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‘You’ve got the sidhe, Craig,’ Helen yelled, sounding just as desperate as I felt, ‘now let me have my daughter.’
‘Very well, Helen.’ He turned to the smiling Nicky. ‘Nicola, please go to your mother now.’
She started trotting towards Helen, hooves striking off the stone floor, her smile unchanging.
I gaped. Was he really just going to let her go?
Helen evidently thought so, as she brokeher circle and started hurrying towards Nicky, a big concerned smile on her face.
Unease shifted in me. I craned my head …
Nicky grabbed the frilly nightdress, bunching it up round her thighs, showing well-muscled, ta
Something was wrong.
Helen’s smile dimmed.
‘Helen,’ I shouted, ‘get back in the circle—
Nicky leapt the last few steps, kicking out as she did, and one precisely placed hoof caught her mother in the stomach. Helen doubled over and dropped like a broken broomstick to the stone-flagged floor. Another hoof caught her in the kidneys. Nicky circled round to Helen’s front and aimed a dainty hoof at her mother’s head—
‘Stop her,’ I screamed, reaching out and grabbing Dr Craig’s orange furry cape—
And everything stopped as if I’d pressed the pause button on a DVD: Nicky with her hoof in mid-air— Nurse Ratched with the Stun spell ready to throw— The Stepfords, all smiling creepily in my direction— Dr Craig standing half turned away from me—
Musty air shivered over me, and the rank scent of charred meat choked in my throat, then a huge translucent figure winked into being, superimposing itself like a badly scratched hologram over Dr Craig.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The figure looked half giant, half long-haired orang-utan, if you discounted his broad, mostly human face with its glowing orange eyes, and the heavy scimitar-like horns that were as long as my arms sweeping to either side of his head above his twitching furry ears. He was naked, apart from the orange hair, the heavy gold chain round his neck and a small brown leather loincloth. Underneath the thick hair his skin was covered in an intricate swirling pattern of red, gold and black ink that shimmered with latent power.
He had to be the Morrígan’s son: MacCúailnge, the Old Do
He was also the spitting image of The Mother’s photofit.
Hmm.Maybe she didn’t need a camera after all.
He was also a ghost.
My phobia hit. I pressed my lips together hard, stifling the shriek in my throat. Fae don’t leave ghosts—not naturally, anyway—but the Old Do
He flicked a long cowlick of paler orange hair out of his eyes and gri
‘Yeah? Well, you can forget that idea,’ I said, pleased my words came out dry as dust despite the little phobic-fuelled voices in my head telling me to scream and run and don’t stop until I was far, far away. ‘I’ve got one dictatorial male in my life already. No way do I need another. So how about we try doing this the democratic “help-each-other-out” way?’
‘“Help” … ?’ The glow in the MacCúailnge’s orange eyes turned crafty. ‘I might be afther considerin’ it, seeing as I’m wantin’ something in return.’
Figured. I pursed my lips at him, wondering just how helpful a non-corporeal ghost could actually be, and if I really needed to ask him what he wanted when no doubt the clip-clop of little bull hooves was going to be the answer. I sighed. ‘Go on then, tell me what you want.’
He raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘Why, a body and me freedom, me darlin’. Forty years of bein’ without them both is quite the trial.’
A body?I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘What sort of body?’
‘A new one, of course.’ He waved a huge hairy arm towards the Stepfords. ‘This wee wizard man here’s been promisin’ me one for a rare long while now, but none o’ these wee girlies are strong enough for the MacCúailnge.’ A sly expression crossed his face and he crouched down so he could look me in the eyes. ‘Unless you’ll be willin’, pretty sidhe?’
The Morrígan’s little fertility mix of spit and Fi
‘No,’ I said, as rage filled my veins with icy determination, ‘no way. You don’t deserve a new body, not after what you did to Rhia
His large orange eyes did a slow blink, then his expression turned to dismay. ‘The wee lassies have been dyin’?’ His shoulders lowered and he shot a bushy browed frown at the Stepfords. ‘The wee wizard man ne’r told me that. And you have the right of it, pretty sidhe, I should have been afther stoppin’ him from doin’ such a foul thing in my ain home.’
Ri-ight. I gave him a suspicious look, not sure whether he was for real or not. ‘So, are you going to stop him now?’
‘I’m thinkin’ there’s not much I can do like this, pretty sidhe.’ His ears flattened. ‘Not while the wizard man here has harnessed what little power I still possessed by wearin’ me ain skin.’
Nice!Except— ‘That’s it: he’s used your power to Glamour them,’ I muttered. ‘Damn; that’s why I couldn’t catch him with mine.’ I looked him over speculatively, then tugged on the orange furry cape. ‘Okay, everything stopped when I grabbed your skin here, so does that mean I’ve got control of your power now?’
‘Maybe if you were wearin’ my hide, you would.’ His wide nostrils flared pensively. ‘But mind, once ye leave go of your hold on me, time will all be afther startin’ again.’
He’s wylde fae, murmured my cautious voice, and they’re always tricky, not to mention he gave in way too easily on the whole new body thing. Or that it wasn’t a coincidence that he’d appeared right at the opportune time. And where was Jack? I squinted up past the Old Do
And I knew what the Morrígan wanted.
Wearing his hide was a definite no.
But it wasn’t the only source of juice here.
This was Between, after all, malleable if you had enough will and power, and if the magic liked you—I glanced at the suits of armour—which it sort of looked like it did … I closed my eyes, sent a quick prayer to The Mother, and focusedon what Iwanted: enough time, plenty of space, and a perfect aim—
Something brushed against me, a shy questing touch of an unfamiliar consciousness. It— No, she, offered aid … power freely given. I took half a second to quell my natural cynical response that whispered about unspoken obligations, then, eager and grateful, I opened the part of me that absorbsthe magic and accepted. Power flooded into me like a tsunami, filling and stretching and reshaping until the barrier between us dissolved and it settled like a warm weight inside my soul. I took a shaky breath, then another, and with the third a rush of searing heat drenched sweat over my body, my bones vibrated like a magical tuning fork as the stone floor trembled beneath me, and the tart apple taste of cloudberries slipped down my throat and poured steadiness into my limbs.