Nine Shillings

Puzzle Pieces

London - 1842

'Still watching the ducks?' I sat down beside Freyja on the bank of The Serpentine, the same time as she always sat there.

'How else would you find me to say thank you?' she asked.

'What would I want to thank you for?'

'I got rid of your little problem.' She sighed and lay back on the grass. 'You can't leave magically drained corpses lying around.'

'What?'

'I got rid of that woman and made sure no-one would sniff you out.' She folded her arms behind her head. 'You should thank me.'

'You don't have a problem leaving other magically drained bodies lying about.'

'Well, that's other people.' She gave me a side-long look. 'I don't like other people.'

It explained why there'd been no word of Elizabeth's death. 'I need her body back so her daughter knows she's dead. People like to have funerals and things.'

'Ah, I'm not sure regurgitation is possible at this point.'

I looked at her. 'You fed her to something?'

'Mother Nature is top of the food chain.' She crossed her ankles.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and thought hard about not whacking her. 'I need to know how a changeling can blow two vampires off their feet hard enough to crack walls,' I said, more to distract myself from the desire to wallop her than because I wanted to ask her, which didn't change the fact I needed to.

She frowned at the grey rain clouds passing overhead. 'When we're afraid we can do things we normally can't. Just like humans.' She tapped her lips with a charcoal fingertip. '"Two", was one of your boys there?'

'Josef.'

She sat up. 'It's possible in their fear of getting caught they sucked up energy around them, which your boy has a lot of, and threw it back out. The kind of power he has...' She gave me an 'oh dear' look.

I twisted my wedding ring back and forth. If Gale could do that without taking much of Josef's energy, I didn't want to find out what she could do with more. 'How did you know I was changeling when I couldn't cast spells?'

She gave me a look that said it should be obvious. 'Your body was laced with magic constantly healing you, but not strong enough to heal your wound. Unfortunate for you, if your power had ever stopped functioning you would've had no natural defences.' She chuckled to herself. 'Magic giveth and it taketh away.'

I didn't think I had time to find a way to inhibit Gale's magic so she could die of a cold, but I put it in my pocket for later use.

She snapped her fingers. 'The magic we can cast is limited by the amount we expend regenerating. It's possible if you're not regenerating then you might cast stronger magic outwards.'

An idea was forming on the edge of my mind. 'If a changeling doesn't have magic defences what would happen?'

Her eyebrows rose. 'A stressor could activate latent magic. It would have to be a mortal injury or one of those serious-possible-death type illnesses humans are so fond of. Consumption, something like that.'

'Syphilis?'

'That would do it. That attacks everything and their body would want to regenerate, if they don't have a fully formed ability it might only prolong the illness. Not healing them but not letting them die.' She sat up and leaned towards me. 'They might start to think if they can find someone or something with enough energy it would heal them completely.'

And I'd taken Josef right into the murderer's path.

'Would the illness kill them in the end?' I asked. 'Or would they carry on indefinitely?'

Freyja sucked her teeth for a moment. 'I hope you're not looking for a young person, some changelings can be long-lived for mortals.' She did a mock wince. 'And how are they different from you? How many people will a vampire kill in their lifetime?'

'We don't need to kill anyone we feed from,' I said. 'She forfeited the right to plead good intentions the moment she put Sarah Toby on a slab.'

She grinned. 'I hope I'm still around to know what you're saying in a century or two.'

I gave her a sidelong look. Perhaps an argument could've been made about our murderer losing control but Sarah had been dropped to the bottom of the stairs and stepped over. That wasn't a loss of control. It was an act of malice.

Freyja sighed and propped herself up on her elbows. 'One thing's for certain, they won't stop until they're dead.'

I looked at her.

'You kill others to sustain your life,' she said. 'Would you stop?'

'Is this where we get into a philosophical debate and I start feeling guilty about being a "monster"?' I asked. 'Because if I am a monster then I'm probably not going to feel guilty about it, what with being monstrous and all.'

'People like you are no bloody fun,' she muttered.

I put my arm across the back of her seat. 'The question is, are you in my way?'

She wrinkled her nose. 'People don't speak to me like that.'

'Josef told me that once. Didn't stop me.' I got to my feet and brushed off my dress. 'While you enjoy watching the ducks, I'm going to protect the people who can't protect themselves.'

'Good luck with that,' she said. 'They all lose the optimism in the end.'

'Lucky I'm not an optimist.' I flipped her a rude gesture and walked away to the sound of her laughing.

I'd got it wrong. The murderer wasn't Gale.

It was Tessa.