Faerie Magic (5 page)

“Our concerns are not yours, human.”

Figures.
“They almost were. You nearly set this place on fire yesterday. The Mage Councils give you permission to police yourselves, but considering the Mage Lord himself had to intervene last night, you’re lucky nothing worse happened. Who died?”

“This would mean very little to you,” said the half-faerie. “The name of the half-faerie was Verek. He was killed by Kairi, a Summer half-faerie.”

So the killer had been caught?

“Rivalry?”

“Perhaps.” The half-faerie looked me up and down. “We found traces of an unfamiliar substance in the attacker’s blood.”

“Wait. Where
is
the attacker?”

“Dead. He was trampled yesterday.”

I fought the urge to groan. “You might have told me at the outset. So now
two
people are dead? Why not call the police instead of letting your people trample one another?”

The faerie’s eyes gleamed. “You presume too much, human. Our rules are not yours.”

“You live in
our
realm.”

Big mistake. The faerie’s lips pulled back from his teeth, giving him a feral appearance, and I thought he’d leap at my throat. Just as I wondered how
he’d
react to seeing my faerie magic in action, a shout behind him made us both startle.

“What?” he hissed.

“There’s another one,” called a second male half-faerie. Another medieval cosplayer wannabe.

The half-faerie guard shot me a glare, then turned around and followed the second one through the gate.

“Wait—”

I attempted to follow, but the gate closed on me. Literally. I yelped, withdrawing my arm, half-wriggling out. One more tug, and I was free. Blood beaded on my hand where I’d snagged it on the hedge.

Vance appeared in a swirl of autumn leaves. “Why is it whenever I leave you for five minutes, you’re always bleeding?”

“Thanks for the help,” I said. “Something else happened. When I tried to see what, the hedge shut me out.”

“That can be dealt with.” He raised his hands, and the gate sprang open like he’d frightened it into letting us in. I cast a wary look inside, but both half-faeries had disappeared.

“Nice,” I said. “They’ll be pissed with you.”

“They shouldn’t have left their gates unguarded.”

Good point, and not my problem. Clearly, the only way to deal with my issues was to let the Mage Lord mow them out of the way. Which irritated the shit out of me. I was supposed to be an independent freelancer, not his lackey. How would we be able to get answers out of anyone now he’d decided to blow the doors open?

I sucked it up and walked alongside him, following the path into half-faerie territory.

The district looked different to last time, more like the world outside than its own private bubble of creepiness. Last time I’d been here, Summer magic had poured out of every corner, manifesting in eye-watering colours, smells and sounds. Now, though the sun shone, it seemed almost subdued, but not like Winter magic, either. Like a transition. Maybe they were preparing to switch over to Winter as the real-world seasons shifted. A chill lurked in the air, leaves turned brown and fell off trees, while flowers shed dead petals. The ground was a carpet of orange leaves, which stirred in a breeze I was pretty sure the Mage Lord’s presence had intensified.

“Overkill on the special effects, much?” I muttered.

Faeries hid in every corner and under every stone. Even at Vance’s side, the constant sense of being watched followed me around. The thick smell of decay filled the air. Dying flowers wilted in their flowerbeds, while every step stirred a fresh wave of leaves. I looked around, scanning the blocks of flats at the end. Nobody seemed to be around, but I didn’t know how far the territory extended.

A rustling noise. Vance reacted so quickly I knew he’d been anticipating an attack. His blade appeared, slicing the air and knocking the attacker back several feet. The head of the mages really did have a flair for the dramatic.

“I wouldn’t,” he said quietly.

“Mage Lord!” gasped the half-faerie who’d appeared from thin air at our side. “I was told—an intruder—”

Vance’s gaze swept over the frozen onlooker, as no fewer than five others appeared beside us. Must have hidden themselves using faerie glamour, which I hadn’t spotted. So much for having highly attuned faerie senses.

“I’m here to see if you’ve managed to calm yourselves down after yesterday,” said Vance. “Considering the current state of things, I’d guess not. I’m told two of your people are dead?”

What’s it to you?
I read the question on every face, but nobody dared ask it aloud.

“Three,” spat the half-faerie who’d attacked. “Including the killer. A second murder was just committed.”

“The first faerie who died… who killed him? Was there anything odd?” I asked. There might not be a link between the two deaths, especially when the first killer was dead, but still.

“The killer was a Summer half-faerie. He flew into a fit of rage over a minor disagreement and stabbed the other half-faerie to death.”

“And that’s… out of character?” I managed to keep a straight face, with difficulty. I mean, I’d been grabbed, cursed at, bitten and kicked around by faeries on a daily basis since I came back from a stint in Faerie ten years ago. Violent seemed to be their default state.

“We operate according to the same Laws as the Seelie and Unseelie Courts,” said the faerie guard from the gate, who’d also appeared from thin air at our side. “Nobody is allowed to harm or kill another faerie.” He gave the Mage Lord a cold look. “No one invited you inside.”

“No,” said Vance, “but you clearly have problems within your ranks. With permission, I’d like to look at the bodies.”

“They’re dead.” Even the half-faerie guard kept his distance from the Mage Lord. “Fine, but there’s nothing to learn. We already know the cause of death, and the motives. This is an isolated incident.”

“And the second murder?” I asked.

The half-faerie gave me a frosty look. “The killer has yet to be caught.”

Oh, great. We were on the wrong side of the faeries’ fence with a homicidal maniac on the loose somewhere. Wait, was ‘homicide’ the right word for half-faeries? I hadn’t a clue.

Vance fell into step alongside me, and we walked down the path between flowerbeds of rotting buds.

