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Then the sharp ammonia scent brought me back.
Fuck. Whatever happened to not making my injuries worse?As I shifted away from the pungent smell, another shock of pain ripped through me and I resolved to stay still. If I didn’t move, it didn’t hurt. Of course, if she didn’t spell-punch me, it wouldn’t hurt either.
‘Ms Taylor.’ Helen clenched her hands, her multitude of rings chinking in anger. ‘There are no friendly trolls, inquisitive media or myex-husband here to protect you this time, and my patience is wearing thin. I suggest you keep your mouth shut until I ask—’
A clock struck, sounding like the Westminster chimes of Big Ben. Helen and Jack started chanting under their breath and turned their backs to me. Magic shivered over us like a light snowfall, illuminating the dome of the ten-foot circle enclosing us and melting like cool kisses against my cheeks. I lay there counting the sixteen notes of the hour, waiting for the deeper gongs at the end to tell me how long I’d been here: one, two … ten, elev—
The eleventh gong cut out halfway through.
Four hours, give or take. Shit, that was a long time. C’mon, Malik, find the damn feather; the night’s not getting any younger.
In the silence that followed, I could hear the quiet rustling of people moving, the muted cry of a baby, quickly hushed, and the scrape of metal on stone.
The cold round me increased, and my breath fogged into the air as my teeth started chattering.
My stomach heaved as a spell rolled over us like an air pressure wave following an explosion.
Jack moaned and collapsed against Helen; she wrapped her arms round him and gently lowered him to the floor. As she stroked his hair back from his face, sadness and longing crossed hers, and I relived the memory of her grief as he’d been taken from her by Angel.
I scowled; I so didn’t want to feel sorry for her.
Then her sadness was gone and she fixed me with an irritated look. ‘You’re shivering, Ms Taylor.’
I didn’t bother to answer. One, it was obvious, and two, my teeth were going at it like they were one of those joke wind-up sets that clatter around until they run out of power and die. A not-so-cheerful thought.
She pulled her cardigan off and laid it on top of me, tucking it under my chin. ‘It will warm up in a minute,’ she said absently. ‘It’s just the after-effect of keeping this circle tuned to Betweenso we don’t go out of Time-sync.’
‘Time-sync?’ I asked, then braced myself for another magical shoulder-punch as her attention focused on me instead of her internal thoughts.
After a moment, she said. ‘Yes, Time-sync, Ms Taylor. Time here runs slow, around a day for every hour in the normal world. Until the clock finishes the chime we can’t get out, and no one can get in. The place is cut off until this time tomorrow.’
I digested that. Time in Between—like space and form—was malleable, of course. Not that I had much of a clue where to start with any of that, but that was less important than how long … in other words, how long before Malik, my super-powerful fangy back-up found the bloody Morrígan’s feather and caught a raven-powered flight to my (and everyone else’s) rescue. Still, the good news was I probably hadn’t been out of it for as long as I thought. The bad news— If it took Malik an hour, I could end up trapped here for twenty-four of them—
Panic bubbled inside me and I slammed a lid on it, hard. I’d been in worse situations; I could find a way out of this, I wasn’t dead yet—and to be honest, I was pretty sure me dead wasn’t part of Helen’s immediate game plan, so—
‘You have to pick your moment.’ Helen interrupted my thoughts. ‘It’s why it took us so long to get in without him knowing.’
‘Without who knowing?’ I asked cautiously.
‘Dr Craig, of course.’ She regarded me as if I was simple. ‘This is all his doing—although he had to force Ana—she’s his sister-in-law—to pull this patch of Betweeninto being, he’s not powerful enough to castthis sort of magic.’
Ri- ight. Dr Craig was The Mother’s killer, so the ‘horned god’ in Her photofit wassymbolic, as I’d thought. Someone really did need to buy Her a digital camera. I fervently hoped Hugh had already discovered that Dr Craig was the main perpetrator, and that he’d got him locked up in one of Old Scotland Yard’s cells, but part of me knew I couldn’t get that lucky. And my glee at Helen being a crooked cop wasn’t quite as satisfying now she’d got me in her shackles, only— Helen didn’t appear to be on the same baddie team as Dr Craig any more, not if she was hiding out in a circle. Plus she wanted something from me, something I needed to agree to if I was supposed to have all my faculties … and her daughter was missing. I took a mental leap and came up with—
‘So, Dr Craig’s holding Nicky hostage and I’m your ransom.’ I gave her a level look. ‘Have I got it about right?’
‘Spot on, Ms Taylor.’ She looked down her patrician nose at me. ‘But you can be quite clever, on occasion.’
‘So the real question is, since you’re not just handing me over now you’ve got me all trussed up’—I lifted my uninjured arm with its police issue silver shackle—‘what is it you want me to agree to before you do the swap?’
Her lip curled in disdain. ‘Craig’s interested in your childbearing capabilities.’
Of course he was. Everyone else and their dog was, so why not him? But— ‘What exactly does “interested in my childbearing capabilities” mean?’
‘Sit up and have a look.’
‘Why don’t you just do your magic-punch thing again? It’d be easier,’ I said flatly.
Her lips thi
Better than nothing. Using my good arm as a lever, I sat up.
Chapter Fifty
In the centre of the large mediaeval-looking room there were around twenty metal hospital beds, all in the half-reclined position and set out in a large circle. The beds were all occupied by young girls. As I studied the faces of those I could see, I realised they all were all wearing the same Doppelgänger spells as the two dead faelings found in Dead Man’s Hole. Sitting alternatively round the circle were the pretty ‘girl next door’ with her brown hair and freckles (Sally Redman’s spell) and the beautiful, blue-eyed blonde: Miranda, the teenage witch from Morgan Le Fay College.
‘Oka- aay,’ I muttered, ‘creepy or what?’ Then I realised something even creepier: they were all pregnant, and most of them looked like it wasn’t long to D-Day—or rather, B-Day? Not only that, half a dozen of the beds had small clear plastic cots next to them, complete with sleeping baby. And all the girls were silent and smiling, like this was the best place to be in the whole, wide world, like some sort of weird gathering of Stepford mums-to-be. Had to be some sort of Happy spell; twenty folk just wouldn’t sit that quietly. I looked, but there was no magic to see, not on the Stepfords, anyway.
But there was on the right side of the room. About halfway down was a modern pine grandfather clock dripping with spells. It clashed with the whole mediaeval look—suits of armour would’ve been more in keeping—but then, the clock had to be what was stopping the time—literally. Next to it was a door. I doubted it was the way out: it didn’t look large enough to get the hospital beds through, and they’d definitely been imported from the humans’ world—
‘You are now looking at the Merlin Foundation’s newest initiative to produce the next generation of wizards,’ Helen said, interrupting my escape-pla