I picked up a couple of daggers and tested them. They were perfectly balanced and sharpened to lethal points. I hefted one then another in my hands, feeling immense satisfaction at having some decent protection again at last within my reach. Yes, I didn’t necessarily need weapons to be able to fight; Thomas’ tutelage had shown me just how possible it was to fight bare-fisted successfully and, yes, I had my green fire which could prove equally lethal. If push came to shove I could also transform into a dragon again, although as I’d already pointed out several times to myself, that wasn’t a route I particularly ever wanted to have to go down again. Despite all these things, the familiar feeling of safety that holding daggers again gave me was heartening. Sometimes the old ways were the best. The fact that they were silver, and therefore even more potentially lethal to shifters, was equally satisfying. I imagined myself hurling one through the air at Corrigan. Given my current mood, it was a rather nice idea.

“How much are these?”

Balud fixed me with a baleful glance then named his price. I choked, then laid them back down carefully in the tray. Damnit. Didn’t he know there was a recession on?

“Do you have anything, er, cheaper?”

“These are the cheapest.” He swept his eyes over me from head to eye with a disdainful glance.

I smarted. Okay, I wasn’t wearing Armani and didn’t reek of money like maybe Solus had, but I was still a customer. A customer who couldn’t afford to pay for anything, but still…

I tried to not to let the stench of desperation emanate from me too obviously. “Do you maybe have a payment plan?”

The answering look of disgust in the troll’s face was enough. I sighed heavily. So much for my grandiose ideas. I figured I could maybe drop by a kitchen shop and pick up some more utilitarian knives there. They would hardly be ideal, but they’d have to do.

I opened my mouth to thank Balud for his time, but he interrupted me. “You want daggers and you have no money. I want help. Do me one favour and I will let you have these.” He gestured down at the two weapons that I’d favoured.

I looked at him suspiciously. Agreeing to do a favour for someone in the Otherworld was never ever a smart move. And while I might not always be its most intelligent inhabitant, I wasn’t completely without my wits.

“What kind of favour?”

He barked out a laugh. “Nothing too onerous, little girl. I’m a troll, not a Fae. I have a competitor on the other side of the city. Her name is Wold and she is undercutting all my prices and driving away some of my best customers.”

I felt a flicker of guilty hope inside me. Maybe I could find out where this Wold was and get some decent daggers from her instead. If the little troll was going to continue to call me ‘little girl’ then I had little compunction about going to his competitors.

Balud continued. “I don’t trust her. Particularly because, as far as I can tell, she is just a front. There is no way that a Batibat runs a successful business.”

“A what?”

He looked annoyed at being interrupted. I put my hands up in placation. “Okay, sorry, I’ll look up Batibat on my own.”

“I’ll give you these and you will find out who is behind Wold’s shop. This will be our payment plan.”

“And what if I take them and then don’t manage to find out who Wold’s backer is?”

The troll looked amused. “Then I will take my knives back. With interest.”

I didn’t really want to find out what interest the little shopkeeper would be after. I had no doubt that he had many tools at his disposal to make good on such a threat. He wouldn’t be running a successful Otherworld business otherwise. And yet, what he was asking really didn’t sound that hard at all. A little bit of digging and a little bit of watching, and I was pretty confident I could get an answer for him. Having Balud as a sort of friend might, in retrospect, be a better idea for my future prospects than anything else I could currently think of.

I nodded to him decisively. “Okay then. Is there a time frame?”

He shrugged. “A week sounds reasonable.”

That indeed sounded very reasonable. I wondered if there was something about the Batibat species that I clearly didn’t know about and that was going to make this a more complicated task than it appeared on the surface. I guessed I’d find out sooner or later.

“It’s a deal.” I spat on my hand and held it out to the troll. He did the same, grasping mine in his.

“I will see you back here in seven days time then, Miss Smith.”

I stared at him, suddenly startled.

He gave a short chuckle. “I deal with dangerous customers. Do you really think I wouldn’t take the time to find out who they are first?”

That made sense. This was one canny troll though. I’d have to watch my step around him. I picked up the daggers and then realised stupidly that I had nowhere to put them other than inside my backpack where they’d be difficult to reach in a hurry.

Balud snorted, and threw me some kind of leather strapped device. “Here. On the house. I wouldn’t want you to lose these weapons as quickly as you lost the previous ones. It attaches round your back so that a short sleeved t-shirt can still conceal them. It’s much more effective than arm braces.” He arched an eyebrow at me.

