The Bitter Seed of Magic

supposedly courting me?

‘Look,’ I said, ‘nice as this little breakfast club is, I’ve got places to go, people to meet’—and no way do I want to play gooseberry—‘so you’ll both have to amuse yourselves without me today.’

‘Gosh, don’t worry about us, Genny. We’re both happy to do whatever.’

‘Yeah, luv.’ Ricou thumped his clawed fist proudly on his chest. ‘Ricou here will be honoured to escort you two ladies on the town.’

‘Now then, breakfast is served,’ Sylvia said brightly. ‘We’ve got some more blood’—she tapped a couple of the large cups—‘and pancakes with extra maple syrup—they’re mine, but I’m happy to share; a couple of bacon butties, because the waitress said they were your favourite, and some sashimi tuna and whole sardines for the waterbaby there.’ She waved at the half-dozen other cups and containers. ‘We also have coffee, tea, orange juice, custard doughnuts and a selection of vegetable crudities.’

I eyed the carrot and celery sticks sitting neatly alongside the broccoli and cauliflower florets, all complete with a sprinkling of sesame seed. Eew! That was the sort of rabbit food only Finn ate. And thinking of him … why hadn’t he returned my text? I left the raw stuff and picked up one of the bacon butties.

‘You can drop the act,’ I said, waving it to indicate the two of them, ‘and you can tell me what you’re doing courting me.’ I took a bite.

Ricou’s membranes flickered over his eyes nervously. Sylvia’s dress quivered, and a lone white petal fell to land next to her silver-sandalled feet.

‘Well,’ I said, after I’d swallowed, ‘who wants to go first?’

‘Ricou here won you in a poker game.’ He flexed his head-crest to free it from the beads, making them jangle. ‘Told you that, the last time we met, luv.’ He wandered over to the kitchen, snagged a sardine and threw it in the air, snapping his jaws with a loud smacking noise as he caught it.

‘He means he fixed it so he won.’ Sylvia dribbled the sickly syrup in a criss-cross pattern over her pancakes.

‘She’s a harsh one,’ Ricou said to his next sardine. ‘At least Ricou’s name was on the list.’

I choked on a mouthful of bacon butty. There was a list?

Sylvia absently thumped me on the back. ‘Gosh, but then Ricou here didn’t remove his name, did he?’

‘Ricou was told not to by the Lady Meriel, wasn’t he?’ He snapped at another sardine.

‘Fiddlesticks.’ She crushed her empty syrup packet and tossed it into the large takeaway bag. ‘Ricou’s a hundred and sixty-three, not three. He should be able to stand up for himself by now.’

What list?’ I gasped out in between coughs.

‘Ricou doesn’t see you standing up for yourself much, Blossom. You’re here, aren’t you? So it looks like Lady Isabella still has you tied to her stake.’

‘She does not!’ She jabbed her plastic fork at him. ‘I haven’t been staked since I was fifty!’

‘What list?’ I yelled.

Sylvia turned to me in surprise. ‘The list of who’s allowed to court you, of course.’

‘Only Blossom here isn’t on it.’ Ricou’s face-fins flared. He was either sulking or annoyed, or maybe both. ‘So she shouldn’t be here.’

‘She is here because Genny didn’t want anything to do with Algernon’s Twig Gang,’ Sylvia’s dress lost a whole shower of petals. ‘And I don’t blame her, not after they did their usual. Nasty bunch of sticks they are.’

Their usual?

Ricou dropped his fish and flung a scaly arm round Sylvia’s shoulders. He tapped her cycle helmet gently with his webby-clawed hand. ‘Aww, Blossom, don’t start shedding. I told them I’d strip their water if they tried their grab and grind tricks on you again and I meant it.’

Grab and grind? They’d tried to rape me to get me pregnant; I’d thought they’d done it because of the fertility curse. Now it sounded like it was more a nasty habitual perversion.

‘My hero.’ Sylvia sniffed and patted his chest. Then she poked him hard. ‘But if you want to stay that way, then you’ll have to tell your mother to take you off the list, right?’

‘Nobody’s mother is taking anyone off the list,’ I dumped my bacon butty on the counter, too angry to eat, ‘because there is no list, not any more.’

‘What?’ they said in unison, turning to me.

I grabbed a napkin and wiped my hands, fixing them both with a quelling look. ‘If I decide to have a child, then it will be with willing, single partners only. I’m not getting together with someone who’s already dating. This is about cracking a curse, not breaking up people’s relationships. Whoever thought either of you’d be good candidates was wrong.’

Ricou’s headcrest zipped upright in alarm. ‘But the curse has to be broken. It’s not just the fae, there’s all the faelings too. I’ve got six halfling pups, and—’

‘You’ve got six kids?’ I interrupted, aghast.

‘Everyone on the list has children,’ Sylvia said flatly, ‘or faelings, anyway. It was one of the criteria, which was why I wasn’t on it. I’ve never sprouted any seedlings.’

There were criteria? ‘What are the others?’ I demanded.

‘Gosh, there’s only the two. They had to be under two hundred years old, and have to have at least one faeling, so that they have someone to fight for and they’re proven fertile.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I think there were about fifty-odd on the initial list, but by the time Tavish had finished there was only about a dozen left.’

‘Tavish organised the list?’ I asked sharply—although why that should surprise me was a mystery. Damn, interfering, arrogant kelpie.

‘’Course he did, luv.’ Ricou’s eye membranes flickered nervously again. ‘Tavish always organises everything. He’s the one who said who got to court you, and in what order. Him first, of course. The Ladies Meriel and Isabella wanted it done by lots or something, but he said no. And no one messes with Tavish.’

I frowned. Tavish seemed to be pulling everyone’s strings in an effort to be Daddy Number One … except Tavish had done a disappearing act even before the Morrígan had caught him. Why would he do that if he was first in line? And then there was the list he’d organised. If Ricou’s facts were right, everyone on it was under two hundred years old—except Tavish. Everyone had at least one faeling kid—except Tavish … or at least as far as I knew, but then obviously I’d been on a need-to-know-nothing basis since the very beginning … my eyes fixed on the wilting carrot sticks—

Everyone on the list had to have proven their fertility.

‘Here.’ Sylvia wrapped my hands round a cup. ‘Have some tea, Genny. It’ll perk you up.’

‘I don’t drink tea,’ I said slowly, looking at them both. Ricou’s eye membranes were fully down over his black orbs and his headcrest was flat to his head. Sylvia was fluffing out her skirt, refusing to meet my gaze. It didn’t take a genius to work out which path my thoughts were following. Finn’s and my relationship might not be exactly what London’s fae thought it was, but there was a relationship, and it wasn’t a secret.

‘Finn’s got a faeling child?’ I asked, surprised my voice came out normal when inside I wanted to scream.

Sylvia took the cup from my unresisting hand, sympathy clouding her glossy green eyes. ‘Yes.’

When the hell had he planned on telling me? I didn’t need to ask who the mother was, but I did, and Sylvia told me.

‘Helen Crane.’

Chapter Thirty-Two

‘Finn’s waiting for you downstairs,’ Sylvia had said.

The echoing noise my boots made pounding down the five flights of stairs to the front door of my building seemed to mark angry time with my shocked, thudding heart. And as I exited onto the street, Ricou and Sylvia