The Bitter Seed of Magic

‘Yep, it’s a new one on me too,’ I sighed, relieved that he’d caught on quick, and Darius wasn’t going to lose his head just yet. ‘Look, I’m a bit hazy on the specifics of how I ended up inside Darius’ body, and I’d really like to get back to my own. Don’t suppose you’ve heard of anything like this before?’

‘Not without a demon or black magic being involved?’ He raised his voice in question.

‘No, no demon, nor anything like that this time,’ I said quickly, with a shudder.

He tilted my/Darius’ head up further, peering closer into my/his eyes, and his dark spice scent twisted a curl of desire inside us. ‘And you are sure you did nothing to cause this, Genevieve?’

‘Nope,’ I said, pressing down on the bit of mattress, seriously hoping Darius didn’t choose this moment to do anything stupid. ‘One minute I’m hitting the painful high point of being necked on, then the next I’m hearing voices—or rather, hearing thoughts and memories in my head, only now it’s not my head …’ I trailed off.

‘You have thought of something?’ His expression turned quizzical.

‘I had a visit from the Morrígan earlier today …’ I frowned, thinking it through as I spoke. ‘She sicced some kind of memory spell on me. Darius triggered the spell—it seems to be triggered by touch; his isn’t the first memory I’ve picked up on—but maybe with me pushing my Glamour into him, the spell had some sort of drastic side-effect?

‘What are these memories?’

‘Sad ones,’ I said, softly, ‘from their pasts. And the spell is still working, even though I’m in Darius’ body,’ I added, recalling the memory of Francine’s, the one of Mad Max dragging away the blonde girl (who was vaguely familiar from somewhere) when Francine had kissed me—or rather, Darius.

‘I see,’ he said, releasing my/Darius’ chin with something like apprehension. And I wondered what memory he didn’t want me to know. ‘We will discuss this later, Genevieve. For now, we should concentrate on healing your body and restoring you to it safely. I will examine your injuries to see what can be done.’

‘Works for me,’ I said, more than happy to let Malik use his handy healing powers on my body.

He moved closer to my body and carefully tore my T-shirt. Watching him gently probing my injury was surreal enough to make my/Darius’ stomach churn squeamishly, so instead I fixed my gaze on the ripped-up doorway, and thought about the Morrígan and the memories instead. Was I just picking up any memory to do with grief and childhood, or were the memories clues to the dying faelings and, therefore to the curse? And if so, what did they mean, and what was I meant to do with them? And where had I seen the girl in Francine’s—

Francine herself reappeared from wherever she’d been, and derailed my thoughts. She wasn’t alone. She was dragging a groaning Mad Max behind her, like a child trailing a gigantic rag doll.

‘My liege.’ She dipped her head at Malik. ‘Maxim, he is the only possibility. Fyodor, he is staked. There is none other here above fifty.’

Malik eyed the groaning Maxim for a moment, then stood and moved to one side. ‘Maxim will be sufficient.’

Francine kicked and shoved Mad Max—she really didn’t like him—until he was lying alongside my body. With her two bronze blades still jutting out of his chest, and the metal pole in my stomach, we looked like a couple of gruesome extras in a low-budget horror flick.

I leaned over and poked him suspiciously. ‘What’s Mad Max sufficient for?’ I asked as he fixed me with a malevolent glare from the one blue eye which wasn’t quite swollen shut.

‘Mad Max?’ Francine’s mouth fell open, her eyes widened and she backed up, crossing herself in panic until she was plastered against the wall. ‘You are not Darius! What voodoo is this?’

‘It’s not voodoo, Francine,’ I said, ‘just a side-effect of the magic.’

‘Voodoo is evil.’ She crossed herself again, sweat beading on her forehead.

‘Be calm, Francine.’ Malik’s pupils flared with tiny flames and her face smoothed over. ‘Darius is not harmed; he has allowed Genevieve to share his body for now.’

‘As you wish, my liege,’ she replied blandly.

‘Did you just mind-lock her?’ I asked, curious.

‘No,’ Malik and Francine said in unison.

I waited for Malik to say more. He didn’t, and I realised that was all the answer I was getting. ‘Trust me, Francine, I’d much rather be in my own body’—I looked down at it—‘well, maybe not quite this minute, but as soon as Malik’s healed me.’

‘I believe you should return to your body before it is healed further, Genevieve.’ Malik started to brush a hand over his forehead, his ‘I’m considering’ gesture I recognised from when his hair was longer, then hesitated before running a palm over his new buzz-cut. ‘It is possible that with the blood connection between you and Darius, and your attempt to control his mind, that your spirit slipped out to avoid the pain, much as the Moths do.’

That sort of made sense: except the Moths usually vacated their bodies as temporary ghosts, not as squatting tenants.

‘I do not understand how they return to their bodies,’ he carried on. ‘Francine can only tell me that they fly when their blood sings to them, but she tells me their spirits are less susceptible to losing themselves if they return before their bodies are fully healed. She also tells me that those Moths who are able to perform this trick have some fae magic in their blood.’

The Moths were fae, or at least had an ancestor who was fae? Interesting—and reassuring, given I was just about to try the same trick. ‘Okay,’ I said, looking from him to Francine, ‘so how do we make my blood sing to me?’

Francine drew her lips back and her tiny venom fangs sprang down. ‘The vampire, he make the blood sing,’ she murmured.

Lovely. I—or rather, my body—was going to get a shot of the real stuff. I’d really fall off the blood-fruit wagon after that—

‘Umm, I think maybe I already venom-stuck you, Genny,’ Darius’ apologetic voice interrupted my own internal thoughts. ‘Y’know, when I—’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I muttered, scowling at Mad Max who was still giving me the evil eye from the floor, and feeling that same fuzz in Darius’ mind again. There was something there he didn’t want me to know … about my blood … and someone called Andy … he’d made a promise not to tell—

‘Genevieve?’ Malik touched my/Darius’ face and the thoughts scattered. I blinked and looked up at him. Compassion softened his expression. ‘You have no need to worry,’ he said softly. ‘I will find a way if this does not succeed. But first we shall try this?’

I didn’t tell him I wasn’t worried, or rather, I hadn’t been until I caught a glimpse of his own anxiety beneath the compassion. My heart gave a happy little lurch that he cared, and I flashed him a smile big enough to reassure both of us. ‘Hey, I’m hard to kill, remember? Not to mention I’ve got two goddesses on my case, so no doubt one of them is watching over me.’

He gave me a long, pensive look, then nodded. ‘Good, then Francine will finish her preparations.’

Francine stepped forward, jumped up and grabbed something hanging above. The something dropped down with a great clanking noise and turned out to be a thick, heavy chain with an odd leather-belt contraption on its end. The chain was attached to a pulley bolted into the ceiling.

I started to wonder what on earth it was for, but almost immediately images flashed in my mind of naked bodies dangling down, the leather belt-thing strapped tightly around their ankles, then the images were quickly replaced by a wide expanse of blank white wall, and the knowledge that Darius was embarrassed and trying not to think about anything else.

‘Tell me you haven’t killed anyone with that,’ I demanded.

‘No!’ His answer blasted through me with enough shock and horror, along with a flash of something very definitely to do with sex, that I had absolutely no trouble believing him.

Francine hunkered down at Mad Max’s feet and efficiently buckled the leather contraption —‘Ankle cuffs,’ Darius murmured from behind his white wall—around Mad Max’s legs, and started hoisting him up.

‘What’s she preparing him for?’ I asked, sincerely doubting Mad Max was being strung up for the usual reasons.

‘Your body is too depleted of blood for your heart to beat on its own,’ Malik explained. ‘You need a transfusion