Suzanne McLeod - The Bitter Seed of Magic

For Corrie and Sophie

faithful friends

Curses are never goodand never more so when you end up trapped in the middle of onelike the droch guidhe, the curse that started eighty years ago.

Clona, a powerful sidhe queenone of the noble faefell in love with a human, and she chose to bear him a son. Like all mortal children born of sidhe and human, her son was human and therefore ill-suited for life in the Fair Lands. So although she loved him with all her heart, she left him with his father when she was forced to return to her throne, charging those lesser fae who lived in the humans world to watch over him and keep him safe.

Only the lesser fae didnt watch him closely enough.

The vampires found him.

And they lured him to his death.

Distraught at losing her son, Clona cut off the lesser fae from the Fair Lands and laid the droch guidhe on them, that they should also know the grief in her heart.

Faelingsthe mortal children of lesser fae and humanswere (and still are) the first victims of the curse: easy pickings for the vampires through no fault of their own. Unwilling to see more of their mortal children die before their time, and hoping to deny the curse its prey, Londons lesser fae first chose to stop having children with humans, but as time moved on, it became clear that not only were no faelings being born, but since the curse had been laid, no full-blood fae children had been born either.

The curse had blighted the lesser faes fertility.

And while they might be nearly immortal, while they might be able to heal themselves of most injuries, they are the offspring of the Shining Times, born of magic and nature conjoined, and to survive, they must continually renew their connection to keep it strong, and that means they must procreate. For if the fae dont procreate, then the magic doesnt either, and if the magic fades, then it wont be long before the fae follow it.

Londons lesser fae are dyingliterallyto break the curse.

But now they think theyve found another way.

Me.

I stood at the entrance to Dead Mans Hole, the now disused mortuary under Tower Bridge, shivering as the chill March wind sliced through my leather jacket. The wind tossed the distant voices of tourists visiting the bridge with the angry cries of the seagulls, and brought me the wilder scent of the river. Weak sunlight flickered into the mortuarys large cave-like interior, making its Victorian glazed-brick walls and curved ceiling waver with watery reflections. Before me, my shadow stretched thin across the rough concrete floor, only to fade as it reached the large white sand and salt circle drawn in the rooms centre. Inside the darkness of the circle lay the dead girl Id come to see.

More than fifty humans a year lose their lives in the River Thames.

I wiped my damp palms down my jeans and walked into the mortuary, nodding at the female police constable standing watch on one side. The astringent scent of sage coated with something sweet and thick caught the back of my throat. I swallowed back a choking cough, and kept walking until I reached the edge of the circle. Flecks of rust-coloured bone and the dried green of shredded yew patterned the sand and salt in intricate swirls like the ritual ashes scattered after a dwarfs funeral pyre. The blood-spattered bone and yew meant the circle was consecrated to stop the dead from rising and hell-born visitors from appearing: standard police practice since the demon attack on London last Halloween. And overkill in my opinion, considering it was now March, not October. But then, my opinion wasnt one the police were usually interested in.

More than fifty humans a year lose their lives in the River Thames; around eighty per cent are suicides.

Stay outside the circle, Ms Taylor, the WPC said, her voice echoing the disapproval evident in her expression, her hand tightening around the extendable baton at her side. I quickly lifted my own hand in acknowledgement. She was a witch, and while I was no longer on the Witches Councils hit list, witches still tend to get a little trigger-happy around me. The last thing I wanted was to give her an excuse to zap me with the Stun spell stored in the batons jade and silver tip.

Careful not to let my trainers scuff the sand circle I studied the dead girl staring sightlessly up at me from its centre. She was in her late teens, and Mediterranean girl next door pretty: dark brown eyes, blue-black hair still wavy even while wet, and a dusting of freckles over her nose. More freckles dotted the dark skin of her shoulders, but where the spaghetti strap of her flowered sundress had slipped, the line of paler flesh it exposed suggested her colour was a result of sun or a sunbed, and not her natural skin tone.

More than fifty people a year lose their lives in the River Thames.

And none of them fae.

The dead girl didnt look like any sort of fae. The suntan was the obvious giveaway; only human DNA produces melanin. As a sidhe fae, I could lie naked in the middle of the Sahara for a week and the dark-honey shade of my skin would never change, the blood-amber colour of my hair would never lighten, and even the sunburn would be nothing more than a rosy blush thanks to my fast-healing fae metabolism. But HughDetective Sergeant Hugh Munro of the Metropolitan Polices Magic and Murder squadwouldnt have called me in to look at the body if this was just an ordinary human death.

And the witches wouldnt have put her in a consecrated circle.

So either she wasnt all human, or

Dread constricted my throat. I didnt want this to be real. I didnt want to think about what this girls death might herald. The droch guidhe that afflicted Londons fae had already mutated in the past by blighting their fertility, and now it looked like it might be mutating again. And if it was, was this girls death my fault? Had I somehow caused it by not doing what the fae wantedby not having the child they wanted? A child they thought would crack the cursedespite there being no reason other than I was sidhe. Guilt at my continued refusal stabbed at me, but it was too life-altering a decision to say yes to without some sort of guarantee and without knowing the magical consequences for the baby, the one innocent I should protect above all others

I touched the gold pentacle where it burned reassuringly against my sternum, then shoved my fears away into the locked box in my mind.

Right now, none of that mattered.

What mattered was finding out if this girls death was a random deatha human deathor not.

I flipped the metaphysical switch inside me and looked, checking for magic. The circle glowed like a ring of blood-red neon shot with bright stars, the Stun spell in the WPCs baton winked like an iridescent green firefly in my peripheral vision

and the girls body disappeared beneath a binding of dirty-white ropes. I frowned, narrowing my eyes to get a better look. There was nothing neat about the spell trussing her up in a lumpy cocoon; it looked as if someone had gone crazy and sprayed her with a dozen cans of magical silly string. So whoever had tagged the girl was an amateuror wanted the police to think they wereor theyd been in a hurry

Whatever the answer, the girl was still dead.

Detached sadness at the waste of life rippled over me. I hadnt known the girl, she wasnt a friend Id loved and lost I clutched the gold pentacleGraces gold pentacleas the memory of Grace sacrificing herself for me at Halloween rose like some malevolent leviathan, eager to consume me The box in my mind snapped shut again and the sadness drained away, leaving me numb and empty.