would be a gate to the Place of Ice and Darkness in the arches beneath the viaduct. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was to swim into a faery realm—you never knew what the water would be like on the other side, and given where I suspected that path led, there was a good chance that I’d come out into the cold and dark and be entombed in ice forever. A vampire could cope with that, especially one who was expecting help when she got through. I really couldn’t.
It also meant the sun wouldn’t do me any good. Even if the King-Queen’s realm was accessible in daylight—faery gates, it might amaze you to learn, didn’t have terribly consistent rules—the Place of Ice and Darkness was, well, the clue was kind of in the name. No sun meant no sunrise meant no mystical symbol of whatever the fuck that was a symbol of robbing the vampires of their powers. And there was no way I was fighting my stalker ex from hell’s stalker ex from hell and a two thousand year old vampire who’d come within spitting distance of godhood and possibly a faery lord I’d both insulted and physically attacked, all at once, and on their home turf.
It was time for plan B.
Plan B, as it stood, was fairly sketchy. It was looking a whole lot like my enemies were working with the backing of a powerful faery lord, and the lord in question had a kid running a pawn shop in town. Of course the fae weren’t exactly the types to be doting parents but, as I’d learned when Sebastian Douglas tried to use me to eat my mother, that didn’t have to matter.
I tromped down off the heath, taking a moment to appreciate the skyline—because sometimes it was worth giving yourself a moment to remember why anything at all was worth bothering with—and then got on the three different fucking buses you needed to reach Seven Dials without going on the underground.
I pushed open the door a bit more forcefully than I’d intended, making the pawnbroker fix me with a disapproving look.
“In a hurry today?” they asked. This was the Merchant of Dreams. I had the impression they were way older than they looked, which wasn’t necessarily surprising. If there was anybody in London who could buy your youth for the price of a sunbeam, it was the Merchant. Trading in abstract concepts was, like, their entire job.
“I need to kill a faery lord, and you’re going to help me.”
They smiled. “Nothing is free, my dear. And what you’re asking is likely to come at the steepest possible price.”
“Your patron”—it was the Merchant’s preferred term for the otherworldly entity that had been either their mother, their father, or quite possibly both—“is sheltering a vindictive magic vampire who seems pretty damned keen on killing a bunch of people just to hurt somebody I care about. Also me. Also Patrick.”
“That seems like a vampire problem. I am simply a go-between. A striker of bargains and a granter of wishes.”
“Fine, then I wish you would be slightly more helpful.” I regretted it instantly. Words had real power for the fae-blooded, wishes doubly so.
“Oh, my dear.” The Merchant shook their head sadly. “You really should have phrased that better.”
“Don’t suppose I get to take it back?”
“I fear not. And you didn’t specify who you wished me to be helpful to.”
A sudden gust of wind slammed the door closed, and the steel shutters rolled down across the windows. But that on its own wouldn’t quite account for how dark and how cold it had got all of a sudden. “You don’t have to do this.”
“We both know that isn’t true at all.”
I tried to run, but something was draining my strength and making it hard to even move my legs. The Merchant had drawn a long sliver of black wood from beneath their desk. That did not look like it was designed to go anywhere good. “Ever consider that you might be making a massive mistake here?”
“That’s what you’ve never understood, Kate Kane. Our kind don’t make mistakes. We live bound by rules and laws as old as time, and we act as we must, in accordance with our natures.” They pressed the wooden shard against my throat, and I felt a pricking that meant it was drawing blood.
Time to act in accordance with my nature.
I’d been far closer to my mother today than I had in a long while, and