“Do you have a tracking spell?” he asked me in an undertone. I gave the faeries a wary glance, but they appeared to be arguing amongst themselves.

“Yes.”
Oh. He does have a plan.
One of Isabel’s detection spells would detect any hidden magic around the bodies. Witch magic was accurate, if nothing else. But we needed to act fast before the half-faeries caught on.

We reached a small grove of red-leaved trees. The faeries moved aside to let us past—one of them tried to trip me, and I glared at him—through a curtain of ivy into a small clearing.

Two bodies lay on a carpet of leaves. The first looked like he might be sleeping, save for the deep wound in his chest, crusted with blood. No flies hovered around the bodies. The faeries had probably cast some kind of spell to stop anything feeding on their dead. Glassy blue eyes stared sightlessly at the sky.

As for the second body… ugh. His face was a mess of blood covering a clearly broken nose. He’d been trampled, I remembered, and not by humans. The deep wounds on his chest might have come from a kelpie or maybe a small troll. His wrists had been shattered, and the imprint of a giant footprint covered his chest. Dark blood soaked through his shirt, indicating shattered ribs underneath. His death had not been pleasant.

“Move quickly,” said the Mage Lord in an undertone, sweeping to cover the view out of the clearing so the other faeries couldn’t see us move.

I whipped the spell from my pocket—Isabel’s spells mostly took the form of elastic bands—and activated it. The band spread into a circle around the bodies, and I leaned in. No magic remained, though. They were Summer faeries, but their magic had faded with their deaths.

So much for that.

Impulsively, I reached into my pocket for a small container. I always kept salt on me in case I ran into a wayward undead. Surreptitiously, I transferred the salt from one container into the other so I had one empty jar. Then I reached down to the body and let the blood flowing from the ghastly chest wound drip into the container.

I moved to the second body, reaching out, but the Mage Lord hissed a warning. He moved aside to let two warrior half-faeries walk into the clearing, carrying another limp body between them. This one had been stabbed, too, and vicious cuts marked his arms. Looked like wounds from a sword or knife fight.

“No idea who killed him?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

The half-faeries looked at me like I was dirt on their shoes. I shrugged. “Just trying to help out.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The Mage Lord stepped to my side. “We were leaving.”

So much for looking around. I edged closer to Vance, trying to hide my jacket. Blood stained my sleeve, and if the half-faeries looked too closely, they’d realise what I’d done. Carrying a sample of faerie blood in my pocket felt like wearing a brand.

A choking noise behind us made me whirl around. The half-faerie who’d been carried in gasped and writhed on the ground.
Holy shit. He’s alive.

Barely. The two guards descended immediately, while Vance and I moved behind them.

“Who did this to you?” asked the first guard.

The half-faerie choked out an unpronounceable name.

“Where is he?”

“He—not himself. He said he was—said he was immortal. I—” The faerie’s body spasmed as he choked, the breath rattling in his throat. Then he went still.

I looked at Vance.
Immortal?

Shit. The last time anyone had mentioned immortality, someone had broken open the veil. Didn’t take a genius to see we were in trouble.

CHAPTER FOUR

“So,” said Vance, as we walked down the street towards my flat. “It seems old rumours die hard. The faerie you fought—”

“Velkas,” I interjected. “He promised pure faerie blood would give any faerie in this realm immortality. Obviously, it’s total bullshit.”

And this time, somebody had paid with their life.

“He might have been deluded,” I added. “But considering what happened the other week… yeah. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. They’re still hung up on what Velkas promised them. I mean, it’s not like I can go into half-blood district and tell them all personally Velkas was a liar.” I’d never thought to, either. Besides, he’d fed the same lie to pure faeries living in this realm. Like the Lady of the Tree. Technically, I owed her a favour, even if she’d duped us and sent us into a factory ruled by a murderous spider faerie.

“You have blood from one of the half-faeries?” he asked.

“Yeah. I didn’t see any weird magic, but it fades after they die.”

Which didn’t help us. Besides, none of them had been killed by magic. Two had been stabbed. Sure, half-faeries were capable of flying off the handle and attacking one another, but two dying in the same way felt like a pattern. Maybe.

I let Vance into the flat, resigning myself to letting him see the state of the living room again. Isabel’s witch paraphernalia covered the tables and one armchair—bottles, jars and other containers, along with a large number of pencils and elastic bands. The strong smell of herbs mingled with the scented candles burning on the windowsills, and particles of chalk drifted in the air.

Isabel herself stood at the stove. From the acrid smell, she was brewing up some kind of potion. She wore old jeans and a T-shirt, strands of frizzy hair escaping where she’d tied it back. Witch runes stood out against her brown skin, and chalk stains on her knees told me she’d been drawing spell circles again. Sure enough, most of the floor had symbols on it. I wouldn’t be putting this faerie blood anywhere near a powerful witch spell.

“Hey,” I said, reaching into my pocket for the jar of faerie blood. “Got a clear spot anywhere?”

“Hold on.” She moved to the living room area to clear half the coffee table. “What’s that?”

“Blood.” I leaned over to the side table where she kept her store of spells, and picked out a detection charm—a yellow elastic band. “Mind giving me a hand with this? I’m trying to see if there’s anything weird.” I explained the situation we’d found while Isabel took over setting up the circle.

Isabel leaned over the spell circle she’d created on the table, frowning. Her witch eyes saw things nobody else did, but the way she was biting her lip told me she’d run into something she was unfamiliar with.

“That’s not blood,” she said. “Not pure blood, anyway. It’s a formula, I’d guess. I can list the ingredients, but it won’t be much use without knowing what it’s for. It’s like… a drug.”

“Wait.” I frowned. “He was drugged?”