Tom stared at the Fae for a moment, then shook his hand. “You were at the restaurant that time.”
“Indeed I was,” Solus said smoothly. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Tom muttered something uncomplimentary about Fae in general. I watched Solus’ eyes harden for just a heartbeat before returning to normal.
”Tom, do you think you could give us a moment?” He began to shake his head, but I interrupted. “You can stand just over there. I only want to talk to Solus for a minute in private.”
He glared at me, then stomped off, positioning himself just a few feet away.
Solus raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you trust the little wolf any more?”
“Corrigan’s got him on a short leash. Look,” I said quickly, “I need your help.”
“Again? Dragonlette,” he said, shaking his head in mock disappointment, “this is becoming a bad habit.”
“Please? It’s important.”
He sighed dramatically. “Very well. What do you need?”
“Just to get out of this room without every single shifter trailing after me. Can you glamour them or something?”
Solus glanced about. “I can manage three or four but I’m afraid you’ve got more than that hanging off your coat-tails.”
“I know,” I said grimly. “But I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need to.”
He frowned, considering the matter. “You won’t have long. Maybe three of four minutes.”
“That’s okay,” I said. If that was all the time I had, then that was just what I’d have to work with. I’d just have to hope that the Ancile really was being kept in the trophy room that The Geography and Domestic Situation of the Vampyre had described. Come to think of it, I thought looking around for a moment, I hadn’t yet seen any gold leaf on the walls.
“So what will you give me in return?”
I thought for a moment. Of course it had been stupid of me to think that the Fae would help me out of the goodness of his heart. And even I wasn’t enough of an idiot to ask him what he wanted in return. A few ideas flipped over in my head, and then a bolt of inspired lightning hit me. If this worked…
I put on a serious look. “I don’t want to do this, Solus. It’s only because I’m desperate.”
“Go on,” he said, eyeing me with a disturbingly hungry expression.
“Well, I have this book, see? I’m pretty sure it’s one of a kind. I found it first up in Inverness, in fact right before you showed up. Then it turned up again in the mages’ library. I’m sure it’s the same one and that somehow it’s sentient.”
“What would I want with a sentient book?” Solus waved a hand airily around. “My life is far too exciting to bother with reading.”
And that, Solus, is one of the reasons why I will never entirely trust you, I thought, keeping my mental fingers crossed. “It’s a Fae book. Rather beautiful, I might add. But very old. And it goes into lots and lots of detail about dragons.”
He started. “Dragons? You mean…”
I nodded. “Yes, I do. So with this book, this sentient book, you can know more about the Draco Wyr than anyone else on the planet. In fact, more than anyone else on any plane.” I licked my lips. “Well, apart from me of course. Knowledge is power, Solus. While I’m reluctant to give you such knowledge so easily, I can see I have little other choice at the moment.”
He held my gaze steadily. “So you would promise that this book is worth reading, would you?”
“Certainly. I give you my word on that.” Especially if you can read it for me and tell me what it says, I thought.
The Fae thought about it. I held my breath.
“Okay then. Give me the book and I will sort out your little shifter problem.”
I exhaled. Praise the gods. Now I’d just have to finagle my way into getting him to tell me what was actually in the book without him realising that I’d not actually read much more than the first chapter. I felt a slight twinge of guilt, then dismissed it. This was the sort of thing the Fae did all the time with their tricksy bargains. I just happened to be playing them at their own game for once.
“I can’t get you the book right now, of course. It’s at the academy. But I leave every Friday for a couple of hours to go to anger management counselling.” Solus started to laugh. I ignored him. “You can meet me there and then I’ll give you the book.”“It’s a deal.” He spat on his hand and held it out. I did the same and then we shook.
Solus crooked an eyebrow at me. “If you have access to the mages’ library, then why is the old woman still asleep?”
Puzzled, I just frowned at the mage.
“Honestly, dragonlette, for an apparently smart girl sometimes you can be incredibly dim. The spell they put on her had to come from somewhere. And it will be written down somewhere. Just find the book that it’s written in and then you can find out how to free her.”
I stared at him, completely nonplussed. A vision of the off-limits catalogue cabinet swam into my head, along with the fact that Slim was constantly reminding me to stay on the ground floor. I smacked my palm against my forehead. I was a fucking idiot.
“And so turns on the lightbulb,” drawled Solus.
