The Cold Kiss of Death

Tomas lay on his back, his hips thrust upwards, arms outstretched, head thrown back, mouth and eyes wide open, his pupils fashioned into gold-bright orbs by magic, a grotesque statue sculpted rigid at the ultimate high of sexual pleasure.

Shock had me staring with disbelief.

Tomas hadn’t been killed by a jealous witch.

The French call the pleasure of orgasm le petit mort, the small death. Tomas’ death hadn’t been small—but then, humans are too fragile to survive the full force of faerie sex outside of the Fair Lands.

The white-gold light shimmered over his body, lining his pumped-up muscles with hard contours, and a detached part of me could see why the market witches had been battling over him with their broomsticks. Then sadness and anger washed away the shock and I moved towards him, an insane glimmer of hope telling me to touch him, that maybe he wasn’t dead, maybe this wasn’t real, maybe it was all just some elaborate illusion. I reached out and gently placed my forefinger to his forehead. Golden mist curled like rising smoke from his open mouth and spilled the scent of honeysuckle into the air.

Honeysuckle is the scent of my own Glamour, my own magic.

Horror rushed through me, raising the little hairs on my body. My heart thudded against my ribs. I took an involuntary step back, and another, then yelped, high-pitched, as the hot prickle of a Ward hit my shoulders. I turned and looked. The doorway was still open behind me, the flour-storm a swirling white curtain, but a Ward now vibrated up from the threshold like rising heat; a basic, bought-off-the-shelf Knock- back Ward, the sort that usually had big warning signs that read Danger—Keep Out. Someone wanted to make sure I was caught red-handed and still clutching the smoking gun when the police arrived.

‘Fucking bastard!’

I shoved the questions of who and why and how away. There was nothing I could do for Tomas, however much I wished there was, but there was still his ex, or whoever the woman was, to find. I walked through the kitchen carefully. Glass-fronted ovens lined one wall, small blue-tinged flames dancing in their huge stainless-steel cavities. Two commercial-sized food mixers were bolted to the floor, flat paddles jacked up above their industrial- sized bowls. And half a dozen large metal flour barrels were stacked under a high rectangular window next to the bolted and padlocked back door. I eyed the barrels. They were big enough for someone to hide in, but my gut and the fact there were more Knock-back Wards vibrating on both the back door and the high window told me the woman was long gone.

Rats and traps came to mind.

And escaping wasn’t going to be an easy option.

‘Genevieve.’ My name slid like sorrow and silk over my skin, making me shiver. Mesma. I recognised his voice with its not-quite-English accent and, heart thudding in my chest like a cornered cat’s, I turned to look at him.

Malik stood just inside the kitchen, the flour-storm behind him dimmed by the shadows shifting round him. His black hair curled into the darkness of his long leather coat, and the coat itself merged into the blackness of the clothes he wore beneath. I’d seen him draw those same shadows into himself, using them to hide himself from sight. He studied me, his skin gleaming pale as the shadows dissipated, his obsidian eyes enigmatic; his part-Asian heritage obvious in their shape. Once I’d thought his face perfect, pretty even, but he’d played with my mind and my perceptions and now with only the edge of prettiness left, he was more beautiful, more male, and more frightening than my imagination had let me remember.

I frowned. Something wasn’t right; not the fact that I was frightened—vamps are predators, and being wary of them is just common sense—but this feeling was ... different. Then I realised that thinking about coming to some arrangement with him was nothing compared to contemplating it while he was standing in front of me like some dark angel. Damn. Maybe Grace was right yet again and I was just kidding myself that I could negotiate with him on my own terms when the 3V and my attraction to him meant I probably didn’t have my own best interests at heart.

Mentally I shored up my resolve and said, ‘Malik al-Khan,’ grateful my voice came out dry as dust.

He inclined his head, an elegant movement that echoed the past. And going by the power I’d seen him wield he had a good five hundred years of past too, maybe more, for all that he appeared to be around my age, twenty- four. Like all vamps, he looked the same now as when he’d accepted the Gift. An unfelt breeze ruffled his hair and lifted the edges of his coat, dislodging the faint patina of white that covered him, and I glanced down at the flour still stuck to my own damp clothes and sighed.

Vamps get all the best magic tricks.

His eyes flicked to the body that lay on the baker’s table between us. ‘It was unwise of you to enter and not wait for the police.’

‘Yeah well, I’d sort of come to that conclusion myself.’ I grimaced. ‘I don’t suppose you can tell if there’s a witch or anyone else hiding around here somewhere, can you?’

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘There has been no witch here, in this part of the shop, for a day, possibly more, and no one now other than us and the dead man.’

Okay, so Tomas’ ex wasn’t around, and the barrels held only flour. Then another thought clicked. Malik had been following me; had he overheard the boy talking? ‘The lad outside said he’d seen a woman come in and heard some sort of fight?’ I narrowed my eyes in question.

‘He lied.’

‘Ri-ight.’ I pursed my lips. Good old vamp super-senses, better at spotting a fib at fifty paces than any polygraph machine ever would be. ‘He’s part of the set-up then?’

‘Not necessarily; there was some confusion in his mind.’ He pushed back the fall of dark hair from his forehead. ‘As I said, Genevieve, it was unwise of you to enter.’

Confusion? Caused by some sort of spell? Still, back to being the trapped rat and now with a scary vampire in tow. So not the way I wanted to start my day. Still. I looked sadly at Tomas; his day had started a hell of a lot worse than mine, so I really was the better off. Until the police got here, at least.

I frowned at Malik. Why had he followed me in? ‘You do realise that there are Wards stopping us getting out, and that the police will be here any minute, don’t you?’

‘I informed the boy that the police would not be required.’ He turned his head as if listening, giving me the sculptured line of his profile. ‘He believes you will deal with any problems and has put it from his thoughts.’

My pulse sped up. He’d mind-locked the boy, given him instructions. The vamp trick isn’t illegal—just as any other form of hypnotism isn’t—so long as no crime results. It meant there were no police rushing to arrest me. Or to rescue me. One of those good news, bad news things. Still, at least it bought me some time. Tomas was dead. Someone had used him to frame me and—I clenched my fists—I was going to find out who it was, and why. My eyes moved suspiciously to the vampire standing like a beautiful statue not three feet away.

‘Is this anything to do with you?’ I indicated the dead body.

He treated me to his usual impassive expression, then started walking with graceful purpose around the body. I held my place as he rounded the feet and closed on me, refusing to allow him to intimidate me. Finally he stopped, his coat brushing against my bare legs. Dark spice mixed with the scent of leather curled through me, shimmering lust in my belly. I ignored it; with the 3V in my blood, it was nothing more than a chemical reaction to his nearness. You just keep telling yourself that, whispered a mocking voice in my mind. I ignored that too.

‘This looks more like your handiwork, Genevieve,’ he murmured, looking down at me, his breath disturbing my hair.

‘Yeah,’ I lifted my chin to meet his eyes, ‘like I couldn’t work that one out, except of course I didn’t kill him.’

‘Which is always the standard response of both the innocent’—he wrapped cool fingers round my left wrist; the bruises there heated to his touch—‘and the guilty.’

‘I’m fae, Malik.’ I jerked out of his hold. ‘The fae can’t lie.’

‘That is true.’ His voice licked over me like hot flames. ‘As far as the truth goes.’

‘Fine!’ I glared up at him. ‘If we’re doing the pedantic stuff; yes it’s impossible for the fae to lie outright, but they’—I paused to correct myself; I was fae, after all, even if I hadn’t been brought up amongst them—‘we fae can usually skirt around the edges of the truth and misdirect. And of course the same holds for vampires.’