The Bitter Seed of Magic

question, the answer was there in front of me, on the hovering vellum of the family tree. ‘Brigitta was a full-blood sidhe, and you kept her because of the curse. Damn! She was going to be your next curse-breaking experiment. You tried to breed from her, didn’t you? And Clíona just let you.’ Anger welled up in me and I kicked at the book on the floor. It thudded into the wall next to the bathroom door, making Sylvia jump.

‘We are not as cruel as you sseem to think, ssidhe,’ the Librarian said in a conciliatory tone. ‘We had high hopess that Brigitta would break the curse, ssso like you, ssshe was given her choice of father. And ssshe chose one of the water fae, but when Ana, her daughter, was born, it was evident that the husband was not Ana’s father.’

I looked at the family tree again. Ana’s father was down as ‘unknown’, and Ana was a faeling.’ I laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound. ‘Brigitta stiffed you by getting pregnant by a human, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. Brigitta held usss all guilty for what happened with her mother and the Old Donn. Ssshe took her revenge thuss.’

I didn’t know whether to cheer for Brigitta or cry. The fertility curse had really screwed up her life, even before she’d been killed, and now it was screwing up Ana’s too. I really hoped I was wrong about a vamp still having his or her fangs in Ana; the poor faeling already had more than enough problems to deal with.

‘Sssometimess a fate cannot be changed,’ the Librarian said quietly, as if she’d read my thoughts, ‘but with forewarning it is posssible. What did the Morrígan ssshow you, sssidhe?’

‘Gosh, yes, do tell.’ Sylvia gave me an eager look.

‘Sorry, no,’ I said, and reached over and pressed the ‘off ’ button on her phone. Whatever the Morrígan/Alien baby show was about, I wasn’t in the mood to discuss it after that sordid little tale. I fixed Sylvia with a look. ‘Thanks for getting rid of the books, Sylvia, but what exactly are you doing here?’

Her phone trilled the theme tune from Dirty Dancing. She cancelled the call and the phone vanished. Two seconds later the hovering family tree and the newspapers did too. The Librarian obviously didn’t want to leave them hanging around (no pun intended). Sylvia smiled coyly. ‘Is that, no, you won’t tell, or no, the Morrígan didn’t show you anything?’

‘You first,’ I said.

‘Fiddlesticks, that’s not fair,’ she pouted.

‘Up to you.’ I shrugged and looked down at my bloodstained clothes. ‘But if you’re not going to talk, then I’m getting cleaned up.’ I turned and headed for the bathroom, saying over my shoulder, ‘Don’t forget to shut the window on your way out.’

‘Wait!’ she called. ‘Wait! I’ll tell. You know you said one of us could court you so long as it wasn’t one of the Twig Gang. Well, here I am.’

I turned to see her standing with her arms outstretched and a big smile on her face. ‘Ta dah!’ She grinned. ‘Although I’m not as pretty as when I started out, thanks to your Ward.’

‘You’ve come to court me? Somehow I don’t think you’re going to be much use in getting me pregnant—not that I want to get pregnant,’ I finished quickly.

‘I’m a dryad, silly,’ she giggled. ‘Depending on our tree—mine’s a cherry, Prunus avium—some of us come with a choice of both’—she patted her breasts, then fluffed her skirt —‘accessories, if you see what I mean. But I prefer to be female, mostly. Especially in the spring. People look at you odd if you’re male and dressed in white and pink.’

Like the Barbie pink cycle helmet wouldn’t do it? ‘You’re a hermaphrodite.’

‘Actually, I’m cosexual, since I’m a tree.’ She gave a delighted laugh and clapped her hands together. ‘No one’s told you, have they?’

Evidently, it wasn’t an aspect of fae life that my faerie dog-mother had decided I needed to know, for whatever reason. And there I’d thought Grianne’d told me everything at least thrice over in her lectures.

‘Right, so … you like girls, then?’ I said, thinking that having a fluffy-headed cosexual dryad hanging around me was hands-down a better option than Bandana, who came with an excess of sadistic testosterone built in.

‘Girls, boys—or both.’ Her grin stretched wider. ‘It’s spring, my sap’s rising, and I just love sex.’

Oh, goodie. ‘What if I don’t love girls?’

‘Oh, but you do! We’ve all seen the YouTube of you kissing that female vamp last year.’ She fanned herself with her hand. ‘Gosh, that was hot.’

‘That was an act,’ I said flatly.

‘It was?’ Her exuberance visibly deflated as she regarded me doubtfully. ‘Um, well, I suppose I could change my appearance. But it’s been a long time since I’ve been male. It’ll take me a while.’

I held my hands up. ‘It’s not an issue, okay? I said I’d let a dryad court me, so fine, we’ll court, but courting means exactly that: dating, getting to know each other, finding out if we like each other. Courting does not mean jumping into bed together in the next five minutes, or in the next five hours, or whatever. So, y’know, you can just stay as you are.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Disappointment flickered over her face, then it was gone, replaced by another wide smile. ‘So, do you want to go out and get some dinner? It could be our first date? We could chat about what the Morrígan told you.’ Her smile turned sly as she glanced down and lifted a foot; a gloop of blood dripped off her silver sandal. ‘I could clean this up while you get ready?’

Not exactly what I had planned for my evening, but she didn’t need to know that yet. ‘Do whatever you like with it,’ I said, then added, ‘Just as a matter of curiosity, what’s Bandana?’

‘Bandana? Oh, you mean Algernon? He’s a willow, they’re dioecious, and he’s strictly male.’ She sighed. ‘He’s also a spiteful, bullying cad, though you know that, don’t you.’

‘Yeah, I do,’ I agreed, and closed the bathroom door, wondering how I was going to get rid of her.

Chapter Seventeen

I turned the shower on and stripped my top off, then heard a high-pitched sound. After a couple of seconds I realised Sylvia was whistling while she worked—maybe the Disney books had been hers too; all we needed now were the seven dwarves to show up. I grimaced at my jeans. Better still, a nice Brownie who knew how to get bloodstains out of denim. I carefully unzipped them, peeled them and my briefs down and kicked them away. Then I stared at my stomach.

A black handprint marked my flesh like a brand.

Crap! The uncomfortable feelings hadn’t been because my jeans were wet, but because Tavish had tagged me with some sort of spell. No wonder his touch had felt like it was burning me. I looked, but the handprint didn’t change, so whatever the spell was, it wasn’t active. Tentatively, I placed my own hand on it. The skin felt leathery and rough, and itchy, as if it were healing; and one finger felt damp. I sniffed it … closed my eyes … sweet, spicy, Christmassy: cinnamon.

Which didn’t tell me a damn thing.

I slumped to the floor, and sat staring blindly at the tiles. I was so not having a good day.

Half an hour later, after the long shower I’d been craving—during which questions had jabbed my mind like carrion crows at a fresh corpse—I wrapped myself in my towelling robe, grabbed a handful of cotton wool balls—the main ingredient of my ‘neutralise the cherry tree’ plan—and walked out into my living room.

Sylvia was standing under my beaded chandelier with her arms outstretched, eyes closed, mouth partially open, a relaxed, oblivious expression on her face. Her dress flared out like a huge white flower, fully repaired, and all her cuts and scratches were gone. Tiny green buds peaked out from under her pink cycle helmet, and small hair- like roots snaked out from her feet, ankles, even the silver sandals, and trailed through the puddle of blood, which