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‘And these aren’t the solution either.’ She placed a packet of little black pills on the counter between us; no doubt pinched from my bathroom.
She was right, taking the G-Zav—the vamp-junkies’ methadone—might work on humans, but my sidhe metabolism is too fast; the reason why I was popping the pills like they were going out of fashion.
‘Of course,’ she carried on, ‘unlike everyone else, you and I know you’ve had 3V for, oh, ten years, isn’t it now?’ She tapped the tablets. ‘And while you might be fooling them into thinking these are how you’re coping, I recognised the spell-tattoo on your hip; we both know how you’ve been satisfying your needs.’
Ri-ight!She’d seen the tattoo when she’d done me the ‘blood-drinking favour’. I’d bought an all-singing, all-dancing, all-blood-sucking Disguise spell from the Ancient One, a sorcerer who’d been around a lot longer than Ha
It was another problem on my to-sort-out list, after the vamps, my neighbours, Cosette—and now Ha
It was getting to be a long list.
‘But here’s the dilemma,’ Ha
She wasn’t wrong. Malik hadthreatened to kill me over Rosa’s body. But since he’d thrown away the opportunity when he’d had the chance, and had now done a vanishing act, Ha
‘Okay, Ha
‘Here’s your light, Genevieve.’ She reached up and cupped Darius’ face. ‘Young and handsome and so recently Gifted that he’s both biddable and controllable. And he has no master, no one to tell tales to, so no one need ever know what you do with him.’
No master?I frowned at him. That wasn’t possible, was it? Unless—? Well, maybe shacking up with an evil sorcerer had its compensations.
‘Doesn’t Darius have anything to say about it?’
She smiled up at him. ‘Do you?’
‘Yes,’ he gri
Now I remembered: Darius was a man of few words and that was his favourite. If it wasn’t for the predatory intelligence lurking in his eyes, I’d have thought him simple.
‘Think about it,’ she said softly. ‘No need for tablets, no need to be at the mercy of any vamp that takes a fancy to you, no need to do any deals with them. Freedom, independence and control of your own life. And look at him, he’s the icing on the cake.’
She could be reading my mind with her offer—in fact, I wasn’t sure she wasn’t—but even as I considered her little scenario, I knew it wouldn’t work, not in the long run. Darius might not belong to a master vamp now, but as soon as one of them found out I was using him as a venom-pet that would change. Never mind that even contemplating the role reversal bit was giving me a queasy feeling in my stomach; I was anti being a blood-slave myself, so no way did I want to own one, however willing he appeared. Then there was the other, Ha
‘So how do you think this would work then?’ I said slowly. ‘Do we split the week between us and give him the seventh night off?’
‘If that is what you want.’ She smiled.
‘I’m kind of more interested in what youwant, Ha
She patted Darius’ chest. ‘Looks like we’ve been rumbled, my pet.’ She glanced round before giving me a rueful smile. ‘There wasn’t much to search, though—oh, don’t get me wrong, I like what you’ve done with the place, but wouldn’t you like something more—Well, some place where Darius could pop by and no one would notice, somewhere that belonged to you that wasn’t dependant on the charity of the Witches’ Council?’
Now we were getting to the cherry on top. ‘Okay, now I’m biting.’
Satisfaction flickered in her eyes. She leaned forward, eager to close the sale. ‘You were given a present from the Earl’—London’s big-cheese vamp, the vamp I’d given my blood-bond to, the vamp now thankfully waterlogged ashes—‘he gave you a Fabergé egg containing a sapphire pendant. It was one of the earliest, made in 1886 in Saint Petersburg as a gift from Tsar Alexander III to Tsarina Maria Fyodorovna, and is, according to records, now lost.’ She held her hands out. ‘All you need to do is sell it.’
My mouth almost dropped open. The Fabergé egg was some cherry!
I’d all but forgotten all about it—probably because I’d never wanted it in the first place, or ever considered it mine. The Earl hadgiven it me during the Mr October thing, not so much as a present, but more a sort of gem-studded blackmail note, an added inducement to get me to take his blood-bond. And while I’d realised it was valuable—it was Fabergé, after all—I’d sort of imagined it was a recent one, or an expensive copy, not a lost original.
And how the hell did Ha
‘Oh and before you say you don’t have it, Ge
I narrowed my eyes at her thoughtfully. There was something wrong with what she was saying, only I couldn’t quite work it—
‘I have contacts, Genevieve,’ Ha
I didn’t bother answering that one.
‘Here are my details,’ she added, holding out her hand palm up.
Darius produced a card from somewhere, reminding me of a well-trained magician’s assistant. She placed it on the counter next to the G-Zav pills.
‘Call me tomorrow and we’ll set up a meeting to arrange the sale.’ She smiled. ‘I think this could be a very profitable and enjoyable relationship for both of us.’
I stood sipping my vodka and watched them leave, then turned on my computer.
‘The egg’s worth how much?’ Grace spluttered coffee, her brown eyes widening with shock.
I snagged a clean dishcloth from under the sink, rinsed it under the tap and held it out to her. ‘Ten to twelve million quid, if you believe Google,’ I repeated, gri
‘Goddess!’ She blinked, then took the cloth and dabbed thoughtfully at her baggy jumper.
I studied her, worried about how tired she looked. The bruised circles under her eyes and the slight grey tinge to her latte-coloured skin made her look a good five years older than her actual twenty-nine, and her plump shoulders were on their ‘been working too long’ downward slump. I wished she’d take a break and not push herself so hard all the time, only thatargument was older than all our more recent ones about me and the vamps. But since my place is nearer to HOPE than her house in Wimbledon, at least she’d agreed to crash with me if she was on back-to-back shifts, rather than camp out in her office at the clinic. Although tonight thatplan wasn’t working out too well. When she’d finally got away after her emergency, it was only to end up helping me in my cleaning frenzy as I tried to rid my flat of the nasty lingering presenceof my uninvited visitors.