla fragranced the air. Above us curved a twenty-foot-high dome of magic, painted the sapphire blue of a clear summer sky. Etched into the blue was the smiling image of a benign old man with a long white beard.

I’d been beamed up to Disney Heaven. Lucky me.

The angelic sidhe looked to be in her late teens (although since she was virtually immortal, gauging her physical age by her looks was a guessing game I was never going to win) and she was staring at me with the