The cogs in my brain geared up. “I was told that only the Ministry Council could actually remove the spell.”
“Well, of course you were told that. If every mage had access to it then it would never work, would it?”
I thought about it. Assuming that I could find a book with details about how to remove the spell, and that I was able to do it myself, not only would I be breaking my word to the Arch-Mage, but I’d be pretty much damning myself and potentially Mrs. Alcoon forever. I already knew that there were few places to hide from the reach of the mages. And yet if I could free her now...I pondered carefully. It wouldn’t hurt to have a back up plan in case everything fell to shit at the academy.
Solus was watching me carefully. “You could always come and live in Tir-na-nog. You’d be safe there.”
I snapped my head up at him. He sighed. “I’m not a mindreader, dragonlette. It’s just not hard to work out what you might be thinking.”
“I don’t want to go to Fae-land.”
He shrugged. “Think about it.”
I breathed out. I didn’t like the lack of honour that those kind of actions would highlight. But I would have to think about it, and seriously. In the meantime, however I had to concentrate on the matter in hand. I raised my eyebrows pointedly at the Fae.
He sighed. “Give me a minute to put things into place.”
“Wait!” I stopped him and reached down to my shoes and began undoing the complicated straps.
I could feel Tom staring at me from the other side of the room. I mimed that my feet were hurting, which was actually true, and yanked the offending things off. Suddenly I felt about two feet shorter. I handed the Fae the shoes and he looked at them in disgust, as if I’d given him a pair of live snakes.
“Now you can begin,” I said.
Solus closed his eyes briefly and muttered something inaudible. Then he opened them and grinned at me. “Get ready.”
I stood there for a moment. Everyone around me continued on as before. Irritated, I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could there was an almighty roar of rage from right outside the window. The ground shook and half the guests ducked down, covering their ears.
“It’s a wendigo.” The Fae was looking incredibly smug.
“Huh?” I gaped at him.
“A wendigo. A cannibalistic nightmare of a beast. I’ve summoned it. It’s not happy.”
The thing roared again. People began running for the door – whether to get away or to try to kill the thing, I had no idea.
“Is it dangerous?” Bloody hell, I certainly didn’t want anyone’s blood on my hands for this.
Solus shrugged. “Only if it eats you.” He gave me a little nudge. “You’d better go now.”
I looked around, realising that the shifters were transforming in an explosion of fur and cloth, ready to do what shifters did best and save the proverbial day. Tom was already in wolf shape and leaping out of the door. I reached up and pecked Solus on the cheek, then ran.
Floods of different people were pushing past me in a rush to get outside. Even the vamps seemed to be taking heed of Solus’ wendigo creature, and were pelting out the front door, fangs elongating. It would take their combined efforts virtually no time at all to dispatch the thing. I hoped for its sake that Solus would transport it back to wherever it came from before they managed to do so.
Ducking underneath, and shoving my way through, I hiked up my dress so that I could actually move freely. Satisfied that everyone’s attention was on what was outside rather than in, I quickly leapt up the stairs, my bare feet hardly even touching the ground as I flew up. As soon as I reached the first floor, I curved round again and continued upwards. The trophy room was, according to my potentially defunct research, on the second floor towards the back of the house. I could still hear shouts from the different denizens of the Otherworld as they rushed to meet the wendigo outside. It roared again, and the foundations shook, but I ignored it as I completed my ascent, one sweaty palm clutching the banister and the other gripping onto my clutch with the Palladium inside.
I swung round, hitting the second floor. There were several doors to choose from. Fuck. Which one would it be? I launched myself towards the end of the landing and tried the very last door. It was locked. Not wanting to leaving a trace of myself if I didn’t need to, I didn’t try kicking it open for now. Instead, my hand twisted the knob on the second door. This one opened easily. However, inside all there seemed to be was a full size snooker table and a dartboard. I guessed the vamps enjoyed their indoor sports.
Shutting the door again, I sprang to my right and tried again. The catch on this one was a bit stiff and I ended up having to put my shoulder to it to force it open. I felt around for a light switch on the wall, finding it quickly and then flicking it on, illuminating the entire room. This was it. Heat rippled through my veins, snaking its way out from my heart and down to the tips of my extremities. I sucked it up, for once enjoying the focus the bloodfire gave me. Then I ducked inside the room and shut the door.