Arm braces being what I would normally use. There was definitely more to this troll that met the eye. Before I could make any more comments on his astuteness, however, Balud bowed to me.

“I will give you some privacy to put it on and then you can show yourself out. It’s been a pleasure doing business.”

“Likewise,” I murmured, watching as he turned and plodded heavily away, then closed the door and quickly stripped off my t-shirt on order to get myself properly kitted up.

Chapter Six

A few hours later, I stepped off the train at Hampstead Heath station. The weight of the daggers against my back felt comforting. I had practised pulling them out several times, and now had it down to one sharp swift movement that would serve me well if this dryad, unlikely as it was, decided to turn on me. My head was a bit foggy and, as I walked through the darkened park, I felt somewhat sluggish. I’d been trying hard not to think about Corrigan and his latest date but annoying recurring images of the pair of them kept flashing through my mind. I was a fucking idiot.

The night air was cool and I could only hope that it would sharpen my senses up somewhat. I mulled over the possible reasons as to why a dryad would be interested in having a chat with me. Years ago, when I’d lived in Cornwall with the Pack, I’d patiently tracked one down in a bid to find out more about their species. It had taken a very long time to build up enough trust between myself and that dryad for her to even talk to me, and she’d never have become confident enough to seek me out. Not that finding me would have been that easy for her, of course. Dryads were somewhat tied to their tree habitats, finding it painful to be any distance away from them. The mages had seemed somewhat oblivious to this fact, using them to practise Kinesthetic spells on with their students. I had tried to encourage them to stop it, knowing how traumatic it was for the dryads, but had ended up leaving the academy before I’d had much success. It was theoretically possible that was reason why Atlanteia was trying to talk to me. Maybe she thought I had enough clout with the mages to make them cease such practices altogether. It wasn’t clear how she could possibly know that I had been trying to help them in the first place of course though.

I’d printed out a small map to take with me. Hampstead Heath was a vast area, covering almost 800 acres of land. Although pockets here and there were developed, and the influences of humans were apparent all over the place with its pools and paths, it nonetheless retained a wonderfully wild element to it, with gorgeous trees and plants lining virtually every aspect. I was aware that certain areas of the Heath were used for ‘cruising’ for random sexual encounters, but I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t be anywhere near those sections. Still, I took a long looping route round towards the Vale of Heath, the small village that the dryad had directed me to.

Despite my less than direct wanderings, I arrived at the edge of the village in good time. The moon, although not yet full, was high in the sky and the night was clear. I sucked the clean air deep into my lungs. There was an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach, a sort of oily nausea that didn’t appear to be going away. If I didn’t know better I’d have thought that it was shaky butterflies of nervousness. Yet there was no reason to be feeling that way. I shook my head, trying to clear away the clouds that still lurked there, and hoped that I wasn’t coming down with some kind of summer bug. Between this meeting and the promise I’d made to Balud, the last thing I needed was to start feeling ill.

I began heading east, following the tree nymph’s instructions, and counting out my steps. Remaining wary of my surroundings, I paused at irregular intervals to double check that I wasn’t being followed. Everything, fortunately, seemed clear. When I finally reached a count of five hundred, I stopped and hunkered down, preparing to wait for the mysterious appearance of Atlanteia. I didn’t have too wait too long. Just as my eyelids were drooping heavily shut, the effort of keeping them open proving to be just a little too much, a voice drifted down towards me from one of the ancient trees.

“You are tired?” It was melodious and light but held a note of doubt.

I pulled myself to my feet, muscles tensed and hands by my sides, ready to yank out Balud’s daggers should the need arise. “No, er, yes, a bit. I think I’ve caught some little bug that’s all.”

The wispy figure of a dryad appeared in front of me. She had long flowing hair and slightly green stained lips. The moonlight danced lightly over her pale skin and she sniffed at me delicately. “You have ingested sculletaria. In large quantities. Is it possible you have been poisoned?”

I blinked at her, feeling defensive flickers of heat flare up. Poisoned? What the hell? Then it occurred to me what she was referring to and I started to relax again slightly. “You mean skullcap, don’t you?” I shrugged. “I had some earlier on today. I was trying to avoid, um, what I mean is, I needed a herbal remedy to help combat, er, negative feelings of… stress. I have quite a stressful life. You know, being contacted by Otherworld people all the time.”