spoke aloud. ‘Whatever that damn thing was, it had to come from a portal. It’s not from this plane. It’s just as well we brought the mage here after all.’
‘For once I have to agree,’ Staines said. ‘He may even be able to shed some light on what it actually is. Considering his fee, he needs to do something.’ He glanced behind, his gaze landing on the hapless mage, who had taken it upon himself to sidle up to Mack. ‘I’ll see what he knows.’
I watched Staines stride over and begin talking. Now that the danger was over, Floride was relaxed and laughing. He murmured something to Mack, licking his lips in an overtly sexual manner. I frowned. Then I walked over to join them.
He grinned at me with irritating good humour, offering up a mock – and very sloppy – salute. ‘That’s not the first time I’ve seen pack members’ rage mean that an alpha’s compulsion doesn’t work properly. You guys are taking this death pretty seriously.’
The wizard was becoming more annoying by the second. I wondered what else we were supposed to be doing, other than taking a brutal murder ‘seriously’. ‘Do your thing, then,’ I snapped.
A satisfying flicker of nervousness shuddered through him. ‘What now? But I thought…’
‘We haven’t got all day, or night. The thing that killed the Cornish alpha left no traces.’ I nodded towards the fallen monster. ‘That did. So you need to scry and tell us what you can see.’
‘Alpha dude, I’ll do better than that, I’ll show you.’
I held back my snort at being called ‘Alpha dude’. It was doubtful that the Arch-Mage put up with that kind of attitude. Aware that I was still attempting to maintain good inter-relations with his kind – and that Mack was watching me carefully as if waiting for me to react to the subtle insult, I simply folded my arms and acted casual. I was gratified to spot a faint blush cross her cheeks. It was unusual for shifters to be disturbed by another’s nudity and I liked that my own lack of clothes was unbalancing her. It was about time something did.
Floride closed his eyes. At least the sparks of blue alighting from his hands gave some hint that he was more powerful than his appearance suggested. The reek of magic began to fill the air and there was a familiar hum. Then it began, a trail of blue light surging forward and up to the summit of the dunes in front of us. He was creating a shadow of the thing that had attacked John, a scryed facsimile that would mimic the movements of that terrible evening. Every eye tracked the light as it swirled and began to take shape. I realised I was holding my breath and exhaled loudly. I needed some bloody answers.
‘Can you tell what it is yet?’ he asked flippantly.
‘Try harder, mage,’ I replied, ignoring his attitude. It was going to take more than an indistinct blue cloud to satisfy me.
Fortunately, he seemed to acknowledge my frustration and the magic began to do its thing. The blue light danced, coalescing into a more recognisable silhouette. I leaned forward. It wasn’t any damn earthquake monster: it was a stunningly beautiful woman, gracefully raising her arms in the air as her ghost shadow stared down at us. I took in her features. I’d never seen her before in my life and, while she might have looked human in origin, her features were too fine and her movements too elegant and controlled for her to be anything other than deeply Otherworld. I wondered whether she might be Fae but, for some reason, that didn’t seem to fit. It didn’t take long to realise why. The woman’s shape was floating in the air, the very antithesis of the beast we’d just killed that had seemed to draw strength from the earth. I didn’t know a great deal about the faeries but I knew for sure that if they were capable of that, they’d have advertised it long ago.
‘Is she meant to be floating?’ Mack interrupted. ‘I mean, is that a side-effect of the scrying?’
It was a sensible question for someone who knew next to nothing about what using magic involved. ‘No,’ I answered, not wanting the mage to be disturbed from his spell. ‘What you see is what was here. Neither would the dunes have shifted that much in the last forty-eight hours. She is hovering above the ground.’
‘Fuck me,’ she whispered.
I glanced