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I packed my paranoia into my backpack and handed her the things back. “Very colorful dress, Mrs. Christakis. Thank you.”
She grimaced. “Not my choice, unfortunately, but you can’t argue with the old traditions.” She stood aside and motioned me in. “Or at least, I can’t. Oh, and call me Dora. ‘Mrs. Christakis’ reminds me too much of my mother-in-law.”
“Sure,” I said, and transferred my cat carriers inside.
The entrance hallway was high and wide, with double doors leading off either side and an ornate marble-and-iron staircase sweeping upward. The walls were bare of pictures, the black-and-white marble floor was partially covered by drop cloths, and the only lighting was a couple of dangling bulbs. Next to a door at the back of the hall was a crisscrossed stack of toolboxes, a pyramid of paint cans, and three huge sledgehammers lined up by height. The builders were either toddlers, or neat freaks. Unsurprisingly, the place smelled of paint and the nose-stinging reek of turpentine, and I had a brief, regretful thought that my best black suit was going to end up trashed.
The double doors to the left were open, and the room beyond snagged my attention. It was haphazardly peopled with life-size statues of muscled, naked men in various athletic poses, and half-dressed women cradling fruit or pouring water. Scattered among the statues were marble busts, plaques, stone animals, and half a dozen knee-high stacks of shining silver and copper platters. It was like looking into a museum’s messy storeroom, or the White Queen’s lair, if she’d been Greek. Not to mention that the room was obviously pixie heaven.
I looked. And everything lit up with the telltale colorful sprinkles of pixie dust, but most of it was faint and old, with only a few brighter, newer patches. My paranoia peeked out of my backpack.
“We’re renovating the whole house”—Dora smiled and pointed up the stairs—“so we’re camping out on the second floor just now, but if you’d like something to eat or drink before you start, then you’re very welcome.”
As if on cue, a gray-haired woman in a black head scarf, who looked as if she were a hundred and suffering from eczema going by her wrinkled, scaly face, leaned over the banisters above. She waved a ladle large enough it could be classified as a weapon and shouted something (which was all Greek to me) in a strident, demanding tone. Dora repeated her offer of hospitality in a dutiful-sounding voice. I told her no thanks, and she shouted back in the same language (obviously it was all Greek to her too, except she understood it). The woman threw her hands in the air in disgust or despair and disappeared.
“Malia, my aunt. She refuses to believe that women work outside the home”—Dora rolled her eyes—“and therefore you must be a guest, and I am shirking my responsibility by not letting her stuff you full of food.”
The aunt’s stereotypical Greek appearance had almost settled my paranoia, although I still had questions. “So,” I said, “how long have you had your pixie problem?”
“With all the building work going on, I’m not sure when they first appeared.” Dora’s reply was a bit too casual. “I’ve seen them in Trafalgar Square, and thought they were cute.” She stopped and gave me a rueful grimace. “Look, to be honest, I’m using them in a new game, so it was handy having them around. Only then one of my husband’s more expensive statues got broken, and he’s due back next week, so, well, it’s time for the pixies to go.”
Made sense, but—“What about the local witches? Have you consulted with them at all?”
“I did,” she said, and frowned, “but the local coven wanted to use Stun spells and nets.” (Which was another way of solving the problem—with a low survival rate for the pixies.) “But I want it done humanely”—she smoothed her hand over her camera—“which is the way Spellcrackers does it, isn’t it?”
“It is, yes.” Humane to the pixies anyway; my arms still itched from their bites. Not that I’d want to catch them any other way. And after all, like all fae, I’m fast-healing, a bonus of being virtually immortal. So Dora’s answers meant I was good to go, other than my last niggle of unease: “Where are the pixies?” I asked her.
“Mostly up on the third floor,” Dora said. “But your office mentioned you’d probably need to close the portal in the swimming pool first.” I nodded. It was standard operating procedure: pointless rounding them up before you’d stopped more coming through. Dora led me to the door at the end of the hallway, “It’s down here, in the basement,” and then she added in a rush, “I’m not sure, but there might be a bit of a problem.”
I bit back a sigh. I hated it when clients didn’t tell you everything going in; it always made my job harder. But at least that explained where my last doubt was coming from.
I gave her my best professional smile. “Why don’t you show me, then?”
She opened the door to reveal a modern glass-and-chrome stairway that clashed with the rest of the house and the half-finished mural of ancient ruins and olive trees that decorated the stairwell wall. As we descended, the sound of crashing waves assaulted my ears and the salty scent of open water cut with the rank smell of death slapped me in the face. Either Dora had a hell of a wave pool down here, or she was right, and there was definitely a problem.
We reached the bottom of the stairs, walked along a long opaque-glass corridor, and at the end she opened another door.
The sound of the sea intensified.
I walked through the door with a feeling of trepidation. I just knew this wasn’t going to be good.
The room and the swimming pool were both bigger than I’d expected. The pool was fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, and eighteen feet at the deep end, going by the markings stenciled onto the very obvious white squares on the walls, which ruined the whole illusion of the painted panoramic vistas. And judging by the way the pool’s edges wavered with magic, instead of the pixie portal being the usual, easily closed hole about the size of a di
I stared, stu
“Maybe a week?” Dora pulled a face. “Bruno, the mural painter, has been off sick, so no one’s been down here. I didn’t realize it was like this myself until not long ago, otherwise I’d have said when I phoned. You can sort it, can’t you?”
No way in hell. This was way out of my league, but—I forced my mouth back into my professional smile. “I’m going to need some help with this.” I dug out my phone. This needed a coven, but they were all at the Spring Rites, or scrying for the missing boys . . .
But there was someone who could help. Someone who was in his element in water, and who’d told me to call him. Tavish. Okay, so this probably wasn’t the sort of call he was expecting . . .
He answered on the first ring. Keen.“Hello, doll,” he said in his soft burr.
“Hey,” I said, brightly, “I’ve got a bit of a fishy problem here. A big one. Sharks.”
“Di
“Ha, ha,” I said. “But seriously, Tavish, there are sharks here, and I’m not about to start reenacting Jaws.”
“ ’Tis nae the sharks I’m fussed about. Tell the lamia: ten minutes. And see if you can find out where the children are.” The phone went dead.
I stared at it, my mind whirling. Why did Tavish sound like he knew what was going on? What children? And who was the lamia? I transferred my stare to Dora, who, though she had her eyes squeezed shut, had her camera up and was snapping pictures like her life depended on it, and the paranoia in my backpack jumped out and sucker-punched me. “What’s going on, Dora?” I demanded.