I cleared my throat. All three of them suddenly sprang up to attention, with slightly guilty looks on their faces. Mrs. Alcoon was the first to recover.

“Mackenzie, dear, your friend was just telling us about your exploits. I thought you were going to have a proper rest and a bit of a holiday, not go gallivanting around the countryside.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. It was interesting the way in which she could turn the fact that she’d clearly been involved in a deep gossip about what I’d been up to into apparent concern that I hadn’t been sat on my sofa for four and a half days watching daytime television. She smiled at me innocently.

“So I suppose you won’t be here for the fecking opening tomorrow then?” growled Slim.

“Don’t you worry about that,” I said, walking over and patting him on his little purple shoulder. “I’ll be here. I just might have some other things to take care of too.” Like working out a way to kill an apparently unkillable necromancer who had a penchant for slaughtering innocent creatures.

Mrs. Alcoon suddenly cast me a concerned look. She reached and touched me gently then drew back with troubled eyes. I guessed that her weak mage skills were springing to the fore.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly. “You’re too hard on yourself.”

I watched her carefully. “What else do you see?”

She shook herself. “Just…” she lifted her blue eyes to mine. “Nothing, dear.”

“Mrs. Alcoon…” I began, before stopping. Maybe it was better not to know. “I need Aubrey.”

He snapped up, straightening his back. “I’m ready! Where are we going? Are we going to kick some nasty shit’s butt?”

I shot him a look. He was definitely no longer the aloof and slightly scary master vampire that I’d first met. “We’re going to a meeting. You’re going to come along and only speak if you’re spoken to. Okay?”

He nodded vigorously. “Okay, okay, yes, no problem.”

I gave my old friend an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I will be here tomorrow, I promise.”

She smiled at me, although it was with a tinge of sadness that worried me. “I know you will, dear. You go and sort them all out. The council needs you.”

I was momentarily confused. Council? Before I could ask her about it however, there was a rap on the glass. Corrigan was getting impatient.

“We should go.”

Mrs. Alcoon nodded, and both her and Slim raised their hands in almost identical salutes of farewell. Weird. I left them to it, with Aubrey trotting happily at my heels.

By the time we were outside, Corrigan was already there at the car, holding the passenger door open. I bit back a retort about how I was perfectly capable of opening a car door by myself and instead slid myself in. He climbed in after me, leaving Aubrey to sort himself out. The ex-vamp rather clumsily stepped up, bumped his head on the edge of the car and winced in dramatic pain. Corrigan rolled his eyes and pulled him inside, then reached over and shut the door. Almost immediately the car rolled off.

Aubrey picked himself up off the floor and sat on the leather covered seats opposite Corrigan and myself. He fumbled for the seatbelt for several moments, then eventually managed to slot it into place and leaned back. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and then, as if remembering suddenly that I’d compelled him otherwise, snapped it shut again. His eyes drifted from myself to Corrigan and back again, as if he were watching a particularly engaging game of tennis. I gave up watching him and turned to Corrigan instead.

“So where is this meeting?”

He half turned to me, and smiled. I was so conscious of his proximity that it was almost difficult to breathe. “It’s at a neutral location. Somewhere I believe you’ve been before?”

Oh. “Alcazon?”

He nodded. I cursed inwardly. Fuck. I still really wanted to ask him about the dark-haired shifter I’d seen him with before. There was no way I was going to do it in front of Aubrey, however. I could have used the Voice to ask him about it, but for some reason this was a conversation I wanted to conduct aloud. It seemed that it would be more honest that way. So, instead, I leaned back in my own seat, and stared silently out of the window. The edge of Corrigan’s hand scraped gently against my thigh, seemingly as if by accident. I allowed my own hand to fall down against his. His skin was warm to the touch. A tiny smile lit the corners of my mouth. Not much more than twelve hours’ earlier I’d done some terrible things, unspeakable things. And I was facing an opponent about whom I knew next to nothing, other than he had far more power than I could begin to imagine and shady plans afoot that were absolutely terrifying. However, with Corrigan by my side, it somehow felt as everything was going to be alright.

Chapter Twenty Four

When we finally reached the glass-fronted restaurant, we were quickly ushered inside and into the lift. Rather than heading for the public area where I’d previously dined with Solus, we were led into a back room. It was filled with a large walnut boardroom type oval table, and plush cream carpet covered the floor. Swanky. Everyone else was already sitting there waiting.

