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Uneasy, I studied him further. He was dressed as his übergoth persona: black leather trousers and a muscle-hugging T-shirt topped off with a long leather coat that flared and snapped in a nonexistent wind—a standard vamp trick, which, for some bizarre reason, was impressing the hell out of me right now, and filling me with envy …
Until I realised it wasn’t me being envious but Darius, who was metaphysically huddled behind me. He couldn’t do tricks like that, not yet. Darius’ gaze slid admiringly over the muscles under Malik’s T-shirt. He also looked good enough to eat …
… and our memories collided as we both remembered sinking our fangs into Malik, recalling the powerful, buzzing taste of his blood … our mouth watered, lust and hunger burned inside us, and something sprang to attention between our legs again, jolting me out of Darius’ reverie.
‘ Okay, now that is so,so weird, and so,so wrong,’ I muttered in my head.
‘ Not wrong.’ Our mouth stretched as Darius gri
‘ Normal for vamps maybe,’ I spluttered, ‘not for me.’
‘ Yeah, but you’re in me now, and the blood and sex bits get all mixed up.’ A certain part of our anatomy did its weird, excited flex again. ‘ Even more right now, ’cos you really,really want to get into his pants.’
‘ That. Is. None. Of. Your. Business!’
‘ Hey, it’s not like I can miss what you’re feeling.’ He gave a sly laugh. ‘ And it’s not like he wouldn’t know you were hot for him anyway; he’d smell it if he wanted to. We vamps got supersenses, y’know.’
‘ Okay, eew! And really,so not helping.’
‘ Want me to hitch you up with him?’ Our face muscles contorted as I tried to wipe our grin away and he wouldn’t let me. ‘ I could, like, ask him if he’s got the hots for you too.’
‘ No! Just, no! And, please, go away. I need to think—’
‘Darius?’ Malik crouched in front of us and I vaguely registered that Francine had gone. ‘Do you know what you have done here? What the penalty is for causing harm to the sidhe?’
His attention accomplished what I couldn’t, and Darius’ teasing grin disappeared in the blink of one of Malik’s fire-filled eyes, and then Darius himself disappeared into some dark corner of his mind, leaving me on my own in his body.
‘Yep, he knows who you are all right,’ I grimaced, keeping my hand on the lumpy bit of mattress in my lap, even though things in that department had deflated rapidly. ‘But what I want to know is, do you think this counts as death number five, or number six?’
He stilled, then reached out and tipped my chin up with his finger. ‘Your eyes glow gold with sidhe Glamour. I knew you could trap some of us in this ma
‘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 myhead …’ 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 reallydidn’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 notDarius! 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 ru