“It is, yes. Not ideal.”
“He didn’t even wash it off before showing up here. That bit seems a bit off, you know? I mean, give it a good rinse first, at least. Showing up to a kill with other people’s blood is just not on.”
It creeped me the hells out that he knew my first name. Also, yes, the fresh blood wasn’t endearing him to me.
“How did he know he was being scryed on?” Gina asked.
“You can feel it,” I said. “On the back of your neck, like someone’s watching, you know?”
Gina ran her fingers over the magical glass. “So he’s here to kill you. But what exactly are you gonna do about it? You can’t fight him. He’s trained to kill outlaws within seconds.”
A powerful pulse of his magic vibrated through the walls. My stomach clenched at the dark music of his magic. What exactly was he brewing up there on the surface? Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be pleasant.
Goosebumps rose all over my skin. “Have some faith in me. I can kill him.” I pointed to the dried demon hearts nailed to our rickety underground walls. Demon body parts, crammed between shelves of potions and magical amulets. “Look. You see that? I’ve killed before. Plenty of times. That’s why I’m known as Aenor, Flayer of Skins, Scourge of the Wicked. Boom.”
Gina gave me a sympathetic look that was frankly patronizing coming from a sixteen-year-old. “First of all, you gave yourself that name. Second of all, those guys you scourged weren’t as scary as this blood-sword motherfucker.”
“Language!” Perhaps I carved out hearts and broke bones, but I had some standards for proper behavior. Or at least I expected those under eighteen to follow them.
“Fucking hell, Aenor.” She pressed her hands on either side of the mirror, ignoring my admonition. “He’s, like, eight feet tall and well…murdery. Third of all—was I on point three? Your demon kills were extreme circumstances. You didn’t have a choice. Those were demons beating their girlfriends. Or vampires hunting teenage girls through the streets. You intervened to save lives. There’s no, like… immediate emergency right now. As long as we stay in the shop, no one has to die. Like I said. Zero assassins inside the shop. We’re perfectly safe underground.”
She was reassuring herself more than she was making a coherent argument.
The magic intensified around me, setting my teeth on edge. “You’re wrong, Gina. If I don’t act, we both die. He’s fixing to do something nasty.”
“I don’t see it that way. You could stay in here and wait till he gets bored enough to leave. He’ll slink off home to watch Doctor Who at some point and have a spliff or something.”
“That’s not how this works. Assassins don’t get bored and leave.” I stood, my body buzzing with adrenaline, and crossed to the desk behind the counter. I rolled it open and pulled out a handgun. “And anyway, I have a little advantage. They’ll be expecting me to use an attack spell, not a gun. Traditional fae like him never use modern weapons. It’s a whole taboo thing for no good reason whatsoever. Lucky for us, I don’t care a lick about tradition, so I’ll just shoot him in the heart with iron bullets. Unlike lead, they actually kill the fae. Job done.”
“But he has magic.”
“So do I.”
“Right,” she countered. “But you just have sad dirt-hole magic, and he looks like his would be better.”
“Anyway,” I said a little too sharply. “Waiting until an assassin gets bored enough to wander home isn’t a real solution.”
“What will I do if you die, Aenor? I’d have no one to take care of me. I get scared at night, and I can’t run the shop on my own.”
Sometimes, Gina seemed surprisingly worldly. And at other times—like now—she seemed more like the sixteen-year-old human that she was.
From above, the killer’s magic grew stronger, thrumming over my skin in a dangerous warning. I breathed in the heavy, sea-smelling air, and my heart started pounding harder against my ribs.
He was going to hit us with an attack at any moment. Then—our bodies would sway from the hawthorn tree.
I had to stop this murderer before he got the chance.
Chapter 2
Cold, wet magic skimmed through my cluttered shop, growing so powerful it rattled the floorboards beneath my feet. Gina’s dark eyes went wide, and she stared at me, looking lost.
Suddenly, I wanted to protect her with a fierce intensity. Humans could break so easily.
Gina gripped the mirror tighter, staring into it. “Oh, bloody hell. There’s a second one, Aenor. At least I think I saw him? He sort of glowed from the shadows for a moment, like a… I don’t know, a creepy angel. There’s no way you can go fight both of them.” She looked up, her forehead creased. “Maybe we can escape through the underground tunnel. It goes to the river, right?”
It wasn’t the worst idea. We couldn’t go straight up through the hatch in the ceiling, but there was a second route out of here. An old tunnel led south from here to the Thames, carving underground through the most ancient parts of London.
I threaded my fingers into my blue hair, pacing now. “We might be able to get to the river. I’ll have more power there anyway.”
That’s when it hit me—the heavy scent of the river, slamming into me like a fist. When I looked down at the old floorboards, my stomach dropped. Dark water seeped through the cracks, pooling in my shop.
“Change of plan,” I said. “They want to drown us. They’re going to flood us out. They’re flooding the tunnel as we speak.”
These creeps wanted to destroy my home, my livelihood.
And this was exactly why I had a gun loaded with iron bullets.
“Bollocks. Bollocks!” Gina looked frantic. “Let’s run. Now.”
“No. You stay here for a few more minutes. You’ll drown if you go further down that tunnel. Unlike me, you can’t breathe underwater.”
Dark river water pooled beneath my feet, soaking the bottoms of my high heels. My teeth chattered from the cold.
I shoved my hand into my pocket, running my fingertips over a mother-of-pearl comb.
The gun was one of my most useful weapons. Believe it or not, the comb was the other. It would help lure the assassins to me. Then, I’d simply shoot them.
“I’ve got this, Gina,” I said. “Just keep the doors shut. If the water fills up too fast, you can escape through the hatch in the roof. I’ll lure the assassins away from that opening, so they won’t notice you. Sneak out from the ceiling hatch and make a run for it. In five minutes, they’ll be totally gone. They’re not after you, anyway. They just want me.”
“Please be careful.” She pulled a plastic ring off her finger and shoved it at me. “Take this for good luck.”
“Thanks.” I slid the gun into the belt on my shorts, then the ring onto my finger. A cartoon donkey on the top grinned at me. I was pretty sure it had been a prize from a Happy Meal, but I’d take all the luck I could get.
Now the water had risen up to my toes, and powerful magic skimmed over my body.
I crossed though the silk curtains that hid the tunnel door. Then, I pulled open the door into an ancient, earthen tunnel. Here, dirt particles filled the air, and I couldn’t see a thing. Already, the water was turning the dirt walls to mud. In another life, I’d once had total power over water. Not anymore.