Home Improvement: Undead Edition

up Charm-struck at the bottom of the River Thames.

The crowd whooped, drawing my attention back to the pixie, who was now striking muscleman poses. I inched my hand closer. The pixie tensed, webbed feet gripping the hot metal as it unfurled its useless wings. I froze. I hadn’t safely caught all its pals to have this last one do itself an injury because I’d spooked it. After a moment, its wings dropped, and, holding my breath, I made a grab for its nearest limb, relieved as my fingers closed around its scaly left leg. It let out an ear-piercing screech that almost drowned out the crowd’s disappointed boos, then mercifully went quiet as it sniffed the honey in the Pixnap and sank its teeth into my forearm. Gritting my own teeth against the dull pain, and carefully cradling the suddenly dozy pixie, I slid off the bronze lion and tucked the pixie in with its pals.

Now for the cleanup.

I opened the metaphysical part of me that can see the magic and looked. Almost everything in the square, including some of the audience, lit up as if it had been scattered with multicolored sugar sprinkles: pixie dust. Some of the dust was old and faint, some brighter and more recent. Cleaning this up was one of the reasons why I’d gotten the job at Spellcrackers despite my lack of spell-casting ability. (The other was my dubious celebrity quality.) It would take a coven of witches a good four or five hours to call all the pixie dust and neutralize it. And they’d have to enclose Trafalgar Square in a circle to do it. Way too expensive. The other, quicker way would be to crack the dust, but cracking magic doesn’t just destroy the spell, and pitted bronze lions, broken pavement, and exploding pixies weren’t included in the contract. Whereas I could do my party trick: suck the dust up like a magical vacuum cleaner, and neutralize it back at the office.

I sat and made myself comfortable next to the cat carriers, then dug out a spell-crystal and some licorice torpedoes from my backpack. Chewing on the candy for a quick magical boost, I activated the Look-Away veil in the crystal . . .

And called the pixie dust.

It flew to me like iron filings to a magnet, clumping in colorful patches on my skin. The patches rustled and tickled like dry grass in a wind. Weird, but not entirely unpleasant. But then the not-so-fun part kicked in: the pixie-dust sprinkles twisted into tiny fishhooks that pierced my flesh painlessly and jerked my limbs around as if I were a disjointed marionette. To anyone who couldn’t see, I probably looked like I was convulsing. The usual nausea roiled in my stomach, and I closed my eyes, concentrating on straightening the hooks and dropping them into the metaphysical bag inside me.

“Well now, doll, that’s as fine a sight as any I’ve seen for a long while.” Tavish’s soft burr snapped my head up.

He was crouched next to me, appreciation in the solid pewter color of his eyes. Apart from his Roman- straight nose, his long, angular features weren’t classically handsome, but he was striking, and captivating, and alluring. Though, caution warned me, a lot of his allure was probably down to his kelpie Charm.

I scowled and pushed my sweaty hair back from my face. “Tavish, I look like something the cat’s dragged in after a fight with birthday cake.”

He blinked, his eyes changing from pewter to a pale, translucent blue, and then he gave me a lingering head-to-toe assessment. “Aye, doll, so you do,” he agreed prosaically, the delicate black-lace gills on either side of his neck fanning wide. “But that’s nae but your shell; your soul is shining with magic like a sun-kissed rainbow brightening the cold depths of the sea.”

Kelpies are soul-tasters; they taste the souls of those who are dying. Of course sometimes the souls aren’t actually dying until after the kelpie has Charmed them into the water. But Tavish abides by River Lore—has done so for a couple of hundred years—so he no longer Charms humans into the Thames, and of those he finds in the river, he tastes only those who have killed or want to die.

“Great,” I said, unsure whether to be pleased my soul looked pretty (although maybe that should be tasty), or irrationally annoyed because he’d admitted I didn’t look so good. “Any chance of you helping this rainbow up? I’ve got the pixies to pack off back to Cornwall and another job to go to.”

“Nae problem, doll.” He grasped my hand and pulled me up hard enough that my nose ended up pressed against his neck. I sucked in a startled breath. Boy, did he smell good: like oranges and peat-mellowed whisky. And his pulse was thudding temptingly close under the hot smooth skin of his throat. I almost succumbed to an urge to lick it, but my sensible head took charge, and reluctantly I pushed him back. He gave me a satisfied look, as if he knew exactly what I’d been thinking, but as I narrowed my gaze, his forehead creased in concern and he said, “I heard a lassie shouting for you from the crowd, was there maybe some trouble or t’other I couldnae see?”

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’