Nine Shillings

Location, Location, Location

London - 1842

London was a place people went to get lost. It could take us months to find Gale and Tessa, if we ever found them, and the longer it took the more people would die. I needed Freyja's help.

She wasn't watching the ducks on The Serpentine and the only other place I knew she might be was her house. That was tricky, Freyja's house had a door in London but the door didn't lead to a house in London. I thought of it as the other side and hadn't been there since I'd become a vampire, I had no idea if the rules were different for the undead.

I sighed and looked up at the eye carved into the lintel above the door. 'And you can stop staring.' I tugged the bell pull.

The door creaked open. The entrance hall was empty, except for the huge oak tree growing in the middle, which seemed like a strange thought to have about a tree in a house made of entwined woodland. I took a breath and stepped inside.

Energy burned through my skin and my nails blackened. The oak tree groaned, I had a sense it was looking at me. I frowned and stepped towards it.

The door banged shut.

'Don't be rude.' A young woman entered in a chair on wheels; it wasn't like any bath chair I'd seen, the wheels at the back were much larger than the front so she could steer it herself, and there was a staff of twisted wood strapped to the back. 'Sorry, Auntie Frigga said to expect you but Mum's out looking for bits... looking for your not-friend.' She offered me her hand. 'I'm Jax.'

I stared at her. 'No offence, you look a lot less dead than your mother.'

'I take after my father, apparently.' She turned her chair and gestured for me to follow her. 'Mum told me he was so chatty she used to turn her hearing spell off so she wouldn't have to listen to him.' She laughed like it was a comedic romance. 'I'm quite chatty myself, someone has to be in a family that makes a point of stony silences. Family reunions are always fun, in-between trying to kill each other.'

Unsure what to say I went with, 'Hmmm.'

'Mother also said he was from "The East" as if there isn't a lot of east, I heard he was actually from Bromley.' She led me through a door that looked like a gap in a hedge into a kitchen where a collection of open books lay on a table next to a cup and a plate with a half-eaten pastry on. 'Studying,' she said and rolled her eyes as she reversed her chair into a corner.

Having never studied for anything I smiled politely and peered at the books. I thought Freyja had been having me on when she mentioned magical textbooks but they looked like they might be, I couldn't read Moragi to be sure.

Jax grasped the staff and symbols glowed for a moment as if it was greeting its mistress. She lifted herself out of the chair and leaned on the staff to cross to a comfortably stuffed chair at the table. 'What do you need?' The bottom of the staff unravelled and spread like a foot, she let it go and it stood beside her. 'Maybe I can help you.'

I looked at the table.

'Oh, these...' She gestured at the books. 'It's nothing, just some exams I've got to complete to get into the Military Investigators.'

I hoped none of my children ever decided to serve in the military. 'I need to find a changeling in London, quickly.'

'You need a locating spell.' She started rummaging through the books. 'I can -'

A door opened opposite the one we'd entered through, it hadn't been there before, and Freyja came in carrying an arm that looked like it had been ripped off. She dropped it on the table with a fleshy thud.