The magnitude of this meeting hit me. Sure, I knew that on occasion the Otherworld heads met up to try to avoid unnecessary conflict. In fact that had been how I’d come to meet Aubrey in the first place: when I’d sort of gate-crashed his vamp lair in order to steal back the Ancile and leave the Palladium in its place. But this was different. There was a sombre atmosphere, and the gravity of the situation was clearly not lost on anyone. At one end of the table were the Fae: the Summer Queen, Solus, Beltran, and two others, all of whose grace and elegance rather put me to shame. Opposite them were the mages. Alex, apparently not in hiding after all, was seated next to the Arch-Mage. Max and Larkin were both there, along with a couple of austere looking female mages who I vaguely recognised. In the far corner were Staines, Lucy, and Tom. There was an empty seat next to them that was clearly meant for Corrigan himself. More surprisingly, Balud the troll was also present.

I pulled out the chair next to Balud and sat myself down. At least this way I could not only ensure that I kept my promise to him, by detailing everything I knew about Endor’s weapon shop, but also maintain some semblance of neutrality by not visibly aligning myself with any of the other groups. Aubrey sat next to me. The cushion on his chair let out a gentle farting sound as he rested himself upon it. He giggled to himself. Everybody else ignored him.

The Summer Queen tapped her long tapered fingernails impatiently on the table top. “Where’s Atlanteia? She should be here as well.”

My stomach dropped. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face the dryad just yet. To do so would be to ultimately acknowledge not only my failure to keep her extended family safe, but also my culpability in their deaths.

“She is as yet too weak to leave her habitat,” stated the Arch-Mage. “The attack took it out of her and she is not ready to supplant herself so far away from her tree.”

The Summer Queen raised her perfectly manicured eyebrows. “You’ve been in contact with her? I seem to recall that it wasn’t too long ago that you were using the dryads for silly teaching experiments.”

He scowled in obvious annoyance. Before he could answer, however, Corrigan interrupted. “We’re not going to get anywhere by starting off in conflict. We can talk to Atlanteia later. Let’s focus on the matter in hand instead.” He looked meaningfully at me.

I cleared my throat somewhat nervously and began, laying out the details of how I’d come to end up at Haughmond Hill, including both Balud’s ‘request’ to discover the identity of his competitor, and what Atlanteia had asked of me.

“This is not something you should have undertaken alone,” frowned the Arch-Mage.

“Well, I didn’t think it was actually going to be that big of a deal. There was no reason to expect there to be a fucking all powerful necromancer behind everything,” I explained, trying to remain patient and not point out that even having a string of shifters, mages and Fae along for the ride hadn’t really helped all that much.

“He really is a big deal, dudes,” added in Alex. The Summer Queen winced. “According to the Batibat I spoke to, he’s trying to harness the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. His ultimate goal remains unclear, but you can bet it ain’t anything fluffy and sweet.”

“It’s impossible, though. No necromancer can use death magic to gain leverage over the elements.”

I turned to the Arch-Mage. “But I think he already has,” I said quietly. “That’s what killing the dryads was all about. They’re tied to the trees and the trees are tied to the earth. He’s already got that one in the bag.” Several faces around the table paled.

“It doesn’t make sense,” stated Staines, firmly. “He killed that one dryad, Mereia, and then didn’t go back until you blundered in and destroyed his ward.”

I forced myself to stay calm. “Because initially he didn’t want to take all the power at once. He described it as some kind of overload. That he’d short out if he did too much at once. When he came back the second time, he was strong enough to take more.”

“So is he going to go back? Do we need to protect the dryads all over the country?”

“Even though he didn’t manage to draw power from all of them, I get the feeling that he’s done with them,” I answered slowly. “He’s going to move onto another element.”

“Still,” said the Summer Queen, “we can’t be too careful. We should ensure that the tree nymphs are safe from further encroachment.”

“Oh, yes?” inquired one of the female mages. “And how exactly are we going to do that?”

The Fae Queen turned cold eyes onto her. “I would rather think that the mages could manage that. After all, not only are you apparently versed in creating protective wards, you also owe the dryads in the first place for the torture you inflicted upon them.”